1087
Death of William the Conqueror
Mortally injured when his horse stumbled during a siege at Mantes, the Conqueror died at Rouen after days of agony. His corpse was stripped by servants, the abbot had to buy the land for its burial, and the body swelled so that it burst open during the funeral. The indignity of his death stood in sharp contrast to the iron authority he had wielded for twenty-one years.
Emperor Shirakawa begins insei rule
The Japanese emperor abdicated in favor of his son but continued to rule from behind the throne, inaugurating the insei or cloistered emperor system. The arrangement allowed retired emperors to bypass Fujiwara regents and act freely, ending a century of Fujiwara dominance at the Heian court at Kyoto. Shirakawa reportedly lamented that only the waters of the Kamo River, the dice, and the warrior monks refused to obey him.
Translators of Toledo begin work
Archbishop Bernard began gathering Jewish, Arabic, and Latin scholars to translate Arabic philosophical, mathematical, and medical works into Latin. Over the following century, Toledo would become the chief conduit by which Aristotle, Euclid, and Galen reached the Latin West in reliable translations from the Arabic. The collaborative method, with Jewish scholars rendering Arabic into Castilian and Latin scholars translating onward, was itself a remarkable feat of intercultural cooperation.
William II Rufus crowned King of England
The Conqueror's red-faced second son was crowned at Westminster, having raced across the Channel at his father's dying word. His elder brother Robert inherited Normandy. The separation of the dukedom from the kingdom would keep cross-Channel politics in turmoil for the next generation of Norman rulers. Rufus proved an effective military commander but was widely despised by the Church for his cynical exploitation of vacant bishoprics.
Translation of St. Nicholas relics to Bari
Sailors from Bari broke into the tomb of the fourth-century bishop of Myra on the Anatolian coast and carried his bones back across the Adriatic. Pope Urban II later consecrated a new basilica over them. Nicholas became the patron saint of Bari and, in distant centuries, the ancestor figure of Santa Claus.