Osman, the great Turkish leader of the thirteenth century, was born between 1258 and 1259 where he is recorded on the Bible Timeline Poster with World History. His family belonged to the Kayi tribe of the Oghuz Turks. He was known for his conquests of a great part of the restored Byzantine Empire in the fourteenth century. His heir, Orhan, later named his empire Ottoman in honor of his father.
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The Turks lived on the fringes of great empires before they first appeared in Mesopotamia as soldiers of the Abbasid caliph Al-Mutasim (833-842) in the ninth century. These ghilman (Turkic slave soldiers) made up the bulk Al-Mutasim’s army which he used to attack the Byzantine Empire. Other Turks, at the same time, also served the Byzantine emperors as guards or warriors.
“Abbasid Caliphate at its greatest extent, c. 850.”
The Turks became stronger as the years went by. They started to carve out empires of their own (Ghaznavid and Seljuk Empires). Many of them flowed into Asia Minor in the eleventh century when Oghuz Turks took large parts of eastern Anatolia from the Byzantines. They were led by Chaghri Beg. He (along with the Seljuk sultan Toghrul) later defeated the Ghaznavids in 1040.
Their dominance in the region cleared the way for their migration from Central Asia to West Asia. Others lived near the frontiers of Anatolia and began large-scale raids in the region. The Seljuks, by then, had grown so powerful that they defeated the Byzantines at the Battle of Manzikert (1071). The Sultanate of Rum (a vassal state of the Seljuks) was founded in 1077 after the Byzantine Empire’s humiliating loss to the Turks.
The Birth of Osman
The Seljuk ruler Malik Shah then encouraged his people to resettle west into Anatolia now that the Byzantine Empire had become so weak. Although the Turks belonged to different tribes, they were formidable as a people. During the early 1200s, they started to capture and occupy most of Eastern Anatolia. The Seljuk Sultanate started its slow decline during the Mongol invasion of the thirteenth century.
The rulers that followed the Sultan of Rum, Kaykhusraw II, became puppets for the Mongols Ilkhans. Different Turkish tribes built their own states or beyliks. The most important of these beyliks was the one occupied by the Kayi tribe of the Oghuz Turks. Their beylik was centered in Sogut which was wedged between the Byzantine border and other Turkish beyliks. Out of this beylik came the great Ottoman rulers Toghrul and his son Osman.
Osman was born between 1258 and 1259. At the time of his birth, his father, Ertugrul, was already a powerful tribal chief of the Kayi tribe. Ertugrul had led his tribe from Central Asia to Anatolia. They lived near the ancient city of Doryleaum. Osman’s real name was probably Ataman (Osman was the Arabic version of his name). He became a great warrior during his youth, and he was later known as Osman Gazi (the Warrior). He started his conquests in 1290 and one by one, the Byzantine cities fell into his hands.
References:
Picture By Gabagool – Own work, CC BY 3.0, Link
Finkel, Caroline. Osman’s Dream: The Story of the Ottoman Empire, 1300-1923. New York: Basic Books, 2006.
Fleet, Kate. The New Cambridge History of Islam: The Western Islamic World, Eleventh to Eighteenth Centuries. Edited by Maribel Fierro. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Uyar, Mesut, and Edward J. Erickson. A Military History of the Ottomans: From Osman to Ataturk. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger Security International/ABC-CLIO, 2009.
Two important events marked on the Bible Timeline with World History during the year 1438 for the Inca people. First was their victory in the Inca-Chanca War and second was the death of the doomed Inca Emperor Viracocha. The emperor had abdicated in favor of his son, Inca Cusi Yupanqui after the young hero defeated the Chanca warriors that attacked Cuzco.
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The Chanca rose to become a powerful group of people in central Peru around the fifteenth century. They were said to be sons and daughters of a lion, and that they came from the Lake Chuqlluqucha region in the Huancavelica Region. Just like the Inca, they also wandered far from their homeland and settled near the Quechua people in southern Peru.
“The Kingdom of Cusco in 1438, shown in red on the map.”
In the early 1400s, they defeated the Quechua people and pushed south to occupy Andahuaylas. The war drove the Quechua refugees to flee near the city of Cuzco and seek an alliance with the Inca. Meanwhile, the Chanca people strengthened and gathered its army in preparation for the war against the Inca. Finally in 1438, the Chanca army led by Hastu Huaraca and Tomay Huaraca crossed the Apurimac River to reach the Inca territory. They also carried with them the mummy of their ancestor Uscovila in hopes that he would bring them victory.
When they arrived near the city of Cuzco, they immediately sent envoys to the elderly Inca king Viracocha to demand his city’s submission. Perhaps he had no fight left in him as Viracocha responded by fleeing with his heir Urcon and some Inca nobles to his villa far from Cuzco. His two other sons had no choice but to lead the defense of the city. One son, in particular, rose to become the hero of Cuzco and this was Inca Cusi Yupanqui. He enlisted the help of allied peoples such as the Cotapampas, Quechuas, and Aymaras to defend Cuzco from the Chanca army.
