8 stories from this century.
On 29 July 1014 the Byzantine emperor Basil II crushed the Bulgarian army in the Kleidion pass. Tradition holds he blinded his thousands of prisoners, leaving every hundredth man one eye to lead the rest home — and that Tsar Samuel collapsed and died at the sight. The story made Basil "the Bulgar-Slayer"; historians debate how much of it is true.
Read the story →The Bayeux Tapestry is a 70-metre embroidered cloth strip, approximately 50 cm tall, depicting the 1066 Norman conquest of England in 58 narrative scenes. It was almost certainly produced in southern England in the 1070s for the Norman bishop Odo of Bayeux. It has been displayed at Bayeux Cathedral or its successor museum since at least 1476. It is one of the most important surviving 11th-century European narrative artworks.
Read the story →Emperor Henry IV stood outside the gates of Canossa Castle in the northern Italian Apennines in a hairshirt, barefoot, in deep snow, for three days from 25 to 27 January 1077. He was begging Pope Gregory VII to lift the excommunication that had threatened his control of the Holy Roman Empire. The Pope eventually admitted him and lifted the ban. The political conflict — the Investiture Controversy — continued for another 45 years.
Read the story →Ibn Sina's *Canon of Medicine*, compiled at Isfahan around 1025, synthesised Greek, Roman, Persian, and Arabic medical traditions into a five-volume systematic treatise. Translated into Latin in Toledo by Gerard of Cremona around 1180, it became the standard medical-school textbook at Paris, Padua, Montpellier, and Bologna for almost five centuries. The first English translation appeared in 1930.
Read the story →The First Crusade reached Jerusalem on 7 June 1099 with approximately 12,000-15,000 surviving soldiers. The city of approximately 20,000-30,000 mostly Muslim and Jewish residents fell on 15 July 1099 after a five-week siege. The two-day massacre that followed killed an estimated 10,000-30,000 inhabitants. The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem was established within the month and lasted until 1187.
Read the story →Count Emicho of Flonheim led the unofficial 'German Crusade' of 1096 — the substantial armed band that conducted the Mainz, Worms, and Cologne massacres of Rhineland Jews. The army never reached Constantinople. King Coloman of Hungary destroyed it in a series of military engagements in late summer 1096. Emicho himself survived and returned home in disgrace.
Read the story →The Worms synagogue was first built in 1034. It was destroyed by Count Emicho's army in 1096, by the Black Death mob in 1349, and by the Nazis on Kristallnacht in 1938. It was rebuilt each time, most recently in 1961. It is the longest continuously rebuilt religious building in central Europe.
Read the story →In the spring of 1096, before the First Crusade reached Asia, an army of pilgrims spent six weeks killing the Jewish communities of the Rhine.
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