Connection

Paper writing: I love it and I hate it. I hate how it takes so long to take an idea you have fully intact and perfect in your head and shoehorn it into the limited vocabulary you have from staying up late reading the dictionary. Writing essays is like wrestling for me. I wrestle this idea into 10 pages of prose.
I just handed an essay on the relationship between Pope Gregory VII and King William the Conqueror of England. Don't worry, I can see you staring at your computer screen and tilting your head and saying "hm" in sympathetic interest. That's been the typical response. Its an odd topic I'll admit. I came attracted to it because in general I love historical connection. Sure it's nice to have all these random facts in your head, but when you can connect things together like Christmas cards on a string above the mantle, it's beautiful.
What comes to mind when you think of 11th century Europe? Probably not much. What about the year 1066? If you grew up in the Commonwealth you should know that this is the date of the Battle of Hastings, the Norman Conquest, King Harold getting shot in the eye, King William taking the throne in the last successful military invasion of the England. What else? Well, the Church had gone to shit, priests were getting married, holy things were being bought and sold like used cars, hardly the kingdom of God. But along comes a number of pious popes who wanted to change that and so we get the papal reforms. Their solution to the problems in the church? Stop people from doing bad things. How were going to do that? By having more authority. If only the word of the pope would be obeyed lickety-split, there'd be no problems. The problem was that this other group of fellows, let's call them 'kings', because that's what they were, weren't too quick to take orders from a pope and so there's this big controversy, all of a sudden you have three guys claiming to pope, yadda yadda yadda.
So my question: how did these two events converge? I basically threw them at each other and saw where the sparks flew and started writing. Turns out William helped the papal agenda along rather nicely. They got on relatively well. William helped the papacy bring about reform and the papacy helped William assert his rule over the English he didn't slaughter. That's about it.
Until you look further and you see that here we have England and the pope getting along nicely, but in 500 years with old Henk #8 things changed.
So that is when history gets fun for myself. When you begin to string the lines from one event to another across geography, across time.
If anyone actually wants to read my paper, let me know I'll send you a copy. (...crickets...tumbleweed...)
As for me, I have library books to return.