{|align=right style="width: 350px; margin: 0 0 1em 1em;" |- !style="color: #black; background-color: #f8eaba; font-size: 100%;" align="center" |Early Middle Ages |- | [[Image:Europe 814.jpg|thumb|center|340px| Charlemagne's empire at his death included modern Catalonia, France, western Germany, the Low Countries and northern Italy. ---- Charlemagne's empire (814) ---- {|width=95% | Middle East/Balkans East Roman Empire Abbasid Caliphate Bulgarian Kingdom Northern Europe Northmen Finnish Tribes Swedes and Goths Danes Eastern Europe Esthland Slavonic Tribes Kingdom of the Chazars Atelensu Kindom of the Avars | British Isles Ireland Picts Scots Welsh England Italian peninsula Duchy of Beneventum Sardinia Sicily Iberian peninsula Kingdom of Asturias Emirate of Cordova |} ]] |} The Early Middle Ages was the period of European history lasting from the 5th century to approximately 1000. The ''Early Middle Ages'' followed the decline of the Western Roman Empire and preceded the High Middle Ages (c. 1001–1300). The period saw a continuation of trends begun during late classical antiquity, including population decline, especially in urban centres, a decline of trade, and increased immigration. The period has been labelled the "Dark Ages", a characterization highlighting the relative paucity of literary and cultural output from this time, especially in Western Europe. However, the Eastern Roman Empire, or Byzantine Empire, continued to survive, and in the 7th century the Islamic caliphates conquered swaths of formerly Roman territory.

Many of these trends were reversed later in the period. In 800 the title of emperor was revived in Western Europe by Charlemagne, whose Carolingian Empire greatly affected later European social structure and history. Europe experienced a return to systematic agriculture in the form of the feudal system, which introduced such innovations as three-field planting and the heavy plow. Barbarian migration stabilized in much of Europe, though the north was greatly affected by the Viking expansion.

Periodization

The term "Early Middle Ages" is one of the three periods of the Middle Ages, the others being the High Middle Ages and the Late Middle Ages. Leonardo Bruni was the first historian to use tripartite periodization in his History of the Florentine People (1442). Flavio Biondo used a similar framework in Decades of History from the Deterioration of the Roman Empire (1439–1453). Tripartite periodization became standard after the German historian Christoph Cellarius published Universal History Divided into an Ancient, Medieval, and New Period (1683).

History

Collapse of Rome

;372 – 410 [[Image:Hunnen.jpg|thumb|left| ''Die Hunnen im Kampf mit den Alanen'' [''Tr''., The Huns in battle with the Alans] (Johann Nepomuk Geiger, 1873) ---- The Alans, an Iranian people who lived north and east of the Black Sea, were Europe's first line of defence against the Asiatic Huns. They were dislocated and settled throughout the Roman Empire]]

Starting in the 2nd century, various indicators of Roman civilization began to decline, including urbanization, seaborne commerce, and population. Only 40 percent as many Mediterranean shipwrecks have been found for the 3rd century as for the first. During the period from 150 to 400 the population of the Roman Empire is estimated to have fallen from 65 million to 50 million, a decline of more than 20 percent. Some have connected this to the Dark Ages Cold Period (300–700), when there was a decrease in global temperatures which impaired agricultural yields.

Early in the 3rd century the Germanic peoples migrated south from Scandinavia and reached the Black Sea, creating formidable confederations which opposed the local Sarmatians. In Romania and the steppes north of the Black Sea, the Goths, a Germanic people, created at least two kingdoms: Therving; and Greuthung.

The arrival of the Huns in 372–375 ended the history of these kingdoms. The Huns were a confederation of central Asian tribes who founded an empire with a Turkic-speaking aristocracy. They had mastered the difficult art of shooting composite recurve bows from horseback. The Goths sought refuge in Roman territory (376) agreeing to enter the Empire as unarmed settlers. However many bribed the Danube border guards into allowing them to bring their weapons.

The discipline and organization of a Roman legion made it a superb fighting unit. The Romans preferred infantry to cavalry because infantry could be trained to retain the formation in combat, while cavalry tended to scatter when faced with opposition. While a barbarian army could be raised and inspired by the promise of plunder, the legions required a central government and taxation to pay for salaries, constant training, equipment, and food. So the financial burden of running an empire, coupled with a decline in agricultural and economic activity, reduced the empire's taxable income and saw it struggle to maintain a professional army.

{|align=right style="margin: 0 0 1em 1em;" |- !style="color: #black; background-color: #f8eaba; font-size: 100%" align="center" colspan="2" |The Barbarians' Invasion |- | [[Image:Invasions of the Roman Empire 1.png|thumb|center|The Germanic migrations of the fifth century were triggered by the destruction of the Gothic kingdoms by the Huns in 372–375. The city of Rome was captured and looted by the Visigoths in 410 followed by the Vandals in 455 ---- {|align=centerstyle="margin: 0 0 1em 1em;" | Germanic tribes ---- Angles, Saxons Franks Goths Visigoths Ostrogoths Huns Vandals |   Roman Empire ---- Western Empire Eastern Empire |} ]] |} In the Gothic War (376–382), the Goths revolted and confronted the main Roman army in the Battle of Adrianople (378). By this time, the Roman army was mainly barbarians and soldiers recruited for a single campaign. The general decline in discipline also led to the use of smaller shields and lighter weaponry. Not wanting to share the glory, Eastern Emperor Valens ordered an attack on the Therving infantry under Fritigern without waiting for Western Emperor Gratian, who was on the way with reinforcements. While the Romans were fully engaged, the Greuthung cavalry arrived. Only one-third of the Roman army managed to escape. It was the most shattering defeat that the Romans had suffered since Cannae, according to the Roman military writer Ammianus Marcellinus. The core army of the eastern empire was destroyed, Valens was killed, and the Goths were freed to lay waste the Balkans, including the armories along the Danube. As Edward Gibbon comments, "The Romans, who so coolly and so concisely mention the acts of ''justice'' which were exercised by the legions, reserve their compassion and their eloquence for their own sufferings, when the provinces were invaded and desolated by the arms of the successful Barbarians."

The empire lacked the resources, and perhaps the will, to reconstruct the professional mobile army that had been destroyed at Adrianople, so it was forced to rely on barbarian armies to fight for it. The Eastern Roman Empire was able to buy off the Goths with tribute. The Western Roman Empire was less fortunate. Stilicho, the western empire's half-Vandal military commander, stripped the Rhine frontier of troops to fend off invasions of Italy by the Visigoths in 402–03 and by other Goths in 406–07.

Fleeing before the advance of the Huns, the Vandals, Suebi, and Alans launched an attack across the frozen Rhine near Mainz; on 31 December, 406, the frontier gave way and these tribes surged into Gaul. They were soon followed by the Burgundians and by bands of the Alamanni. In the fit of anti-barbarian hysteria which followed, Emperor Honorius had Stilicho summarily beheaded (408). Stilicho submitted his neck, "with a firmness not unworthy of the last of the Roman generals," wrote Gibbon. Honorius was left with only worthless courtiers to advise him. In 410, the Visigoths led by Alaric I captured the city of Rome and for three days there were fire and slaughter as bodies filled the streets, palaces were stripped of their valuables, and those thought to have hidden wealth were interrogated and tortured. As newly converted Christians, the Goths respected church property. But those who found sanctuary in the Vatican and in other churches were the fortunate few.

Migration Period

;400 – 700

{|align=right style="margin: 0 0 1em 1em;" |- !style="color: #black; background-color: #f8eaba; font-size: 100%" align="center" colspan="2" | Migration Period |- | |} The Goths and Vandals were only the first of many waves of invaders that flooded Western Europe. Some lived only for war and pillage and disdained Roman ways. Others admired Rome and wished to become its heirs. "A poor Roman plays the Goth, a rich Goth the Roman" said King Theodoric of the Ostrogoths.

The subjects of the Roman empire were Catholics, civilized subjects of a long-established bureaucratic empire. The Germanic peoples knew little of cities, money, or writing. They were recent converts to Arian Christianity and were thus heretics to the churchmen of the empire.

During the migrations, or ''Völkerwanderung'' (wandering of the peoples), the earlier settled population was left intact or only partially displaced. Whereas the peoples of France, Italy, and Spain continued to speak the dialects of Latin that today constitute the Romance languages, the language of the smaller Roman-era population of what is now England disappeared with barely a trace in the territories conquered by the Anglo-Saxons, although the Brittanic kingdoms of the west remained Brythonic speakers. The new peoples greatly altered established society, including law, culture, religion, and patterns of property ownership.

The ''pax Romana'' had provided safe conditions for trade and manufacture, and a unified cultural and educational milieu of far-ranging connections. As this was lost, it was replaced by the rule of local potentates, sometimes members of the established Romanized ruling elite, sometimes new lords of alien culture. In Aquitania, Gallia Narbonensis, southern Italy and Sicily, Baetica or southern Spain, and the Iberian Mediterranean coast, Roman culture lasted until the 6th or 7th centuries.

Everywhere, the gradual break-down of economic and social linkages and infrastructure resulted in increasingly localized outlooks. This breakdown was often fast and dramatic as it became unsafe to travel or carry goods over any distance; there was a consequent collapse in trade and manufacture for export. Major industries that depended on trade, such as large-scale pottery manufacture, vanished almost overnight in places like Britain. Tintagel in Cornwall, as well as several other centres, managed to obtain supplies of Mediterranean luxury goods well into the 6th century, but then lost their trading links. Administrative, educational and military infrastructure quickly vanished, and the loss of the established ''cursus honorum'' led to the collapse of the schools and to a rise of illiteracy even among the leadership. The careers of Cassiodorus (died c. 585) at the beginning of this period and of Alcuin of York (died 804) at its close were founded alike on their valued literacy.

For the formerly Roman area, there was another 20 percent decline in population between 400 and 600, or a one-third decline for 150-600. In the 8th century, the volume of trade reached its lowest level since the Bronze Age. The very small number of shipwrecks found that dated from the 8th century supports this (which represents less than 2 percent of the number of shipwrecks dated from the 1st century). There were also reforestation and a retreat of agriculture that centred around 500. This phenomenon coincided with a period of rapid cooling, according to tree ring data. The Romans had practised two-field agriculture, with a crop grown in one field and the other left fallow and ploughed under to eliminate weeds. With the gradual break-up of the institutions of the empire, owners were unable to stop their slaves from running away and the plantation system broke down. Systematic agriculture largely disappeared and yields declined to subsistence level.

For almost a thousand years, Rome was the most politically important, richest and largest city in Europe. Around AD 100, it had a population of about 450,000. Its population declined to a mere 20,000 during the Early Middle Ages, reducing the sprawling city to groups of inhabited buildings interspersed among large areas of ruins and vegetation.

Smallpox did not definitively enter Western Europe until about 581 when Bishop Gregory of Tours provided an eyewitness account that describes the characteristic findings of smallpox. Waves of epidemics wiped out large rural populations. Most of the details about the epidemics are lost, probably due to the scarcity of surviving written records.

It is estimated that the Plague of Justinian killed as many as 100 million people across the world. Some historians such as Josiah C. Russell (1958) have suggested a total European population loss of 50 to 60 percent between 541 and 700. After 750, major epidemic diseases did not appear again in Europe until the Black Death of the 14th century.

Byzantine Empire

{|align=right style="margin: 0 0 1em 1em;" |- | |- !style="color: #black; background-color: #f8eaba; font-size: 100%" align="center" colspan="2" | Byzantine Empire |- | [[Image:Justinien 527-565.svg|thumb|center|300px|Byzantium under the Justinian dynasty Under Emperor Justinian (r. 527-65), the Byzantines were able to reestablish Roman rule in Italy and most of North Africa ---- Justinian's conquests Eastern Empire ]] |- | |} The death of Theodosius I in 395 was followed by the division of the empire between his two sons. The Western Roman Empire disintegrated into a mosaic of warring Germanic kingdoms in the 5th century, making the Eastern Roman Empire in Constantinople the legal successor to the classical Roman Empire. After Greek replaced Latin as the official language of the Empire, historians refer to the empire as "Byzantine." Westerners would gradually begin to refer to it as "Greek" rather than "Roman." The inhabitants, however, always called themselves ''Romaioi'', or Romans.

The Eastern Roman Empire aimed at retaining control of the trade routes between Europe and the Orient, which made the Empire the richest polity in Europe. Making use of their sophisticated warfare and superior diplomacy, the Byzantines managed to fend off assaults by the migrating barbarians. Their dreams of subduing the Western potentates briefly materialized during the reign of Justinian I in 527–565. Not only did Justinian restore some western territories to the Roman Empire, but he also codified Roman law (with his codification remaining in force in many areas of Europe until the 19th century) and built the largest and the most technically advanced edifice of the Early Middle Ages, the Hagia Sophia. A pandemic, the Plague of Justinian, however, marred Justinian's reign, infecting the Emperor, killing perhaps 40% of the people in Constantinople, and contributing to Europe's early medieval population decline.

Justinian's successors Maurice and Heraclius had to confront invasions of the Avar and Slavic tribes. After the devastations by the Slavs and the Avars, large areas of the Balkans became depopulated. In 626 Constantinople, by far the largest city of early medieval Europe, withstood a combined siege by Avars and Persians. Within several decades, Heraclius completed a holy war against the Persians by taking their capital and having a Sassanid monarch assassinated. Yet Heraclius lived to see his spectacular success undone by the Muslim conquests conquest of Syria, three Palaestina provinces, Egypt, and North Africa which was considerably facilitated by religious disunity and the proliferation of heretical movements (notably Monophysitism and Nestorianism) in the areas converted to Islam.

Although Heraclius's successors managed to salvage Constantinople from two Arab sieges (in 674–77 and 717), the empire of the 8th and early 9th century was rocked by the great Iconoclastic Controversy, punctuated by dynastic struggles between various factions at court. The Bulgar and Slavic tribes profited from these disorders and invaded Illyria, Thrace and even Greece (which they called Morea). After the decisive victory at Ongala in 680 the armies of the Bulgars and Slavs advanced to the south of the Balkan mountains, defeating again the Byzantines who were then forced to sign a humiliating peace treaty which acknowledged the establishment of the First Bulgarian Empire on the borders of the Empire.

To counter these threats, a new system of administration was introduced. The regional civil and military administration were combined in the hands of a general, or strategos. A theme, which formerly denoted a subdivision of the Byzantine army, came to refer to a region governed by a strategos. The reform led to the emergence of great landed families which controlled the regional military and often pressed their claims to the throne (see Bardas Phocas and Bardas Sklerus for characteristic examples).

By the early 8th century, notwithstanding the shrinking territory of the empire, Constantinople remained the largest and the wealthiest city of the entire world, comparable only to Sassanid Ctesiphon, and later Abassid Baghdad. The population of the imperial capital fluctuated between 300,000 and 400,000 as the emperors undertook measures to restrain its growth. The only other large Christian cities were Rome (50,000) and Salonika (30,000). Even before the 8th century was out, the Farmer's Law signalled the resurrection of agricultural technologies in the Roman Empire. As the 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica noted, "the technological base of Byzantine society was more advanced than that of contemporary western Europe: iron tools could be found in the villages; water mills dotted the landscape; and field-sown beans provided a diet rich in protein".

The ascension of the Macedonian dynasty in 867 marked the end of the period of political and religious turmoil and introduced a new golden age of the empire. While the talented generals such as Nicephorus Phocas expanded the frontiers, the Macedonian emperors (such as Leo the Wise and Constantine VII) presided over the cultural flowering in Constantinople, known as the Macedonian Renaissance. The enlightened Macedonian rulers scorned the rulers of Western Europe as illiterate barbarians and maintained a nominal claim to rule over the West. Although this fiction had been exploded with the coronation of Charlemagne in Rome (800), the Byzantine rulers did not treat their Western counterparts as equals. Generally, they had little interest in the political and economical developments in the barbarian (from their point of view) West.

