Part 3: The Byzantine Empire and the Middle East in the Eleventh Century
Despite the devastating loss of territory in the seventh century to the Islamic Empire, the
Byzantine Empire survived. Indeed, by 800, the empire was re-expanding and by the early
eleventh century had made inroads into the Mesopotamian region itself, which by this time was
near the heartland of the Islamic Empire. However, because of dynastic problems and unclear
successions, between 1025 and 1081, the empire declined again. In 1071, they faced a
devastating humiliation at the hands of the Muslim Seljuk Turks at the Battle of Manikert, losing
important cities, such as Antioch, and much of Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey). It also resulted
in the capture of Emperor Romanus IV Diogenes (r. 1067-1071). The political fallout of this
defeat plunged the empire into a series of civil wars, until Alexius I Comnenus (r. 1081-1118)
managed to seize control of the imperial throne and brought some degree of stability back to the
empire. Alexius soon thwarted invasions of pesky Normans (relatives of the Normans who
conquered England in 1066) from southern Italy, the Turks in the Aegean, and the Cumans from
the North, and he even took back Crete and Cyprus from the Muslims. However, still fearing the
threat of the Muslim Seljuk Turks to the east, the emperor sent a message to Pope Urban II
requesting mercenary troops.
When Alexius sent this request, relations between the eastern and western church could
not be described as healthy. Since the collapse of imperial authority in the west, if not before,
relations between the eastern and western church had been strained. This was due to various
factors. Though theological controversies had pitted the emperor against the pope and alienated
them from each other numerous times between the fifth and ninth centuries, what really caused
the tension between east and west were cultural differences. For one, Latin remained the
predominate language of the Western Church and the mother language of many of the vernacular
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languages of Western Europe, while Greek was the predominate language of the east, eventually
completely displacing Latin. In addition, the two halves of the church had developed varying
liturgical and religious traditions, such as the Western Church requiring priests to be celibate
while the Eastern Church allowed married men to become priests, though priests once ordained
could not get married.
Above all, the Byzantine Church and the Latin Church disagreed on the role of the
papacy. As we have already seen, in the eleventh century, the Latin Church had really focused
on the primacy, perhaps even supremacy, of the popes over the entire Church, claiming that they
had the fullness of power as the Vicars of Christ. The Byzantines were willing to accept the
pope as the first among equals, but they insisted not only that the bishop of the New Rome, or
the patriarch of Constantinople, was at least second to the bishop of Rome, but also that the
emperor himself had a special leadership role in the church, even if his exact role was fluid and
often ill defined. Emperors after all had called for major church councils, not the popes, and they
also deposed and appointed patriarchs of Constantinople, though not without opposition. In the
eleventh century, because of both the Latin Church’s increasing emphasis on the power of the
pope and political conditions, the tension erupted out into a full-fledged schism.
In the eleventh century, Normans, serving as mercenaries for the Byzantines and
Lombards in southern Italy, turned on their employers and preceded to conquer both Byzantine
and Lombard territories in Southern Italy as well as Muslim Sicily. In these newly conquered
territories, the Latin clergy and the Greeks increasingly noticed differences in practices, and
these differences especially bothered the Greeks. First, the Greek clergy disliked how the Latin
Christians used unleavened bread when celebrating Mass and administrating communion to the
lay faithful, while the Greeks used leavened bread. The Greeks began to accuse the Latins of
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judaizing Christianity by retaining Old Testament practices. Second, the Greeks also were very
upset that by the mid-eleventh century, the Latin clergy, including the pope, used a different
version of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan creed, or confession of faith, that had established the
common faith for the Catholic Church in the fourth century. What the Byzantine clergy were
concerned about was that in the article that professes belief in the Holy Spirit and the relation of
the Holy Spirit to the Trinity: “Who proceeds from the Father,” the Latin Church had added “and
the son” to that clause, making it read “Who proceeds from the Father and the Son.” The Latin
Church itself had only slowly added this to the creed. The first time it ever appeared in the West
was when a local church council in late sixth-century Spain added the phrase in order to
emphasize their condemnation of Arianism. Though the Byzantines agreed that Arianism was
heresy, they objected to what they saw as Latin arrogance in adding to the Nicene Creed on
which the Church as a whole had agreed in the fourth century. By the mid-eleventh century, the
popes had only been using this slightly modified Creed in the Mass for about a decade, because
the modified Creed had eventually been adopted in the Carolingian Empire in the ninth century,
and after the breakup of the Carolingian Empire, the German Church continued to use it. It was
introduced to Rome and in Italy, when one of Henry III’s German popes began to use it in the
papal court in the 1040s.
Disagreement over these differences culminated in 1054. Though the pope himself was
perfectly fine with differences in practices between the Latin and Byzantine Churches, not all
Latins agreed, especially the Normans who after all had recently conquered the Byzantine
Christians of southern Italy. In 1050, after a council in Southern Italy condemned Greek
practices, the rather abrasive patriarch of Constantinople ordered Latin churches in
Constantinople to adopt the Greek practices. The emperor, Constantine IX, was more
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conciliatory and convinced the patriarch to send a peacemaking letter that prompted Pope Leo IX
to send a delegation led by Cardinal Humbert of Silva, who was at least equally as obnoxious as
the patriarch, to Constantinople. Because of Humbert’s condescending treatment of the patriarch,
accusing him of heresy, the patriarch responded in kind. This conflict culminated on July 16,
1054, when Humbert and his delegation stormed into the Church of Hagia Sophia during the
Divine Liturgy and deposited a Bull of Excommunication on the altar, declaring the patriarch to
be outside of communion with the Roman Church. When a minor Greek cleric chased after the
cardinal, trying to convince him to take back the bull, he refused. In response, the patriarch
excommunicated Humbert and his delegation, not the pope and the Western Church. However,
because Leo IX was dead by this point, Humbert’s bull of excommunication was technically
invalid. Nevertheless, historians often identify 1054 as the beginning of the schism between the
Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Churches, even though the final split really didn’t
happen until the fifteenth century. Regardless, both Alexius I and Urban II hoped that when the
pope sent assistance to the east in the late eleventh century, it would help heal the split between
the Catholic Church in Western Europe and the Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire.
Regardless of this dispute, Alexius I definitely needed assistance against the Seljuk Turks in Asia
Minor, though this is not to say that the Islamic world was unified, because in 1095 it was
anything but unified.
If you remember from last week, the Islamic Abbasid Empire began to splinter as emirs
across the Islamic world from Spain through North Africa started to assert autonomy, and even a
Shi'ite dynasty in Egypt established a caliphate to rival that of the Abbasids in Baghdad. Though
the Abbasid Caliphate would remain in power until 1258 when the Mongols sacked Baghdad, by
the ninth century a series of families, such as the Buyid dynasty from the mid-tenth through the
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mid-eleventh centuries, dominated the caliphs whose authority was reduced to being the
symbolic leader of the fragmented empire. In the mid-eleventh century, the Seljuk family,
nomadic Turks who recently had converted to Sunni Islam, seized control of Baghdad and
became the new puppet masters of the caliphs, displacing what they saw as the heretical Shia
Buyid dynasty, and the Abbasids granted them the title of sultan, which means authority.
