The Twelfth Century

T hough the Crusades would continue in some form until 1464, the crusading movement reached its peak during the twelfth century, as Europeans fought to maintain what they had gained in the First Crusade. The Crusades were the heart of the Middle Ages, source of the ideas and images most closely associated with the medieval period; but they were also the turning point, the beginning of the end. Conceived in ignorance, greed, and superstition, these so-called "holy wars" would have the unexpected effect of exposing Europeans to new ideas; as a result, the Europeans and their world were forever changed. From 1100, the reawakening of Europe began to pick up speed, and soon there was no turning back.

A changing world

Early in the twelfth century, England had its own Investiture Controversy. William the Conqueror's son William II (ruled 1087–1106), though he proved greedy and foolish as a king, was smart enough to appoint an outstanding man as archbishop of Canterbury, the leader of England's church. This was Anselm (c. 1034–1109), who quarreled first with William and later with his younger brother Henry I (ruled 1100–1135)—a much more competent ruler—over the powers of the church versus those of the king. Finally Henry and Anselm reached a compromise in 1105.

Words to Know: The Twelfth Century

Allegory:

A type of narrative, popular throughout the Middle Ages, in which characters represent ideas.

Artillery:

Cannons and other heavy firepower.

Archbishop:

The leading bishop in an area or nation.

Buttress:

An exterior supporting structure.

Chateau:

Originally a type of feudal castle in France, but later a name for a large country house.

Classical:

Referring to ancient Greece and Rome.

Coat of arms:

A heraldic emblem representing a family or nation.

Courtly love:

An idealized form of romantic love, usually of a knight or poet for a noble lady.

Heraldry:

The practice of creating and studying coats of arms and other insignia.

Intellectual:

A person whose profession or lifestyle centers around study and ideas.

Moat:

A large deep trench, filled with water, that surrounds a castle.

Page:

The first step in training for knight-hood, usually undertaken by young boys who performed menial tasks for a knight or feudal lord.

Penance:

An act ordered by the church to obtain forgiveness for sin.

Reason:

The use of the mind to figure things out; usually contrasted with emotion, intuition, or faith.

Squire:

The middle stage in training for knighthood, usually undertaken by teenaged boys who became a knight's personal assistant.

Troubadour:

A type of poet in Provence who composed in French rather than Latin, and whose work chiefly concerned courtly love.

Trinity:

The three persons of God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—which according to Christian theology are also a single entity.

Anselm and Abelard (c. 1079–1144), two of the medieval world's greatest philosophers, worked to reconcile reason with religious faith. Like Anselm, Abelard was a cleric; indeed, there was simply no other place for an intellectual. His position in the church, however, had not stopped him from engaging in a celebrated love affair with his young student Héloïse (EL-uh-eez; c. 1098–1164). They conceived a child and were secretly married, but their relationship angered her uncle, a powerful church official, who arranged to have Abelard castrated. Abelard entered a monastery, while Héloïse joined a convent, and they became a symbol of enduring, if tragic, love. During this time he wrote a work in which he questioned established teachings about the Trinity, or the three-part nature of God.

Abelard was an early proponent of Scholasticism, a philosophical movement that attempted to bring together Christian faith, classical learning, and knowledge of the world. It marked the first stirrings of an intellectual reawakening in Europe. More typical of the medieval mind, however, was Bernard of Clairvaux (klair-VOH; 1090–1153), a Cistercian who perceived reason as a threat to religion. This made him an outspoken critic of Scholasticism in general, and of Abelard in particular.

The Second Crusade (1147–49)

Bernard was also a passionate speaker, and in the Second Crusade, he combined the roles formerly played by Urban II and Peter the Hermit. After the Muslims captured Edessa in 1144, Pope Eugenius III, a former student of Bernard, called on his help. On March 31, 1146, Bernard made his first crusade sermon in France, and as was the custom, he handed out wooden crosses to those who volunteered to go. So many men "took up the cross" that he

ran out of wooden ones, and in an extremely dramatic move, he began cutting his own garments into crosses and passing them out to the crowd.

Among the royal leaders of the crusade were Conrad III, founder of the Hohenstaufen dynasty (hoh-un-SHTOW-fun), which was destined to rule Germany for a century, and Louis VII of France. This Crusade even in cluded a woman, one of the most extraordinary figures of the Middle Ages:

Louis's wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine (c. 1122–1204).

