Peter I was the King of Aragon and Navarre for a decade from 1094 until his death. He was the son and successor of Sancho V Ramírez by his first wife, Isabella of Urgell. He was named in honour of Saint Peter, because of his father's specia...

Henry I was the fourth son of William I of England. He succeeded his elder brother William II as King of England in 1100 and defeated his eldest brother, Robert Curthose, to become Duke of Normandy in 1106. He was called Beauclerc for his s...

Hugues de Payens, also de Payns, a French knight from the Champagne region, was the co-founder and first Grand Master of the Knights Templar. With Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, he created the Latin Rule, the code of behavior for the Order....

The Battle of Manzikert was fought between the Byzantine Empire and the Seljuq Turks on August 26, 1071 near Manzikert (modern Malazgirt in Mus Province, Turkey). The decisive defeat of the Byzantine army and the capture of the Emperor Roma...

Alfonso I, called the Battler or the Warrior (Spanish: el Batallador), was the king of Aragon and Navarre from 1104 until his death in 1134. He was the second son of King Sancho Ramírez and successor of his brother Peter I. With his marriag...

Peter Abelard (Latin: Petrus Abaelardus or Abailardus; French: Pierre Abélard) was a medieval French scholastic philosopher, theologian and preeminent logician. His love for, and affair with, Héloïse d'Argenteuil have become legendary. The...

Anna Komnene, Latinized as Comnena, was a Greek princess, scholar, physician, hospital administrator, and the daughter of Emperor Alexios I Komnenos of Byzantium and Irene Doukaina. She wrote the Alexiad, an account of her father’s reign, w...

The Domesday Book is a great land survey from 1086, commissioned by William the Conqueror to assess the extent of the land and resources being owned in England at the time, and the extent of the taxes he could raise. The information collect...

Saint Bernard of Clairvaux was a French abbot and the primary builder of the reforming Cistercian monastic order. "The voice of conscience, the dominating figure in the Catholic Church from 1125 to 1153", his authority helped to end the sch...

William of Malmesbury was the foremost English historian of the 12th century. C. Warren Hollister so ranks him among the most talented generation of writers of history since Bede, "a gifted historical scholar and an omnivorous reader, impre...

Roger II was King of Sicily, son of Roger I of Sicily and successor to his brother Simon. He began his rule as Count of Sicily in 1105, later became Duke of Apulia and Calabria (1127), then King of Sicily (1130). It is Roger II's distinctio...

The Crusades were a series of religiously-sanctioned military campaigns waged by much of Latin Christian Europe, particularly the Franks of France and the Holy Roman Empire. The specific crusades to restore Christian control of the Holy Lan...

Stephen, often referred to as Stephen of Blois, was a grandson of William the Conqueror. He was King of England from 1135 to his death, and also the Count of Boulogne jure uxoris. His reign was marked by civil war with his cousin and rival...

The Siege of Antioch took place during the First Crusade in 1097 and 1098. The first siege, by the crusaders against the Muslim-held city, lasted from 21 October 1097 to 2 June 1098. Antioch lay on the crusaders' route to Palestine, and ant...

Hildegard of Bingen, also known as Saint Hildegard and the Sibyl of the Rhine, was a German Benedictine abbess, writer, composer, philosopher, Christian mystic, visionary, and polymath. She is one of the best-known composers of sacred monop...