Contributions of Otto 1

i) Unifying Germany
- Henry rebuilt royal power by forcibly combining the duchies of Swabia, Bavaria,
Saxony, Franconia and Lotharingia.
- He secured imperial borders by checking the invasions of the Hungarians and the Danes
- In a truly imperial gesture in 951, he invaded Italy and proclaimed himself its king.
- In 955, he won his most magnificent victory by defeating the Hungarians at Lechfield.
- That victory secured German borders against new barbarian attacks, further unified the
German duchies and earned Otto the well-deserved title the Great.
ii) Embracing the church
- Otto, following the example of his predecessors, enlisted the church.
- In 961, Otto, who had long aspired to the imperial clown, responded to a call for help
from Pope John XII (r. 955-964), who was then being bullied by an Italian enemy of the
German king, Berengar of Friuli.
- In recompense for this rescue, Pope John crowned Otto emperor on February 2, 962.
- Otto, for his part, recognized the existence of the Papal States and proclaimed himself
their special protector.
- Over time, such close cooperation between emperor and pope put the church more than
ever under royal control.
- Pope John belatedly recognized the royal web in which the church was becoming
entangled and joined the Italian opposition to the new emperor.
- This turnabout brought Ottos swift revenge.
- Under Otto I, popes ruled at the emperors pleasure.
- As these events reflect, Otto had shifted the royal focus from Germany to Italy.

Beginnings of reforms in Church

The Reviving Catholic Church
- During the late ninth and early tenth centuries, the clergy had become tools of kings and
magnates and the papacy a toy of Italian nobles.
- The Ottonians made bishops their servile princes and likewise dominated the papacy.
- The church was about to gain renewed respect and authority, thanks not only to the
failing fortunes of the overextended Ottonian empire but also to a new, determined force
for reform within the church itself.
The Cluny Reform Movement
- The great monastery in Cluny in east-central France gave birth to a monastic reform
movement that won the support of secular lords and German kings.
- Here began the real Christianization of Europe.
- Surface belief and lip service to Christian values appear now to have penetrated more
deeply into the lives of rulers and the laity, as both new, successful reform movements
and the growth of heresy attest.
- This development enabled the church to challenge royal authority at both the episcopal
and papal levels.
- The reformers of Cluny were aided by widespread popular respect for the church that
found expression in lay religious fervor and generous baronial patronage of religious
houses.
- In 910, William the Pious, duke of Aquitaine founded Cluny.
- It was a Benedictine monastery devoted to the strictest observance of Saint Benedicts
Rule for Monasteries with a special emphasis on liturgical purity.
- Although the reformers who emerged at Cluny were loosely organized and their
demands not always consistent, they shared a determination to maintain a spiritual church
and they absolutely rejected the subservience of the clergy, especially that of the German
bishops to royal authority.
- No local secular rulers, the Cluniacs asserted could have control over their monasteries
and they further denounced the sins of the flesh of the secular parish clergy, who
maintained concubines in a relationship akin to marriage. Thus, the cluny reformers
resolved to free the clergy from both kings and wives to create an independent and
chaste clergy. The church alone was to be clergys lord and spouse. Thus, the distinctive
Western separation of church and state and the celibacy of the Catholic clergy, both of
which continue today, had their definitive origins in the Cluny reform movement.
- Cluny rapidly became a center from which reformers were dispatched to other
monasteries throughout France and Italy.
- The proclamation of a series of church decrees called the Peace of God reflected the
influence of the Cluny movement. These decrees tried to lessen the endemic warfare of
medieval society by threatening excommunication for all who at any time harmed
members of such vulnerable groups as women, peasant, merchants and the clergy. The
Peace of God was subsequently reinforced by the Truce of God, a church order
proclaiming that all men must abstain from violence and warfare during a certain part of
each week (eventually from Wednesday night to Monday morning) and in all holy
seasons.
- Popes devoted to reforms like those urged by Cluny came to power during the reign of
Emperor Henry III (r. 1039-1056).
- Pope Leo IX (r.1049-1954) promoted regional synods to oppose simony (the selling of
spiritual things especially church offices) and clerical marriage. He also placed Cluniacs
in key administrative posts in Rome.
- During the turbulent minority of his successor, Henry IV (r.1056-1106), reform popes
began to assert themselves more openly. Pope Stephen IX (1057-1058) reigned without
imperial ratification, contrary to the earlier declaration of Otto I.
- To prevent local factional control of papal elections, Pope Nicholas II (1059-1061)
decreed in 1059 that a body of high church officials and advisers known as the College
of Cardinals would choose the pope establishing the procedures for papal succession
that the Catholic Church still follows. He also embraced Clunys strictures against
simony and clerical concubinage and even struck his own political alliances with the
Normans in Sicily and with France and Tuscany.