The Crusade itself was a devastating failure, largely due to the treachery of the crusaders' supposed allies in the Holy Land. On their way through Anatolia, the crusaders suffered heavy losses, but they were determined to take Edessa. Then the Europeans controlling Jerusalem convinced them to attack Damascus—one of the only Muslim cities in the area still on good terms with the Christians—instead. In Damascus, the Muslims dealt the crusaders a heavy blow; meanwhile the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem negotiated a separate peace with the enemy and withdrew from the fight.

Castles and arms

The Crusades exposed Europeans to the Middle Eastern art of castle-building. Since the fall of the Western Roman Empire, when invasions by barbarian tribes had made it necessary to build forts, castles had existed in a crude form, as earthen mounds surrounded by ditches. Usually the mound had a high wall and perhaps a tower made of wood. In Palestine, however, wood was far from plentiful, and in any case, stone made for more sturdy fortifications. Impressed by the defensive architecture of the Byzantines and Muslims—not to mention their considerably more sophisticated military technology—the Europeans began imitating their fortresses. Some of the greatest castles were built in the Holy Land, to defend the crusader states, and later they appeared in Europe itself (see box).

The Crusades would transform the entire structure of knighthood, beginning with the knight's appearance. The heat in Palestine made chain mail uncomfortable, and to deflect the Sun's rays, crusaders began wearing sleeveless coats, decorated with crosses and other designs, over their armor. Only knights were allowed to wear these "coats of arms," as they came to be called. The exact appearance of their insignia, which they also carried on their shields, was important because it identified them on the field of battle. Therefore men known as heralds were charged with keeping track of the knights' symbols, and they developed the art of heraldry, which survives today in many a family's or country's coat of arms.

When a Castle Was a Castle

Castles changed dramatically during the Middle Ages, and with each new offensive technique developed by invading forces, castle-builders added new defensive technology. For instance, because castles were vulnerable to attack by sappers, men who dug under the walls and caused the foundations to collapse, builders surrounded castles with moats, or large deep trenches.

To make it easy for troops to retreat into the castle without the enemy pursuing them, builders added drawbridges, which were lowered and raised by a series of cranks. Eventually they also added an outer gate house, a fortified tower that stood in front of the drawbridge and provided an additional line of defense. In place of the single tower that had dominated early castles, later structures included a number of defensive towers, linked by walkways from which defenders could fire.

Within the castle walls was a courtyard where troops could assemble and regroup, and beneath ground level was the dreaded dungeon for prisoners. There were also stables and storerooms just inside the walls, and the main building housed sleeping quarters, a kitchen, the great hall (for dining and meeting), and a chapel.

Castle defenses became increasingly elaborate, but the development of cannons and other new forms of artillery in the late 1300s began to render the medieval castle obsolete. Eventually the chateau (sha-TOH), a massive but delicate structure with real windows instead of small slits from which to fire at attackers, took the place of the castle as a residence for kings and noblemen.

Romanesque turns to Gothic

The world was changing, and so were Europeans' perceptions of it as reflected in art and architecture. From about 1000 onward, a style termed Romanesque (roh-mun-ESK) had dominated; but in about 1150, this gave way to the Gothic, which originated in France and spread throughout the continent during the next four centuries. The names appeared later, and "Romanesque," at least, is accurate, since aspects of this style resembled Roman architecture—particularly its use of vaults and round arches. But there is little in the delicate beauty of Gothic architecture to suggest the

Gothic tribes that destroyed the Roman Empire; in fact later art historians used the deceptive name as a way of identifying the entire medieval period with barbarism.

Gothic became the style for cathedrals, which were not simply large churches but the centers of their communities, the place where the bishop had his throne, or cathedra. Among Europe's finest Gothic cathedrals are Notre Dame (NOH-truh DAHM; "Our Lady") in Paris, started in 1163; and Chartres (SHART), southwest of Paris, built after the old Romanesque cathedral there burned down in 1194. These two became models for the Gothic style, imitated throughout Catholic Europe, from northern Spain to Poland.

The cathedral's spire was always the highest point in any medieval city. Not only was the building a symbol of man's yearning to reach heavenward, but the height emphasized the power of the church above all other forces in medieval society. In order to achieve this height, Romanesque architects developed buttresses, or exterior supporting structures. These not only made it possible to build higher towers, but also gave buildings a distinctive appearance. What Romanesque churches lacked, however, was light: fearful that windows would weaken the structures, designers allowed only narrow slats.

Architects of the Gothic era solved this problem with a number of innovations. First was the pointed arch, which not only looked more striking than the curved arch, but was also more sound structurally. This allowed more windows and a higher roof. In place of Romanesque-style buttresses, Gothic designers used a flying buttress, a stone support connected to the building by an arch.

