A.d. 1201 to 1300

A.d. 1201 to 1300

Backward to A.D. 1101 to 1200

This was the century of the Mongol conquests throughout Eurasia. Although trade between the continents of Europe and Asia had gone on since before the time of the Romans, the merchant communities had not dealt directly with each other but through caravaneers and market-owners of the Middle East. Islam later created such a barrier that people of medieval Europe had no more knowledge of the East than had the citizens of imperial Rome. Thus, when the Mongols came the inhabitants of Europe had no concept of the nature of those people or from whence they came. This was again a warm century throughout Europe and Asia, and this may, in a sense, have facilitated the Mongol travels by virtue of increased grass as food for their horses and better traveling conditions. (Ref. 27 , 224 )

The christian church

Throughout the Middle Ages, the church had been attempting to emulate the old Roman Empire in the sense of maintaining a universal sovereignty over a motley of states but still allowing a modicum of self rule within each state. The secular and parochial princes were to dwell together in unity under the guidance of an ecclesiastical shepherd, the pope. At the start of this century papal power reached its peak and the German Empire had to yield to many of its demands, as the church's bureaucracy had been continuously improved. But this papal growth and its increasing need for money made the clergy seem worldlier and even corrupt, so that an anti-clerical movement drawing on long hidden Manicheism, stressing poverty and chastity, again arose. (Ref. 137 ) The rebellions, and there were several, were precipitated in part by a bull, Clericis larcos, issued by Pope Boniface VIII, in which the clergy were forbidden under pain of excommunication to give any part of their revenues to temporal rulers without papal consent. In southern France the Albigensian, or Cathari, heresy had appeared at the end of the preceding century and had precipitated wars with the pope for 30 years. They had their own priests, who denied all matter as evil even including Christ's cross and made the Sermon on the Mount the essence of their ethics. The wars to annihilate this sect were devastating and the lands and properties of even the faithful in those areas were confiscated.

In the Balkans the rebels were known as "Bogomils" and they were actually beyond the reach of the papacy but Pope Gregory IX, aware of this, made heresy equal to treason and punishable by death. In this way the Inquisition was officially started in A.D. 1231.

Mariolatry, or the worship of Mary, arose from the people themselves as a measure for transforming the religion of terror to one of mercy and love. It represented a reversion back to the tenderness of the old Egyptian Mother Goddess Isis with her infant son, Horus. The church, apparently sensing the need for this softening of the religion, gradually made way for Mary in her doctrines. This was the time of St. Francis of Assisi, who was perhaps a schizophrenic and of Dominic, who established the Dominican order of monks, so active in the coming Inquisition. It was the age of Siger and of Thomas Aquinas who will be discussed in a later paragraph. (Ref. 49 )