| THE EARLY CENTURIES |
|
|
LINK
TO AN EXCELLENT AND MORE DETAILED SUMMARY TIMELINE
FROM
MOLLOY COLLEGE (NEW YORK STATE) |
| Saint Augustine of Hippo |
354
-430
(76) |
Philosopher, Bishop of Hippo |
The most influential early Christian philosopher and the outstanding figure in philosophy between Aristotle and Aquinas. Son of a Roman family living in North Africa, he studied and taught rhetoric in Carthage, Rome and Milan, where he was baptised by Ambrose (then Bishop of Milan). Augustine returned to Africa and eventually became Bishop of Hippo (modern Annaba in Algeria) in 395. A prolific writer and proactive refuter of early heresies, his autobiographical book "Confessions", universally regarded as one of the all time "great books", is a good way of getting into very early medieval times and the life of an unusual and outstanding man. |
|
Atilla the Hun |
c406
-453
(47) |
King of the Huns from 434 |
Called "The Scourge of God" - All round pillager and conqueror, ranging both East to Persia, and West to i) Gaul in 451, where his army of as many as a few hundred thousand was stopped near Troyes by a Roman / Visigoth alliance, and ii) Rome in 452, where he arrived at a bad time - both famine and plague were around and he had to retire to regroup. But there was to be no more campaigning - Atilla died of a haemorrhage after a heavy round of drinking on the night of his seventh wedding (yes wedding, not wedding anniversary) in 453 and the Huns evaporated into other Germanic tribes. |
|
Western Roman Empire Ends |
476 |
|
Roman General and leader Orestes is defeated and executed by Odoacer
(433 - 493 (60)), a Barbarian chief who had joined the Roman army.
Orestes' young son, briefly Western Roman Emperor Romulus Augustulus, is deposed by Odoacer,
who takes over and lasts a surprisingly successful 17 years till being
defeated at Ravenna by
Ostrogoth King Theoderic the Great in 493,
after which Theoderic asked him to a banquet and killed him.
Theoderic was in Italy with the support of the Eastern Roman Emperor
Zeno, who thus successfully sidetracked Theoderic from any designs he
might have had on Constantinople! Anicius Boethius, sole translator of Aristotle in the Medieval West, was for a time advisor to Theoderic (see below). |
| San
Benedict and Montecassino
PHOTO AND HISTORY PAGE
INSIGHT PAGE: WW II IN ITALY
ABBEYS OF CENTRAL ITALY
ABBEY OF FLEURY, SAN BENOÎT
SUR LOIRE |
480
-547
(67)
|
Norcia,
Saint
|
St Benedict
founded monasteries at Subiaco and Montecassino (529), and wrote a
Monastic Rule (regula monachorum) for use within each monastery. The
Rule of Benedict was one of several used in monasteries in his time, but
over time began to be adopted by other monastic establishments.
Charlemagne's son Louis the Pious, King of
Aquitaine and Emperor from 814 - 840, passed a law in 816 making the
Rule of Benedict, by now in wide use, the only one allowed in Frankish
monasteries. From this time on the monks and nuns started
developing a sense of belonging to a community stretching beyond the
walls of their individual monasteries, and this community became known
as the Order of St Benedict (hence it is not correct to say that Saint
Benedict founded the Benedictines - he wrote the Rule, and the
Benedictines evolved over several centuries as very loosely
connected congregations ruled by powerful independent abbots, not a head
office with subsidiary priories order like
Cluny, or a multi-abbey
federal show like
the Cistercians).
Interestingly,
the good Saint's remains (and those of his twin sister S Scholastica)
are to be found in France - in
L'Abbaye de Fleury, St Benoît sur Loire, SE of
Orléans.
Montecassino was within 50 years (577) destroyed by the Longobards.