When they met in battle, the Inca army under Inca Cusi Yupanqui defeated the Chancas and drove them back across the Apurimac River. Now that the city was safe, Inca Cusi Yupanqui killed his brother and his father’s heir Urcon so he could be proclaimed as the new king. He also convinced his father to give up the crown and proclaim him as the new king. Viracocha had no choice but to give up the kingship and in 1438, he crowned his son and gave him the title “Pachacuti.” Viracocha was treated kindly by his son afterwards. The elderly former king was allowed to return to his favorite villa until he died there in the same year.
References:
Public Domain, Link
Brundage, Burr Cartwright, and Arnold Toynbee. Empire of the Inca. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1963.
Julien, Catherine J. Reading Inca History. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2000.
McEwan, Gordon Francis. The Incas: New Perspectives. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2006.
Steele, Paul R., and Catherine J. Allen. Handbook of Inca Mythology. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2004.
Apart from the movable type printing method and the magnetic compass, gunpowder was one of the most important discoveries during the Song Dynasty (960-1279). Its first use was chronicled on the Bible Timeline Poster with World History between AD 1100 and 1200. The Taoists of ancient China were accomplished alchemists. It was in their records that the chemical compounds of gunpowder (potassium nitrate and sulfur) were first mentioned. Saltpeter (potassium nitrate) and sulfur were first used in connection with an elixir for longevity during the Han dynasty. It was Taoist philosopher Ge Hong who first recorded experiments using saltpeter and sulfur which resulted in an explosion.
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The Triple Invasion of Song China and the First Mention of Gunpowder
China’s peace and prosperity during the late tenth and early eleventh centuries were hammered out after a humiliating peace treaty with the powerful Khitan Liao ruler whose territory bounded the Song’s north frontier. The Song emperor was forced to recognize the Liao ruler as its equal in the Chanyuan Treaty of 1005 and had to pay 200,000 bolts of silk and a large amount of silver to the Liao as annual tribute. As long as their Khitan neighbors were pacified, the Song Dynasty was free to turn China into an economic powerhouse. The Confucian distaste for violence (as well as the warrior class) and the peace brought by the Chanyuan Treaty lulled the Song into a false sense of security. This resulted in the central government’s neglect of the military.
“Early Chinese rocket”
The Song, however, would be jolted out of its complacency thirty years later when its neighbor, the Tanguts of the Kingdom of Western Xia (Xi Xia), rose and attacked China’s western frontier in 1038. The Tanguts occupied a large portion of former Song territories. To keep them from invading deeper into China, Emperor Renzong was forced to negotiate for peace and agreed to pay a hefty annual tribute to the Western Xia.
If the first concession to a “barbarian” neighbor was humiliating enough, then the second concession left a bitter taste in the Song emperor’s mouth. By 1044, he ordered his generals to strengthen the military and compile a collection of the best military strategies for their use. The result was a compendium that was later called the Wujing Zongyao. It contained the first description of an explosive black powder made up of saltpeter, sulfur, and coal that the Song used against its enemies.
Gunpowder was utilized effectively against the Jurchen warriors with the Song use of fire lances and incendiary bombs during the Jin-Song wars. These explosives, however, were later used by the Jurchens against their opponents when they sacked Song cities and captured Chinese alchemists. They were forced to give the enemies the formula for gunpowder. The formula, in turn, was used by the Mongols of the Yuan Dynasty when it conquered both the Great Jin and the Southern Song dynasties in the thirteenth century.
References:
Picture By NASA – http://history.msfc.nasa.gov/rocketry/03.html, Public Domain, Link
Fairbank, John King, and Merle Goodman. China: A New History. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1992.
“Firearms.” Accessed October 25, 2016. http://depts.washington.edu/chinaciv/miltech/firearms.htm.
Mote, Frederick W. Imperial China, 900-1800. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.
Ropp, Paul S. China in World History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
The Fourth Crusade that was launched in 1203 (as listed on the Bible Timeline Poster with World History) ranked as one of the messiest and most violent of all the Crusades. None of the Crusaders who left Europe ever reached the Holy Land nor the seat of power of the Ayyubids which was Egypt. Strapped for cash, the Crusaders only succeeded in occupying the city of Zadar after an agreement with the Venetians. In 1204, they sacked Constantinople, removed its Greek rulers, and established the Latin Empire. The failure of the Fourth Crusade angered Pope Innocent III who denounced them for the destruction of Constantinople.
