1126
Ibn Rushd born at Cordoba
In al-Andalus a boy was born who would grow up to write commentaries on Aristotle so thorough that Latin Christendom would call him simply the Commentator. Averroes's rational philosophy would be condemned in Paris and absorbed by Aquinas within a century and a half. His insistence that reason and revelation operated in separate spheres opened a fault line in medieval thought that neither Islam nor Christianity ever fully closed.
Oath for Empress Matilda
Henry I compelled his English barons to swear they would accept his daughter Matilda as queen, the first time such an oath had been demanded for a woman in England. Many swore with fingers crossed. When Henry died the magnates promptly chose her cousin Stephen instead. The broken oaths would haunt the kingdom for nearly two decades, producing the civil war chroniclers remembered as the years when Christ and his saints slept.
Hildegard becomes prioress of Disibodenberg
After the death of the anchoress Jutta, her young pupil Hildegard of Bingen was chosen to lead the small community of women attached to the Rhineland monastery. Within a decade she would have her mystical visions sanctioned by Bernard of Clairvaux and begin writing them down. Her luminous theological works, composed in a Latin she claimed to have learned by divine inspiration, would make her the most prominent female intellectual of the century.
Almoravid raid destroys Ucles outpost
Almoravid cavalry struck deep into Christian New Castile, burning villages and carrying off captives. The raid illustrated how permeable the Reconquista frontier still was, and how dependent Castilian defenses remained on the quickly reorganizing military orders of Calatrava and Santiago. The destruction prompted Alfonso VII to fortify the Toledo-Ucles road with new castles and garrison towers, attempting to create a defensible line that the Almoravids could not simply ride around.