It was later rebuilt more splendidly and given "vast privileges" after a 787 visit from the Emperor Charlemagne, destroyed by the Saracens
(Arabs) in 883 and destroyed again 500 years later in 1349 by an earthquake (also the time of the Black Death - in fact the thirteen hundreds were a bad bad time all round for Europe). This time the great rebuilt buildings lasted nearly 600 years before, in late 1943, the site
found itself at the centre of the German
"Gustav Line" defending the approaches to Rome against the advancing Allied forces, and,
even though it was not linked at all to the German military, it was destroyed in an Allied bombing raid
at the particular urging of the NZ General Freyberg. It has since been rebuilt along the lines of the earlier buildings. |
|
Anicius
Boethius
BOOK |
c480
-524
(44) |
Rome / Ravenna
Philosopher & Advisor to Theodoric the Ostrogoth King |
Boethius was
one of the last major figures from the Classical World. A member of one of the ruling Roman families, he became the trusted advisor of King Theoderic the Great (c455 - 526) who had invaded Italy in 488, killed Odoacer, and established
the Ostrogoth Kingdom with its capital in Ravenna. Boethius wrote about arithmetic, music, Cicero and God, including a book called "The Consolation of Philosophy" which is still available today (link). More importantly, he translated Aristotle - in fact he did the only translation of Aristotle known to the Western World, until the translations done by the Arabs became available hundreds of years later, and thus can genuinely lay claim to having been the key player in "keeping the flame alight" during the "dark ages". He himself was executed by Theoderic when he became untrusted. |
|
Justinian I
INSIGHT PAGE |
c483
-565
(82) |
Emperor of Byzantium,
Constantinople |
Emperor of Byzantium at the height of its power for 35 years from 527 to 565. Based in the Byzantine capital of Constantinople, he was supported by a brilliant General, Belisarius, who recovered N Africa from the Vandals and Italy from the Ostrogoths
(establishing
Ravenna as the Byzantine Capital in
Italy) and even a small bit of Southern Spain from the Visigoths
(MAP). (Shades of a similar pairing to the ones between the
Norman Sicilian King Roger II and
Ammiraglio (Admiral) Giorgio di Antiochia in the first half of the eleven hundreds, and
Sultan Suleiman I and Barbarossa in the first half of the fifteen hundreds). Justinian also had time to build "the Greatest Church in Christendom" (Santa Sophia in Constantinople) and other imperially impressive places, codify Roman Law, and marry
Theodora - an attractive courtesan who according to the court historian Procopius
- who "told
all"
after a falling out with his boss - had a neat trick involving geese and
corn and a lack of clothing .....
 |
|
Tribal Europe in 500 |
|
|
MAP |
| Pope Gregory I ("Gregory the Great")
MEDIEVAL
POPES |
540
590
604
(64) |
Pope |
Pope for 14 years from 590 to 604, who devoted countless hours of work (and his name) to the Gregorian Chant. These chants were designed to replace a huge variety of local chants and music forms which had evolved over time, with a uniform musical form for each of the church services in the Christian churches of Europe. This was a major challenge at a time when no effective musical notation system existed (a situation which persisted until
Guido d'Arrezzo invented "modern" musical notation around 1020) and everything had to be committed to memory!
Gregory sent
Saint Augustine (of Canterbury - not to be confused with the earlier and more widely known
church doctor one from Hippo in North Africa) to convert the Brits to Christianity in 597 - and refused to let him come back when the going got tough.