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Pope Innocent III was elected in 1198. He immediately launched a new Crusade to take back Jerusalem from Muslim hands. He sent one of his cardinals to France and the other one to Venice. The France-bound cardinal was tasked to reconcile King Philip II and King Richard the Lionheart so they would lead the new Crusade. Both kings did not want to join at first since the last Crusade did not end well for them. But the two kings eventually agreed to sign a peace treaty and prepared to return to the Holy Land. This plan, however, was put on hold when Richard was killed in 1199.
The other cardinal went to Venice, and he convinced the city’s leader to provide them with ships with which to transport the new Crusaders. Pope Innocent also did not give up on convincing the European noblemen to join the Fourth Crusade. Between 1199 and 1200, Count Theobald of Champagne, Count Louis of Blois, and Count Baldwin of Flanders answered the call to join the Crusade.
Henry VI of Germany died in 1197, and he was succeeded by his brother, Philip of Swabia, as Holy Roman Emperor. Philip had married the Byzantine princess Irene Angelina in the same year. Over at the Byzantine court, Irene’s father, Isaac II Angelos, was deposed by his own brother. His heir, the young Alexius, was also imprisoned. Alexius escaped Constantinople and travelled to the court of his brother-in-law in Swabia for shelter. Philip also had his own problems with the German noblemen, so he could not leave Germany for the Holy Land.
Soon, European noblemen and knights made their way to Venice so they could board the ships to the Holy Land. They arrived in Venice in 1202, but there were too few of them. They discovered that there were too few Crusaders in Venice, so they were strapped for cash. Since their money was not enough, the ruler of Venice, Doge Enrico Dandolo, would not allow them to board the ships they financed specifically for this mission. They could not go forward, but they could not return to their homes, too, as it would mean humiliation.
From One Bad Idea to Another
So Enrico Dandolo offered them a way out. They would attack the city of Zadar (Zara), and in exchange, the Venetians would let them board the ships to the Holy Land. The problem was that Zadar was a Christian city and it was held by the only king who promised to join the Crusade. These facts did not matter for the Crusaders, and they went ahead with the siege. The confused defenders of Zadar surrendered after a fierce siege. The Venetians allowed the Crusaders to sail to the Holy Land, but winter stood in their way. So the voyage was once again postponed, and they were forced to stay in Zadar for the time being.
In Germany, Philip was still unable to leave his kingdom to join the Crusade because his hold on the throne was threatened by his brother Otto. So the young Alexius came up with a plan: enlist the stranded Crusaders in Zadar in removing the usurper in Constantinople. Alexius promised thousands of his own men to add to the ranks of the Crusaders. He also pledged money to pay off the Crusaders’ debts to the Venetians. Some of the Crusaders wanted to accept the offer, while others wanted to go on to the Holy Land once winter was over. Another group wanted to sail off to Egypt and attack the Ayyubid rulers instead.
“The Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople “
Those who wanted to go to Constantinople and oust the emperor eventually won. They marched to Corfu to meet with Alexius, but many of those who did not agree with the plan went home. The rest of the Crusaders sailed to Constantinople and arrived in the Bosphorus with Alexius in summer of 1203. When they arrived, they were forced to besiege the city because the defenders closed the city gates on them.
The siege went on for several days until they finally broke through the city walls. The usurper (Alexius’ own uncle) fled, and Isaac II Angelos was freed from prison. He then crowned his son Alexius as his co-emperor, but Alexius knew that his hold on the crown was not secure. He offered to keep the Crusaders on his payroll so that they would stay until spring. Money was something neither he, nor his government had, so he had to impose higher taxes on his people to pay the Crusaders. The people hated Alexius for it, but he had a greater problem when the Crusaders fought among themselves. The resentful residents of Constantinople also hated them.
The Sack of Constantinople
A high-ranking military officer named Mourtzouphlos then rebelled and deposed Alexius. He proclaimed himself the new emperor and ordered the death of the previous emperor. It was clear to the Crusaders that the payment will never come at this point. Broke and humiliated, the dream of fighting in the Holy Land or in Egypt all but disappeared. The restless Crusaders had enough. They attacked Constantinople in 1204 and the beaten down Byzantine troops fought them for some days then fled. The new emperor also escaped the city after his soldiers deserted him.
The Crusaders then rampaged through Constantinople for three days and stole everything they wanted. They went on a killing and raping spree that spared not even the elderly, children, priests, and nuns. After three days, the Crusaders declared Baldwin of Flanders as the new emperor of Constantinople. The news of the rampage reached the horrified Pope Innocent III who immediately condemned the soldiers of the Fourth Crusade. The Crusaders had their taste of chaos, plunder, and bloodshed even if they never reached the Holy Land.
References:
Picture By Eugène Delacroix – The Yorck Project: 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei. DVD-ROM, 2002. ISBN 3936122202. Distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH., Public Domain, Link
Angold, Michael. The Fourth Crusade: Event and Context. Harlow: Longman, 2003.
Madden, Thomas F. Crusades: The Illustrated History. Ann Arbor, MI: Univ. of Michigan Press, 2004.
