12th century - Definition and Overview

(11th century - 12th century - 13th century - other centuries)

As a means of recording the passage of time, the 12th century was that century which lasted from 1101 to 1200. In the history of European culture, this period is considered part of the High Middle Ages.

Events

• Song dynasty loses power over Northern China.
• The Kamakura Shogunate deprives the Emperor of Japan from political power.
• First, Second, and Third Crusades of western European kingdoms against Islam.
• Pope Adrian IV granted overlordship of Ireland to Henry II of England.
• Suger rebuilds the abbey church at St Denis north of Paris, seen as first Gothic building.
• Portugal gained independence from the kingdom of León in 1128 (recognised by Leon in 1143).
• Nalanda, the great Indian Buddhist educational centre, was destroyed.
• Thomas Becket murdered in 1170.
• Toltec Empire collapses.
• Founding of Katedralskolan (Cathedralschool) in Lund, Sweden, 1185. The school is the oldest in northern Europe, and one of the oldest in Europe.

Significant people

• Pierre Abélard, one of the first scholastic philosophers; author of "Historia calamitatum mearum", a description of his love affair with Héloïse.
• Bernard of Clairvaux, French abbot influential in church politics.
• Saladin, ruler of Egypt and Syria who resisted the Crusaders.
• Hugh of St. Victor, French scholar.
• Richard of St. Victor, theologian.
• Alfonso I Henriques, first King of Portugal.
• Maimonides, leading Jewish philosopher.
• Thomas Becket, archbishop of Canterbury.
• Minamoto no Yoritomo, first shogun of Japan.
• Omar Khayyam, Persian poet and astronomer

Inventions, discoveries and introductions

• Beginning of the Gothic architecture style.
• First European universities founded.
• Christian humanism becomes a self-conscious philosophical tendency in Europe.
• Earliest record of a miracle play, in Dunstable, England.
• Beginning of troubador and trouvère music in France.
• Earliest account of a mariner's compass, by Alexander Neckam is "De utensilibus".
• First fire and plague insurance (in Iceland).
• First authenticated influenza epidemics.

Decades and years