A Chronology of the Church, Religion, and Learning c.950-c.1350

Compiled by Dr. Richard Abels

for HH315: Age of Chivalry and Faith at the United States Naval Academy.

Copyright 2009

(Feel free to use this document for academic purposes, but please provide proper citation)

List of popes and antipopes of the middle ages with links to (the old) Catholic Encyclopedia

The chronology

(Embedded links are, with a few exceptions, to primary sources in translation or to contemporary illustrations)

c.950-1300 Period of steady demographic and economic growth in Western Europe. The population of Europe (excluding Russia) more than doubled, growing from about 30 million people in A.D. 1000 to about 70-80 million in 1250, after which population growth leveled off until it began to decline in the fourteenth century. The greatest population growth occurred in western and southern Europe. Demographic growth was supported by (and, in turn, supported) an expansion of food resources. European agricultural production increased markedly between c. 900-1300, especially between 1050 and 1250. This represented both extensive and intensive agricultural growth. Most of the increase in grain production came from expanding the acreage under cultivation. (There is little good evidence for a significant increase in the crop yield to seed ratio, which for wheat remained between 3.5:1 and 4:1.) The increase in arable acreage under cultivation was the result of both natural and human action. The climate of northern Europe between c.950 and c.1300 climate was warmer than in the early Middle Ages. This Medieval Climate Optimum meant longer growing seasons and the ability to cultivate lands further north and expand the repertoire of crops. Human activity took the form of extensive woodland clearance (assarting) and draining of marshes, both encouraged and funded by nobles who granted freedom to serfs willing to establish new villages in woodland clearances. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries marked the period of the greatest deforestation in Western European history. By 1250 there were few trees left in France large enough for ship masts and cathedral beams. New farming practices also resulted in higher crop yields. The most important of these was the shift from a two field system, in which half the land always lay fallow, to a three-field system of crop rotation. Closer integration of animal husbandry and cereal agriculture led to more efficient manuring (animal and human manure were the main sources of fertilizer). More extensive cultivation of beans and peas, nitrogen-fixing crops, not only improved peasant diets but also helped restore the soil’s fertility. Technology also played a role, especially the widespread use of the heavy plow with iron coulter and plowshare and moldboard, which allowed cultivation of the fertile heavy clay lands of northern Europe. The invention of the horse collar and horseshoes made possible the replacement of oxen with horses for plowing and transport; the latter was especially important in reducing transportation costs for marketing. Underlying all these innovations were improvements in mining and metallurgy that increased the supply and reduced the cost of iron. The period 950-1300 also witnessed the widespread use of watermills and vertical (post) windmills (introduced, c.1180), not only for grinding grain but for the production of iron, textiles, paper, and beer.

The expansion of agricultural production encouraged and made possible the growth of towns, increased trade, and an integrated European-wide monetized commodity economy. Flourishing textile industries arose in the towns of Flanders (Bruges, Ypres, Brussels) and northern Italy. Regions became economically interdependent (e.g. in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the Flemish cloth makers depended upon English wool grown in Yorkshire.) Between the late twelfth and the late thirteenth centuries, the fairs of Champagne in France served as wholesale markets linking the merchants and cloth makers of Flanders and Italy. During the thirteenth century the growth of international trade led to the emergence of banking houses in Italy which developed instruments of financial exchange that side-stepped the Christian prohibition on money-lending (usury).

c. 950 Revival of Christian trade in the Mediterranean, as Venice, Amalfi, Pisa, and Genoa successfully confront Arab pirates; long-distance trade routes began to be dominated by Italian and Jewish merchants. Development of merchant guilds as sworn associations/confraternities of merchants to protect, avenge, bury members (artificial kindred).

955-964 Pontificate of John XII. Octavianus, son of Alberic II, Patrician (secular ruler) of Rome, succeeded his father as Patrician at the age of 17, and was chosen pope by the nobles of Rome in the following year, taking the papal name John, making John both the spiritual and temporal ruler of the Papal States. Faced with threats by the Lombard King Berengar of Italy to the Papal States (the lands belonging to the papacy, which stretched across Italy from Roman in the west to Ravenna in the east) and political intrigues by the Roman nobility, John XII in 961 turned for protection to King Otto I of Germany, whom he offered to consecrate as “Roman Emperor,” an office that had lain vacant since the death in 887 of the Carolingian King Charles the Fat. Otto came with an army to Rome and was crowned emperor by John XII in 962. Immediately following the coronation, Otto issued a charter that pledged his and his successors’ protection of papal rule over the Papal States. But John XII soon became uneasy with Otto’s growing power in Italy, and after Otto defeated Berengar, the pope secretly sent emissaries to the Byzantine emperor and the Magyars to form an alliance against Otto. Upon learning of this, Otto returned to Rome (963) and deposed John for gross immorality, replacing him with a new pope of his own choosing, Leo VIII. The charges against John XII are recorded by Bishop Liudprand of Cremona, a supporter of Otto I:

Then, rising up, the cardinal priest Peter testified that he himself had seen John XII celebrate Mass without taking communion. John, bishop of Narni, and John, a cardinal deacon, professed that they themselves saw that a deacon had been ordained in a horse stable, but were unsure of the time. Benedict, cardinal deacon, with other co-deacons and priests, said they knew that he had been paid for ordaining bishops, specifically that he had ordained a ten-year-old bishop in the city of Todi... They testified about his adultery, which they did not see with their own eyes, but nonetheless knew with certainty: he had fornicated with the widow of Rainier, with Stephana his father's concubine, with the widow Anna, and with his own niece, and he made the sacred palace into a whorehouse. They said that he had gone hunting publicly; that he had blinded his confessor Benedict, and thereafter Benedict had died; that he had killed John, cardinal subdeacon, after castrating him; and that he had set fires, girded on a sword, and put on a helmet and cuirass. All, clerics as well as laymen, declared that he had toasted to the devil with wine. They said when playing at dice, he invoked Jupiter, Venus and other demons. They even said he did not celebrate Matins and the canonical hours nor did he make the sign of the cross.

When Otto and his army departed Rome a few months later, John’s supporters recaptured the city and drove Leo VIII into exile. John’s victory was short-lived. He died soon after under uncertain circumstances. (Rumor had it that he was killed by a jealous husband.) His pontificate is often cited as the nadir of the early medieval papacy. The Roman nobility’s control over the papacy evidenced in the pontificate of John XII was replicated in other sees and monasteries through tenth-century Western Europe. Local counts and nobles often regarded the churches and monasteries on their lands as their property, and accordingly appointed their priests and abbots. The majority of priests were illiterate and often married (or lived with concubines). The majority of popes, mostly sons of powerful Roman families, were worldly and/or incompetent. The German bishops, in contrast, were usually men of considerable ability and education, largely because they rose to the rank of bishop by serving first in the courts of the German kings. (See St. Udalrich, s.a. 973.)

The Ottonian (918-1024) system of royal administration in Germany relied upon dynastic connections between the kings and the dukes, bishops, and counts. Otto and his successors attempted to keep the duchies of Germany and episcopacies in the hands of members of their family. Although German kingship remained technically “elective,” the Ottonian kings and the Salians who succeeded them (see entry for the year 1024) ensured the succession of their sons by having them ‘elected’ and crowned co-rulers with them. The result was a de facto hereditary monarchy. The Ottonians’ control over northern Italy depended upon their physical presence, and Emperor Otto III (r. 983-1002), the son of a Byzantine princess, consciously imitated Roman imperial and Byzantine court customs and made Rome the center of his imperial administration. The Ottonians and their successors the Salians promoted a theocratic ideology of kingship modeled on Byzantium. Otto III seated in majesty receiving tribute from regions of the empire. From Otto III’s gospel book.)

973 Death of St. Udalrich (Ulrich), bishop of Augsburg. Udalrich had been bishop of Augsburg since his appointment by King Henry I of Germany in 923. Udalrich is a model of pre-Gregorian piety. He served the German kings not only as a spiritual counselor but as a royal official and military commander. Despite charges of nepotism, he was canonized in 993, the first canonization that followed an established canonical procedure based on evidence of miracles.

989 Peace of God. Synod of Charroux (at a Benedictine monastery in La Marche in western France on the border of Aquitaine): beginning of the Christian “Peace of God” movement. Threatens excommunication “for attacking or robbing a church, for robbing peasants or the poor of farm animals—among which the ass is mentioned but not the horse which would have been beyond the reach of a peasant—and for robbing, striking or seizing a priest or any man of the clergy who is not bearing arms. Making compensation or reparations could circumvent the anathema of the Church.” Subsequent peace councils were held at Poitiers (1011-14) and Limoges (994, 1028, 1031, 1033).

999-1003 Pontificate of Pope Sylvester II (born Gerbert d’Aurillac), the greatest scholar of his time, who is important in the history of science and mathematics because of his role in introducing to Christendom Arabic astronomy and mathematics, including the abacus. Gerbert also wrote treatises on the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music), and popularizing the teaching of the Seven Lberal Arts.

1024 Salian dynasty begins in Germany: royal administration based upon use of ministeriales and prelates. Because King Henry II of Germany died without a son, his cousin Conrad II was elected king of Germany. This marks the end the Saxon dynasty (918-1024) and the beginning of the Salian dynasty (1024-1125) of German kings. The great accomplishment of the Salian kings was the development of an effective royal administrative system based upon the use of ministeriales as royal officials. Ministeriales were a peculiar class of “unfree vassals.” They were serfs who served their lords as knights and administrators. Although their lords provided them with land and wealth, they remained unfree in terms of personal status and could not claim hereditary right to either offices or property. In the tenth century, German bishops and abbots employed ministeriales to administer their properties and to fight for them because they were less likely to lose church lands by granting them to serf-knights than to free knights. The Salians adapted this system to royal government, employing ministeriales as the backbone of royal administration. Like their Ottonian predecessors, the Salian German kings used prelates (bishops and abbots) for the higher offices of royal administation. They could safely do this because the crown maintained control over the appointment of bishops and abbots. The Salians in particular used the royal household as a preparatory school for bishops. When a see fell vacant, the king picked the new bishop from among his royal chaplains upon the basis of proven administrative ability and loyalty. The result was that, with the possible exception of the Anglo-Saxon England which maintained a Carolingian-style government, eleventh-century Germany had the most stable and effective central administration in Western Europe. Manuscript portrait of Emperor Conrad II

The ideological basis for Salian kingship was theocratic: the Salian kings saw themselves as God’s vicars on earth, responsible to Him for the peace and safety of both the church and the state. As Roman emperors, they also saw themselves as having primacy over the other kings in Christendom, although this was a view not shared by other kings. The greatest constitutional check upon the power of the medieval German monarchy remained the elective character of royal succession, but as long as a king had a son, succession in practice was hereditary. The greatest practical impediment to royal absolutism was the lack of personal ties of loyalty between the local German aristocracy and the Crown. And although the Ottonians had established the crown’s right to appoint dukes to four of Germany’s six traditional “tribal” duchies, two—Saxony and Lorraine—remained beyond royal control.

1027 Truce of God. Council of Toulouges (in eastern Pyrenees) proclaims the “Truce of God,” prohibiting warfare on Sundays and holy days.

1033 Peace of God. Peace council at Limoges adds merchants to list of noncombatants protected by the Peace of God.

1037 Death of Ibn Sina (known in the West as Avicenna), the great Persian physician, scientist, and philosopher who attempted to reconcile Aristotelianism, Neoplatonism, and Islamic theology.

1046 King Henry III of Germany deposes rival popes; beginning of papal reform. Pope Benedict IX reneges on the sale of the papacy a year earlier to his godfather Pope Gregory VI (a reformer) and reclaims the office. The German King Henry III (r. 1039-1056) arrives in Italy with an army to be crowned emperor, discovers that there are two men claiming to be pope (a third had been deposed the year before) and calls the council of Sutri to resolve the question. Henry III deposed both popes and appointed his a reform-minded German bishop who had accompanied him to Italy as the new pope. (Miniature portrait of Emperor Henry III, c.1040.)

1049-1054 Pope Leo IX launches a papal reform movement against simony and clerical marriage. After the deaths in quick succession of two German popes (to lead poisoning and malaria), Emperor Henry III appoints his kinsman Bishop Bruno of Toul (in what is now northeastern France) pope. Bruno, an ardent church reformer, asks to be canonically elected by the clergy and people of Rome before being consecrated pope. He takes the name Pope Leo IX (p. 1049-1054). Pope Leo IX was the first in a series of reforming popes who enacted decrees against the clerical abuses of simony (purchase of holy offices) and clerical marriage. The reform movement that Leo IX began would later be called the Gregorian Reforms after his successor Gregory VII [p.1073-1085). It was long thought that the Gregorian Reform was inspired by the monastery of Cluny’s emphasis upon piety but the impetus for purifying the morals of the secular clergy probably derived more from the spiritual anxiety generated by the growing commercialism and wealth in northern Italy and Flanders.