The Investiture Struggle: Gregory VII and Henry IV

- Cluniacs had repeatedly inveighed against simony. Cardinal Humbert, a prominent
reformer, argued that lay investiture of the clergy that is the appointment of bishops and
other church officials by secular officials and rulers was the worst form of this evil
practice.
- In 1075, Pope Gregory embraced these arguments and condemned under penalty of
excommunication, lay investiture of clergy at any level. He had primarily in mind the
emperors well-established custom of installing bishops by presenting them with the ring
and staff that symbolized the episcopal office.
- Henry assembled his loyal German bishops at Worms in January 1076 and had them
proclaim their independence from Gregory. Gregory promptly responded with the
churchs heavy artillery: He excommunicated Henry and absolved all of Henrys subjects
from loyalty to him.
- In March 1080, Gregory excommunicated Henry once again but this time the action was
ineffectual. In 1084, Henry, absolutely dominant, installed his own antipope, Clement III,
and forced Gregory into exile where he died the following year.
- The settlement of the investiture controversy came in 1122 with the Concordant of
Worms. The old church-state back-scratching in this way continued but now on different
terms. The clergy received their offices and attendant religious powers solely from
ecclesiastical authority and no longer from kings and emperors. Rulers continued to
bestow lands and worldly goods on high clergy in the hope of influencing them. The
Concordat of Worms thus made the clergy more independent, but not necessarily less
wordly.
Crusades within Europe and outside Europe
i) The first crusade
- At the Council of Clermont in 1095, Pope Urban II (r.1089-1099) responded positively
to that appeal setting the First Crusade in motion. This event has puzzled some historians
because the First Crusade was a risky venture. The pope saw that peace and tranquility
might more easily be gained at home by sending these quarrelsome aristocrats abroad,
100,000 of whom marched off with the First Crusade. The nobility, in turn, saw that
fortunes could be made in foreign wars. Pope Urban may well have believed that the
Crusade would reconcile and reunite Western and Eastern Christianity.
- Unlike the later Crusades which were undertaken for mercenary reasons, the early
Crusades were inspired by genuine religious piety and carefully orchestrated by a revived
papacy. Popes promised the first Crusaders a plenary indulgence should they die in a
battle. In addition to this spiritual reward, the prospect of a Holy War against the Muslim
infidel also propelled the Crusaders. Also, the sheer romance of a pilgrimage to the Holy
Land played a role. All these motives combined to make the First Crusade a Christian
success.
ii) The First Victory
- The Crusaders goal was to rescue the holy city of Jerusalem which had been in the
hands of the Muslims since the seventh century.
- They soundly defeated one Muslim army after another in a steady advance toward
Jerusalem which they captured on July 15, 1099. The Crusaders owed their victory to
superior military discipline and weaponry and were also helped by the deep political
divisions within the Islamic world that prevented a unified Muslim resistance.
- The victorious Crusaders divided conquered territories into the feudal states of
Jerusalem, Edessa and Antioch which were apportioned to them as fiefs from the pope.
The crusaders however remained small islands within a great sea of Muslims who looked
on the Western invaders as savages to be slain or driven out.
- Through such endeavors, they became rich, ending up as wealthy bankers and
moneylenders.
iii) The second and third crusade
- A Second Crusade preached by Christendoms most eminent religious leader, the
Cistercian monk Bernard of Clairvaux (1091-1153) attempted a rescue but met with
dismal failure. In October 1187, Saladin (1138-1193), king of Egypt and Syria
reconquered Jerusalem.
- A Third Crusade in the twelfth century (1189-1192) attempted yet another rescue, led
by most powerful Western rulers: Hohenstaufen emperor Frederick Barbarossa, Richard
the Lion-Hearted, the king of England, and Philip Augustus, the king of France.
- The long-term results of the first three Crusades had little to do with their original
purpose. Politically and religiously they were a failure. The Holy Land reverted as firmly
as ever to Muslim hands. The Crusades had, however, been a safety valve for violence-
prone Europeans. More importantly, they stimulated Western trade with the East, as
Venetian, Pisan and Genoan merchants followed the Crusaders across Byzantium to
lucrative new markets. The need to resupply the Christian settlements in the Near East
also created new trade routes and reopened old ones long closed by Islamic supremacy
over the Mediterranean.
iv) The fourth crusade
- It is a commentary on both the degeneration of the original crusading ideal and the
Crusaders true historical importance that a Fourth Crusade transformed itself into a
piratical, commercial venture controlled by the Venetians.
- In 1202, 30,000 Crusaders arrived in Venice to set sail for Egypt. When they could not
pay the price of transport, the Venetians negotiated an alternative venture: the conquest of
Zara, a rival Christian port on the Adriatic.
- This stunning event brought Venice new lands and maritime rights that assured its
domination of the eastern Mediterranean. Constantinople was now the center for Western
trade throughout the Near East.
- Western Control of Constantinople continued until 1261, when eastern emperor Michael
Palcologus helped by the Genoese, who envied their Venetian rivals windfall in the East,
finally recaptured the city. This fifty seven year occupation of Constantinople did nothing
to heal the political and religious divisions between East and West.

