The Crusaders and the Conquest of Estremadura…

Suryavarman dispatches his greatest general, Senapati Sankara, at the head of a combined Khmer-Vijayan force to attack the relocated Cham capital in 1147.

Jaya Harivarman meets Sankara’s army at Chaklyang in the Phanrang valley and annihilates it.

The Chams, following the Khmer invasion and conquest of the Cham capital of Vijaya, install Rudravarman as ruler in Panduranga, which becomes the provisional capital of Champa.

Following King Rudravarman’s death in 1147, his son succeeds him as Jaya Harivarman I.

Yuri, the sixth son of Vladimir Monomakh, had in 1108 been sent by his father to govern in his name the vast Rostov-Suzdal province in the northeast of Kievan Rus'.

In 1121, he had quarreled with the boyars of Rostov and moved the capital of his lands from that city to Suzdal.

As the area is sparsely populated, Yuri has founded many fortresses here, establishing the town of Ksniatin in 1134 (He is to found Pereslavl-Zalesski and Yuriev-Polski in 1152, and Dmitrov in 1154.

The establishment of Tver, Kostroma, and Vologda is also popularly assigned to Yuri.)

For all the interest he takes in fortifying his northern lands, Yuri still covets the throne of Kiev.

It is his active participation in southern affairs that earns him the sobriquet of "Dolgoruki", i.e., "the long-armed".

His elder brother Mstislav of Kiev had died in 1132, and "the Rus lands fell apart", as one chronicle put it.

Yuri had instantaneously declared war on the princes of Chernigov, enthroned his son in Novgorod, and captured Pereyaslav of the South.

The Novgorodians, however, had betrayed him, and Yuri had taken vengeance by seizing their key fortress, Torzhok.

Dolgoruki resumes his struggle for Kiev in 1147, arranging a meeting with Sviatoslav Olgovich in a place called Moscow, a trading center along the Baltic-Volga-Caspian route, situated on the Moscow River near the geographic center of European Russia and the Great Russian Plain.

Albert the Bear, ruler of the Nordmark and some valuable lands in northern Saxony, had on his mother's death in 1142 succeeded to one-half of the lands of the House of Billung, which had been the primary ruling dynasty in Saxony in the tenth and eleventh centuries, and for which reason Albert has become embroiled in a low-intensity feud with the Welf dukes of Saxony.

Now firmly established in the Nordmark, Albert casts his covetous eye on the lands to the north and east that are thinly populated the Slavic Wends, who as pagans are considered fair game, and whose subjugation to Christianity is the aim of the German "Wendish crusade" of 1147 authorized by the Roman Catholic church and led by Henry the Lion, and in which Albert takes part.

Vienna has become an important center of German civilization in central Europe by the middle of the twelfth century, and the four existing churches, including only one parish church, no longer meet the town's religious needs.

In 1137, Bishop of Passau Reginmar and Margrave Leopold IV had signed the Treaty of Mautern, which referred to Vienna as a civitas for the first time and transferred the St. Peter's Church to the Diocese of Passau.

Under the treaty, Margrave Leopold IV also received from the bishop extended stretches of land beyond the city walls, with the notable exception of the territory allocated for the new parish church, which will eventually become St. Stephen's Cathedral.

Founded in 1137 following the Treaty of Mautern, the partially constructed Romanesque church is solemnly dedicated in 1147 to Saint Stephen in the presence of Conrad III of Germany, Bishop Otto of Freising, and other German nobles who are about to embark on the Second Crusade.

Henry III, a member of the Welf dynasty and Duke of Saxony, is the son of Henry the Proud, Duke of Bavaria and Saxony, who was the son of Duke Henry the Black and an heiress of the Billungs, former dukes of Saxony.

Henry's mother is Gertrud, only daughter of Emperor Lothair III and his wife Richenza of Northeim, heiress of the Saxon territories of Northeim and the properties of the Brunones, counts of Braunschweig.

Henry's father had died in 1139, aged thirty-two, when Henry was still a child.

King Conrad III had dispossessed Henry the Proud, who had been his rival for the German crown in 1138, of his duchies in 1138 and 1139, handing Saxony to Albert the Bear and Bavaria to Leopold of Austria.

Henry, however, had not relinquished his claims to his inheritance, and Conrad had returned Saxony to him in 1142.

Having reached his majority in 1146, Henry in 1147 marries Clementia of Zähringen, thereby gaining her hereditary territories in Swabia.

Upon the refusal of Conrad III to grant his demand of the Duchy of Bavaria, Henry initiates a war with the emperor, who is absent in Palestine with France’s Louis VII.

As Henry the Lion, he is to become one of the most powerful German princes of his time.

Fridianus (Frediano), an Irish bishop of Lucca in the first half of the sixth century, had had a church built in Lucca dedicated to St. Vincent, a martyr from Zaragoza, Spain.

When Fridianus was buried in this church, the church was renamed Ss.

Frediano and Vincenzo.

Soon afterwards, a community of Augustinian canons was growing around this church.

In the Longobard era, the church and the canon house had been enlarged.

In 1104, this order had been recognized by Pope Paschal II.

The prior of St. Frediano was later accorded a rank equal in dignity to that of a bishop.

The Romanesque church, known as the Basilica of San Frediano, acquires its present appearance of a typical Roman basilica during the period 1112-1147.

Al-Mumin’s forces had moved west onto the Atlantic coastal plain after defeating the Almoravids in open battle.

After laying siege to Marrakech, they finally capture it in 1147, killing Ishaq ibn Ali, the last Almoravid ruler in Marrakech, in 1147 and establishing Marrakech as the Almohad capital.

After the capture of Marrakech, Abd al-Mu'min orders the elimination of thirty thousand Almoravids in a purge to quell any open rebellions.

The Almohads offer Christians and Jews the choice of conversion or expulsion.

Many Jews convert but continue to practice Judaism in secret.

Hildegard, after splitting from the monastery at Disibodenberg, founds a new convent at Rupertsberg, near Bingen, in about 1147, by which time she has begun dictating her mystical visions to a monk.

She had acquired the land from Hermann, dean of Mainz, and Count Bernhard of Hildesheim, plus various smaller gifts.