Texts in Context:
In the Year of Our Lord
By Gabriel Blanchard
The High Middle Ages are almost upon us. With them come two movements that will transfigure Europe and, eventually, the globe.
Rumors of Wars
As we draw to the close of the eleventh century, a definite change in atmosphere arises. (No, not the Medieval Warm Period; we’re already smack in the middle of that.) The assorted pilgrim nations of Europe—the Avars, Bulgars, Burgundians, Danes, Franks, Gæls, Lombards, Ostrogoths, Magyars, Normans, Serbs, Vandals, Varangians, etc.—have re-sorted themselves. Most of Europe has officially been more or less Christianized, with an accent on “less” in the east of the continent.
The Christianization of their cultures remains less than total. Violence is far more commonplace, which in the tenth and early eleventh centuries prompted the movements known as the Pax Dei and the Treuga Dei, or Peace and Truce of God, which laid down rules protecting the immunity of designated people and places (e.g. children, women, the peasantry, and clergy, as well churches and abbeys), as well as decreeing certain times off-limits for violent acts (chiefly Sundays and feasts of the Church). The Cluniac reform, a subgroup within the Benedictine Order, furnish these movements with many of their leaders—which is interesting, in that many Cluniacs were drawn from the very knightly class whose violence they now sought to curb.
Norþ, Sūþ, Est, ond Ƿest1
Let’s glance for a moment at the map of Europe in 1095. The year is not arbitrary; we are then on the eve of one of two phenomena that will define European culture for at least the next six hundred years: the Crusades.
There are several familiar-enough names here, but even they look different; others fall well short of being familiar. Let’s take a look at the major regions of Europe, one by one.3
- The Balkans are dominat border powers where its influence on the one hand, and that of the papacy and the Holy Roman Empire on the other, blend; the same is true in Apulia and the city of Venice (not labeled). Bosnia, though officially falling under the ecclesiastical governance of Rome, was a bit isolated due to its mountainous terrain, and would begin to wander from the Roman mainstream by the late twelfth century.
- The British Isles consist in a collection of petty realms—Anglian, Brythonic, Gælic, Jutish, Norse, Saxon, and now Norman—with little but the Catholic religion to unite them; nonetheless, Norman England has already emerged as the largest, strongest, and most centralized. And speaking of Normans (whose speech is affecting English), the English crown holds substantial territories in France; these will be increasing shortly, thanks to a … well, for now we’ll just call it a complicated marriage.
- East-Central Europe (loosely corresponding to the former Warsaw Pact countries outside the USSR) is mostly a chain of comparatively young states. The Kingdom of Hungary was founded in the year 1000; Poland was reified first as a duchy in 966, then as a fully-fledged kingdom in 1025. This region, along with that of our next bullet point, is one of the few parts of Europe that is still largely pagan.
- Eastern Europe is chiefly inhabited by two groups. One is the Balts, for whom the Baltic Sea is named (Curonians, Latgallians, Lithuanians, Prussians, Selonians, Semigallians,4 and Yotvingians, mainly—Estonians, Finns, and Livonians were their own thing). The other consists in those Slavs that have not moved west or south like the Croats, Poles, or Serbs have done. These are regarded as roughly a single “Ruthenian” ethnicity, which would later differentiate into the Belarusian, Russian, Rusyn, and Ukrainian peoples). Much of it is under the sovereignty of the Kyivan Rus’ on paper, though the state’s real authority and cohesion have begun to wane.
They are bookish. They are indeed very credulous of books. They find it hard to believe that anything an old auctour has said is simply untrue.
- The Iberian Peninsula is also split. To the south lies the Almoravid Empire, a Muslim state linked with northwestern Africa; to the north, a collection of small Catholic kingdoms have been chipping away at Islam’s presence basically since the beginning, a phase of history known as the Reconquista. Though by no means a tolerant utopia, Medieval Spain is one of the few places with public interchange among Christians, Jews, and Muslims; it is accordingly an important route for the introduction of Muslim learning and technologies to the rest of Europe—notably the castle.
- The Italian Peninsula is divided three ways. The Papal State is in the middle; the southern regions are traditionally (if loosely) Byzantine. Most of the north belongs to the king of Italy, and thus to the Holy Roman Emperor. Some northern Italian cities have risen to effective self-governance or soon will, e.g. Genoa, Florence, and Milan. Moreover, in 1088, the city of Bologna has opened a university which has never closed down to our own day, making it the oldest university in continuous operation in Europe.5
- West-Central Europe, or the artist formerly known as the Carolingian Empire, is dominated by the Holy Roman Empire, especially since the kings of Burgundy owe them fealty. Both East and West Francia—now the Holy Roman Empire and the Kingdom of France, respectively—suffered from the collapse of the Carolingians in the late ninth and early tenth centuries; however, in the eastern realm, the imperial line was quickly restored with the Ottonian dynasty. That house still retains its prestige now (though we shall be reviewing a certain incident at Canossa). But in the west, the authority of the King of France withered to practically nothing. Beyond the immediate environs of Paris, a region known as the Île-de-France, his rule is a dead letter to this day.