Against this economic background, the culture and the imperial traditions of the Eastern Roman Empire attracted its northern neighbours — Slavs, Bulgars, and Khazars — to Constantinople, in search of either pillage or enlightenment. The movement of the Germanic tribes to the south triggered the great migration of the Slavs, who occupied the vacated territories. In the 7th century, they moved westward to the Elbe, southward to the Danube and eastward to the Dnieper. By the 9th century, the Slavs had expanded into sparsely inhabited territories to the south and east from these natural frontiers, peacefully assimilating the indigenous Illyrian and Finno-Ugric populations.

Rise of Islam

;632–750

From the 7th century Byzantine history was greatly affected by the rise of Islam and the Caliphates. Muslim Arabs first invaded historically Roman territory under Abū Bakr, first Caliph of the Rashidun Caliphate, who entered Roman Syria and Roman Mesopotamia. Under Umar, the second Caliph, the Muslims decisively conquered Syria and Mesopotamia, as well as Roman Palestine, Roman Egypt, and parts of Asia Minor and Roman North Africa. This trend continued under Umar's successors and under the Umayyad Caliphate, which conquered the rest of Mediterranean North Africa and most of the Iberian Peninsula. Over the next centuries Muslim forces were able to take further European territory, including Cyprus, Malta, Crete, and Sicily and parts of southern Italy.

The Muslim conquest of Hispania began when the Moors (mostly Berbers with some Arabs) invaded the Christian Visigothic kingdom of Iberia in the year 711, under their Berber leader Tariq ibn Ziyad. They landed at Gibraltar on 30 April and worked their way northward. Tariq's forces were joined the next year by those of his superior, Musa ibn Nusair. During the eight-year campaign most of the Iberian Peninsula was brought under Muslim rule — save for small areas in the northwest (Asturias) and largely Basque regions in the Pyrenees. This territory, under the Arab name Al-Andalus, became part of the expanding Umayyad empire.

The unsuccessful second siege of Constantinople (717) weakened the Umayyad dynasty and reduced their prestige. After their success in overrunning Iberia, the conquerors moved northeast across the Pyrenees, but were defeated by the Frankish leader Charles Martel at the Battle of Poitiers in 732. The Umayyads were overthrown in 750 by the 'Abbāsids and most of the Umayyad clan massacred.

A surviving Umayyad prince, Abd-ar-rahman I, escaped to Spain and founded a new Umayyad dynasty in the Emirate of Cordoba, (756). Charles Martel's son, Pippin the Short retook Narbonne, and his grandson Charlemagne established the Marca Hispanica across the Pyrenees in part of what today is Catalonia, reconquering Girona in 785 and Barcelona in 801. The Umayyids in Spain proclaimed themselves caliphs in 929.

Resurgence of the Latin West

;700–850

{|align=right style="yellow: 0 0 1em 1em;" |- !style="color: #black; background-color: #f8eaba; font-size: 100%;" align="center" | Resurgence of the West |- |width=305px style="text-align:center;"| Western Europe began to improve ca. 700. |- | |} Conditions in Western Europe began to improve after 700 as Europe experienced an agricultural boom that would continue until at least 1100. A study of limestone deposited in the Mediterranean seabed concludes that there was a substantial increase in solar radiation received between 600 and 900. The first signs of Europe's recovery on the battlefield were the defence of Constantinople in 717 and the victory of the Franks over the Arabs at the Battle of Poitiers in 732.

Between the 5th and 8th centuries, a political and social infrastructure developed across the lands of the former empire, based upon powerful regional noble families, and the newly established kingdoms of the Ostrogoths in Italy, Visigoths in Spain and Portugal, Franks and Burgundians in Gaul and western Germany. These lands remained Christian, and their Arian conquerors were converted (Visigoths and Lombards) or conquered (Ostrogoths and Vandals). The Franks converted directly from paganism to Catholic Christianity under Clovis I.

The interaction between the culture of the newcomers, their warband loyalties, the remnants of classical culture, and Christian influences, produced a new model for society, based in part on feudal obligations. The centralized administrative systems of the Romans did not withstand the changes, and the institutional support for chattel slavery largely disappeared. The Anglo-Saxons in England also started to convert from heathenism with the arrival of Christian missionaries around the year 600.

Italy

The Lombards, who first entered Italy in 568 under Alboin, carved out a state in the north, with its capital at Pavia. At first, they were unable to conquer the Exarchate of Ravenna, the ''Ducatus Romanus'', and Calabria and Apulia. The next two hundred years were occupied in trying to conquer these territories from the Byzantine Empire.

The Lombard state was truly barbarian in custom compared with the earlier Germanic states of Western Europe. It was highly decentralized at first, with the territorial dukes having practical sovereignty in their duchies, especially in the southern duchies of Spoleto and Benevento. For a decade following the death of Cleph in 575, the Lombards did not even elect a king; this period is called the Rule of the Dukes. The first written legal code was composed in poor Latin in 643: the ''Edictum Rothari''. It was primarily the codification of the oral legal tradition of the people.

The Lombard state was well-organized and stabilized by the end of the long reign of Liutprand (717–744), but its collapse was sudden. Unsupported by the dukes, King Desiderius was defeated and forced to surrender his kingdom to Charlemagne in 774. The Lombard kingdom ended and a period of Frankish rule was initiated. The Frankish king Pepin the Short had, by the Donation of Pepin, given the pope the "Papal States" and the territory north of that swath of papally-governed land was ruled primarily by Lombard and Frankish vassals of the Holy Roman Emperor until the rise of the city-states in the 11th and 12th centuries.

In the south, a period of anarchy began. The duchy of Benevento maintained its sovereignty in the face of the pretensions of both the Western and Eastern Empires. In the 9th century, the Muslims conquered Sicily and began settling in the peninsula. The coastal cities on the Tyrrhenian Sea departed from Byzantine allegiance. Various states owing various nominal allegiances fought constantly over territory until events came to a head in the early 11th century with the coming of the Normans, who conquered the whole of the south by the end of the century.

British Isles

{|align=right style="margin: 0 0 1em 1em;" |- !style="color: #black; background-color: #f8eaba; font-size: 100%;" align="center" | Book of Kells |- |width=305px style="text-align:center;"| The Book of Kells is a famous Early Middle Ages artwork. |- | |}

In the mid-5th century, mercenary tribes from modern Germany, Holland, and Denmark began to raid the wealthy independent Sub-Roman Province of Britannia. Traditionally, two Jutish chieftains named Hengest and Horsa were promised land by the powerful British king Vortigern in exchange for routing the warlike Pict tribe. According to the ''Anglo-Saxon Chronicle'', after they defeated the Picts, "They sent to Angeln and called on them to send more forces, and to tell people about the worthlessness of the Britons and the merits of their land." This marked the beginning of decades of invasion and conquest of southern and central Britain, by such Germanic peoples as the Jutes, Angles, and Saxons. However the Brythonic populations of Wales, Dumnonia and Hen Ogledd were able to hold back the incursions and maintain their independent language and traditions as recounted in the world famous legends of King Arthur dating from the 6th century.

The Anglo-Saxons eventually established several kingdoms of differing longevity and significance. King Alfred the Great (871–899) of Wessex led Anglo-Saxon resistance to the invading Danish forces. The unification of England was completed in 926 when Northumbria was annexed by King Athelstan, a grandson of Alfred and set the Cornish border in 936.

It is claimed 50 percent of England's original Celtic inhabitants were killed off however it is just as plausible, and historically justifiable, that most emigrated to found the independendent Kingdom of Brittany on the continent which maintained close cultural ties with Devon and Cornwall into the later medieval period.

Frankish Empire

{|align=right style="margin: 0 0 1em 1em;" |- | [[File:Charlemagne and Pope Adrian I.jpg|thumb|center| Charlemagne and Pope Adrian I.]] |- !style="color: #black; background-color: #f8eaba; font-size: 100%" align="center" colspan="2" |Charlemagne's Coronation |- | [[Image:Sacre de Charlemagne.jpg|thumb|center| ''Coronation of Charlemagne'', Grandes Chroniques de France, Jean Fouquet, Tours, ca 1455-1460 (Second Book of Charlemagne) ---- On 25 December of the year 800, St. Peter's in Rome, Charlemagne was crowned emperor by Pope Leo III. ]] |} The Merovingians established themselves in the power vacuum of the former Roman provinces in Gaul, and Chlodwig I following his victory over the Alemanni at the Battle of Tolbiac (496) converted to Christianity, laying the foundation of the Frankish Empire, the dominant state of medieval Western Christendom.

Starting with the Frankish realms at the beginning of the 9th century, Charlemagne united much of modern day France, western Germany and northern Italy into the Carolingian Empire. Scholarship and Classical learning flourished under Charlemagne leading to what 20th historians called the "Carolingian Renaissance".

The 840s saw renewed disorder, with the break-up of the Frankish Empire and the beginning of a new cycle of barbarian raids, at first by the Vikings and later by the Magyars.

Feudalism

Around 800, there was a return to systematic agriculture in the form of the open field, or strip, system. A manor would have several fields, each subdivided into strips of land. This was considered to be the amount of land an ox could plough before taking a rest, according to one theory. Another possibility is that the holdings were originally rectangular and were split into strips because of the way land was inherited. In the idealized form of the system, each family got thirty such strips of land. The three-field system of crop rotation was first developed in the 9th century: wheat or rye was planted in one field, the second field had a nitrogen-fixing crop (barley, oats, peas, or beans), and third was fallow.

Compared to the earlier two-field system, a three-field system allows for significantly more land to be put under cultivation. Even more important, the system allows for two harvests a year, reducing the risk that a single crop failure will lead to famine. Three-field agriculture creates a surplus of oats that can be used to feed horses. Because the system required a major rearrangement of real estate and the social order, it took until the 11th century before it came into general use. The heavy wheeled plough was introduced in the late 10th century. It required greater animal power and promoted the use of teams of oxen. Illuminated manuscripts depict two-wheeled ploughs with both a mouldboard, or curved metal ploughshare, and a coulter, a vertical blade in front of the ploughshare. The Romans had used light, wheelless ploughs with flat iron shares that often proved unequal to the heavy soils of northern Europe.

The return to systemic agriculture coincided with the introduction of a new social system called feudalism. This system featured a hierarchy of reciprocal obligations. Each man was bound to serve his superior in return for the latter's protection. This made for confusion of territorial sovereignty since allegiances were subject to change over time, and were sometimes mutually contradictory. Feudalism allowed the state to provide a degree of public safety despite the continued absence of bureaucracy and written records. Even land ownership disputes were decided based solely on oral testimony. Territoriality was reduced to a network of personal allegiances.

Viking Age

;793–1066

{|align=right style="margin: 0 0 1em 1em;" |- !style="color: #black; background-color: #f8eaba; font-size: 100%" align="center" colspan="2" |The Viking Expansion |- | [[Image:Viking Expansion.svg|thumb|center| Scandinavian settlements and raiding territory ---- 8th century homeland 9th century expansion 10th century expansion 11th century expansion ---- Viking raiding regions ]] |} The Viking Age spans the period between AD 793 and 1066 in Scandinavia and Britain, following the Germanic Iron Age (and the Vendel Age in Sweden). During this period, the Vikings, Scandinavian warriors and traders, raided and explored most parts of Europe, south-western Asia, northern Africa and north-eastern North America.

With the means of travel (longships and open water), their desire for goods led Scandinavian traders to explore and develop extensive trading partnerships in new territories. Some of the most important trading ports during the period include both existing and ancient cities such as Aarhus, Ribe, Hedeby, Vineta, Truso, Kaupang, Birka, Bordeaux, York, Dublin and Aldeigjuborg.

Viking raiding expeditions were separate from and coexisted with regular trading expeditions. A people with the tradition of raiding their neighbours when their honour had been impugned might easily fall to raiding foreign peoples who impugned their honour. Apart from exploring Europe by way of its oceans and rivers with the aid of their advanced navigational skills and extending their trading routes across vast parts of the continent, they also engaged in warfare and looted and enslaved numerous Christian communities of Medieval Europe for centuries, contributing to the development of feudal systems in Europe.

Eastern Europe

; 600–1000

Kievan Rus'

Before the rise of the Kievan Rus, the eastern frontier of Europe had been dominated by the Khazars, a Turkic people who had gained independence from the Turkic Khaganate by the 7th century. Khazaria was a multiethnic commercial state which derived its well-being from control of river trade between Europe and the Orient. The Khazars also exacted tribute from the Alani, Magyars, various Slavic tribes, the Goths and Greeks of Crimea. Through a network of Jewish itinerant merchants, or Radhanites, they were in contact with the trade emporiums of India and Spain.

{|align=right style="width: 222px; margin: 0 0 1em 1em;" |- !style="color: #black; background-color: #f8eaba; font-size: 100%;" align="center" | Magyar tribes |- | [[File:Kalandozasok.jpg|thumb|center| Magyar campaigns in the 10th century. ---- Magyar region ---- Most European nations were praying for mercy: "Sagittis hungarorum libera nos Domine" - "Lord save us from the arrows of Hungarians"]] |} Once they found themselves confronted by Arab expansionism, the Khazars pragmatically allied themselves with Constantinople and clashed with the Caliphate. Despite initial setbacks, they managed to recover Derbent and eventually penetrated as far south as Caucasian Iberia, Caucasian Albania and Armenia. In doing so, they effectively blocked the northward expansion of Islam into Eastern Europe several decades before Charles Martel achieved the same in Western Europe.

In the 7th century, the northern littoral of the Black Sea was hit with a fresh wave of nomadic attacks, led by the Bulgars, who established a powerful khanate of Great Bulgaria under the leadership of Kubrat. The Khazars managed to oust the Bulgars from Southern Ukraine into the middle reaches of the Volga (Volga Bulgaria) and into the lower reaches of the Danube (Danube Bulgaria, or the First Bulgarian Empire). The Danube Bulgars were quickly Slavicized and, despite constant campaigning against Constantinople, selected the Eastern Roman form of Christianity. Through the efforts of two local missionaries, Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius, the Bulgarian alphabet came into being in Bulgaria's capital Preslav and a vernacular dialect, now known as Old Bulgarian or Old Church Slavonic, was established as a language of books and liturgy.

To the north from the Byzantine periphery, the first attested Slavic polity was Great Moravia, which emerged under the aegis of the Frankish Empire in the early 9th century. Moravia was a stage for confrontation between the Christian missionaries from Constantinople and from Rome. Although the West Slavs eventually acknowledged the Roman ecclesiastical authority, the clergy of Constantinople succeeded in converting into the Eastern Christinity faith one of the largest state of contemporary Europe, Kievan Rus, towards 990. Led by a Varangian dynasty, the Kievan Rus controlled the routes connecting Northern Europe to Byzantium and the Orient. Great Moravia was ultimately overrun by the Magyars, who invaded the Pannonian Basin around 896.

{|align=right style="width: 222px; margin: 0 0 1em 1em;" |- !style="color: #black; background-color: #f8eaba; font-size: 100%;" align="center" |Persecution of Rus' |- | [[Image:Persecution of Russ by the Byzantine army John Skylitzes.jpg|thumb|center| Svyatoslav's warriors pursued by Byzantine fighters. (Miniature from John Skylitzes) ---- A Rus' attack, instigated by the Byzantines, led to the collapse of the Bulgarian state and the occupation of much of the country by the Rus'. An ensuing direct military confrontation between the Rus' and Byzantium ended with a Byzantine victory. The Rus' withdrew and eastern Bulgaria was incorporated into the Byzantine Empire. ]] |} Both before and after the Christianization, the Rus staged predatory raids against Constantinople, some of which resulted in the trade treaties which benefitted both sides. The importance of Russo-Byzantine relations is highlighted by the fact that Vladimir I of Kiev was the only foreigner who married a Byzantine princess of the Macedonian dynasty, a singular honour which many rulers of Western Europe sought in vain. The military campaigns of Vladimir's father, Svyatoslav I, had crushed the statehood of the Khazars as well as inflicted a wound to the First Bulgarian Empire.