Phillips, Jonathan. The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople. New York: Penguin Books, 2005.
Roberts, J. M., and Odd Arne. Westad. The History of the World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
The Eleventh Century Byzantine Empire and the Arrival of the Seljuk Turks
The First Crusade is recorded on the Bible Timeline Poster with World History during 1096 AD. It began with a series of events starting with Tughril. Tughril (Togrul), the great Seljuk dynasty ruler, accomplished what the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphs failed to do hundreds of years before. This was to cut a large swath of Byzantine territories in Asia Minor and claim it all for the Seljuk Empire after Emperor Constantine Monomachos ceded the area to him. Constantine died in 1055, and the throne passed to the minister Michael Gerontas. Tughril, meanwhile, turned south and drove out the powerful Buyids from Baghdad (who, at that point, held the reins of power for the puppet caliphs of the Abbasids). Michael was later ousted by the military due to his advanced age. He was replaced with a military commander named Isaac Komnenus in 1057. Komnenus died after his short stint as Byzantine emperor, and he was succeeded by a government official named Constantine Doukas who ruled until 1067. Romanos IV Diogenes ruled in 1068, but Constantine Doukas’ sons remained as Romanos IV’s co-emperors.
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While the Byzantine crown passed from one hand to another, the Seljuk Sultanate passed easily to Tughril’s nephew died in 1063. This nephew, the ambitious and brilliant Alp Arslan, planned to wrest more of the Byzantine territories in Asia Minor for the Seljuks. Romanos knew that the Seljuks were a serious threat, so he gathered his troops and started a campaign in 1071 to the eastern frontier to drive them out of Asia Minor for good. He was initially successful in driving the Seljuk troops out of eastern Anatolia, but Alp Arslan was only preparing to ambush the Byzantine troops in the Battle of Manzikert in 1071.
The result of Romanos’ miscalculation was a massive loss of life on the side of the Byzantines. He was captured by Alp Arslan during the battle, but strangely, he was later set free. Romanos was as good as dead when he started the journey home to Constantinople as the blame for the disastrous results of the Battle of Manzikert fell on his shoulders. The Doukas family commanded some of their trusted men to intercept Romanos on his way and had him captured. He was later sent to the Monastery of Transfiguration in the Sea of Marmara after he was blinded as punishment for the defeat.
“The crusader states after the First Crusade”
The First Crusade
Things were not working out very well for the Byzantines after the adventurer Robert Guiscard of Normandy wrested the last of their holdings in Italy in the late eleventh century. They were also wracked with infighting and saddled with the emperor Michael VII whose passion for literature clashed with his responsibilities in the Byzantine government. The exasperated John Doukas (Michael’s own uncle) rebelled against him, but it did not succeed when general Alexios Komnenus rallied Seljuk mercenaries and some Byzantine troops against John. Michael resigned in 1078, and the Byzantine crown passed on from one man to another until the formidable Alexios I Komnenus held it between I081 until 1118.
Alp Arslan, meanwhile, had died and was succeeded by his son Malik Shah as sultan. The Seljuks under his command had turned west and conquered the city of Jerusalem from the Fatimids in 1077 after a bloody massacre of Jews and Fatimid Arabs. Malik Shah died in 1092, and his death left the Seljuk Empire divided between his competing sons and brother (meanwhile the eastern portion of Asia Minor was held by the Seljuk vassal, the Sultanate of Rum).
Alex Komnenus wanted to get rid of the Seljuk threat once and for all when he saw that they were in chaos over the succession. However, he did not have enough troops to go up against the Byzantine’s most formidable enemy just yet. So he sent a message through envoys to Pope Urban II and asked him to send his own troops as reinforcements against the Seljuks. Alex Komnenus’ message reached Pope Urban II while he was traveling through Western Francia. He altered Alex’s simple request for reinforcements and weaved religious sentiments into it. In Clermont (Western Francia), he preached and encouraged the people to help the beleaguered Byzantine empire but added that they also needed to pitch into the liberation of the Jerusalem—something that Alex Komnenus did not request.
The Frankish noblemen, knights, and peasants snapped up the chance to wage war against the Seljuk “infidels” in the Levant after Pope Urban promised them the protection of their land while they were away on a holy pilgrimage (for the nobles) and forgiveness for their sins. The pope promised that paradise awaited them as a reward for their courage, and the first to answer the call to engage in the “holy” war was Godfrey, the Duke of Lorraine. His brothers Eustace and Baldwin came along with him, while others, such as Duke Raymond of Toulouse, Bohemond of Otranto (son of Robert Guiscard), and Robert, Duke of Normandy, also volunteered. They brought with them their own troops, and they assembled in Constantinople in later 1096. Count Stephen of Blois and Hugh of Vermandois also joined the list of nobles who started to Constantinople.
