Kingdom of Jerusalem

As demonstrated by Henri Pirenne in Mohammed and Charlemagne, Europe’s collapse into a so-called “Dark Ages” was largely attributable to the Muslim conquest of the Mediterranean, which choked Europe’s access to international markets. After Charlemagne’s death, his precarious empire fragmented under the attack of the Vikings and Magyars. In its wake, the peasantry were subjected to a system of feudalism solidified, particularly in France and the Low Countries. In the countryside, private castles were erected by local seigneurs without imperial permission to fend off barbarian attacks. Small trading centers grew around the castles, and eventually served as sites for periodic fairs. By the end of the eleventh century, Western Europe was gaining greater economic integration. This internal explosion of urbanization provided the financial strength that emboldened the West to undertake the Crusades in an attempt to retake the Holy Land from the Muslims.[1]

The Crusades were a number of attempts to recapture the Holy Land, which had fallen to Islamic expansion as early as the seventh century. The First Crusade (1095 – 1099) was called for at the Council of Clermont on November 27, 1095, by Pope Urban II (c. 1035 – 1099), a former monk of the influential Abbey of Cluny, who called for a military expedition to aid the Byzantine Empire, which had recently lost most of Anatolia to the Seljuq Turks. Clermont was some 200 miles from Troyes, in the influential County of Champagne, town of Rashi de Troyes (1040 – 1105), the greatest alumnus of the Kalonymus academy in Mainz, and was reputedly descended from the royal line of King David.[2] Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki, known as Rashi, was the leading Jewish figure who dominated the second half of the eleventh century, as well as the whole rabbinical history of France. He was descended from the Makhir-Kalonynus line through his mother, whose brother was Simeon the Great, Rabbi of Mainz.[3] His teachers were students of his relative, Gershom ben Judah.

Rashi was the author of complete commentaries on the Bible and on the Babylonian Talmud, and famously, his first comment on the first verse of Genesis, which might be the best-known exegesis of the Torah, asserts the God-given right of the Jewish people to possess the Land of Israel:

Rabbi Isaac said: The Torah should have begun with the verse, “This month shall be to you the first of months” (Exodus 12:2) which was the first commandment given to Israel. Why then did it begin with, “In the beginning”? It began thus because it wished to convey the idea contained in the verse (Psalm 111:6), “The power of His acts He told to His people, in order to give them the estate of the nations.” So that if the nations of the world will say to Israel, “You are robbers because you took by force the land of the seven nations,” Israel might reply to them, “The whole earth belongs to the Holy One, blessed be He. He created it and gave it to them, and by His will He took it from them and gave it to us.

Rashi’s hometown of Troyes was the site of the famous Champagne fairs, which sparked an international trade, that according to Janet Abu-Lughod, in Before European Hegemony, represented a critical “turning-point” in world history, giving rise to Europe as a modern economy, and assisting it in leaving behind the Dark Ages.[4] The King of France granted the privileges of the Champagne fairs to the Knights Templars, a Crusading order founded in 1119, and named after their headquarters in the site of the old Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem.[5] At the time, Champagne was governed by Hugh, Count of Champagne (c. 1074 – c.1125), a founding member of the Templars, who frequently received Rashi as an honored guest.[6]

Hugh of Champagne was a member of a network of primarily Frankish nobles who embarked on the expedition to the Holy Land, since known as the Princes’ Crusade, founding a legacy of chivalry remembered in the Legends of the Holy Grail, the symbol of their dynastic descent from King David, the bloodline expected to produce the messiah. In Judaism, ha mashiach, often referred to as melekh mashiach, is to be a Jewish leader, descended from the paternal Davidic line through King David and King Solomon. He is expected to accomplish the unification of the tribes of Israel, the gathering of all Jews to Eretz Israel, the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem, the ushering in of a Messianic Age of global universal peace, and the annunciation of the world to come. Thus, the families of the Princes’ Crusade, although ostensibly Christian, appeared to have participated in an attempt to reconquer the Holy Land and establish one of their own as “King of Jerusalem,” in expectation of the coming of the Messiah.

There is a legend recounted in Shalshelet ha-Kabbalah by Gedaliah ibn Yahya (1526 – 1587), where Godfrey de Bouillon (1060 – 1100), the leader of the First Crusade, purportedly connected to the Davidic bloodline, visited Rashi to ask him advice about his attempt to lead the First Crusade. Rashi predicted that Godfrey would conquer Jerusalem and rule over it for three days, then lose it to the Muslims on the fourth day, and he would return with only three horses. Godfrey responded, “What you say may come true, but if I return with even four horses, I will feed your flesh to the dogs and kill every Jew in France.” Four years later, Godfrey returned with four horses, but as he hastened into the city to harm Rashi, the fourth horse and its rider were killed by a falling stone of the gate. When Godfrey seeks out Rashi to “bow down” before him, he discovers that Rashi has already passed away.

Godfrey was only one of several leaders of the crusade. Pope Urban had first gained the support of two of southern France’s most important leaders, papal legate Adhemar of Montiel, Bishop of Le Puy (d. 1098), and Raymond IV, Count of Toulouse (c. 1041 – 1105). Other leaders Urban II recruited throughout 1096 included Bohemond of Taranto (c. 1054 – 1111), a southern Italian ally of the reform popes; Bohemond’s nephew Tancred (1075 – 1112); Godfrey of Bouillon; his brother Baldwin of Boulogne (1060s – 1118), later Baldwin I of Jerusalem; Hugh I, Count of Vermandois (1057 – 1101), brother of the excommunicated Philip I of France; Robert Curthose (Robert II of Normandy, c. 1051 – 1134), brother of William II of England; and his relatives Stephen, Count of Blois (c. 1045 –1102) and Robert II, Count of Flanders (c. 1065 – 1111). The crusaders represented northern and southern France, Flanders, Germany, and southern Italy, and so were divided into four separate armies that were not always cooperative, though they were held together by their common ultimate goal.[7]

Godfrey, who was joined by his brothers Eustace III and Baldwin of Boulogne in the First Crusade in 1096, played a key role during the successful Siege of Jerusalem in 1099. He was the first ruler of the Kingdom of Jerusalem from 1099 to 1100, but avoided using the title of king, choosing instead that of princeps. For his exploits he was included among the ideal knights known as the Nine Worthies, nine personages who personify the ideals of chivalry established in the Middle Ages, along with the Trojan herod Hector, Alexander the Great, and Julius Caesar, Joshua, King David, and Judah Maccabee, King Arthur, and Charlemagne. Godfrey’s role in the crusade was described by Albert of Aachen, the anonymous author of the Gesta Francorum, written in 1100–1101, and Raymond of Aguilers, a participant in the First Crusade who co-wrote Historia Francorum qui ceperunt Iherusalem, with Pons of Balazun. William of Tyre (c. 1130 – 1186), writing his History of the Crusade about 1190, records to the tale of the Knight of the Swan from whom Godfrey and his brothers were descended. The tale was repeated in the Crusade cycle, where Godfrey was the hero of numerous French chansons de geste. The legend of the Knight of the Swan, most famous today as the storyline of Wagner’s opera Lohengrin, based on Wolfram von Eschenbach grail story Parzival

Ultimately, the Princes’ Crusade not only succeeded in the recapture of Anatolia, but also conquered the Holy Land, and culminated in July 1099 in the re-conquest of Jerusalem and the establishment of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, which lasted for almost two hundred years, until the siege of Acre in 1291. The Armenians in Cilicia gained powerful allies among the Frankish Crusaders, whose leader, Godfrey de Bouillon, was considered a savior for the Armenians. With the Crusaders’ help, the states of Armenians secured Cilicia from the Byzantines and Turks, both by direct military actions in Cilicia and by establishing Crusader states in Antioch, Edessa, and Tripoli. In 1098, Baldwin of Boulogne left the main Crusading army, and went first south into Cilicia, then east to Edessa, where he convinced its lord, Thoros, to adopt him as son and heir. He also married Thoros' daughter, Arda of Armenia, who eventually became the first queen of Jerusalem, when his brother Godfrey of Bouillon died in 1100.

While Baldwin of Boulogne headed east from Asia Minor to set up the County of Edessa, the main army of the First Crusade continued south to besiege Antioch in late October 1097, led by led by Stephen of Blois. Adhemar of Le Puy is said to have carried the Holy Lance in the Crusaders’ desperate breakout at Antioch on 28 June 1098. The first ruler of the Principality of Antioch was Bohemond of Taranto, the son of Robert Guiscard. Bohemond I married Constance of France, the daughter of Philip I of France. The County of Tripoli, the last of the Crusader states, was founded when the Frankish Crusaders captured the region in 1109, and Bertrand of Toulouse, the son of Raymond IV of Toulouse, became the first count of Tripoli as a vassal of Baldwin I of Jerusalem. The County of Edessa passed to his cousin Baldwin II of Jerusalem (c. 1075 – 1131).