Bulgarian Empire

In 681 the Bulgars founded a powerful state which played a major role in Europe and specifically in South Eastern Europe until its fall under Ottoman rule in 1423. In 718 the Bulgars decisively defeated the Arabs near Constantinople, and their ruler Khan Tervel became known as "The Saviour of Europe". Bulgaria effectively stopped the barbarian tribes (Pechenegs, Khazars) from migrating further to the west and in 806 destroyed the Avar Khanate. Under Simeon I (893–927), the state was the largest in Europe, threatening the existence of Byzantium.

After the adoption of Christianity in 864, Bulgaria became the cultural and spiritual centre of the Eastern Orthodox Slavic world. The Bulgarian alphabet also know as the Cyrillic alphabet was invented by the Bulgarian scholar Clement of Ohrid in 885. Literature, art and architecture were thriving with the establishment of the Preslav and Ohrid Literary Schools, and the Preslav Ceramics School. In 927 the Bulgarian Orthodox Church was the first European national Church to gain independence with its own Patriarch.

Transmission of learning

With the end of the Western Roman Empire and urban centres in decline, literacy and learning decreased in the West. Education became the preserve of monasteries and cathedrals. A "Renaissance" of classical education would appear in Carolingian Empire in the 8th century. In the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium), learning (in the sense of formal education involving literature) was maintained at a higher level than in the West. Further to the east, Islam invaded and conquered many of the Eastern Patriarchates, and there were some advances in science, philosophy, and other intellectual endeavors in a "golden age" of learning.

Classical education

The classical education system, which would persist for hundreds of years, emphasized grammar, Latin, Greek, and rhetoric. Pupils read and reread classic works and wrote essays imitating their style. By the 4th century, this education system was Christianized. In ''De Doctrina Christiana'' (started 396, completed 426), Augustine explained how classical education fits into the Christian worldview. Christianity was a religion of the book, so Christians must be literate. Tertullian was more sceptical of the value of classical learning, asking "What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?" But even he did not object to Christian enrolment in classical schools. Plato's Academy and other remaining classical schools were closed by the emperor Justinian in AD 529 and non-Christian philosophy was partially banned. Charles Freeman argues that "The conversion of the Emperor Constantine to Christianity in 312AD.. ..turned Rome from the relatively open, tolerant and pluralistic civilisation of the Hellenistic world, towards a culture that was based on the rule of fixed authority". From that date some education was required and enforced to conform with sanctioned church doctrine, except in private and hidden circumstances.

{|align=right style="margin: 0 0 1em 1em;" |- !style="color: #black; background-color: #f8eaba; font-size: 100%" align="center" colspan="2" | Christian monasticism |- |[[Image:Silos-Claustro.jpg|thumb|center| Abbey of Santo Domingo de Silos ---- In the Early Middle Ages, cultural life was concentrated at monasteries. ]] |}

Decline in the West

De-urbanization reduced the scope of education and by the 6th century teaching and learning moved to monastic and cathedral schools, with the centre of education being the study of biblical texts Education of the laity survived modestly in Italy, Spain, and the southern part of Gaul, where Roman influences were most long-lasting. However, in the 7th century, learning began to emerge in Ireland and the Celtic lands, where Latin was a foreign language and Latin texts were eagerly studied and taught.

Science

In the ancient world, Greek was the primary language of science. Advanced scientific research and teaching was mainly carried on in the Hellenistic side of the Roman empire, and in Greek. Late Roman attempts to translate Greek writings into Latin had limited success. As the knowledge of Greek declined, the Latin West found itself cut off from some of its Greek philosophical and scientific roots. For a time, Latin-speakers who wanted to learn about science had access to only a couple of books by Boethius (c. 470–524) that summarized Greek handbooks by Nicomachus of Gerasa. Saint Isidore of Seville produced a Latin encyclopedia in 630. Private libraries would have existed, and monasteries would also keep various kinds of texts.

Most of the leading scholars that we know of in the early centuries were clergymen for whom the study of nature was a small part of their interest. The study of nature was pursued more for practical reasons than as an abstract inquiry: the need to care for the sick led to the study of medicine and of ancient texts on drugs, the need for monks to determine the proper time to pray led them to study the motion of the stars, the need to compute the date of Easter led them to study and teach rudimentary mathematics and the motions of the Sun and Moon. Modern readers may find it disconcerting that sometimes the same works discuss both the technical details of natural phenomena and their symbolic significance.

Carolingian Renaissance

Around 800, there was renewed interest in Classical Antiquity as part of the Carolingian Renaissance. Charles the Great carried out a reform in education. The English monk Alcuin of York elaborated a project of scholarly development aimed at resuscitating classical knowledge by establishing programmes of study based upon the seven liberal arts: the ''trivium'', or literary education (grammar, rhetoric and dialectic) and the ''quadrivium'', or scientific education (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music). From the year 787 on, decrees began to circulate recommending, in the whole empire, the restoration of old schools and the founding of new ones.

Institutionally, these new schools were either under the responsibility of a monastery (monastic schools), a cathedral or a noble court. The real significance of these measures would only be felt centuries later. The teaching of dialectic (a discipline that corresponds to today's logic) was responsible for the rebirth of the interest in speculative inquiry; from this interest would follow the rise of the Scholastic tradition of Christian philosophy. In the 12th and 13th century, many of those schools founded under the auspices of Charles the Great, especially cathedral schools, would become universities.

Byzantium's golden age

{|align=right style="margin: 0 0 1em 1em;" |- !style="color: #black; background-color: #f8eaba; font-size: 100%" align="center" colspan="2" |Macedonian's Byzantium |- |[[Image:Paris psaulter gr139 fol1v.jpg|thumb|center| Miniature from the Paris Psalter ---- Tenth-century Byzantine experienced a wide-scale cultural revival. ]] |} Byzantium's great intellectual achievement was the Corpus Juris Civilis ("Body of Civil Law"), a massive compilation of Roman law made under Justinian (r. 528-65). The work includes a section called the ''Digesta'' which abstracts the principles of Roman law in such a way that they can be applied to any situation. The level of literacy was considerably higher in the Byzantine Empire than in the Latin West. Elementary education was much more widely available, sometimes even in the countryside. Secondary schools still taught the ''Iliad'' and other classics.

As for higher education, the Neoplatonic Academy in Athens was closed in 526 due to its paganism. There was also a school in Alexandria which remained open until the Arab conquest (640). The University of Constantinople, originally founded by Emperor Theodosius II (425), seems to have dissolved around this time. It was refounded by Emperor Michael III in 849. Higher education in this period focused on rhetoric, although Aristotle's logic was covered in simple outline. Under the Macedonian dynasty (867–1025), Byzantium enjoyed a golden age and a revival of classical learning. There was little original research, but many lexicons, anthologies, encyclopaedias, and commentaries.

Islamic learning

In the course of the 11th century, Islam's scientific knowledge began to reach Western Europe. The works of Euclid and Archimedes, lost in the West, were translated from Arabic to Latin in Spain. The modern Hindu-Arabic numerals, including a notation for zero, were developed by Hindu mathematicians in the 5th and 6th centuries. Muslim mathematicians learned of it in the 7th century and added a notation for decimal fractions in the 9th and 10th centuries. Around 1000, Gerbert of Aurillac (later Pope Sylvester II) made an abacus with counters engraved with Hindu-Arabic numbers. A treatise by Al-Khwārizmī on how to perform calculations with these numerals was translated into Latin in Spain in the 12th century.

Christianity West and East

{|align=right style="width: 222px; margin: 0 0 1em 1em;" |- !style="color: #black; background-color: #f8eaba; font-size: 100%;" align="center" | Medieval Christians |- |[[Image:Sacr Gelasianum 131v 132.jpg|thumb|center| Sacramentarium Gelasianum. ---- Frontispiece of Incipit from the Vatican manuscript]] |- |[[File:St Boniface - Baptising-Martyrdom - Sacramentary of Fulda - 11Century.jpg|thumb|center| St Boniface - Baptism and Martyrdom. ]] |} From the early Christians, early medieval Christians inherited a church united by major creeds, a stable Biblical canon, and a well-developed philosophical tradition. The history of medieval Christianity traces Christianity during the Middle Ages - the period after the fall of the Roman Empire until the Protestant Reformation, considered the start of the modern era.

During the early Middle Ages, the divide between Eastern and Western Christianity widened, paving the way for the East-West Schism in the 11th century. In the West, the power of the Bishop of Rome expanded. In 607, Boniface III became the first Bishop of Rome to use the title Pope. Pope Gregory the Great used his office as a temporal power, expanded Rome's missionary efforts to the British Isles, and laid the foundations for the expansion of monastic orders. Roman church traditions and practices gradually replaced local variants, including Celtic Christianity in Great Britain and Ireland. In the East, the conquests of Islam reduced the power of the Greek-speaking patriarchates. Various barbarian tribes went from raiding and pillaging the island to settling and invading. They were entirely pagan, having never been part of the Empire, and although they experienced Christian influence from the surrounding peoples, such as those who were converted by the mission of St. Augustine sent by Pope Gregory the Great.

Christianization of the West

The Catholic Church, the only centralized institution to survive the fall of the Western Roman Empire intact, was the sole unifying cultural influence in the West, selectively preserving some Latin learning, maintaining the art of writing, and preserving a centralized administration through its network of bishops ordained in succession. The Early Middle Ages are characterized by the urban control of bishops and the territorial control exercised by dukes and counts. The rise of urban communes marked the beginning of the High Middle Ages.

The Christianization of Germanic tribes began in the 4th century with the Goths, and continued throughout the Early Middle Ages, in the 6th to 7th centuries led by the Hiberno-Scottish mission, replaced in the eighth to 9th centuries by the Anglo-Saxon mission, with Anglo-Saxons like Alcuin playing an important role in the Carolingian renaissance.Saint Boniface, the Apostle of the Germans, propagated Christianity in the Frankish Empire during the 8th century. He helped shape Western Christianity, and many of the dioceses he proposed remain until today. After his martyrdom, he was quickly hailed as a saint. By AD 1000, even Iceland became Christian, leaving only more remote parts of Europe (Scandinavia, the Baltic and Finno-Ugric lands) to be Christianized during the High Middle Ages.

Holy Roman Empire

;10th century

{|align=right style="margin: 0 0 1em 1em;" |- !style="color: #black; background-color: #f8eaba; font-size: 100%" align="center" colspan="2" |The Holy Roman Empire |- |[[Image:HRR 10Jh.jpg|thumb|center| Otto I, the Holy Roman Empire included Germany, northern Italy, Austria, and the Netherlands ---- Imperial region Borders (Solid); Otto I (927) Borders (Dots); Konrad II (1032) Theodisc kingdom (Solid) Saxon Eastern March (Slashed) Kingdom of Italy Burgundy / Bohemia / Moravia ---- Other regions Byzantium Papal States Republic of Venice Saracens / Moors / Arabs Not Specified ]] |}

Listless and often ill, Carolingian Emperor Charles the Fat provoked an uprising led by his nephew Arnulf of Carinthia which resulted in the division of the empire into the kingdoms of France, Germany, and (northern) Italy (887). Taking advantage of the weakness of the German government, the Magyars had established themselves in the Alföld, or Hungarian grasslands, and began raiding across Germany, Italy, and even France. The German nobles elected Henry the Fowler, duke of Saxony, their king at a Reichstag, or national assembly, in Fritzlar in 919. Henry's power was only marginally greater than that of the other leaders of the stem duchies, which were the feudal expression of the former German tribes.

Henry's son King Otto I (r. 936–973) was able to defeat a revolt of the dukes supported by French King Louis IV (939). In 951, Otto marched into Italy and married the widowed Queen Adelaide, named himself king of the Lombards, and received homage from Berengar of Ivrea, king of Italy (r. 950-52). Otto named his relatives the new leaders of the stem duchies, but this approach didn't completely solve the problem of disloyalty. His son Liudolf, duke of Swabia, revolted and welcomed the Magyars into Germany (953). At Lechfeld, near Augsburg in Bavaria, Otto caught up the Magyars while they were enjoying a razzia and achieved a signal victory (955). After this, the Magyars ceased to be a nation that lived on plunder and their leaders created a Christian kingdom called Hungary (1000). Otto, his prestige greatly enhanced, marched into Italy again and was crowned emperor (''imperator augustus'') by Pope John XII in Rome (962).

[[File:Otto I begegnet Papst Johannes XII.jpg|thumb|left|159px|

Founding of the Holy Roman Empire

Otto I meets Pope John XII]] Historians count this event as the founding of the Holy Roman Empire, although the term was not used until much later. The Ottonian state is also considered the first ''Reich,'' or German Empire. Otto used the imperial title without attaching it to any territory. He and later emperors thought of themselves as part of a continuous line of emperors that begins with Charlemagne. (Several of these "emperors" were simply local Italian magnates who bullied the pope into crowning them.) Otto deposed John XII for conspiring with Berengar against him and named Pope Leo VIII to replace him (963). Berengar was captured and taken to Germany. John was able to reverse the deposition after Otto left, but died in the arms of his mistress soon afterwards.

Besides founding the German Empire, Otto's achievements include the creation of the "Ottonian church system," in which the clergy (the only literate section of the population) assumed the duties of an imperial civil service. He raised the papacy out of the muck of Rome's local gangster politics, assured that the position was competently filled, and gave it a dignity that allowed it to assume leadership of an international church.

Europe in AD 1000

;AD 1000 [[Image:Gokstadskipet1.jpg|thumb|right| The Gokstad ship Viking Ship Museum Oslo, Norway ---- A 9th-century Viking longship excavated in 1882.]] Speculation that the world would end in the year 1000 was confined to a few uneasy French monks. Ordinary clerks used regnal years, i.e. the 4th year of the reign of Robert II (the Pious) of France. The use of the modern "anno domini" system of dating was confined to the Venerable Bede and other chroniclers of universal history.

Europe remained a backwater compared to Islam, with its vast network of caravan trade, or China, at this time the world's most populous empire under the Song Dynasty. Constantinople had a population of about 300,000, but Rome had a mere 35,000 and Paris 20,000. In contrast, Islam had over a dozen major cities stretching from Córdoba, Spain, at this time the world's largest city with 450,000 inhabitants, to central Asia. The Vikings had a trade network in northern Europe, including a route connecting the Baltic to Constantinople through Russia. But it was a modest affair compared to the caravan routes that connected the great Muslim cities of Cordoba, Alexandria, Cairo, Baghdad, Basra, and Mecca.

With nearly the entire nation freshly ravaged by the Vikings, England was in a desperate state. The long-suffering English later responded with a massacre of Danish settlers in 1002, leading to a round of reprisals and finally to Danish rule (1013), though England regained independence shortly after. But Christianization made rapid progress and proved itself the long-term solution to the problem of barbarian raiding. The territories of Scandinavia were soon to be fully Christianized Kingdoms: Denmark in the 10th century, Norway in the 11th, and Sweden, the country with the least raiding activity, in the 12th. Kievan Rus, recently converted to Orthodox Christianity, flourished as the largest state in Europe. Iceland and Hungary were both declared Christian about AD 1000.

[[Image:St Michaels Church Hildesheim.jpg|thumb|left|Ottonian architecture St. Michael's Church, Hildesheim, 1010s ---- Ottonian architecture draws its inspiration from Carolingian and Byzantine architecture. ]] In Europe, a formalized institution of marriage was established. North of Italy, where masonry construction was never extinguished, stone construction was replacing timber in important structures. Deforestation of the densely wooded continent was under way. The 10th century marked a return of urban life, with the Italian cities doubling in population. London, abandoned for many centuries, was again England's main economic centre by 1000. By 1000, Bruges and Ghent held regular trade fairs behind castle walls, a tentative return of economic life to western Europe.

