1084
Sima Guang completes Zizhi Tongjian
After nineteen years of work, the Chinese scholar-official presented Emperor Shenzong with a comprehensive chronological history of China from 403 BC to 959 AD, in two hundred ninety-four chapters. The Zizhi Tongjian remains one of the greatest feats of historiography ever undertaken by a single scholar in any culture. Its title, Comprehensive Mirror to Aid in Government, declared its purpose: to teach rulers from the past's mistakes.
Henry IV takes Rome and installs antipope
After months of siege, the German king finally entered Rome. Gregory VII remained barricaded in Castel Sant'Angelo. Henry had Clement III enthroned as antipope and was crowned emperor by him at Easter. The schism in the Western church was now formal and would last for years to come. Two rival popes now competed for the allegiance of Christendom, each excommunicating the other's supporters.
Normans sack Rome
Robert Guiscard marched north from Apulia with a mixed Norman and Saracen army to rescue his papal ally Gregory VII. His troops drove out Henry IV but then pillaged and burned large parts of Rome, including the Lateran quarter. Roman hatred of the rescuers ensured Gregory's permanent exile thereafter. The destruction was so extensive that entire neighborhoods remained abandoned ruins for decades.
Carthusian Order Takes Shape in the French Alps
In the harsh mountain valley of Chartreuse, Bruno of Cologne and six companions had retreated to lives of extraordinary austerity - silence, solitude, and manual labor in individual cells. The community they founded would become the Carthusian order, the most austere in Western monasticism. Their motto, 'Never reformed because never deformed,' would hold true across centuries: alone among medieval orders, the Carthusians never required reform because they never relaxed their original severity.