However, the office of sultan was not handed down from father to son; rather the brothers and
sons of the late sultan usually fought with each for the title, and once successful in consolidating
authority, the sultan often relied on the goodwill of his family members who control various
regions of the Seljuk Empire. At the time of the First Crusade, the Seljuk sultan had only
recently died in 1092 and though a victor eventually emerged, significant differences and
disagreements remained when the crusaders arrived. In addition, the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum in
Asia Minor had become virtually independent of the main Seljuk Sultan, and Rum had carved
out its own empire in Asia Minor at the expense of the Byzantine Empire. Despite the danger
that the Seljuks posed to the Byzantine Empire, the fragmentation of the Islamic world prevented
Muslims from presenting a unified front against the First Crusade in the late 1090s.
The Seljuk Empire was not the only Islamic political entity that was suffering. The Shiite
Fatimid Dynasty was in serious decline, ever since the reign of Caliph al-Hakim between 996
and 1021. Al-Hakim made a series of unfortunate mistakes that destabilized the Fatimid Empire
before disappearing mysteriously in the desert in 1021, most likely a victim of a palace coup.
Seeking to enforce Shia orthodoxy, he commanded all women to be confined, and he closed
down all cobbler shops that made women’s sandals, so that women would have no shoes. He
instituted new dietary laws for Muslims and began to oppress not only non-Muslims but Sunni
Muslims as well. In 1009, he commanded that the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem be
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razed to the ground. Surprisingly, there was little response to this in Latin Europe, and only later
did the Byzantine Empire provide the funds to rebuild the church. By the late eleventh century,
the caliphs’ viziers, often Sunnis, dominated the caliphs and the Egyptian government. This,
however, did not prevent conflict with the Sunni Abbasid Caliphate and their Seljuk puppet
masters. Such conflicts contributed to the success of the First Crusade to which we will turn next.
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Part 4: The Crusading Movement
In November 1095, Pope Urban II addressed a crowd of clergy and knights outside of the
cathedral in Clermont in France. “O race of Franks, race from across the mountains, race chosen
and beloved by God…set apart from all the nations by the situation of your country, as well as
by your Catholic faith and the honor of the Holy Church!” He then recounted stories from
Jerusalem and Constantinople about “a race from the kingdom of the Persians, an accursed race
utterly alienated from God [who] has invaded the lands of those Christians and has depopulated
them by the sword.” He then proceeded to recount rather salacious reports of Muslims
circumcising Christian men against their will and then defiling altars and baptismal founts with
the blood, torturing Christians in particularly cruel ways, raping women, and other such
atrocities. In response to these supposed Muslim actions against Christians, Urban II called upon
the knights to imitate the deeds of their ancestors, such as Charlemagne, and to liberate “the Holy
Sepulcher of the Lord our Savior, which is possessed by unclean nations…and the Holy Places
which are now treated with ignominy and irreverently polluted with their filthiness.” Referring
to the Peace and Truce of God Movements, the pope challenged the knights present to “let hatred
depart from among you, let wars cease, and let all dissensions and controversies slumber.”
Instead, they should “wrest that [Holy] Land from the wicked race, and subject it to yourself.”
But why should they do this? The pope explained, “Undertake this journey for the remission of
your sins, with the insurance of the imperishable glory of the kingdom of heaven.” In response,
those present shouted, “God wills it! God wills it! As dramatic as this speech of Urban II was, it
is important to keep in mind that there was multiples version of this speech, which were only
written down a few decades after Urban gave it. Because of this, the various speeches not only
reflect what the pope said but also what crusaders experienced on the First Crusade. Making this
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important for the background of the crusade and post-crusade reflections. Its complex nature is a
reminder of the complexity of the crusading movement itself.
The Crusades are probably among the most misunderstood events in Western History.
Especially in light of the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and the current war on terrorism, they
are often misunderstood as unprovoked attacks by Europeans on Islamic territories that initiated
centuries of conflict to this very day. But that is far from reality. Yes, the Crusades often
resulted in horrors for victims of crusaders’ attacks, but that is nothing unique to either the
crusades or to the Middle Ages, especially in light of the horrific death tolls of World War II and
the Holocaust. The goal of the medieval crusades was initially to liberate the Holy Land,
especially Jerusalem, from Muslim control and to free the eastern Christians from oppression.
From their perspective, the Holy Land had once been a Christian territory belonging to the
Byzantine Empire, and they believed that Christians ought to control the land made holy by the
shedding of Christ’s blood.
So what was a Crusade? It is not easy to define. But in a simple way, a crusade was first
and foremost an armed penitential pilgrimage. What is that? For centuries, Christians had been
going to the Holy Land sites, including Bethlehem and Jerusalem, on pilgrimages as part of
devotional practices, usually in order to do penance for their sins. Unlike typical pilgrims,
crusaders had weapons, since they needed to retake Jerusalem and/or defend it in order to fulfill
their vows. So, a crusade was an armed penitential pilgrimage. As a penitent and a pilgrim, the
crusader took a vow to go to Jerusalem and finish the pilgrimage in the Church of the Holy
Sepulcher, which was built on the site where Christians believed Christ was buried and then rose
again. It is also necessary to define penance. In medieval Catholic theology, when a Catholic
confessed to a priest and was absolved, they still had to do an act of penance in order to remove
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the temporal punishment, that is, when a person committed a mortal or serious sin, they needed
not only to have the eternal punishment in hell removed but also the temporal damage it caused
removed. So, if a person stole, they needed to restore it. Now, most crusaders were knights, and
eleventh-century medieval knights tended to be very thuggish and violent, not only killing fellow
Christian knights, but also peasants, women, and children. It follows that they needed to fulfill
more penance than was humanly possible within this theological framework. So that was why
they would go to purgatory after death, which was place of cleansing from temporal punishment.
Thus, if a Christian went on a crusade, they could receive a plenary indulgence to limit or even
eliminate their need to go to purgatory. What was an indulgence? If they fulfilled their vow or
died trying after making a genuine and full confession of their sins, an indulgence relieved the
crusaders of the temporal punishments of penance usually completed in purgatory before
entering heaven. In this way, an indulgence removed the debt of the temporal consequences of
sin, not the eternal punishment in hell.
A crusade also had to have authorization. Even though later medieval kings organized
crusades, in the end, the pope had to call it and authorize it, especially when granting an
indulgence. In addition, the crusaders received other privileges, such as an exemption from
being sued in secular courts, ecclesiastical protection of their lands, and other things to
encourage them to go and know that the Church was protecting their interests back home.
