(Sir?) ? SAWYER

This file originated as a place-holder for a number of 12C figures and to provide a place to add 'Contemporary Events' from BN HT.

o/l

Not long after 1140 AD, the Italian scholar Gerard of Cremona [Italy] traveled to the Spanish peninsula, hoping to find a rare copy of the 1kyo Greek astronomy text known as the Almagest. His chances were better there than anywhere else in Europe. The S half of [Spain] had been in Arab hands for centuries, and [their rulers] had brought w/them 1000s of classical texts, translated into Arabic but long lost to the vernacular languages of the West. The libraries of Toledo, in the center of [Spain], housed scores of these valuable volumes - and Toledo had now been recaptured by one of the Christian kingdoms of the N, meaning that W scholars could visit ... in safety. Gerard found [even] more than he [had hoped] ... Euclid, Galen, Ptolemy and Aristotle ... Overwhelmed, he settled into Toledo and learned Arabic ... to the end of his life he [translated] ... whatever books he thought finest ... Renaissance had begun (HRW p xxiii). Much later, the 1st Italian to give a name to this reawakened interest in classical learning was the poet Petrarch in the 1340s. SWB ack's that even before Gerard, Western scholars (mostly Italian) had been working thru Arabic libraries, reacquainting themselves w/the classics. Its likely that this interest was sparked by Western contact w/the Muslim world in the recently completed 1st Crusade 1096-9.

The Order of the Temple was fnd'd at the beginning of the 12C. In the years that followed the 1rst Crusade [1096-9], a French knight named Hugues de PAYNS, lord of a fief near the city of Troyes and vassal of the Count of Champagne, had brought together a few comrades in the city of Jerusalem, just taken back by Christians, to found a brotherhood of lay soldiers who lived as lay people w/the Canons of the Holy Sepulchre. [Then] In 1119, a gang of Saracen robbers slaughtered a caravan of Christian pilgrims traveling to the Holy Places. The event had an enormous resonance ... The govt of the Kingdom of Jerusalem was growing increasingly concerned about [this chronic Holy Land problem] ... It was perhaps as a result of this tragedy that the following year, 1120, Hugues de PAYNS and his comrades committed themselves before the patriarch of Jerusalem to fight in defense of Chr pilgrims ... embrac[ing] poverty [and chastity, obedience] ... the lay knights took the name 'poor fellow soldiers of Christ' and lived on alms ... a few years later [there were] some 30 [of them] ... too many to remain [at] ... the Holy Sepulchre ... [to the 2nd KoJ Baldwin II r1118-31 invited them to] move to a wing of the royal palace ... near ruins of Solomon's Temple ... [which lead to their nickname] the Templars (Temp p38-9). They were to become 'barely 50yrs after their founding, the most powerful monastic and military order of the Middle Ages' (18, 21).

Sources:
- BN HT = History's Timeline, Barnes & Noble, 1981, own.
- KRGG = Knights, Romans, Greeks and God, Brian Daniel Starr, Xlibris, 2011, own.
- CHME = Christian History Made Easy, Dr Timothy Paul Jones, Rose, 2005, 165pp, own.
- HRW = The History of the Renaissance World, Susan Wise Bauer, Norton, 2013, Mustang.
- Hyby = History Year by Year, DK, 2013, FHL.
- Temp = The Templars, Barbara Frale, Skyhorse, 2012, FHL.

cf ahnen-sg, Roman