1153
Death of Bernard of Clairvaux
The ascetic preacher who had shaped Cistercian monasticism, launched two crusades, mentored a pope, and argued with Abelard died in his abbey at sixty-three. Gaunt from lifelong fasting and ulcerated from cilice-wearing, he was canonized within twenty years, becoming the last of the Latin Fathers. Bernard left behind a monastic empire of over three hundred Cistercian houses and a rhetorical legacy that would influence Christian devotional writing for centuries.
Baldwin III takes Ascalon
After besieging the Fatimid fortress port for seven months, the young king of Jerusalem finally broke through the walls. Ascalon was the last Egyptian foothold on the Levantine coast. Its fall completed the Crusader conquest of the Palestinian seaboard and isolated Egypt from Syria. The capture removed the staging post from which Egyptian armies had launched raids into the heart of the kingdom for half a century.
Treaty of Wallingford
King Stephen and Henry of Anjou, both exhausted by eighteen years of the Anarchy, met near the Thames and agreed Henry would succeed Stephen on his death. The king's own son Eustace had conveniently died that summer. Henry waited less than a year. The treaty ended the most destructive period in English history since the Viking invasions, and its terms ensured a peaceful transition to the Plantagenet dynasty.
Eugenius III dies weeks after Bernard
The first Cistercian pope, a former pupil of Bernard of Clairvaux, died within two months of his old teacher. The coincidence of their deaths closed an era in which the white monks had set the moral agenda of Latin Christendom. Both would later be venerated as saints. Eugenius had spent much of his pontificate in exile from Rome, governing the universal church from France while Roman factions fought over his palace.
Malcolm IV becomes King of Scots
A boy of twelve, grandson of David I, inherited the Scottish crown. The court's kinship with the Anglo-Norman world and Malcolm's frailty - he was called Malcolm the Maiden - ensured that Scotland would follow the Plantagenet cultural current for much of the next generation. His reign saw the consolidation of feudal institutions that his grandfather had imported from England, including the establishment of sheriffdoms and royal burghs across the Lowlands.