Finally, even though the destination of the First Crusade was Jerusalem, other crusades did not
go to the Holy Land. Eventually, crusading indulgences were given to those fighting Muslims in
Spain, pagans in the Baltic region, and religious dissidents in the south of France. But this
required adaption. Again, a crusade was an armed penitential pilgrimage to the Holy Land but
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sometimes to other places whose participants took a vow in response to the pope’s summons; in
return, they received a plenary indulgence and temporal privileges to encourage them to go.
So what motivated the crusaders? As with all human beings, their motivations were
complicated and perhaps even contradictory; of course, when generalizing about motivations,
keep in mind that individuals and groups of crusaders probably had varying reasons, even if they
shared some common reasons for crusading. It is a popular misconception that the main
motivations for the crusaders was wealth and land in Syria and Palestine. While we cannot
exclude such a motivation for some of them when considering the descriptions in some version
of Urban’s speech of Palestine as a land flowing with milk and honey, it does not seem to be the
primary motivation.
The vast majority of the participants of the First Crusade did not seem to plan on staying
in the Holy Land, partially because they had expected to turn over conquered land to the
Byzantines and also because most could not have conceived of settling permanently in a territory
far from their beloved homes. Some of the crusaders might have planned or, at least, considered
planning to stay in the Holy Land afterwards. For example, Count Raymond of Toulouse
planned to stay, because he was in his mid-50s and planned to remain as a penitent. For others,
staying in the Holy Land might have been attractive because their prospects were rather dismal
in Europe, not that they would fare much better in the Holy Land, since their chance of success
was not guaranteed, and even Raymond made provisions for a possible return to Toulouse.
For all the participants in the crusade, regardless of social class, the primary motivation
seems to have been religious. Indeed, it cost up to four or five times the average annual income
of a knight to pay for the cost of a crusade, and for a member of the major aristocracy, it
probably cost about two or three times their average yearly income. Crusades were an
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investment in a person’s spiritual salvation. Because of the popularity of pilgrimage among the
knightly class of Europe, the knights would have been well aware of the economic conditions of
Palestine at the time (caught in the middle of war as it was), and they also understood how
difficult a victory would be. Yes, the crusaders often plundered areas they passed through, but
not for wealth but in order to feed themselves and their retinue. No crusader returned to Europe
enriched. Thus, while scholars used to argue that crusaders (besides the major leaders) were
second sons of aristocrats who had no hope of land in Europe, families who invested in
crusading took huge financial risks that could have ruined the family and, thus, not worth doing
so to get rid of unwanted sons.
Religion primarily motivated aristocrats, knights, and others who went on the First
Crusade. For them, ideas surrounding the crusade were not entirely new. Because these knights
and others were increasingly anxious about their salvation, they would have received the idea of
crusading quite warmly, especially since it brought them to the most revered pilgrimage
destination, Jerusalem. In addition, by Urban using language that evoked the Peace and Truce of
God Movement, he was able to drive home the connection between the knightly vocation and the
need to defend Christendom, rather than killing other Christians.
At the same time, religious enthusiasm and the knightly culture of the crusaders
combined in two additional motivations. First, the crusaders as men of military training
undoubtedly desired not so much wealth, which they couldn’t feasibly carry back with them, but
glory, glory in battle, glory as they killed their enemy, and glory as they fought side by side with
their brother knights. Second, also rooted in knightly culture, a desire for vengeance seems to
have motivated the crusaders. A primary example of this seems to be the attacks on the Jews of
France and the Rhineland (in Germany) between December 1095 and July 1096. The attacks
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often resulted in the massacre of Jews, though sometimes they committed suicide and/or killed
their children in order to prevent forced baptisms. The crusaders also desecrated the Torah
scrolls kept in the synagogues before destroying the buildings themselves. The pope and many
local bishops tried to prevent this by threatening excommunication, and some bishops hid the
Jews in their palaces or sent them into the countryside and out of the clutches of the crusaders,
though some bishops extorted money out of the Jews for this protection, while others handed
over the Jews when threatened by the crusaders. Many chronicles attributed these attacks to a
desire for vengeance. In his sermon at Clermont, Urban II fanned the flame of vengeance against
those who caused so much suffering for the Eastern Christians and, more importantly, had not
only seized the Holy Land but also violently attacked western pilgrims. Because many crusaders
saw ideas of vengeance in terms of their customary vendettas, which had caused so many
problems in the Latin West, they seem to have applied the idea of a vendetta to the crusade, and
this time they were seeking vengeance for wrongs against Christ.
What has this to do with the Jews? Traditionally, the church had forbidden attacks on the
Jews, because the church saw them as testimonies to the truth of Christianity through their very
refusal to accept the faith. In addition, Christians believed that the conversion of the Jews at the
end of time would usher in the second coming of Christ. However, the knights of the crusade
seem to have equated Jews with Muslims. Because of the growing view of the Jews as Christkillers, which caused the eruption of much more violent and widespread anti-Judaism in the
Later Middle Ages, some crusaders, who saw the Jews and Muslims as one enemy, attacked the
unarmed Jews on their way to the Holy Land. Not only did the attack on the Jews show the
influence of ideas of vengeance on crusading, it also reveals how the pope and other
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ecclesiastical leaders could not and would not be able to have complete control of the direction
of the crusades.
When the crusaders finally captured Jerusalem in 1099, they were probably just as
surprised as Alexius I was when 50,000 to 60,000 crusaders over the course of a few months
showed up to help out rather than just a few hundred mercenaries. Despite the pope’s original
plans for the crusaders to turn over conquered territory to the Byzantines, a break down in
Byzantine-crusader relations, a need to defend the newly liberated territories, and ambition
among a few crusading princes, led the crusaders to create a series of states in Syria and
Palestine: The Principality of Antioch, the County of Edessa, the County of Tripoli, and the
Kingdom of Jerusalem, the crown jewel of them all. Though these states survived for nearly two
hundred years and often held their own, they often struggled not just with the Muslim powers
around them but also with having enough people to defend them. Though some Western
Europeans certainly did settle in the east both immediately after the First Crusade and in the
years following, Christians remained a minority, and the Latin Kingdom found it difficult to
recruit a steady number of fighting men to permanently or least for a long term remain within the
Holy Land. This meant that the crusaders states often did not have a sufficient fighting force to
defend their territory. It was this concern about that gave rise to a novel and somewhat
controversial form of religious life, the military orders, such as the Knights Templars, whose
members not only vowed celibacy, obedience, and poverty but also the defense of the Crusader
States and protection of pilgrims on their way to the Holy Land.