In the culture of Europe, several features surfaced soon after 1000 that mark the end of the Early Middle Ages: the rise of the medieval communes, the reawakening of city life, and the appearance of the burgher class, the founding of the first universities, the rediscovery of Roman law, and the beginnings of vernacular literature.

In 1000, the papacy was firmly under the control of German Emperor Otto III, or "emperor of the world" as he styled himself. But later church reforms enhanced its independence and prestige: the Cluniac movement, the building of the first great Transalpine stone cathedrals and the collation of the mass of accumulated decretals into a formulated canon law.

Middle East

Rise of Islam

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from: 622 till: 632 color:era text:Muhammad from: 632 till: 634 color:age text:Abu Bakr from: 634 till: 644 color:era text:Umar ibn al-Khattab from: 644 till: 656 color:age text:Uthman ibn Affan from: 656 till: 661 color:era text:Ali ibn Abi Talib from: 661 till: 666 color:age text:Muawiyah I :::''Consult particular article for details''

{|align=right style="margin: 0 0 1em 1em;" |- | |- !style="color: #black; background-color: #f8eaba; font-size: 100%" align="center" colspan="2" |Rise of Islam |- | [[File:Arabische Rijk.jpg|thumb|center| Arab expansion in the seventh century. ''Area I'' : Abu Bakr ''Area II'' : Omar ''Area III'' : Uthman III ''Area IV'' : Ali ]] |- !style="color: #black; background-color: #f8eaba; font-size: 100%;" align="center" | Muslim conquests |- | |- | [[File:Age-of-caliphs.png|thumb|center|The Islamic expansion of the 7th and 8th centuries ]] |- !style="color: #black; background-color: #f8eaba; font-size: 100%" align="center" colspan="2" | Al-Andalus |- | thumb|center|The 10th-century [[Mezquita|Grand Mosque of Cordoba (Andalusian city, Córdoba, Spain) ---- The site of the Grand Mosque was originally a pagan temple, then a Visigothic Christian church, before the Umayyad Moors at first converted the building into a mosque and then built a new mosque on the site. ]] |} The rise of Islam begins around the time Muhammad and his followers took flight, the Hijra, to the city of Medina. Muhammad spent his last ten years in a series of battles to conquer the Arabian region. From 622 to 632, Muhammad as the leader of a Muslim community in Medina was engaged in a state of war with the Meccans. In the proceeding decades, the area of Basra was conquered by the Muslims. During the reign of Umar, the Muslim army found it a suitable place to construct a base. Later the area was settled and a mosque was erected. Upon the conquest of Madyan, it was settled by Muslims. However, soon the environment was considered harsh and resettlement of settlers went to Kufa. During Umar's rule, he defeated the rebellion of several Arab tribes in a successful campaign, unifying the entire Arabian peninsula and giving it stability. Under Uthman's leadership, the empire expanded into Fars in 650, some areas of Khorasan in 651 and the conquest of Armenia was begun in the 640s. In this time, the Islamic empire extended over the whole Sassanid Persian Empire and more than two thirds of the Eastern Roman Empire. The First Fitna, or the First Islamic Civil War, lasted for the entirety of Ali ibn Abi Talib's reign. After the recorded peace treaty between with Hassan ibn Ali and the suppression of early Kharijites' disturbances, Muawiyah I accedes to the position of Caliph.

Islamic expansion

The Muslim conquests of the Eastern Roman Empire and Arab wars occurred between 634 and 750. Starting in 633, Muslims conquered Iraq. The Muslim conquest of Syria would begin in 634 and would be complete by 638. The Muslim conquest of Egypt started in 639. Before the Muslim invasion of Egypt began, the Eastern Roman Empire Empire had already lost the Levant and its Arab ally, the Ghassanid Kingdom, to the Muslims. The Muslims would bring Alexandria under control and fall of Egypt would be complete by 642. Between 647 and 709, Muslims swept across North Africa and establish their authority over that region.

The Transoxiana region was conquered by Qutayba ibn Muslim between 706 and 715 and loosely held by the Umayyads from 715 to 738. This conquest was consolidated by Nasr ibn Sayyar between 738 and 740. It was under the Umayyads from 740-748; and under the Abbasids after 748. Sindh, attacked in 664, would be subjugated by 712. Sindh became the easternmost province of the Umayyad. The Umayyad conquest of Hispania (Visigothic Spain) would begin in 711 and end by 718. The Moors, under Al-Samh ibn Malik, sweeping up the Iberian peninsula, by 719 overran Septimania and the area would fall under their full control in 720. With the Islamic conquest of Persia, the Muslim subjugation of the Caucasus would take place between 711 and 750. The end of the sudden Islamic Caliphate expansion ended around this time. The final Islamic dominion eroded the areas of the Iron Age Roman Empire in the Middle East and controlled strategic areas of the Mediterranean.

At the end of the 8th century, the former Western Roman Empire was decentralized and overwhelmingly rural. The Islamic conquest and rule of Sicily and Malta was a process which started in the 9th century. Islamic rule over Sicily was effective from 902, and the complete rule of the island lasted from 965 until 1061. The Islamic presence on the Italian Peninsula was ephemeral and limited mostly to semi-permanent soldier camps.

Caliphs and empire

The Abbasid Caliphate, ruled by the Abbasid dynasty of caliphs, was the third of the Islamic caliphates. Under the Abbasids, the Islamic Golden Age philosophers, scientists and engineers of the Islamic world contributed enormously to technology, both by preserving earlier traditions and by adding their own inventions and innovations. Scientific and intellectual achievements blossomed in the period.

The Abbasids built their capital in Baghdad after replacing the Umayyad caliphs from all but the Iberian peninsula. The influence held by Muslim merchants over African-Arabian and Arabian-Asian trade routes was tremendous. As a result, Islamic civilization grew and expanded on the basis of its merchant economy, in contrast to their Christian, Indian and Chinese peers who built societies from an agricultural landholding nobility.

The Abbasids flourished for two centuries, but slowly went into decline with the rise to power of the Turkish army it had created, the Mamluks. Within 150 years of gaining control of Persia, the caliphs were forced to cede power to local dynastic emirs who only nominally acknowledged their authority. After the Abbasids lost their military dominance, the Samanids (or Samanid Empire) rose up in Central Asia. The Sunni Islam empire was a Tajik state and had a Zoroastrian theocratic nobility. It was the next native Persian dynasty after the collapse of the Sassanid Persian empire caused by the Arab conquest.

European timelines

Beginning years

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bar:People color:era from:400 till:430 text:Augustine from:466 till:511 text:Clovis I from:527 till:565 text:Justinian I from:570 till:632 text:Muhammad bar:  color:era from:433 till:493 text:Odoacer from:540 till:604 text:Gregory I bar:Events color:age from:496 till:496 text:Tolbiac from:602 till:629 text:Roman-Persian War from:535 till:552 text:Gothic War from:674 till:678 text:Constantinople Siege ;Dates

410 — Visigoths under Alaric I sack Rome

430 — Death of Saint Augustine

476 — Odoacer deposes Romulus Augustus

496 — Battle of Tolbiac, Clovis I converts to Catholicism

507 — Battle of Vouillé

527–565 — Justinian I

535–552 — Gothic Wars

541–542 — Plague of Justinian in Constantinople

547 — death of Benedict of Nursia

c. 570 — birth of Muhammad

590–604 Pope Gregory I

597 — death of Columba

602–629 — Last great Roman-Persian War

615 — death of Columbanus

626 — Joint Persian-Avar-Slav Siege of Constantinople

627 — Byzantine Emperor Heraclius invites the Serbs to settle in the Balkans

632 — death of Muhammad

636 — death of Isidore of Seville

674–678 — First Arab siege of Constantinople

681 — First Bulgarian Empire established

Ending years

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bar:People color:era from:714 till:721 text:Ardo from:768 till:814 text:Alfred the Great from:871 till:899 text:Charlemagne from:912 till:973 text:Otto I bar:Events color:age from:711 till:718 text:Al-Andalus bar:  color:age from:732 till:732 text:Poitiers ;Dates

7th century — Khazar empire established

711–718 — Umayyad conquest of Hispania

717 — Second Arab siege of Constantinople

721 — death of Ardo, last king of the Visigoths

730 — Byzantine Iconoclasm

732 — Battle of Poitiers

735 — death of Bede, British historian

746 — Blood court at Cannstatt

751 — Pepin the Short founds the Carolingian dynasty

754 — death of Saint Boniface

768–814 — Charlemagne

778 — Battle of Roncevaux Pass

782 — Bloody Verdict of Verden

793 — first Viking raids

796–804 — Alcuin initiates the Carolingian Renaissance

815 — Byzantine Iconoclasm

843 — Treaty of Verdun

862 — Rurikid Dynasty established

871–899 — Alfred the Great

872–930 — Harald I of Norway

882 — Kievan Rus' established

911 — Treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte (Normandy)

955 — Battle of Lechfeld

962 — Otto I crowned Holy Roman Emperor

969 — Kievan Rus' subjugates Khazars

987–996 — Hugh Capet

988 — Christianization of Kievan Rus'

991 — Battle of Maldon

See also

;Medieval culture: Medieval demography, English Medieval fashion, Early Medieval literature, Early medieval European dress ;Sassanid Empire: Indo-Sassanid (Early Medieval Persia and India) ;Other: Turkic expansion

Further reading

''Cambridge Economic History of Europe'', vol. I 1966. Michael M. Postan, et al., editors.

Norman F. Cantor, ''The Medieval World 300 to 1300''

Georges Duby, 1974. ''The Early Growth of the European Economy: Warriors and Peasants from the Seventh to the Twelfth Centuries'' (New York: Cornell University Press) Howard B. Clark, translator.

Georges Duby, editor, 1988. ''A History of Private Life II: Revelations of the Medieval World'' (Harvard University Press)

Heinrich Fichtenau, (1957) 1978. ''The Carolingian Empire'' (University of Toronto) Peter Munz, translator.

Charles Freeman, 2003. ''The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason'' (London: William Heinemann)

Richard Hodges, 1982. ''Dark Age Economics: The Origins of Towns and Trade AD 600-1000'' (New York: St Martin's Press)

David Knowles, (1962) 1988. ''The Evolution of Medieval Thought''

Richard Krautheimer, 1980. ''Rome: Profile of a City 312-1308'' (Princeton University Press)

Robin Lane Fox, 1986. ''Pagans and Christians'' (New York: Knopf)

John Marenbon (1983) 1988.''Early Medieval Philosophy (480-1150): An Introduction'' (London: Routledge)

Rosamond McKittrick, 1983 ''The Frankish Church Under the Carolingians'' (London: Longmans, Green)

Karl Frederick Morrison, 1969. ''Tradition and Authority in the Western Church, 300-1140'' (Princeton University Press)

Pierre Riché, (1978) 1988. ''Daily Life in the Age of Charlemagne''

Richard Southern, 1953. ''The Making of the Middle Ages'' (Yale University Press)

Early Medieval History page, Clio History Journal, Dickson College, Australian Capital Territory.

Glimpses of the dark ages: Or, Sketches of the social condition of Europe, from the fifth to the twelfth century. (1846). New-York: Leavitt, Trow & company

References

;Citations

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name	Terry Carter
birth name	John E. DeCoste
birth date	December 16, 1928
birth place	Brooklyn, New York, U.S.
occupation	Actor
yearsactive	1955–2001
spouse	Anna DeCoste (1964-1990)Beate Glatved DeCoste (1991-2006)
website	http://www.terry-carter.net/ }}

Terry Carter (born December 16, 1928) is an American actor and filmmaker who is known for his roles as "Sgt. Joe Broadhurst", on the seven year hit TV series ''McCloud'' and as "Colonel Tigh" on the original ''Battlestar Galactica''.

Biography

Early life

Carter was born in Brooklyn, New York as John E. DeCoste. His mother, Mercedes, was a native of the Dominican Republic, and his father, William DeCoste, was of Argentinian and African-American descent and operated a radio repair business. Carter graduated from the elite Stuyvesant High School in New York City in 1946. He attended Hunter College, St. John's University Law School, Boston University, and U.C.L.A. and earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Northeastern University in 1983.

Acting career

Carter gained theatre experience in several productions on the Broadway and off-Broadway stage. His Broadway credits include playing the male lead opposite Eartha Kitt in the play ''Mrs. Patterson'' and performing the title role in the musical extravaganza ''Kwamina''.

From 1965 to 1968, Carter worked as a newscaster for WBZ-TV in Boston becoming the world's first black TV news anchor-reporter. During his three-year stint, he also served as New England television's first opening-night movie and theatre critic.

Terry Carter also played roles in numerous TV series, specials, and theatrical films. He was featured as the only black actor to have a leading role opposite Vic Morrow in "Combat" (Episode: "The Long Wait"-1965.) He was a regular cast member in ''The Phil Silvers Show'' (also known as ''The Sergeant Bilko Show''). He played the part of Police Officer Tuttle in the 1974 children's film Benji. He is best known internationally for his co-starring role as "Colonel Tigh" in the popular science-fiction TV series ''Battlestar Galactica''. He was originally cast as "Lieutenant Boomer", but was cut following a roller skating accident that fractured his ankle. After replacing Carter with Herb Jefferson, Jr., producer Glen A. Larson instead offered Terry Carter the role of "Colonel Tigh", second in command of the ragtag fleet of starships. Terry Carter also starred as Dennis Weaver's partner, "Sergeant Joe Broadhurst" in the popular detective series ''McCloud'' for seven years. He played opposite Pam Grier in the motion picture ''Foxy Brown''. He played the role of CIA chief "Texas Slim" in ''Hamilton'', a multinational action-adventure Swedish film (1999). Most recently, Carter had a recurring role in ''Hotel Caesar'', Norway's most popular soap opera, as "Solomon Tefari", an Ethiopian businessman and father of one of the main characters.

Production career

In 1975, Carter started a small Los Angeles corporation for which he produced and directed more than 100 industrial and educational presentations on film and videotape for virtually every agency of the federal government.

Carter is president of Council for Positive Images, Inc., a non-profit organization he formed in 1979, dedicated to enhancing intercultural and interethnic understanding through audiovisual communication. Under the Council’s auspices, Carter has produced and directed award-winning dramatic and documentary programs for presentation on PBS and distribution worldwide.

He currently resides in both Oslo, Norway and New York City.

Selected past projects

Katherine Dunham Technique – Library of Congress A 2-½ hour presentation of the dance technique of anthropologist-choreographer Katherine Dunham. Funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, this video documentary is designed to serve as a study guide for dance teachers, scholars and dancers, as part of the Katherine Dunham Legacy Project of the Library of Congress.

A Duke Named Ellington - WNET-TV (PBS), ''American Masters'' Series (1988) This two-hour musical documentary features "the Duke" himself, reminiscing and performing, as soloist and with his illustrious orchestra. ''A Duke Named Ellington'' offers a retrospective of Ellington's half-century career, focusing primarily on his music and method, his artistic accomplishments and his role as a trailblazer in the development of modern music. ''A Duke Named Ellington'' had its world premiere on the PBS American Masters series, to critical acclaim:

"A masterly portrait of a master." (Politiken, Denmark)

"in a class by itself” … “a triumph of film and tape research… it is achingly good...(Los Angeles Times)

"can't be beat... a superb two-parter... the perfect example of just how an in-depth profile of an artist should be done..." (New York Daily News)

" ... much more than a documentary about the Duke... an essential testimony about the music of our century." (Jazz Magazine, France).

''A Duke Named Ellington'' was selected as the official US entry in international television festivals in countries such as the People's Republic of China, France, Spain, Italy, Canada, Brazil, Poland, and Bulgaria. ''A Duke Named Ellington'' has been telecast in most countries of Europe, as well as in Japan, Australia, and South Africa. The program has been awarded the CINE Golden Eagle and the Golden Antenna. A Duke Named Ellington was nominated for an Emmy Award as "Outstanding Informational Special".

In 2007, Terry Carter released ''A Duke Named Ellington'', the documentary he produced for PBS American Masters in 1988, as a DVD: A Duke Named Ellington DVD.

