1198
Innocent III elected pope
Lothar of Segni, thirty-seven years old and one of the youngest cardinals, was elected pope the day his predecessor died. He would prove the most activist pope of the Middle Ages: launching the Fourth Crusade, the Albigensian Crusade, and approving the Franciscans and Dominicans. His eighteen-year pontificate would represent the high-water mark of medieval papal authority over the secular rulers of Christendom.
Death of Averroes
Ibn Rushd died in Marrakech in his seventies, his rehabilitation barely complete. His bones were later brought back to Cordoba for burial. Christian Europe would soon be translating his Aristotle commentaries into Latin, making him - ironically - far more influential in Paris than in Islamic Spain. Thomas Aquinas, who never read Arabic, would engage with Averroes so deeply that the Commentator became an essential interlocutor in the construction of scholastic philosophy.
Teutonic Order recognized as military
Pope Innocent III formally confirmed the Teutonic Order's new military status, placing it on the same footing as the Templars and Hospitallers. The German knights in Acre got a Rule, a white mantle with a black cross, and the license to make war on behalf of the Church. Within three decades the order would shift its crusading mission from the Holy Land to the pagan Baltic, carving out a theocratic state in Prussia.
Philip of Swabia elected antiking
With the Hohenstaufen dynasty in disarray after Henry VI's death, his brother Philip of Swabia was elected King of the Romans by the Staufer party, while the Welf party elected Otto of Brunswick a few months later. Germany entered the double-election crisis that would drag on for a decade. Pope Innocent III inserted himself as arbiter, claiming the right to judge between rival kings, a constitutional innovation that both parties resented.