11th century

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: General history

As a means of recording the passage of time, the 11th century was that century which lasted from 1001 to 1100. In the history of European culture, this period is considered the early part of the High Middle Ages.

Overview

The eleventh century is, in European history, a century of change. It is usually marked as the first period of the High Middle Ages and is therefore sometimes termed the Early Middle Ages, though this term has another common meaning synonymous with Dark Ages. The century began while the translatio imperii of 962 was still somewhat novel and ended in the midst of the Investiture Controversy. It saw the final Christianisation of Scandinavia and the emergence of the Peace and Truce of God movements, the Gregorian Reforms, and the Crusades which revitalised a church and a papacy which survived tarnished by the tumultuous tenth century. In 1054, the Great Schism rent the church in two, however.

In Germany, it was marked by the ascendancy of the Holy Roman Emperors, who hit their high watermark under the Salians.

In Italy, it opened with the integration of the kingdom into the empire and the royal palace at Pavia was sacked in 1024. By the end of the century, Lombard and Byzantine rule in the Mezzogiorno had been usurped by the Normans and the power of the territorial magnates was being replaced by that of the citizens of the cities in the north.

In Britain, it saw the transformation of Scotland into a unified kingdom and the Norman conquest of England in 1066. The social transformations wrought in these lands brought them into the fuller orbit of European feudal politics.

In France, it saw the nadir of the monarchy and the zenith of the great magnates, especially the dukes of Aquitaine and Normandy, who could thus foster such distinctive contributions of their lands as the pious warrior who conquered Britain, Italy, and the East and the impious peacelover, the troubadour, who crafted out of the European vernacular its first great literary themes.

In Spain, the century opened with the successes of the last caliphs of Córdoba and ended in the successes of the Almoravids. In between was a period of Christian unification under Navarrese hegemony and success in the Reconquista against the taifa kingdoms which replaced the fallen caliphate. Spain emerged fully "Europeanised".

Events

Bayeux Tapestry depicting events leading to the Battle of Hastings

• 1001 ± 40 years, Baitoushan volcano on what would be the Chinese-Korean border, erupts with a force of 6.5, the fourth largest Holocene blast.
• 1001, Mahmud of Ghazni, Muslim leader of Ghazni, begins a series of raids into Northern India; he finishes in 1027 with the destruction of Somnath.
• Circa 1001, Vikings, led by Leif Eriksson, establish small settlements in and around Vinland in North America
• 1040, Duncan I of Scotland slain in battle. Macbeth succeeds him.
• 1054, the Great Schism, in which the Western ( Roman Catholic) and Eastern Orthodox churches separated from each other. Similar schisms in the past had been later repaired, but this one continues after nearly 1000 years.
• 1060, Norman conquest of Sicily
• 1065, independence of the Kingdom of Galicia and Portugal under the rule of Garcia
• 1066, Edward the Confessor dies; Norman conquest of England in the Battle of Hastings
• 1071, Defeat of the Byzantine Empire at the Battle of Manzikert, ending 3 centuries of a military and economic Golden Age
• 1076, Ghana Empire began break-up after capital (Kumbi) sacked
• 1085, Alfonso VI of Castile captures the Muslim city of Toledo.
• 1086, compilation of the Domesday Book

Capture of Jerusalem, 1099

• 1094, El Cid, the great Spanish hero, conquers the Muslim city of Valencia
• ca. 1095- 1099, earliest extant manuscript of the Song of Roland
• 1099, First Crusade captures Jerusalem
• King Anawrahta of Myanmar made a pilgrimage to Ceylon, returning to convert his country to Theravada Buddhism.
• The Tuareg migrate to the Aïr region.
• Kanem-Bornu expands southward into modern Nigeria.
• The first of seven Hausa city-states are founded in Nigeria.
• The Hodh region of Mauritania becomes desert.

Significant people

• Empress Agnes
• Alexius I Comnenus byzantine Emperor (lived 1048-1118; reigned 1081-1118)
• Alp Arslan
• Archbishop Anno II of Cologne
• Saint Anselm, reputed founder of scholasticism and creator of the ontological argument
• Basil II Byzantine Emperor (lived 958-1025; reigned 976-1025)
• Canute
• El Cid (Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar)
• Pope Saint Gregory VII (Hildebrand)
• Guido of Arezzo
• Emperor Henry III
• Emperor Henry IV
• Konrad II
• Lanfranc, archbishop of Canterbury
• Leif Eriksson
• Macbeth
• Saint Robert, founder of the Cistercians
• Stephen I of Hungary
• Tunka Manin ruler of the Ghana Empire
• William the Conqueror
• Pope Urban II
• Tāriqu l-Ḥakīm bi Amr al-Lāh, Sixth Fātimid Caliph

Inventions, discoveries, introductions

• Troubadours appear in what is now southern France.
• Invention of military rockets by the Chinese
• The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu is one of the first novels in the Japanese language.
• The tittle was created.
• Main body of Aristotle's works rediscovered.

Decades and years