CHAPTER NINE - REVIVAL, RECOVERY, REFORM, AND EXPANSION Beginning in the last half of the tenth century, after

a long winter of discontent, Latin Christendom that area of western Europe "that recognized papal authority and celebrated the Latin liturgy"'-saw the first hints of spring. The European springtime lasted from the middle of the eleventh century to the end of the thirteenth. This period from about 1050 to 1300 has been called the "High Middle Ages" or the "Central Middle Ages." Either term designates a time of change, growth, and cultural achievement between two eras of economic, political, and social crisis. These centuries also witnessed the expansion of Latin Christian culture into frontier zones, "border regions and regions of warfare 112 -the Baltic, Scandinavia, eastern Europe, and Spain-through conquest and colonization. * What were the ingredients of revival, and how did they come about? * How did political revival affect the reform of the church? How, in turn, did religious reform influence secular developments? * How did the reform of the Christian church come to affect relations between the church and civil authorities? * What were the Crusades, and how did they manifest the influence of the church and the ideals of medieval society? * What were the means of Latin Christian penetration into pagan and Muslim regions, and how did that penetration bring about change? These are the questions that will frame the discussion in this chapter. POLITICAL REVIVAL The eleventh century witnessed the beginnings of new political stability. Rulers in France, England, and Germany worked to reduce private warfare and civil anarchy. Domestic disorder subsided, and external invasions from the Vikings, Muslims, and Magyars (see page 274) gradually declined. These developments gave people security in their persons and property. Political order and stability provided the foundation for economic recovery and contributed to a slow increase in population. The Decline of Invasion and Civil Disorder In the tenth century, Charlemagne's descendants continued to hold the royal title in the West Frankish kingdom, but they exercised no effective control over the great feudal lords. Research on medieval France has focused on regions and principalities, emphasizing the diversity of languages and cultures, the differences in social structures, and the division of public authority. Northern French society, for example, had strong feudal elements, but the fief and vassalage were almost unknown in the south. The southern territories used Roman law, while the northern counties and duchies relied on customary law that was not formally codified until the thirteenth century. Thus broad generalizations about France, or indeed any single part of Europe, are very dangerous. 3 Five counties dominated northern France: Anjou, Blois-Chartres, Brittany, Flanders, and Normandy. In the early eleventh century, all five experienced considerable internal disorder, and all were -aggressively expansionist. But Normandy gradually emerged as the strongest territory with the greatest relative level of peace. The territory that we call Normandy takes its name from the Northmen, or Vikings, who settled there in the tenth century. In 911 the West Frankish ruler Charles the Simple, unable to oust the Vikings, officially recognized their leader, Rollo, and later invested him with more lands; in return, Rollo gave allegiance and agreed to hold the region as a barrier against future Viking attacks. Rollo and his men were baptized as Christians and supported the West Frankish ruler when he needed their help. Although additional Northmen arrived, they were easily pacified. The late tenth and early eleventh centuries saw the assimilation of Norman and French, and major assaults on France ended. During the minority of Rollo's descendant Duke William I (r. 1035-1089), however, rebellious lords ignored

ducal authority, built private castles, and engaged in private warfare-with general instability the result. The alliance of Count Geoffrey Martel of Anjou and King Henry I of France posed a dire threat to ducal authority until 1054, when William defeated them. This victory turned the tide. Beginning in 1060, William united the Norman nobility under threat of external aggression from the counts of Blois and Maine and defended his frontier with a circle of castles. William also made feudalism work as a system of government. He insisted on the homage of his vassals, attached specific quotas of knight service to the lands he distributed, swiftly executed vassals who defaulted on their obligations, limited private warfare, and forbade the construction of private castles, always the symbol of feudal independence. The duke controlled the currency and supervised the church by participating in the selection of all bishops and abbots. By 1066 the Norman frontiers were stable, and the duchy possessed a feudal hierarchy. By the standards of the time, Normandy was an orderly and well-controlled principality. Following the death of the last Carolingian ruler in 987, an assembly of nobles met to choose a successor. Accepting the argument of the archbishop of Reims that the French monarchy was elective, not hereditary, the nobles selected Hugh Capet, dux Francorum, duke of the Franks and head of a powerful clan in the West Frankish kingdom. Soon after his own coronation, Hugh crowned his son Robert to ensure the succession and prevent disputes after his (Hugh's) death and to weaken the feudal principle of elective kingship. The Capetian kings (so called from the cope, or cloak, Hugh wore as abbot of Saint-Denis) subsequently saved France from further division, but this was hardly apparent in 987. Compared with the duke of Normandy, the first Capetians were weak. By hanging on to what they had, however, they laid the foundation for later political stability. Aquitaine, to the south, was the largest duchy in France geographically, and few lords in the north could match the power of Duke William V (995-1030). His authority extended from the Loire to the Garonne. Although scholars dispute the meaning of the term vassal in Aquitaine and whether William's knights actually performed their military service, he seems to have maintained their loyalty. 4 The export of wine and salt brought the duke wealth; the German emperor and the kings of Navarre, Aragon, and England sent him gifts; and William influenced the election of bishops in the duchy. All these suggest a relatively high level of political stability, and a contemporary chronicler said that the duke was thought to be more a king than a duke. 5 Recovery followed a different pattern in Anglo-Saxon England. The Vikings had made a concerted effort to conquer and rule the whole island, and probably no part of Europe suffered more. Before the Viking invasions, England had never been united under a single ruler, and in 877 only parts of the kingdom of Wessex survived. The victory of the remarkable Alfred, king of the West Saxons (or Wessex), over Guthrun the Dane at Edington in 878 inaugurated a great political revival. Alfred and his immediate successors built a system of local defenses and slowly extended royal rule beyond Wessex to other Anglo-Saxon peoples until one law, royal law, replaced local custom. Alfred and his successors also laid the foundation for an efficient system of local government responsible directly to the king. Under the pressure of the Vikings, England was gradually united under one ruler. In 1013 the Danish ruler Swen Forkbeard invaded England. His son Canute completed the subjugation of the island. 1,,,-ing of England (1016-1035) and after 1030 king of Norway as well, Canute made England the center of his empire. He promoted a policy of assimilation and reconciliation between Anglo-Saxons and Vikings. Slowly the two peoples were melded together. The assimilation of Anglo-Saxon and Viking was personified by King Edward the Confessor (r. 10421066), the son of an Anglo-Saxon father and a Norman mother who had taken Canute as her second husband. In the cast, the German King Otto I (r. 936-973) inflicted a crushing defeaton the Hungarians on the banks of the Lech River in 955. This battle halted the Magyars' threat to Germany and made Otto a great hero to the Germans. It also signified the revival of the German monarchy and demonstrated that Otto was a worthy successor to Charlemagne. When chosen king, Otto had selected Aachen as the site of his coronation to symbolize his intention to continue

the tradition of Charlemagne. The basis of his power was alliance with and control of the church. Otto asserted the right to control ecclesiastical appointments. Before receiving religious consecration and being invested with the staff and ring symbolic of their offices, bishops and abbots had to perform feudal homage for the lands that accompanied the church office. (This practice, later known as "investiture," was to create a grave crisis in the eleventh century [see pages 280-282.) Otto realized that he had to use the financial and military resources of the church to halt feudal anarchy. He used the higher clergy extensively in his administration, and the bulk of his army came from monastic and other church lands. Between 936 and 955, Otto succeeded in breaking the territorial power of the great German dukes. Some of our knowledge of Otto derives from The Deeds of Otto, a history of his reign in heroic verse written by a nun, Hrotswitha of Gandersheirn (ca 935ca 1003). A learned poet, she also produced six verse plays, and she is considered the first dramatist after the fall of the ancient classical theater. Hrotswitha's literary productions give her an important place in the mainstream of tenth-century civilization. Otto's coronation by the pope in 962 revived the imperial dignity and laid the foundation for what was later called the Holy Roman Empire. Further, the coronation showed that Otto had the support of the church in Germany and Italy. The uniting of the kingship with the imperial crown advanced German interests. Otto filled a power vacuum in northern Italy and brought peace among the great aristocratic families. The level of order there improved for the first time in over a century. Peace and political stability in turn promoted the revival of northern Italian cities. Although plague, climatic deterioration that reduced agricultural productivity, and invasions had drastically reduced the population throughout Italy, most of the northern cities had survived the disorders of the early Middle Ages. By the ninth century, some of these cities showed considerable economic dynamism, in particular Venice, which won privileged access to Byzantine markets and imported silks, textiles, cosmetics, and Crimean slaves to sell to Padua and other cities. By the eleventh century, Venetian commerce had stimulated economic growth in Milan and Cremona, with those cities and Sicily supplying Venice with food in exchange for luxury goods from the East. The rising economic importance of Venice and later of Genoa, Pisa, and other cities became a central factor in the struggle between the papacy and the German Empire. Population, Climate, and Mechanization A steady growth of population also contributed to Europe's general recovery. The decline of foreign invasions and internal civil disorder reduced the number of people killed and maimed. Feudal armies in the eleventh through thirteenth centuries continued their destruction, but they were very small by modern standards and fought few pitched battles. Most medieval conflicts consisted of sieges directed at castles or fortifications. As few as twelve men could defend a castle. With sufficient food and an adequate water supply, they could hold out for a long time. Monastic chroniclers, frequently bored and almost always writing from hearsay, tended to romanticize medieval warfare (as long as it was not in their own neighborhoods). Most conflicts were petty skirmishes with slight loss of life. The survival of more young people-those most often involved in war and usually the most sexually active-meant a population rise. Nor was there any "natural," or biological, hindrance to population expansion. Between the tenth and fourteenth centuries, Europe was not hit by any major plague or other medical scourge, though leprosy and malaria did strike down some people. Leprosy, caused by a virus, was not very contagious, and it worked slowly. Lepers presented a frightful appearance: the victim's arms and legs rotted away, and gangrenous sores emitted a horrible smell. Physicians had no cure. For these reasons, and because of the command in the thirteenth chapter of Leviticus that lepers be isolated, medieval lepers were eventually segregated in hospitals called leprosaria. Crop failure and the ever-present danger of starvation were much more pressing threats. The weather cooperated with the revival. Meteorologists believe that a slow but steady retreat of polar ice occurred between the ninth and eleventh centuries. A significant warming trend continued until about 1200. The century between 1080 and 1180 witnessed exceptionally clement weather in England, France, and Germany, with mild winters

