Chapter 9 State and Church in the High Middle Ages, 1000–1300

In this thirteenth-century manuscriptIn this thirteenth-century manuscript, knights of King Henry II stab Archbishop Thomas Becket in 1170 in Canterbury Cathedral, a dramatic example of church-state conflict. Becket was soon made a saint, and the spot where the murder occurred became a pilgrimage site; it is still a top tourist destination.

HIP/Art Resource, NY

Some scholars believe that Philip II received the title “Augustus” (from a Latin word meaning “to increase”) because he vastly expanded the territories of the kingdom of France. The province of Toulouse in the south became part of France as a result of the crusade against the Albigensians

The Growth of the Kingdom of France

This finely worked embroidered banner is typical of Muslim style; it incorporates Arabic lettering on the edges and includes no representation of the human form. The Almohads were a strict Muslim dynasty from North Africa that had ruled about half of Spain in the twelfth century. In 1212 King Alfonso VIII of Castile won a decisive victory over Almohad forces at Las Navas de Tolosa, and Christian holdings in Spain increased.

Almohad Banner

Institut Amatller d’Art Hispanic

Palatine Chapel at Palermo(1132–1140)Muslim craftsmen from Egypt painted the wooden ceiling of the royal chapel for King Roger of Sicily. This section shows the diverse peoples—Jews, Christians, Muslims—who lived in Palermo.

Burgerbibliothek Bern Cod. 120 II, fol. 98r

The staff, or crozier, symbolized a bishop’s spiritual authority. Receiving the staff from the emperor gave the appearance that the bishop gained his spiritual rights from the secular power. Pope Gregory VII vigorously objected to this practice.

Emperor Otto III Handing a Staff to Archbishop Adalbert of Prague (tenth century)

Bildarchiv Marburg/Art Resource, NY

Countess MatildaA staunch supporter of the reforming ideals of the papacy, Countess Matilda (ca 1046–1115) planned this dramatic meeting at her castle at Canossa in the Apennines. The arrangement of the figures—King Henry kneeling, Abbot Hugh of Cluny lecturing, and Matilda persuading— suggests contemporary understanding of the scene in which Henry received absolution. Matilda’s vast estates in northern Italy and her political contacts in Rome made her a person of considerable influence in the late eleventh century.

Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana

An engravingAn engraving (18th century) of the mass suicide of the Jews of Worms in 1096, when they were overwhelmed by Crusaders (with shields).

Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz/Art Resource, NY

Christianization of the Baltic RegionDioceses and monasteries served as the means by which pagan Baltic peoples were Christianized and brought into the framework of Latin Christian culture.

Source: Some data from R. Bartlett, The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change, 950–1350 [Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993], pp. 16 and 259