Guilhemids

Scholars have concluded that the Abbey of Cluny in Burgundy, France, which became acknowledged as the leader of western monasticism, played a major role in preparing and profiting from the Crusades.[8] The Abbey Cluny was founded in 910 AD by William I of Aquitaine (875 – 918), who was a member of the important network of Grail families who were descended from Guillaume of Gellone (c. 755 – 812 or 814 or 814), the medieval William of Orange, through the Dukes of Normandy, in addition to the House of Anjou of France, thus producing the Plantagenets of England, to form the backbone of the family networks who sponsored the Princes’ Crusade. As explained by Edward Gelles, “His Christian descendants number many royal and noble families, including those of William the Conqueror and of some of his followers, the Dukes of Guise and Lorraine, Habsburg Lorraine and d’Este and many others.”[9] Guillaume also ruled as count of Toulouse, duke of Aquitaine, and marquis of Septimania. According to Arthur Zuckerman, Guillaume of Gellone was the son of Alda or Aldana and Theodoric, or Thierry, the name assumed by Rabbi Makhir, the Nasi of Narbonne.[10] In the Medieval romances, Thierry is called Aymery. Zuckerman further proposed that Makhir is to be identified with a Maghario, Count of Narbonne, and in turn with an Aymeri de Narbonne, whom heroic poetry marries to Alda or Aldana, daughter of Charles Martel, becoming the father of Guillaume of Gellone. According to Zuckerman, where the Sefer ha-Kabbalah of Abraham ibn Daud states that Makhir and his descendants were “close” with Charlemagne and all his descendants, it could be taken to mean they were inter-related.[11]

After expelling the Muslims from Narbonne in 759 and driving their forces back over the Pyrenees, the Carolingian King Pepin the Short, the younger son of Charles Martel, conquered Aquitaine in a ruthless eight-year war. Charlemagne followed his father by subduing Aquitaine, and appointing Frankish or Burgundian counts, like his trustee and cousin Guillaume of Gellone, making Toulouse his base for expeditions against Al-Andalus.[12] Charlemagne had decided to organize a regional subkingdom in order to keep the Aquitanians in check and to secure the southern border of the Carolingian Empire against Muslim incursions. In 781, his three-year-old son Louis was crowned King of Aquitaine, under Guillaume’s supervision, and was nominally in charge of the incipient Spanish March, serving as a military buffer zone between Septimania and the Umayyad Moors.[13]

Guillaume of Gellone became one of the best soldiers and trusted counsellors of Charlemagne, and in 790 was made count of Toulouse, when Charles’s son Louis the Pious was put under his charge. In 793, Hisham I, the successor of Abdur Rahman I, proclaimed a Holy War against the Christians to the north, attacking the Kingdom of Asturias while the other half invaded Languedoc, penetrating as far as Narbonne. Guillaume’s resistance exhausted the Muslim forces such that they retreated to Spain. In 801, along with Louis the Pious, Guillaume commanded a large expedition of Franks, Burgundians, Provençals, Aquitanians, Gascons and Goths that captured Barcelona from the Ummayads.

At least six major epic poems about Guillaume of Gellone were composed before the era of the Crusades, including Willehalm by Wolfram von Eschenbach, the author of Parzival. Guillaume’s career fighting the Muslims is celebrated in epic poems in the twelfth and thirteenth century cycle called La Geste de Garin de Monglane, consisting of about two dozen chansons de geste that actually center around Guillaume, the great-grandson of the largely legendary Garin. One section of the cycle, however, is devoted to the feats of his father, there named Aymeri de Narbonne, who had received Narbonne as his seignory after his return from Spain with Charlemagne. The defeat of the Moors at Orange was given legendary treatment in the twelfth century epic La Prise d’Orange. Around 800, for his services in the wars against the Moors and in the reconquest of southern France and the Spanish March, Guillaume was awarded the Principality of Orange originated as the County of Orange, a fief in the Holy Roman Empire, in the constituent Kingdom of Burgundy.

Guillaume’s son Bernard of Septimania (795 – 844), was the Frankish Duke of Septimania and Count of Barcelona from 826 to 832 and again from 835 to his execution. During his career, he was one of the closest counsellors of the Emperor Louis the Pious (778 – 840). Bernard married Dhuoda, possible daughter of Sancho I of Gascony, by whom he had two sons, William and Bernard Plantapilosa (841 – 886). Bernard was appointed Margrave of Septimania before 868. The Emperor Charles the Fat granted him the title of Margrave of Aquitaine in 885. He married Ermengard, daughter of Bernard I of Auvergne. They had at least two children: Adelinda and William I of Aquitaine, the founder of the Abbey of Cluny.

Some claims suggest Guillaume of Gellone’s sister, Ida Redburga, married Egbert of Wessex (771/775 – 839) of the Anglo-Saxon invaders who displaced the Britons from England, and a direct descendant of Odin, according to the chronicles.[14] Egbert had been forced into exile at court Charlemagne by a rival Saxon claimant to the throne, the powerful Offa, King of Mercia, and returned to England in 802 where he eventually became king of Wessex, and later first king of England.[15] Their son, Ethelwulf was the father of Alfred the Great (between 847 and 849 – 899), who in turn became the father of Edward the Elder (c. 874 – 924).

The Dukes of Normandy were created in 911 AD when Rollo the Viking (c. 860 – c. 930) met Charles the Simple, the grandson of Charles the Bald, and agreed to the Treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte, where it was stipulated that Rollo would convert to Christianity and become Charles’ vassal. In return, Charles granted Rollo land between the Epte and the sea as well as Brittany. The Dukes of Normandy were descended from Rollo, who married Poppa of Bayeux, the great-granddaughter of Guillaume of Gellone. There are different opinions among medieval genealogy experts about Poppa’s family. Christian Settipani says her parents were Guy de Senlis and Cunegundis, the daughter of Pepin II Quentin, Count of Vermandois (817 – after 850). Pepin II’s father was King Bernard of Italy. Pepin II’s mother was the Queen of Italy, Cunigunda of Gellone.[16] Settipani’s theory is part of a more extensive reconstruction which suggests that Cunigunda was a daughter of Heribert of Toulouse (780 – c. 843), who might have been a son of Guillaume of Gellone and Cunegonde.[17]

Ottonian Dynasty

As the first non-Frankish king of East Francia, Henry I the Fowler of Saxony (876 – 936) established the Ottonian dynasty of kings and emperors, and is generally considered to be the founder of the medieval German state. Henry I the Fowler’s father was Otto I the Illustrious (c. 830/40 – 912), whose mother was Oda Billung, the granddaughter of Charlemagne’s son Pepin, and Bertha of Toulouse, the daughter of Guillaume of Gellone.[18] Oda Billung’s mother, Aeda of Italy, would have been the step-sister of Bernard of Italy (797 – 818), the illegitimate son of of Pepin of Italy, brother of Louis the Pious.[19]

After the coronation of Charlemagne, his successors maintained the title until the death of Berengar I of Italy (845 – 924), grandson of Louis the Pious. The relatively brief interregnum between 924 and the coronation of Otto the Great in 962 is taken as marking the transition from the Frankish Empire to the Holy Roman Empire. Over the course of the later ninth century the title of Emperor was disputed by the Carolingian rulers of Western Francia, in what would become France, and Eastern Francia, which would become Germany, and after the death of Charles the Fat in 888, the Carolingian Empire broke apart, and was never restored. After the Carolingian king Louis the Child died without issue in 911, East Francia did not turn to the Carolingian ruler of West Francia to take over the realm but instead elected one of the dukes, Conrad I of Germany (c. 881 – 918), as Rex Francorum Orientalium. Conrad was the first king not of the Carolingian dynasty, the first to be elected by the nobility and the first to be anointed.[20] On his deathbed, Conrad yielded the crown to his main rival, Henry the Fowler, who was elected king at the Diet of Fritzlar in 919.

Genealogy of the Ottonian Dynasty

• Oda Billung + Liudolf of Saxony

  • Bruno, Duke of Saxony

  • Otto I the Illustrious + Hedwig of Babenberg

    • Henry the Fowler + Saint Matilda

      • Hedwig of Saxony + Hugh the Great

      • OTTO THE GREAT, HOLY ROMAN EMPEROR (first of the Ottonian dynasty) + Eadgyth (see above)

        • Liutgard of Saxony + Conrad, Duke of Lorraine

          • Otto I, Duke of Carinthia + Judith of Carinthia

            • Pope Gregory V

            • Conrad I, Duke of Carinthia

            • Henry of Speyer + Adelaide of Metz

              • Conrad II, Holy Roman Emperor (fisrt of Salian dynasty) + Gisela of Swabia

      • OTTO THE GREAT, HOLY ROMAN EMPEROR + Adelaide of Italy (close to Odilo of Cluny)

      • Henry I, Duke of Bavaria + Judith, Duchess of Bavaria

        • Henry II, Duke of Bavaria + Gisela of Burgundy (see above)

          • Henry II, Holy Roman Emperor + Cunigunde of Luxembourg

          • Gisela of Hungary + Stephen I of Hungary

      • Gerberga of Saxony + Gilbert, Duke of Lorraine

        • Alberade of Lorraine + Renaud of Roucy (Viking)

          • Ermentrude de Roucy + Alberic II of Mâcon

          • Ermentrude de Roucy + Otto-William, Count of Burgundy

            • Gerberga + William II of Provence (see above)

            • Renaud I + Alice of Normandy (see above)

              • William I, Count of Burgundy + “Stephanie”

                • Stephen I, Count of Burgundy + Beatrix of Lorraine

                  • Isabella + Hugh, Count of Champagne (Templars, s-b of Stephen of Blois f. of Henry of Blois)

                  • Reginald III, Count of Burgundy + Agatha of Lorraine

                    • Beatrice I, Countess of Burgundy + Frederick Barbarossa (see below)

                • Guy of Burgundy (Pope Callixtus II, involved in the Investiture Controversy. Close advisor was Pope Honorius II, who approved founding of Templars)

                • Raymond of Burgundy + Urraca of Leon and Castile

                • Sybilla + Odo I, Duke of Burgundy

                • Gisela of Burgundy + Humbert II of Savoy

                • Gisela of Burgundy + Rainier, Marquis of Montferrat

                  • William V, Marquis of Montferrat + Judith of Babenberg

                    • Conrad of Montferrat + Isabella I of Jerusalem

                • Reginald II, Count of Burgundy

            • Agnes of Burgundy + William V, Duke of Aquitaine (see above)

              • William VII of Aquitaine

  • Liutgard of Saxony + Burchard I, Duke of Swabia

    • Burchard II, Duke of Swabia + Regelinda of Zürich

      • Bertha of Swabia + Rudolph II of Burgundy (Burgundian group of the Elder House of Welf)

        • Adelaide of Italy + OTTO THE GREAT, HOLY ROMAN EMPEROR (see above)

          • Otto II, Holy Roman Emperor + Theophanu (niece of Byzantine Emperor John I Tzimiskes)

            • Otto III, Holy Roman Emperor

        • Conrad I of Burgundy + Matilda of France (see above)

          • Gisela of Burgundy + Henry II, Duke of Bavaria

          • Bertha of Burgundy + Odo I, Count of Blois (brother of Emma of Blois)