and dry summers. Good weather helps to explain advances in population growth, land reclamation, and agricultural yield. Increased agricultural output had a profound impact on society: it affected Europeans' health, commerce, industry, and general lifestyle. A better diet had an enormous impact on women's lives: it meant increased body fat, which increased fertility; also, more iron in the diet meant that women were less anemic and less subject to opportunistic diseases. Some researchers believe that it was in the High Middle Ages that Western women began to outlive men. The tenth and eleventh centuries also witnessed a remarkable spurt in mechanization, especially in the use of energy. The increase in the number of water mills was spectacular. An ancient water mill unearthed near Monte Cassino could grind about 1.5 tons of grain in 10 hours, a quantity that would formerly have required the exertions of 40 slaves. The abundance of slave labor in the ancient world had retarded the development of mills, but by the mid-ninth century, on the lands of the abbey of Saint- Germaine - des- Pr6s near Paris, there were 59 water mills. Succeeding generations saw a continued increase. Thus, on the Robec River near Rouen, there were 2 mills in the tenth century, 4 in the eleventh, 10 in the thirteenth, and 12 in the fourteenth. Domesday Book, William the Conqueror's great survey of English economic resources in the late eleventh century (see page 336), recorded 5,624 water mills. On the 9,250 manors in England at that time, 3,463 had at least one mill. One scholar has calculated that on average each mill supplied 50 households. Besides grinding wheat or other grains to produce flour, water mills became essential in fulling, the process of scouring, cleansing, and thickening cloth. Rather than men or women trampling cloth in a trough, wooden hammers were raised and dropped on the cloth by means of a revolving drum connected to the spindle of a water wheel. Water mills revolutionized the means of grinding and fulling by using natural, rather than human, energy. Successful at adapting waterpower to human needs, medieval engineers soon harnessed wind power. They replaced the wheels driven by water with sails. But while water always flows in the same direction, wind can blow from many directions. Windmill engineers solved this problem very ingeniously by mounting the framed wooden body, which contained the machinery and carried the sails, on a massive upright post free to turn in the wind. REVIVAL AND REFORM IN THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH The eleventh century also witnessed the beginnings of a remarkable religious revival. Monasteries, always the leaders in ecclesiastical reform, remodeled themselves under the leadership of the Burgundian abbey of Cluny. Subsequently, new religious orders, such as the Cistercians, were founded and became a broad spiritual movement. The papacy itself, after a century of corruption and decadence, was cleaned up. The popes worked to clarify church doctrine and codify church law. They and their officials sought to communicate with all the clergy and peoples of Europe through a clearly defined, obedient hierarchy of bishops. The popes wanted the basic loyalty of all members of the clergy. Pope Gregory VII's strong assertion of papal power led to profound changes and serious conflict with secular authorities. The revival of the church was manifested in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries by a flowering of popular piety, reflected in the building of magnificent cathedrals. Monastic Revival In the early Middle Ages, the best Benedictine monasteries had been citadels of good monastic observance and centers of learning. Between the seventh and ninth centuries, religious houses such as Bobbio in northern Italy, Luxeuil in France, and Jarrow in England copied and preserved manuscripts, maintained schools, and set high standards of monastic observance. Charlemagne had encouraged and supported these monastic activities, and the collapse of the Carolingian Empire had disastrous effects. The Viking, Magyar, and Muslim invaders attacked and ransacked many monasteries across Europe. Some communities fled and dispersed. In the period of political disorder that followed the disintegration of the Carolingian Empire, many religious houses fell under the control and domination of local feudal lords. Powerful laymen appointed themselves or their relatives as abbots, while keeping their wives or mistresses. They took for themselves the lands and goods of monasteries, spending monastic revenues and selling monastic offices.

Temporal powers all over Europe dominated the monasteries. The level of spiritual observance and intellectual activity declined. Since the time of Charlemagne, secular powers had selected church officials and compelled them to become their vassals. Abbots, bishops, and archbishops thus had military responsibilities that required them to fight with their lords, or at least to send contingents of soldiers when called on to do so. Church law forbade clerics to shed blood, but many prelates found the excitement of battle too great to resist. In the ninth century, Abbot Lupus of Ferrieres wrote his friend Abbot Odo of Corbie: I am often most anxious about you, recalling your habit of heedlessly throwing yourself, all unarmed, into the thick of battle whenever your youthful energy is overcome with the greedy desire to conquer ... I, as you know, have never learned how to strike an enemy or to avoid his blows. Nor do I know how to execute all the other obligations of military service on foot or horseback.7 Lupus preferred the quiet of his scriptorium to the noise of the battlefield. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, ecclesiastical barons owed heavy contingents of knight service; some prelates actually fought with the king. For example, in twelfth-century England, the abbot of Peterborough owed the king the service of sixty knights, the abbot of Bury Saint Edmunds forty knights, and the archbishop of Canterbury the huge service of five hundred knights, though after 1166 the service was usually commuted into a cash payment. As feudal lords, ecclesiastical officials also had judicial authority over the knights, whose cases prelates tried in their feudal courts, and peasants, whose disputes they resolved in the manorial courts. For some prelates, the conflict between their religious duties on the one hand, and their judicial and military obligations on the other, posed a serious dilemma. In 909 William the Pious, duke of Aquitaine, established the abbey of Cluny near Macon in Burgundy. This was to be a very important event. In his charter of endowment, Duke William declared that Cluny was to enjoy complete independence from all feudal (or secular) and episcopal lordship. The new monastery was to be subordinate only to the authority of Saints Peter and Paul as represented by the pope. The duke then renounced his own possession of and influence over Cluny. This monastery and its foundation charter came to exert vast religious influence. The first two abbots of Cluny, Berno (910-927) and Odo (927-942), set very high standards of religious behavior. They stressed strict observance of The Rule of Saint Benedict, the development of a personal spiritual life by the individual monk, and the importance of the liturgy- Cluny gradually came to stand for clerical celibacy and the suppression of simony (the sale of church offices). In the eleventh century, Cluny was fortunate in having a series of highly able abbots who ruled for a long time. These abbots paid careful attention to sound economic management. In a disorderly world, Cluny gradually came to represent religious and political stability. Therefore, laypersons placed lands under its custody and monastic priories (a priory is a religious house, usually smaller in number than an abbey, governed by a prior) under its jurisdiction for reform. Benefactors wanted to be associated with Cluniac piety. Moreover, properties and monasteries under Cluny's jurisdiction enjoyed special protection, at least theoretically, from violence.9 In this way, hundreds of monasteries, primarily in France and Spain, came under Cluny's authority. Cluny was not the only center of monastic reform. The abbey of Gorze in Lotharingia (modern Lorraine) exercised a correcting influence on German religious houses. With royal support and through such abbeys as Saint Emmeran at Regensburg, Gorze directed a massive reform of monasteries in central Europe. Gorze and Cluny represented two different monastic traditions. Gorze became a center of literary culture, Cluny of liturgical ceremony. Gorze personified the simple lifestyle, Cluny the elaborate. Gorze accepted lay authority over monasteries; Cluny did not. Gorze served the empire, Cluny the Gregorian reformers (see pages 280-282). In some ways, Gorze stood for the German East, Cluny for the French West. 10 Deeply impressed laypeople showered gifts on monasteries with good reputations. jewelry, rich vestments, elaborately carved sacred vessels, even lands and properties poured into some houses. But with this wealth

