(Feature Photo: Late Medieval picture from the 15th century of the Battle of Tinchebrai, by the Rohan Master, an anonymous French illuminator who was active in the first half of the 15th century, after his main work, the Rohan Hours; Credit: Wikimedia Commons)
1100
RULERS & ROYALTY: Henry I is king of England – Philip I "The Amorous" is king of France
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“The 12th century saw an upsurge in literature in the vernacular (local language), many of them epic poems such as the German sagas, the Nibelungrnlied and Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival, in Southern France, troubadours, traveling performers-poets, spread chanson de geste (“songs of deeds,” tales of romance, heroic deeds, and courtly love), such as the Chanson de Roland, which recounted episodes from Charlemagne’s campaigns against the Muslims in northern Spain in the 770s”
(A History of the World, Map by Map 105)
“In the 12th century, scholars such as Abelard (at Paris) and Anselm of Acosta (at Bec) taught classes in theology and logic that attracted large numbers of students, their schools developed into studia generalia or universities, which offered a wider range of courses.”
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William II Rufus dies during a hunting accident (some say his death was orchestrated by Henry, his youngest brother), he is buried in Winchester Cathedral in the ossuary chests (see photo under Winchester Cathedral photos) and
August 6 Henry is crowned as Henry I of England in Westminster Abbey even though his older brother Robert technically should have been king, but Robert was on crusade when William II died, and by the time he got back, his younger brother had already been crowned
The White Tower in London is completed (it is Henry I’s son, William the Aetheling, who dies on the White Ship in 1120)
1101
RULERS & ROYALTY: Henry I is king of England
Robert raises a considerable army against Henry I and invades England in June in order to take his rightful place on the English throne, he lands at Portsmouth while Henry’s army waits at Arundel Castle, though Robert has several chances to succeed, he ends up negotiating with Henry and going back home to Normandy
1102
RULERS & ROYALTY: Henry I is king of England
Empress Matilda (daughter of Henry I) is born in Sutton Courtenay, England,
March 13 A storm in Jaffa (today to be found in Tel-Aviv-Yafo) breaks all but seven ships in port and 1,000 sailors and passengers are drowned; the pilgrim to whom we owe this account was an Englishman known as Saewulf, who kept a pilgrim diary and one medieval copy of it found its way into the library of Matthew Parker, the sixteenth-century bishop of Canterbury, Seawulf was rowed to shore just hours before the storm broke (The Templars pg. 11)
1103
RULERS & ROYALTY: Henry I is king of England
Anselm, the archbishop of Canterbury, self-exiles himself because Henry I refuses to allow the papal authority to appoint clergy, the pope threatens to excommunicate Henry and so Henry recalls Anselm (British Kings Queens pg. 67)
1104
RULERS & ROYALTY: Henry I is king of England
1105
RULERS & ROYALTY: Henry I is king of England
1106
RULERS & ROYALTY: Henry I is king of England
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All in the Family
September 26, Henry I invades Normandy and captures his brother Robert at Tinchebrai, then brings him back and imprisons him for the rest of his life
And then, Robert dies, aged 80
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In this same year...
"Henry accepts the clerical authority in investiture on the understanding that the clergy still recognized secular authority over the lands owned by the church. In this way, Henry kept his revenues (which Anselm had maintained belonged to the church and thus to Rome) and it meant he could still agree who had possession of the property. Nevertheless when Anselm died in 1109 Henry succeeded in keeping the see of Canterbury vacant for five years.”
(British Kings and Queens pg. 67)
1108
RULERS & ROYALTY: Henry I is king of England – Philip I, king of the West Franks (France hadn’t fully come into being yet) dies, and Louis VI takes the throne (until 1137)
After the First Crusade, many of the pilgrims going to the Holy Land are killed along the way...
“Pilgrims in any age expect a certain degree of danger from brigands and robbers. But the hostility of the Muslims who lived in and around the new crusader states was more than opportunistic. The losses their people had suffered from the first appearance of the Franks in 1096 were considered shameful and perplexing—a sign of God’s displeasure at divisions in the Muslim world and a call to the faithful to rise in arms to fight back against the invaders, ‘Armies like mountains, coming again and again, have ranged forth from the land of the Franks,’ wrote the Syrian poet Ibn al-Khayyat, before 1109. ‘The heads of the polytheists have already ripened, so do not neglect them as a vintage and a harvest!’”
(The Templars pg. 22)
1109
RULERS & ROYALTY: Henry I is king of England – Louis VI is king of the West Franks
Anselm, the archbishop of Canterbury, dies and Henry I succeeds in keeping the see vacant for five years
1110
RULERS & ROYALTY: Henry I is king of England – Louis VI is king of the West Franks
1111
RULERS & ROYALTY: Henry I is king of England – Louis VI is king of the West Franks; Henry V becomes the emperor of Germany/Holy Roman Emperor
1112
RULERS & ROYALTY: Henry I is king of England – Louis VI is king of the West Franks – Henry V is the Holy Roman/German Emperor
1113
RULERS & ROYALTY: Henry I is king of England – Louis VI is king of the West Franks; Henry V is the Holy Roman/German Emperor
Severe earthquakes shake Syria and Palestine, which razed towns, while...
“...virtually very springtime brought plagues of mice and locusts, which swarmed over vines and fields, ruining crops and stripping the bark from trees. From time to time strange eclipses stained the moon and the sky bloodred.”
