1184
Fujiwara no Teika begins to write
In Kyoto a young courtier of the declining Fujiwara family began keeping a diary in Chinese and composing waka in Japanese. His aesthetic of yugen - mysterious depth - would shape Japanese poetry for centuries and culminate in his edited imperial anthology the Shin Kokin Wakashu. Teika's insistence that poetry should evoke what cannot be said directly became the defining principle of Japanese literary aesthetics.
Synod of Verona
Pope Lucius III and Barbarossa met at Verona and issued the bull Ad abolendam, defining heresy and instructing bishops to search out Cathars, Waldensians, and Humiliati in their dioceses. It is usually cited as the first step toward the institutional inquisition of the next century. The bull required bishops to visit suspected heretical communities twice a year and hand convicted heretics over to the secular arm for punishment.
Go-Shirakawa issues edict of pacification
The retired Japanese emperor, a nominal political figure manipulated by whichever warrior clan held Kyoto, issued an edict favoring the Minamoto over the Taira and authorizing Yoritomo's eastern government. It was the first formal imperial recognition of the Kamakura regime. The edict gave Yoritomo the legal authority to appoint military stewards and constables across Japan, creating the administrative skeleton of the shogunate.
Diet of Mainz pageant
Barbarossa staged a huge chivalric feast at Mainz to knight his sons and display imperial magnificence. Chroniclers described forty thousand knights and tents stretching for miles along the Rhine. A freak windstorm that killed several participants was read as an omen that the imperial peak had passed. The pageant was the most lavish secular celebration of the twelfth century, a deliberate demonstration that the empire could still command the loyalty of Latin Christendom.