Once Upon A Vision - KET-TV (PBS) (1991) This one-hour television documentary reveals the little-known history of Berea, Kentucky, a unique 19th Century inter-racial colony founded in the midst of the slave-holding South. Before the Civil War, a group of zealous abolitionists and former slaves began building a community based on unconditional racial and gender equality and participatory democracy. For more than half a century, withstanding intense persecution from slavers, pro-slavery politicians, and the Ku Klux Klan, these poor white and black settlers lived, and died for, their vision of multi-racial democracy. This program has become part of the secondary-school American History curriculum in Kentucky. Hosted and narrated by historian and author Alex Haley.

JazzMasters - TV2/Denmark (1988) This series of 13 television portraits features some of the most outstanding musical artists in the world of jazz. An international co-production, JazzMasters was the first program series ever commissioned by TV2/Denmark. The JazzMasters series has been telecast in Scandinavia, France, Poland, Bulgaria and Japan. The series features programs about Chet Baker, Kenny Drew, Dexter Gordon, Johnny Griffin, Bobby Hutcherson, Carmen McRae, Palle Mikkelborg, James Moody, Clark Terry, Randy Weston, Niels Henning Ørsted-Pedersen, Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter.

K*I*D*S - KCET-TV (PBS), US Department of Education (1984) This dramatic television miniseries was designed for public broadcasting to promote interracial and interethnic understanding among adolescents. K*I*D*S is the story of a multi-racial group of teenagers struggling to cope with some of the adult-sized conflicts confronting youth in America today. Endorsed by the National Education Association, K*I*D*S, accompanied by a teachers' guide, was also distributed on videocassette to secondary schools throughout the nation. K*I*D*S received an Emmy award in Los Angeles as "Best Series for Children and Youth".

Works In Progress:

Katherine Dunham: Dancing With Life - National Endowment for the Arts This 90-minute documentary program designed for PBS is about the extraordinary life and work of the African-American anthropologist-choreographer-dancer, a pioneer internationally heralded as one of the most influential creative forces in American dance theatre.

Awards

Emmy Award, Los Angeles, Best Series for Children and Youth, 1985, for K*I*D*S

Emmy Nomination, Best Informational Special, 1989, for A Duke Named Ellington

CINE Golden Eagle, 1989, for A Duke Named Ellington

Golden Antenna, 1989, for A Duke Named Ellington

Award for Excellence, L. A. Film Review Board, 1977, for Child Abuse & Neglect Series

References

External links

Terry Carter - official site

Category:1928 births Category:African American actors Category:American film actors Category:American television actors Category:Boston, Massachusetts television anchors Category:Living people Category:Northeastern University alumni Category:People from Brooklyn Category:American people of Dominican Republic descent Category:American people of Argentine descent Category:Stuyvesant High School alumni

de:Terry Carter fr:Terry Carter

David Munrow (12 August 194215 May 1976) was a British musician and early music historian.

Biography and career

Munrow was born in Birmingham and was the son of Birmingham University dance teacher Hilda Norman Munrow and Albert Davis 'Dave' Munrow, a Birmingham University lecturer and physical education instructor who wrote a book on the subject. David Munrow attended King Edward's School, Birmingham until 1960. He excelled academically.

In 1960 David Munrow went to Peru, teaching English under the British Council Overseas Voluntary Scheme. He returned with Bolivian flutes and other obscure instruments. Studying English at Pembroke College, Cambridge, he noticed a crumhorn on a friend's wall and threw himself into independent study that climaxed in his book ''Instruments of the Middle Ages and Renaissance'' (1976). From his starting position as a pianist, singer and bassoonist he taught himself many old instruments. He joined the Royal Shakespeare Company as a bassoonist but soon played instruments of Shakespeare's time. Although he displayed talent on a wide variety of instruments, he had a particular lasting influence as a recorder player. His English style of discreet, controlled expression contrasts to the greater tonal flexibility of the Continental style espoused by the Dutch recorder player Frans Brüggen and others.

By 1967 he was a lecturer in early music at the University of Leicester and married to Gillian Reid. With Christopher Hogwood he formed the Early Music Consort, each of whose core members was an expert in his or her own right. Sometimes other professional musicians were employed when necessary, such as Nigel North and Robert Spencer, both highly regarded lutenists. Beginning in 1968, he toured the world, unearthing obscure instruments in every country he visited. He commissioned reconstructions of instruments related to the cornett and rackett from, amongst others, Otto Steinkopf. Two television programmes made him a household name: ''The Six Wives of Henry VIII'' (1970) and ''Elizabeth R'' (1971).

Munrow's two contributions to film music were, fittingly, for visionary British directors: Ken Russell's ''The Devils'' (1971) and ''Zardoz'' (1974), written and directed by John Boorman. The latter included arrangements of Beethoven's Symphony No. 7 for early music instruments.

He was a man of manic energy. In his relatively short life he released over 50 albums, some of which are now available on CD. As well as his recordings with the Early Music Consort, he recorded with Michael Morrow's Musica Reservata, Alfred Deller and the King's Singers. He recorded Bach and Monteverdi many times but his widest influence was in the Medieval and Renaissance periods. His 3-record set with the Early Music Consort ''The Art of the Netherlands'' issued in 1976 (EMI SLS5049), was particularly influential in popularising the genre .

On BBC Radio 3 he presented ''Pied Piper'', a multi-ethnic, centuries-spanning spread of music from Monteverdi to the Electric Light Orchestra rock group. Munrow also had dealings notably with The Young Tradition and Shirley and Dolly Collins.

Apart from his regular radio slot and other programmes, he also appeared on television, most notably in a series entitled ''Ancestral Voices'' (BBC2) in a London studio, and ''Early Musical Instruments'' (ITV) filmed on location at Ordsall Hall, Salford. By such means, he introduced many people to a whole new world of audio experience. Sadly, these specific programmes were transmitted posthumously.

His personal interests were travel, sailing, jazz and antiques. He was also a linguist. In addition, he wrote some articles on music, especially for his own recordings.

Munrow committed suicide in 1976; the deaths of his father and father-in-law, to whom he dedicated his last book, are thought to have contributed to his death by hanging.

Legacy

Arguably, David Munrow did more than anyone else in the second half of the 20th century to popularise early music in Great Britain, despite a career lasting barely ten years. Indeed, this fact was underscored when the committee selected one of his recordings for the Voyager Golden Record, which was sent on the Voyager space probes on an interstellar journey.

David Munrow left behind him not only his recordings, but a large collection of musical instruments. The Munrow Archive at the Royal Academy of Music holds a collection of his letters, papers, TV scripts, scores, musical compositions and books. The collection is accessible to the public. The online catalogue of the British Library Sound Archive reveals his many recording entries, and those of many other noted personages.

Information about the life and work of David Munrow can be found in obituaries about him in 1976 (particularly the OUP journal ''Early Music''), and in the following sources: a detailed piece in the ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' by Christopher Hogwood; The ''New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians''; ''The Art of David Munrow'', a record set with a biography by Arthur Johnson, the producer of ''Pied Piper'' and on the old vinyl sleeve of the ''Renaissance Suite''.

Selected discography

Recordings with Musica Reservata

*''French Court Music of the Thirteenth Century'' (1967)

*''Music from the 100 Years War'' (1968)

*''Music from the Decameron'' (1969)

*''16th Century Italian Dance Music'' (1970)

*''Music from the Court of Burgundy'' (1971)

Recordings with The Early Music Consort, directed by David Munrow

*''Ecco la primavera - Florentine Music of the 14th Cent'' (1969)

*''Music of the Crusades'' (1970)

*''The Triumphs of Maximilian I'' (1970)

*''Music for Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain'' (1972)

*''The Art of Courtly Love'' (1973)

*''Praetorius - Dances and Motets'' (1973)

*''Music of Guillaume Dufay: Missa "Se La Face Ay Pale"'' (1974)

*''Instruments of the Middle Ages and Renaissance'' (1976)

*''Monteverdi's Contemporaries'' (1976)

*''Music of the Gothic Era'' (1976)

*''Greensleeves to a Ground'' (1976)

*''Festival of Early Music - Music from 14th Century Florence, Music of the Crusades & The Triumphs of Maximilian'' (1976)

*''Henry Purcell: Birthday Odes for Queen Mary'' (1976)

*''The Art of the Netherlands'' (1976)

The Young Tradition and Early Music Consort

*''Galleries'' (1968)

The Round Table & David Munrow

*''Spinning Wheel'' (1969)

*"Saturday Gigue/Scarborough Fair" (single) (1969)

Shirley and Dolly Collins & the Early Music Consort of London

*''Anthems in Eden'' (1969)

Royal Shakespeare Wind Band, directed by Guy Wolfenden

*''Music From Shakespeare's Time'' (1969)

David Munrow, Gillian Reid, Christopher Hogwood

*''Pleasures of the court - Festival dance music by Susato & Morley'' (1971)

David Munrow, Oliver Brookes, Robert Spencer, Christopher Hogwood

*''The amorous flute'' (1973)

David Munrow solo or in various combinations

*''Telemann: Suite for Recorder and Orchestra, Concerti for Recorder and Orchestra by Sammartini and Handel''

*''The Art of the Recorder'' (1975)

*''The Art of David Munrow'' (1971 - 1976)

Music for radio, television and cinema

*''The Six Wives of Henry VIII'' (BBC TV) (1970)

*''Elizabeth R'' (BBC TV) (1970)

*''The Devils'' (directed by Ken Russell) (1971)

*''Zardoz'' (directed by John Boorman) (1973)

*''Tolkien's The Hobbit'' (BBC radio) (1973)

*''La Course en tête'' Documentary on Belgium Cyclist Eddie Merckx. Soundtrack released as ''Renaissance Suite'' (1974)

Awards and recognitions

Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance:

David Munrow (conductor) & the Early Music Consort of London for ''The Art of Courtly Love'' (1977)

See also

Jordi Savall

Philip Pickett

Similar early music performers with an interest in renaissance and medieval music.

References

External links

Website dedicated to David Munrow, with biography

Discography

Podcast interview with Munrow's recording producer and other resources.

Category:1942 births Category:1976 deaths Category:Academics of the University of Leicester Category:BBC Radio 3 presenters Category:British classical bassoonists Category:British multi-instrumentalists Category:British performers of early music Category:Classical musicians who committed suicide Category:Conductors (music) who committed suicide Category:English conductors (music) Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Performers of early music Category:People from Birmingham, West Midlands Category:Suicides by hanging in England

de:David Munrow it:David Munrow ja:デイヴィッド・マンロウ

type	monarch
name	Richard the Lionheart
succession	King of England
moretext	(more..)
reign	6 July 1189 – 6 April 1199
coronation	3 September 1189
predecessor	Henry II
regent	Eleanor of Aquitaine; William Longchamp ''(Third Crusade)''
successor	John
spouse	Berengaria of Navarre
issue	Philip of Cognac
house	House of Plantagenet
father	Henry II of England
mother	Eleanor of Aquitaine
birth date	September 08, 1157
birth place	Beaumont Palace, Oxford
death date	April 06, 1199
death place	Châlus, Limousin
place of burial	Fontevraud Abbey, France }}

Richard I (8 September 1157 – 6 April 1199) was King of England from 6 July 1189 until his death. He also ruled as Duke of Normandy, Duke of Aquitaine, Duke of Gascony, Lord of Cyprus, Count of Anjou, Count of Maine, Count of Nantes, and Overlord of Brittany at various times during the same period. He was known as , or Richard the Lionheart, even before his accession, because of his reputation as a great military leader and warrior. The Saracens called him ''Melek-Ric'' or ''Malek al-Inkitar'' - King of England.

By the age of sixteen Richard was commanding his own army, putting down rebellions in Poitou against his father, King Henry II.

Although speaking only French and spending very little time in England (he lived in his Duchy of Aquitaine in the southwest of France, preferring to use his kingdom as a source of revenue to support his armies), he was seen as a pious hero by his subjects. He remains one of the very few Kings of England remembered by his epithet, rather than regnal number, and is an enduring, iconic figure in England.

Early life and accession in Aquitaine

Family and youth

Richard was born on 8 September 1157, probably at Beaumont Palace. He was a younger brother of William IX, Count of Poitiers; Henry the Young King; and Matilda, Duchess of Saxony. As the third legitimate son of King Henry II of England, he was not expected to ascend the throne. He was also an elder brother of Geoffrey II, Duke of Brittany; Leonora of England, Queen of Castile; Joan of England; and John, Count of Mortain, who succeeded him as king. Richard was the younger maternal half-brother of Marie de Champagne and Alix of France. Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine's oldest son, William IX, Count of Poitiers, died in 1156, before Richard's birth. Richard is often depicted as having been the favourite son of his mother Eleanor of Aquitaine. His father, Henry, was Norman-Angevin and great-grandson of William the Conqueror. The closest English relation in Richard's family tree was Edith, wife of Henry I of England. Contemporary historian Ralph of Diceto traced his family's lineage through Edith to the Anglo-Saxon kings of England and Alfred the Great, and from there linked them to Noah and Woden. According to Angevin legend, there was even infernal blood in the family.

While his father visited his lands from Scotland to France, Richard probably stayed in England. He was wet-nursed by a woman called Hodierna, and when he became king he gave her a generous pension. Little is known about Richard's education. Although born in Oxford, Richard could speak no English; he was an educated man who composed poetry and wrote in Limousin (lenga d'òc) and also in French. He was said to be very attractive; his hair was between red and blond, and he was light-eyed with a pale complexion. He was apparently of above average height, according to Clifford Brewer he was but his remains have been lost since at least the French Revolution, and his exact height is unknown. From an early age he showed significant political and military ability, becoming noted for his chivalry and courage as he fought to control the rebellious nobles of his own territory. His elder brother Henry was crowned king of England during his father's lifetime.

The practice of marriage alliances was common among medieval royalty: it allowed families to stake claims of succession on each other's lands, and led to political alliances and peace treaties. In March 1159 it was arranged that Richard would marry one of the daughters of Ramon Berenguer IV, Count of Barcelona; however, these arrangements failed, and the marriage never took place. Richard's older brother Henry was married to Margaret, daughter of Louis VII of France and heiress to the French throne, on 2 November 1160. Despite this alliance between the Plantagenets and the Capetians, the dynasty on the French throne, the two houses were sometimes in conflict. In 1168, the intercession of Pope Alexander III was necessary to secure a truce between them. Henry II had conquered Brittany and taken control of Gisors and the Vexin, which had been part of Margaret’s dowry. Early in the 1160s there had been suggestions Richard should marry Alys (Alice), second daughter of Louis VII; because of the rivalry between the kings of England and France, Louis obstructed the marriage. A peace treaty was secured in January 1169 and Richard’s betrothal to Alys was confirmed. Henry II planned to divide his and his wife's territories between their sons, of which there were three at the time; Henry would become King of England and have control of Anjou, Maine, and Normandy, while Richard would inherit Aquitaine from his mother and become Count of Poitiers, and Geoffrey would get Brittany through marriage alliance with Constance, the heiress to the region. At the ceremony where Richard's betrothal was confirmed, he paid homage to the King of France for Aquitaine, thus securing ties of vassalage between the two.

After he fell seriously ill in 1170 Henry II put in place his plan to divide his kingdom, although he would retain overall authority of his sons and their territories. In 1171 Richard left for Aquitaine with his mother and Henry II gave him the duchy of Aquitaine at the request of Eleanor. Richard and his mother embarked on a tour of Aquitaine in 1171 in an attempt to placate the locals. Together they laid the foundation stone of St Augustine's Monastery in Limoges. In June 1172 Richard was formally recognised as the Duke of Aquitaine when he was granted the lance and banner emblems of his office; the ceremony took place in Poitiers and was repeated in Limoges where he wore the ring of St Valerie, who was the personification of Aquitaine.