            • Theobald III, Count of Blois + Gersent of Le Mans

              • STEPHEN, COUNT OF BLOIS (leader of the Princes’ Crusade) + Adela, Countess of Blois (d. of William the Conqueror)

                • Theobald II of Champagne + Matilda of Carinthia

                  • Henry I of Champagne + Marie of France

                    • Henry II of Champagne + Isabella I of Jerusalem

                    • Marie of Champagne + Baldwin I, Latin Emperor

                    • Theobald III of Champagne + Blanche of Navarre, Countess of Champagne

                  • Adela of Champagne + Louis VII of France (also married Eleanor of Aquitaine)

                  • Matilda of Blois-Champagne + Rotrou IV, Count of Perche

                  • Agnes of Champagne + Reginald II, Count of Bar

                • STEPHEN, KING OF ENGLAND + Matilda I, Countess of Boulogne

                • Henry of Blois, Abbot of Glastonbuy, Bishop of Winchester (author of Perlesvaus, and used Geoffrey of Monmouth as a nom de plume to write Historia Regum Britanniae, which was largely responsible for formulating the image of Arthur)

            • Theobald III, Count of Blois + Adela

              • Odo V, Count of Troyes

              • Hugh, Count of Champagne (Founder of the TEMPLARS, in contact with RASHI) + Isabella

            • Odo II, Count of Blois + Ermengarde of Auvergne

            • Agnes de Blois + Geoffrey II of Thouars

          • Rudolph III of Burgundy + Ermengarde of Burgundy

            • (last of Burgundian group of the Elder House of Welf)

          • Gerberga of Burgundy + Herman II, Duke of Swabia

            • Gisela of Swabia + Conrad II, Holy Roman Emperor (see above)

              • Henry III, Holy Roman Emperor + Agnes of Poitou (see above)

                • Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor (involved in Investiture Controversy with Pope Callixtus II) + Bertha of Savoy (see Genealogy of the House of Savoy)

Upon Henry the Fowler’s death, his son and designated successor, Otto I (912 – 973), traditionally known as Otto the Great, was elected King in Aachen in 936, and his descendants, the Ottonian dynasty, would continue to rule the Eastern kingdom for roughly a century. Under the Ottonians, much of the former Carolingian kingdom of Eastern Francia fell within the boundaries of the Holy Roman Empire. Hedwige, the sister of Otto I the Great, married Hugh the Great (c. 898 – 956), a direct descendant of Guillaume of Gellone. Their descendants would become the dynasty of Capetians, from whom would descend all the kings of France until the Second Republic was established in 1848.

Otto the Great first married Eadgyth, the daughter of Edward the Elder by his second wife, Ælfflæd. Otto later married Adelaide of Italy (951 – 973), and their son become Otto II, Holy Roman Emperor (955 – 983). Otto II married Theophanu, the niece of the Byzantine Emperor John I Tzimiskes (c. 925 – 976). Following the death of their son Otto III, Henry II (973 – 1024), the grandson of Otto I the Great’s brother Henry I of Bavaria, became Holy Roman Emperor. Henry II married Cunigunde of Luxemburg (c. 975 – 1040), who was descended from the grandson of Charlemagne, Charles the Bald, and Ermentrude d’Orleans, the granddaughter of Guillaume of Gellone, by his wife Cunegonde de France, daughter of Carloman II (c. 866 – 884).[21]

The House of Luxembourg claimed descent from the she-demon Melusine, who was akin to the echidna who was the supposed ancestress of the Scythians. The Luxembourg family traced their descent to Melusine through their ancestor, Cunigunde’s father, Sigfried, Count of the Ardennes (c. 922 – 998).[22] The family city of Luxembourg was founded around a castle developed from a Roman fort built on a rock called “the Bock,” which was famous as one of the most powerful and defensible castles in Europe. Siegfried, who bought the site of the castle in 963 was said to have married Melusina, who made the castle of Bock magically appear, the morning after her wedding. Their marriage lasted until Siegfried broke his vow not to disturb her privacy each month. When he spied on her taking a bath, he discovered that she was half-woman, half-fish. As he cried out in shock, Melusina immediately sank beneath the castle and disappeared.[23]

Abbey of Cluny

In 925, William I of Aquitaine nominated Berno (c. 850 – 927) as the first Abbot of Cluny, who placed the monastery under the Benedictine rule. Berno was subject to Pope Sergius III (c. 860 − 911), whose rule is known as the Saeculum obscurum (“the dark age/century”), or the “pornocracy” (“rule of prostitutes”), by German historians of the nineteenth century, due to his association with his mistress Marozia (c. 890 – 937), and her family the Theophylacti, their relatives and allies, whose descendants controlled the papacy for the next hundred years. The Pornocracy began when Sergius III, at the behest of Theophylact, Count of Tusculum (before 864 – 924/925)—who had been stationed at Rome by the retreating Emperor Louis the Blind in 902, seized the papal throne from Antipope Christopher, who in turn had deposed Pope Leo V. According to the Eugenius Vulgarius, Sergius III ordered both Christopher and Leo V to be strangled in prison in early 904 AD.[24]

Marozia was the daughter of the Theophylact and of Theodora, the real power in Rome. According to Liutprand of Cremona (c. 920 – 972), who served as a page at the court of Marozia’s husband Hugh of Arles (c. 880–947), the son of Lothair II’s daughter Bertha. Edward Gibbon wrote of her that the “influence of two sister prostitutes, Marozia and Theodora was founded on their wealth and beauty, their political and amorous intrigues: the most strenuous of their lovers were rewarded with the Roman tiara, and their reign may have suggested to darker ages the fable of a female pope. The bastard son, two grandsons, two great grandsons, and one great great grandson of Marozia—a rare genealogy—were seated in the Chair of St. Peter.”[25]

Genealogy of Morazia

• Theophylact I of Tusculum (most powerful man in Rome) + Theodora

  • MORAZIA + Alberic I of Spoleto

    • Alberic II of Spoleto + Alda of Vienne (d. of Hugh of Italy)

      • Pope John XII

      • Gregory I of Tusculum

        • Pope Benedict VIII

        • Alberic III of Tusculum

          • Peter

          • Pope Benedict IX

        • Pope John XIX

    • David or Deodatus

      • Pope Benedict VII

  • MORAZIA + Pope Sergius III

    • Pope John XI

At the age of fifteen, Marozia became the mistress of Pope Sergius III, whom she knew when he was bishop of Portus. In order to counter the influence of another of her alleged lovers, Pope John X (d. 928 AD), Marozia subsequently married his opponent Guy of Tuscany (d. 929). Together they attacked Rome, arrested, and jailed John X. Either Guy had him killed in 928 or he simply died. Marozia seized power in Rome in a coup d’état. The following popes, Leo VI and Stephen VII, were both her puppets. In 931, she even managed to impose her son by Pope Sergius III as Pope John XI. When Guy died in 929, Marozia negotiated a marriage with his half-brother Hugh of Arles (c. 880 – 947), who had been elected King of Italy. After deposing them in 932, at the very wedding ceremonies, Marozia’s son Alberic II of Spoleto (912 – 954) imprisoned her until she died, while his father Hugh escaped.

Alberic II was in his turn father of Octavian, who became Pope John XII (c. 930/937 – 964) in 955 AD. Agreeing to John XII’s invitation, Otto the Great entered Rome in 962, and swore under oath that, “I will exalt to the best of my ability the Holy Roman Church and you its ruler.”[26] John then proceeded to crown Otto as emperor, the first in the west since Berengar I of Italy. The pope and the Roman nobility swore an oath to be faithful to Otto, and not to provide aid against their enemies, Berengar II of Italy or his son Adalbert. The pope and Otto also ratified the Diploma Ottonianum, under which the emperor became the guarantor of the independence of the Papal States, which ran from Naples and Capua in the south to La Spezia and Venice in the north. This was the first effective guarantee of such protection since the collapse of the Carolingian Empire nearly a hundred years before.

John XII, who was both spiritual head of the church and secular prince of Rome, has become infamous for his scandalously immoral behavior. Liudprand of Cremona, who was also a partisan of Otto the Great, detailed the charges levelled against John XII at the Synod of Rome in 963 AD:

…he had fornicated with the widow of Rainier, with Stephana his father's concubine, with the widow Anna, and with his own niece, and he made the sacred palace into a whorehouse. They said that he had gone hunting publicly; that he had blinded his confessor Benedict, and thereafter Benedict had died; that he had killed John, cardinal subdeacon, after castrating him; and that he had set fires, girded on a sword, and put on a helmet and cuirass. All, clerics as well as laymen, declared that he had toasted to the devil with wine. They said when playing at dice, he invoked Jupiter, Venus and other demons.[27]

Sergius III had supported the establishment of the Abbey of Cluny in order to revive the spirituality of Benedictine monasticism.[28] His son John XI also granted many privileges to the Abbey Cluny, which was later on a powerful agent of Church reform.[29] When Berno resigned as abbot, his abbeys were divided between his relative Vido and his disciple Odo of Cluny (c. 880 – 942). As a child, Odo was sent first to the court of Fulk II of Anjou (c. 905 – 960), and later became a page at William I’s court in Aquitaine. Odo developed a particular devotion to Mary, under the title “Mother of Mercy,” an invocation by which he would address her throughout his life.[30]

Pope John XIII (d. 972) was Morazia’s nephew, the offspring of her younger sister Theodora, and Popes Benedict VIII, John XIX, Benedict IX, and antipope Benedict X of the House of Tusculani were also Marozia’s descendants. The reformation sponsored by Cluny was supported by Pope Benedict VIII (c. 980 – 1024), another descendant of Mazoria, who was a close friend of Saint Odilo of Cluny (c. 962 – 1049), fifth Benedictine Abbot of Cluny, who held the post for around 54 years, during which Cluny became the most important monastery in western Europe. For most of his reign, Pope John XIX, who succeeded his brother Benedict VIII, enjoyed close relations with Saint Odilo of Cluny, twice confirming the privileges of the abbey.[31] Odilo encouraged the formal practice of personal consecration to Mary. He established All Souls’ Day in Cluny and its monasteries as the annual commemoration to pray for all the faithful departed. The annual celebration is held on November 2 and is associated with the season of Allhallowtide, including All Saints’ Day and its vigil, Halloween, corresponding with the Fall Equinox. Some believe that the origins of All Souls’ Day in European folklore and folk belief are related to customs of ancestor veneration practiced worldwide, through events such as, in India Pitru Paksha, the Chinese Ghost Festival, the Japanese Bon Festival and the Mexican Day of the Dead.[32] The Roman custom was that of the Lemuria, a feast during which the Romans performed rites to exorcise the malevolent ghosts of the dead from their homes.[33]

