886

By place

Byzantine Empire

• March - A wide-ranging conspiracy against Emperor Basil I, led by John Kourkouas, is uncovered.
• August 29 - Emperor Basil I the Macedonian dies from a fever, contracted after a hunting accident. He is succeeded by the 19-year-old Leo VI, officially Basil's son, but reputedly a son of former emperor Michael III, as sole ruler of the Byzantine Empire. After his coronation Leo reburies the remains of his reputed father Michael, with great ceremony in the imperial mausoleum, within the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople.

  Europe

• October - Siege of Paris: Count Odo slips through Viking-controlled territory, to ask the king of West Francia Charles the Fat for support. He returns with a relief force, and reaches safety within the walls. Charles arrives later with a large army, and establishes a camp at Montmartre. After negotiations he promises the Vikings tribute worth 700 Livres, and allows them to sail up the River Seine, to over-winter in Burgundy.

  Britain

• King Alfred the Great of Wessex recaptures London from the Danish Vikings, and renames it Lundenburh. Slightly upstream from London Bridge, he builds a small harbor called Queenhithe. Alfred hands the town over to his son-in-law Æthelred, lord of Mercia. A street system is planned out in the town, with boundaries of 1,100 yards from east to west, and around 330 yards from north to south.
• King Alfred receives the formal submission of all of the citizens of England not under Viking rule, and adopts the title King of the Anglo-Saxons.

  By topic

Religion

• December - Emperor Leo VI dismisses Patriarch Photius I, who has been his tutor, and replaces him with his own brother Stephen I.
• The Glagolitic alphabet, devised by Cyril and Methodius, missionaries from Constantinople, is adopted in the Bulgarian Empire.
• Boris I, ruler of the Bulgarian Empire, establishes the Preslav and Ohrid Literary Schools.