came lay influence. As the monasteries became richer, the lifestyle of the monks grew increasingly luxurious. Monastic observance and spiritual fervor declined. Soon fresh demands for reform were heard, and the result was the founding of new religious orders in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries. The Cistercians, because of their phenomenal expansion, and the great economic, political, and spiritual influence they exerted, are the best representatives of the new reforming spirit. In 1098 a group of monks left the rich abbey of Molesmes in Burgundy and founded a new house in the swampy forest of Citeaux. They had specific goals and high ideals. They planned to avoid all involvement with secular feudal society. They decided to accept only uncultivated lands far from regular habitation. They intended to refuse all gifts of mills, serfs, tithes, and ovens-the traditional manorial sources of income. The early Cistercians determined to avoid elaborate liturgy and ceremony and to keep their chant simple. Finally, they refused to allow the presence of powerful laypeople in their monasteries, because they knew that such influence was usually harmful to careful observance. The first monks at Citeaux experienced sickness, a dearth of recruits, and terrible privations. But their obvious sincerity and high ideals eventually attracted attention. In 1112 a twenty- three -year- old nobleman called Bernard joined the community at Citeaux, together with some of his brothers and other noblemen. Three years later, Bernard was appointed founding abbot of Clairvaux in Champagne. From this position, he conducted a vast correspondence, attacked the theological views of Peter Abelard (see page 361), intervened in the disputed papal election of 1130, drafted a constitution for the Knights Templars (see page 288), and preached the Second Crusade. For his learning, charm, and deep spiritual charisma, Bernard of Clairvaux exercised great influence on many aspects of twelfth century culture. This reforming movement gained impetus. Citeaux founded 525 new monasteries in the course of the twelfth century, and its influence on European society was profound. Unavoidably, however, Cistercian success brought wealth, and wealth brought power. By the later twelfth century, economic prosperity and political power had begun to compromise the originalCistercian ideals. Reform of the Papacy Some scholars believe that the monastic revival spreading from Cluny influenced reform of the Roman papacy and eventually of the entire Christian church. Certainly Abbot Odilo of Cluny (994-1048) was a close friend of the German emperor Henry III, who promoted reform throughout the empire. Pope Gregory VII, who carried the ideals of reform to extreme lengths, had spent some time at Cluny. And the man who consolidated the reform movement and strengthened the medieval papal monarchy, Pope Urban 11 (1088-1099), had been a monk and prior at Cluny. The precise degree of Cluny's impact on the reform movement cannot be measured, but the broad goals of the Cluniac movement and those of the Roman papacy were the same. The papacy provided little leadership to the Christian peoples of western Europe in the tenth century. Factions in Rome sought to control the papacy for their own material gain. Popes were appointed to advance the political ambitions of their families-the great aristocratic families of the city-and not because of special spiritual qualifications. A combination of political machinations and sexual immorality damaged the papacy's moral prestige. Pope John XII (955-963) represents perhaps the epitome of corruption. Appointed pope by his powerful father when he was only eighteen, and lacking interest in spiritual matters, John concentrated on expanding papal territories. These activities brought him in conflict with Berengar II, king of Italy (r. 950 963). In return for military support from the German king Otto I against Berengar, John crowned Otto Holy Roman emperor in 962 (see page 274). But where John had sought a protector, he found a master. Otto presided over a council at Rome where the clergy denounced the pope for immoral behavior. When John refused to appear at the synod, Otto had him deposed and a replacement elected. The emperor left Rome to return to Germany. But John, by manipulating the Roman populace, provoked a revolt, inflicted savage reprisals on his enemies, and made a comeback. Before Otto could return to pacify the situation, John suffered a stroke, allegedly in bed with a married woman, and died a week later at age twenty-seven. At the local parish level, there were many married priests. Taking Christ as the model for the priestly life, the Roman church had always encouraged clerical celibacy, and it had been an obligation for ordination since the

fourth century. But in the tenth and eleventh centuries, probably a majority of European priests were married or living with a woman. Such priests were called "Nicolaites" from a reference in the Book of Revelation to early Christians who advocated a return to pagan sexual practices. Serious efforts at reform began under Pope Leo IX (1049-1054). Not only was Leo related to Emperor Henry III but, as bishop of Toul and a German, he was also an outsider who owed nothing to any Roman faction. Leo traveled widely and held councils at Pavia, Reims, and Mainz that issued decrees against simony, Nicolaitism, and violence. Leo's representatives held church councils across Europe, pressing for moral reform. They urged those who could not secure justice at home to appeal to the pope for ultimate justice. By his character and actions, Leo set high moral standards for the West. But the reform of the papacy had legal as well as moral aspects. During Leo's pontificate, a new collection of ecclesiastical law was prepared, the Collection of 74 Titles, which placed great emphasis on papal authority. In substance the collection stressed the rights, legal position, and supreme spiritual prerogatives of the bishop of Rome as successor of Saint Peter. Papal reform continued after Leo IX. During the short reign of Nicholas II (1058-1061), a council held in the ancient church of Saint John Lateran in 1059 reached a momentous decision. To remove the influence of Roman aristocratic factions, and perhaps to make papal elections independent of imperial influences, a new method of electing the pope was devised. Since the eighth century, the priests of the major churches in and around Rome had constituted a special group, called a "college," that advised the pope when he summoned them to meetings. These chief priests were called '"cardinals," from the Latin cardo, meaning "hinge." The cardinals were the hinges on which the church turned. The Lateran Synod of 1059 decreed that the authority and power to elect the pope rested solely in this college of cardinals. The college retains that power today. (In the Middle Ages, the college of cardinals numbered around twenty-five or thirty, most of them from Italy. In 1586 the figure was set at seventy. In the 1960s, Pope Paul VI virtually doubled that number, appointing men from all parts of the globe to reflect the international character of the church.) When the office of pope was vacant, the cardinals were responsible for governing the church. By 1073 the progress of reform in the Christian church was well advanced. The election of Cardinal Hildebrand as Pope Gregory VII changed the direction of reform from a moral to a political one. THE GREGORIAN REVOLUTION The papal reform movement of the eleventh century is frequently called the Gregorian reform movement, after Pope Gregory VII (1073-1085). The label is not accurate, in that reform began long before Gregory's pontificate and continued after it. Gregory's reign did, however, inaugurate a radical or revolutionary phase that had important political and social consequences. Gregory VII was the first pope to emphasize the political authority of the papacy. His belief that kings had failed to promote reform in the church prompted him to claim an active role in the politics of Western Christendom. I I Pope Gregory VII's Ideas Cardinal Hildebrand had received a good education at Rome and spent some time at Cluny, where his strict views of clerical life were strengthened. He had served in the papal secretariat under Leo IX and after 1065 was probably the chief influence there. Hildebrand was dogmatic, inflexible, and unalterably convinced of the truth of his own views. He believed that the pope, as the successor of Saint Peter, was the vicar of God on earth and that papal orders were the orders of God. Once Hildebrand became pope, the reform of the papacy took on a new dimension. Its goal was not just the moral regeneration of the clergy and centralization of the church under papal authority. Gregory and his assistants began to insist on the "freedom of the church." By this they meant the freedom of churchmen to obey canon law and freedom from control and interference by laypeople. "Freedom of the church" pointed to the end of lay investiture-the selection and appointment of church officials by secular authority. Bishops and abbots were invested with the staff, representing pastoral jurisdiction, and the

ring, signifying union with the diocese or monastic community. When laymen gave these symbols, they appeared to be distributing spiritual authority. Ecclesiastical opposition to lay investiture was not new in the eleventh century. It, too, had been part of church theory for centuries. But Gregory's attempt to put theory into practice was a radical departure from tradition. Since feudal monarchs depended on churchmen for the operation of their governments, Gregory's program seemed to spell disaster for stable royal administration. It provoked a terrible crisis. The Controversy over Lay Investiture In February 1075, Pope Gregory held a council at Rome. It published decrees not only against Nicolaitism and simony but also against lay investiture: If anyone henceforth shall receive a bishopric or abbey from the hands of a lay person, he shall not be considered as among the number of bishops and abbots.... If any emperor, king ... or any one at all of the secular powers, shall presume to perform investiture with bishoprics or with any other ecclesiastical dignity ... he shall feel the divine displeasure as well with regard to his body as to his other belongings. 12 In short, clerics who accepted investiture from laymen were to be deposed, and laymen who invested clerics were to be excommunicated (cut off from the sacraments and all Christian worship). The church's penalty of excommunication relied for its effectiveness on public opinion. Gregory believed that the strong support he enjoyed for his moral reforms would carry over to his political ones; he thought that excommunication would compel rulers to abide by his changes. Immediately, however, Henry IV in the empire, William the Conqueror in England (see page 336), and Philip I in France protested. The strongest reaction came from Germany. Henry IV had supported the moral aspects of church reform within the empire. In fact, they would not have had much success without him. Most eleventh- century rulers could not survive without the literacy and administrative knowledge of bishops and abbots. Naturally, then, kings selected and invested most of them. In this respect, as recent research has shown, German kings scarcely varied from other rulers. In two basic ways, however, the relationship of the German kings to the papacy differed from that of other monarchs: the pope crowned the German emperor, and both the empire and the papal states claimed northern Italy.Since the time of Charlemagne (see page 247), the emperor had controlled some territory and bishops in Italy. In addition to the subject of lay investiture, a more fundamental issue was at stake. Gregory's decree raised the question of the proper role of the monarch in a Christian society. Did a king have ultimate jurisdiction over all his subjects, including the clergy? For centuries tradition had answered this question in favor of the ruler, so it is no wonder that Henry protested the papal assertions about investiture. Indirectly, they undermined imperial power and sought to make papal authority supreme. An increasingly bitter exchange of letters ensued. Gregory accused Henry of lack of respect for the papacy and insisted that disobedience to the pope was disobedience to God. Henry protested in a now-famous letter beginning, "Henry1,ing not by usurpation, but by the pious ordination of God, to Hildebrand, now not Pope, but false monk." Henry went on to argue that Gregory's type of reform undermined royal authority and that the pope "was determined to rob me of my soul and my kingdom or die in the attempt." 13 Within the empire, those who had the most to gain from the dispute quickly took advantage of it. In January 1076 many of the German bishops who had been invested by Henry withdrew their allegiance from the pope. Gregory replied by excommunicating them and suspending Henry from the kingship. The lay nobility delighted in the bind the emperor had been put in: with Henry IV excommunicated and cast outside the Christian fold, they did not have to obey him and could advance their own interests. Powerful nobles invited the pope to come to Germany to settle their dispute with Henry. Gregory hastened to support them. In the pope's mind, the German nobility "shared his vision of the vicar of St. Peter as an arbiter of secular affairs. 14 The Christmas season of 1076 witnessed an ironic situation in Germany: the clergy supported the emperor, while the great nobility favored the pope. Henry outwitted Gregory. Crossing the Alps in January 1077, he approached the pope's residence at Canossa in