Leo IX’s reform of the Papal Curia. From Leo's pontificate marks the development of the cardinals and the Roman Curia (the Pope’s Court) into institutions of papal government. Cardinals were the clergy of the cathedral of Rome (the Lateran). In 1073 there were 7 cardinal bishops, 28 cardinal priests, 18 cardinal deacons and possibly 21 subdeacons. Cardinal-bishops had a similar relationship to the pope as great barons did to a king. They held dual sees, one of the titular (nonresidential) churches of Rome and a see outside of Rome; their chief duty was conducting services in the Lateran church. They didn't take part in the routine government of the church, but they acted as advisors and as a council, and after 1059 elected and consecrated pope. Cardinal-priests and cardinal deacons were the personnel of papal government. These served the popes as legates (ambassadors) and as administrators (e.g., chancellor, chamberlain, etc.). Below the cardinals were the lesser papal officials--notaries--and the papal soldiers. (Portrait of Pope Leo IX.)

1049 Council of Reims, first council of the papal reform movement. Pope Leo IX presided over this French ecclesiastical council, which was timed to coincide with the translation of the relics of the diocese patron saint Remigius to a new crypt in the refurbished cathedral. Leo IX used this occasion to launch an attack upon simony, demanding that all the bishops present affirm that they did not purchase their spiritual offices. One bishop was tried and deposed (in absentia] and others who admitted guilt and sought forgiveness were allowed to retain their sees through the authority of the pope.

c.1050 First European ‘Industrial Revolution’ in textiles. Horizontal looms appear in Flemish towns; Flemish cloth trade develops, facilitating the development of towns and cities in Flanders. Similar developments occur in northern Italy. Merchant and craft guilds develop into specialized, chartered economic association, the purpose of which was to secure a monopoly of town's business for its members and to regulate competition among them. Each trade/profession had own guild (c. 1250 there were 101 guilds in Paris). Not all guilds were created equal. The great merchant guilds, representing the urban patriciate, were usually the dominant political powers in towns. Crafts guilds, in fact, were often formed to guard interest of artisans against the economic and political power of the merchant capitalists. Craft guilds were professional associations more like the American Medical Association (AMA) or plumbers union rather than modern trade unions, which represent the interests of labor against capital. Only “masters” were full members of a guild. Guilds regulated production and limited competition by prescribing prices and quality of goods, and hours and wages of laborers; determined who could practice craft and what training they needed before becoming masters. Guild regulations represented compromise between artisans, looking to their self-interest, and town magistrates (representing the urban patriciate), who insisted on the inclusion of rules to protect the consumer. The master's shop (ideally) was an economic household, with the master filling the role of father, and the journeymen and apprentices, his sons/boys.

1053 The Battle of Civitate in southern Italy: Normans defeat papal led army. A Norman army under Humphrey de Hauteville, count of Apulia, defeats a German-Lombard-Italian coalition army sponsored by Pope Leo IX. Pope Leo IX was captured and held for several months in honorable captivity. He was forced to sign a series of treaties favorable to the Normans before they released him.

1054 East-West Schism/death of Pope Leo IX. In 1154 Pope Leo IX sent Cardinal Humbert of Silva Candida as papal legate to Constantinople to complain about the Patriarch Michael I Cerularius’s ‘usurpation’ (in Rome’s view) of dioceses in southern Italy and the patriarch’s condemnation of Latin liturgical practices, and about other issues dividing the Latin and Greek Churches, including a theological dispute about the nature of the Trinity as defined by the Council of Nicaea in 325 (the “Filioque Controversy’). At bottom the issue was papal claims to supremacy over the entire Catholic Church, including the Patriarch of Constantinople, which the patriarch vigorously rejected. Humbert was notoriously hotheaded as was Patriarch Michael, and negotiations quickly broke down, with Humbert delivering a bull excommunicating the Patriarch. Michael responded by excommunicating both Humbert and Pope Leo IX, whom unknown to either Humbert or Michael, had died three months earlier. This began a schism between the Latin and Greek Churches that was to last throughout the Middle Ages and into modern times. (Portrait of Patriarch Michael Cerularius.)

1055 Birth of Guibert of Nogent (d.1125), abbot and intellectual, author of the first autobiography in the West since Augustine. See below under 1115.

1059 Papal Electoral Decree: cardinals elect popes. Pope Nicholas II (p.1059-1061] presiding over the Synod of the Lateran (in Rome) issued a Papal Electoral Decree which gave the College of Cardinals (the seven cardinal bishops) the sole right of electing popes: “First, the cardinal bishops, with the most diligent consideration, shall elect a successor; then they shall call in the other cardinal clergy [cardinal priests and cardinal deacons to ratify their choice], and finally the rest of the [Roman] clergy and the people shall express their consent to the new election.” The decree did not allow a direct role for the emperor in choosing a pope, but vaguely mandated that “due honor and reverences shall be shown to our beloved son, Henry [IV], king and emperor elect”—not as a right of the imperial office but, significantly, as a papal grant of privilege. The historical background: the traditional pope-makers, the Roman lay aristocracy, opposed the papal reform movement of Pope Leo IX and when the death of Emperor Henry III in 1056 and the succession of a child, Henry IV to be king of Germany, deprived the papacy of a secular protector, the Count of Tusculum, secular ruler of Rome, engineered the election of an antipope “Benedict X” in 1058. (An antipope is someone whose claim to have been pope is not recognized by the Catholic Church.) Led by the cardinal deacon Hildebrand (the future Pope Gregory VII), the cardinals met and elected the reformer Bishop of Florence as Nicholas II. The Papal Electoral Decree was aimed at freeing the papacy from control by the Roman aristocracy. The imperial claim to appoint/ratify popes was not the target of the Decree but collateral damage. The significance of the Decree was that it excluded the laity, the Roman nobility and the emperor, from the selection of popes.

Ban on lay investiture. The Synod also banned for the first time the practice of lay investiture (laymen giving bishops the symbols of their spiritual offices), as part of a package of church reform that included condemnation, once again, of simony and clerical marriage, and a papal endorsement of the Peace and Truce of God.

Papacy allies itself with the Normans of southern Italy: Robert Guiscard de Hauteville (d. 1085), a Norman adventurer and mercenary who with his brothers conquered southern Italy from the Lombards and the Byzantines and who had defeated Pope Leo IX and taken him prisoner in 1053, makes peace with the papacy, submits to Pope Nicholas II as his vassal, and is recognized by him as the legitimate duke of Apulia and Calabria. (Gold coin of Robert Guiscard.)

1073 Pope Gregory VII (r. 1073-1085) initiates a new conception of the Church and the role of the papacy within it. According to Gregory, the Church is obligated to create "right order in the world" rather than withdraw from it. Gregory seeks to create a papal monarchy with moral authority over the “temporal sword” (secular state) and rule over the clergy. Gregory’s claims are enunciated in the “Dictates of the Pope” (Dictatus Papae), a list of 27 assertions recorded in Gregory’s papal register under 1075: a) the supremacy of the Roman pontiff over the entire Church, including the eastern branch ('That the Roman pontiff alone can with right be called universal/That his name alone shall be spoken in the churches') and rule over the episcopate, which entailed the right of deposing and reinstating bishops (a right that could be exercised even by a legate), the power of organizing diocese, the right to be the ultimate judge in ecclesiastical cases, and a claim to be exempt from human judgment); b. The power to issue canon law; c. the sanctity of the pope qua pope (through the merits of St Peter); d. papal supremacy over the princes of the earth ('That he alone may use the imperial insignia/That of the pope all princes shall kiss the feet'), with the practical and revolutionary claim 'that he may absolve subjects from their fealty to wicked men.' [There is an indication here of Gregory's view of the pope as the final judge over the entire feudal system; in his treatment of Henry at Canossa there is some indication that he conceived of himself as being the ultimate feudal overlord. The feudal claims of the papacy is a topic that deserves to be explored in more depth.]

King Henry IV of Germany responds with the traditional theocratic claims for German kingship, including the right to appoint bishops within his realm, thereby inaugurating the Investiture Controversy pitting reformer popes supported by pious laity and monks against traditionalist emperors, kings, and bishops. The conflict ostensibly concerns the papacy’s attempt to ban the practice of lay investiture, i.e. laymen conferring upon newly consecrated bishops the symbols of spiritual office, but it is really a struggle by the papacy against laymen appointing (and controling) bishops and abbots. The papacy claims that bishops and abbots must be freely elected by the clergy of their diocese or the monks of their monastery; emperors and kings maintain their traditional right to appoint bishops and abbots. The Gregorian reform encourages the practice of Christian warfare in the pursuit of providing "right order in the world,” which forms the basis for the Crusades. Gregory VII encouraged Christian princes to recover lands from Muslims in Spain, over which he claimed papal sovereignty on the basis of ancient right. (Portrait of Pope Gregory VII.)

1077 Submission at Canossa. Henry IV of Germany submits to Pope Gregory VII at Canossa in an act of public humiliation. After two years of harmony with the papacy because he needed the pope’s support against rebellious German princes, Henry IV defied Pope Gregory VII’s ban on lay investiture by appointing and investing the archbishop of Milan in Italy (1075). Gregory VII reprimanded Henry IV, and the latter responded by calling a council of German bishops (1076) which declared that Gregory VII had gained the papacy by illegitimate means and had forfeited the office through his unholy actions. Henry IV deposed Gregory VII, who responded by excommunicating the king and absolving his subjects from their oaths of loyalty to him. The German princes took this as a signal to revolt against Henry IV and prepared to elect a new German king. While Pope Gregory VII was on his way to attend the election, Henry intercepted him at Canossa, a fortress in northern Italy at the mouth of the Alps belonging to Countess Mathilda of Tuscany, a fervent papal supporter. Rather than attack, as Gregory expected, the king surprised the pope by presenting himself as a penitent. Gregory kept the king standing in the snow bareheaded for three days before lifting the excommunication. Henry IV, with Pope Gregory VII maintaining neutrality, wages war against the rebel German princes and their “anti-king” Rudolf of Swabia. (Emperor Henry IV enthroned.)

1078-1093 St. Anselm served as abbot of Bec (Normandy), where he composed several important works of theology, notably the Proslogion which offers a rational argument for the existence of God (the so-called “Ontological Argument”).

1079-1142   Life of Peter Abelard, the father of “scholasticism,” a method of dialectical reasoning in which logic is used to reconcile apparent contradictions between authoritative texts. Peter Abelard contributes to this movement with his great theological work, Sic et Non (see entries for years 1118, 1121).

1080 Pope Gregory VII realizes that King Henry IV has no intention of abiding by his submission to the papacy and declares Rudolf the legitimate king of Germany and excommunicates Henry IV for a second time. Henry IV responds by appointing an antipope. (From this point on, the appointment of antipopes became a major weapon used by emperors in their fights with popes, just as popes used the threats of excommunication and deposition against emperors.]

1084 Henry IV seizes Rome and enthrones his antipope who crowns him emperor. The Norman duke of southern Italy Robert Guiscard, an ally and vassal of Pope Gregory VII, rescues the pope but the Normans pillage Rome in the process. Gregory VII retires to southern Italy with Robert Guiscard. (Miniature of Henry IV driving Gregory VII out of Rome, 12^th-century ms. of the “Life of King Henry IV.)

1084 St Bruno of Cologne founds the Carthusian Order of hermit-monks in the then desolate and deserted valley of La Chartreuse near Grenoble. Bruno, who had been chancellor of the archbishop of Rheims, sought a more ascetic and solitary life than offered by contemporary Benedictine monasticism. Guibert of Nogent writing around 1115 described the monastery at Chartreuse and its way of life: “The church stands upon a ridge . . . thirteen monks dwell there, who have a sufficiently convenient cloister, in accordance with the coenobitic custom, but do not live together claustraliter like other monks. Each has his own cell round the cloister, and in these they work, sleep, and eat. On Sundays they receive the necessary bread and vegetables (for the week) which is their only kind of food and is cooked by each one in his own cell; water for drinking and for other purposes is supplied by a conduit . . . . There are no gold or silver ornaments in their church, except a silver chalice. They do not go to the church as we do [Guibert was a Benedictine], but only for certain of them. They hear Mass, unless I am mistaken, on Sundays and solemnities. They hardly ever speak, and, if they want anything, ask for it by a sign. If they ever drink wine, it is so watered down as to be scarcely better than plain water. They wear a hair shirt next the skin, and their other garments are thin and scanty. They live under a prior, and the Bishop of Grenoble acts as their abbot and provisor . . . Lower down the mountain there is a building containing over twenty most faithful lay brothers [laicos], who work for them. . . . Although they observe the utmost poverty, they are getting together a very rich library.” The Carthusians along with the Cistercians represent an ascetic and puritanical reforming trend within Western monasticism in the late eleventh and early twelfth century.