It was also Gregory who labelled Mary Magdalene as a prostitute, despite
there being no evidence for this. This slander was never accepted
by the Eastern church, and was in fact formally withdrawn by the Vatican
in the 1960s having been allowed to stand by them for nearly 1,400 years. |
| Muhammad |
570
-632
(62) |
Mecca,
Founder of Islam |
Around 616 had the Koran revealed to him by God. Fled to Medina from persecution in Mecca in 622,
the flight "Hegira" marking the "year 0" of Islam. Later retook Mecca, after which 200 years of explosive growth saw Moslem control established in the lands from Spain, along the Southern Mediterranean and through to the Indus river on the Western border of India. It also saw the emergence of the great centres of learning of Baghdad and Cordoba (in Spain). |
|
Battistero di San Giovanni, Firenze
PHOTO PAGE |
C600 |
Florence,
Baptistery |
One of the oldest buildings in Florence, the Baptistery dates from C600 and was
clad in green and white marble in the 10 / 11 hundreds. The South door (1336) is by Andrea Pisano, the North door (1403 - 24)
is by
Lorenzo Ghiberti, who then spent most of the rest of his life (1425 - 52) on his masterpiece,
the East door - called by Michelangelo "The Gates of Paradise" (with the original panels now to be found in the Cathedral Museum). Inside, the dazzling and distinctively Byzantine mosaic dome was completed by Venetian artists in the 12 hundreds. The only tomb in the
Baptistery is that of
Baldassare Cossa (1370 - 1419) - condottiere, lawyer, Cardinal and latterly the "Antipope" John XXIII, friend of and giver of church business to Giovanni di Bicci - who founded the Medici bank in 1397 - and his son Cosimo.
The tomb, organized by
the Medicis to say "thank you", was sculpted by
Donatello
(the figure of Cossa) and
Michelozzo (the surrounding drapery and
tabernacle). |
|
Iconoclasts |
726 |
|
Byzantine Emperor Leo III initiates the destruction of religious images - a movement which destroys much of the art of Byzantium over the following century despite the fact that Pope Gregory excommunicates supporters of iconoclasm in 731.
|
|
Charlemagne
(aka Charles the Great)
CHARLEMAGNE'S TRAVELS
&
EMPIRE MAP
EQUESTRIAN STATUE
BOOKS |
742-
768
-814
(72) |
King of the Franks |
LINK TO EARLY FRENCH KINGS AND SAINTS
Becomes Frankish (=German,
lowlands and
French) King in 768 and later has himself crowned "Holy Roman Emperor" in
Rome on Christmas Day 800. This title, which had been in hibernation since the end of the
real Western Roman Empire in 476, was attractive because of its historical cachet. However, although Charlemagne was the first European ruler since the real Roman Emperors to "pull it all together", he and subsequent Holy Roman Emperors had
little connection with Rome and none with a Roman Empire.
By 804 Charlemagne ruled much of Western Europe,
having early on defeated the Lombards in Northern Italy, and later
bloodily subjugated the Saxons in what is now Northern Germany
(see map).
During his 46 year reign he
travelled often and widely and established schools, reformed and developed legal, administrative, agricultural and commercial systems,
promoted the arts and enforced Christianity. It is interesting
that his long reign was paralled by two outstanding and long reigned
Popes - Hadrian I (Pope 772 - 795) and S Leo III (Pope 795 - 816), and
indeed by a long reigning Caliph, Harun al-Rashid (see below).
Sadly,
Charlemagne's patchwork quilt Kingdom of small towns and lanes was not a lasting legacy, and after his death the wheels fell off
again. Notwithstanding this, the institution and position of Holy Roman Emperor lasted for another thousand years (until 1806). |
| Harun al-Rashid
BIOGRAPHY |
763-
786
-809
(46) |
Baghdad,
Abbasid Sultan,
|
The legendary Caliph and Sultan (at age 23) who ruled for 23 years from the new Abbasid capital of Baghdad at the height of the Abbasid Empire. As well as successful soldier (mainly against the Byzantines) he was a lavish patron of music, poetry, letters, and also parties, and was immortalized through the "Tales from a Thousand and One (Arabian) Nights". It was Harun who sent the Emperor Charlemagne an elephant (named Abul Abbas) as a present.
|
|
Abbey of Cluny
PHOTO PAGE
MORE HISTORY |
910 |
Burgundy |
The first of the major monastic reform movements,
Cluny (to the West
of Macon in Burgundy) was established by Duke William the Pious in 910
and placed under the direct protection of the Pope. The Abbey exerted huge influence in the ten hundreds, particularly through the Abbots Odilo and Hugh, and several of its Abbots became Popes. It was rebuilt twice to accommodate more monks - Cluny II in 981 and Cluny III - said to cover a bigger area than the
present day Pentagon - between 1088 and 1130. Sadly, hardly any of the buildings remain today.