northern Italy. According to legend, Henry stood for three days in the snow seeking forgiveness. As a priest, Pope Gregory was obliged to grant absolution and to readmit the emperor to the Christian community. Henry's trip to Canossa is often described as the most dramatic incident in the High Middle Ages. Some historians claim that it marked the peak of papal power because the most powerful ruler in Europe, the emperor, had bowed before the pope. Actually, Henry scored a temporary victory. When the sentence of excommunication was lifted, Henry regained the kingship and authority over his rebellious subjects. But in the long run, in Germany and elsewhere, secular rulers were reluctant to pose a serious challenge to the papacy for the next two hundred years. For Germany the incident at Canossa settled nothing. The controversy over lay investiture and the position of the king in Christian society continued. In 1080 Gregory VII again excommunicated and deposed the emperor; in return, Henry invaded Italy, captured Rome, and controlled the city when Gregory died in 1085. But Henry won no lasting victory. Gregory's successors encouraged Henry's sons to revolt against their father. With lay investiture the ostensible issue, the conflict between the papacy and the successor of Henry IV continued into the twelfth century. Finally, in 1122, at a conference held at Worms, the issue was settled by compromise. Bishops were to be chosen according to canon law-that is, by the clergy in the presence of the emperor or his delegate. The emperor surrendered the right of investing bishops with the ring and staff. But since lay rulers were permitted to be present at ecclesiastical elections and to accept or refuse feudal homage from the new prelates, they still possessed an effective veto over ecclesiastical appointments. The English and French kings accepted the same resolution. The papacy achieved a technical success, because rulers could no longer invest with ring and staff. Papal power was enhanced, but neither side won a clear victory. William the Conqueror of England and Philip I of France were just as guilty of lay investiture as the German emperor, and both quarreled openly with Gregory. However, Rome's conflict with the western rulers never reached the proportions of the dispute with the German emperor. Gregory VII and his successors had the diplomatic sense to avoid creating three enemies at once. The long controversy had tremendous social and political consequences in Germany. For half a century, between 1075 and 1125, civil war was chronic in the empire. Preoccupied with Italy and the quarrel with the papacy, emperors could do little about it. The lengthy struggle between papacy and emperor allowed emerging noble dynasties, such as the Zdhringer of Swabia, to enhance their position. By the eleventh century, these great German families had achieved a definite sense of themselves as noble.15 To control their lands, the great lords built castles, symbolizing their increased power and growing independence. (In no European country do more castles survive today.) The castles were both military strongholds and centers of administration for the surrounding territories. The German aristocracy subordinated the knights and reinforced their dependency with strong feudal ties. They reduced free men and serfs to an extremely servile position. Henry IV and Henry V were compelled to surrender rights and privileges to the nobility. When the papal-imperial conflict ended in 1122, the nobility held the balance of power in Germany, and later German kings, such as Frederick Barbarossa (see page 340), would fail in their efforts to strengthen the monarchy against the princely families. For these reasons, particularism, localism, and feudal independence characterized the Holy Roman Empire in the High Middle Ages. The investiture controversy had a catastrophic effect there. The Papacy in the High Middle Ages In the late eleventh century and throughout the twelfth, the papacy pressed Gregory's campaign for reform of the church. Pope Urban II laid the foundations for the papal monarchy by reorganizing the central government of the Roman church, the papal writing office (the chancery), and papal finances. He recognized the college of cardinals as a definite consultative body. These agencies, together with the papal chapel, constituted the papal court, or curia Romana-the papacy's administrative bureaucracy and its court of law. The papal curia, although not fully developed until the mid-twelfth century, was the first well-organized institution of monarchial authority in medieval Europe. The Roman curia had its greatest impact as a court of law. As the highest ecclesiastical tribunal, it formulated

canon law for all of Christendom. It was the instrument with which the popes pressed the goals of reform and centralized the church. The curia sent legates to hold councils in various parts of Europe. Councils published decrees and sought to enforce the law. When individuals in any part of Christian Europe felt they were being denied justice in their local church courts, they could appeal to Rome. Slowly but surely, in the High Middle Ages the papal curia developed into the court of final appeal for all of Christian Europe. What kinds of appeals came to the Roman curia? The majority of cases related to disputes over church property or ecclesiastical elections and above all to questions of marriage and annulment. Since the fourth century, Christian values had influenced the administration of the law, and bishops frequently sat in courts that heard marriage cases. Beginning in the tenth and eleventh centuries, church officials began to claim that they had exclusive jurisdiction over marriage. Appeals to an ecclesiastical tribunal, rather than to a civil court, or appeals from a civil court to a church court implied the acceptance of the latter's jurisdiction. Moreover, most of the popes in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were canon lawyers who pressed the authority of church courts. The most famous of them, the man whose pontificate represented the height of medieval papal power, was Innocent III (1198-1216). Innocent judged a vast number of cases. He compelled King Philip Augustus of France to take back his wife, Ingeborg of Denmark. He arbitrated the rival claims of two disputants to the imperial crown of Germany. He forced King John of England to accept as archbishop of Canterbury a man John did not want. By the early thirteenth century, papal efforts at reform begun more than a century before had attained phenomenal success. The popes themselves were men of high principles and strict moral behavior. The frequency of clerical marriage and the level of violence had declined considerably. The practice of simony was much more the exception than the rule. Yet the seeds of future difficulties were being planted. As the volume of appeals to Rome multiplied, so did the size of the papal bureaucracy. As the number of lawyers increased, so did concern for legal niceties and technicalities, fees, and church offices. As early as the mid-twelfth century, John of Salisbury, an Englishman working in the papal curia, had written that the people condemned the curia for its greed and indifference to human suffering. Nevertheless, the power of the curia continued to grow, as did its bureaucracy. Thirteenth- century popes devoted their attention to the bureaucracy and their conflicts with the German emperor Frederick II. Some, like Gregory IX (1227-1241), abused their prerogatives to such an extent that their moral impact was seriously weakened. Even worse, Innocent IV (1243-1254) used secular weapons, including military force, to maintain his leadership. These popes badly damaged papal prestige and influence. By the early fourteenth century, the seeds of disorder would grow into a vast and sprawling tree, and once again cries for reform would be heard. THE CRUSADES The Crusades of the eleventh and twelfth centuries were the most obvious manifestation of the papal claim to the leadership of Christian society. The enormous popular response to papal calls for crusading reveals the influence of the reformed papacy. The Crusades also reflect the church's new understanding of the noble warrior class. A distinguished scholar of the Crusades wrote: At around the turn of the millennium [the year 10001, the attitude of the church toward the military class underwent a significant change. The contrast between militia Christi [war for Christ] and militia saecularis [war for worldly purposes] was overcome and just as rulership earlier had been Christianized. . . , so now was the military profession; it acquired a direct ecclesiastical purpose, for war in the service of the church or for the weak came to be regarded as holy and was declared to be a religious duty not only for the king but also for every individual knight. " Crusades in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries were holy wars sponsored by the papacy for the recovery of the Holy Land from the Muslims. They grew out of the long conflict between Christians and Muslims in Spain, where by about 1250 Christian kings had regained roughly 90 percent of the peninsula. Although people of all ages and classes participated in the Crusades, so many knights did so that crusading