The building of a cathedral took place over decades, and there was never a single architect who received credit for the design; instead, a team of architects (typically former stone-masons)

worked under a master architect. Yet even the names of the master architects are lost to history, in part due to the medieval world's lack of emphasis on individual achievement.

The same is true of the many sculptors whose work filled Chartres and other sites. In an age when few people could read and write, the intricate sculptural work decorating virtually every surface provided clearly understandable "sermons in stone" depicting events from the Bible. Stained glass served the same purpose in a particularly striking way. Since the 800s, artists had known how to use melted glass with metallic oxides of various colors; but in the century after 1150, the art of stained glass reached a high point. When sunlight entered a church window and illuminated scenes of Jesus Christ and the saints, it filled believers with the sense that the light of God was shining down upon the world.

The cross and the sword

A new struggle between pope and king, sparked by the efforts of Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa (bar-buh-ROH-suh; "Red Beard"; ruled 1152–90) to forge a single German state, began in the 1150s. Frederick set out to subdue all rival princes, and initially allied himself with Adrian IV, history's only English pope. Soon afterward, however, Frederick broke off the alliance.

He invaded northern Italy in 1154, and after twenty years of fighting, he succeeded only in making himself more and more unpopular with the Italians. One of his most bitter foes was Pope Alexander III (ruled 1159–81), against whom Frederick supported an antipope. Alexander countered by helping to organize the Lombard League, an alliance of cities opposed to Frederick. In 1175 Frederick also had a falling-out with Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony and a member of the powerful Welf family. Soon Frederick's Italian opponents began calling themselves Guelphs (GWELFZ), and joined forces with the church against the emperor and his supporters, the Ghibellines (GIB-uh-leenz; see box, "Church vs. State vs. People").

Frederick suffered a major military defeat in 1176 and made a truce with Alexander a year later. The Peace of Constance in 1183 gave Lombard League cities their freedom. Frederick had meanwhile turned his attention to his homeland, where he adopted an entirely new strategy, supporting the German noblemen he had once opposed. To give the nobles more power, he adopted feudalism, which had long since taken hold in France and England. The resulting peace and unity among the Germans made him one of his nation's greatest heroes.

England's own struggle

As with the Investiture Controversy, events in England reflected the church-state struggle in Central Europe. In 1152, Eleanor of Aquitaine had divorced Louis VII of France to marry Henry II of England (ruled 1154–89), which gave England title to new French lands and further heightened tensions between the two countries. Meanwhile, Henry became involved in a heated dispute with Thomas à Becket (uh BEK-et; 1118–1170), the archbishop of Canterbury.

The conflict centered around the question of whether a church official charged with a crime such as rape or murder should be tried by the church, as Thomas maintained, or the state. Knights loyal to Henry attempted to settle the issue on December 29, 1170, when they murdered Thomas inside his cathedral. This only made Thomas a martyr: he was canonized just three years after his death (a very short interval), and Henry had to do penance at Thomas's shrine in Canterbury. Eventually, however, Henry persuaded the pope to make a series of compromises that gave the English king greater power over church affairs.

The Third Crusade (1189–92)

Henry's and Eleanor's son Richard I, the Lion-Hearted (ruled 1189–99), became one of the leading figures in the Third Crusade. He was joined by Frederick I Barbarossa and Philip II Augustus of France (ruled 1179–1223), who is remembered for turning his nation into a great power. To complete this assembly of great personalities was their brilliant opponent: Saladin.

Saladin had united Egypt with Syria and Mesopotamia, then conquered a number of cities in Palestine. On July 4, 1187, he dealt the crusaders a devastating blow in the Battle of Hittin, where the Europeans found themselves on a dry, desolate plain, overcome by thirst. Saladin's forces set fire to the dry grass around them, nearly wiping out the European forces, and went on to capture Jerusalem on October 2.

Church vs. State vs. People

Americans typically guard against encroachments on their freedom by church authorities, citing "separation of church and state" as one of the bedrock principles of the U.S. government. Thus it is easy for them to sympathize with the Ghibellines, supporters of the Holy Roman emperor, in their long struggle against the pro-papacy Guelphs. Yet upon closer investigation, one finds that the Guelph-Ghibelline rivalry was really about power and not principle; thus by the 1300s, two centuries after the conflict began, it had become little more than a struggle between various Italian families.

As opposed to government by church or state, America's system is based on a third force, the people, who exercise authority through elected representatives. One of the most important milestones in the development of government by the people occurred during the Middle Ages, when a group of English nobles forced King John to sign the Magna Carta, or "Great Charter," in 1215. Thenceforth England's government would take quite a different course from that of France and other nations on the European continent, which continued to be dominated both by priests and kings.