Saint Odilo was close to Adelaide of Italy, the wife of Otto the Great. Saint Odilo visited Henry II, Holy Roman Emperor, on several occasions and because of his closeness to him, he was able to intercede on several occasions for people who had disputes with him. When Henry II was crowned King of Italy in 1004, Odilo attended the ceremony. He also attended the coronation of Conrad II (c. 989/990 – 1039) who succeeded Henry II and had a similarly good relationship with Odilo, and thus succeeded in getting the Emperor to give favor to Cluny.[34]

As Henry II’s marriage with Cunigunde of Luxembourg remained childless, the Ottonian dynasty became extinct with Henry II’s death of in 1024. The crown passed to Conrad II of the Salian dynasty, great-grandson of Liutgarde, a daughter of Otto I the Great, who along with his wife Gisela of Swabia, was crowned with great pomp at St. Peter’s Basilica on Easter of 1027 by Pope John XIX. Gisela was the daughter of Gerberga of Burgundy, whose father was Conrad I of Burgundy (c.  925 – 993). Conrad I’s sister Adelaide of Italy, the wife of Otto the Great, who had long entertained close relations with Cluny Abbey, and in particular with Saint Odilo.[35] Gerberga’s sister, Bertha married Odo I, Count of Blois (c. 950 – 996). When Gerberga’s brother, Rudolph III Rudolph III of Burgundy (c.  970 – 1032), died without heirs in 1032, the sovereignty of the kingdom of Burgundy devolved as a fief or legacy to his nephew Emperor Conrad II.

When Pope Benedict IX (c. 1012 – c. 1056), the last of the Theophylacti popes, was briefly forced out of Rome in 1036, he returned with Conrad II’s help.[36] Benedict IX is one of the youngest popes in history, the only man to have been pope more than one, and the only man ever to have sold the papacy. He was the nephew of his predecessor, John XI (d. 1032). In 1032, Benedict’s father, Alberic III, Count of Tusculum (d. 1044) obtained his election through bribery. The reign of Benedict IX was also scandalous. Pope Victor III (c. 1026 – 1087), in his third book of Dialogues, referred to “his rapes, murders and other unspeakable acts of violence and sodomy. His life as a pope was so vile, so foul, so execrable, that I shudder to think of it.”[37] Benedict was driven out of Rome and Sylvester III elected to succeed him, but Benedict and his supporters managed to expel several months afterwards. Benedict then decided to abdicate in favor of his godfather Gregory VI (d. 1048), provided his expenses be reimbursed.

Kingdom of Hungary

In 1025, John XIX sent the crown to Poland and blessed the coronation of the Polish king Boleslav I the Brave (967 – 1025), King of Poland and Duke of Bohemia.[38] Boleslav was the grandson of Boleslav I (c. 915 – 967 or 972), known as “the Cruel”—the conduit for the Schechter Letter of Hasdai ibn Shaprut to King Joseph of the Khazars—a member of the Přemyslid dynasty, was ruler of the Duchy of Bohemia from 935 to his death. Boleslav I’s son, Boleslav II of Bohemia (c. 927/928 – 999), married Adiva, the daughter Edward the Elder and sister of Otto I’s first wife Eadgyth.[39] Boleslav II’s sister Dubrawka married Mieszko I, founder of the Piast dynasty, the first historical ruling dynasty of Poland. Their son was Boleslaw I the Brave, who fathered Mieszko II Lambert of Poland (c. 990 – 1034), who married Richeza of Lotharingia, the great-granddaughter of Emperor Otto II. Boleslav the Cruel became the first king of an independent Bohemia, after he led a Czech force in alliance with Otto the Great, that was victorious over the Magyar forces in 955 AD.

At the end of the eighth century AD, Bohemia, like the neighboring states of Great Moravia and Hungary, fell to the invading Magyars, a number of clans emerging from the lands of the Khazars. At its height, the Khazarian empire covered the area of the Ukraine, southern Russia to the Caucasus, and the western portions of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan to the Aral Sea. The town of Kiev, meaning “the site at the shore”, at the Dnepr river, had been founded by the Khazars around the beginning of the eighth century AD, as a trading and administrative center in the western part of the Khazarian empire. At the end of the ninth century AD, the Khanagate of the Khazars had appointed a man named Arpad (c. 845 – c. 907), to be the leader of the kingdom of Hungary, formed by seven Magyar and three Khazar tribes under his leadership.[40] And, as recounted in the Gesta Hungarorum, Latin for “The Deeds of the Hungarians”, a record of early Hungarian history, written by the unknown author around 1200 AD, the Magyars were Scythians, originally descended from Magog:

Scythia, which is called Hungary upon the [river] Don, is quite a vast land. Its eastern border stretches from the northern region to the Black Sea. Behind it runs the Don river with its enormous marshlands, where there are enough martens not just to lavishly clothe the noblemen and the lower ranking people, but also the herdsmen, swineherdsmen, and shepherds. The land is rich in gold and silver, and its rivers offer pearls and semi-precious stones. Scythia’s eastern neighbors were the nations of Gog and Magog, who were cut off from the world by Alexander the Great. The dimensions of the Scythian land are extremely large. The people inhabiting it are still customarily called Don-Hungarians; they have never been under the yoke of any ruler. The Scythians are, namely, an ancient nation which has power over the east. Scythia’s first king was Magog, son of Japheth, and the nation obtained its name “Magyar” from him.[41]

The Gesta goes on to explain that, from Magog’s descendants, Attila the Hun, came from Scythia to Pannonia, in 451 AD, with an enormous army, driving out the Romans and conquering the land. In the year 819, it continues, Ogyek, the commander of Scythia and also descendant of Magog, decided to marry a woman named Emesh. During her pregnancy, Emesh saw a supernatural vision, in the shape of a turul, which landed on her body and made her pregnant. The Turul, like the Turkic Toghrul of the Khazars, is a giant mythical eagle, a messenger of god in Hungarian mythology, who sits on top of the tree of life, along with the other spirits of unborn children in the form birds. Turul is often replaced by the sun in illustrations of the tree of life.[42] Since a dream in Hungarian is called álom, the boy was named Almos, and became the father of Arpad.

Arpad and his clan began a push westward, eventually settling in what is today Hungary, where a unified Magyar state was established by Arpad’s great-grandson Geza Arpad, Grand Prince of the Hungarians (c. 940 – 997), in 971. Although still a pagan, when he became ruler, an alliance was concluded between the Holy Roman Empire and Byzantium in 972, forced Geza to convert to Christianity, to secure a lasting peace for Hungary. Although Geza was baptized in 985, it is doubtful his conversion was sincere, for according to the Bishop of Merseburg, he continued to worship pagan gods.[43] Geza was the son of Grand Prince Taksony and his Khazar, Pecheneg or Volga Bulgarian wife.[44]

According to the Hungarian-Polish Chronicle, composed in the thirteenth century, Geza married a second time to Adelaide, the daughter of Mieszko I and Dubrawka.[45] According to the chronicle, Adelaide had a vision where she saw St. Stephen, who announced that she would have a son, and that she should name him after him. Their son was Stephen I (c. 975 – 1038)), the first king of Hungary, who was canonized in 1083 by Pope Gregory VII. Stephen I married Gisela of Bavaria, the sister of Henry II, Holy Roman Emperor. Richeza of Poland, the daughter of Mieszko II married Stephen I’s cousin, Bela, King of Hungary (c. 1016 – 1063), who succeeded his brother, Andrew I of Hungary (c. 1015 – 1060).

Bogomils

An unknown daughter of Boleslav the Brave married Svyatoslav (943 – 972), Grand Prince of Kiev, who led a mounted force Viking force, known as the Kievan Rus, in a treacherous collaboration with Byzantium, succeeded in penetrating the Khazarian empire, and destroying their capital Itil in 967. Svyatoslav was the great-grandson of Halfdan Frodason King of Denmark, in turn descended from Odin, and whose mother was Hilda of the Vandals. Hilda’s father was Hilderic of the Vandals, whose mother was Eudoxia of Rome, the great-great-granddaughter of Constantine.[46] The resulting dispersal of the Khazars penetrated into the nations of Poland, Bulgaria, and the Magyars of Hungary, who were vassals of the Khazars.

The dynasty of the Piasts intermarried extensively with the Hungarian dynasty of the Arpads and the Cometopuli of Bulgaria. Hercegno, a daughter of Adelaide and Geza, married Gavril Radomir (d. 1015), the son of Samuil, Tsar of Bulgaria.[47] Samuil was one of four sons of Prince Comita Nikola, Count of Bulgaria. The Bulgars, during the seventh century, had come under domination of the Khazars, with whom they shared a language. The Khazars forced some of the Bulgars to move to the upper Volga River region where the independent state of Volga Bulgaria was founded, while other Bulgars fled to modern-day Bulgaria.