Revolt against Henry II

According to Ralph of Coggeshall Henry the Young King was the instigator of rebellion against Henry II; he wanted to reign independently over at least part of the territory his father had promised him, and to break away from his dependence on Henry II, who controlled the purse strings. Jean Flori, a historian who specialises in the medieval period, believes that Eleanor manipulated her sons to revolt against their father. Henry the Young King abandoned his father and left for the French court seeking the protection of Louis VII; he was soon followed by his younger brothers, Richard and Geoffrey, while the 5-year-old John remained with Henry II. Louis gave his support to the three sons and even knighted Richard, tying them together through vassalage. The rebellion was described by Jordan Fantosme, a contemporary poet, as a "war without love".

The three brothers made an oath at the French court that they would not make terms with Henry II without the consent of Louis VII and the French barons. With the support of Louis, Henry the Young King attracted the support of many barons through promises of land and money; one such baron was Philip, Count of Flanders, who was promised £1,000 and several castles. The brothers had supporters in England, ready to rise up; led by Robert de Beaumont, 3rd Earl of Leicester, the rebellion in England from Hugh Bigod, 1st Earl of Norfolk, Hugh de Kevelioc, 5th Earl of Chester, and William I of Scotland. The alliance was initially successful, and by July 1173 they were besieging Aumale, Neuf-Marché, and Verneuil and Hugh de Kevelioc had captured Dol in Brittany. Richard went to Poitou and raised the barons who were loyal to himself and his mother in rebellion against his father. Eleanor was captured, so Richard was left to lead his campaign against Henry II's supporters in Aquitaine on his own. He marched to take La Rochelle, but was rejected by the inhabitants; he withdrew to the city of Saintes which he established as a base of operations.

In the meantime Henry II had raised a very expensive army of over 20,000 mercenaries with which to face the rebellion. He marched on Verneuil, and Louis retreated from his forces. The army proceeded to recapture Dol and subdued Brittany. At this point Henry II made an offer of peace to his sons; on the advice of Louis the offer was refused. Henry II's forces took Saintes by surprise and captured much of its garrison, although Richard was able to escape with a small group of soldiers. He took refuge in Château de Taillebourg for the rest of the war. Henry the Young King and the Count of Flanders planned to land in England to assist the rebellion led by the Earl of Leicester. Anticipating this, Henry II returned to England with 500 soldiers and his prisoners (including Eleanor and his sons' wives and fiancées), but on his arrival found out that the rebellion had already collapsed. William I of Scotland and Hugh Bigod were captured on 13 July and 25 July respectively. Henry II returned to France where he raised the siege of Rouen, where Louis VII had been joined by Henry the Young King after he had abandoned his plan to invade England. Louis was defeated and a peace treaty was signed in September 1174, with the Treaty of Montlouis.

When Henry II and Louis VII made a truce on 8 September 1174, Richard was specifically excluded. Abandoned by Louis and wary of facing his father's army in battle, Richard went to Henry II's court at Poitiers on 23 September and begged for forgiveness, weeping and falling at the feet of Henry, who gave Richard the kiss of peace. Several days later, Richard's brothers joined him in seeking reconciliation with their father. The terms the three brothers accepted were less generous than those they had been offered earlier in the conflict (when Richard was offered four castles in Aquitaine and half of the income from the duchy) and Richard was given control of two castles in Poitou and half the income of Aquitaine; Henry the Young King was given two castles in Normandy; and Geoffrey was permitted half of Brittany. Eleanor would remain Henry II's prisoner until his death, partly as insurance for Richard's good behaviour.

Under Henry II's reign

After the conclusion of the war began the process of pacifying the provinces that had rebelled against Henry II. He travelled to Anjou for this purpose and Geoffrey dealt with Brittany. In January 1175 Richard was dispatched to Aquitaine to punish the barons who had fought for him. According to Roger of Howden's chronicle of Henry's reign, most of the castles belonging to rebels were to be returned to the state they were in 15 days before the outbreak of war, while others were to be razed. Given that by this time it was common for castles to be built in stone, and that many barons had expanded or refortified their castles, this was not an easy task. Gillingham notes that Roger of Howden's chronicle is the main source for Richard's activities in this period, although he notes that it records the successes of the campaign; it was on this campaign that Richard acquired the name "Richard the Lionheart". The first such success was the siege of Castillon-sur-Agen. The castle was "notoriously strong", but in a two-month siege the defenders were battered into submission by Richard's siege engines.

Henry seemed unwilling to entrust any of his sons with resources that could be used against him. It was suspected that Henry had appropriated Princess Alys, Richard's betrothed, the daughter of Louis VII of France by his second wife, as his mistress. This made a marriage between Richard and Alys technically impossible in the eyes of the Church, but Henry prevaricated: Alys's dowry, the Vexin, was valuable. Richard was discouraged from renouncing Alys because she was the sister of King Philip II of France, a close ally.

After his failure to overthrow his father Richard concentrated on putting down internal revolts by the nobles of Aquitaine, especially the territory of Gascony. The increasing cruelty of his reign led to a major revolt there in 1179. Hoping to dethrone Richard, the rebels sought the help of his brothers Henry and Geoffrey. The turning point came in the Charente Valley in spring 1179. The fortress of Taillebourg was well defended and was considered impregnable. The castle was surrounded by a cliff on three sides and a town on the fourth side with a three-layer wall. Richard first destroyed and looted the farms and lands surrounding the fortress, leaving its defenders no reinforcements or lines of retreat. The garrison sallied out of the castle and attacked Richard; he was able to subdue the army and then followed the defenders inside the open gates, where he easily took over the castle in two days. Richard’s victory at Taillebourg deterred many barons thinking of rebelling and forced them to declare their loyalty to him. It also won Richard a reputation as a skilled military commander.

In 1181–1182 Richard faced a revolt over the succession to the county of Angoulême. His opponents turned to Philip II of France for support, and the fighting spread through the Limousin and Périgord. Richard was accused of numerous cruelties against his subjects, including rape. However, with support from his father and from the Young King, Richard succeeded in bringing the Viscount Aimar V of Limoges and Count Elie of Périgord to terms.

After Richard subdued his rebellious barons he again challenged his father for the throne. From 1180 to 1183 the tension between Henry and Richard grew, as King Henry commanded Richard to pay homage to Henry the Young King, but Richard refused. Finally, in 1183 Henry the Young King and Geoffrey, Duke of Brittany invaded Aquitaine in an attempt to subdue Richard. Richard’s barons joined in the fray and turned against their duke. However Richard and his army were able to hold back the invading armies, and they executed any prisoners. The conflict took a brief pause in June 1183 when the Young King died. However Henry II soon gave his youngest son John permission to invade Aquitaine. With the death of Henry the Young King, Richard became the eldest son and so heir to the English crown, but still he continued to fight his father.

To strengthen his position, in 1187, Richard allied himself with 22-year-old Philip II, the son of Eleanor's ex-husband Louis VII by Adele of Champagne. Roger of Hoveden wrote:

:"''The King of England was struck with great astonishment, and wondered what [this alliance] could mean, and, taking precautions for the future, frequently sent messengers into France for the purpose of recalling his son Richard; who, pretending that he was peaceably inclined and ready to come to his father, made his way to Chinon, and, in spite of the person who had the custody thereof, carried off the greater part of his father's treasures, and fortified his castles in Poitou with the same, refusing to go to his father.''"

Overall, Hoveden is chiefly concerned with the politics of the relationship between Richard and King Philip. The historian John Gillingham has suggested that theories that Richard was homosexual probably stemmed from an official record announcing that, as a symbol of unity between the two countries, the kings of France and England had slept overnight in the same bed. He expressed the view that this was "an accepted political act, nothing sexual about it; ... a bit like a modern-day photo opportunity".

In exchange for Philip's help against his father, Richard promised to concede to him his rights to both Normandy and Anjou. Richard paid homage to Philip in November of the same year. With news arriving of the Battle of Hattin, he took the cross at Tours in the company of other French nobles.

In 1188 Henry II planned to concede Aquitaine to his youngest son John. The following year, Richard attempted to take the throne of England for himself by joining Philip's expedition against his father. On 4 July 1189, Richard and Philip’s forces defeated Henry's army at Ballans. Henry, with John's consent, agreed to name Richard his heir. Two days later Henry II died in Chinon, and Richard succeeded him as King of England, Duke of Normandy, and Count of Anjou. Roger of Hoveden claimed that Henry's corpse bled from the nose in Richard's presence, which was taken as a sign that Richard had caused his death.

King and Crusader

Anti-Jewish violence

Richard I was officially crowned duke on 20 July 1189 and king in Westminster Abbey on 3 September 1189. When he was crowned, Richard barred all Jews and women from the ceremony, but some Jewish leaders arrived to present gifts for the new king. According to Ralph of Diceto, Richard's courtiers stripped and flogged the Jews, then flung them out of court. When a rumour spread that Richard had ordered all Jews to be killed, the people of London began a massacre. Many Jews were beaten to death, robbed, and burned alive. Many Jewish homes were burned down, and several Jews were forcibly baptised. Some sought sanctuary in the Tower of London, and others managed to escape. Among those killed was Jacob of Orléans, a respected Jewish scholar. Roger of Hoveden, in his ''Gesta Regis Ricardi'', claimed that the rioting was started by the jealous and bigoted citizens, and that Richard punished the perpetrators, allowing a forcibly converted Jew to return to his native religion. Archbishop of Canterbury Baldwin of Forde reacted by remarking, "If the King is not God's man, he had better be the devil's," a reference to the supposedly infernal blood in the House of Anjou.

Realising that the assaults could destabilise his realm on the eve of his departure on crusade, Richard ordered the execution of those responsible for the most egregious murders and persecutions. (But those hanged were rioters who had accidentally burned down Christian homes.) He distributed a royal writ demanding that the Jews be left alone. The edict was loosely enforced, however, as the following March there was further violence including a massacre at York.

Crusade plans

Richard had already taken the cross as Count of Poitou in 1187. His father and Philip II had done so at Gisors on 21 January 1188 after receiving news of the fall of Jerusalem to Saladin. Having become king, Richard, together with Philip, agreed to go on the Third Crusade, since each feared that during his absence, the other might usurp his territories.

Richard swore an oath to renounce his past wickedness in order to show himself worthy to take the cross. He started to raise and equip a new crusader army. He spent most of his father's treasury (filled with money raised by the Saladin tithe), raised taxes, and even agreed to free King William I of Scotland from his oath of subservience to Richard in exchange for marks. To raise still more finances he sold official positions, rights, and lands to those interested in them. Those already appointed were forced to pay huge sums to retain their posts. William Longchamp, Bishop of Ely and the King's Chancellor, made a show of bidding £ to remain as Chancellor. He was apparently outbid by a certain Reginald the Italian, but that bid was refused.

Richard made some final arrangements on the continent. He reconfirmed his father's appointment of William Fitz Ralph to the important post of seneschal of Normandy. In Anjou, Stephen of Tours was replaced as seneschal and temporarily imprisoned for fiscal mismanagement. Payn de Rochefort, an Angevin knight, was elevated to the post of seneschal of Anjou. In Poitou the ex-provost of Benon, Peter Bertin, was made seneschal, and finally in Gascony the household official Helie de La Celle was picked for the seneschalship there. After repositioning the part of his army he left behind to guard his French possessions, Richard finally set out on the crusade in summer 1190. (His delay was criticised by troubadours such as Bertran de Born.) He appointed as regents Hugh de Puiset, Bishop of Durham, and William de Mandeville, 3rd Earl of Essex—who soon died and was replaced by Richard's chancellor William Longchamp. Richard's brother John was not satisfied by this decision and started scheming against William.

Some writers have criticised Richard for spending only six months of his reign in England and siphoning the kingdom's resources to support his crusade. According to William Stubbs:

Richard claimed that England was "cold and always raining," and when he was raising funds for his crusade, he was said to declare, "I would have sold London if I could find a buyer." However, although England was a major part of his territories—particularly important in that it gave him a royal title with which to approach other kings as an equal—it faced no major internal or external threats during his reign, unlike his continental territories, and so did not require his constant presence there. Like most of the Plantagenet kings before the 14th century, he had no need to learn the English language. Leaving the country in the hands of various officials he designated (including his mother, at times) Richard was far more concerned with his more extensive French lands. After all his preparations he had an army of men-at-arms, foot-soldiers and a fleet of 100 ships.

Occupation of Sicily

In September 1190 Richard and Philip arrived in Sicily. After the death of King William II of Sicily his cousin Tancred of Lecce had seized power and had been crowned early in 1190 as King Tancred I of Sicily, although the legal heir was William's aunt Constance, wife of the new Emperor Henry VI. Tancred had imprisoned William's widow, Queen Joan, who was Richard's sister, and did not give her the money she had inherited in William's will. When Richard arrived he demanded that his sister be released and given her inheritance; she was freed on 28 September, but without the inheritance. The presence of foreign troops also caused unrest: in October, the people of Messina revolted, demanding that the foreigners leave. Richard attacked Messina, capturing it on 4 October 1190. After looting and burning the city Richard established his base there, but this created tension between Richard and Philip Augustus. He remained there until Tancred finally agreed to sign a treaty on 4 March 1191. The treaty was signed by Richard, Philip and Tancred. Its main terms were:

Joan was to receive 20,000 ounces of gold as compensation for her inheritance, which Tancred kept.

Richard officially proclaimed his nephew, Arthur of Brittany, son of Geoffrey, as his heir, and Tancred promised to marry one of his daughters to Arthur when he came of age, giving a further twenty thousand ounces of gold that would be returned by Richard if Arthur did not marry Tancred's daughter.

The two kings stayed on in Sicily for a while, but this resulted in increasing tensions between them and their men, with Philip Augustus plotting with Tancred against Richard. The two kings finally met to clear the air and reached an agreement, including the end of Richard's betrothal to Philip's sister Alys (who had supposedly been the mistress of Richard's father Henry II).

Conquest of Cyprus

In April 1191 Richard, with a large fleet, left Messina in order to reach Acre. But a storm dispersed the fleet. After some searching, it was discovered that the boat carrying his sister and his fiancée Berengaria was anchored on the south coast of Cyprus together with the wrecks of several other ships, including the treasure ship. Survivors of the wrecks had been taken prisoner by the island's despot Isaac Komnenos.

On 1 May 1191 Richard's fleet arrived in the port of Lemesos (Limassol) on Cyprus. He ordered Isaac to release the prisoners and the treasure. Isaac refused, so Richard landed his troops and took Limassol.

Various princes of the Holy Land arrived in Limassol at the same time, in particular Guy of Lusignan. All declared their support for Richard provided that he support Guy against his rival Conrad of Montferrat.

The local barons abandoned Isaac, who considered making peace with Richard, joining him on the crusade and offering his daughter in marriage to the person named by Richard. But Isaac changed his mind and tried to escape. Richard then proceeded to conquer the whole island, his troops being led by Guy de Lusignan. Isaac surrendered and was confined with silver chains because Richard had promised that he would not place him in irons. By 1 June Richard had conquered the whole island. He named Richard de Camville and Robert of Thornham as governors. He later sold the island to the Knights Templar and it was subsequently acquired, in 1192, by Guy of Lusignan and became a stable feudal kingdom.

The rapid conquest of the island by Richard is more important than it seems. The island occupies a key strategic position on the maritime lanes to the Holy Land, whose occupation by the Christians could not continue without support from the sea. Cyprus remained a Christian stronghold until the battle of Lepanto (1571). Richard's exploit was well publicized and contributed to his reputation. Richard also derived significant financial gains from the conquest of the island.

Richard left for Acre on 5 June with his allies.