became a distinctive feature of the upper-class lifestyle. In an aristocratic, military society, men coveted reputations as Crusaders; the Christian knight who had been to the Holy Land enjoyed great prestige. The Crusades manifested the religious and chivalric ideals-as well as the tremendous vitality-of medieval society. The Roman papacy supported the holy war in Spain and by the late eleventh century had strong reasons for wanting to launch an expedition against Muslim infidels in the East as well. The papacy had been involved in the bitter struggle over investiture with the German emperors. If the pope could muster a large army against the enemies of Christianity, his claim to be leader of Christian society in the West would be strengthened. Moreover, in 1054 a serious theological disagreement had split the Greek church of Byzantium and the Roman church of the West. The pope believed that a crusade would lead to strong Roman influence in Greek territories and eventually the reunion of the two churches. In 1071 at Manzikert in eastern Anatolia, Turkish soldiers defeated a Greek army and occupied much of Asia Minor. The emperor at Constantinople appealed to the West for support. Shortly afterward, the holy city of Jerusalem, the scene of Christ's preaching and burial, fell to the Turks. Pilgrimages to holy places in the Middle East became very dangerous, and the papacy claimed to be outraged that the holy city was in the hands of unbelievers. Since the Muslims had held Palestine since the eighth century, the papacy actually feared that the Seljuk Turks would be less accommodating to Christian pilgrims than the previous Muslim rulers of the areas had been. In 1095 Pope Urban II journeyed to Clermont in France and on November 27 called for a great Christian holy war against the infidels. Urban's appeal at Clermont represents his policy of rapprochement, or reconciliation, with Byzantium, with church union his ultimate goal. (Mutual ill will, quarrels, and the plundering of Byzantine property by undisciplined westerners were to frustrate this hope.) He stressed the sufferings and persecution of Christians in Jerusalem. He urged Christian knights who had been fighting one another to direct their energies against the true enemies of God, the Muslims. Urban proclaimed an indulgence, or remission of the temporal penalties imposed by the church for sin, to those who would fight for and regain the holy city of Jerusalem. Few speeches in history have had such a dramatic effect as Urban's call at Clermont for the First Crusade. Godfrey of Bouillon, Raymond of Toulouse, and other great lords from northern France immediately had the cross of the Crusader sewn on their tunics. Encouraged by popular preachers such as Peter the Hermit and by papal legates in Germany, Italy, and England, thousands of people of all classes joined the crusade. Although most of the Crusaders were French, pilgrims from many regions streamed southward from the Rhineland, through Germany and the Balkans. Of all of the developments of the High Middle Ages, none better reveals Europeans' religious and emotional fervor and the influence of the reformed papacy than the extraordinary outpouring of support for the First Crusade. (See the feature "Listening to the Past: An Arab View of the Crusades" on pages 298-299.) Religious convictions inspired many, but mundane motives were also involved. For the curious and the adventurous, the crusade offered foreign travel and excitement. It provided kings, who were trying to establish order and build states, the perfect opportunity to get rid of troublemaking knights. It gave land hungry younger sons a chance to acquire fiefs in the Middle East. Even some members of the middle class who stayed at home profited from the crusade. Nobles often had to borrow money from the burghers to pay for their expeditions, and they put up part of their land as security. If a noble did not return home or could not pay the interest on the loan, the middle-class creditor took over the land. The Crusades also brought to the surface latent Christian prejudice against the Jews. Between the sixth and tenth centuries, descendants of Sephardic (from the modern Hebrew word Separaddi, meaning Spanish or Portuguese) Jews had settled along the trade routes of western Europe; in the eleventh century, they played a major role in the international trade between the Muslim Middle East and the West. Jews also lent money to peasants, townspeople, and nobles. Because the Jews performed these useful economic services, kings and lords protected them. When the First Crusade was launched, many poor knights had to borrow from Jews to equip

themselves for the expedition. Debt bred resentment. (See the feature "Individuals in Society: The Jews of Speyer: A Collective Biography.") The First Crusade was successful, mostly because of the dynamic enthusiasm of the participants. The Crusaders had little more than religious zeal. They knew nothing about the geography or climate of the Middle East. Although there were several counts with military experience among the host, the Crusaders could never agree on a leader, and the entire expedition was marked by disputes among the great lords. Lines of supply were never set up. Starvation and disease wracked the army, and the Turks slaughtered hundreds of noncombatants. Nevertheless, convinced that "God wills it," the war cry of the Crusaders, the army pressed on and in 1099 captured Jerusalem. Although the Crusaders fought bravely, Arab disunity was a chief reason for their victory. At Jerusalem, Edessa, Tripoli, and Antioch, Crusader kingdoms were founded on the Western feudal model (Map 9.1). Between 1096 and 1270, the crusading ideal was expressed in eight papally approved expeditions to the East. Despite the success of the First Crusade, none of the later ones accomplished very much. The Third Crusade (1189-1192) was precipitated by the recapture of Jerusalem by the sultan Saladin in 1187. Frederick Barbarossa of the Holy Roman Empire, Richard the Lion Hearted of England, and Philip Augustus of France participated, and the Third Crusade was better financed than previous ones. But disputes among the leaders and strategic problems prevented any lasting results. During the Fourth Crusade (1202-1204), careless preparation and inadequate financing had disastrous consequences for Latin-Byzantine relations. In April 1204, the Crusaders and Venetians stormed Constantinople; sacked the city, destroying its magnificent library; and grabbed thousands of relics, which were later sold in Europe. _________________ The Jews of Speyer: A Collective Biography In the winter of 1095-1096, news of Pope Urban II's call for a crusade spread. In spring 1096, the Jews of northern France, fearing that a crusade would arouse anti-Semitic hostility, sent a circular letter to the Rhineland Jewry seeking its prayers. Jewish leaders in Mainz responded, "All the (Jewish) communities have decreed a fast.... May God save us and save you from all distress and hardship. We are deeply fearful for you. We, however, have less reason to fear (for ourselves), for we have heard not even a rumor of the crusade." I Ironically, French Jewry survived almost unscathed, while the Rhenish Jewry suffered frightfully. Beginning in the late tenth century Jews trickled into Speyer-partly through Jewish perception of opportunity and partly because of the direct invitation of the bishop of Speyer. The bishop's charter meant that Jews could openly practice their religion, could not be assaulted, and could buy and sell goods. But they could not proselytize their faith, as Christians could. Jews also extended credit on a small scale, and, in an expanding economy with many coins circulating, determined the relative value of currencies. Unlike their Christian counterparts, many Jewish women were literate and acted as moneylenders. Jews also worked as skilled masons, carpenters, and jewelers. As the bishop had promised, the Jews of Speyer lived apart from Christians in a walled enclave where they exercised autonomy: they maintained law and order, raised taxes, and provided religious, social, and educational services for their community. (This organization lasted in Germany until the nineteenth century.) Jewish immigration to Speyer accelerated; everyday relations between Jews and Christians were peaceful. But Christians resented Jews as newcomers, outsiders, and aliens; for enjoying the special protection of the bishop; and for providing economic competition. Anti-Semitic ideology had received enormous impetus from the virulent anti-Semitic writings of Christian apologists in the first six centuries A.D. Jews, they argued, were decides (Christ- killers); worse, Jews could understand the truth of Christianity but deliberately rejected it; thus, they were inhuman. By the late eleventh century, anti-Semitism was an old and deeply rooted element in Western society. Late in April 1096, Emich of Leisingen, a petty Rhineland lord who had the reputation of being a lawless thug, approached Speyer with a large band of Crusaders. Joined by a mob of burghers, they planned to surprise the