1085 Pope Gregory VII dies in exile in southern Italy. His last words are a bitter parody of a psalm: ‘I have loved justice and hated iniquity, and therefore I die in exile.” (Cf. Psalm 45:7 “Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated wickedness: therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.”) Robert Guiscard dies while fighting the Byzantines in an attempt to seize Thessaly from the Byzantine Empire. (Miniature of Gregory VII dying in exile, 12^th-century ms. of the “Life of King Henry IV.)

1095 Council of Clermont. The First Crusade is initiated when Byzantine Emperor Alexius Comnenus requests help in reconquering from the Seljuk Turks the lost territory of Asia Minor. Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont calls upon the princes of Christendom for an armed “pilgrimage” to recover Jerusalem from the Muslims. Among his goals is the strengthening of the Gregorian papacy by bringing the Greek Orthodox Church under papal authority. The response is dramatic with two waves of “crusaders” answering the Pope’s call. War continues between Pope Urban II and the German Emperor Henry IV, who is forced to flee Italy. (Miniature of Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont.)

Historical definition of “crusades”: a series of holy wars called by popes with the promise of indulgences for those who fought in them and directed against external and internal enemies of Christendom for the recovery of Christian property or in defense of the Church or Christian people. Crusades were characterized by the taking of vows and the granting of indulgences to those who participated. Like going on pilgrimage, to which they were often likened, crusading was an act of Christian love and piety that compensated for and paid the penalties earned by sin. It marked a break in earlier Christian medieval conceptions of warfare in that crusades were penitential warfare.

1096‑1099: Phases and major events of the First Crusade.

1096: People’s Crusade. About 20,000 lesser nobles and peasants from northern France and Germany, led in part by Peter the Hermit and Walter Sansavoir. Peasants massacred Jews of Rhineland along the way. Many of the crusaders were killed by Hungarians in retaliation for their looting of the countryside. Those that made it to Constantinople were slaughtered by the Turks in Anatolia. Remnant, about 3,000 strong, including Peter the Hermit, joined up with Prince's Crusade. Probably the greatest significance of the People’s Crusade was that it revealed the wide-spread popular appeal of Urban’s call to crusade and that the poor military showing it made against the Turks lulled the Sultan Kilij Arslan to underestimating the threat of the Princes’ Crusade that followed.

1096‑1099: Princes' Crusade. Force of about 50-60,000 (including noncombatants), of which about 7,000 were knights. Led by dukes and counts: Godfrey of Bouillon, Baldwin of Boulogne, Raymond IV of Toulouse, Stephen of Blois, Robert Curthose of Normandy, Hugh of Vermandois, Bohemond of Taranto (Norman of southern Italy), and Robert of Flanders. The crusade did not have a military commander or a chain of command. Its moral leader was Bishop Adhemar of Le Puy, the papal legate. Results: Jerusalem taken and Crusader States established.

1097-1098 Siege of Antioch. The crusaders, after swearing oaths of allegiance to Emperor Alexius and promising to restore to him formerly held Byzantine territory, crossed into Anatolia, the Seljuq Sultanate of Rum ruled by Kilij Arslan. They laid siege to the Seljuq capital city of Nicaea and defeated a relief army led by Kilij Arslan, but were deprived of plunder when the city surrendered to Alexius after secret negotiations. In compliance with their oaths, the crusaders ceded Nicaea to Alexius and marched southeast, but this was the beginning of bad blood between the crusader leaders and the Byzantines. Kilij Arslan’s forces intercepted the army (which was marching in two divisions separated by mile) at Dorylaeum but the crusaders managed to defeat it. They continued marching south through Anatolia meeting little opposition. Baldwin of Boulogne broke off from the main army to take control of the county of Edessa, while the main crusader army marched on to Antioch. The Siege of Antioch (20 Oct 1097-3 June 1098) proved a turning point. This long siege turned into a competitive starving match during which many hungry crusaders deserted. After beating off several relief attempts from local Turkish rulers, the crusaders took the city by treachery. Bohemond, who wanted Antioch for himself, contacted a disaffected Armenian warden of one of the city’s towers. After forcing the other leaders to agree to give him Antioch (in breach of their agreement with Alexius), Bohemond had his confederate permit the crusaders to enter the city through his now unguarded tower. The crusaders now found themselves starving within the city’s walls and caught between the still untaken city citadel and a large advancing Turkish army commanded by the atabeg (governor) of Mosul, Kerbogha. Stephen of Blois, who had left the crusade just before the city was taken and was on his way back to his mortified wife Adela, convinced Alexius that the crusaders’ situation was hopeless and that there was no point in coming to their rescue. When all seemed lost, a simple soldier in Count Raymond’s southern French army, Peter Bartholomew, had visions in which St. Andrew told him where to find the Holy Lance. The discovery of the “Holy Lance” was greeted with skepticism by Bohemond and Bishop Adhemar of Le Puy, but it raised morale in the ranks and was an important factor in the Crusaders victory over Kerbogha’s relief army. (In the following year Peter Bartholomew was to die in an ordeal by fire to prove the authenticity of the Lance.) The Fatimids of Egypt, enemies of the Seljuqs, entered into negotiations with the crusaders, whom they understood to be a Byzantine mercenary army, facilitating their capture of Turkish held towns in Syria and the Levant as they marched south toward Jerusalem.

1099   The crusaders of the First Crusade, numbering now around 20,000, capture Jerusalem, massacring its inhabitants (Muslims, Jews, and Christians alike). The Crusaders divide their new territories into four principalities. Godfrey of Bouillon is named “defender of the Holy Sepulcher” and ruler of Jerusalem.

1101-1102: the Crusade of the Faint-hearted (coda to the First Crusade). Pope Paschal II, taking up where his predecessor Pope Urban II left off, preached another crusade to aid the fledgling Kingdom of Jerusalem. He called in particular upon those who had taken but failed to fulfill the crusader vow but had not fulfilled it, whom he threatened with excommunication, and those who had left the First Crusade before it reached Jerusalem (the “faint-hearted”). The result was another large, disorganized crusade, even more heterogeneous and far less successful than the First. The largest contingent were townspeople and peasants from Lombardy (northern Italy). Others came from various parts of France and Germany. Among the Crusades’ leaders were Count Stephen of Blois and Count Hugh of Vermandois, both seeking to restore the honor they had lost by leaving the First Crusade prematurely. (Stephen’s ignominious flight from the Crusade during the dark days of the siege of Antioch mortified his wife Countess Adela, the daughter of King William the Conqueror; she nagged him into going back to restore her honor.] The crusade of 1101 was almost annihilated in Asia Minor by the Seljuks.

1098 Founding of the Cistercian Order. Saint Robert abbot of Molesme leaves the abbey of Molesme, which he finds too worldly and wealthy, to found the abbey of Citeaux, in a desolate valley near Dijon (France) and becomes its first abbot. The monasticism adopted at Citeaux emphasizes asceticism, simplicity, and manual labor, developing into the monastic order of the Cistercians. The abbeys second and third abbots, St. Alberic of Citeaux (1100-1108) and St. Stephen Harding (1108-1134), are considered co-founders of the Cistercian order, and St. Bernard of Clairvaux (see, s.a., 1115), the man most responsible for the astounding popularity that the order achieved in the twelfth century. The Cistercians rejected anything smacking of worldliness. Their churches were unadorned and unheated, they remained silent unless it was absolutely necessary to speak, and they ate the plainest of diets. Because of their emphasis upon voluntary renunciation of the world, the Cistercians, like the Carthusians and unlike traditional Benedictine monasteries, accepted only adults.

c.1100 Carthusian and Cistercian monastic reform movements. Around the same time, a new asceticism is sought for monks who wish to engage in contemplation and self-examination. Two new orders are created: the Carthusian and the Cistercian. Both followed the rule of St. Benedict but placed a greater emphasis upon austerity than practiced in contemporary Benedictine monasteries. The Carthusians mimicked hermits by living in individual cells; the Cistercians rejected anything smacking of worldliness. Their churches were unadorned and unheated, they remained silent unless it was absolutely necessary to speak, and they ate the plainest of diets. Because of their emphasis upon voluntary renunciation of the world, the Carthusians and Cistercians, unlike traditional Benedictine monasteries, accepted only adults.

1106 Henry I of England and Archbishop Anselm of Canterbury agree on a compromise over the practice of lay investiture. Henry gives up the claimed right to invest bishops with ring and crozier, while Anselm agrees that newly elected bishops should do homage to the king for their lands. This is a dry-run for the compromise that sixteen years later ended the Investiture Controversy in Germany, the Concordat of Worms (1122).

1108 William of Champeaux founds school of theology and philosophy at the Abbey of Saint Victor, Paris.

1113/1129: First Crusading Military Orders founded. “Military Orders” were a hybrid creation combining knighthood and monasticism. The Brother Knights lived under a monastic rule modeled in the case of the Primitive Rule of the Templars upon the Cistercian rule. Their monastic “work” was prayer and warfare. Like the Cistercians, the Military Orders only accepted adults into their ranks.

Knights Hospitaller (“Knights of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem”), founded in 1099 but recognized by papacy as a religious order in 1113. Although founded earlier than the Templars, the Hospitallers became a “military order” later, probably in the middle of the 12^th century.

Knights Templar (“Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon”) established c.1119 to protect pilgrims to Jerusalem and confirmed by papacy as a religious order in 1129. Cistercian abbot St. Bernard of Clairvaux popularized the Templars in his treatise the New Knighthood (Manuscript illumination of Bernard of Clairvaux writing.) (Great Seal of the Master of the Knights Templar.)

1115 St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) founds the Cistercian monastery of Clairvaux. Mystic, theologian, religious enthusiast, St. Bernard was the third son of a Burgundian noble. As a child he was educated in a cathedral school, an indication that his family may have intended him to enter the Church. Nonetheless, it was not until 1113 that he entered the fledgling Cistercian Order, one of thirty young Burgundian noblemen to do so. Tradition has it that Bernard’s decision was the result of a vision he had of the Virgin Mary soon after the death of his devout mother. Bernard’s influence was such that all five of his brothers, his sister, and his father all ended up following him into the monastic profession. St. Bernard was to become the spiritual leader of Europe and an adviser to kings and popes. He is largely responsible for making the new Cistercian Order the most popular religious movement of the early twelfth century and for popularizing the cult of the Virgin Mary (all Cistercian churches were dedicated to the Virgin). In 1115 the monastery of Citeaux had four “daughter houses” (dependent monasteries); by the time of his death, the order had grown to 343 houses. Bernard opposed the Gothic style of Abbot Suger as idolatrous; opposed Cluny as too formalistic and wealthy; and opposed Abelard and the new scholastic movement. (Ruins of 12^th-century Cistercian abbey at Boyle, Ireland.)

1115 Guibert, abbot of Nogent completes his autobiography (entitled Monodiae, i.e. Songs in One Voice).

1118-1119 Abelard and Heloise. Abelard teaches in Paris; tutors, seduces, impregnates, and marries Heloise. When he places her in a convent, Heloise’s uncle Canon Fulbert (of Notre Dame), believing that Abelard was repudiating the marriage, defends his family honor by hiring men to castrate Abelard. Abelard survives and becomes a monk at St. Denis, the royal monastery near Paris; Heloise enters a convent at Argenteuil, also near Paris. They give their son Astrolabe into the care of relatives. Abelard subsequently writes about the events in an open letter, The History of My Calamities. Abelard ended up as a monk of Cluny after being driven from one place to another and suffering condemnation of his teachings. (Abelard and Heloise from a 14^th-century illuminated ms.)

1121 Abelard [1079-1142] writes Sic et Non (“Yes and No”), the first great scholastic treatise which juxtaposes apparently contradictory statements about theology from Scripture and the Church Fathers and provides a logical method for reconciling the contradictions (e.g. the multiple meanings of words, scribal errors in transmission of texts). St. Bernard of Clairvaux engineers the condemnation of Peter Abelard for heresy at council of Soissons. Although the formal accusation is that Abelard denied the unity of the Trinity, St. Bernard of Clairvaux underlying objection is to Abelard’s scholasticism, which he pronounces to be “fool-ology” rather than theology. Abelard, the son of a Breton nobleman who had become a cleric and teacher of philosophy and theology, had pioneered a dialectical method of inquiry in which apparently contradictory but equally authoritative texts would be weighed against one another. He argued that with reason one could reconcile all the apparent contradictions. He explained his goal in his treatise Sic et Non: “We have undertaken to collect various sayings of the Fathers that gave rise to questioning because of their apparent contradictions. ... This questioning excites young readers to the maximum of effort in inquiring into the truth, and such inquiry sharpens their minds. Assiduous and frequent questioning is indeed the first key to wisdom. .... For by doubting we come to inquiry; through inquiry we perceive the truth, according to the Truth Himself. ‘Seek and you shall find,’ He says.” Abelard never really doubted the truth of Revelation, and insisted that all revealed knowledge, if understood properly, is true and mutually consistent. The trick was to use reason and logic to understand that truth. Abelard’s emphasis upon the critical importance of inquiry and knowledge in the pursuit of the Truth underlies his ethical philosophy as well (see below 1138), which emphasizes the importance of introspection for moral development.