Marriage

Before leaving Cyprus Richard married Berengaria of Navarre, first-born daughter of King Sancho VI of Navarre. Richard first grew closer to her at a tournament held in Berengaria's native Navarre. The wedding was held in Limassol on 12 May 1191 at the Chapel of St. George. It was attended by his sister Joan, whom Richard had brought from Sicily. The marriage was celebrated with great pomp and splendour and many feasts and entertainments, and public parades, and celebrations followed, to commemorate the event. Among the other grand ceremonies was a double coronation. Richard caused himself to be crowned King of Cyprus, and Berengaria Queen of England and of Cyprus too. When Richard married Berengaria he was still officially betrothed to Alys, and Richard pushed for the match in order to obtain Navarre as a fief like Aquitaine for his father. Further, Eleanor championed the match, as Navarre bordered on Aquitaine, thereby securing her ancestral lands' borders to the south. Richard took his new wife with him briefly on this episode of the crusade. However they returned separately. Berengaria had almost as much difficulty in making the journey home as her husband did, and she did not see England until after his death. After his release from German captivity Richard showed some regret for his earlier conduct, but he was not reunited with his wife.

In the Holy Land

King Richard landed at Acre on 8 June 1191. He gave his support to his Poitevin vassal Guy of Lusignan, who had brought troops to help him in Cyprus. Guy was the widower of his father's cousin Sibylla of Jerusalem and was trying to retain the kingship of Jerusalem, despite his wife's death during the Siege of Acre the previous year. Guy's claim was challenged by Conrad of Montferrat, second husband of Sibylla's half-sister, Isabella: Conrad, whose defence of Tyre had saved the kingdom in 1187, was supported by Philip of France, son of his first cousin Louis VII of France, and by another cousin, Duke Leopold V of Austria. Richard also allied with Humphrey IV of Toron, Isabella's first husband, from whom she had been forcibly divorced in 1190. Humphrey was loyal to Guy and spoke Arabic fluently, so Richard used him as a translator and negotiator.

Richard and his forces aided in the capture of Acre, despite the king's serious illness. At one point, while sick from scurvy, Richard is said to have picked off guards on the walls with a crossbow, while being carried on a stretcher. Eventually Conrad of Montferrat concluded the surrender negotiations with Saladin and raised the banners of the kings in the city. Richard quarrelled with Leopold V of Austria over the deposition of Isaac Komnenos (related to Leopold's Byzantine mother) and his position within the crusade. Leopold's banner had been raised alongside the English and French standards. This was interpreted as arrogance by both Richard and Philip, as Leopold was a vassal of the Holy Roman Emperor (although he was the highest-ranking surviving leader of the imperial forces). Richard's men tore the flag down and threw it in the moat of Acre. Leopold left the crusade immediately. Philip also left soon afterwards, in poor health and after further disputes with Richard over the status of Cyprus (Philip demanded half the island) and the kingship of Jerusalem. Richard, suddenly, found himself without allies.

Richard had kept 2,700 Muslim prisoners as hostages against Saladin fulfilling all the terms of the surrender of the lands around Acre. Philip, before leaving, had entrusted his prisoners to Conrad, but Richard forced him to hand them over to him. Richard feared his forces being bottled up in Acre as he believed his campaign could not advance with the prisoners in train. He therefore ordered all the prisoners executed. He then moved south, defeating Saladin's forces at the Battle of Arsuf on 7 September 1191. He attempted to negotiate with Saladin, but, this was unsuccessful. In the first half of 1192 he and his troops refortified Ascalon.

An election forced Richard to accept Conrad of Montferrat as King of Jerusalem, and he sold Cyprus to his defeated protégé, Guy. Only days later, on 28 April 1192, Conrad was stabbed to death by Hashshashin before he could be crowned. Eight days later Richard's own nephew Henry II of Champagne was married to the widowed Isabella, although she was carrying Conrad's child. The murder has never been conclusively solved, and Richard's contemporaries widely suspected his involvement.

Realising that he had no hope of holding Jerusalem even if he took it, Richard ordered a retreat. There commenced a period of minor skirmishes with Saladin's forces while Richard and Saladin negotiated a settlement to the conflict, as both realized that their respective positions were growing untenable. Richard knew that both Philip and his own brother John were starting to plot against him. However Saladin insisted on the raising of Ascalon's fortifications, which Richard's men had rebuilt, and a few other points. Richard made one last attempt to strengthen his bargaining position by attempting to invade Egypt—Saladin's chief supply-base—but failed. In the end time ran out for Richard. He realised that his return could be postponed no longer since both Philip and John were taking advantage of his absence. He and Saladin finally came to a settlement on 2 September 1192—this included the provisions demanding the destruction of Ascalon's wall as well as an agreement allowing Christian pilgrims and merchants access to Jerusalem. It also included a three-year truce.

Captivity and return

Bad weather forced Richard's ship to put in at Corfu, in the lands of the Byzantine Emperor Isaac II Angelos, who objected to Richard's annexation of Cyprus, formerly Byzantine territory. Disguised as a Knight Templar, Richard sailed from Corfu with four attendants, but his ship was wrecked near Aquileia, forcing Richard and his party into a dangerous land route through central Europe.

On his way to the territory of his brother-in-law Henry of Saxony, Richard was captured shortly before Christmas 1192 near Vienna by Leopold V, Duke of Austria who accused Richard of arranging the murder of his cousin Conrad of Montferrat. Moreover Richard had personally offended Leopold by casting down his standard from the walls of Acre. Richard and his retainers had been travelling in disguise as low-ranking pilgrims, but he was identified either because he was wearing an expensive ring, or because of his insistence on eating roast chicken, an aristocratic delicacy.

Duke Leopold kept him prisoner at Dürnstein Castle. His mishap was soon known to England, but the regents were for some weeks uncertain of his whereabouts. While in prison, Richard wrote ''Ja nus hons pris'' or ''Ja nuls om pres'' ("No man who is imprisoned"), which is addressed to his half-sister Marie de Champagne. He wrote the song, in French and Occitan versions, to express his feelings of abandonment by his people and his sister. The detention of a crusader was contrary to public law, and on these grounds Pope Celestine III excommunicated Duke Leopold.

On 28 March 1193 Richard was brought to Speyer and handed over to Henry VI, Holy Roman Emperor, who was aggrieved both by the support which the Plantagenets had given to the family of Henry the Lion and also by Richard's recognition of Tancred in Sicily, and who imprisoned him in Trifels Castle. Henry VI, needing money to raise an army and assert his rights over southern Italy, continued to hold Richard for ransom. In response Pope Celestine III excommunicated Henry VI, as he had Duke Leopold, for the continued wrongful imprisonment of Richard.

Richard famously refused to show deference to the emperor and declared to him, "I am born of a rank which recognizes no superior but God". Despite his complaints, the conditions of his captivity were not severe.

The emperor demanded that marks (65,000 pounds of silver) be delivered to him before he would release the king, the same amount raised by the Saladin tithe only a few years earlier, and 2–3 times the annual income for the English Crown under Richard. Eleanor of Aquitaine worked to raise the ransom. Both clergy and laymen were taxed for a quarter of the value of their property, the gold and silver treasures of the churches were confiscated, and money was raised from the scutage and the carucage taxes. At the same time, John, Richard's brother, and King Philip of France offered marks for the Emperor to hold Richard prisoner until Michaelmas 1194. The emperor turned down the offer. The money to rescue the King was transferred to Germany by the emperor's ambassadors, but "at the king's peril" (had it been lost along the way, Richard would have been held responsible), and finally, on 4 February 1194 Richard was released. Philip sent a message to John: "Look to yourself; the devil is loose".

The affair had a lasting influence on Austria, since part of the money from King Richard's ransom was used by Duke Leopold V to finance the founding in 1194 of the new city of Wiener Neustadt, which had a significant role in various periods of subsequent Austrian history up to the present.

Later years and death

In Richard's absence, his brother John revolted with the aid of Philip; amongst Philip's conquests in the period of Richard's imprisonment was Normandy. Richard forgave John when they met again and, bowing to political necessity, named him as his heir in place of Arthur, whose mother Constance of Brittany was perhaps already open to the overtures of Philip II.

Richard began his reconquest of Normandy. The fall of Château de Gisors to the French in 1196 opened a gap in the Norman defences. The search began for a fresh site for a new castle to defend the duchy of Normandy and act as a base from which Richard could launch his campaign to take back the Vexin from French control. A naturally defensible position was identified perched high above the River Seine, an important transport route, in the manor of ''Andeli''. Under the terms of the Peace of Louviers (December 1195) between Richard and Philip II, neither king was allowed to fortify the site; despite this, Richard intended to build the vast Chateau Gaillard. Richard tried to obtain the manor through negotiation. Walter de Coutances, Archbishop of Rouen, was reluctant to sell the manor as it was one of the diocese's most profitable, and other lands belonging to the diocese had recently been damaged by war. When Philip besieged Aumale in Normandy, Richard grew tired of waiting and seized the manor, although the act was opposed by the Church. Walter de Coutances issued an interdict against the duchy of Normandy which prohibited church services from being performed in the region. Roger of Howden detailed "the unburied bodies of the dead lying in the streets and square of the cities of Normandy". Construction began with the interdict hanging over Normandy, but it was later repealed in April 1197 by Pope Celestine III, after Richard made gifts of land to Walter de Coutances and the diocese of Rouen, including two manors and the prosperous port of Dieppe.

During Richard's reign, royal expenditure on castles declined from the levels spent under Henry II, Richard's father. This has been attributed to a concentration of resources on Richard's war with the king of France. However, the work at Château Gaillard was some of the most expensive of its time and cost an estimated £15,000 to £20,000 between 1196 and 1198. This was more than double Richard's spending on castles in England, an estimated £7,000. Unprecedented in its speed of construction, the castle was mostly complete in just two years, when most construction on such a scale would have taken the best part of a decade. According to William of Newburgh, in May 1198 Richard and the labourers working on the castle were drenched in a "rain of blood". While some of his advisers thought the rain was an evil omen, Richard was undeterred:

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As no master-mason is mentioned in the otherwise detailed records of the castle's construction, military historian Allen Brown has suggested that Richard himself was the overall architect; this is supported by the interest Richard showed in the work through his frequent presence. In his final years, the castle became Richard's favourite residence, and writs and charters were written at Château Gaillard bearing "''apud Bellum Castrum de Rupe''" (at the Fair Castle of the Rock). Château Gaillard was ahead of its time, featuring innovations that would be adopted in castle architecture nearly a century later. Richard later boasted that he could hold the castle "were the walls made of butter". Allen Brown described Château Gaillard as "one of the finest castles in Europe" and military historian Sir Charles Oman wrote that: }}

Determined to resist Philip's designs on contested Angevin lands such as the Vexin and Berry, Richard poured all his military expertise and vast resources into war on the French King. He constructed an alliance against Philip, including Baldwin IX of Flanders, Renaud, Count of Boulogne, and his father-in-law King Sancho VI of Navarre, who raided Philip's lands from the south. Most importantly, he managed to secure the Welf inheritance in Saxony for his nephew, Henry the Lion's son Otto of Poitou, who was elected Otto IV of Germany in 1198.

Partly as a result of these and other intrigues, Richard won several victories over Philip. At Freteval in 1194, just after Richard's return from captivity and money-raising in England to France, Philip fled, leaving his entire archive of financial audits and documents to be captured by Richard. At the battle of Gisors (sometimes called Courcelles) in 1198 Richard took "Dieu et mon Droit"—"God and my Right"—as his motto (still used by the British monarchy today), echoing his earlier boast to the Emperor Henry that his rank acknowledged no superior but God.

In March 1199, Richard was in the Limousin suppressing a revolt by Viscount Aimar V of Limoges. Although it was Lent, he "''devastated the Viscount's land with fire and sword''". He besieged the puny, virtually unarmed castle of Chalus-Chabrol. Some chroniclers claimed that this was because a local peasant had uncovered a treasure trove of Roman gold, which Richard claimed from Aimar in his position as feudal overlord.

In the early evening of 25 March 1199, Richard was walking around the castle perimeter without his chainmail, investigating the progress of sappers on the castle walls. Missiles were occasionally shot from the castle walls, but these were given little attention. One defender in particular amused the king greatly—a man standing on the walls, crossbow in one hand, the other clutching a frying pan which he had been using all day as a shield to beat off missiles. He deliberately aimed at the king, which the king applauded; however, another crossbowman then struck the king in the left shoulder near the neck. He tried to pull this out in the privacy of his tent but failed; a surgeon, called a 'butcher' by Hoveden, removed it, 'carelessly mangling' the King's arm in the process. The wound swiftly became gangrenous. Accordingly, Richard asked to have the crossbowman brought before him; called alternatively Peter Basile, John Sabroz, Dudo, and Bertrand de Gurdon (from the town of Gourdon) by chroniclers, the man turned out (according to some sources, but not all) to be a boy. This boy claimed that Richard had killed the boy's father and two brothers, and that he had killed Richard in revenge. The boy expected to be executed; Richard, as a last act of mercy, forgave the boy of his crime, saying, "Live on, and by my bounty behold the light of day," before ordering the boy to be freed and sent away with 100 shillings. Richard then set his affairs in order, bequeathing all his territory to his brother John and his jewels to his nephew Otto.

Richard died on 6 April 1199 in the arms of his mother; it was later said that "As the day was closing, he ended his earthly day." His death was later referred to as 'the Lion (that) by the Ant was slain'. According to one chronicler, Richard's last act of chivalry proved fruitless; in an orgy of medieval brutality, the infamous mercenary captain Mercadier had the crossbowman flayed alive and hanged as soon as Richard died.

Richard's heart was buried at Rouen in Normandy, the entrails in Châlus (where he died) and the rest of his body was buried at the feet of his father at Fontevraud Abbey in Anjou.

A 13th century Bishop of Rochester wrote that Richard spent 33 years in purgatory as expiation for his sins, eventually ascending to Heaven in March 1232.

Sexuality

Before 1948, no historian appears to have clearly affirmed that Richard was homosexual. Historian Jean Flori, however, has analysed the work of contemporary historians, and reported that they quite generally accepted that Richard was homosexual. However, not all historians agree regarding Richard's sexuality: indeed Richard's homosexuality was disputed by historian John Gillingham. But Flori analysed the available contemporaneous evidence in great detail, and concluded that Richard's two public confessions and penitences (in 1191 and 1195) must have referred to the "sin of sodomy". There are contemporaneous accounts of Richard's relations with women, and Richard acknowledged one illegitimate son, Philip of Cognac. Flori thus concludes that Richard was probably bisexual. Flori thus disagrees with Gillingham, although he does agree with Gillingham that the contemporaneous accounts do not support the allegation that Richard had a homosexual relation with King Philip II of France.

Legacy

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Richard's contemporaneous image was that of a king who was also a knight, and that was apparently the first such instance of this combination. He was known as a valiant and competent military leader and individual fighter: courageous and generous. That reputation has come down through the ages and defines the popular image of Richard. He left an indelible imprint on the imagination extending to the present, in large part because of his military exploits. This is reflected in Steven Runciman's final verdict of Richard I: ''"he was a bad son, a bad husband and a bad king, but a gallant and splendid soldier."''("History of the Crusades" Vol. III) meanwhile, Muslim writers during the Crusades period and after wrote of him: 'Never have we had to face a bolder or more subtle opponent.'

During his life, he was criticized by chroniclers (and the clergy) for having taxed the clergy both for the Crusade and for his ransom, whereas the church and the clergy were usually exempt from taxes.

Richard produced no legitimate heirs and acknowledged only one illegitimate son, Philip of Cognac. As a result, he was succeeded by his brother John as King of England. However, his French territories initially rejected John as a successor, preferring his nephew Arthur of Brittany, the son of their late brother Geoffrey, whose claim is by modern standards better than John's. Significantly, the lack of any direct heirs from Richard was the first step in the dissolution of the Angevin Empire. While Kings of England continued to press claims to properties on the continent, they would never again command the territories Richard I inherited.