At its height the Abbey had over
1,000 dependencies,
but they were run from the centre on rigid authoritarian lines, and it
is easy to see how the participative governance systems set up by
the Cistercians proved more attractive and effective, particularly when Cluny fell
into the incompetent hands of Abbot Pons between 1109 and 1122.
Whilst the Cistercians and then the mendicant orders took over the
religious running. Interestingly, the Cistercians had to
pay Cluny a franchising fee for the
first decades of their existence.
Cluny steamed on as an abbey under the momentum of
its huge endowments, and in fact had almost completed another major
rebuild in the seventeen hundreds when the French Revolution led to the
abbey (but not the new monastic buildings) being sold and broken up ..... with
just one end if the huge abbey
transept eventually saved for posterity. |
| Via Francigena MAP |
|
"Route" from France to Rome |
A "safe road" (avoiding Byzantine territory), based on a route developed in the 5 hundreds by the Lombards, further improved by Charlemagne in the late 7 hundreds when he became interested in Rome (and, on the way, in the site where the Abbazia di Sant'Antimo now stands). Documented in 990 in the diary (to be found in the British Museum) of Sigeric the Serious, Archbishop of Canterbury in the days of
King Aethelred the Unready. Sigeric was travelling back to Canterbury (with 80 overnight stops en route) after seeing the Pope in Rome to get his pallium and cope.
Not an "intercity route" for wagons and legions like the great straight European roads built by Rome, but a windy collection of paths, trails and roads maintained by local rulers who benefited greatly as it became the main drag for commerce, pilgrims (especially in Jubilee years) and armies travelling from England and France to the Eternal City (Rome), or connecting with the other two great medieval pilgrimage
routes to Santiago di Compostela (in Spain), and Jerusalem.
In Tuscany
the road descended across the Apennines via the Cisa Pass and past the famous marble mountains near Carrara to Lucca, then followed the valleys of the Elsa, Arbia and Orca to the Abbadia San Salvatore in the shadow of the great volcanic mountain Monte Amiata (go there in late October to see the Autumn leaves on the Chestnut and Beech trees). In central Tuscany it passed through Certaldo,
San Gimignano,
Monteriggione,
Siena, Buonconvento, Montalcino (with its nearby
Abbazia di Sant'Antimo) and wandered into Lazio at Radicofani. Note the absence of Florence, which did not get a good North-South road (the reconstituted Via Cassia) until the 12 hundreds, and the Chianti area which
"evolved" from a series of frontier Florentine and Sienese garrison
towns through feudalism and the mezzadrei system into a very poor
depopulated area for the first two thirds of the 20th century, and was
better known for brigands than roads for most of this time. |
|
Guido Monaco
(Guido d' Arezzo) |
C990
-1033+ |
Arezzo,
Musician |
Inventor of modern musical notation c1020.
Before then it was not possible for musician A to send a piece of paper
to musician B containing information that would enable B to know how to
play a piece of music accurately. |
| 10 HUNDREDS |
|
|
To eliminate an unnecessary mental gymnastic, the Italian form "the 10 hundreds" has been used throughout in preference to the English expression "the 11th Century" or "11C". |
|
Lanfranc
Canterbury, Lanfranc and Anselm |
C1007
-1089
(82) |
Pavia,
Bec and Canterbury,
Lawyer, Monk and Church Leader |
In the 1030s a Norman knight named
Herluin founded the Abbey of Bec, on the river Bec in Normandy.
Bec became one of the earliest intellectual power houses of Europe under the
guidance of Lanfranc (born in Pavia in northern Italy in 1005) who joined up in
1042.