Though the crusader states would have their share of victories, the conquest of Jerusalem
in 1099 would be the last major victory of a full-fledged crusade in the east. Further major
attempts to defend the newly established Kingdom of Jerusalem would fail in the Second
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Crusade in the 1140s and eventually the city would be lost to a revitalized Muslim power under
the Egyptian Sultan Saladin in 1187, leading to the Third Crusade. Saladin and others who
defeated the crusaders often used the rhetoric of jihad and Islamic purity to consolidate power
among Muslims, such as when Saladin, a Sunni Muslims, overthrew the Shia Fatimid dynasty in
Egypt. Sunni Muslims were much more disturbed about the existence of the Shia, whom they
saw as apostates, than the infidel crusaders. In addition, driving out the Crusaders was just one
goal. Indeed, when the Muslim Mamluk dynasty in 1291 conquered the last remnant of the
crusader kingdom in the city of Acre, their drive for purifying the region was motivated partially
by their reaction to the surprising and shocking Mongol conquest of Baghdad in 1258.
So, what can we say about the outcome of the Crusades? They did manage to slow the
rate of Islamic conquests in the Byzantine Empire, though the Fourth Crusade’s conquest of
Constantinople in 1204 did nothing to help the empire, even though it was restored in the
1260s. The crusading spirit did not die with the loss of the Holy Land in 1291. Indeed, by 1492,
when Columbus sailed the ocean blue, the Spanish monarchy under Ferdinand and Isabella had
liberated all of Spain from Muslim control, and this crusading mentality would drive Spain in its
conquest of much of Latin America. In addition, Europeans managed to borrow ideas from the
Islamic intellectual tradition, building on them while the Islamic intellectual tradition declined in
the Later Middle Ages. This in turn led to the rise of universities in medieval Europe. Thus, we
will now turn to the other major developments in Western Europe, including its kingdoms,
religious life, and last but not least an intellectual revival.
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Part 5: Western Europe in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries
Despite the elected nature of the kingship and the toll the eleventh century conflict with
the pope had on imperial prestige, the Holy Roman Empire had quite a few powerful emperors in
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, including Frederick I Barbarossa (r. 1152-1190), Henry VII
(r. 1190-1197), and Frederick II (r. 1212-1250). Despite the prestige and influence these men
had in Germany and in Europe in general, they had two fatal flaws. First, the emperors,
especially the two Fredericks, spent too much time trying to reassert their control over Italy,
which made sense considering that they were Holy Roman Emperors. However, such
distractions allowed the princes of Germany to become increasingly autonomous and
independent of the emperor’s control. Second, because of their desire to control Italy and their
dependence of churchmen in their governments, they often conflicted with the pope over
territory in Italy and the freedom of the Church in the empire. In many ways, this culminated in
the reign of Frederick II, who not only was the Holy Roman Emperor but also the King of Sicily,
which included both the island and southern Italy. Frederick II’s main goals were to assert his
authority over the difficult Kingdom of Sicily as well as to assert control over northern and
central Italy in order to unite his two realms. Unfortunately for everyone involved, Italy
included not only the papal states in central Italy but also independent-minded mercantile citystates in the north and in the center. As a result, Frederick II’s effort resulted in war, his
excommunication, and the further loss of imperial authority within the imperial heartland of
Germany itself. By the end of the Middle Ages, the various German princes ruled with near
autonomy, while the emperors (no longer Frederick’s family) only dominated their own family’s
ancestral lands.
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In France, the fortunes of the ruling Capetian dynasty improved, so that by the end of the
thirteenth century, they were by far the most prestigious and powerful dynasty in Europe.
During the reign of King John of England (r. 1199-1216), the French King Philip II (r. 11801223) took advantage of feudal custom and outright conquest to extend French royal authority
and dominance outside of its familial territory. King Philip II’s reign was a turning point for
French royal power, further amplified by the reign of his grandson, Louis IX (1226-1270). Louis
IX exemplified French Christian kingship through his commitment to justice, rooting out abuses
among royal officials, going on two crusades, and his genuine piety. He even seriously
considered casting off his royal crown and becoming a Franciscan friar. Because of his piety, the
pope granted him the title of Most Christian King in his lifetime, and later Pope Boniface VIII
canonized him in 1297.
Once the English kings lost much of their territories as vassals of the French kings, they
had to begin to focus on their English holdings. However, King John's attempt to preserve the
greater part of his French holdings against Philip II of France had led to constant demands for
taxes from his English subjects. This exacerbated the English crown’s money shortage, which
John’s predecessor and brother, Richard the Lionheart, had caused because of his ambitions
during the Third Crusade. The English barons especially resented scutage, which had originally
been an alternative for military service owed in the feudal system, but under John it became an
annual tax. Because of this issue and what they considered to be arbitrary trials, discontented
barons revolted in 1213 until they eventually forced John to accept the Magna Carta (Great
Charter) in 1215. Though the Magna Carta laid the foundation for later English and American
constitutional principles and ideas, such as trial by jury or no taxation without representation, it
did not introduce democratic principles but reinforced feudal customs. What it established was
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that the king was not above the law, that is the customary and now increasingly written English
Common Law. It also made clear that an English king could not rule without consulting his
vassals and the prominent commoners in the cities. Thus, during the thirteenth century, this
expectation would give birth to the English Parliament. Although English kings were far from
impotent, parliament, especially the barons, could place a limit on royal power.
Finally, I will now turn to high medieval religion and intellectual life. The High Middle
Ages marked the height of the authority and power of the medieval papacy. Though the papacy
during this period is often called the papal monarchy, it should be remembered that the
Europeans monarchies in this period were not absolutists, and the pope especially was dependent
on the princes of Europe. Nevertheless, his opinion did carry weight, but it was not necessarily
the final word on anything. In many ways, the medieval popes are more akin to the United
Nations than a monarchy, imposing sanctions but often to little avail. Accordingly, it is more
accurate to describe the high medieval popes as highly influential arbitrators whose decisions
people often ignored though nervously.
More than any other pope, Pope Innocent III, who reigned between 1180 and 1216,
embodied the high medieval papacy. This is because his papacy intersected with many of the
major developments of the High Medieval church, including papal dealings with the monarchs,
the crusades, the struggle with heresy, and intellectual life. Innocent III, born Lotario in 1160,
was from a noble Italian family and studied theology at the University of Paris. By 1189 or 1190,
he began to serve in the Roman Curia under his uncle Pope Clement III. Appointed a cardinaldeacon by his uncle, on January 8, 1198, Lotario was elected pope at the young age of 38.
Having previously written a book called On Contempt of the World, and influenced by monastic
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reformers, Innocent III had a clear agenda for pastoral reform. However, in order to act
effectively as pope in the Middle Ages, he had to take care of other problems as well.
