Tasorius

From the page: "12th Century Timeline: 1101 to 1200

1101 In western Africa, a few miles from the Niger River, where the mosquitoes are not so bad as they are closer to the river, a well has been dug and a camp created for people trading salt for gold and slaves brought northward on the river. The camp is to become Timbuktu.

1101 By the beginning of this new century, towns were becoming an important part of life in Europe, although people there were less than ten percent and ninety percent were rural. The towns are centers of commerce, which enlightened feudal lords and kings find in their interest, either of the two having granted the town charters. Where big landowners resisted the rise of towns they found trouble often in the form of violence directed against them.

1101 In Europe, royalty is little more than family of warlords. Robert Curthose, Duke of Normandy, has returned from the First Crusade, and he invades England in an attempt to take the throne from his brother, Henry I.

1101 In Southern France, troubadours appear, resuming a tradition that began in the 500s when secular entertainers were banished on the urging of Christian bishops. The troubadours sing of the lives and the courts of noblemen.

1114 Two peasants at Soissons are accused of holding meetings outside of the Church. A deep vat of water is blessed. One of the peasants, Clement, is tied up and tossed into the tank, and he floats, leading to the conclusion that the "holy water" has rejected him and that he is therefore guilty. After this, the other peasant confesses. Two others are imprisoned with the two. Local people excited and passionate about heresy break into the jail and burn the four to death.

1116 The Chinese have begun stitching together books of printed pages. They have have been enjoying prosperity. Poetry and art are flourishing. But China is weak militarily, a result in part of Confucianism, which dominates ideologically.

1119 For centuries -- perhaps as early as the 200s C.E. -- a few Chinese have known about magnetic north, and now the first recorded use of a magnetic compass takes place.

1121 The Roman Catholic Church is more bureaucratically organized than it was in previous centuries. Centuries before it had no problem with common people believing in pagan herbal magic, holy trees and springs, fairies and the like, but now the Church feels more threatened in its role as arbiter of truth. Literacy had been rising. Translations of ancient Greeks are circulating. Ideas are spreading with the increase in the movement of trade and people within Europe. The Church is now concerned about heresy. The Concordat of Worms condemns the popular lecturer and writer, Peter Abelard. And later this year the uncle of Abelard's wife, Heloise, leads a group of men who attack and castrate Abelard.

1121 In far northwestern Africa, a religious movement among the Berber tribes, led by Abdallah ibn Tumart, takes power, overthrowing the Almoravids, who had been strict interpreters of the Koran. Tumart founds the Almohad state, proclaiming himself a promised messianic figure, the Mahdi. An administrative structure is created to enforce piety. This includes a keeper of morals, the mizwar, whose duties include punishing the users of alcohol and destroying musical instruments.

1122 A summit meeting between Holy Roman Emperor Henry V and and Pope Calixtus II settles the investiture issue between the two. The Church is to choose who will be a bishop within the Holy Roman Empire, but the Holy Roman Emperor is to have veto power over this selection.

1125 China's emperor, Huizong, has made an alliance with the Jurchen of eastern Manchuria, against a common enemy, the Khitan empire. The Jurchen accomplish what China, with its much larger population, has failed to do: defeat the Khitan.

1126 Following their victory against the Khitan, the Jurchen turn on China's emperor, Huizong. They overrun his capital, Kaifeng, and take him and around 3,000 others away. Remnants of the Song royal family flee southward, and Huizong's ninth son continues the Song dynasty in southern China, the dynasty there to be called the Southern Song.

1128 The Catholic Church sanctions the Knights Templar, of Jerusalem, to guard the road between the eastern Mediterranean port of Acre, held by the crusaders, and the holy city of Jerusalem. The Knights Templar have grown from an a few crusaders reputed to have been fierce warriors. They have taken vows (promises to God) of poverty and chastity.

1130 Drought in what someday will be called Arizona causes the Anasazi people to abandon that area.

1139 The Catholic Church forbids Christians from using the crossbow against their fellow Christians. It remains okay to use against Turks and other Muslims.

1139 Portugal is forming. Count Afonso Henriques, 29, has been allied with discontented nobles in the northeast corner of the Iberian Peninsula. He has been fighting the king