Lanfranc became the first
Norman appointed Archbishop of Canterbury in 1070 after
the last Anglo Saxon Archbishop, Stigand, was deposed by a great
council meeting at Winchester. He proceeded to get rid of all but
one (Wulfstan of Worcester) of the Saxon bishops and shift the centre of
power of the church firmly from York to Canterbury. His power was
underpinned by an excellent relationship with William I (The Conqueror)
and after his death Lanfranc was instrumental in ensuring the succession
of William Rufus - one of his less clever contributions. |
|
Saint Anselm of Canterbury
BOOK
Canterbury, Lanfranc and Anselm
Reform movements and Bec Abbey
|
1033
-1109
(76) |
Italian,
Scholar, Abbot and
Archbishop of Canterbury |
Born in Aosta, at the head of the north east Italian valley leading
to Monte Bianco and the Gran San Bernardo pass, Anselm made his mark as a student of Lanfranc
(above) at the Abbey of Bec in Normandy, and from 1078 to 1093 was its Abbot,
building on Lanfranc's base to make it on of the centres of scholarship in Europe.
Anselm reluctantly accepted appointment as Lanfranc's successor as Archbishop of Canterbury in 1093, a post he held for 16 years until his death in 1109.
Unlike Lanfranc, his relationships with Kings were not good, and he spent a significant amount of this time in exile from England
and the unattractive sons of William the Conqueror - first
William II (Rufus) and then his successor Henry I - mainly over disputes over the relative powers of Church and State. One suspects that he was quite happy being away from England - he was reluctant to take on the position in the first place, and later explained to Eulalia, the Abbess of Shaftesbury, how harassed he felt by it. His real love was philosophy - he is regarded, along with Augustine (354 - 430) and Erigena (an Irish philosopher of the 800s) who preceded him, and Abelard (1079 - 1142) and Roger Bacon (1214 - 1292), who came later, as one of the leading medieval philosophers and a major contributor to the development of Scholasticism. This was the theological and philosophical system of the medieval church of Europe, which sought to integrate Christian teaching with Aristotelian (and to a lesser extent Platonic) philosophy and which reached its apex in the works of Thomas Aquinas (1226 - 1274).
|
| Badia a Passignano PHOTOS |
1049 |
Chianti,
Monastery |
A daughter house of the
Abbazia di Vallombrosa a large
monastery high in the Apennine foothills to the south east of Florence. Vallombrosa was set up by
St. John Gualbert
(995 - 1073)
around 1028. The Vallombrosans were one of
the early monastic reform movements and were dedicated to a very harsh
living regime for themselves and to the elimination of simony - the
practice of selling church livings, indulgences etc. Gaulbert died
and lies buried in
Badia a Passignano, which was formed as a daughter
house of Vallombrosa in 1049.
Like many others the Monastery was later secularized
(and in this case crenellated) in the 19 hundreds, but has now been
returned to a small group of monks and remains, along with the valleys and ridges around nearby Panzano, one of the most photographable places in the
generally photographable area of central Chianti.
It also contains a
Last Supper frescoed by the brothers
Domenico and Davide Ghirlandaio
in 1476. By the end of the 1100s
there were 50 or so Vallombrosan monasteries, mostly in Tuscany.
