Christianity in the 12th century
The agreement differentiated between the royal and spiritual powers and gave the emperors a limited role in selecting bishops in Germany.
The English dispute was resolved by the Concordat of London, 1107, where the king renounced his claim to invest bishops but continued to require an oath of fealty from them upon their election.
It was in response to movements within Europe considered apostate or heretical to Western Catholicism, in particular the Cathars and the Waldensians in southern France and northern Italy.
12th-century France witnessed the widespread growth of Catharism, a dualistic belief in extreme asceticism which taught that all matter was evil, accepted suicide and denied the value of Church sacraments.
[1] This style, with its large windows and high, pointed arches, improved lighting and geometric harmony in a manner that was intended to direct the worshiper's mind to God who "orders all things".
[2] Cistercian monk Bernard of Clairvaux exerted great influence over the new orders and produced reforms to ensure purity of purpose.
[3] Scholasticism comes from the Latin word scholasticus meaning "that [which] belongs to the school"; it was a method of learning taught by the academics (or schoolmen) of medieval universities c.1100–1500.
Scholasticism proper can be thought of as the kind of theology that emerges when, in the Cathedral schools and their successors, the tools of dialectic are pressed into use to comment upon, explain, and develop the gloss and the sentences.
In the Middle Ages, monasteries conserved and copied ancient manuscripts in their scriptoria, their pharmacies stored and studied medicaments and they aided the development of agricultural techniques.
The consequence of this centralisation of knowledge was that they initially controlled both public administration and education, where the trivium led through the quadrivium to theology.
However, the dialectical dispute between Peter Abelard and William of Champeaux in the early 12th century over the methods of philosophic ontology led to a schism between the Catholic Orthodox of the School of Notre Dame in Paris and the student body, leading to the establishment of Free Schools and the concept of an autonomous University, soon copied elsewhere in Europe, and this eventually led to the Reformation which dismounted the primacy of the monasteries.
French and south German armies, under the Kings Louis VII and Conrad III respectively, marched to Jerusalem in 1147 but failed to win any major victories, launching a failed pre-emptive siege of Damascus, an independent city that would soon fall into the hands of Nur ad-Din Zangi, the main enemy of the Crusaders.
St. Bernard of Clairvaux, who in his preachings had encouraged the Second Crusade, was upset with the amount of misdirected violence and slaughter of the Jewish population of the Rhineland.
After taking Jerusalem back from the Christians, the Muslims spared civilians and for the most part left churches and shrines untouched to be able to collect ransom money from the Franks.
[5] Cyprus served as a Crusader base for many centuries and remained in Western European hands until the Ottoman Empire conquered the island from Venice in 1571.
[5] After reaching port, Richard the Lionheart promised to leave noncombatants unharmed if the city of Acre surrendered and Saladin returned his Christian prisoners, as well as the true cross and a ransom.
The treaty allowed unarmed Christian pilgrims to make pilgrimages to the Holy Land (Jerusalem), while it remained under Muslim control, as well as ensured the survival of a new Crusader kingdom based around Acre and other Levantine port cities.
Swedish and German campaigns against Russian Eastern Orthodox Christians are also sometimes considered part of the Northern Crusades.
The First Swedish Crusade is purely legendary and according to most historians today never took place as described in the legend and did not result in any ties between Finland and Sweden.