(The Templars pg. 24)
Geoffrey Plantagenet is born, he’s the Count of Anjou (which is where we get the word Angevin), Touraine, and Maine from 1129 and Duke of Normandy by conquest from 1144, (later marries Empress Matilda and their son becomes Henry II, king of England and the first of the Plantagenet kings
In Cambodia, construction begins on the Angkor Wat (it will be completed by 1150, taking 37 years to build, it will be built by 3000,000 workers with the help of 6,000 elephants) (History of the World Map by Map pg. 379)
1114
RULERS & ROYALTY: Henry I is king of England – Louis VI is king of the West Franks – Henry V is the Holy Roman/German emperor – Alexios I Komnenos is the Byzantine emperor
January 7, Henry I of England’s daughter, Matilda, marries Henry V, the Holy Roman/German emperor, she is only 12 years old, it is clearly a political marriage
Severe earthquakes again shake Syria and Palestine just like last year, several buildings and towns are destroyed (The Templars pg. 24)
In January, as an act of diplomacy, Henry I marries off his daughter Adelaide (changed her name to Matilda upon marriage) to Heinrich V, emperor of Germany, she was crowned empress the same day (she was 11, he was 32) (British Kings and Queens pg. 68),
“Layman who went to fight Muslims in the East were described as having joined the “knighthood of Christ” (militiae Christi), and having taken up the “gospel knighthood” (evangelicam militiam), Ivo, Bishop of Chartres, describes Hugh, Count of Champagne as such in 1114”
(The Templars pg. 29, 377)
1115
RULERS & ROYALTY: Henry I is king of England – Louis VI is king of the West Franks – Henry V is the Holy Roman/German emperor, Matilda (Henry I’s daughter) is his queen – Alexios I Komnenos is the Byzantine emperor
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux founds Clairvaux Abbey in France, south-east of Paris and Troyes, a Cistercian abbey (today it is in ruins and the present structure dates from 1708, the Abbey has been listed as since 1926 as a historical monument by the French Ministry of Culture, and the grounds are now used by Clairvaux prison, a high security prison)
1116
RULERS & ROYALTY: Henry I is king of England – Louis VI is king of the West Franks – Henry V is the Holy Roman/German emperor, Matilda (Henry I’s daughter) is his queen – Alexios I Komnenos is the Byzantine emperor
1117
RULERS & ROYALTY: Henry I is king of England – Louis VI is king of the West Franks – Henry V is the Holy Roman/German emperor, Matilda (Henry I’s daughter) is his queen – Alexios I Komnenos is the Byzantine emperor
1118
RULERS & ROYALTY: Henry I is king of England – Louis VI is king of the West Franks – Henry V is the Holy Roman/German emperor, Matilda (Henry I’s daughter) is his queen – Alexios I Komnenos of the Byzantine emperor dies on August 15, and his son, John II Komnenos ascends the throne – Baldwin I, King of Jerusalem, dies, (Baldwin II ascends the throne) as well as the leading Latin churchman in the Kingdom: Arnulf, patriarch of Jerusalem three weeks later (The Templars pg. 24)
Henry I’s wife, Queen Matilda of Scotland dies (British Kings and Queens pg. 69)
Alfonso, king of Aragon, achieves a victory against the Moors when he captures Saragossa, (Encyclopedia Britannica)
1119
RULERS & ROYALTY: Henry I is king of England – Louis VI is king of the West Franks – Henry V is the Holy Roman/German emperor, Matilda (Henry I’s daughter) is his queen – John II Komnenos is the Byzantine emperor – Ali ibn Yusuf is the emir of the Almoravid empire
Ali ibn Yusuf invades the Iberia (and will do again in 1121)
March 29, After the miracle of the Holy Fire at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher (every year an oil lamp would burst into flame of its own accord and the pilgrims who had gathered to see it would then travel down to the Jordan River to be baptized)
“The chronicler Albert of Aachen recorded that once they (the pilgrims) had descended from the mountains to a ‘place of solitude’ near the river, all of a sudden there ‘appeared Saracens from Tyre and Ascalon [two cities still in Muslim hands], armed and very fierce.’ They fell upon the pilgrims, who were ‘virtually unarmed’ and weary after a journey of many days, weakened by fasting for Jesus’ name.’ It was no fight at all. ‘The wicked butchers pursued them, putting three hundred to the sword and holding sixty captive,’ wrote Albert,”
(The Templars pg. 25-26)
June 28, "At Sarmada in northwest Syria, a very large force of Christians who were occupying Antioch went into battle against an army led by an Artuqid ruler known as Il-ghazi, a drunkard but a dangerous general who occupied nearby Aleppo…the Christians were slaughtered by the hundreds…Fulcher of Chartres estimated that, in all, seven thousand Christians were killed,” the Franks called that place the Field of Blood, out of this event came the “germ of an idea that would lie at the heart of Templar ideology (The Templars pg. 26)
Henry I defeats Louis VI of France and now holds Normandy unopposed. “When peace was agreed with the Pope’s blessing, Henry I was accepted unchallenged as Duke of Normandy. Henry I cemented this advance by marrying his eldest son William to Alice (who also changed her name to Matilda), the daughter of Fulk V, count of Anjou and Maine. William was only fifteen and, Alice less than twelve.” William stood in succession to the English throne now (British Kings and Queens pg. 68)