After an inauspicious start, Walter the Penniless and his small troops were the first to arrive in Constantinople. They were followed closely by other nobles, knights, and troops until their number swelled to around 100,000 by 1097. The army that gathered in Constantinople were propelled to fight for different reasons which included:
Religious fervor and the promise of remission of sins upon death in the “holy pilgrimage” to Jerusalem.
The reward of additional money and land for the most pragmatic noblemen and knights.
Alex Komnenus did not expect a large number of additional men that swelled his troops, and apparently, he did not know how to properly deal with the European noblemen who came with these troops. Some of the troops who answered the call were led by a preacher named Peter the Hermit and his ragtag soldiers were later christened the “People’s Crusade.” Alexius asked them to move to the Asian side of the empire as he was worried that they would cause trouble if they stayed near Constantinople. His anxiety was confirmed when the soldiers left their camp in Asia and raided the nearby city of Nicaea which was then held by the Sultan of Rum.
The sultan of Rum sent his own soldiers to counter this leaderless bunch and promptly had them massacred. The survivors of the “People’s Crusade” had to be rescued by Alexius’ own Byzantine army. The emperor learned his lesson when various nobles arrived with their own armies between 1096 and 1097. He had them swear that they would return any territory they recovered during the crusade, but the prominent leader Raymond of Toulouse refused and swore to simply honor him instead. The crusader army first conquered the city of Nicaea from the Sultanate of Rum, and then headed south and wrested the cities of Sardis, Ephesus, Smyrna, and Philadelphia on the way to Jerusalem.
The Siege of Antioch
The army, led by Bohemond, Raymond of Toulouse, and Godfrey, stopped short of the city of Antioch (in present-day Turkey) when they saw the mighty ramparts of the city. They started the siege on October 21 of 1097, but famine and the difficulty of besieging an impregnable city frayed on the Crusaders’ resolve. Some of those who joined them abandoned the siege of Antioch, while those who veered off to other cities (such as Baldwin in Edessa and Stephen of Blois in some Mediterranean city) were better off.
They were encouraged when a ship that was commanded by the English nobleman Edgar Atheling docked and brought them fresh provisions. Edgar himself joined them as one of the crusade leaders and helped them block the provisions coming into Antioch. The crafty Bohemond also sealed a deal with a Turkish soldier inside the city of Antioch by promising him riches if he would open the gates and let the Crusader army into the city. The soldier agreed to the devil’s bargain and let them in, but what ensued was total destruction as the restless crusader army killed many of the citizens of Antioch and spared no one from the massacre.
Three days later, the situation took a turn for the worse when the Seljuk sultan dispatched a large army from Baghdad to rescue Antioch. The besiegers were now the besieged, and the Crusaders shut themselves inside the city when they saw the large Seljuk army that came after them. The rotting corpses left on the streets and the lack of provisions disheartened them, but it was lifted when the “Holy Lance” was discovered by a soldier named Peter Bartholomew. The lance, most likely, was an invention of the crafty Bohemond. The crusader army was encouraged to charge out of Antioch and beat back the Seljuk army.
The Parting of Ways and the Siege of Jerusalem
Although Bohemond swore to Alexius that he would return any land they recovered, he never really took it seriously, and he started to occupy Antioch as his own land in Asia. Raymond of Toulouse disagreed with Bohemond over this, and he left Antioch with Robert of Normandy and Tancred of Hauteville (Bohemond’s nephew). They continued to Jerusalem with Godfrey and their troops, and Bohemond was now free to claim Antioch as his own. Raymond and his troops reached Jerusalem in 1099 and started the siege on the 3rd of June of the same year. The attack they launched against Jerusalem was so fierce, and the crusader troops so determined to take the city that it took only thirty days to complete the siege.
What followed, however, was an equally fierce massacre of Jerusalem’s inhabitants that even later Christian and Muslims chroniclers of the siege were horrified. The Fatimids of Egypt sent an army to regain Jerusalem, but the Crusaders easily drove them back when they arrived. Edessa, Antioch, and Jerusalem were now firmly in Christian hands. However, it was far from what Alexius Komnenus expected as those territories stayed under the Crusaders’ rule. By the end of the first crusade, Raymond of Toulouse served as Jerusalem’s Duke, while Bohemond ruled the Principality of Antioch, and Baldwin ruled the city of Edessa.
Godfrey later died in 1100, and Baldwin started to rule Jerusalem as King starting in 1100 up to 1118. The Crusaders went on to capture the coastal cities of Beirut and Sidon in the following years, but this time, they were aided by the Italians from Genoa and Pisa.
References:
Picture By MapMaster – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link
Bradbury, Jim. The Routledge Companion to Medieval Warfare. London: Routledge, 2004.
Comnena, Anna. “Medieval Sourcebook: The Alexiad: On the Crusades.” Internet History Sourcebooks Project. Accessed October 19, 2016. http://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/comnena-cde.asp.