1122 Concordat of Worms formally ends the Investiture Controversy. A compromise is reached in a meeting at Worms, Germany, between pope and emperor over the issue of investiture: bishops will invest newly consecrated bishops with the religious symbols of their office, while the emperor invests them with the symbols of their temporal rule. This acknowledges the dual office of bishop. Insofar as the bishop is spiritual, he belongs to the clergy alone. Insofar as he is an earthly ruler endowed with jurisdictional rights, he is a subject of the emperor from whom he has received these rights.

1123 First Lateran Council (ninth ecumenical council) is called by Pope Calixtus II. It meets in Rome and ratifies the Concordat of Worms.

c. 1120-1303 Papal Monarchy. The resolution of the Investiture Controversy facilitated the development of the Papal Monarchy, which realized many of the claims to papal supremacy over the Church made by Pope Gregory VII in the Dictatus Papae of 1075. The pope emerged as the head of a hierarchical, institutional Church with a sophisticated administrative system that relied upon written records. In a sense, the twelfth-century Church became the most administratively advanced “state” in Western Europe, with the pope serving as its ruler and the Papal Curia as his central administration. The Papal Monarch possessed all the attributes of a sovereign state: it legislated, taxed, maintained order within the church, and even raised armies to defend its interests (the crusades). The twelfth century witnessed the development of a codified body of canon law that asserted the papacy’s supremacy over the clergy, from archbishops down to subdeacons; regular use of papal legates to assert the pope’s control over regional churches; a series of ecumenical councils called by the pope; and the extension of papal oversight over canon law courts that head disputes not only between clerics and monastic houses but those involving rights of inheritance, marriage, and the rights of widows and orphans, and the establishment of the pope’s authority to make new canon law. An extensive system of canon law courts developed in which the papal curia serves as a supreme court of appeals.  Because of this, it became necessary for popes to be trained as legal experts, rather than as monks. It also necessitated the papacy’s search for increased revenues. The regular revenues of the papacy in the twelfth century came from a hodgepodge of sources. The most important of these were the feudal revenues the pope drew from the Papal States. This was supplemented by the “census,” annual payments by churches and monasteries directly subject to the papacy; Peter’s Pence, a land tax from England; charitable bequests from pious laymen; occasional income taxes and charitable subsidies taken from the clergy; payment by archbishops for the scarf-like vestment known as a pallium that indicated their rank and which could only be given by the pope; and, increasingly, by servitia, gratuities paid by bishops and abbots installed in their offices by the pope. To defray the cost of the growing judicial business heard by the Papal Court, attorney and chancery fees were charged. Given to great abuse were the fees charged by papal judges and court attendants to hear the suits, which could easily become extortionate. Finally, the personnel of the Papal Curia, in particular the cardinals, expected and sometimes demanded gifts from those who appealed to the papacy for justice. As a result, criticism of the wealth and greed of the Papal Curia grew in the twelfth century among the lesser clergy outside of Rome, and gave rise to pointed satires and parodies such as “The Gospel according to the Mark of Silver” (a “mark” was a unit of money].

The development of the Papal Monarchy is reflected in the explosion in the number of ecumenical councils and in the number of papal bulls issued annually. Between 650 and 1000 there were only three ecumenical councils, two in Constantinople and one in Nicaea. Between 1123 (1st Lateran) and 1274 (2nd of Lyons) there were six ecumenical councils, all in the west. In addition there was an explosion of local legatine councils during this same period. In England there were 20 such councils between 1050 and 1300. Papal bulls (sealed letters) were the popes’ mechanism for conveying orders, resolving disputes, issuing decisions on doctrine, etc. Annual average of papal letters in first half of eleventh century was 1-10. Under Leo IX it rose to 35 and stayed at this level until 1130. Innocent II (1130-43) issued annually 72; 130 under Hadrian IV (1154-9), 179 under Alexander III (1159-81), 280 under Innocent III (1198-1215), and 730 under Innocent IV (1243-1254). The papal chancery, in which copies of all papal bulls were kept, became the model for record keeping offices instituted by secular rulers in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

1122-1151 Suger abbot of St. Denis. Abbot Suger was a statesman-prelate who served as adviser and confidant to the French kings Louis VI and Louis VII. He is credited with introducing the architectural style known as “Gothic” (emphasis on stained glass windows, arched vaults, and flying buttresses) with the building of the Abbey Church of St. Denis (1137-1144), about which he wrote in his tracts Liber de Rebus in Administratione sua Gestis and Libellus Alter de Consecratione Ecclesiae Sancti Dionysii. Suger also wrote several works of history, including a panegyric for King Louis VI (the Fat), The Deeds of King Louis the Fat.

1125 St. Bernard of Clairvaux writes “On Love of God,” in which he posits “four degrees of love of God”: “At first, man loves himself for his own sake. That is the flesh, which can appreciate nothing beyond itself. Next, he perceives that he cannot exist by himself, and so begins by faith to seek after God, and to love Him as something necessary to his own welfare. That is the second degree, to love God, not for God's sake, but selfishly. … He advances to the third degree, when he loves God, not merely as his benefactor but as God. Surely he must remain long in this state; and I know not whether it would be possible to make further progress in this life to that fourth degree and perfect condition wherein man loves himself solely for God's sake.”

1129 At the Council of Troyes in France, the Knights Templar receive a rule modeled on that of the Cistercian Order. The main author of the rule, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, follows up on this by composing a tract praising the military order, De laude Novae Militiae ad Milites Templi (“In Praise of the New Chivalry”)

1130 Disputed papal election: Pope Innocent II vs. (antipope) Anacletus II. “In 1130, Pope Honorius II lay dying and the cardinals decided that they would entrust the election to a commission of eight men, led by the papal chancellor Haimeric, who had his candidate Cardinal Gregory Papareschi hastily elected as Pope Innocent II. He was consecrated on February 14, the day after Honorius' death. On the same day, the other cardinals announced that Innocent had not been canonically elected and chose Cardinal Pietro Pierleoni, a Roman whose family were the enemy of Haimeric's supporters the Frangipani. Anacletus' supporters were a mixture of anyone opposed to Haimeric making him powerful enough to take control of Rome while Innocent was forced to flee North; legally speaking Anacletus was the canonically elected Pope and Innocent was the anti-Pope.

However, north of the Alps, Innocent gained the crucial support of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Abbot Peter the Venerable of Cluny, and other prominent reformers who personally helped him to gain recognition from European rulers such as Lothair III, Holy Roman Emperor, leaving Anacletus with few patrons. Anacletus had been a relatively acceptable candidate for the Papacy, being well-respected, so rumors centering on his descent from a Jewish convert were spread to blacken his reputation. Among Anacletus' supporters were duke William X of Aquitaine, who decided for Anacletus against the will of his own bishops, and the powerful Roger II of Sicily, whose title of "King of Sicily" Anacletus had approved shortly after his accession. By 1135 Anacletus' position was weak despite their aid, but the schism only ended with his death in 1138, after which Innocent returned to Rome and ruled without opposition. Innocent II quickly convened the Second Lateran Council in 1139 and resolidified the Church's teachings against usury, clerical marriage, and other problems.” (from Wikipedia) The accusation against Anacletus II that the Perleoni family was of Jewish descent, although the family was unimpeachably Catholic in 1130, is often cited as a significant event in the history of antisemitism (as opposed to anti-Judaism).

1130 Chivalry: tournaments banned by the Council of Clermont, canon 9: “We completely forbid those detestable fairs or festivals where knights customarily gather by agreement and heedlessly fight among themselves to make show of their strength and bravery, whence often result men's deaths and souls' peril. Should any knight die on such an occasion he should not be denied penance and the last rights if he asks for them; yet let him not enjoy Church burial.” This provides evidence for the growing popularity of tournaments in France. The Church saw tournaments as places in which all of the seven deadly sins flourished and forces of disorder. They also feared that tournaments distracted knights who might otherwise go on crusade. The ban, however, proved completely ineffective, as did subsequent conciliar prohibitions of tournaments (1148, 1179, 1215, 1245, 1279, and 1313). Finally, in 1316 Pope John XXII gave up the fight and bestowed his blessings on tournaments.

1133/1134 Abelard writes The History of My Calamities (Historia Calamitatum).

1138 Abelard writes his treatise on ethics, entitled Know Yourself (Scito te ipsum). Abelard’s theory of ethics is radically intentionalist, that is he posits that the moral quality of an action is defined solely by the intention of the actor and that the consequences of the action are ethically irrelevant. Sin, according to Abelard, is inner consent to an action that one knows to be evil. Typically, Abelard illustrates this with the most provocative example possible: the Jews who called for Jesus’s crucifixion were not guilty of sin because they did so in ignorance of his divinity and out of an inner belief that they were upholding the dignity of God against blasphemy. Abelard, however, was not a moral relativist. He maintained that there is a right and a wrong, but he separated objective right and wrong from the intentions of the actor to do right and wrong. Abelard’s ethics emphasizes the importance of introspection and self understanding (hence the title). It also relates closely to developments in the theology of the sacrament of confession and reconciliation which at this time was being transformed from public group admissions of sin to private and personal individual confessions to a priest who assigned penance in accordance with the individual’s spiritual need.

1139 Second Lateran Council (tenth ecumenical council). The main business of this council, called in the wake of the death of the antipope Anacletus II, was to affirm Pope Innocent II, condemn Anacletus posthumously as a schismatic, excommunicate his greatest supporter King Roger II of Sicily, and restate the condemnation of church abuses from the Councils of Clermont (1095) and Council of Reims (1049). Several lesser heresies were anathematized. Arnold of Brescia’s anticlerical teachings were condemned and Arnold himself banished from Italy.

c.1140 Canon law codified. Gratian, a canon lawyer from Bologna, compiles a handbook of canon law from councils and papal decrees, reconciling apparent contradictions by using Abelard’s scholastic method. His Decretum or Concord of Discordant Canons was incorporated into the official Catholic Church Corpus Juris Canonici and was used as a canon law textbook until 1917. 12^th century copy of Gratian’s Decretum; glossed Gratian’s Decretum, early 13^th century, Stowe 378, British Library.

1141 Council of Sens condemns Abelard and Arnold of Brescia for heterodox teaching. The condemnations were engineered by Bernard of Clairvaux. Abelard was condemned (again) for heterodox propositions about the Trinity. His student Arnold was condemned for teaching that “clerics who own property, bishops who hold regalia [tenures by royal grant], and monks who have possessions cannot possibly be saved. All these things belong to the [temporal] prince, who cannot dispose of them except in favor of laymen.” Both are condemned to life imprisonment in separate monasteries, although the sentence is not carried out.

1144 Gothic architecture. Abbot Suger abbot of St. Denis, a burial shrine for French saints and kings, orders the Romanesque of the abbey to be torn down and replaced with one in the new Gothic style. Suger’s conception is to fill the church with light, which he sees as divine illumination. Gothic architecture is the result. In order to have “walls of glass” the architects replace the rounded arches and vaults of Romanesque churches with pointed arches and ribbed vaulting, and build external “flying buttresses” to support thin outer walls (as compared with Romanesque churches) dominated by stained glass windows. (Stained glass window from Abbey of St. Denis.) (Abbey Church of St. Denis.)

1144-1187 Recovery of Aristotle. Gerard of Cremona translates from Arabic into Latin the Classical Greek scientific and mathematical works by Ptolemy, Euclid, and Aristotle.

1146-1155 Republican commune governs Rome led by Arnold of Brescia and the Pierleoni (the family of the antipope Anacletus II). Commune drives Pope Eugenius III from Rome; urban and religious revolution led by Arnold of Brescia, a deposed abbot and a student of Abelard who condemned popes and bishops “for their avarice and their shameful money-grubbing, for leading sin-stained lives and for trying to build God’s Church through the shedding of blood” (John of Salisbury). Ironically, Arnold was in Rome on pilgrimage by order of Pope Eugenius III to do penance for his heterodox teaching when the communal revolt broke out. The communal revolt was political and economic rather than religious. The lay leaders of Rome were intent on reestablishing the rule of the Senate in place of the temporal rule of the Pope. Arnold, however, saw the revolt as a religious movement against the wealth and worldliness of the papacy and the clergy.

1147-1148 Second Crusade called by Pope Eugene II, preached by St. Bernard of Clairvaux, and led by King Louis VII of France and King Conrad of Germany, to recover the city of Edessa, which had been taken by the Muslims in 1144. Accomplishes nothing.

c.1150 Peter Lombard, theologian and later bishop of Paris (1159-1160), compiles his Four Books of Sentences, a collection of scriptural and Patristic texts arranged topically and treated systematically. Peter Lombard, a student of Abelard, used Abelard’s scholastic method to reconcile apparent contradictions. Peter Lombard’s Sentences became the most widely used textbook of theology in the Middle Ages.