Comita Nikola belonged to the Bulgarian Cometopuli dynasty, who according to the Armenian chronicler of the eleventh century, Stephen of Taron, originated in Armenia.[48] Comita married Rhipsime, a princess of the Bagratuni who became rulers of Armenia in the ninth century AD, and who claimed Jewish descent.[49] Moses of Chorene, who wrote a History of Armenia at the request of Isaac Bagratuni, in the middle of the fifth century AD, stated that King Hracheay joined the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar (c. 605 BC – c. 562 BC ) in his first campaign against the Jews, and took part in the siege of Jerusalem. From among the captives he selected the distinguished Jewish chief Shambat, and brought him with his family to Armenia, and it is from him that the Bagratuni claim descent.[50]

The Jewish origin of the Bagratuni was first reported by Moses of Khoren ((ca. 410–490s AD.) According to a tradition first recorded in the work of the eleventh century Georgian chronicler Sumbat Davitis-Dze,[51] and repeated much later by Prince Vakhushti Bagrationi (1696 – 1757), the dynasty claimed descent from King David and came from Israel around 530 AD. Sumbat’s Life and Tale of the Bagratids traces the ultimate origin of the Georgian Bagratids from Adam through King David down to Joseph, husband of the Virgin Mary, and then from Cleopas, brother of Joseph, to a certain Solomon, whose seven sons left the Holy Land and went to Armenia, where a certain queen Rachael baptized them. Three of them remained in Armenia and their offspring later ruled that country, while the four brothers arrived in Kartli in Georgia. One of them, Guaram, was made a ruler there and became the forefather of the Bagrationi. Guaram’s brother Sahak established himself in Kakheti in eastern Georgia, while two other brothers, Asam and Varazvard, conquered Kambechani, east of Kakheti, from a Persian governor.[52]

The Bulgarian Tsars David, Moses and Aaron, the sons of Prince Comita Nikola, became defenders of the heresy of Bogomilism, that developed in Bulgaria in the tenth century AD from Paulicianism. Another descendant of the Mithraic bloodline was the Syrian queen of the third century AD, Zenobia of Palmyra, who led a famous revolt against the Roman Empire. St. Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria (c. 328 – 373 AD), reported her as being “a Jewess follower of Paul of Samosata.”[53] Paul of Samosata, the capital of Commagene, was known as a “Judaizer” and St. Athanasius also accused him of wanting to introduce Judaism into Christianity. But Paul of Samosata’s Jewish influence was of a heretical variety, and likely derived from the Kabbalah, as he inspired the Gnostic sect of the Paulicians, who believed in a distinction between the God who created and governs the material world, and the “God of heaven” who created souls, and who alone should be worshipped—in other words, Lucifer. Therefore, like all Gnostic sects before them, they thought all matter to be corrupt. For the Paulicians, Christ was an angel sent into the world by their “God.” Jesus’ real mother was not the Virgin Mary, but the heavenly Jerusalem, an idea derived from the “Shekhina” of the Kabbalah. Because they claimed that Jesus taught that only to believe in him saves men from judgment, their enemies accused them constantly of gross immorality, even at their prayer-meetings.

In 970 AD, the Byzantine Emperor John Tzimisces, himself of Armenian origin, transplanted as many as 200,000 Armenian Paulicians to Europe, and settled them in the Balkans, which then became the center for the spread of their doctrines. They were settled there as a bulwark against the invading Bulgarians, but the Armenians instead converted them to their religion, eventually evolving into what is known as Bogomilism.[54] The Gnostic doctrine of the Bogomils, meaning in Slavonic “friends of God,” maintained that God had two sons, the elder Satanael and the younger Jesus. Satanael, who sat on the right hand of God and to whom belonged the right of governing the celestial world, became filled with pride and rebelled against his Father and fell from Heaven. Then, aided by the companions of his fall, he created the visible world, image of the celestial, having like the other its sun, moon, and stars, and last he created man and the serpent which became his minister. Later Christ came to earth in order to show men the way to heaven, but his death was ineffectual, for even by descending into Hell he could not wrest the power from Satanael. Nicetas Choniates, a Byzantine historian of the twelfth century, thus described the Bogomils as, “considering Satan powerful they worshipped him lest he might do them harm.”[55]

Agatha of Bulgaria

Sigrid, the daughter of Dubrawka and Mieszko I, married Sven I of Denmark (960 – 1014). In late 1013, Sven embarked on a full-scale invasion of England, and was accepted as king of that country, following the flight to Normandy of King Ethelred the Unready (c. 968 – 1016), the son and successor of Edward the Elder. Ethelred married Emma of Normandy, the daughter of Richard Duke of Normandy. Ethelred returned to England in only 1014 AD after Sven died, but he himself also died only two years later. Ethelred the Unready was then succeeded by his son Edmund II Ironside (c. 990 – 1016. Edmund’s son, Edmund Ætheling, spent most of his life in exile in the Kingdom of Hungary following the defeat of his father by Canute the Great of Denmark and England, the son of Sven. John XIX made a great impression on Canute, and when Conrad II was crowned by him in Rome by in 1027, Canute joined the ceremonies with Rudolph III of Burgundy. Canute was also an ally of Boleslav the Brave.

When Edward the Confessor (c. 1003 –1066), the son of Æthelred the Unready and Emma of Normandy, then heard that another half-brother, Edward the Exile (1016 – 1057), the son of Æthelred by another woman, was still alive, he had him recalled to England and made him his heir. Edward the Exile was married to Agatha of Bulgaria (before 1030 – after 1070). Though her parentage is not known for certain, various sources maintain that she was daughter or sister of “Emperor Henry.” It is not clear whether the “Henry” mentioned was Henry II, Holy Roman Emperor or Henry III, Holy Roman Emperor, although John of Worcester in Regalis prosapia Anglorum specifies Henry III. The penetration of Cluniac ideals in Germany was effected in concert with Henry III, who had married Agnes of Poitou, the daughter of William V of Aquitaine and Agnes of Burgundy.

René Jetté pointed out that William of Malmesbury in De Gestis Regis Anglorum and several later chronicles unambiguously state that Agatha’s sister was a Queen of Hungary.[56] In response to the recent interest in the subject, Ian Mladjov reevaluated the question and presented a completely novel solution. He concluded that of the few contemporaries named Agatha, only Agatha Chryselia, the wife of Samuil of Bulgaria could possibly have been an ancestor of Edward the Exile’s wife. Mladjov inferred that Agatha was granddaughter of Agatha Chryselia, daughter of Gavril Radomir, Tsar of Bulgaria, by his short-lived first marriage to a Hungarian princess thought to have been the daughter of Geza Arpad and Adelaide.[57] A Polish hypothesis has also been presented by John P. Ravilious, who has proposed that Agatha was daughter of Mieszko II Lambert, making Agatha kinswoman of both Emperors Henry, as well as sister of a Hungarian queen, the wife of Bela I.[58]

William the Conqueror

On hearing that Edward the Exile was alive, Edward the Confessor had recalled him to England in 1056 and made him his heir. Agatha of Bulgaria came to England with her husband Edward the Exile and children in 1057, but was widowed shortly after her arrival, so Edward the Confessor made his great nephew Edgar Atheling (c. 1051 – c. 1126) his heir. But Edgar had no secure following among the nobles. The resulting succession crisis opened the way for the invasion by William the Conqueror (c. 1028 – 1087), Duke of Normandy, the great-grandson of Richard I of Normandy.

A traditional rivalry between Brittany and Normandy continued to the end of the eleventh century. The Breton-Norman War of 1064 – 1065 was the result of William the Conqueror’s support of rebels in Brittany against Conan II. To prevent further hostilities during his invasion of England, William I married his daughter Constance to Alan IV of Brittany in 1087. In 1093, Alan IV married Ermengarde of the neighboring Angevin Counts of Anjou in France, as a political alliance with her father Fulk IV, to counter Anglo-Norman influence. Ermengarde of Anjou had previously been married to William IX Duke of Aquitaine, the grandfather of Eleanor.

By 1060, after a long struggle to establish his power, William the Conqueror had secured his hold of Normandy and launched the Norman conquest of England in 1066, decisively defeating the English at the Battle of Hastings. After further military efforts, William was crowned King of England on Christmas Day 1066. Shortly after the Battle of Hastings, William made rich presents to the Abbey of Cluny and pleaded to be admitted a confrater of the abbey like the Spanish kings. He subsequently asked Hugh to send six monks to England to minister to the spiritual needs of the court, and renewed his request in 1078, promising to appoint twelve of the Cluniac Congregation to bishoprics and abbacies within his kingdom.[59]

William, who was exceptionally cruel, had been particularly disliked during his reign, and died a famously ignominious end. Of the two main accounts of William’s death, the more famous of the two is the Historia Ecclesiastica written by the Benedictine monk and chronicler Orderic Vitalis (1075 – c. 1142), a Benedictine monk from Saint-Evroult monastery in Normandy, and who visited Cluny in 1132. According to Orderic, William eventually confessed to his crimes:

I treated the native inhabitants of the kingdom with unreasonable severity, cruelly oppressed high and low, unjustly disinherited many, and caused the death of thousands by starvation and war, especially in Yorkshire… In mad fury I descended on the English of the north like a raging lion, and ordered that their homes and crops with all their equipment and furnishings should be burnt at once and their great flocks and herds of sheep and cattle slaughtered everywhere. So I chastised a great multitude of men and women with the lash of starvation and, alas! was the cruel murderer of many thousands, both young and old, of this fair people.

While some accounts claim that William became ill on the battlefield in 1087, Orderic’s contemporary William of Malmesbury added that William died after his horse reared up during the battle, throwing the corpulant king against his saddle pommel so forcefully that his intestines ruptured. An infection ensued that killed him several weeks later. As priests tried to stuff William into a stone coffin that proved too small for his enormous size, “the swollen bowels burst, and an intolerable stench assailed the nostrils of the by-standers and the whole crowd,” according to Orderic. The assembled crowd was immediately covered in William’s putrified remains and overwhelmed by the fowl odor of decomposing flesh.

Saint Margaret

Eustace II (c. 1015 – c. 1087), Count of Boulogne, the father of Godfrey of Bouillon, Baldwin I of Jerusalem, fought on the Norman side at the Battle of Hastings, and afterwards received large grants of land forming an honor in England. He is one of the few proven companions of William the Conqueror. Eustace II’s father, Eustace I, Count of Boulogne (d. 1049), was the founder of the Boulogne branch of the House of Flanders. During the minority of Baldwin IV, Count of Flanders, Eustace I’s grandfather, Arnulf III, Count of Boulogne had broken free of Flanders and operated as an independent prince. Pope Gregory VII sent Arnulf to Hugh, Abbot of Cluny, who permitted him to become a monk at Cluny. However, Eustace I and Baldwin V (c. 1012 – 1067), who succeeded his father Baldwin IV, became allies. Baldwin V’s daughter Matilda married William the Conqueror. Eustace I was also allied to the ducal house of Normandy by the marriage of his son Eustace II (c. 1015 – c. 1087) to Goda, sister of Edward the Confessor and niece of Richard II. Eustace II had visited England in 1051, and was received with honor at the court of Edward the Confessor. Eustace II later married Ida of Loraine and fathered Godfrey, Baldwin I and their brother Eustace III, Count of Boulogne (c. 1050 – c. 1125).