Luscombe, David and Jonathan Riley-Smith, eds. The New Cambridge Medieval History. Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Madden, Thomas F. Crusades: The Illustrated History. Ann Arbor, MI: Univ. of Michigan Press, 2004.
The great stone houses of Zimbabwe were built between the ninth and fifteenth centuries. These stone buildings were named dzimbabwe in the local Shona language. The people of Zimbabwe later named their country after these stone buildings to honor their ancient cultural heritage. The stone houses of Zimbabwe are recorded on the Bible Timeline Poster with World History during 1250 AD.
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The Shona people of ancient Zimbabwe lived between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers. Their ancestors hunted and gathered food wherever they could find them. They found that they lived on a good and fertile land later on, so they started to farm it. To make a living, they also raised cattle, made ceramics, and worked on iron. The Shona people also discovered that their land had an abundance of gold. So they started to mine and trade it with neighboring peoples.
“A n’anga (Traditional Healer) of the majority (70%) Shona people, holding a kudu horn trumpet”
They also became merchants and traded textiles from India for gold, ivory, and other products from south-east Africa. The kingdom became prosperous because of the trade. Around 1250, the people started to use their wealth to build stone houses. They laid out the foundations of the city of Great Zimbabwe around 1270 and expanded it around 1300 to include larger stone buildings.
The Great Zimbabwe Kings became the most powerful men in the region for the next 150 years. The city became so big in the years that followed that it covered an area of as much as 1,730 acres and as much as 20,000 people lived inside at its peak. The great city was divided into the three sites: the Great Enclosure, the Hill Ruins, and the Valley Ruins.
The Shona people lived in the Hill Ruins starting in the eleventh century and into the fifteenth century. They built a large structure which can only be reached via a narrow passage and enclosed it with rough stone blocks on top of a granite hill. It served as the house of the Great Zimbabwe kings and their families. A part of it served as a center where religious ceremonies were held.
The Great Enclosure was built south of the Great Zimbabwe hills and it was a massive round enclosure made of granite blocks. It contained some daga huts (walls made of granitic sand and clay), a public area, and a high conical tower. The Valley Ruins came much later in the nineteenth century. It included structures made of bricks or stones stacked and locked together to form a wall.
The Great Zimbabwe was abandoned in 1450, possibly because of food shortages caused by overpopulation and deforestation. The gold trade also shifted to other regions which greatly affected the kingdom’s economy and politics. The northern and western kingdoms rose after the Great Zimbabwe’s decline. They completely overshadowed the once great city in the years that followed.
Pope Paschal II was elected in 1099 which is where is recorded on the Bible Timeline Poster with World History. He reigned as Roman pontiff until his death in 1118. He inherited the Investiture dispute from his predecessors Gregory VII and Urban II. The struggle also continued against the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV and his son Henry V. This long-drawn-out Investiture Controversy was solved not only in Italy itself or Germany but also in France and England during his reign.
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Paschal II was born around 1050/1055 from a family of modest means in the Bieda de Galeata in the Romagna region. The son of a couple named Crescentius and Alfatia was christened Rainerius. As a boy, he was offered as a monk either in the Cluny Abbey or the scenic Vallombrosa Abbey in Florence. The young monk was appointed as an abbot of San Lorenzo fuori la Mura by Pope Gregory VII. In 1078, he rose once again to the clerical ranks with his appointment as cardinal priest of San Clemente. An additional appointment to a special mission in Spain was added by Urban II before his death in 1099.
Election as Pope and Investiture Controversy
Rainerius was elected in 1099 soon after Urban II’s death and adopted the name Paschal II. He was described as a capable administrator, but his reign was marred with the Investiture Controversy that Gregory VII and Urban II passed on to him when they died. Although the antipope Clement III had died in 1099, the surprisingly resilient Henry IV was still insistent on his right to appoint his own clerics. Three separate antipopes (Theodoric, Adalbert, and Silvester IV) were also elected by different factions to replace Clement. However, all three were subsequently deposed during the reign of Paschal II.
“This illustration is from The Lives and Times of the Popes by Chevalier Artaud de Montor”
Paschal II asserted the Church’s right to appoint clergy and reinforced the ban on investiture on Henry and his supporters. Henry IV died in 1106, but before his death, his son Henry V rebelled against him and insisted on being crowned as king in his father’s stead in Rome. Paschal seized the chance to weaken the father further by building an alliance with the son. This backfired when Henry V also insisted on his right to investiture. The exasperated Pope issued repeated bans on Henry V’s for this defiance until the German prince marched to Rome escorted by his troops to insist on what he thought was his right.