Innocent often did not see on eye to eye with the kings of Europe, and the kings did not
necessarily change their actions in conformity with the pope’s expectations. For example, when
the powerful Philip II of France (r. 1180-1223) married the Danish princess Ingeborg in 1193,
something went so horribly wrong on the wedding night that Philip II wanted nothing more to do
with her. So he cast her aside and married Agnes in 1196 with whom he had two children.
Because of the appeals of Ingeborg, whom Philip imprisoned in a castle, Innocent declared that
the marriage with Agnes was invalid. Because of Philip’s influential position, he was able to
wait out the excommunication until Agnes died. Only then did Philip agree to take back
Ingeborg so long as Innocent declared his two children with Agnes legitimate.
However, the beleaguered King John of England was less fortunate in his relations with
the pope, though the pope ultimately considered him a more loyal son of the Church than Philip
was. In addition to his problems with Philip II, John’s conflict with Pope Innocent III was a
contributing factor to the Baron’s Revolt in 1213. In 1205, when the archbishop of Canterbury
died, the monks of Canterbury, responsible for episcopal elections, elected one of their own.
King John rejected this election, especially since they did not consult him as was customary.
Instead, he appointed one of his friends as archbishop. When the monks appealed to Pope
Innocent III about the issue, Innocent III decided the best solution was to reject both candidates,
so he appointed his own friend and known reformer, Stephen Langton, as archbishop. Angry,
John refused to accept Stephen and expelled the monks of Canterbury. In 1208, the pope
responded by placing England under interdict, which was the suspension of the Mass, the
administration of the sacraments, except for baptism, confession, and the last rites, and Christian
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burial. When John attempted to bully the clergy into ignoring the interdict, the pope
excommunicated the king in 1212 and declared him deposed. Because Innocent III authorized
Philip II’s son to invade England, John finally gave into the pope’s demands in 1213, submitting
to his authority and receiving the kingdom back as a vassal of the pope. In the end, the bad son
became the good son, and because he also promised to go on a crusade, Innocent nullified the
Magna Carta in 1215 to ensure no obligations would prevent John’s crusading promises. Thus,
as influential as medieval popes were, their actual ability to assert their authority depended on
factors far beyond their control.
One of the other major problems that Innocent III and other high medieval popes faced
was heresy, that is, beliefs that diverged from what the popes and the Church hierarchy believed
were the revealed truths of the faith. Often these heretics criticized what they saw as the
persistent corruption of the Catholic Church, which they saw irrefutable evidence of the church’s
lack of legitimate authority. Among the various heresies in the late twelfth century were the socalled Cathars of Southern France. In sum, as far as the hostile Catholic sources tell us, they
believed that there was one good God and one evil God (Satan). The good God created all that
was spiritual: angels, the human soul, etc. The bad God created all that was evil, i.e. all material
objects. At some point the evil one either rebelled against God or convinced the angels to rebel
against God, and Satan imprisoned their souls in material bodies. The Cathars claimed that this
evil God Satan was in fact the God of the Old Testament. The good God was the god of the New
Testament, God the Father. This God sent his son – either an angel or God himself – in the
appearance of a man (they rejected the incarnation) in order to enlighten mankind about their
true nature. Because they were so anti-material, they rejected baptism, the Eucharist and
marriage as abhorrent, and they condemned taking oaths or any use of capital punishment.
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Ultimately, they denounced the Catholic Church as evil. The Cathars did not have a formal
church structure but their elite religious, the good men and good women, were the only ones who
could fully live out the obligations of their beliefs, having to renounce sex, keep a strict vegan
diet, and maintain such purity until death. Those would not attain this status in this life could
adopt it on their deathbed or do so in another life, since Cathars believed in reincarnation.
Though Innocent III managed to reconcile other heretics in the region by accommodating
them, Innocent found it difficult to convince the Cathars to abandon their heresy by persuasion or
through judicial action. Eventually, because of the assassination of one of his representatives in
the region in 1208, Innocent called for a crusade against the major lords in the region in order to
remove them from power, so that the church could more effectively eliminate heresy by
preaching and other more strident measures. The Albigensian Crusade, which lasted between
1208 and 1229, proved more difficult than the pope ever imagined, and the ultimate winner was
neither the pope nor the local lords but the French king who, as a result of the crusade and the
Treaty of Paris ending it, was able to extend direct royal control over Southern France.
What really was effective in eliminating heresy in Southern France was the formation of
the inquisition. Contrary to popular misconceptions, the goal of the inquisition was not to kill
and burn heretics but to save their souls, that is, from the perspective of the medieval Church.
Inquisition itself was a legal process in which the inquisitors searched out and questioned under
oath persons who were defamed or merely suspected of crimes; if guilty, they became their own
accusers. It had whole series of legal procedures around it and was rooted in Roman law. First
instituted in 1231, the inquisitions into heresy were not formal institutions but commissions that
the pope granted an individual, usually a member of a religious order. When an inquisitor came
into a region, he issued a period of grace during which heretics could come to the inquisitors and
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renounce their heresy and receive light penances. They then proceeded to interview every single
man and woman over the age of 14, requiring people to swear under oath that they were not
heretics and inquiring into their religious behaviors, beliefs, and level of contact with heretics.
Based on these testimonies, they focused on the more stubborn heretics. Although the accused
did not have the right to confront their witnesses, they were asked for a list of all their enemies,
so that inquisitors could cross-reference it with those who had made accusations. If the
inquisitors believed a suspect was innocent, they let him or her go. If they were found guilty and
did not renounce heresy, they were usually imprisoned for a time, hoping to persuade them to
renounce their beliefs. If they ultimately refused to do so, they were eventually abandoned to the
secular arm in order to be punished, usually death by burning, since inquisitors themselves could
not actually inflict capital punishment. If they recanted when asked, the inquisitors would
impose penances, such as pilgrimages, which the penitents were obligated to fulfill. If they did
not, the inquisitors made further inquiries. Again, the purpose of the inquisition was not to burn
heretics but to save them. Burning heretics was final measure to cut off what the inquisitors saw
as a cancer in Christian society. Overall, there was a relative low rate of burning probably
around a few thousand people or so, though that was hardly comforting for those were burned.
But again, it is important understand the background of historical developments, especially ones
that most moderns dislike, and to understand is not the same as condoning.
Although Pope Innocent III sought to suppress what he saw as heretical religious
expressions, Innocent gave approval to two religious groups, the Dominicans and the Franciscans,
who together became known as the mendicants. Unlike monks who generally remained in their
monasteries leading life of prayerful contemplation and cooperate poverty (at least in theory), the
mendicants, while maintaining the traditional monastic vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience,
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sought to go out into the world in order to preach the gospel and to attempt to Christianize
further Western Europe. Even more committed to voluntary poverty than monks were, they were
called mendicants from the Latin word for begging, since the early mendicants begged in the
streets for their daily needs. The mendicants soon became instrumental in instilling Christian
virtues among the laity, serving as inquisitors in order to root out what they saw as religious error,
and eventually dominating the study of theology in Europe’s universities.