1155 Roman Commune led by Arnold of Brescia overthrown. Emperor Frederick I and Pope Hadrian IV join forces to suppress the commune of Rome. Its leader, the religious reformer Arnold of Brescia, is hanged, his body burned, and his ashes scattered in the Tiber River to prevent his bones becoming popular relics.

1157 Diet of Besançon. At the Diet of Besançon (a “diet” was an assembly of the German nobility) Frederick Barbarossa’s chancellor Rainald of Dassel read aloud a letter from Pope Hadrian IV letter, translating it from Latin into German as he read. In it Pope Hadrian declared that he as pope had conferred on Frederick the “emblem of the imperial crown,” adding that he would be willing to bestow even greater “benefits” (beneficia) on the emperor in the future. Rainald chose to translate beneficia as dependent tenures (fiefs) rather than the more neutral “benefits.” The German nobility loudly protested the implication that Frederick held the Roman Empire as a fief/benefice from the papacy. It is possible that Frederick engineered the dispute at Bescancon in order to make clear his position that he was emperor by grace of God and not by grace of the pope. It is also possible that Rainald got it right. Twelfth-century popes had claimed that Western Emperors held their imperial dignity from the papacy, citing for this the so-called “Donation of Constantine,” a forged imperial decree in which the Emperor Constantine before relocating to Constantinople supposedly transferred authority over the entire Western Empire to Pope Sylvester I and his successors. This document was concocted by a papal scribe in the middle of the eighth century to justify the papacy’s claims to the Papal States in Italy. Lorenzo Valla proved it to be a forgery in 1440. A Constantine conveying the Western Empire to Pope Sylvester, painting hung in the Lateran Palace in the thirteenth century.

c.1160-c.1250 First universities emerge from cathedral schools. Bologna (by tradition founded in 1080 but chartered in 1158), Paris (c. 1160, but chartered by King Philip Augustus in 1200), Oxford (1167), Cambridge (1209), Salamanca (1218), Montpellier (1220), Padua (1222), Naples (1224), Toulouse and Angers (1229) and Orleans (1235). The “University” developed from cathedral schools when these schools began to offer permanent positions to itinerant scholars and began to establish standardized curricula. The word “university” meant “guild” in the twelfth century, i.e. a corporation with the legal status to regulate itself and establish standards of practice for its members, and medieval universities were “guilds” of learning. Two separate models emerged. In Italy the early universities were the creation of students, who elected student rectors and a student council for day to day governance; students chose, paid, and disciplined the professors, who could be fined for meeting classes late or failing to cover the agreed upon syllabus. North of the Alps, universities were organized from above, by the bishop’s chancellor and by an association of “masters” (accredited teachers), who functioned as a guild, who established the curriculum as well as rules and regulations for examining, passing, or refusing students seeking the status of “master” (the license to teach was given separately by the bishop’s chancellor).

By the thirteenth century the legal independence of universities from the town authorities and from episcopal authority was secured through charters granted, respectively, by a king or a pope. The papacy accredited universities as studium generale, which meant that its degrees would be recognized by other universities. The undergraduate curriculum remained the traditional Seven Liberal Arts, consisting of the literary subjects (the Trivium: grammar, rhetoric, and logic) and the technical subjects (the Quadrivium: arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy). Each subject was taught through prescribed Classical Greek or Roman textbooks. Areas of graduate study included: theology (the “queen of sciences”), for which Paris was famous; canon law; Roman law (Bologna’s specialty), and medicine (Salerno). At Paris in the 13^th century, students began their studies in their early to mid teens, spent four to six years attending lectures on the trivium and quadrivium, and, when they reached the age of 20, would take a set of oral exams lasting the whole period of Lent (40 days) to earn a bachelor’s degree. That student would then spend several more years studying a specialized subject such as law, while teaching as an assistant to a master, until he was ready for inception into full mastership. This involved another set of oral examinations, a public lecture, and a public disputation in which he would argue against a panel of masters, justifying his theses with quotations and detailed citations to the recognized authorities.

The standard teaching method was for the master to read aloud from the authoritative textbook for the subject, explaining difficult or disputed passage. (This is called “glossing.”) Students, meanwhile, would write down everything the professor said, a necessity since books were too expensive for students to purchase. A premium was placed upon the ability to memorize long passages or even whole books. The approach to analyzing texts was derived from Peter Abelard and came to be known as scholasticism (i.e. the method of the ‘schools’). It was characterized by the employment of logic to understand and reconcile apparent contradictions between authoritative texts.

University students lived together in “colleges” for their mutual protection and to get better prices for lodgings and food) and were grouped by national origin. Because they were young males far from home, students often drank too much, and brawls between Town and Gown and between students from different Nations were common. Since students came from all other Europe, university life could be disrupted by international political conflicts. Oxford was founded when English students fled from Paris in 1167 when the conflict between King Henry II of England and King Louis VII of France resulted in attacks upon the “English Nation” at the University of Paris. (Students at Bologna listening to lecture by John of Legnano, from tomb of John of Legnano, 1383.)

1164 Outbreak of the Becket Controversy. King Henry II of England (r. 1154-1189), duke of Normandy, count of Anjou, and, by marriage, duke of Aquitaine, issues the “Constitutions of Clarendon” in an attempt to regain power for the royal courts that had been lost to ecclesiastical courts during the English civil war between King Stephen and Queen Matilda (1137-1153). Citing the customs of the realm in the time of his grandfather King Henry I (r. 1100-1135), Henry II declared that clerics who commit crimes were first to be tried in an ecclesiastical court and, if found guilty, were to be stripped of holy orders, rearrested, and brought to answer in a royal court where they were to be treated like laymen, subject to the penalties of royal law. Clerical appeals to the pope and excommunications by bishops were to be subject to royal approval. The Archbishop of Canterbury, St. Thomas Becket, the king’s former chancellor, initially accepted the Constitutions but then reneged. The result was a furious quarrel between the king and the archbishop, the former citing the “ancient customs of the realm” and the latter, “the liberty of the Church.” Becket fled to France, where he received support from King Louis VII in a move meant to embarrass King Henry II. Kings of England were traditionally crowned by the archbishop of Canterbury.

1170 Martyrdom of St. Thomas Becket. When Henry II had his eldest son Henry the Younger crowned king by the archbishop of York, Becket excommunicated the archbishop and after six years of exile returned to England to uphold the privilege of Canterbury. The points of contention, however, remained. Neither Henry nor Becket would budge, which led to an exasperated Henry blurting out on to his household on Christmas Day something along the lines of, ‘Will no one rid me of this pestilent priest?” Four of the king’s household knights took this as a royal order, went to Canterbury to arrest Becket and force him to submit to the king’s will. They broke into the Cathedral and found Becket conducting Mass. When Becket ignored them, they grew enraged and murdered him. Becket had never been popular with the clergy and monks of Canterbury when alive. Now, however, he was perceived as a martyr for the “liberty of the Church.” Pope Alexander III had him canonized in 1173, and Henry, facing a rebellion by his son and wife, aided by the king of France, went to Canterbury to admit his (unwitting) guilt in instigating the murder and to do penance before the tomb of the saint. Henry had to concede the immunity of clergy to royal criminal justice and the rights of clergy to freely elect their bishops and abbots (although Henry kept a veto right). None of the murderers were punished officially, although miracle stories arose in which they all suffered divine retribution. Becket became the most revered English saint and Canterbury became a favorite site for pilgrimages. Manuscript illumination of Henry II and Becket. Reliquary casket depicting Becket’s martyrdom, French, commissioned by prior Benedict of Peterborough Abbey to hold Becket’s bones (c.1180).

1170s-1198 Writings of Ibn Rushd (1126-1198), known in the West as Averroes, the greatest Muslim Aristotelian philosopher of the Middle Ages. Ibn Rushd was to medieval Islamic philosophy what Thomas Aquinas, upon whom he had a great influence, was to medieval Christian theology. Judge, official, jurist, scientist, physician, and philosopher, Ibn Rushd sought to reconcile Islamic beliefs with the natural philosophy of Aristotle, whom he regarded embodying the highest development of the human intellect. His greatest works were commentaries upon Aristotle. “Ibn Rushd maintained that the deepest truths must be approached by means of rational analysis and that philosophy could lead to the final truth. He accepted revelation and attempted to harmonize religion with philosophy without synthesizing them or obliterating their differences. He believed that the Qur'an contained the highest truth while maintaining that its words should not be taken literally. He argued that as the milk-sister of religion, philosophy confirms and does not contradict the sharî'ah (revelation). To Ibn Rushd, the supremacy of the human intellect did not allow for the possible contradiction between science and revelation. He gives religion an important role in the life of the state, considering that the scriptures when philosophically understood are far more superior to the religion of pure reason. Striving to bring the two together, he wrote that in case of differences, provided scriptural language does not violate the principles of reason, that is, it does not commit a contradiction, science should give way.” (Habeeb Salloum).

1170s-1204 Writings of Moses Maimonides, the greatest Jewish theologian and philosopher of the Middle Ages, who was born in Cordoba, Sapin, in 1135, and died in Egypt in 1204. Maimonides’ family fled Spain and later Morocco because of persecution from the puritanical Almohades, who threatened Jews with conversion to Islam, death, or exile. His reputation as a physician brought him to the notice of the Fatimid Grand Vizier Alfadhil, who made him his court physician, a position he continued to hold under Saladin. Maimonides greatest work of philosophy is The Guide to the Perplexed, which he wrote in Arabic. As with Ibn Rushd and Aquinas, Maimonides’ underlying assumption is that there can be no contradiction between the truths which God has revealed, and the findings of the human mind in science and philosophy. Maimonides primarily followed Aristotle’s natural philosophy (although not slavishly) and attempted to show that it was consistent with the teachings of the Talmud. Maimonides’ work exerted a great influence upon thirteenth-century Christian theologians and philosophers such as Thomas Aquinas.

1175-1202 The period covered in the Chronicle of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds (Suffolk, England) by the monk Jocelin of Brakelond who began writing it in the 1190s. Jocelin’s Chronicle, which focuses on the charismatic and strong willed Abbot Samson, is a valuable window on to the practical aspects of twelfth-century Benedictine monasticism: the often contentious relationship between the monks and their abbots, priors, and cellarers; the factions that formed within monastic communities; the difficulties of monasteries in keeping control over and getting service from lands held from the monastery fiefs by knights; the relationship between abbots and kings. The Abbey of Bury St Edmunds possessed by royal grant rights of jurisdiction over the town and surrounding countryside. It also enjoyed an exemption from the authority of the local bishop and the Archbishop of Canterbury by a privilege from the Pope. Jocelin details Abbot Samson’s struggles to maintain these privileges.

1179 Third Lateran Council (eleventh ecumenical council). Called by Pope Alexander III in the wake of his reconciliation with the Emperor Frederick Barbaross and attended by 302 bishops, the council affirmed the legitimacy of Pope Alexander III and condemned the antipopes whom Barbarossa had appointed to oppose him. The council also condemned the Cathars and Waldensians as heretics, stressing the duty of secular rulers to repress heresy, required a two-thirds majority of cardinals for the election of a pope, established 25 and 30 as the minimum ages for priests and bishops, forbade priests charging for sacraments and burials, ordered every cathedral to have a school to teach clerics and poor scholars, deposed married clergy and clergy guilty of sodomy, forbade Jews and Muslims from having Christian servants.

1181-1226 Life of St. Francis of Assisi. Francis, the son of a wealthy merchant, would renounce his father’s wealth, embrace the ideal of apostolic poverty, and become the founder of the most popular order of “friars” (wandering monks) of the Middle Ages, the “Little Brothers” or Franciscans. (See under years 1206-1208, 1209.)