Paschal knew he could not match Henry V’s troops and he was unwilling to resort to violence. The pope was then forced to concede to him and propose a compromise: waive his rights to appoint clergy and hold free elections instead. In exchange, the Church would give up all properties and other rights the Empire had given to it (the tithes would still be retained by the Church). Henry accepted these concessions, but these caused an uproar among the people when the terms were read aloud during his coronation. The people expressed their disapproval and halted the coronation; Henry then had the pope imprisoned for two months until Paschal was forced to grant him investiture rights to buy his freedom.
Henry’s coronation pushed through on April 13, 1111. He returned to Germany soon after, but Paschal was left to bear the brunt of the people’s anger over his concession. He offered to abdicate to pacify the people and to nullify the concessions, but for some reason, his abdication did not push through. He renewed the ban on investiture in 1116, but by then, it had already been solved by the kings of England and France. They agreed to refrain from investiture and be content with a vow of loyalty from the appointed cleric. Paschal approved this compromise when the news reached him.
Last Years and Death
Paschal’s last year as a pope was marred with riots which forced him to flee Rome around 1116. By 1117, he was forced to escape to Benevento when Henry V took advantage of the chaos in the city and returned from Germany who had him replaced with antipope Gregory VIII. Henry V was crowned by the antipope in 1117. Paschal attempted to come back to power but died in 1118 in Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome.
References:
Picture By Artaud de Montor (1772–1849) – http://archive.org/details/thelivesandtimes00montuoft, Public Domain, Link
Kelly, J. N. D., and Michael J. Walsh. The Oxford Dictionary of Popes. New York, NY.: Oxford UP, 2010.
Mann, Horace K. The Lives of the Popes in the Early Middle Ages. Vol. VIII. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1925.
Dominic, a Castilian priest, founded the Order of the Dominicans around 1216, and it was legalized by Pope Honorius III in the same year. The Dominican priests later became leaders in the Papal Inquisition after it was authorized by Pope Gregory IX through a papal bull in 1233 which is where it is recorded on the Bible Timeline Poster with World History.
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Dominic was born in the Spanish town of Calaruega around 1170. He studied at the University of Salamanca before he became a priest in Osma. He became a chaplain when he came with the bishop of Osma to the south of France. There they preached against the Albigensian heresy. They were later allowed to set up the first Dominican convent for women at Prouille in Languedoc, France. For the next seven years, Dominic worked hard in France to bring back the Albigensians under the influence of the Catholic Church.
The first Dominican monastery was established in Toulouse in 1215. Pope Honorius III legalized the Order of the Dominicans in 1216. He established Dominican monasteries in France, Spain, and Italy in the years that followed. He died in the Italian city of Bologna in 1220. He was later canonized by Pope Gregory IX as a saint in 1234.
“Pope Honorius III”
The Inquisition
The Dominicans were great students and preachers which made them valuable to the Pope each time he wanted them to preach the Crusade. Since their Order depended on alms, they were also useful when the Pope needed to collect donations and taxes. In 1233, Pope Gregory IX authorized the Inquisition and allowed the Dominicans to get rid of the Albigensian and Waldensian heretics in southern Europe.
The Dominicans initially used teaching and preaching to win over the people they knew as heretics. They convinced them to confess to the Dominicans and those who did were punished lightly. Those who did not confess were brought to the priest and then interviewed by the church authorities. In 1252, Pope Innocent IV allowed the use of torture to get the suspected heretics to confess. As the years passed, the punishment for heresy became more brutal. Many people the Inquisitors suspected as heretics were tortured, imprisoned, or worse, burned to death. “Lesser” penalties for heretics included whipping, prayer, pilgrimage, and confiscation of properties.
References:
Douglas, J. D., and Earle E. Cairns, eds. The New International Dictionary of the Christian Church. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Pub., 1978.
Graves, Dan. “Dominicans Became Dreaded Inquisitors.” www.christianity.com N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Nov. 2016.
Kibler, William W., Grover A. Zinn, John Bell Henneman, Jr., and Lawrence Earp, eds. Medieval France: An Encyclopedia. New York: Routledge, 1995.
McDonald, James. “Inquisition against the Cathars of the Languedoc.” Cathars and Cathar Beliefs in the Languedoc. Accessed November 16, 2016. http://www.cathar.info/cathar_inquisition.htm.
Gregory VII was elected as pope in 1073 (which is where is he recorded on the Bible Timeline Poster with World History) and ended his papacy in 1085 after a falling out with the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV. Although his tenure as pope ended in his exile, Gregory VII was one of the popes who introduced enduring papal reforms after years of corrupt clerical elections and appointments.
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Gregory VII was born around 1020 in the town of Sovana (Soana) in Southern Tuscany. According to tradition, his father, Bonizo, worked either as a carpenter, a goatherd, or a blacksmith. His parents christened him the name Hildebrand. Despite his humble origins, they sent him to Rome to be educated in the Cluniac Benedictine monastery of Santa Maria del Priorato on the Aventine Hill. Hildebrand as a monk was deeply influenced by Cluny’s reformist movement of caring for the poor and restoration of monastic discipline.