Pope Innocent III’s alma mater, the University of Paris was one of the first such
universities in Europe; however, medieval universities were much more informal than their
modern counterparts. Medieval universities often had dual origins. First, in the tenth and
eleventh centuries, bishops, such as the bishop of Paris, had established cathedral schools in
order to educate young men from poor backgrounds so that they could be priests. Alongside the
cathedral schools developed guilds of scholars, whose masters taught theology, philosophy, and
other subject matters. As in other medieval guilds, the masters set the standards for who could
become a master, the curriculum of study, and the cost of classes. Overtime, both the bishop and
local secular authorities tried to extend their authority over the scholastic guild or universitas of
Paris. This was both because the bishop of Paris wanted more control over the training of his
clergy, and because these adolescent students, as traditional undergraduates today, often got
themselves into troubles due to rowdy drunkenness, even if they all technically had clerical
status. As a result, in 1215, the masters appealed to Innocent III, who as a loyal alumnus granted
the University of Paris its charter, recognizing officially that while the bishop’s chancellor
granted licenses to teach, it was the masters who ultimately determined whether a student
merited a degree.
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More importantly, these scholars at places, such as the University of Paris, rediscovered
the works of Aristotle, which they translated from Arabic into Latin. These scholastics, such as
Thomas Aquinas in the mid-thirteenth century, fell in love with Aristotle. Out of this love for
Aristotle and Greek philosophy, they developed scholastic philosophy, which sought to
demonstrate the essential harmony of all truth, whether natural or revealed. In the end, they
essentially baptized Aristotle. Because these scholastics sought to reconcile conflicting
authorities and to create a coherent intellectual system out the messy abundance of past writings
and opinions, their method entailed careful study, respect for past authorities, and logical
thinking. In short, scholastics sought to bring all knowledge – religious and natural, past and
present, classical and Christian – into a unified whole, and their method used logic to reconcile
parts of knowledge that seemed to be in conflict but could, scholastics believed, be proven
compatible. Though Renaissance humanists would later accuse late medieval scholastic
theologians of an excess of theological absurdities (often accurately so), the scholastic project’s
confidence in humanity’s capacity for rationality laid one of the esential foundations for the
modern world, and the Western World would never be the same again.
Despite the confidence of these scholars, we will see next week how by 1300 the various
cultures and groups of the medieval world, especially in Western Europe, had reached the height
of their prosperity, influence, and even confidence. After 1300, many problems would soon
afflict the medieval world, including famine, the bubonic plague, and war between France and
England. But the intellectual revival of the High Middle Ages laid the foundations for a new
intellectual revival in the Late Middle Ages known as the Renaissance. But that is the story for
next week, so until then, having a great week!
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Weekly Lecture 7: The High Middle Ages, 1000-1300
Welcome to Week 7. This week we will continue to study the fascinating period of the
Middle Ages, especially the emergence of a new political, religious, and economic order in the
medieval world during the High Middle Ages between 1000 and 1300. By 1000, most of the old
Roman institutions had faded away in Western Europe and were in decline even in the Byzantine
Empire, and power had become personalized and localized in western Europe. Despite this or
perhaps because of this, the medieval world began to reintegrate, and agricultural and economic
improvements once again encouraged international trade. The new world that began to form in
second millennium of the Common Era was much more vibrant and diverse than that of the
classical world. It was also just as or more violent than that the classical world, as can be seen in
the rise of the crusading movement in the late eleventh century. In Western Europe, church
reformers reinvigorated the Catholic Church, and seeking to free it from secular authorities in the
name of church liberty, they strengthened the influence of the pope, and they helped to diminish
the sacredness of kingship, though they in no way emasculated kings. Indeed, Western Europe
saw the rise of stronger monarchies that nonetheless still relied on the cooperation of the great
princes of their kingdoms, tied together by the feudal system.
In the process, the social, political, and religious boundaries of the medieval world,
especially those of Europe, became more sharply defined and redefined. After the reform
movement of the eleventh century, the medieval church sought to define clearly the faith and to
differentiate between heresy and orthodoxy. This confidence in determining the truth inspired
medieval Europe’s burgeoning universities to seek to encompass all knowledge, revealed and
natural, within the boundaries of logic and reason informed by the Christian faith. But this
attempt to clear cut boundaries had its limits. The extension of the pope’s authority often
1
infringed on the boundaries of royal secular authority, which in turn often overstepped
themselves, at least as far as the popes were concerned, by treading upon church liberty. Though
the French monarchy was successful in extending its authority geographically and in practice,
other kings, such as in England and Germany, who sought to extend the boundaries of their
power often did so to the detriment of royal authority when barons, popes, and independent cities
retaliated. Despite such conflicts, the High Middle Ages was one of Europe’s greatest periods
of intellectual, cultural, political, and religious creativity, and it all started partially because of an
improved climate
Part 1: Economic Revival
Between about 950 and 1250, medieval Europe experienced what is often called the
Medieval Warm Period during which Europe experienced mild winters and dry summers. These
ideal temperatures allowed for increased agricultural production and more fruitful harvests, and
it reduced but did not eliminate occurrences of famine. A major result of this was that between
1000 and 1300, the population of Europe doubled in size from 40 million to 80 million. Another
reason for this increase was due to human ingenuity and adaption. Despite or perhaps because of
the limitations of manorialism, which I talked about last week, on the medieval peasants, the
peasants had to develop agriculture techniques and use long-known but underused methods.
Unlike the classical world, medieval landlords did not have a seemingly endless supply of slave
labor to depend on. On the medieval manors, peasants worked both the land reserved for their
lord (known as the demesne land) and the common land of the peasants. These peasants used the
open-field system in which peasants divided common fields into strips of land, which individual
peasants or families owned (or were tenants on) with no fences or hedges dividing their land
from other family’s lands. Beginning in the eighth century, peasants began to use the three-field
2
rotation system in which the common fields were divided into three and cultivated in a three-year
cycle. Each year, one field would be used for spring planting, one for fall planting, and one
would lay fallow. In addition, other technologies allowed them to clear and cultivate new land.
Medieval Europeans began to use a redesigned horse collar that allowed them to use horses in
plowing the fields, and they began to use iron for not only horse shoes but also for heavy plows
with an iron cutting blade that could be used on rocky soil. The peasants also began to use
windmills and watermills to drain swamps and to grind wheat for flour. Romans had used
windmills and watermills sparingly, because they tended to use slave labor not technological
innovations to get things done.