In 1067, following William the Conqueror’s conquest of England, Edward the Exile’s wife Agatha of Bulgaria fled with her children to Scotland, finding refuge, where her daughter Saint Margaret (c. 1045 – 1093) married Malcolm III of Scotland (1031 – 1093). Their daughter Mary married Eustace III, Count of Boulogne. Mary’s brother was King David I of Scotland (c. 1084 – 1153). David I married Maud, Countess of Huntingdon. Maud’s mother, Countess Judith of Lens, was a niece of William the Conqueror. She was a daughter of his sister Adelaide of Normandy, Countess of Aumale, and Lambert II, Count of Lens, the brother of Eustace II of Boulogne. Judith’s sister Adelise, married Raoul III de Conches whose sister, Godehilde, was the first wife of Baldwin of Boulogne.

David’s reign saw what has been characterized as a “Davidian Revolution,” by which native institutions and personnel were replaced by English and French ones, underpinning the development of later Medieval Scotland. These included his foundation of burghs, implementation of the ideals of Gregorian Reform, foundation of monasteries, Normanization of the Scottish government, and the introduction of feudalism through immigrant Norman and Anglo-Norman knights. He continued a process begun by his mother and brothers helping to establish foundations that brought reform to Scottish monasticism based on those at Cluny and he played a part in organizing diocese on lines closer to those in the rest of Western Europe.[60]

Matilda I, Countess of Boulogne, the daughter of Mary and Eustace III married Stephen, King of England (1092/6 – 1154). Stephen was the son of Stephen, Count of Blois—the leader of the Princes’ Crusade—and Adela, the daughter of William the Conqueror and Matilda of Flanders. Stephen, Count of Blois’s father was Theobald III, the son of Odo I, Count of Blois and Bertha of Burgundy. During the First Crusade, Stephen lead one of the major armies of the Princes, often writing enthusiastic letters to Adela about the crusade’s progress. Stephen was the head of the army council at the Crusaders’ siege of Nicaea in 1097. He returned home in 1098 during the lengthy siege of Antioch, fleeing the battlefield, without having fulfilled his crusading vow to forge a way to Jerusalem. Adela was so ashamed of him that she would not permit him to stay at home.[61] Stephen was pressured by Adela into making a second pilgrimage, and joined the minor crusade of 1101, called the Crusade of the Faint-Hearted, due to the number of participants who joined after having turned back from the First Crusade. In 1102, Stephen was killed at the Second Battle of Ramla at the age of fifty-seven.

Eustace III founded the Cluniac house of Rumilly and was patron of the Templars.[62] Eustace III’s daughter Matilda as well was a supporter of the Templars. She founded Cressing Temple in Essex in 1137 and Temple Cowley in Oxfordshire in 1139.[63] Matilda and King Stephen continued their close family association with the Cluniac order, which received Matilda’s father and to which Stephen’s mother Adela had retired before her death. Matilda’s mother, Mary of Scotland, was buried in the Cluniac house at Bermondsey in 1115.[64]

Knights Templar

The Abbey of Cluny has been suspected to have been the “Order behind the Order” of the Knights Templar, founded soon after the conquest of Jerusalem during the First Crusade, with the support of Baldwin I.[65] The Crusades began when, on November 27, 1095, at Clermont, some 200 miles from Rashi’s town of Troyes in the County of Champagne, Pope Urban II, a former Cluny monk, called for a military expedition to recapture Jerusalem and the Holy Land from the Muslims. The influence of Hugh of Cluny (1024 – 1109) upon Pope Urban II, who had been prior at the Abbey of Cluny under him, made Hugh one of the most powerful and influential figures of the late eleventh century. Sometimes referred to as “Hugh the Great” or “Hugh of Semur,” Hugh was the driving force behind the Cluniac monastic movement during the last quarter of the eleventh century, which had priories throughout Southern France and northern Spain.

After the successful siege of Jerusalem in 1099, Godfrey of Bouillon became the first ruler of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. But Godfrey refused the title of King. Godfrey’s younger brother Baldwin I became the first titled king when he succeeded Godfrey in 1100. The Crusaders gained powerful among the Armenians in Cilicia, who considered Godfrey their savior. Cilicia was the very hub of the intrigues that produced the Mithraic religion. Its capital city of Tarsus was the birthplace of Saint Paul. The Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia had its origins in the principality founded by the Rubenid dynasty, an alleged offshoot of the larger Bagratuni dynasty, which at various times had held the throne of Armenia. Located outside the Armenian Highlands and distinct from the Kingdom of Armenia of antiquity, it was centered in the Cilicia region northwest of the Gulf of Alexandretta. The state formed during the High Middle Ages by Armenian refugees fleeing the Seljuk invasion of Armenia. In 1080, the foundations of the independent Armenian princedom of Cilicia, and the future kingdom, were laid under the leadership of Ruben I, Prince of Armenia (1025/1035 – 1095). After Ruben’s death in 1095, the Rubenid principality, centered around their fortresses, was led by Ruben’s son, Constantine I of Armenia (1035/1040 – c. 1100). Baldwin II of Jerusalem (d. 1131), the cousin of Godfrey and Baldwin I, married Morphia, the daughter of an Armenian nobleman named Gabriel, the ruler of the city of Melitene, whose wife, sources claim, was a daughter of Constantine I.[66]

A decisive battle commonly known as the Battle of Harran was fought on May 7, 1104, during which Baldwin II, was captured by troops of the Great Seljuq Empire. After his release, Baldwin became King of Jerusalem. Around 1119, ten years after the conquest of Jerusalem, the French knight Hugues de Payens (c. 1070 –1136), a vassal of the Count of Champagne, approached Baldwin II with the proposal of creating a monastic order for the protection of pilgrims. The order was founded with about nine knights including Godfrey de Saint-Omer and André de Montbard (c. 1097 – 1156). Baldwin II granted the knights a headquarters in a wing of the royal palace on the Temple Mount in the captured Al-Aqsa Mosque, above what was believed to be the ruins of the Temple of Solomon. The knights called themselves Milites Christi, soldiers of Christ, but because their first Convent was a part of the palace of the king of Jerusalem, which was supposed to have been built close by the place where once Solomon’s temple stood, they became traditionally known as the Knights of the Temple, or the Templars.

The wealthy and cosmopolitan town of Troyes, the scene of annual international trade fairs where the Jews played a prominent role, was a hotbed of Crusader activity, was the seat of Stephen Count of Blois’ half-brother, Hugh, Count of Champagne. Hugh spent 1104–1108 in Jerusalem and later joined the Templar Order, and had two close associates: Hugues of Payens, a village a kilometer from Troyes, and Godfrey of Saint Omer, a town in Flanders.[67] According to legend, Hugues de Payens and Godfrey were so poor that between the two of them they had only one horse, and this gave rise to the famous image on the seal of the Templars, of two men seated on a single horse. When Hugh became a Templar himself in 1124, the Order comprised few more than a dozen knights, and Hugues de Payens was a vassal of his, who had been with him at Jerusalem in 1114.[68]

Hughes de Payens, the Templar Grand Master, give up his own holdings to the order and campaigned for more grants. Hugh of Champagne’s nephew, Theobald II of Blois, granted the order “a house, grange, and meadow, together with one tenement of one carucate, at Barbonne… as well as conceding to his own vassals the right to make gifts from their own lands.” Hugh of Payens received lands from William Clito, Count of Flanders, as well as holdings in Anjou and Poitou. Hugh of Champagne campaigned in England as well, receiving several grants, including the original London Temple. Henry I and Stephen, King of England, made substantial gifts as well. Stephen also excepted the order from all taxes. Other nobles embraced the Templars and the order soon established preceptors throughout Western Europe.[69]

Council of Troyes

In 1128, Hugues de Payens journeyed to the West to seek the approbation of the Church at the Council of Troyes, where Honorius II (1060 – 1130) officially recognized the order.  Honorius II, who was born Lamberto Scannabecchi, was deeply involved in the Investiture Controversy, by which the Holy Roman Emperors Henry IV and Henry V sought the right to select bishops in his territories and the pope himself, with Callixtus II, (c. 1065 – 1124), who was connected to Cluny and the families of the Princes’ Crusade. Henry III, Holy Roman Emperor (1016 – 1056), the son of Conrad II, married Agnes of Poitou, the daughter of the Duke William V of Aquitaine and Agnes of Burgundy, a daughter of Otto-William, Count of Burgundy (955/62 – 1026), the grandson of Berengar II of Italy. Otto-William married Ermentrude de Roucy, the granddaughter of Gerberga of Saxony, the sister of Otto the Great. Otto-William’s son, Reginald I, Count of Burgundy (986 – 1057), married Alice of Normandy, the daughter of Richard II of Normandy. Their son was William I, Count of Burgundy (1020 – 1087), whose sons included Stephen I, Count of Burgundy, whose daughter Isabella married Templar founder Hugh, Count of Champagne. Stephen’s brothers were Raymond of Burgundy and Guy of Burgundy, who was elected pope, in 1119 at the Abbey of Cluny, as Callixtus II, who was deeply involved in the Investiture Controversy, that began with between Pope Gregory VII and Henry IV (1050 – 1106), Holy roman Emperor, the son of Henry III.

Callixtus II’s family was part of a network of some of the most powerful nobles in Europe. He was a cousin of Arduin of Ivrea (c.955 – 1015), the king of Italy. One of his sisters was Gisela of Burgundy, who married to Count Humbert II of Savoy (1065 –1103), and then to Renier I of Montferrat (c. 1084 – 1135), the first Margrave of Montferrat. Another sister Clementia married Robert II, Count of Flanders (c. 1065 – 1111), who became known as Robert of Jerusalem after his exploits in the First Crusade. Another sister Sybilla married Odo I (1060 – 1102), who became Duke of Burgundy. His brother Raymond was married to Urraca, daughter of Alfonso VI of Leon and Castile, and fathered the future King Alfonso VII of León. His brother Hugh was archbishop of Besançon.