Most of them were older Benedictine foundations who had switched
"allegiance", and the order never had a distinctive
architecture like
the Cistercians. In Florence one
was attached to
what is now
SS Trinita, the seat of the present Abbot General of the
Order. The monastery of
San Salvi in Florence was full of Vallombrosan nuns
for 300 years, just to the west of Siena the
Torri cloisters were part of a
large Vallombrosan monastery, and in Rome the ancient Esquiline Hill church of
Santa Prassede, built by Pope Hadrian I c780, also became Vallombrosan. |
|
The Great Schism of 1054 |
1054 |
|
After 600 years of escalating relationship problems, the church of Constantinople splits with the church of Rome, never to rejoin. |
|
Pisa Duomo
PHOTO
PAGE |
1063
-C1150 |
Pisa,
Cathedral |
Bankrolled by serious plunder from the twilight
years of the Saracens (Arabs) in Sicily, the Duomo was started under
Architect Buscheto in 1063 and completed 90 years later under Architect
Rainaldo. The Baptistry followed between 1152 and 1400 - much
longer but with the reward of a perfect acoustic! The Tower
(which leant from an early stage), was built between 1173 and 1350 (see
below). |
|
Peter Abelard
BOOK |
1079
-1142
(63) |
French Philosopher |
One of the
most significant philosophers of the middle ages, though
better known for his love affair (and secret marriage with) his student Heloise (whose love letters still survive), as a result of which he was forcibly castrated and
despatched to a monastery. Their child was christened
Astrolabe. Peter was hounded
mercilessly by Saint Bernard (below), who was eventually given the power
to imprison him after a Papal enquire. However Abbot Peter the
Venerable of
Cluny, whom San B also hated with a passion, whisked Abelard away to the
safety of the all powerful
Cluny, and took care of him for the
final two years of his life. The lovers were finally laid to rest side by side in Pere Lachaise, Paris in 1817. |
| The
Domesday Book |
1087 |
First Census of England |
Early timeline link with the England of
Norman King William the Conqueror (1066 and all that) - amongst other things showed that slavery had effectively disappeared and that there were 5,624 watermills south of the
River Trent!
The entire book is now published as a Penguin Classic. |
|
St Bernard of Clairvaux
INSIGHT PAGE |
1090
-1153
(63) |
France,
Cistercian Abbot |
Driving force behind the huge expansion of the Cistercians,
and latterly one of the most influential men in Europe. He was lumbered (unfairly) by posterity with responsibility for the disastrous
Second Crusade,
but there is much much more to his life than that ....
READ MORE.
|
|
King Roger
II of Sicily
PHOTO PAGE |
1093
-1154
(61) |
Sicily
Norman King from 1113 |
The most outstanding of the Norman Kings of
Sicily, whose dazzling court during his 41 year reign was an exciting
fusion of European, Byzantine and Arab cultures and the happening place
of Europe .....
READ MORE
|
| The
Crusades
INSIGHT PAGE
BOOKS |
1095 |
First Crusade |
The 1st Crusade was launched with a fiery speech by Pope Urban I (1042-1088-1099) on Nov 27 1095 in a field in Clermont (France) (where there was an Ecumenical council going on). In it he promised participants remission of all past and future(!) sins, and that, in a nutshell, is why many people went. A large rabble of Germans, followers of Peter the Hermit, jumped the gun and, pausing only to kill all the Jews they could find, headed south leaving a trail of death and destruction in their wake. They were eventually lured into a trap and slaughtered by the Turks after they had crossed the Bosphorus into Asia. Meantime the main armoured columns had also got their pillaging act into gear as they moved south and joined up, and on July 15 1099 the
1st Crusade took Jerusalem, indiscriminately slaughtering nearly all of the inhabitants - Moslem, Christian and Jewish - and establishing a tradition of mindless violence maintained by later generations of crusaders.
LINK TO INSIGHT PAGE AND THE OTHER CRUSADES
|
| Cistercian Order
INSIGHT PAGE
ABBEY PHOTO PAGES
BOOKS ABOUT CISTERCIAN ABBEYS
Link to Wikipedia page
|
1098 |
Monks and Master Abbey
Builders |
The Cistercian order (the "White Monks" from their habits of coarse
bleached wool, contrasting with Benedictine black) was established at Citeaux (Latin Cistercium),
Burgundy, in 1098 by Benedictines who had had enough of the wealth and corruption that had overtaken the Benedictine order itself, and had spread to the
supposedly reformed Cluny.