Jews in their synagogue on Saturday morning, May 3, but the Jews prayed early and left before the attackers arrived. Furious, the mob randomly murdered eleven Jews. The bishop took the entire Jewish community into his castle, arrested some of the burghers, and cut off their hands. News of these events raced up the Rhine to Worms, creating confusion in the Jewish community. Some took refuge with Christian friends; others sought the bishop's protection. A combination of Crusaders and burghers killed a large number of Jews, looted and burned synagogues and desecrated the Torah (see page 47) and other books. Proceeding on to the old and prosperous city of Mainz, Crusaders continued attacking Jews. Facing overwhelming odds, eleven hundred Jews killed their families and themselves. Crusaders and burghers vented their hatred by inflicting barbaric tortures on the wounded and dying. The Jews were never passive; everywhere they put up resistance. If the Crusades had begun as opposition to Islam, after 1096 that hostility extended to those Christians saw as enemies of society-lepers, Jews, and homosexuals (see pages 348-349). But Jews continued to move to the Rhineland and to make important economic and intellectual contributions. Crusader- burgher attacks served as harbingers of events to come in the later Middle Ages and well into modern times. Questions for Analysis 1. How do you explain Christian attacks on the Jews of Speyer? Were they defenses of faith? 2. What is meant by the term dehumanization of the enemy.? Can you give other examples? 1. Quoted in R. Chazan, In the Year 1096: The First Crusade and the Jews Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1996), p. 28. _____________ grabbed thousands of relics, which were later sold in Europe. (See the feature "Individuals in Society: Enrico Dandolo" on page 358.) The Byzantine Empire, as a political unit, never recovered from this destruction. Although the Crusader Baldwin IX of Flanders was chosen emperor, the empire splintered into three parts and soon consisted of little more than the city of Constantinople. Moreover, the assault of one Christian people on an other-when one of the goals of the crusade was reunion of the Greek and Latin churches-made the split between the churches permanent. It also helped to discredit the entire crusading movement. In 1208, in one of the most memorable episodes, two expeditions of children set out on a crusade to the Holy Land. One contingent turned back; the other was captured and sold into slavery. Two later crusades against the Muslims, undertaken by King Louis IX of France, added to his prestige as a pious ruler. The last of the official crusades accomplished nothing at all. Crusades were also mounted against groups within Europe that were perceived as heretical, political, or pagan threats. In 1208 Pope Innocent III proclaimed a crusade against the Albigensians, a heretical sect. The Albigensians, whose name derived from the southern French town of AN wherethey were concentrated, rejected orthodox doctrine on the relationship of God and man, the sacraments, and clerical hierarchy. Fearing that religious division would lead to civil disorder, the French monarchy joined the crusade against the Albigensians. Under Count Simon de Montfort, the French inflicted a savage defeat on the Albigensians at Muret in 1213; the county of Toulouse passed to the authority of the French crown. Fearful of encirclement by imperial territories, the popes also promoted crusades against Emperor Frederick II in 1227 and 1239. This use of force backfired, damaging papal credibility as the sponsor of peace. The Crusades also inspired the establishment of new religious orders. For example, the Knights Templars, founded in 1118 with the strong backing of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, combined the monastic ideals of obedience and self-denial with the crusading practice of military aggression. The Templars waged wars against the pagan Prussians in the Baltic region. After 1230, and from a base in Poland, they established a new territory, Christian Prussia, and gradually the entire eastern shore of the Baltic came under theirhegemony. Military orders such as the Templars served to unify Christian Europe. In the entire crusading movement, fewer women than men participated directly, since the Crusades were primarily military expeditions and all societies have perceived war as a masculine enterprise. Given the aristocratic bias of the chroniclers, we have more information about royal and noble ladies who went to the Holy Land than about middle-class and peasant women, though the latter groups contributed the greater numbers. Eleanor of Aquitaine (1122?-1204) accompanied her husband, King Louis VII, on the Second

Crusade (1147-1149), and the thirteenth- century English chronicler Matthew Paris says that large numbers of women went on the Seventh Crusade (1248-1254) so that they could obtain the crusading indulgence. The Crusades illustrate that women in feudal society exercised considerable power. Women who stayed home assumed their husbands' responsibilities in the management of estates, the dispensation of justice to vassals and serfs, and the protection of property from attack. Since Crusaders frequently could finance the expedition only by borrowing, it fell to their wives to repay the loans. These heavy responsibilities brought women power. The many women who operated inns and shops in the towns through which crusading armies passed profited from the rental of lodgings and the sale of foodstuffs, clothing, arms, and fodder for animals. For prostitutes, also, crusading armies offered business opportunities. The Crusades introduced some Europeans to Eastern luxury goods, but their overall cultural impact on the West remains debatable. By the late eleventh century, strong economic and intellectual ties with the East had already been made. The Crusades testify to the religious enthusiasm of the High Middle Ages, but Steven Runciman, a distinguished scholar of the Crusades, concludes in his three-volume history: The triumphs of the Crusades were the triumphs of faith. But faith without wisdom is a dangerous thing.... In the long sequence of interaction and fusion between orient and occident out of which our civilization has grown, the Crusades were a tragic and destructive episode.... High ideals were besmirched by cruelly and greed, enterprise and endurance by a blind and narrow self- righteousness; and the Holy War itself was nothing more than a long act of intolerance in the name of God, which is the sin against the Holy Ghost. " Along the Syrian and Palestinian coasts, the Crusaders set up a string of feudal states that managed to survive for about two centuries before the Muslims reconquered them. The Crusaders left two more permanent legacies in the Middle East that continue to affect us today. First, the long struggle between Islam Christendom, and the example of persecutions by Christian kings and prelates, left an inheritance of deep bitterness; relations between Muslims and their Christian and Jewish subjects worsened. Second, European merchants, primarily Italians, had established communities in the Crusader states. After those kingdoms collapsed, Muslim rulers still encouraged trade with European businessmen. Commerce with the West benefited both Muslims and Europeans, and it continued to flourish." THE EXPANSION OF LATIN CHRISTENDOM The period after the millennial year 1000 witnessed great migrations and cross-regional contacts. The movement of peoples and ideas from western France, the heartland of Christendom, and from western Germany into frontier regions-Ireland, Scandinavia, the Baltic lands, eastern Europe, and Spain-had, by about 1300, profound cultural consequences for those fringe territories. Wars of expansion, the establishment of new Christian bishoprics, and the vast migration of colonists, together with the papal emphasis on a unified Christian world, brought about the gradual Europeanization of the frontier (Map 9.2). The Crusades provided the means for what a recent scholar has called "the aristocratic diaspora," the movement of knights from their homes in France to areas then on the frontiers of Christian Europe. 19 Wars of foreign conquest had occurred before the Crusades, as the Norman Conquest of England in 1066 (see page 223) illustrates, but for many knights "migration began with the taking of the cross." We have already seen how restless, ambitious knights, many of them younger sons with no prospects, left on crusade to the Holy Land. Some of them were able to carve out lordships in Palestine, Syria, and Greece. Others went to northwestern, eastern, and southern Europe. Northern and Eastern Europe In 1177 John de Courcy, member of a Norman family with small estates in Somerset (southwestern England), with twenty-two knights and three hundred foot soldiers crossed the Irish Sea and raided Ulcad in the province of Ulster. John easily defeated the local ruler, Rory MacDunlevy, seized the town of Downpatrick, and with this foothold built himself a sizable lordship. Other Anglo-Norman settlers followed. Ireland had technically been Christian since the days of Saint Patrick (see page 203), but John dc Courcy's intervention led to the remodeling

of the Irish church from a monastic structure to an episcopal one with defined territorial dioceses. The AngloNorman invasion also meant the introduction of the fief, feudal cavalry, and AngloNorman landlords, as well as the beginnings of chartered towns on an English pattern. Similarly, AngloNorman, Anglo-French, and Flemish knights poured into Scotland in the twelfth century, bringing the fief and the language of feudalism. In 1286 the descendants of twelfth-century colonists held five of the thirteen Scottish earldoms. Scottish feudalism closely resembled that of western France, and immigrant knights transformed Scottish society. Latin Christian influences entered Scandinavian and Baltic regions primarily through the erection of dioceses. As an easily identifiable religious figure, as judge, and as the only person who could ordain priests and confirm laypeople, the bishop was the essential instrument in the spread of Christianity. Otto I (see page 274) established the first Scandinavian sees-Schleswig, Ribe, and Arhus in Denmark-between 948 and 965. In 1060 a network of eight bishoprics was organized, and in 1103-1104 the Danish kingdom received its first archbishopric, Lund, in Scania (now part of Sweden). Royal power advanced institutional Chri stianity in Denmark; because that power was weaker in Sweden, Norway, and Iceland, Christianity progressed much more slowly in those lands. In the 1060s, however, two dioceses were set up in Norway and six in Sweden, and in 1164 Uppsala in Sweden, long a center of the pagan cults of Thor and Odin, became a Catholic archdiocese. In the lands between the Oder River in the east and the Elbe and Saale Rivers in the west lived the Wends, a West Slavic people, and their linguistic cousins, the Balts (Prussians, Lithuanians, Latvians, Livonians, Estonians, and Finns). These peoples clung tenaciously to paganism in spite of extensive Christian missionary activity. Nevertheless, Otto I established a string of dioceses along his northern and eastern frontiers to pacify newly conquered Slavic lands and to Christianize. Among these were the archdiocese of Magdeburg, intended for "all the people of the Slavs beyond the Elbe and Saale, lately converted and to be converted to God, 1120 and the dioceses of Brandenburg, Schwerin, and Ledbeck, all filled with German bishops. Repeated Slavic revolts, illustrating ethnic opposition to German lords and German bishops, indicate that the new faith did not easily penetrate the Baltic region. Only the ruthless tactics of Albert the Bear (d. 1170) pacified the region and forced the incorporation of the eastern and northern bishoprics into the structure of the Latin church. A member of the highest Saxon nobility, with extensive experience in border warfare against the Slavs, Albert the Bear reconquered the town of Brandenburg on June 11, 1157. With this base, Albert declared himself margrave of Brandenburg and founded a dynasty that ruled there for seven generations. To support his Ostiedlung (orientation to the East), Albert proclaimed a German crusade against the Slavs. He invited Dutch, Flemish, and German knights from the Rhineland to colonize conquered territories. To keep the region as far as the Oder pacified, he built castles manned by these newly recruited knights. Slav revolts were ruthlessly crushed. Meantime, German knights from Saxony also moved into Esturia on the Gulf of Finland, into Silesia along the Oder, and into Bohemia and Hungary. Duke Boleslaw I of Silesia (1163-1201) invited German knights and German Cistercian monks to settle in Silesia, thereby contributing to the political stability and agricultural development of his lands. 21 Along with German knights, German (or Roman) ecclesiastical influences entered other parts of eastern Europe in the tenth and eleventh centuries. Prague in Bohemia became a bishopric in 973; from Prague missionaries set out to convert the Poles. The first diocese in Poland, Poznan, was erected in 968. The German emperor Otto I established an archdiocese at Gniezno in central Poland in 1000, with Poznan and several other sees subordinate to it. Likewise in Hungary, Esztergom became a diocese in 1001, and during the eleventh century Hungarian rulers established new ecclesiastical centers along the Danube and eastward into Transylvania (modern central Romania). In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, tens of thousands of German settlers poured into eastern Europe, Silesia, Mecklenburg, Bohemia, Poland, Hungary, and Transylvania. But these settlers did not come to an empty frontier. In Poland, for example, towns had emerged after about 700 as fortress settlements, centers for safety from external threats. These early towns contained the residence of the military leader of the region, the duke, and his servants and knights. The Christian baptism of Duke Mieszko (d. 992) and his court in 966 at