1182-1184 Joachim of Fiore, Cistercian abbot and mystic from Calabria (southern Italy), devises a new schema for providential history. Joachim, citing the “eternal gospel” mentioned in Revelations 14:6, proposed Three Ages of God’s dispensation, corresponding to the three Persons of the Trinity. The first was the Age the Father, representing God’s rule through power and awe, to which the Old Testament dispensation corresponds; in the second, the Age of the Son, hidden wisdom was revealed in the Son, represented by the New Testament and the Catholic Church; in the third, the Age of the Holy Spirit, the Kingdom of the Holy Spirit will be established on earth based on a new dispensation of universal love, which will proceed from the Gospel of Christ but transcend the letter of it. In this third age there will be no need for the disciplinary institutions of the Church, which will disappear; the “reign of justice” will be replaced with the “reign of freedom.” Joachim held that the second period was drawing to a close, and that the third epoch would actually begin after some great cataclysm which he tentatively calculated as happening in 1260. The Franciscan Gerardo of Borgo San Donnino (see 1257 below) identified the Franciscan Order with Joachim’s “Order of the Just” who were to succeed the Catholic Church. This led Pope Alexander IV to set up a commission to review Joachim’s works, which were condemned as heretical in 1263 at the Synod of Arles

1184 Waldensians condemned as heretics. In the 1170s a wealthy merchant of Lyon, France, Peter Waldo (Pierre Valdes), was converted to a life of apostolic poverty by hearing the story of St. Alexis and discovering that Christ had counseled a rich young man to give all that he owned to the poor and to follow him (Matthew 19:16-22). Waldo gave his real estate to his wife and distributed his moveable wealth as alms to the poor and began to preach in the streets of Lyon. He soon attracted followers who became known as the Poor Men of Lyon or the Waldensians. In 1179 Waldo and his followers went to the Third Lateran Council to seek approval for their Order from Pope Alexander III. Alexander was impressed by their piety but was made nervous by their lack of theological learning, and forbade them from preaching without a bishop’s permission. Waldo and his followers continued to preach, which led Pope Lucius III to excommunicate Waldo and his followers as heretics at the Council of Verona in 1184. The Waldensians responded by becoming increasingly anti-clerical, condemning the papacy, bishops, and clergy for their wealth and worldliness. The movement in northern Italy became even more radical, as the Poor of Lombardy rejected the Church’s teaching that only priests could perform the Mass and claimed that all men in a state of grace could had sacramental power. By the mid thirteenth century both the Poor of Lyon and the Poor of Lombardy had repudiated the Roman Church, calling it the Whore of the Apocalypse (Revelation), and had proclaimed the Waldensians as the “true Christian church.” The Church responded with further persecution. The Waldensians were one of several urban religious movements of the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries that preached apostolic poverty, a reflection of the spiritual anxiety produced by the growth of the commercial economy and the wealthy urban middle class it created. The most successful of these movements were the Franciscans, who, unlike the Waldensians whom they resemble in many ways, gained papal approval and sanction as an orthodox religious order (see 1209).

1189-1192 Third Crusade: Crusade to recapture Jerusalem from Saladin. Call to crusade answered by German Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa, French King Philip Augustus and English King Richard the Lionheart. Frederick drowned in Cilicia; Philip returned after the capture of Acre (1191), and Richard campaigned until 1192, when he made peace with Saladin, a compromise which left the Christians in control of the coast down to Ascalon and Saladin as ruler of Jerusalem, with Christian pilgrims allowed free access to the Holy City.

1195-1260 Chartres Cathedral rebuilt in Gothic style. The Romanesque Cathedral of Chartres burnt down in 1194. The new church, begun in 1195 and dedicated in 1260, is one of the early masterpieces of the new Gothic style of architecture.

1198-1216 Pope Innocent III, the apex of the medieval papacy. Lothar de Conti, who was trained in both canon law and theology, was elected pope in 1198 at the age of 37 and took the papal name Innocent III. Innocent III’s agenda was to protect the Church against heresy, promote crusading to recover Jerusalem, improve the morals and behavior of the Catholic clergy, and to protect the political independence of the Papal States against encroachment by the kings of Germany. His primary concern was to unify all Christendom under the papal monarchy, and maintained that as vicar of Christ on earth, he was the ultimate judge of all Christians, including kings. In his view popes had greater authority than kings: “Now just as the moon derives its light from the sun and is indeed lower than it in quantity and quality, in position and in power, so too the royal power derives the splendor of its dignity from the pontifical authority.” This conception of papal authority is sometimes called “Caesaropapism,” pope as world ruler. But Innocent III did not claim to wield the temporal sword himself (except over the Papal States). Rather, he saw himself as responsible to God for the actions and performance of all Christian kings. Pope Innocent III refused to recognize King Philip Augustus of France’s annulment of his marriage to Ingeborg of Denmark and nullified the king’s marriage to Agnes of Meulan and ordered him to separate from her. When he refused, Innocent placed France under interdict (1199). When King John of England refused to accept Innocent’s choice of Stephen Langton to be archbishop of Canterbury, Innocent placed England under interdict (1207). When John ignored this, Innocent upped the ante by deposing John in 1212 and encouraging Philip Augustus (who had since taken Ingeborg back) to launch a ‘crusade’ against England. This led John to submit to the pope in 1213 and declare himself as a vassal of the Church. When the English barons revolted John and forced him to issue Magna Carta, Innocent III nullified it on the grounds that John, as a vassal of the pope, could not make such concessions without his lord’s consent. He also interfered in the election of German kings, giving and withdrawing his support for claimants according to how it would affect papal control over the Papal States. He organized four crusades, two to the East (the Fourth Crusade, which resulted in the capture of the Christian city of Constantinople, and the Fifth, which began only after his death), the Albigensian Crusade against the Cathar heretics of southern France, and a political crusade against a Hohenstaufen loyalist in Sicily. He presided over the Fourth Lateran Council (see under 1215), the most important Church council of the Middle Ages and the culmination of his ecclesiastical agenda. (Innocent III, fresco portrait, early 13^th century.)

1203-1204 Fourth Crusade: Innocent III calls for a crusade to liberate Jerusalem. The Fourth Crusade starts with Venetians diverting crusaders to Yugoslav city of Zara, which they take for Venetians to pay for ships to take them to the Holy Land. Crusade is then diverted to Constantinople, where crusaders support pretender to the imperial throne. When their candidate is killed, they sack Constantinople and found Latin Kingdom of Constantinople. The crusaders divide up Greece into vassal fiefs: the Kingdom of Thessalonica, the Principality of Achaea, the Duchy of Athens, the Duchy of the Archipelago and the short-lived duchies of Nicaea, Philippopolis, and Philadelphia. The Byzantines retain control over the Despotate of Epirus (western Greece) and the Empire of Nicaea and the Empire of Trebizond in Anatolia.

Innocent III establishes new German Military Order, the Brothers of the Sword, to aid in the establishment of Christian rule in Livonia and the pagan Baltic.

1206-1208 The religious conversion of St. Francis of Assisi (1181-1226). Following a serious illness in 1204 and a mystical vision, Francis, the son of a wealthy Italian merchant and would be knight, experienced a religious conversion that led him to renounce his father’s wealth and worldly things. A bleeding crucifix at the local church of San Damiano spoke to him to ordered him to “build my church.” Francis initially took this literally and physically repaired churches in the area. (including the still surviving Porziuncola chapel, now housed within a huge basilica church). In 1208 Francis, having heard a sermon about Christ sending his apostles to preach in the world, became a wandering preacher. Barefoot and clad only in a rough cloak without a staff or purse, he emulated the apostles by preaching a doctrine of apostolic poverty: “If you wish to be perfect, go and sell what you own and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me” (Matthew 19,21); “Take nothing for your journey” (Luke 9,3); “If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross every day and follow me” (Luke 9,23). Other wealthy young men began to join him as a wandering preacher. Thus began the Franciscans or Order of Friars Minor. (The term “friars” refers to wandering monks who preached, as opposed to the traditional monastic model of separation from the world and prayer. Franciscans were a mendicant (begging) order because Francis believed that he and his friars should obtain the necessities of life by begging and charity rather than by secular labor or the ownership of property. (Miracles of St. Francis, mid 13^th century.)

1207-1213 Pope Innocent III and King John of England fight over the archbishopric of Canterbury. In 1207 Pope Innocent III appointed the English cardinal-priest Stephen Langton as archbishop of Canterbury to resolve a disputed election (King John of England forced the monks of Christ Church, Canterbury to “elect” his favorite, John de Grey, Bishop of Norwich, while some of the younger monks secretly elected the subprior of Christ Church. Pope Innocent received a delegation of 16 monks from Canterbury, deposed both claimants, and ordered the delegation to elect an archbishop in his presence, suggesting Stephen Langton as an obvious candidate. The monks elected Langton and Pope Innocent III consecrated him as archbishop. A royally pissed King John responded by closing the ports of England to the new archbishop, pronouncing as a public enemy anyone for upheld Stephen Langton’s claim, and expelling the monks of Canterbury, who now unanimously supported Stephen, from Christ Church, taking possession of the lands of the monastery and the archbishopric. Pope Innocent III responded in 1208 by placing England under interdict and excommunicating John in 1209. John ignored the papal pressure placed upon him and simply seized all the revenues from the bishoprics since they were no longer performing sacraments, and Innocent, faced with John’s recalcitrance, allowed in 1212 last rites to performed in England and masses to be held in some churches, as long as the doors remained closed. In early 1213 Pope Innocent III went one step further and formally deposed King John, asking King Philip Augustus to invade in a papal sanctioned war. John responded by submitting to Innocent’s demands. Not only did he accept Stephen Langton as archbishop, he formally gave his kingdom to “St. Peter” and received it back as a papal fief. In recognition of Pope Innocent III’s lordship, John agreed to pay the papacy 700 marks a year from England and an additional 300 marks a year from Ireland. This was John’s “Canossa” (see above 1077). By becoming the vassal of the papacy, John had insured Pope Innocent III’s and the English church’s support against the threatened invasion from France.

1209 Pope Innocent III approves St. Francis’ rule marking the foundation of the Franciscan Order (Order of Friars Minor). Sponsored by the bishop of Assisi and Cardinal Ugolino, the nephew of Pope Innocent III and the future Pope Gregory IX, Francis and his original eleven followers, who like him had come from the merchant class, went to Rome to ask the pope for recognition as a new monastic order. Pope Innocent III, who was then combating a number of heresies, including the Cathars and the Waldensians, both of whom rejected wealth and things of this world, was initially wary of the young layman (whom he told to preach to the pigs—which Francis immediately did) but recognized his piety and saw in him a possible weapon against the heretics. (The story is that Innocent III had a dream in which he saw the Lateran church begin to tumble down until Francis pushed it upright. Giotto did a famous painting of this scene.) Innocent III gave him permission to preach and recognized the new order and its primitive rule. Among Francis’ early converts was a young woman, Clare of Assisi, who would found the female analogue to the Franciscans, the Poor Clares. Earliest portrait of St. Francis, before 1228. Thomas of Spalato, a non-Franciscan, saw Francis preach in 1222 and described him as ugly and dirty but a charismatic preacher: “His tunic was filthy, his figure contemptible and his face far from handsome. … The reverence and devotion of people towards him was so great that men and women rushed upon him, trying to touch the hem of his garment and carry off pieces of his clothing” (Thomas of Spalato). (Basilica of San Francesco, Assisi, begun in 1228.)

The Franciscans became an extremely popular order. In the thirteenth century they served as missionaries (including to the Mongols), inquisitors, and university professors (despite the wishes of their founder). By 1316 there were over 1400 Franciscan convents.

1209-1229 Albigensian Crusade against the ‘Cathar’ heretics of southern France/Cathar heresy. After the murder of the Cistercian monk and papal legate (St) Peter of Castelnau following a stormy meeting with Count Raymond VI of Toulouse (1156-1222) over the count’s supposed protection of heretics, Pope Innocent III calls for the Albigensian Crusade against the dualist Cathar heretics (Albigensians) and their supporters in Languedoc (“land of the language of ‘oc’ [yes]”=southern France, as opposed to ‘Langedoïl,’ northern France where people used “oïl”/oui to say yes). Although King Philip II Augustus of France, faced with enemies to his west (King John) and east (Emperor Otto IV) showed no interest in leading this crusade, he gave permission to his barons in the Ile-de-France to answer the summons. The northern French crusading army was led by the pious, sanctimonious, and brutal Count Simon de Montfort (c.1165-1218), lord of Montfort l’Amaury in the Ile-de-France, and father of the English Earl Simon de Montfort (see below 128/1259). Montfort had gone on the Fourth Crusade but had left in disgust when the crusaders attacked Christian Zara to pay the Venetians for transport to the Holy Land. This ferociously brutal war began with a massacre in the southern French city of Béziers in 1209, after which crusaders and southern French defenders exchanged atrocities. Montfort’s army of northern French crusaders proved initially successful, and apparently “won” the war when they defeated King Pere II of Aragon in the Battle of Muret in 1213, after which Montfort styled himself Count of Toulouse and Narbonne. Montfort’s brutality, however, led to renewed support for Count Raymond VI of Toulouse. Montfort died besieging Toulouse in 1218, crushed by a rock thrown by a mangonel. Count Raymond VI died in 1222, and his capable son Count Raymond VII took up the fight. The turning point in the war came in 1226 when King Louis VIII of France (r.1223-1226) brought the full military weight of the French Crown to bear against the southern French. In 1229 the Albigensian Crusade came to an end. Count Raymond VII was allowed to retain his county, but it was to pass after his death to his daughter and her husband, Alphonse of Artois, the younger brother of King (St) Louis IX. The ultimate political consequence of the Albigensian Crusade was that Languedoc became part of the French king’s royal domain. Siege of Carcassonne, early 13^th-century carving.