The Cistercian were the first order to have a constitution ("The Charter of Love" drawn up by English Saxon Nobleman, Monk, third Abbot of Citeaux and Saint, Stephen Harding c1060 - 1133), which inter alia laid down that their abbeys were to be sited in isolation - away from towns and villages and "far from the concourse of men",
and also covered many governance issues like who got to boss who around
and how did they get elected. However, it was the energy, inspiration and writings of
St Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) which propelled the Cistercians from being a good idea into a major pan European Abbey Movement during an extraordinary period of expansion, which resulted in the existence of 530 Cistercian abbeys by the end of the eleven hundreds.
LINK TO PHOTOS OF MORE THAN 40 CISTERCIAN ABBEYS
The White Monks enjoyed two hundred yesrs in
the sun, but by the end of the twelve hundreds their place had been ceded to the mendicant orders of
Saint Francis and
Saint Dominic, who aimed to put their buildings in, rather than out of, towns and villages. Apart from building
many beautiful abbeys, including
San Galgano
(chronology entry) in Tuscany,
Fossanova and
Casamari in Lazio,
Fontenay in Burgundy,
Noirlac in Central France, and
Santes Creus and
many others in Spain, Cistercians led Europe in the development
of land clearance and drainage projects, and of new agricultural techniques through their large landholdings which were usually worked by Cistercian "lay brothers" who were sort of "non-commissioned monks". Other orders relied on feudal tithes, rents etc and did not get near to actually
managing or working their lands, neither in general were they interested in improved land management or the introduction of new agricultural technologies. The Cistercians' agricultural expertize (including wool growing) was complemented
by architectural, engineering (especially water, wool and iron
production) and other professional skills.
By the end of the 12 hundreds, the corruption
and debilitating internal power struggles which the Cistercians had been set up to escape were infiltrating their own organization. The magnificent abbey sites and agricultural ventures entered a long term decline,
accelerated by the rise in power of nation states and their monarchs, and the
appointment by the latter of Commendatory Abbots who were allowed
to rip off monastic incomes into their personal funds. This ended
finally with the suppression of Cistercian
and other monasteries in the reformation movements of the 15 hundreds (including
Henry VIII's dissolution of some 800 religious "houses" between 1536 and 1540)
and later the French revolution at the end of the 1700s (which
overflowed to
Northern Italian areas controlled by Napoleon such as Lombardy, where
several Cistercian monasteries were destroyed, and Venice), and in the
monastic closures in Spain in the 1830s. |
| 11 HUNDREDS |
|
|
|
| Knights Templar
BOOKS
A Knight Templar Tomb in Italy
The Templar Church of Ognissanti in Trani (Puglia)
Link to Wikipedia page |
1118
-1312 |
Jerusalem,
Knights |
Knights of the
Temple (of Solomon in Jerusalem) with a regime drawn up partly by
St Bernard and based
on the Cistercian one of poverty, chastity, and obedience (and including
the odd injunction that they were never to wash, which would have added
to the aromatic elegance of their compulsory raw sheepskin underwear).
Over the sheepskin underwear they wore the famous uniform of a white
tunic with a large red cross on it.
The Templars were originally formed
after the first Crusade for the defence of Jerusalem, but after its fall
in 1187 their network of fortresses stretching as far as Scotland and
Spain were used amongst other things for money movement and they then
invented bills of exchange (or else the Florentine bankers did or else
the Arabs of glittering Abbasid Baghdad did, depending on whose account
you read) so the money did not have to be physically moved. They
had by this time forgotten about the poverty etc bit (and hopefully
abandoned sheepskin underwear and reverted to washing).
But power
corrupts and ...... and by September 1307 King Philip IV of France had
had enough of the knights, and mounted an extraordinary operation which
in just 24 hours rounded up some 15,000 Templars and Templar retainers.
There followed the full medieval sequence of property confiscations,
trials, confessions and burnings - including that of James of Molay, the
last Templar Grand Master. Outside France, other monarchs seized
the moment (or rather the loot which was considerable, though some of the assets
somehow slid seamlessly to other knightly orders like the Knights Hospitallers,
the (Portuguese) Knights of Christ, etc. The formal closure came from Pope
Clement V who dissolved the Templars in March 1312.
|
