The Hungarian king Gezá and his family are baptized as Roman Catholics, beginning a long link between Hungary and Rome

Vladimir, the prince of Kiev, decides that Greek Orthodoxy is the most suitable religion for the Russian people

Lively and often fantastic figures, cunningly fitted around the capitals of columns, show the vigour of Romanesque sculpture

Count Radbot builds himself a 'hawk's castle' or Habichstburg, near Zurich, from which the Habsburg dynasty takes its name

Conrad II is elected as the German king, begining the dynasty variously known as Franconian or Salian

A papal delegate (from Leo IX) excommunicates Cerularius, the Patriarch of Constantinople, and the delegate is excommunicated in retaliation, launching a lasting East-West Schism

Pope Gregory VII decrees that only the church may make ecclesiastical appointments, thus initiating the investiture controversy between pope and emperor

The emperor Henry IV stands as a penitent outside the pope's castle at Canossa, so as to be released from excommunication.

Work begins on a new cathedral in Durham, which will become an outstanding example of Norman (or Romanesque) architecture

The full flowering of the Romanesque style is seen in the nave of the abbey church at Vézelay, in France

Conrad III, of the Hohenstaufen family, is elected German king - a title which remains in the family for more than a century, bringing with it that of Holy Roman emperor

In feudal France and Germany Charlemagne is by now venerated as a saint

Frederick Barbarossa becomes king of Germany and Holy Roman emperor, greatly extending the power of the empire during a long reign

Chrétien de Troyes and other French authors turn the stories of Arthur and his knights into a romance of courtly love

Resentment of western merchants results in a massacre of Roman Catholics by fellow Christians in Constantinople

The three-year old Frederick II has a claim to the thrones of both Sicily and Germany on the death of his father, the emperor Henry VI

The crusaders of the fourth crusade besiege, take and destroy the Christian city of Constantinople

Many of the treasures adorning the church of San Marco in Venice are loot taken from Constantinople during the fourth crusade

Frederick II is crowned Holy Roman emperor by a somewhat reluctant pope, Honorius III

The death of the last Hohenstaufen ruler, Conrad IV, leaves a vacancy on the German throne which is not filled for nineteen years

Nicola Pisano completes a pulpit for Pisa, borrowing details from Roman sarcophagi - an early example of a new interest in the classical past

The Bohemian prince Otakar II, ruler also of Austria, extends his territories after defeating the Hungarians at Kressenbrunn

The period without a German king, known as the Great Interregnum, ends with the election of a Habsburg prince, Rudolf I

Mongol control over the entire breadth of Asia introduces a stability often called the Pax Mongolica, echoing the Pax Romana

At Dürnkrut Rudolf I defeats and kills Otakar II, his rival for Austria - thus bringing the Austrian territories into the Habsburg domain