The year following his election in 1119, prompted by attacks on Jews during the First Crusade, during which over five thousand Jews were slaughtered in Europe, Callixtus II issued the bull Sicut Judaeis which served as a papal charter of protection to Jews. The bull forbade Christians, on pain of excommunication, from forcing Jews to convert, from harming them, from taking their property, from disturbing the celebration of their festivals, and from interfering with their cemeteries.

Callixtus II’s election at Cluny was conducted by Cardinal Lamberto Scannabecchi (1060 – 1130), who later succeed him as Honoraius II. Cardinal  Lamberto became a close advisor to Callixtus II, accompanying him throughout France, and assisting him in his dealings with Emperor Henry V. One of Lamberto’s actions after he succeeded Callixtus II as Pope Hononrius II in 1224, was to personally reinvest Peter the Venerable (c. 1092 – 1156) as Abbot of Cluny.[70] Peter produced some of the most important documents of the twelfth century, including the first Latin translation of the Quran, which became the standard Benedictine text used by preachers of the Crusades.

As suzerain of the kingdom, Honorius II re-confirmed the election of Baldwin II as King of Jerusalem and established him as the royal patron of the Templars.[71] The leading spirit of the council was the French abbot Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1090 – 1153), a leading Church figure and the founder of the Cistercian Order of monks. A rule was drawn up by Saint Bernard under which the Templars were bound by the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, dedicating themselves to the Mere de Dieu, or the Mother of God. The Templars adopted the Rule of St. Benedict, as recently reformed by the Cistercians. They also adopted the white habit of the Cistercians, adding to it a red cross “pattee,” well recognized as the typical image of the crusaders.

Bernard was to become the most admired churchman of his age.[72] Bernard’s parents were Tescelin de Fontaine, lord of Fontaine-lès-Dijon, and Alèthe de Montbard, both members of the highest nobility of Burgundy. Tescelin was described as having a reddish complexion, almost yellow-haired, commonly known as Sorus, or Le Roux (“the red”).[73] Alèthe’s brother was André de Montbard, who would become the fifth Grand Master of the Templars. It was Hugh of Champagne who in 1115 granted lands to Bernard to found the Cistercian monastery at Clairvaux.[74]

Prior to founding the Cistercian Order, Bernard sought the counsel of English-born monk Stephen Harding (c. 1060 – 1134) and decided to enter his order of Citeaux in Burgundy. During the Middle Ages, Burgundy was home to some of the most important Western churches and monasteries, including those of Cluny, Cîteaux, and Vézelay. Jews living in the region of Cluny, notably in Chalon-sur-Saône, had transactions with the abbey, lending money to it to ensure the security of religious objects. Peter the Venerable, opposed the practice, and the Statutes of Cluny of 1301 expressly forbade borrowing from Jews.[75]

A member of Rashi’s famous Yeshiva founded in 1070 in Troyes was a collaborator of the abbot of Citeaux, Stephen Harding.[76] Jews in great numbers attended the fairs at Troyes, especially at the time of Rashi, which attracted a large number of merchant-scholars who came from throughout the Jewish world, had become a center for the study of Hebrew texts.[77] In 1109, Harding undertook a correction of the Latin text of the Bible, for which he sought out the advice the Jewish Rabbis.[78] Harding was followed by another Cistercian monk, Nicholas Manjacoria, who borrowed extensively from Talmudic and Midrashic literature which became accessible to him through the writings of Rashi.[79]

In the year of 1112, Bernard arrived at Cîteaux with 35 of his relatives and friends to join the monastery. In 1115, Harding appointed Bernard to lead a small community of monks to establish a monastery at Clairvaux, on the border of Burgundy and Champagne. Cîteaux had four daughter houses: Pontigny, Morimond, La Ferté and Clairvaux. Founded in 1114, Pontigny Abbey was the second of the four great daughter houses of Cîteaux Abbey. Hildebert (or Ansius), a canon of Auxerre, petitioned Stephen Harding to found a monastery in a place he had selected for the purpose. Accordingly, in 1114 Harding sent twelve monks under the guidance of Hugh of Mâcon, the first abbot and a friend and kinsman of Bernard of Clairvaux, to establish the new foundation. Under his direction the new monastery developed such a reputation that it became known as “cradle of bishops and the asylum for great men,” and was able to establish another twenty-two Cistercian monasteries.[80] In 1128, Hugh of Mâcon would join Bernard at the Council of Troyes.

Harding’s order was supported by Odo I, Duke of Burgundy, who was married to Callixtus II’s sister Sybilla.[81] Odo was the second son of Henry of Burgundy (c. 1035 – 1070/1074) and grandson of Robert I of France (c. 898 – 956). Bernard de Clairvaux’s father, chevalier Tescelin le Roux, had been Henry’s vassal.[82] Henry later participated in the Crusade of 1101 where he died. Odo I became the duke of Burgundy following the abdication of his older brother, Hugh I (1076 – 1079), who retired to become a Benedictine monk at Cluny. Hugh married Isabella, daughter of Stephen I, Count of Burgundy, the brother of Pope Callixtus II. Stephen I’s sister, Clementia of Burgundy, was married to Robert II, Count of Flanders (c. 1065 – 1111), who participated in the First Crusade with Templar founder Godfrey de Saint-Omer as his vassal. Robert II’s aunt was Matilda of Flanders, who married William the Conqueror, making him the cousin of William II of England, and his sister Adela of Normandy, who married Hugh of Champagne’s half-brother, Stephen, Count of Blois. Stephen I succeeded to the County of Burgundy in 1097, following the death in the Crusades of his elder brother, Reginald II. Stephen I himself participated in the Crusade of 1101, as a commander in Stephen, Count of Blois’ army.

Under Harding, the number of subjects at Citeaux significantly increased by the arrival of Bernard, and the order commenced to send out colonies. In the year 1119, Bernard was present at the first general chapter of the order of Citeaux convoked by Harding, which gave definitive form to the constitutions of the order and the regulations of the “Charter of Charity” which Pope Callixtus II confirmed in that year. However, when the regulations of Citeaux were criticized by the Abbey of Cluny, Bernard defended himself by publishing his Apology. When Bernard asserted his profound esteem for the Benedictines of Cluny, Peter the Venerable (c. 1092 – 1156), the abbot of Cluny, assured him of his great admiration and sincere friendship. In the meantime, Cluny established a reform, and Abbot Suger (c. 1081 – 1151), the minister of Louis VI of France, was also converted by Bernard’s Apology.[83] In later years, Bernard wrote his sermons on the Song of Songs.

Saint Bernard was also known to have come to the defense of the Jews. As in the First Crusade, the preaching led to attacks on Jews. A fanatical French monk named Radulphe claimed the Jews were not contributing financially to the cause of the Holy Land leading to the massacres of Jews in the Rhineland, Cologne, Mainz, Worms and Speyer, with Radulphe. The archbishops of Cologne and Mainz asked Bernard to denounce these attacks. However, the slaughter continued, and Bernard traveled from Flanders to Germany to deal with the problems directly. He then found Radulphe in Mainz and was able to silence him, returning him to his monastery.

[1] Abu-Lughod. Before European Hegemony, p. 44.

[2] “Kind David Through Rashi.” Davidic Dynasty. Retrieved from http://www.davidicdynasty.org/king-david-through-rashi/

[3] Edward Gelles. The Jewish Journey: A Passage through European History (London: I.B. Tauris & Co, 2016).

[4] Abu-Lughod. Before European Hegemony, p. 12.

[5] Karen Ralls. Knights Templar Encyclopedia: The Essential Guide to the People, Places, Events, and Symbols of the Order of the Temple (Red Wheel/Weiser, Apr. 15, 2007), p. 65.

[6] Karen Ralls. The Templars and the Grail: Knights of the Quest (Quest Books, 2003), p. 38.

[7] Thomas Asbridge. The First Crusade: A New History. (Oxford. 2004), pp. 55–65.

[8] H.E.J. Cowdrey. “Cluny and the First Crusade.” Revue benedictine, 83, 1973, p. 285-311.

[9] Edward Gelles. The Jewish Journey (Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition), p. 57.

[10] Arthur J. Zuckerman. A Jewish Princedom in Feudal France, 768-900 (New York:Columbia University Press, 1972).

[11] Ibid.

[12] Archibald R. Lewis. The Development of Southern French and Catalan Society, 718–1050 (The University of Texas Press, 1965). pp. 20–33.

[13] Ibid.

[14] “Saint Ida Redburga.” Retrieved from

 https://www.myheritage.se/person-4000119_149773881_149773881/saint-ida-redburga

[15] Peter Townend, ed., Burke's Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Peerage, Baronetage, and Knightage, One Hundred and Fifth Edition (London: Burke’s Peerage Limited, MCMLXX (1970)), pg. l. Robert Brian Stewart. “KrÛlewna Polska Gunhilda Piast.” Retrieved from http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~cousin/html/p286.htm#i17312

[16] Rosamond McKitterick. The Frankish Kingdoms under the Carolingians. (Pearson Education Limited, 1999).

[17] Christian Settipani. La Préhistoire des Capétiens (Nouvelle histoire généalogique de l'auguste maison de France, vol. 1), éd. Patrick van Kerrebrouck, (1993).

[18] “Ancestors (and descendant) of Oda (Billung) van Merseburg (Saksen).” Retrieved from https://www.genealogieonline.nl/en/kwartierstaat-koos-van-rijn/I14097.php

[19] “Bertha of Toulouse (fl. late 700s).” Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia. Encyclopedia.com. (accessed April 16, 2019); “Bertha de Carolman, Queen Consort of Italy (born Toulouse), 775 - 810.” Retrieved from https://www.myheritage.com/names/bertha_toulouse#; M  Pepin 1er Roi d’Italie des Carolingiens ,ou Pippin (Carloman Karlmann) von AACHEN; King of LOMBARDY, Carolingiens. Retrieved from https://gw.geneanet.org/foullon?lang=en&pz=alessio+alain+heribert+debras+foullon+debras&nz=foullon+debras&p=pepin+1er+roi+d+italie+des+carolingiens+ou+pippin+carloman+karlmann+von+aachen+king+of+lombardy&n=carolingiens

[20] Eckhard Müller-Mertens,. “The Ottonians as Kings and Emperors.” In Reuter, Timothy (ed.). The New Cambridge Medieval History, Volume 3: c.900 – c.1024 (Cambridge University Press, 1999). pp. 233–266.