Gniezno led to the construction of a cathedral,the arrival of churchmen, and the building of churches and monasteries for monks and nuns. All these people represented a demand for goods and services. Centers such as Gniezno, Cracow, Wroclaw, and Plock attracted craftsmen and merchant immigrants seeking business opportunities. 22 With urbanization came Germanization. "When Queen Konstanze of Bohemia gave urban privileges to Hodonin (Gbding) in southern Moravia in 1228, she announced in her charter: 'we have summoned worthy Germans and settled them in the city."' Likewise, Duke Boleslaw of Poland's charter for his new city of Cracow stated "the city of Cracow was converted to German law and the site of the market, the houses and the courtyards was changed by the duke's officials."13 Boleslaw specifically excluded Polish peasants from becoming burgesses, because he feared the depopulation of his estates. Again, when Bishop Albert of Livonia decided to found a new cathedral at Riga that would attract merchants from Lubeck and Gotland, he granted burgher- immigrants rights, declaring that they be judged according to "Gotland law," the law of the German burgesses of Visby, the chief city of Gotland. New immigrants were German in descent, name, language, and law. Towns such as Cracow gradually grew and Riga engaged in long-distance trade and g into large urban centers. But there were also hundreds of small market towns populated by German immigrants, such as Kropelin in Mecklenburg, which supplied the needs of the rural countryside. The townspeople, though living in Slavic regions, were German in language and culture and considered themselves German. Spain About 950 Caliph Abd al-Rahman 111 (912-961) of the Umayyad dynasty of Cordoba (see pages 233-234) ruled most of the Iberian Peninsula from the Mediterranean in the south to the Ebro River in the north. Christian Spain consisted of the kingdoms of Castile, Leon, Catalonia, Aragon, Navarre, and Portugal; the Almoravid dynasty (successor to the Umayyads) governed through the caliphate of Cordoba (Map 9.3). The civil wars that erupted among Rahman III's descendants had two important consequences: they divided the peninsula into small Muslim territories, and they made the Christian reconquest easier. Fourteenth-century clerical propagandists called the movement to expel the Muslims the reconquista (reconquest)-a sacred and patriotic crusade to wrest the country from "alien" Muslim hands. This religious myth became part of Spanish political history and of the national psychology. In 1085 King Alfonso VI of Castile and Leon captured Toledo on the Tagus River in central Spain, center of the old Visigothic kingdom. He immediately named Bernard, a monk of Cluny in Burgundy, as archbishop of Toledo. Alfonso, who had married a Frenchwoman, invited French knights to settle in the meseta, the central plateau of Spain, a region well suited for sheep farming, viticulture, and cereal agriculture. His successor, Alfonso VIII (1158-1214), aided by the kings of Aragon, Navarre, and Portugal, crushed the Muslims at Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212, accelerating the Christian push southward. James the Conqueror of Aragon (1213-1215) captured Valencia on the Mediterranean coast in 1233, immediately turning the chief mosque into a cathedral. In 1236 Ferdinand of Castile and Leon captured the great Muslim industrial and intellectual center of Cordoba in the heart of Andalusia. The city's mosque became a Christian cathedral, and the city itself served thereafter as the main military base against Granada. When Seville fell to Ferdinand's Castilians in 1248 after a long siege, Christians controlled the entire Iberian Peninsula, save for the small state of Granada. Once in Seville, Ferdinand's heart "was full of joy at the great reward God had given him for his labours.... His mother (wanted) to revive the archiepiscopal see which had of old been abandoned, despoiled (by the Muslims) ... and a worthy foundation was established in honor of Saint Mary."24 Ferdinand's mother thus inspired the use of the chief mosque as the diocesan cathedral. (Since religious buildings serve as windows into the broader culture, with valuable social, intellectual, and economic information, scholars in many fields have deplored this assimilation of mosques at Cordoba, Valencia, and Seville to Christian religious use, as it involved the destruction of Muslim art. just as the Muslims, when they conquered Spain in the eighth century, had desecrated ancient pagan shrines for the erection of their mosques, so Christians in the reconquista followed suit on Muslim buildings.) By the end of the thirteenth century, Spain had fifty one bishoprics: the reconquista meant the establishment of a Roman ecclesiastical structure. As in eastern Europe, new monasteries aided the growth of Christian culture. As Spanish ruler-kings of the reconquista pushed southward, they established Cistercian monasteries for the military, as well as the religious and cultural, integrity of the conquered areas. As a fortress and base for

regional tactical operations, these abbeys served royal needs, though such were hardly the ideals of the Cistercian founders. Thus Ramon Berenguer IV, count of Barcelona (1131-1162) and prince of Aragon (113 71162), founded Poblet in Catalonian Aragon in 1149; Poblet subsequently developed into a great banking center. In 1187 Alfonso VIII and his wife, Eleanor, sponsored the foundation of Los Huelgas in Burgos, the only Cistercian house of women. Its abbess was always a royal princess, and its nuns were recruited from the highest aristocracy. Alcobasa, founded in 1158 between Coimbra and Lisbon in Portugal, became a great intellectual center. These Iberian houses had distinctive features. First, all were Cistercian, established during the great wave of Cistercian expansion (see page 278). Second, they were royal monasteries: the inspiration for their foundation came from royal princes who endowed them as religious supports for their political power, resided in them, and were buried in the tombs attached to the abbey churches. These abbeys came to exercise a broad cultural, military, political, and economic influence, as well as a religious one, in the areas where they existed. In the early years of the reconquista, Spanish princes used the fighting skills of French knights. With Spanish victories, those knights were rewarded with Spanish lands. For example, the former crusader Gaston V of Boarn fought in Aragon and received the lordship of Uncastillo and the governorship of Saragossa. As the pace of the reconquista quickened in the thirteenth century and the resettlement of gigantic amounts of land acquired from the Muslims (perhaps 150,000 square miles) preoccupied the rulers, a few knights trickled down from north of the Pyrenees, such as William of Condom, Martin of Toulouse, and Richard of Cahors, whose names indicate their ancestry. But French aristocratic involvement in Spain declined. Most settlers came from within the peninsula. French feudalism left a small imprint on Spain. Foreign business people, however, did come to northern Spain in the eleventh century. Muslim Spain had had more cities than any other country in Europe, so Christian Spain became the most urbanized part of the continent. Towns along the Pyrenees or on the pilgrimage route to the shrine of Saint James at Compostela had received a stream of French immigrants, invited by the kings. One example was the town of Logrofto. King Alfonso VI decreed that a town should be established there, assembling from all parts of the world burgesses of many different trades ... Gaston, Bretons, English, Burgundians, Normans, Toulousains, Provencals and Lombards, and many other traders of various nations and foreign tongues; and thus he populated a town of no mean size. 16 After decades of warfare during the reconquista, these towns needed settlers to revive. Moreover, victorious Spanish rulers had expelled the Muslims, leaving the towns with a population shortage. The new lords of Spain recruited immigrants from Old Catalonia, Castile, and Leon. The thirteenth century thus witnessed a huge migration of peoples from the north to the central and southern parts of the peninsula, into the depopulated cities of the reconquista. Toward a Christian Society It was one matter for Western institutions, such as French feudalism and a diocesan pattern of ecclesiastical organization, to penetrate the borderlands of continental Europe, including the Celtic fringe of Wales, Scotland, and Ireland; the Scandinavian fringe of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway; the Baltic fringe of Prussia and Lithuania; the Slavic fringe of Silesia, Bohemia, Poland, and Hungary; and the Iberian fringe of Spain and Portugal. Achieving a cultural unity between these frontier regions and the European heartland, however, presented a more difficult problem. Yet by about 1300, the geographical area that we now call Europe possessed a broad cultural uniformity. How did this unity, or homogeneity, come about? Papal pressure for uniformity of religious worship and a growing loyalty to the institution of the Roman papacy promoted this homogeneity. Beginning with the reform movement of the eleventh century (see page 278), real papal power increased. Reverence in the broad public consciousness for Saint Peter and his successors in Rome meant obedience to the pope. Obedience to the pope meant a local commitment-whether in Scotland, Spain, or Silesia-to the Roman liturgy, the form of worship practiced in Rome. Pope Gregory VII and his successors in the twelfth century, through their letters and their legates, campaigned continually for one religious rite, the Roman rite, in all countries and places.