Medieval folklore

Around the middle of the 13th century, various legends developed that, after Richard's capture, his minstrel Blondel travelled Europe from castle to castle, loudly singing a song known only to the two of them (they had composed it together). Eventually, he came to the place where Richard was being held, and Richard heard the song and answered with the appropriate refrain, thus revealing where the king was incarcerated. The story was the basis of André Ernest Modeste Grétry's opera ''Richard Coeur-de-Lion'' and seems to be the inspiration for the opening to Richard Thorpe's film version of ''Ivanhoe''. It seems unconnected to the real Jean 'Blondel' de Nesle, an aristocratic trouvère. It also does not correspond to the historical reality, since the king's jailers did not hide the fact; on the contrary, they publicized it.

At some time around the 16th century, tales of Robin Hood started to mention him as a contemporary and supporter of King Richard the Lionheart, Robin being driven to outlawry, during the misrule of Richard's evil brother John, while Richard was away at the Third Crusade. Although this view has become increasingly popular, it is certainly not supported by the earliest ballads.

Ancestors

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See also

''The Crusade and Death of Richard I''

Cultural depictions of Richard I of England

List of English monarchs

References

;Notes

;Bibliography

Cannon, John & Hargreaves, Anne (eds). ''Kings and Queens of Britain'', Oxford University Press 2001, 2004, ISBN 0-19-860956-6. Richard I, by John Gillingham

See also

Ralph of Coggeshall, ''Chronicon Anglicanum''

Roger of Hoveden, ''Gesta Regis Henrici II & Gesta Regis Ricardi Benedicti Abbatis'', ed. William Stubbs, 2 vols, (London, 1867), available at Gallica.

Roger of Hoveden, ''Chronica Magistri Rogeri de Houedene'', ed. William Stubbs, 4 vols, (London, 1868–71), available at Gallica.

Further reading

Ralph of Diceto, ''Radulfi de Diceto Decani Lundoniensis Opera Historica'', ed. William Stubbs, 2 vols (London, 1876)

Berg, Dieter. ''Richard Löwenherz''. Darmstadt, 2007.

Edbury, Peter W. ''The Conquest of Jerusalem and the Third Crusade: Sources in Translation''. Ashgate, 1996. [Includes letters by Richard reporting events of the Third Crusade (pp. 178–182).] ISBN 1-84014-676-1

Gabrieli, Francesco. (ed.) ''Arab Historians of the Crusades'', English translation 1969, ISBN 0-520-05224-2

Gillingham, John, ''Richard Coeur de Lion: Kingship, Chivalry and War in the Twelfth Century'', 1994, ISBN 1-85285-084-1

Nelson, Janet L. (ed.) ''Richard Coeur de Lion in History and Myth'', 1992, ISBN 0-9513085-6-4

Nicholson, Helen J. (ed.) ''The Chronicle of the Third Crusade: The Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi'', 1997, ISBN 0-7546-0581-7

Runciman, Steven. ''A History of the Crusades'', 1951–54, vols. 2–3.

Stubbs, William (ed.), ''Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi'' (London, 1864), available at Gallica. (PDF of anon. translation, ''Itinerary of Richard I and others to the Holy Land'' (Cambridge, Ontario, 2001))

William of Tyre, French continuation of. ''Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum'' (external link to text in mediæval French).

Williams, Patrick A. "The Assassination of Conrad of Montferrat: Another Suspect?", ''Traditio'', vol. XXVI, 1970.

Reston, James Jr. "Warriors of God", 2001, ISBN 0-385-49562-5

External links

Richard I "Lionheart" BY JACOB ABBOTT in "btm" format

Roger of Hoveden on Richard the Lion-Hearted and King Philip II of France

Richard and Saladin: Warriors of the Third Crusade

Medieval and Modern Passages Supporting the Theory of Richard I's Homosexuality

Richard I, Ja nuls om pres non dira sa razon (Occitan version of lyric)

Richard I, Ja nus hons pris ne dira sa reson (French version of lyric, with English translation by James H. Donalson)

The Lion roars in France

King Richard a Middle English metrical romance from the ''Auchinleck manuscript'' (edited by David Burnley and Alison Wiggins) at the National Library of Scotland

Category:Article Feedback Pilot Category:1157 births Category:1199 deaths Category:House of Plantagenet *302 Category:Roman Catholic monarchs 304 Category:Dukes of Aquitaine 113 Category:Christians of the Third Crusade Category:People from Oxford Category:Occitan people Category:English people of French descent Category:British Monarchs buried abroad Category:Robin Hood characters Category:English military personnel killed in action Category:Monarchs killed in action Category:Deaths by arrow wounds Category:Burials at Rouen Cathedral Category:English folklore Category:English Roman Catholics Category:Medieval Cyprus Category:Medieval legends Category:Burials at Fontevraud Abbey Category:French people

ab:Ричард I Алымгәы af:Richard I van Engeland ar:ريتشارد الأول ملك إنجلترا an:Ricardo I d'Anglaterra be:Рычард I be-x-old:Рычард I bs:Rikard I, kralj Engleske br:Richarzh Iañ (Bro-Saoz) bg:Ричард I (Англия) ca:Ricard Cor de Lleó cs:Richard I. Lví srdce cy:Rhisiart I, brenin Lloegr da:Richard Løvehjerte de:Richard Löwenherz et:Richard I el:Ριχάρδος ο Λεοντόκαρδος es:Ricardo I de Inglaterra eo:Rikardo la 1-a (Anglio) eu:Rikardo I.a Ingalaterrakoa fa:ریچارد اول انگلستان fr:Richard Ier d'Angleterre ga:Risteard I Shasana gl:Ricardo I de Inglaterra ko:리처드 1세 hy:Ռիչարդ I Առյուծասիրտ hr:Rikard I. Lavljeg Srca id:Richard I dari Inggris is:Ríkharður ljónshjarta it:Riccardo I d'Inghilterra he:ריצ'רד הראשון, מלך אנגליה ka:რიჩარდ I (ინგლისი) ku:Richard I. la:Ricardus I (rex Angliae) lv:Ričards I Plantagenets lt:Ričardas I Liūtaširdis hu:I. Richárd angol király mk:Ричард I mr:रिचर्ड पहिला, इंग्लंड arz:ريتشارد قلب الأسد ms:Richard I dari England nl:Richard I van Engeland ja:リチャード1世 (イングランド王) no:Rikard I av England nn:Rikard I av England oc:Ricard Ièr d'Anglatèrra pl:Ryszard I Lwie Serce pt:Ricardo I de Inglaterra ro:Richard Inimă de Leu ru:Ричард I Львиное Сердце scn:Riccardu I di Ngriterra simple:Richard I of England sk:Richard I. (Anglicko) sl:Rihard I. Levjesrčni sr:Ричард I Лавље Срце sh:Ričard I Lavlje Srce fi:Rikhard I Leijonamieli sv:Rikard I Lejonhjärta th:สมเด็จพระเจ้าริชาร์ดที่ 1 แห่งอังกฤษ tr:I. Richard uk:Річард I Левове Серце ur:رچرڈ شیر دل vi:Richard I của Anh fiu-vro:Richard I zh:理查一世

Holiday name	All Saints
Type	Christian
Nonofficial name	Solemnity of All Saints
Nickname	All Hallows
Observedby	Roman Catholic Church,Eastern Orthodox churches,Anglican Communion,Lutheranism,Methodism,among other Protestant denominations
Litcolor	White
Date	November 1 (Western Christianity)Sunday after Pentecost (Eastern Christianity)
Observances	Church services
Relatedto	All Saints' Eve,All Souls' Day}}

All Saints' Day (in the Roman Catholic Church officially the Solemnity of All Saints and also called All Hallows or Hallowmas), often shortened to All Saints, is a solemnity celebrated on 1 November by parts of Western Christianity, and on the first Sunday after Pentecost in Eastern Christianity, in honor of all the saints, known and unknown.

In Western Christian theology, the day commemorates all those who have attained the beatific vision in Heaven. It is a national holiday in many historically Catholic countries. In the Roman Catholic Church, the next day, All Souls' Day, specifically commemorates the departed faithful who have not yet been purified and reached heaven. Catholics celebrate All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day in the fundamental belief that there is a prayerful spiritual communion between those in the state of grace who have died and are either being purified in purgatory or are in heaven (the 'church penitent' and the 'church triumphant', respectively), and the 'church militant' who are the living. Other Christian traditions define, remember and respond to the saints in different ways.

In the East

Eastern Christians of the Byzantine Tradition follow the earlier tradition of commemorating all saints collectively on the first Sunday after Pentecost, All Saints' Sunday (Greek: Αγίων Πάντων, ''Agiōn Pantōn'').

The feast of All Saints achieved great prominence in the ninth century, in the reign of the Byzantine Emperor, Leo VI "the Wise" (886–911). His wife, Empress Theophano—commemorated on December 16—lived a devout life. After her death in 893, her husband built a church, intending to dedicate it to her. When he was forbidden to do so, he decided to dedicate it to "All Saints," so that if his wife were in fact one of the righteous, she would also be honored whenever the feast was celebrated. According to tradition, it was Leo who expanded the feast from a commemoration of All Martyrs to a general commemoration of All Saints, whether martyrs or not.

This Sunday marks the close of the Paschal season. To the normal Sunday services are added special scriptural readings and hymns to all the saints (known and unknown) from the Pentecostarion.

The Sunday following All Saints' Sunday—the second Sunday after Pentecost—is set aside as a commemoration of all locally venerated saints, such as "All Saints of America", "All Saints of Mount Athos", etc. The third Sunday after Pentecost may be observed for even more localized saints, such as "All Saints of St. Petersburg", or for saints of a particular type, such as "New Martyrs of the Turkish Yoke."

In addition to the Sundays mentioned above, Saturdays throughout the year are days for general commemoration of all saints, and special hymns to all saints are chanted from the Octoechos.

In the West

The Western Christian holiday of All Saints' Day falls on November 1, followed by All Souls' Day on November 2, and is a Holy Day of Obligation in the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church.

The origin of the festival of All Saints celebrated in the West dates to May 13, 609 or 610, when Pope Boniface IV consecrated the Pantheon at Rome to the Blessed Virgin and all the martyrs; the feast of the ''dedicatio Sanctae Mariae ad Martyres'' has been celebrated at Rome ever since. There is evidence that from the fifth through the seventh centuries there existed in certain places and at sporadic intervals a feast date 13 May to celebrate the holy martyrs. The origin of All Saints' Day cannot be traced with certainty, and it has been observed on various days in different places. However, there are some who maintain the belief that it has origins in the pagan observation of 13 May, the Feast of the Lemures, in which the malevolent and restless spirits of the dead were propitiated. Liturgiologists base the idea that this ''Lemuria'' festival was the origin of that of All Saints on their identical dates and on the similar theme of "all the dead".

The feast of All Saints, on its current date, is traced to the foundation by Pope Gregory III (731–741) of an oratory in St. Peter's for the relics "of the holy apostles and of all saints, martyrs and confessors, of all the just made perfect who are at rest throughout the world", with the day moved to 1 November and the 13 May feast suppressed.

This usually fell within a few weeks of the Celtic holiday of Samhain, which had a theme similar to the Roman festival of Lemuria, but which was also a harvest festival. The Irish, having celebrated Samhain in the past, did not celebrate All Hallows Day on this November 1 date, as extant historical documents attest that the celebration in Ireland took place in the spring: "...the ''Felire'' of Oengus and the ''Martyrology of Tallaght'' prove that the early medieval churches [in Ireland] celebrated the feast of All Saints on April 20."

A November festival of all the saints was already widely celebrated on November 1 in the days of Charlemagne. It was made a day of obligation throughout the Frankish empire in 835, by a decree of Louis the Pious, issued "at the instance of Pope Gregory IV and with the assent of all the bishops", which confirmed its celebration on November 1. The octave was added by Pope Sixtus IV (1471–1484).

The festival was retained after the Reformation in the calendar of the Anglican Church and in many Lutheran churches. In the Lutheran churches, such as the Church of Sweden, it assumes a role of general commemoration of the dead. In the Swedish calendar, the observance takes place on the Saturday between October 31 and November 6. In many Lutheran Churches, it is moved to the first Sunday of November. It is also celebrated by other Protestants of the English tradition, such as the United Church of Canada, the Methodist churches, and the Wesleyan Church.

Protestants generally regard all true Christian believers as saints and if they observe All Saints Day at all they use it to remember all Christians both past and present. In the United Methodist Church, All Saints' Day is celebrated on the first Sunday in November. It is held, not only to remember Saints, but also to remember all those that have died that were members of the local church congregation. In some congregations, a candle is lit by the Acolyte as each person's name is called out by the clergy. Prayers and responsive readings may accompany the event. Often, the names of those who have died in the past year are afixed to a memorial plaque.

In many Lutheran churches, All Saints' Day and Reformation Day are observed concurrently on the Sunday before or after those dates, given Reformation Day is observed in Protestant Churches on October 31. Typically, Martin Luther's A Mighty Fortress is Our God is sung during the service. Besides discussing Luther's role in the Protestant Reformation, some recognition of the prominent early leaders of the Reformed tradition, such as John Calvin and John Knox, occurs. The observance of Reformation Day may be immediately followed by a reading of those members of the local congregation who have died in the past year in observance of All Saints' Day. Otherwise, the recognition of deceased church members occurs at another designated portion of the service.

Roman Catholic Obligation

In the Roman Catholic Church, All Saints' Day is a Holy Day of Obligation in many (but not all) countries, meaning going to Mass on the date is required unless one has a good reason to be excused from that obligation, such as illness. However, in a number of countries that do list All Saints' Day as a Holy Day of Obligation, including England & Wales, the solemnity of All Saints' Day is transferred to the adjacent Sunday if 1 November falls on a Monday or a Saturday, while in the same circumstances in the United States the Solemnity is still celebrated on November 1 but the obligation to attend Mass is abrogated.

Customs

In Portugal, Spain, and Mexico, offerings (Portuguese: ''oferendas'', Spanish: ''ofrendas'') are made on this day. In Spain, the play ''Don Juan Tenorio'' is traditionally performed. In Mexico, All Saints Day coincides with the celebration of "Día de los Inocentes" (Day of the Innocents), the first day of the Day of the Dead (Dia de los Muertos) celebration, honoring deceased children and infants. In Portugal, children celebrate the Pão-por-Deus tradition, and go door to door where they receive cakes, nuts and pomegranates. This only occurs in some areas around Lisbon.

In Austria, Belgium, France, Hungary, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal, Spain, and American Cities such as New Orleans people bring flowers to the graves of dead relatives.

In Poland, the Czech Republic, Sweden, Finland, Slovenia, Slovakia, Lithuania, Croatia, Austria, Romania, Moldova, Hungary and Catholic parts of Germany, the tradition is to light candles and visit the graves of deceased relatives.

In the Philippines, this day, called "''Undas''", "''Todos los Santos''" (literally "All Saints"), and sometimes "''Araw ng mga Patay''" (approximately "Day of the dead") is observed as All Souls' Day. This day and the one before and one after it is spent visiting the graves of deceased relatives, where prayers and flowers are offered, candles are lit and the graves themselves are cleaned, repaired and repainted.

In English-speaking countries, the festival is traditionally celebrated with the hymn "For All the Saints" by William Walsham How. The most familiar tune for this hymn is ''Sine Nomine'' by Ralph Vaughan Williams. Catholics generally celebrate with a day of rest consisting of avoiding physical exertion.

Popular culture

In professional sports, the New Orleans Saints franchise was awarded on All Saints' Day, November 1, 1966.

Notes

See also

Veneration of the dead

Halloween

Dziady

Day of the Dead

Irish calendar

Litany of the Saints

Allsaints (clothing)

External links

All Saints Day

All Saints and All Souls Day American Catholic

All Saints Sunday Orthodox England

A Vigil service for All Saints All Hallows' E'en - "Halloween"

First Sunday after Pentecost, or All Saints Sunday by Sergei Bulgakov, ''Handbook for Church Servers''

Synaxis of All Saints Icon and Synaxarion of the feast

Category:Catholic holy days Category:Eastern Orthodox liturgical days Category:People celebrated in the Lutheran liturgical calendar Category:Sainthood Category:Saints days Category:November observances

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