Later, English settlers in the New World brought with them advanced notions about the idea of freedom, and these would find their greatest expression in the U.S. Constitution (1787). In fact the latter does not contain the phrase "separation of church and state": what it does say, in the First Amendment, is that the government may not favor one religious group over another.

On his way to the crusade, Frederick drowned in Anatolia. Richard arrived late in Palestine, having stopped to conquer the strategically located island of Cyprus (SY-prus) in the Mediterranean. (Cyprus would remain a crusader state until 1384, and briefly emerged as an imperial power during the mid-1300s.) Arriving in what is now Israel, Richard joined Philip outside Acre (AH-kruh), an important trading center for the Italian city-states of Genoa (JEN-oh-uh) and Pisa (PEE-zuh). Their use of the siege engine, a recently developed catapult for hurling stones

over castle walls, helped the Europeans gain victory at Acre.

In 1191, Philip learned that his only heir had taken ill, so he rushed back to France. This left just Richard and Saladin, two of the most romantic figures of the Middle Ages, squared off against one another. Though their conflict inspired many legends, in fact it ended in a stalemate—and the two men never even met. Richard needed to get back to England, where his brother John (ruled 1199–1216) had been making trouble for him, so in September 1192, he signed an agreement with Saladin. The Muslims still held Jerusalem, but the crusaders had regained a number of areas along the coast.

The age of chivalry

Prior to about 1200, knights had been mere soldiers employed by the nobility; after that time, however, they were recognized as nobles in their own right. During this period, knights began to adopt a code of honor known as chivalry (SHIV-ul-ree; from chevalier, the French word for knight). In modern times, chivalry is understood chiefly in terms of male courtesy toward women, but in fact this was only part of the larger code, which included offering protection for the weak and defenseless and performing service for God. As with much about medieval times, of course, the truth is rather more complex than the myth: even under the code of chivalry, knights were often brutal creatures. But before the church began its attempts to civilize them in the 900s, introducing concepts that developed into chivalry over the centuries, they were truly brutal.

A young boy who wanted to become a knight went to work as a page, waiting table for a knight or lord and performing other menial tasks. In his late teens, a page who had proved himself became a squire, who cared for the knight's horse—his most trusted companion—and carried the knight's shield and armor into battle. Then in his early twenties, a squire who had received the blessings of his lord was chosen for knighthood. A royal, noble, or priestly figure conferred the title of knight by the ceremony of dubbing, touching a young man's shoulders with a sword.

The orders of knights

Eventually, knights began to see themselves as soldiers for Jesus Christ. Just like monks, these knights formed themselves into orders, their stated purpose being to protect pilgrims. First of the three great orders was the Knights Hospitalers, or Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, formed in 1113. They wore distinctive colors and insignia, including the eight-pointed Maltese cross, and built one of the medieval world's greatest castles, Krak des Chevaliers (DAY shuh-VAHL-yay), in Syria. After the end of the Crusades, they occupied a series of Mediterranean strongholds, and in 1530 ended up on the island of Malta, where they became known as the Knights of Malta.

The Knights Templars, or Poor Knights of Christ, were formed in 1119 to defend one of the most sacred spots in Palestine, the Holy Sepulchre (SEP-ul-kur), where it was believed

that Christ had been buried before his resurrection. Their name came from that of another holy site, where the temple of King Solomon had stood. In contrast to the Hospitalers' black cloaks with white crosses, the Templars wore white cloaks with red crosses. They developed so much military and economic power, and thus aroused so much hostility in England, France, and Spain, that in 1312 the pope disbanded the order.

King Arthur: Fact and Legend

Such a great legend has developed around King Arthur that it may come as a surprise to learn that the character is based on a real person: a Christian general named Ambrosius Aurelianus, who led the Britons to victory over the invading Anglo-Saxons at the Battle of Mount Badon in 516. This figure became associated with Arthur, and as the centuries passed, legend obscured fact.

There are literally hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Arthurian tales, but most depict Arthur as king over a realm centered in western England and Wales, where he had his castle at Camelot. There he held council with his Knights of the Round Table, among whom the greatest was Sir Lancelot. A pure Christian sworn to defend his king, Lancelot fell in love with Arthur's beautiful queen, Guinevere (GWIN-uh-veer), and was torn by conflicting loyalties. In the end, he gave in to his passion and thus helped usher in the end of Camelot.

