"Chelsea Quinn Yarbro - Olivia 2 - Crusader's Torch" - читать интересную книгу автора (Yarbro Chelsea Quinn)

have problems with his former chancellor and friend Thomas ├а Becket, Barbarossa
was carving out an empire in Europe. The same year that Becket became Archbishop
of Canterbury, Barbarossa sacked Milan. Four years later (1165), while Becket
remained a self-exile in France, Byzantium and Venice made common cause against
Barbarossa, fearing (and not without justification) that they might be next on his list.
 Alexander III, one of the great reformer-Popes (reigned 1159-1181), was not
terribly concerned about the state of affairs in Jerusalem, although he did express fear
for the safety of Christians in Moslem countries as the influence of Saladin increased.
While the Orthodox and Catholic Churches were very separate bodies, there was a
shared sense of danger from the expanding forces of Islam, and apparently a fair
amount of diplomatic negotiation took place between the two Churches at this time.
One of the most lasting influences of Pope Alexander III was his establishment of the
rules for canonization of saints: one of the first canonizations under the rules was of
Thomas a Becket, only two and a half years after his murder in Canterbury Cathedral.
In 1178, Frederick Barbarossa was crowned King of Burgundy for the first time
(he repeated the ceremony eight years later); he had already been made Holy Roman
Emperor by his own antipope, Paschal III, in 1167. Despite his defeat at the Battle of
Legnano, Frederick's star was still regarded as rising. The shift of power in Europe
was heightened in 1180 with the death of Louis VII of France; his son, Philippe II
Augustus, was only fifteen at the time and was an unknown quantity. Frederick's
power reached its zenith in 1184 at the Great Diet of Mainz, and with the possible
exception of Moslem Spain, most of Europe had come under his direct or indirect
influence.
In 1185, the Shi'ite Moslems took over Egypt, bringing a more zealous regime to
the Islamic part of the Mediterranean. Norman French forces from Sicily, then under
Norman control, campaigned against the Byzantines, and after a fairly successful
invasion were defeated at Demetritsa by a Byzantine army under the command of
Alexius Branas. With two major European factionsтАФthe Sicilian Franco-Normans
and the Holy Roman Empire under Frederick I BarbarossaтАФas well as Moslem
forces on expansionist programs, the situation was volatile in many ways. The new
Byzantine Emperor, Isaac II Angelus, though a capable politician, was unable or
unwilling to curb the corruption in his government, aware that to undertake reform at
such a time was to invite treachery. Through various clandestine channels, he
approached the new Pope, Urban III, apparently encouraging another Crusade, which
would provide an effective wedge between the beleaguered Byzantine Empire and
the armed might of Islam.
Matters worsened steadily. By 1187 Saladin had defeated the Christians at Hittin
and had taken Jerusalem. The rivalry between France and England was sharpened
when the heir to the English throne, Richard, was required to do homage to Philippe
of France for English possessions in France; Henry II of England, fifty-three years of
age, was offended enough to turn this episode into a fracas, the result of which was
that he was forced to accept all the French demands and to give full recognition to
Richard as his heir and as partial vassal to France.
 Pope Urban III was succeeded in 1187 by Pope Gregory VIII, and, in the same
year, by Pope Clement III, who proclaimed the Third Crusade, charging all Christian
chivalry to reclaim Jerusalem and once again restore European rule to that city.
Frederick I Barbarossa made certain his reign and succession were in order with a
triple coronation at the end of 1186, and began to prepare for war. In France, the first
tax ever imposed on the French people, called the Saladin tax, was levied to raise
money to pay the enormous cost of the Crusade.