The Cathars were dualists who believed that there were two gods, the good god of the New Testament who created the world of spirit and the evil god of the Old Testament who created the material world. They believed that the evil god had imprisoned the souls of men into prisons of flesh, and that unless released by the sacrament of the Consolamentum (akin to baptism but without the use of water), the soul upon the physical death of a person would transmigrate to a new “prison of flesh.” The Cathar clergy, known as “Perfects” (also as the Good Men and the Good Women), lived lives of purity, abstaining from meat, fish, sex, or any worldly pleasures or luxuries, and conceived of themselves to be living vessels of the Holy Spirit. Upon death their souls would be released to go back to heaven. There were few Perfects. There were many more who were “Believers,” Cathar laity, who lived lives much like their Catholic neighbors but hoped to receive the Consolamentum upon their deathbeds. Of course, the Cathars rejected completely the Catholic Church, its clergy, and its sacraments. Even in southern France Cathar believers made up only a small minority of the population. But they were disproportionately well represented among the lesser nobility and were tolerated—and sometimes protected—by Catholic nobles, including the count of Toulouse, Raymond VI. The religion originated in the East, perhaps Bulgaria, and spread to the West in the middle of the twelfth century via Constantinople. It took root in southern France, in part because of the weakness of the institutional church in that region. In the first decade of the thirteenth century (St.) Dominic de Guzman, a Spanish Augustinian canon, and the Diego, bishop of Osma, conducted a preaching mission against the Cathars, debating them in public. The failure of this preaching movement led to the Albigensian Crusade and, later, to the Papal Inquisition. The Church regarded the Cathars as the most serious of the various heretical movements of the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

1213 Frederick II issues the Golden Bull of Eger which acknowledges the pope’s authority over the Papal States, repudiates the traditional imperial claim to revenues from vacant bishoprics, and concedes to the German Church the free election of bishops and the right of clergy to appeal to the papal curia.

1215 Fourth Lateran Council (twelfth ecumenical council). The Fourth Lateran Council was the most important ecumenical council of the Central Middle Ages. Held in the pope’s Lateran palace in Rome, it represents Pope Innocent III's most lasting contribution to ecclesiastical reform. Attended by over 400 bishops, 800 abbots, thousands of lesser clergy and laity, and representatives of all the great princes. Even Byzantium was represented (because of Latin kingdom created in 1204 [lasted until 1261] result of 4th Crusade). The mass of people in the Lateran was so great that an eyewitness commented that he could hear very little of the sermon over the 'tumult of the people.' As one eyewitness described the pageantry: “The greatest Roman noblemen, swathed in silk and purple, preceded him to the accompaniment of drum and chorus, strings and organ, and the resounding harmonies of trumpets, and an infinite multitude of clerics and people followed. Roman boys, raising olive branches, met the lord pope with shouts and, as is their custom, kept saying Kyrieleyson and Christeleyson without interruption. Right away, at the other end of the bridge across which one approaches the church, uncounted lanterns, suspended on ropes throughout the streets and alleys, strove to make the brightness of that day succumb to the brilliance of their own light. The number of banners and pieces of purple cloth, which were unfolded on the houses and high towers of the Romans cannot be estimated at all.” (Miniature of Fourth Lateran Council by Matthew Paris, c.1260.)

Issues of the Fourth Lateran: The council dealt with a variety of issues, ecclesiastical, doctrinal, and even political. The deposed emperor Otto IV sent ambassadors to seek reconciliation with the pope, the rebel English barons fighting against King John were excommunicated, a Latin patriarch of Constantinople was established, and quarrels among bishops (Compostella and Toledo) over precedence were sorted out. The most important issues were

1. Planning for a new crusade (Innocent III’s most fervent desire)

2. Purification of the morals of the clergy and improved instruction of clergy in matters of faith and religious rites. The secular clergy were to be sober and celibate. Clergy are to abstain from drunkenness and to be celibate, canon 15; shall not visit taverns or play games of chance, or dress unsuitably, canon 16; and clergy shall not participate in judicial duels or ordeals--a revolutionary canon, no. 18, that altered the whole judicial system of Christian Europe, led increasingly to use of jury trials in England and Inquisitorial procedure on continent; no. 6, that provincial synods are to be held annually to ensure enforcement of canonical enactments for the correction of abuses; no. 27--only those prepared and instructed in the faith are to be elevated to the priesthood: 'it is better to have a few good ministers than many who are no good'; no. 11 all diocese are to have masters to teach gratis priests and poor students),

3. Suppression of heresy (to which end a lengthy profession of orthodox faith was issued, canon 1; and an order that bishops and rulers suppress heresy in their domains, canon 3)

4. Clarification of doctrine on the sacraments (transubstantiation was established as Church doctrine, canon 1; confession and communion to a parish priest at least once a year was ordered for every adult layman, canon 21; priestly monopoly on the sacrament of the mass was reaffirmed)

5. Separation of Jews and Muslims from Christians. Jews and Muslims were to dress in a manner that would distinguish them from Christians. Jews were forbidden to go out in public during Easter, in particular on Good Friday. Jews were to be punished by secular authorities for blaspheming Christ.

1216   The “Order of Preachers” commonly called the Dominican Order is founded by St. Dominic of Spain (1170-1221) and is authorized by Pope Honorius III. Its purpose is to convert Muslims, Jews, and pagans and to combat heresy. In the thirteenth-century the Dominicans become the main personnel for the papal Inquisition, missionaries to Africa, Asia, and the Baltic, and teachers of theology in universities, where they become associated with Aritotelianism. Death of Pope Innocent III.

1218‑1221 Fifth Crusade directed against Egypt. Gets bogged down in a siege of port city of Damietta and ends in complete failure.

1225   Birth of St. Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274), the most influential Scholastic theologian of the Middle Ages. Thomas, against the wishes of his family, will join the Dominican Order and become a professor of theology at the University of Paris, where he will teach the contemplation of God through the rational understanding the natural order, though ultimate truths are revealed only by studying the revelations of the Bible. His two greatest works are the Summa contra Gentiles and the Summa Theologica, both of which attempt to found the Christian faith on rational principles. His philosophy emphasizes human reasoning, life in the material order, and the individual's participation in personal salvation.

1233 Papal Inquisition established. Because the Albigensian Crusade had failed to root out the Cathar heresy, Pope Gregory IX establishes the Papal Inquisition. The Inquisition is entrusted initially to the Franciscans and Dominicans, but increasingly becomes dominated by the latter. Pairs of inquisitors are sent to regions known for heretical activity with orders to take testimony from all adults. This testimony is systematically recorded, which allows the inquisitors to cross-check testimonies and confessions. Those who confess freely receive light penance; those who resist are punished more harshly, usually through imprisonment. Only Cathar “perfects” (clergy) who refuse to recant are turned over to the secular authorities for punishment (usually burning). No torture is used for the first couple of decades, but the technology of written records proves effective in stamping out the Cathar heresy without it. St. Peter of Verona, Grand Inquisitor in Italy, martyred 1252.

1235 Robert Grosseteste (d. 1253), University Chancellor of Oxford, is appointed bishop of London. Grosseteste, a brilliant theologian and scholar, translates Aristotle's Ethics and makes advances in the science of optics (producing the first accurate description of the color spectrum), mathematics and astronomy.

1245 Pope Innocent IV at the First Council of Lyon (thirteenth ecumenical council) declares Emperor Frederick II deposed and absolves his subjects from their oaths of fidelity, charging him with oath breaking, committing sacrilege by imprisoning cardinals and bishops, violating the peace between himself and the Church, showing contempt for the papacy, sacrilege, heresy, and “joining in odious friendship with the Saracens.” The German princes elect an ‘anti-king’ and Frederick finds himself fighting rebels in Germany and Italy. His control over northern Italy is shattered by the Battle of Parma in 1248. The Council of Lyon also established a three year tax of a 20^th of the revenues from every clerical benefice for the support of crusades. (This was the council that also established the tradition of cardinals wearing red hats.)

1252 Inquisitors are allowed to employ torture. The papal bull “Ad extirpanda” allows Inquisitors to order the torture of suspected heretics, almost twenty years after the establishment of the Inquisition and the successful rooting out of the Cathar heresy in southern France and northern Italy. The use of torture reflects the influence and spread of Roman law and Roman legal procedures.

1252-1284 Reign of Alfonso X “the Wise” (or “the Learned”), king of Leon-Castile (Spain). Alfonso X is credited with either writing or, more probably, commissioning the Siete Partidas (Seven Part Code), a comprehensive law code and treatise on medieval legal theory infused by Roman law. Alfonso X established a school of translation at Toledo, in which mainly Jewish translators were set to work translating Arabic works on astronomy and astrology into Castilian. His intellectual interests were eclectic. He himself wrote a history of the world and a history of Spain up to the reign of his father, a compilation of observations about astronomy, a book of troubadour poems in praise of the Virgin Mary, and a book about games, including discussions of chess and backgammon. Alfonso wrote in the vernacular rather than in Latin and is sometimes called the “Father of Castilian.” (In this he presents an interesting parallel with Alfred the Great of England, r.871-899). Alfonso X was a Hohenstaufen by marriage and after the death of his cousin Frederick II briefly—and unsuccessfully—claimed the imperial title.

1255 “Martyrdom” of Little St. Hugh of Lincoln: beginning of the antisemitic ‘blood libel.’ The body of a little boy named Hugh was found in a well in Lincoln. When a Jew confessed under threat of torture to murdering the boy as part of an annual ritual in which Jews supposedly kidnapped and crucified Christian boys, King Henry III of England saw an opportunity to make some money. Having sold his rights over the Jews to his brother Richard, earl of Cornwall, he leaped upon the story so that he could arrest and confiscate the property of eighteen Jews who were accused of participating in the ‘crucifixion.’

1257-1274 St. Bonaventura and the Conventual Franciscan Order. In 1257 Bonaventura became the seventh Minister General of the Franciscan Order shortly after he and his friend, the Dominican Thomas Aquinas, had been awarded the status of “Doctor of Theology” at the University of Paris. Bonaventura, who had taught theology at Paris since 1248, appreciated Aristotle’s natural philosophy but rejected its utility for understanding theology. He turned instead to the Neoplatonic school of Plotinus. For Bonaventura, the path to God was mystical rather than rational. Man is brought to God not by knowledge and reasoning but by love of God and desire for His grace. (His skepticism of the value of human reason for understanding God led him to forbid the Franciscan Roger Bacon to continue teaching at Oxford.)

In his capacity as Minister General of the Franciscan Order, Bonaventura steered a middle ground between the “relaxed” Franciscans, who accepted that the Order could own property, and the strict Spirtuals, who adhered rigidly to Francis’s doctrine of apostolic poverty and to the ideal of the wandering mendicant preacher. The compromise was based on Pope Gregory IX’s decretal of 1230 which allowed friends of the friars to hold and receive property and money on their behalf and for their use—the beginning of trust law. Franciscans and the Franciscan Order would not own any property but would be the beneficiary of property held for them in trust. Bonventura essentually founded what was to become meanstream Franciscanism: the Conventual Franciscan Order. He assert that the vow of poverty should be carried out within a “conventual frmaework harnessed to learning, buildings, papal privileges, and stability” (Leff, Heresy in the Later Middle Ages, 1:84-5). Bonaventura contended that friars were permitted moderate use of goods and should be given sufficient funds to study in universities as well as for the necessities of life. He also steered a middle path on what was becoming a truly contentious issue: the relationship between the Franciscans and the teachings of Joachim of Fiore (above 1182). A Pisan Franciscan Gerardo da Borgo San Donnino in 1254 published a treatise (“Introduction to the Eternal Gospel”) in which the advent of the Franciscans was identified with Joachim’s prophesied new age of the Holy Spirit (in opposition to the carnal Church). The secular masters at the University of Paris charged Gerardo with heresy and denounced the mendicants as pseudo-prophets of a false apocalypse. Bonaventura was a moderate Joachimite. For him St. Francis had achieved the highest union with good—full illumination—and thus achieved the “Seraphic Order.” Francis, Bonaventura contended, was the Angel of the Sixth Seal of Revelation, the harbinger of the perfection that was to come in the seventh age, pointing the way to the nature of the final order (mendicancy) and to the final illumination. Just as the Apostles had destroyed idolatry and the Church Fathers and Doctors had destroyed heresy, so in the last age God would bring forth men who by voluntary mendicancy would destroy avarice. Nonetheless, the Franciscans still belong to the sixth age, the final period of the Age of the Son, and had not superseded the institutional Church.

c.1260 Aristotle translated. The Dominican William of Moerbecke (c.1215-1286) at the request of Thomas Aquinas translates Aristotle’s Politics from Greek into Latin. This period sees the translations of many Greek texts into Latin (usually from earlier Arabic translations but sometimes from the Greek), including many of the treatises of Aristotle.