[21] Jacques Saillot. Les Seize Quartiers des Reines et Imperatrices Francaises (J. Saillot, 1977).

[22] Philippa Gregory, David Baldwin & Michael Jones. The Women of the Cousins’ War (London: Simon & Schuster, 2011).

[23] Ibid.

[24] Eugenius Vulgarius, De Causa Formosiana, xiv.

[25] Edward Gibbon. Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 5 (1788).

[26] Thietmar, Chronik, IV, 22 (Berlin, 1935); cited in E.R. Chamberlain. The Bad Popes (Sapere Books, 1969).

[27] Mikey Robins. Reprehensible: Polite Histories of Bad Behaviour (Simon & Schuster, 2020).

[28] “The Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church.” Retrieved from https://cardinals.fiu.edu/biosunknowndate885-891.htm

[29] Charles Herbermann, ed. “Pope John XI.” Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1913).

[30] Pope Benedict XVI. “Saint Odo of Cluny,” General Audience, 2 September 2009, Libreria Editrice Vaticana.

[31] Lucy Margaret Smith. The Early History of the Monastery of Cluny (Oxford University Press, 1920).

[32] Kristin Norget. Days of Death, Days of Life: Ritual in the Popular Culture of Oaxaca (Columbia University Press, 2006), pp. 193.

[33] Ovid. Fasti. p. V 419ff.

[34] Lucy Margaret Smith. The Early History of the Monastery of Cluny (Oxford University Press, 1920).

[35] “Saint Adelaide of Burgundy.” Saints.SQPN.com. Retrieved from http://saints.sqpn.com/saint-adelaide-of-burgundy

[36] A. Hauck. “Benedict IX.” The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, Vol. II.

[37] Dialogi de miraculis Sancti Benedicti auctore Desiderio abbate Casinensis, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, SS, XXX, 2, (Hannover 1934), p. 141.

[38] Oscar Halecki & W. F. Reddaway, J.H. Penson. The Cambridge History of Poland (Cambridge University Press), 67.

[39] Hroswitha of Gandersheim. Gesta Ottonis, cited in B. H. Hill, Medieval Monarchy in Action: The German Empire from Henry I to Henry IV (London, 1972), p. 122.

[40] George Bisztray. Thousand Years of Hungarian Thought. Retrieved from http://www.oszk.hu/kiadvany/hsr/2000/myth.htm

[41] Hamori, Fred. The Legend of the Turul Hawk. http://users.cwnet.com/millenia/turul.htm

[42] Hamori, Fred. The Devi and his Helpers and his Aliases, http://users.cwnet.com/millenia/devil.htm

[43] David Hughes. Habsburg Dynasty: one of Europe's most prominent dynasties. Retrieved from http://www.angelfire.com/ego/et_deo/hapsburgs.wps.htm

[44] Gyula Kristó. “Géza.” In Kristó, Gyula; Engel, Pál; Makk, Ferenc. Korai magyar történeti lexikon (9–14. század) [=Encyclopedia of the Early Hungarian History (9th-14th centuries)] (in Hungarian). (Akadémiai Kiadó, 1994). p. 235., p. 235.

[45] Martin Homza. “Adelaide, Princess of Cracow and Wife of Grand Duke of Hungary Geza: On the Problem of Fictivity and Reality in East-Central European Medieval Narratives.” In Female Royal Saints in Medieval East Central and Eastern Europe, East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450-1450, Volume: 42. Chapter 6.

[46] Piero scaruffi A time-line of the Slavs, Magyars, Bulgars and Romanians. Retrieved from http://www.scaruffi.com/politics/slavs.html

[47] Ibid.

[48] Alexander Kazhdan (ed.) The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium (Oxford University Press, 1991).

[49] Nicholas Adontz (1938). “Samuel l'Armenien, roi des Bulgares,” MAR Bclsmp (in French) (39): 37; David Marshall Lang. The Bulgarians: from pagan times to the Ottoman conquest (Westview Press, 1976), p. 67; Tom Winnifrith. Badlands, Borderlands: A History of Northern Epirus/Southern Albania (Duckworth, 2002), p. 83.

[50] Richard Gottheil & Herman Rosenthal. “BAGRATUNI (also called Bagarat).” Jewish Encyclopedia.

[51] Sumbat Davitis-Dze. The Life and Tale of the Bagratids (ცხოვრებაჲ და უწყებაჲ ბაგრატონიანთა ჩუენ ქართველთა მეფეთასა), see Ronald Grigor Suny. The Making of the Georgian Nation (Indiana University Press, 1994), p. 349; SH Rapp. Studies In Medieval Georgian Historiography: Early Texts And Eurasian Contexts, (Peeters Bvba, 2003), p. 337.

[52] Ekvtime Taqaishvili. “Georgian chronology and the beginning of the Bagratid rule in Georgia.” Georgica (1935); Vakhushti Bagrationi (c. 1745), History of the Kingdom of Georgia (აღწერა სამეფოსა საქართველოსი); a Russian translation available at ArmenianHouse.org. Retrieved from http://www.armenianhouse.org/bagrationi/history-ru/6.html

[53] History of the Arians, cited in Javier Teixidor. A journey to Palmyra: collected essays to remember (Brill, 2005) p. 218.

[54] Aleksandr A. Vasil’ev. History of the Byzantine Empire: 324-1453, Vol Two (University of Wiscosin Press, 1980), p. 383

[55] cited in Wesbter. Secret Societies and Subversive Sects, p. 64.

[56] René Jetté. “Is the Mystery of the Origins of Agatha, Wife of Edward the Exile, Finally Solved?” New England Historical and Genealogical Register, vol. 150 (October 1996), pp. 417-432

[57] Ian Mladjov. “Reconsidering Agatha, Wife of Eadward the Exile,” The Plantagenet Connection, vol. 11, Summer/Winter 2003, pp. 1-85.

[58] John P. Ravilious. “The Ancestry of Agatha, Mother of St. Margaret of Scotland.” The Scottish Genealogist, vol. 56, pp. 70-84.

[59] Thomas Kennedy. “St. Hugh the Great.” The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 7. (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1910). Retrieved from http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07524a.htm

[60] B. Webster. Medieval Scotland: the Making of an Identity (St. Martin's Press, 1997), pp. 29–37.

[61] James Lea Cate. “The Crusade of 1101.” In Setton, Kenneth M.; Baldwin, Marshall W. (eds.). A History of the Crusades: I. The First Hundred Years (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1969), pp. 343–352.

[62] Heather J. Tanner. “In his brother's shadow: the crusading career and reputation of Eustace III of Boulogne,” in Khalil I. Semaan ed., The Crusades: other experiences, alternate perspectives. Selected proceedings from the 32nd annual Cemers conference (Albany 2003), p. 87.

[63] Lisa Hilton. Queens Consort, England's Medieval Queens (Orion Publishing Group, 2010).

[64] Ibid.

[65] Ralls. Knights Templar Encyclopedia, p. 48.

[66] Aziz Suryal Atiya. A History of Eastern Christianity (Gorgias Press, 2019), p. 332.

[67] Gilad J. Gevaryahu & Harvey Sicherman. “Rashi and the First Crusade: Commentary, Liturgy, Legend.” Judaism (Spring 1999).

[68] Ibid., p. 46.

[69] Scott J. Beem. “The (Not So) Poor Knights of the Temple.” Historia, Volume 6 (1997).

[70] Ibid., p. 261.

[71] Ibid, p. 300.

[72] C. Warren Hollister. “The Making of England, 55 BC to 1399.” Volume I of A History of England, ed. Lacey Baldwin Smith (Sixth Edition, 1992 ed.). (Lexington, MA., 1966), p. 210.

[73] Samuel John Eales. A St. Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux (Society for promoting Christian knowledge, 1890), p. 24.

[74] Ibid., p. 38.

[75] Bernhard Blumenkranz. “Cluny, France.” Jewish Encyclopedia.

[76] Aryeh Grabois. “The Hebraica Veritas and Jewish-Christian Intellectual Relations in the Twelfth Century.” Speculum, Vol. 50, No. 4 (Oct., 1975), pp. 618.

[77] Gotthard Deutsch & M. Seligsohn. “Fairs.” Jewish Encyclopedia.

[78] Louis I. Newman. Jewish Influences on Christian Reform Movements (Columbia University Press, 1925) p. 57.

[79] Newman. Jewish Influences on Christian Reform Movements, p. 59.

[80] E. Obrecht. “Abbey of Pontigny.” The Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1911). Retrieved September 24, 2019 from New Advent: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12233a.htm

[81] Jonathan Riley-Smith. The First Crusaders 1095-1131 (Cambridge University Press, Nov. 26, 1998).

[82] Thomas Merton. Bernard de Clairvaux (Éditions Alsatia, 1953), p. 10.

[83] Marie Gildas. “St. Bernard of Clairvaux.” In Charles Herbermann (ed.). Catholic Encyclopedia. 2. (New York: Robert Appleton, 1907).

Volume One

Introduction

1. Babylon

2. Ancient Greece

3. The Hellenistic Age

4. The Book of Revelation

5. Gog and Magog

6. Eastern Mystics

7. Septimania

8. Princes' Crusade

9. The Reconquista

10. Ashkenazi Hasidim

11. The Holy Grail

12. Camelot

13. Perceval

14. The Champagne Fairs

15. Baphomet

16. The Order of Santiago

17. War of the Roses

18. The Age of Discovery

19. Renaissance & Reformation

20. Kings of Jerusalem

21. The Mason Word

22. The Order of the Dragon