The legend of Camelot included numerous mystical elements. There was, for instance, the figure of Merlin, a magician with amazing powers who seemed to live forever. There was the knights' quest for the Holy Grail, said to be the cup from which Christ had drunk at the Last Supper.

And there was the account of Arthur's death, after which fairies whisked him away to a magical land called Avalon, where he was restored to life and would one day return to save England.

All in all, it is one of the most intriguing tales in Western literature, though in fact it is not purely English in origin. During the Middle Ages, an extensive body of French, German, Italian, Spanish, and even Hebrew Arthurian legends developed.

The last of the great orders was formed in 1191, and consisted primarily of Germans: hence its name, the Teutonic (too-TAHN-ik; German) Knights, or the Teutonic Order. In 1225, they set out to conquer the last two non-Christian European tribes: the Prussians of eastern Germany, and the Lithuanians farther east. They tamed the wilds of Prussia, destined to become the most powerful of German states, and built Europe's largest castle at Marienburg in 1309.

The literature of chivalry

In addition to the three spiritual orders of knights, there were numerous secular orders throughout Europe—among them the Order of the Garter, which exists today as an honor conferred on Englishmen of merit. Chivalry itself assumed a non-religious character, and became much more concerned with things of this world than with matters of the spirit. In fact chivalry spawned some of the world's first self-help literature, "courtesy books," or manuals that taught people how to behave politely—a rare skill in the Middle Ages. Most popular were courtesy books for pages, squires, and knights. Books for pages taught them how to act like little men rather than boys, whereas squires' courtesy books dealt with more adult issues, such as how to be a brave soldier, a loyal servant of a lord—and a discreet lover of a lady.

A more well-known type of literature associated with chivalry was courtly love poetry, popularized by a new breed of poets called troubadours (TROO-buh-dohrz). The latter, who came from Provence (pruh-VAWNts) in southern France, took the revolutionary step of composing not in Latin, but in the local language, French. Courtly love poetry drew on stories from the past, such as the Celtic legend of Tristan and Isolde (TREES-tahn; ee-SOHld), whose love was doomed because Isolde was married to Tristan's uncle, a powerful king.

One notable type of courtly love poetry was the aubade (oh-BAHD), or "dawn song." This was a song of parting, or to put it more bluntly, of a knight who has to beat a hasty retreat from his lady's bedroom in the morning. The aubade was meant to be taken seriously; by contrast, the Romance of the Rose, written by two French poets in the mid-1200s, was a biting work of satire demonstrating what its authors perceived as the fickleness of women. It was an example of allegory, a type of narrative popular throughout the Middle Ages in which characters represent ideas.

The great poetic narratives of the High Middle Ages were often called "romances," and they typically concerned one of three basic subjects: the classical world (ancient Greece and Rome); France, or specifically Charlemagne; and Britain's great hero Arthur. An example of the first type was the Romance of Troy, written by a French clerk in the court of England's Henry II. The greatest of the Charlemagne epics was the Song of Roland, set during the emperor's otherwise uneventful campaign against the Muslims of Spain in 778. Then there was the legend of Arthur, which gained popularity in the 1100s and later found expression in one of the first printed books produced in England, Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur ("The Death of Arthur"; 1470). A thousand years before Malory, however, there really was a King Arthur—perhaps (see box, "King Arthur: Fact and Legend").

For More Information

Books

Dijkstra, Henk, editor. History of the Ancient and Medieval World, Volume 9: The Middle Ages. New York: Marshall Cavendish, 1996, pp. 1267–78.

Jones, Terry, and Alan Ereira. Crusades. New York: Facts on File, 1995, pp. 81–180.

Langley, Andrew. Medieval Life. New York: Knopf, 1996.

Severy, Merle, editor. The Age of Chivalry. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, 1969, pp. 131–271.

Web Sites

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Castles Are Rubbish. [Online] Available http://www.castlewales.com/rubbish.html (last accessed July 28, 2000).

"The Chivalry FAQ Sheet." [Online] Available http://members.tripod.com/~Baron91/Chivalry_FAQ.html (last accessed July 28, 2000).

The Crusades. [Online] Available http://historymedren.about.com/education/history/historymedren/msubcrus.htm (last accessed July 28, 2000).

Knighthood, Chivalry & Tournament Glossary of Terms. [Online] Available http://www.chronique.com/Library/Glossaries/glossary-KCT/glssindx.htm (last accessed July 28, 2000).

Knight Life. [Online] Available http://historymedren.about.com/education/history/historymedren/library/blknighttoc.htm (last accessed July 28, 2000).

Medieval Sourcebook: The Crusades. [Online] Available http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook1k.html (last accessed July 28, 2000).