1265 Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas. Thomas Aquinas, the greatest scholastic theologian of the Middle Ages, began writing his most famous work, the Summa Theologica (a summary of all theological knowledge), in 1265. The fullest expression of the scholastic method, the Summa reconciles Aristotelian “natural philosophy” with Catholic doctrine and the teachings of Church Fathers (notably Augustine), and provides a rational basis for Christian faith. Thomas organizes the Summa into three parts. The first addresses questions of theology (the existence and nature of God); the second, the theological basis for ethics (Aristotle’s ethics modified by the Augustinian doctrine of Original Sin, in which moral and intellectual virtues can be developed through human reason but can only be completed through God’s grace and His gift of the spiritual virtues of faith, hope, and love); and the third, on the nature of Christ and the sacraments. Thomas had a mystical vision in 1272 that led him to declare “All that I have written seems to me like straw compared to what has now been revealed to me.” He ceased working on the Summa, which remained unfinished at his death. His attempt to reconcile Christian doctrine and pagan philosophy, in particular Aristotle’s, was controversial in his day and several of his conclusions were condemned as heretical in 1277 (see below). Thomas was canonized by the Church in 1323.

1265 Roger Bacon. Pope Clement IV champions the studies of the Franciscan scholar Roger Bacon (1214-1292), a student of Robert Grosseteste, and commissions him to write a summa of all scientific knowledge. Bacon approach to the study of nature was based upon logical deductions based upon empirical observation. Roger believed that God had established an underlying unity in nature that could be discovered through man’s reason. Among Bacon’s discoveries are the optics of the telescope and eyeglasses (described in 1268), the principle for the thermometer, and the formula for gunpowder.

1274 Second Council of Lyon (France). Fourteenth ecumenical council of the Catholic Church attended by 500 bishops, 60 abbots, 1000 other clerics including representatives from all the universities, and representatives of the kings of Christendom and a delegation from the Mongol Khan of the Persian Ilkhanate. The Council attempted to resolve the schism between the Roman and Eastern Orthodox churches. One of the Council’s other major points of business was to deal with complaints about the mendicant orders of friars from secular clerics and Benedictine monks. The attack on the mendicant movement resulted in formal approval of the four major mendicant orders of friars, the Franciscans, Dominicans, Carmelites, and Augustinians, and suppression of other, lesser mendicant orders. St. Thomas Aquinas died travelling to Lyon to represent the Dominicans.

1277 Bishop of Paris, asked by the pope to investigate accusations of heretical propositions being taught at the University of Paris, condemned a list of 219 theses suspected of heterodoxy, several of which were drawn from Boethius and, especially, Aristotle, including some found in Aquinas’ works. The penalty for teaching or listening to the listed errors was excommunication, "unless they turned themselves in to the bishop or the chancellor within seven days, in which case the bishop would inflict proportionate penalties.” The Condemnation of 1277 is generally interpreted as a reactionary attack against Aristotelianism in the universities and the application of reason and philosophical argumentation to theology. A subsequent bishop of Paris annulled the condemnation in 1325 because of its implied attack upon Aquinas who had become a saint two years earlier.

1292-1294 Cardinals deadlocked in attempts to elect a pope. They finally turn to a “dark horse,” a pious hermit Pietro da Morrone who was living secluded in a cave. He took the name Pope Celestine V. He reigns for five months and eight days before abdicating to return to his cave. His successor, Pope Boniface VIII (1294-1303), orders him imprisoned in the castle of Fumone until his death in 1296. Celestine V favored the Spiritual Franciscans, who sought permission from him to refound the true Franciscan Order. Boniface VIII hated the Spirituals, and the Spirituals returned the sentiment, denouncing him as a worldly pseudo-pope presiding over a carnal church. They expected the imminent appearance of an Angelic Pope and World Emperor (a third Frederick) who would usher in the new Age of the Spirit.

1294 Pope Boniface VIII (p. 1294-1303) opposes the kings of France and England over the taxation of the clergy for support of war. Boniface VIII claimed the full powers of the papal monarchy but would run into political problems with King Philip IV of France.

c. 1300-1500 The Late Middle Ages. Period of crisis, marked by famine, demographic decline, plague, endemic warfare, peasant revolts, challenges to papal authority, the Great or Papal Schism (rival popes between 1378 and 1417), growing anti-clericalism, and the unraveling of the medieval intellectual synthesis. On the other hand, the Late Middle Ages witnessed technological advances, including the invention of the magnetic compass and the adoption of the the pintle-and-gudgeon rudder, hung from the sternpost, both of which greatly facilitated overseas expansion and commerce in the North Sea and Atlantic, and the development of stronger institutions of government, including representative political bodies. The economy of Europe remained largely agricultural, although towns and cities remained engines for economic development. Medievalist J. K. Russell estimated that approximately 5%-10% of the total population of Western Europe lived in towns and cities c. 1340. The data for this is poor and incomplete and the figures can only be taken as very rough estimates. There were more than 6000 'towns' in western and central Europe on the eve of the Black Death. Most, however, were tiny. Only a handful had populations in excess of 50,000. Germany had about 3000 “towns”; of these about 50 had populations in excess of 2,000; 150 were small towns with populations of around 1,000; the rest were settlements with a few hundred people. The Black Death hit towns and cities hardest, but rather than destroy industry and international trade, it forced the development of more efficient financial and commercial instruments and techniques (e.g. double entry book keeping and “bills of exchange”)

1300 First Christian Jubilee Year. Pope Boniface VIII grants "great remissions and indulgences for sins" for pilgrims "visiting the city of Rome and the venerable basilica of the Prince of the Apostles.” To earn the indulgence pilgrims must be truly penitent, confess their sins, and visit the basilicas of St Peter and St Paul on at least fifteen days. The Jubilee recognizes the renewed importance of pilgrimages to Rome now that Jerusalem was no longer accessible to the West. Boniface VIII by Giotto (c.1300)

c.1300 Popularity of the Franciscans and Dominicans. By 1300 the Franciscans had 1400 houses with approximately 28,000 brothers; the Dominicans, 600 houses with around12,000 brothers.

1302 Boniface VIII issues the papal bull “Unam Sanctam” which declares papal supremacy over both Church and State. The political reality of the pope’s position, however, is made clear the next year, when King Philip the Fair charges Pope Boniface VIII with heresy and crimes that render him unfit to be pope and sends an army into Italy to seize him.

1303 Boniface VIII is captured in Anagni by an army sent by King Philip IV of France with a warrant for his arrest and dies a month after his release from the mistreatment he had suffered. (Tomb of Pope Boniface VIII.)

1306 Expulsion of the Jews from France. King Philip IV orders the arrest of all the Jews in France, confiscates their property and expels them from his realm—sixteen years after Edward I had expelled them from England.

1307-1312 Suppression of the Knights Templar. In 1307 King Philip IV ordered the arrest of all the Knights Templar in France, charging them with heresy (including rites of spitting on the cross and worshipping the head of an idol called “Baphomet”), sodomy, and witchcraft. Under torture, Templars confessed, which King Philip used to pressure the pope to suppress the Order. Philip’s motivation was probably financial. Threatened with military force by King Philip, Pope Clement VI dissolved the order in 1312. In 1314 the last Grand Master of the order, Jacques de Molay, and Geoffrey de Charny, Preceptor of Normandy, faced with life imprisonment, recanted their confessions and were burnt at the stake.

1308-1321 Dante Alighieri writes the Divine Comedy—perhaps the greatest literary expression of the Middle Ages—in Italian verse. Born in Florence, Dante was extensively educated in literature, philosophy and scholastic theology. His "Comedy" is saturated with the belief of earthly immortality through worthy deeds and the preparation of life everlasting and shows the theological influence of St Thomas Aquinas. (Botticelli’s portrait of Dante.)

1309 Avignon Papacy. Because of political disruption in Rome, Pope Clement V, a Frenchman, moves the Papal Curia to the French-speaking city of Avignon (within the borders of the Empire), beginning the so-called "Babylonian Captivity" of the Church (1309-1377) For most of the fourteenth century, the papacy remained subordinate to French authority with the majority of cardinals and popes being French. The French based papacy in Avignon centralizes the Church government and establishes a system of papal finance but weakens the prestige of the papacy.

1312 Council of Vienne Fifteenth ecumenical church council. Pope Clement V called the council to discuss the problem of the Templars and to plan a new crusade. Although the council could find no convincing evidence for the guilt of the Templars, Pope Clement V, bowing to pressure from King Philip IV of France, suppressed the Order for the general welfare of the Church, allowing former Templars to enter into other Military Orders. The council, while refusing to condemn Pope Boniface VIII for heresy, absolved King Philip IV of any guilt for his prosecution of the late pope. Perhaps most importantly, the council, upon the recommendation of Ramon Lull who thought it critical for successful missions to the Jews and Muslims, ordered that professorships of Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic be set up at the universities of Oxford, Paris, Bologna, and Salamanca. (The chairs in Arabic were never implemented.)

1323 Condemnation of apostolic poverty as heretical/Spiritual Franciscans pronounced heretics. Pope John XXII, who in 1296 had condemned the Fraticelli (proponents of a strict interpretation of St. Francis’ doctrine of apostolic poverty), issued the bull “Cum inter nonnullos,” in which he declared it heretical to deny that Christ and the Apostles owned and used property. In the following year he condemned as heretics Spiritual Franciscans who insisted on maintaining the doctrine of apostolic poverty. John XXII’s attack on the Spiritual Franciscans was in part generated by their criticism of the wealth of the Church and their adoption of a Joachimite (see 1182-1184) interpretation of the Franciscan Order in which friars would replace the Church. He was also probably motivated by the Emperor Louis of Bavaria’s championship of the Spiritual Franciscans and their support for him in his war against the papacy. The Spirituals respond by denying that John XXII papal legitimacy: since a true pope cannot err and the rule of St. Francis cannot be modified, a pope who modifies the Rule must be in error and hence cannot be a true pope.

1324 Defender of the Peace. Marsilius of Padua argues that all earthly authority derives from the consent of the people and for the separation of Church and state. Marsilius, rector of the University of Paris, wrote Defensor Pacis in support of the Emperor-elect Louis (Ludwig) IV the Bavarian against the Caesaropapal claims of Pope John XXII. The papacy and the clergy in general, he argued, had no authority in temporal matters and no right to property. Marsilius wouldn’t even concede to the pope the right to interpret scripture or define dogma, which he saw as belonging to church councils, the true representative of the body of the faithful. In Defender of the Peace (the name refers to the State) Marsilius turned the medieval political paradigm on its head. He argued that all earthly power and authority, whether political or ecclesiastical, derives from the will and consent of the “people.” Civil governments received their authority to govern from the citizenry as a whole; the leaders of the Church, similarly, received their authority from the whole body of the faithful, whose representatives are the church councils. The people delegated the power that God gave them to a king to rule their temporal lives, and to a pope to direct their spiritual lives. Sovereignty for both State and Church resides in the people and their representative bodies. Just as Jesus and the Apostles were subject to Roman authority, all clergy should be subject to political authority. The Church, properly, Marsilius argued, is a spiritual body without any right to property other than that which is delegated to it by a king for its use. “Legislators or rulers,” Marsilius contended, can lawfully, in accordance with divine law, seize and use on their own authority all goods which remain over and above the needs of the gospel ministers. … For with food and clothing the priests should be content.” In other words, kings can tax the clergy at will.

1327   German Dominican Master Eckhart defines the individual soul as a "spark" of the divine at its most basic element. By renouncing all knowledge of the self, one is able to retreat into that "spark" and reach God. Most of his teachings are condemned by the papacy. Two bands of mysticism arise from Eckhart's theories: heterodox, the belief in the unification of God and man on earth without the aid of priests as intermediaries, and orthodox, the belief in the possibility of joining the soul with God and the awareness of divine presence in everyday life.

1347-1350   The Black Death appears during a time of economic depression in Western Europe and reoccurs 1361-1362, 1369, 1374-1375, 1379, 1390, and throughout the fifteenth century. The Black Death was long thought to have been a combination of bubonic but recent research into the spatial diffusion and virulence of the plague suggests that it was spread from person to person rather than through fleas as is bubonic plague. About a third of the population of Europe was killed in the initial outbreak. The plague had a major impact on social and economic conditions, including the ending of serfdom and the outbreak of a number of revolts by peasants and urban workers. Religious flagellation appears among lay groups in order to appease the divine wrath.

1348 English Franciscan theologian and philosopher William of Ockham dies. He teaches that God is free to do good and bad on earth as He wishes and develops the philosophical position known as "nominalism," which asserts that only individual things exist and that Platonic “universals” are fictive. “Universals” rather than having a real existence apart from individual representatives are simply “names” given to groups of objects because of perceived similarities. This was a radical attack upon both Aristotelian Thomism (thought of Thomas Aquinas] and medieval neo-Platonism. Politically, William of Ockham was a supporter of the Emperor-elect Louis (Ludwig) IV the Bavarian in his conflict with the papacy. Like Marsilius of Padua, Ockham advocated a separation between Church and State, and asserted that the right of monarchs to rule arose from the consent of their subjects. William of Ockham’s quest for certainty in human knowledge is one of the foundations of the scientific method. He is known for “Ockham’s razor,” that the simplest explanation for natural phenomena is to be preferred. (William of Ockham, 14^th century ms.)