Domesday Book
- For administration and taxation purposes, William the Conqueror commissioned a
county-by-county survey of his new realm, a detailed accounting known as the Domesday
Book (1080-1086).
- The title of book may reflect the thoroughness and finality of the survey. As none would
escape the doomsday judgment of God, so no property was overlooked by Williams
assessors.

The Reign of Louis IX

i) Generosity Abroad
- Although in a strong position during negotiations for the Treaty of Paris, which
momentarily settled the dispute between France and England, he refused to take
advantage of it to drive the English from their French possessions.
- The conflict underlying the Hundred Years War which began in the fourteenth century.
He surrendered disputed territory on the borders of Gascony to the English king, Henry
III, and confirmed Henrys possession of the duchy of Aquitaine.
- Louis remained neutral during the long struggle between the German Hohenstaufen
emperor Frederick II and the papacy and his neutrality worked to the popes advantage.
He also remained neutral when his brother, Charles of Anjou, intervened in Italy and
Sicily against the Hohenstaufens again to the popes advantage.
ii) Order and Excellence at Home
- Louiss greatest achievements lay at home. The efficient French bureaucracy, which his
predecessors had used to exploit their subjects, became under Louis an instrument of
order and fair play in local government. He sent forth royal commissioners (enqueteurs),
reminiscent of Charlemagnes far less successful missi dominici. Their mission was to
monitor the royal officials responsible for local governmental administration (especially
the baillis and prevots) and to ensure that justice would truly be meted out to all.
- Louis further abolished private wars and serfdom within his royal domain. He gave his
subjects the judicial right of appeal from local to higher courts and made the tax system
by medieval standards, more equitable.
- Louis became an arbiter among the worlds powers respected by the kings of Europe
and possessed of far greater moral authority than the pope.
- Louiss reign also coincided with the golden age of Scholasticism, which saw the
convergence of Europes greatest thinkers on Paris, among them Saint Thomas Aquinas
and Saint Bonaventure.
- Louiss was something of a religious fanatic. He sponsored the French Inquisition. He
led two French Crusades against the Muslims, which, although inspired by the purest
religious motives, proved to be personal disasters.
- During the first (1248-1254), Louis was captured and had to be ransomed out of Egypt.
He died of a fever during the second in 1270.
- Louis later received the rare honor of sainthood bestowed by the church when it was
under pressure from a more powerful and less than most Christian French king, the
ruthless Philip IV, the Fair.

Romanesque and Gothic Architecture

- The High Middle Ages witnessed the peak of Romanesque art and the transition to the
Gothic. Romanesque literally means like Rome, and the art and architecture of the
High Middle Ages embraced the classical style of Ancient Rome.
- Romanesque churches are fortress-like. Rounded arches, thick stone walls, and heavy
columns support their vaults or ceilings. In the early Middle Ages this architecture
expressed the churchs role as a refuge for the faithful and a new world power.
- Appearing first in mid-twelfth-century France, Gothic art and architecture evolved
directly from the Romanesque. The term Gothic implies barbaric and critics initially used
it to condemn the new style. Gothic architecture, however, quickly silenced its critics. Its
distinctive features are a ribbed, crisscrossed ceiling, with pointed arches in place of
rounded ones, a clever construction technique that allows Gothic churches to soar far
above their Romanesque predecessors. The greater weight on the walls was off-loaded by
exterior flying buttresses built directly into them.