The period between 1075 and 1125 witnessed the establishment of new and regular contacts between the papacy, eastern Europe, and Celtic and Iberian lands. Gregory denied permission for a vernacular liturgy in Bohemia; he insisted on the Latin rite. He pressed for the abolition of a special rite in Spain, partly because it was believed to contain Arabic elements, partly because it differed from the Roman Latin rite. In 1081, Gregory wrote triumphantly to King Alfonso VI of Castile and Le6n: "Most dearly beloved, know that one thing pleases us greatly ... namely, that in the churches of your realm, you have caused the order of the Mother of all, the holy Roman church, to be received and celebrated in the ancient way. 1127 In 1125, Pope Honorius II (1124-113 0) sent his legate John of Cremona to Wales and Scotland to check on the moral condition of the clergy and the proper observance of the liturgy in those countries. By the time of Pope Innocent III (see page 283)-when papal directives and papal legates flowed to all parts of Europe; when twelve hundred prelates obediently came to Rome from the borderlands as well as the heartland for the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215; and when the same religious service was celebrated everywhere-the papacy was recognized as the nerve center of a homogeneous Christian society. Europeans identified themselves first and foremost as Christians and even described themselves as belonging to "the Christian race."28 As in the Islamic world, religion had replaced tribal, political, and ethnic structures as the essence of culture. Whether Europeans were Christian in their observance of the Gospels remains another matter. SUMMARY The end of the great invasions signaled the beginning of profound changes in European society-social, political, and ecclesiastical. In the year 1000, having enough to eat was the rare privilege of a few nobles, priests, and monks. By the eleventh century, however, manorial communities were slowly improving their agricultural output through increased mechanization, especially the use of waterpower and wind power; these advances, aided by warmer weather, meant more food and increasing population. Also in the eleventh century, rulers and local authorities gradually imposed some degree of order within their territories. Peace and domestic security contributed to the rise in population, bringing larger crops for the peasants and improving trading conditions for the townspeople. The church overthrew the domination of lay influences, and the spread of the Cluniac and Cistercian orders marked the ascendancy of monasticism. The Gregorian reform movement, with its stress on "the freedom of the church," led to a grave conflict with kings over lay investiture. The papacy achieved a technical success on the religious issue, but in Germany the greatly increased power of the nobility, at the expense of the emperor, represents the significant social consequence. Having put its own house in order, the Roman papacy in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries built the first strong government bureaucracy. In the High Middle Ages, the church exercised general leadership of European society. The Crusades exhibited that leadership, though their consequences for Byzantine -Western and for Christian -Muslim relations proved disastrous. These centuries also saw the penetration of Latin Christian culture into frontier regions. Through the spread of Cluniac and Cistercian monasteries; through the use of military force against Muslim and pagan peoples; through the activities of new religious orders, such as the Knights Templars, who combined piety and aggression; and through the immigration of tens of thousands of settlers, border regions became incorporated into the Christian faith and Latin culture of the western European heartland. Christianization was the impulse for this incorporation. The Latin liturgy and loyalty to the Roman pontiff gradually bound all these regions together. NOTES 1. R. Bartlett, The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change, 950-1350 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993), p. 6.The last section of this chapter leans on this important and seminal work. 2. See R. 1. Burns, "The Significance of the Frontier in the Middle Ages," in Medieval Frontier Societies, ed. R. Bartlett and A. MacK ay (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), p. 322. 3. See E. M. Hallam, Capetian France, 987-1328 (New York: Longman, 1980), pp. 12-43. _______________

An Arab View of the Crusades The Crusades helped shape the understanding that Arabs and Europeans had of each other and all subsequent relations between the Christian West and the Arab world. To medieval Christians, the Crusades were papally approved military expeditions for the recovery of holy places in Palestine; to the Arabs, these campaigns were "Frankish wars" or "Frankish -invasions "for the acquisition of territory. Early in the thirteenth century, Ibn AlAthir (1160-1223), a native of Mosul, an important economic and cultural center in northern Mesopotamia (modem Iraq), wrote a history of the First Crusade. He relied on Arab sources for the events he described. Here is his account of the Crusade recapture of Antioch. The power of the Franks first became apparent when in the year 478/1085-861 they invaded the territories of Islam and took Toledo and other parts of Andalusia. Then in 484/1091 they attacked and conquered the island of Sicily and turned their attention to the African coast. Certain of their conquests there were won back again but they had other successes, as you will see. In 490/1097 the Franks attacked Syria. This is how it all began: Baldwin, their Kng, a kinsman of Roger the Frank who had conquered Sicily, assembled a great army and sent word to Roger saying: "I have assembled a great army and now I am on my way to you, to use your bases for my conquest of the African coast. Thus you and I shall become neighbors." Roger called together his companions and consulted them about these proposals. "This will be a fine thing for them and for us!" they declared, "for by this means these lands will be converted to the Faith!" At this Roger raised one leg and farted loudly, and swore that it was of more use than their advice. "Why?" "Because if this army comes here it will need quantities of provisions and fleets of ships to transport it to Africa, as well as reinforcements from my own troops. Then, if the Franks succeed in conquering this territory they will take it over and will need provisioning from Sicily. This will cost me my annual profit from the harvest. If they fail they will return here and be an embarrassment to me here in my own domain." . . . He summoned Baldwin's messenger and said to him: "If you have decided to make war on the Muslims your best course will be to free Jerusalem from their rule and thereby win great honor. I am bound by certain promises and treaties of allegiance with 'the ruler of Africa." So the Franks made ready to set out to attack Syria. Another story is that the Fatimids of Egypt were afraid when they saw the Seljuqids extending their empire through Syria as far as Gaza, until they reached the Egyptian border and Atsiz invaded Egypt itself. They therefore sent to invite the Franks to invade Syria and so protect Egypt from the Muslims. 2 But God knows best. When the Franks decided to attack Syria they marched east to Constantinople, so that they could cross the straits and advance into Muslim territory by the easier, land route. When they reached Constantinople, the Emperor of the East refused them permission to pass through his domains. He said: "Unless you first promise me Antioch, I shall not allow you to cross into the Muslim empire." His real intention was to incite them to attack the Muslims, for he was convinced that the Turks, whose invincible control over Asia Minor he had observed, would exterminate every one of them. They accepted his conditions and in 490/1097 they crossed the Bosphorus at Constantinople.... They ... reached Antioch, which they besieged. When Yaghi Siyan, the ruler of Antioch, heard of their approach, he was not sure how the Christian people of the city would react, so he made the Muslims go outside the city on their own to dig trenches, and the next day sent the Christians out alone to continue the task. When they were ready to return home at the end of the day he refused to allow them. "Antioch is yours," he said, "but you will have to leave it to me until I see what happens between us and the Franks." "Who will protect our children and our wives?" they said. "I shall look after them for you." So they resigned themselves to their fate, and lived in the Frankish camp for nine months, while the city was under siege. Yaghi Siyan showed unparalleled courage and wisdom, strength and judgment. If all the Franks who died had survived they would have overrun all the lands of Islam. He protected the families of the Christians in Antioch and would not allow a hair of their heads to be touched. After the siege had been going on for a long time the Franks made a deal with ... a cuirass-maker called Ruzbih whom they bribed with a fortune in money and lands. He worked in the, tower that stood over the riverbed, where the river flowed out of the city into the valley. The Franks sealed their pact with the cuirass-maker, God damn him! and made their way to the water-gate. They opened it and entered the city. Another gang of them climbed the tower with their ropes. At dawn, when more than 500 of them were in the city and the defenders were worn out after the night

watch, they sounded their trumpets.... Panic seized Yaghi Siyan and he opened the city gates and fled in terror, with an escort of thirty pages. His army commander arrived, but when he discovered on enquiry that Yaghi Siyan had fled, he made his escape by another gate. This was of great help to the Franks, for if he had stood firm for an hour, they would have been wiped out. They entered the city by the gates and sacked it, slaughtering all the Muslims they found there. This happened in jumada I (491/April/May__~098).... It was the discord between the Muslim princes ... that enabled the Franks to overrun the country. Questions for Analysis 1. From the Arab perspective, when did the Crusade begin? 2. How did Ibn Al-Athir explain the Crusaders' expedition to Syria? 3. Why did Antioch fall to the Crusaders? 4. The use of dialogue in historical narrative is a very old device dating from the Greek historian Thucydides (fifth century B.C.). Assess the value of Ibn Al-Athir's dialogues for the modern historian. 1. Muslims traditionally date events from Muhammad's hegira, or emigration, to Medina, which occurred in 622 according to the Christian calendar. 2. Although Muslims, Fatimids were related doctrinally to the Shi'ites, but the dominant Sunni Muslims considered the Fatimids heretics. Sources: P. J. Geary, ed., Readings in Medieval History (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 1991), pp. 443444; E. J. Costello, trans., Arab Historians of the Crusades (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California)