He was later sent to the Schola Cantorum in Rome and trained under the popes who served before him which included John XIX and Pope Gregory VI (John Gratian). He was particularly close to Pope Gregory VI who appointed Hildebrand as Papal Capellanus (chaplain) in 1045 and guardian of the altar of Saint Peter. In 1046, Gregory VI was compelled to resign after the Council of Sutri deemed his “election” as invalid after he was found guilty of simony (the purchase of clerical office) and he returned to Germany with the loyal Hildebrand at his side. Gregory VI died in Cologne shortly after his resignation and in 1048, Hildebrand entered the Cluny Abbey in France. He accompanied Prior Hugh of Cluny later to Worms where he met Bruno of Egisheim-Dagsburg (later Pope Leo IX) and agreed to return to Rome with him.
Pope Gregory VII
Election as Pope
In Rome, Hildebrand became an adviser to a number of popes, which included Nicholas II, Pope Victor II, and Alexander II. He became a subdeacon under Pope Leo IX, an archdeacon under Nicholas II, and retained his high position during the reign of Victor II. Alexander II died on the 21st of April, 1073, and Hildebrand was proclaimed as pope on the following day after a surprisingly quiet election. He was unanimously elected because of his popularity. He took the name Gregory VII to honor his mentor, the deceased Gregory VI. Pope Gregory VII’s consecration was held on the 30th of June in the same year at Saint Peter’s Basilica. His election was later confirmed by the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV.
One of the first things Pope Gregory VII took care of was to reconcile the competing factions of nobles which dominated Italy. He also curbed their powers to prevent them from interfering with religious matters which sometimes led to simony and other such abuses. These reforms did not sit well with Emperor Henry IV who wanted to appoint his own clerics, but Gregory insisted he, as pope, had the sole right to confirm a bishop and grant him the office after he was elected by the local clergy.
Henry’s defiance of Gregory earned him an excommunication that was issued in 1076 (Henry was only absolved after his penance) and another in 1080 after Gregory was entangled in Henry’s war against the Saxons. The emperor also retaliated by assembling a synod made up of German bishops and branded the Pope as a “false monk.” The synod then deposed Gregory and elected in his stead the antipope Clement III in 1084. His Roman allies abandoned Gregory after Clement’s election. The pope’s Norman allies, particularly Robert Guiscard, had to evacuate him from Rome after he fled to Civita Castellana in Viterbo.
He died in exile on the 25th of May, 1085 in the coastal city of Salerno.
References:
Picture By user:GDK – Own work: unknown 11th-century manuscript, Public Domain, Link
Cowdrey, H. E. J. Pope Gregory VII, 1073-1085. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998.
Doran, John. “Gregory VII.” Oxford Bibliographies. Accessed November 2, 2016. http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195396584/obo-9780195396584-0131.xml.
Kelly, J. N. D., and Michael J. Walsh. The Oxford Dictionary of Popes. New York, NY.: Oxford UP, 2010.
Mann, Horace K. The Lives of the Popes in the Early Middle Ages. Vol. VII. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1925.
The Antipope Victor IV started his reign in 1159 (where he is recorded on the Bible Timeline Poster with World History) and ended it upon his death in 1162. Some parts of Western Europe and the Roman Catholic Church went through upheavals during his 5-year reign as pope.
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The Antipope Victor was born Octaviannus or Octavian (Ottaviano dei Crescenzi Ottavianni dei Monticelli). He belonged to a powerful family that ruled Tusculum during the Medieval Period. Little was known of his early life except that he served as a cardinal priest at Santa Cecilia in Rome before his election as pope in 1159. The Ghibellines (Wibellingen) or the faction of the Hohenstaufen family of Swabia supported his election. He adopted the name Victor IV soon after his election.
Frederick Barbarossa
The majority of the Roman bishops, however, rejected Victor IV and elected Alexander III as pope. In 1160, Victor’s supporter Frederick Barbarossa was forced to rule in his favor during a synod in Pavia. Alexander, meanwhile, answered this by excommunicating the Holy Roman Emperor and his chosen pope.
The majority of bishops and abbots from other European nations sided with Pope Alexander. However, the opposing faction was too powerful, so he had no choice but to flee to and seek refuge in France in 1162. He returned to Rome when the antipope Victor IV died in 1164.
References:
Picture By 1881 young Persons’ Cyclopedia of Persons and Placeshttp://www.creatinghistory.com/frederick-i-barbarossa/, Public Domain, Link
Gurugé, Anura, and Matt Kirkland. The Next Pope. Alton, NH: WOWNH, 2011. Print.
Löffler, Klemens. “Victor IV.” The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 15. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1912. 9 Nov. 2016<http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15411a.htm>.
Williams, George L. Papal Genealogy: The Families and Descendants of the Popes. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004. Print.