Moreover, once the Viking and Magyar threats as well as the danger of Muslim pirates
raiding Italy and Southern France dissipated, trade and cities increased and thrived. Cities began
to emerge out of ancient cities that never completely disappeared, settlements centered on
cathedrals, communities that sprang up around castles, and other such settlements, and they were
usually near waterways. Cities or towns varied from place to place, but they usually all were
ringed by walls and within were a network of narrow streets. The houses were often made of
wattle and daub (twigs woven together and covered with clay), and therefore were highly
flammable. The houses usually had two stories with a shop on the first floor and living quarters
above with the kitchen, livestock and garden behind them. These towns often received charters
from kings or lords exempting them from various dues, usually after merchants and others
banded together against tolls and other exactions. This allowed towns to become virtually
autonomous and those who lived in them free.
Cites were usually dominated by guilds who as a group often controlled city government.
Guilds were essential trade associations for trades such as silk fabric makers, blacksmiths,
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leatherworking, cloth makers and other such trades. In each city, the guilds for a particular
profession drew up statues to determine association dues, working hours, wages, standards for
materials used, the standard product, and the prices, and they also determined who could practice
a trade in a city. Within the guild, there was a professional hierarchy. At the bottom were
apprentices who were young boys and sometimes girls who worked for room and board while
learning the trade. Then came the journeymen and sometimes women who completed their
training but could not yet open up their own shop. Then came the masters who dominated the
guild and made the rules and excluded people. Below even the apprentices, however, there were
also day laborers hired for extra help when needed. Over the course of the high middle ages, the
codifying of guild rules led to the exclusion of women, except for in brewing guilds and silk
guilds, both of which women often dominated.
Cities were increasingly tied together by their waterways and even new roads on which
merchants increasingly traveled. Merchants varied and included local traders who traded a short
distance from their manor or monastery and a nearby village or town, and there were also longdistance traders, especially Jews and Italians, who supplied wines, spices, and fabrics for the
local elite. Such trade allowed some cities, especially those in Flanders in the modern
Netherlands, to have fairs or regular, short-term markets, sort of the medieval precursors to our
modern state fairs or festivals, such as the National Peasant Festival in Dothan, AL. In the
thirteenth century, new trading networks formed with North Africa, the Black Sea region, and
the Baltic region, and connected with the trade routes of the Mongol Empire, opening Europe to
the greater Eurasian world and giving a taste for eastern goods that would drive them into the age
of exploration Such trade networks led to the creation of the Hansa, a league of mercantile cities
who banded together for mutual security (against pirates for example), exclusive trading rights,
4
and extradition agreements, and by the fourteenth century, it include over 200 cities from
Holland to Poland. The Hansa traded not in fine eastern goods, such as spices and silk, but pitch,
tar, lumber, furs, herring, and other stuffs. Merchants needed to find new ways to handle long
distance trade, not just within Europe but also with the Byzantine Empire and the Islamic World.
Some merchants began to form commenda or a limited liability partnership established for
ventures by sea in which the merchant who was having his goods transported had complete
liability if the ship sank or the cargo seized, while the ship captain only had such liability if he
failed to fulfill the contract. They also created compagnia (or bread together) in which brothers
and brothers-in-law invested their family property in trade and all investing partners had full
liability if the venture failed. Private banks began to be established, allowing a merchant to
deposit money in a bank in one city and then withdraw it another city with a banknote. However,
the medieval church looked with anxiety upon mercantile efforts and especially making a profit
from doing nothing but transporting goods someone else made, despite the obvious dangers of
such activity. The church especially disapproved of usury, or charging interest on loans, since
both the Old and New Testaments condemned the practice. Indeed, the church even decreed that
unrepentant usurers were barred from receiving a Christian funeral and from being buried in
consecrated ground. But as the profit and monetary economy spread, Christian merchants found
ways of hiding interest through hiding them under late payment fees or through currency
exchange. Thus, Western Europe throughout the High Middle Ages developed a profit economy
that allowed it to thrive and enabled it to survive economically the disastrous plagues and
famines of the fourteenth century, which we will study next week. In the meantime, we will now
consider the political and religious developments of the eleventh century that allowed for the
launching of the crusading movement.
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Part 2: Western Europe in the Eleventh Century
To understand the crusades, it is necessary to look at its background in Western Europe,
the Byzantine Empire, and the Middle East. We still start first with Western Europe. Despite the
reviving economy at the turn of the eleventh century, the disappearance of Carolingian power in
Western Europe meant that political authority within the framework of the feudal system was
still fragmented. By the end of the tenth century, the Carolingian dynasty ceased to exist in both
East Francia (Germany) and West Francia (France), and northern Italy remained divided between
various competing mercantile city-states and the papacy.
In Germany, the major princes of Germany elected the first non-Carolingian king in 911,
and the German kingship remained an elected position for the rest of the Holy Roman Empire’s
existence, though during the Middle Ages, they went to Rome in order to be crowned emperor by
the pope. Despite the elected nature of the kingship, the Holy Roman Empire had quite a few
powerful emperors who managed to increase power, such as Otto I who laid claim to the
imperial title in 963, and thus Germany became the Holy Roman Empire. Powerful
kings/emperors were possible, because the princes usually elected powerful dukes who had both
the wealth and the military experience needed to defend Germany, though ultimately by the end
of the Middle Ages the power of the German princes would outweigh the power of the emperors.
In West Francia or France, the Capetian dynasty came to power in 987, when the West
Frankish nobility elected Hugh Capet, the Count of Paris, king. Unlike the dukes of Germany
who elected powerful men as their kings, the French dukes intentionally selected a man who
while having great prestige was limited in his familial territory and his wealth. As a result, for
the two first hundred years or so, French monarchal power was limited to the Capetians’
6
immediate ancestral territory around the region of Paris. Indeed, by the end of the twelfth
century, most of France was in the hands of the kings of England. How did this happen?
Well, in 1066, Duke William of Normandy, a vassal of the king of France, claiming his
distant cousin King Edward the Confessor of England had promised him the English throne,
conquered England and subjected the native English to himself and his Norman barons who
displaced the native aristocracy. Though England proved a good place to raise revenue from
taxes, until the thirteenth century, English kings preferred to spend their time in their expanding
number of French fiefs rather than in England.
As for the French kings, their major claim on power was their ability to foster an aura of
sacred kingship. They also had the good fortune of always having a male heir, and their
adoption of the principle of primogeniture, that is, the eldest son alone inheriting the kingdom,
prevented the civil wars experienced under the Carolingian and Merovingian dynasties. In the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries, they also would learn to use the fealty and homage owed to them
by the major French princes to strengthen their power in France. In the meantime, Capetian
power was still weak, and their sacred aura was damaged (but not beyond repair), since the pope
had excommunicated Philip I (r. 1060-1108), nicknamed the Amorous, for repudiating his
supposedly obese wife for a younger, thinner wife. Since this was bigamy and he was a king, he
merited excommunication. When Pope Urban II organized the First Crusade in 1095, he clearly
did not expect any assistance from him on the First Crusade and, in fact, reissued the
excommunication at the Council of Clermont, the same council at which he launched his
preaching campaign for the First Crusade. At the same time, William II of England (r. 10871100) was too busy oppressing the English and picking on his older brother Robert, the duke of
Normandy, in hopes of adding Normandy to his collection of territories. So in the end the only
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man who could really lead Western Christendom at the launch of the First Crusade was the pope
himself.