The Wisdom of Suleiman6
The other civilization-defining phenomenon has arguably started already. From a certain point of view, it has been going strong since the end of the eighth century. This other is Scholasticism. Even as the coinherence of the Christian West with the Christian East was breaking, an intellectual foment was occurring in the former; an example ready to hand can be found in the writings of St. Anselm of Canterbury (who was of course a native of Burgundy). Drawing on Augustine, Anselm was a great believer in beginning with faith but not ending with it—the Latin phrase fidēs quærēns intellēctum, “faith seeking understanding,” was later used as a sort of motto for his work. Both before and after being appointed the Archbishop of Canterbury under King William II Rufus (a son of the Conqueror), St. Anselm’s works touched on many topics that would remain fruitful throughout the High Middle Ages, including the capacities of human reason apart from divine revelation, the nature of the conception of the Virgin Mary, and the problem of universals.
You may be wondering in what sense this sort of thing had been going on since the late eighth century—if you are forgetting the Islamic Golden Age, which is going strong in 1095, and embraces not just Muslims but those living in Muslim-ruled territories. It may have been less in evidence under the Almoravids (who, quite unusually for an Islamic regime, believed not only in establishing the Surrender as supreme in their territories, but in eliminating any kind of opposition to it—no dhimmī among them). But it was not from Spain alone that the remote west, north, and east of Europe was shortly to begin receiving a great influx of Græco-Arabic scholarship.
1These are the Anglo-Saxon, a.k.a. Old English, names for “north, south, east, and west,” written with the letters þ (thorn) and ƿ (wynn), which were used for the th and w sounds until about the late fifteenth century.
2This map was created based on a map of Europe in 1097 by Wikimedia Commons contributor Alphathon (based on an earlier work by contributor Tintazul); the original base of the map, without the modifications of CLT’s editor at large, can be found here.
3For the purposes of this post, the regions listed are deemed to correspond with then-extant and modern states according to this pattern in the list below: region—contemporary states | modern states. (Obviously, not all borders remain the same as in 1095!)
…The Balkans—Bosnia, Croatia, the East Roman Empire | Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Serbia, Turkey
…The British Isles—the Kingdom of England, the kingdoms of Ireland, Norðreyjar, the Kingdom of Scotland, Suðreyjar, the kingdoms of Wales | Ireland, the Isle of Man, the United Kingdom
…East-Central Europe—the Kingdom of Hungary, the Kingdom of Poland, Pomerania, the Prussian people, the Vlach people | Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia
…Eastern Europe—the Finnish people, the Kipchak khanates, the Kyivan Rus’, the Lithuanian people, Novgorod, the Pecheneg people | Belarus, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Ukraine
…The Iberian Peninsula—the Almoravid Empire, the Kingdom of Aragon, the County of Barcelona, the Kingdom of Castile, the Kingdom of Léon, the Kingdom of Navarre | Andorra, Portugal, Spain
…The Italian Peninsula—the Duchy of Apulia, the Kingdom of Italy, and the Papal State | Italy, Monaco, San Marino, the Vatican
…Scandinavia—the Kingdom of Denmark, the Kingdom of Norway including Iceland, the Kingdom of Sweden | Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Sweden
…West-Central Europe—the Kingdom of Burgundy, the Kingdom of France, the Holy Roman Empire, the Duchy of Normandy | Austria, Belgium, Czechia, France, Germany, Lichtenstein, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Switzerland
4One was hardly going to find a complete Gallian, but a pair of Semigallians would do just as well.
5It is not the oldest continuously-operating institute of higher learning in the world; that honor belongs to the University of al-Qarawiyyin in Fez, Morocco.
6This is (the English transliteration of) the Arabic form of the name “Solomon.”
Gabriel Blanchard is CLT’s editor at large. He lives in Baltimore, MD.
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Published on 3rd March, 2025. Page image of a depiction of Emperor Otto III (980-1002) from the Gospels of Otto III, originally produced at Reichenau Abbey in the year 1000 and now housed at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (the Bavarian State Library) in Munich, Germany.