But the pope’s ability to call for a crusade would not have been possible if the western
church and the papacy itself had not just undergone a major reform movement in the years
preceding the First Crusade. The church was just as affected by the Carolingian collapse as the
rest of society, as the powerful feudal lords began to dominate the church. Because monasteries
were often build on highly defensible positions and had a great deal of wealth, local lords often
took control of them, appointing followers to be abbots, even though they were not even monks
themselves. They also took control of parish churches, appointing the priests and sending them
to the local bishops to be ordained. Such priests usually had little formal training beyond
learning to celebrate Mass and the sacraments in an informal apprenticeship, and many were
barely literate and thus not able to teach the Catholic faith to the local laity, whether peasant or
aristocratic. In addition, feudal society was very violent, and the knights (mounted warriors) and
feudal lords often used violencee to get their way against not only each other but also against
peasants and the clergy. Though they later developed an unwritten code of conduct to bring such
violence under control by emphasizing honor and loyalty mainly among their own class, and the
crusades would do much to infuse such chivalric ideas with a Christian ethic.
Many members of the clergy opposed such control of churches and monasteries by lay
lords and lamented their violence. But they were not arguing for the separation of church and
state. Rather, their ultimate goal was the liberty of the church, meaning they wanted freedom for
the church and its clergy to operate without interference from lay authorities, who by the fact that
they were Christians, ought to safeguard the liberty of the church and work with the clergy to the
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common goal of peace and order in Christianity society. But the ultimate goal of such liberty for
the reformers was the salvation of the Christian people.
As one would expect in a fragmented world, reform developed first on the local level. A
reform movement developed in France centered on the Abbey of Cluny. In 910, the Duke of
Aquitaine had established Cluny independent of lay control including that of his own. He
insisted that it follow the Rule of St. Benedict carefully. Instead of wanting to use it as a revenue
base or to reward one of his men, the duke wanted the monks to pray for his family, both before
and after their death. In time, the Abbey of Cluny extended its influence throughout France and
Spain, helping to reform other monasteries along the same lines and freeing them of lay control,
creating a network of abbeys across Western Europe. Though such reforms seemed to
undermine the temporal interests of the violent Christian aristocrats, such men were attracted to
its holiness, and began to donate bequests to Cluny and its associated religious houses, asking
them to pay for their souls.
Cluny and similar abbey, also instilled into the laity a greater desire to follow the
teachings of Christ. For instance, French bishops and Cluny supported a peace movement that
sought to end constant warfare between Christian knights. Through imposing the swearing of
oaths, they advocated the Peace of God Movement that sought to protect peasants, clergy,
women, and children from attack. To violate this peace would result in excommunication from
the Church and forfeiture of one’s lands. Second, reformers pushed the Truce of God
Movement, forbidding fighting on Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays, important feast
days, the Easter and Christmas seasons as well as Advent and Lent. Essentially, it prohibited
fighting on numerous days with the same consequences as the Peace of God movement for
violating it. Though it did not always work, the goal was to end violence between Christians,
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and this quest for peace fueled the First Crusade, when Urban II called on the Christian knights
to direct their violence toward liberating the Holy Land rather than against each other.
Germany also was a center of church reform, because the German kings saw themselves
as successors of Charlemagne on account of their imperial title. They wanted to free the clergy
from control by the local feudal lords, but they did not see their own appointment of bishops in
the empire and their use of them in the administration as a contradiction of the ideal of the liberty
of the church, because they usually appointed educated and spiritually qualified men to episcopal
offices. They also agreed with the reformers’ emphasis on the need for clerical celibacy in order
to safeguard the purity of the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, and to ensure a priest could
not pass on his church position to his son like inheritance. They began to support the reformer’s
opposition to simony, that is the buying and selling of church offices, sacraments, and other
spiritual goods. This became associated especially with laymen appointing priests and bishops,
because often the grateful appointees would give their patrons a gift of thanksgiving, but within
Europe’s burgeoning profit economy, reformers increasingly saw such gifts as payments.
In Rome, the establishment of the College of Cardinals to elect the pope was especially
necessary to ensure the liberty of the Roman Church. Prior to its establishment in 1059, popes
were elected by the common consent of the people and clergy of Rome. While this may sound
democratic to modern ears, it was far from it. Instead, major Roman aristocratic families vied
with each other for the office of the bishop of Rome, since each family wanted one of their
members to hold that prestigious position. Eventually in the 1040s, when the German king,
Henry III, came to Rome to be crowned emperor, he found three men claiming the title of pope,
so he had to depose all three of them and appointed a trusted German cleric as the new pope.
After Henry died in the mid-1050s, Roman families again began to try to control the office of the
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papacy, resulting in Nicholas II’s decision to give the College of Cardinals the duty to the elect
his successors. Though this made the papacy more independent of local aristocratic and German
imperial influence, it also eventually brought the papacy and the emperor into conflict.
Beginning in the 1070s, popes and German emperors were locked into a conflict that did
not end until a generation after the First Crusade. The conflict started during the reigns of Henry
IV (r. 1056-1106) and Pope Gregory VII (r. 1073-1085). In a nutshell, Henry as emperor saw
himself as having a major leadership role in the church and the ability to appoint reforming
bishops to the major episcopal sees of the empire. Gregory disagreed, seeing it as a violation of
church liberty. This resulted in Gregory declaring Henry deposed and, in turn, Henry declaring
Gregory a false pope. Though Gregory died in humiliating exile from Rome in 1085 after Henry
drove him out, Pope Urban II was able to gain sufficient support across Europe and within Italy
to retake Rome and then to call such a massive military expedition as the First Crusade.
Eventually, in 1122, Pope Calixtus II and Henry V, who was Henry IV’s son, agreed that the
clergy should elect bishops but only in the presence of the emperor or his representative to
ensure the validity of the election. This allowed German emperors to retain their influences
while also allowing for the freedom of episcopal elections, at least in theory.
Despite that this was a compromise, one of the most important outcomes was Gregory
VII and his successors’ insistence on the primacy of the Roman Church within the Western
Church. Gregory even stated that only those in communion with the Roman Church were truly
catholic, that the Roman Church was universal, and that the Roman Church had never and could
never err in doctrine. Such statements were the basis for his decision to depose Henry IV and
were also the basis on which the popes called for the crusades. But Pope Urban II did not initiate
the call for an armed expedition to the east. It came from the Byzantine Empire.
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