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Overview: The Middle Ages In Europe
The Middle Ages refers to a period that began with the fall of the Roman
Empire in the 5th century and ended with the start of the Renaissance in the
early 15th century. During this period, significant economic, social, and
political changes occurred throughout Europe.
Charlemagne
Charlemagne, also known as Charles the Great, built a powerful kingdom as
ruler of the Franks (768–814). Charlemagne at an early age learned the
importance both of strong leadership on the battlefield and of close links
between secular power and the Roman Catholic Church. On Christmas Day in
800, Pope Leo IIIcrowned Charlemagne and consecrated him as “Emperor of
the Romans”. This action revived hopes that a new Roman Empire might
emerge and also set a precedent in which an emperor’s authority depended
on the approval of the pope.
Charlemagne is also known as the architect of the Carolingian Empire. He
introduced some key governmental innovations that built on the existing
system of seignorialism, wherein kings gave tracts of land to their nobles in
exchange for loyalty and service. Landholdings, called benefices, were
granted to many tribal military leaders for the duration of their military
service. In addition, numerous Frankish aristocrats were appointed to the
posts of counts and bishops and became key to the successful administration
of the wide-ranging empire. Both counts and bishops were vassals of the
emperor, and were overseen by representatives of Charlemagne known
as missi dominici, who traveled throughout the empire overseeing economic
and legal matters in his name.
The size of Charlemagne’s empire made it increasingly difficult to
administer, and tribal contentions were a frequent threat. The empire
fractured and collapsed shortly after Charlemagne’s death in 814.
Feudalism
Feudalism developed out of peoples’ need for protection against
invaders, and landowners’ need for defense. It was a system in which
powerful lords commanded the obedience of less powerful nobles. People
received protection in exchange for services or for turning over total
ownership of their land to larger landowners. Hierarchies developed: less
powerful nobles became vassals(persons under the protection of a feudal
ruler) of the more powerful lords.
The military relationships of Carolingian feudalism established in the 8th
and 9th centuries differed from the classical feudalism of the 10th century. In
classical feudalism, the estate given a vassal was commonly understood to be
hereditary. The vassal’s heir had to be acceptable to the lord, and an
inheritance tax called a relief had to be paid. The vassal not only took an oath
of fealty (which demonstrated the loyalty he owed to his lord), but also a
special oath of homageto the feudal lord who in return granted him a fief, or
landholding. Feudal lords expected certain duties from their vassals,
including ransom money if the lord was captured, a dowry when a lord’s
daughter married, payment for knighthood, and essential armed services in
defense of the lord.
Unlike seignorialism, feudalism was both a political and a military
institution. The importance of a feudal noble depended upon the size of his
estate or property, the strength of his castle, and the number of knights he
had at his disposal in time of war. Nobles had their own courts from which
they administered a local form of justice. They collected their own taxes, and
the more powerful nobles even minted their own coins. The nobles held their
lands and their authority in the monarch’s name. However, the monarch had
little power beyond his or her own land. Many nobles were more powerful
than monarchs, and the Roman Catholic Church was more powerful than
both.
Crusades
After the death of Charlemagne and the subsequent collapse of his
empire, Christian Europe felt itself to be under attack. The greatest threat
came from the forces of Islam. In the centuries following the death of their
leader, Muhammad, in 632, Islamic forces had conquered North Africa, the
eastern shores of the Mediterranean, and most of Spain.
It was in a speech at Clermont, France in November 1095 that Pope Urban
IIcalled for a great Christian expedition to free Jerusalem from the Seljuk
Turks, a new Muslim power that had recently begun harassing Christian
pilgrims traveling to Jerusalem. The pope justified his cause as genuine,
spurred by his position as the spiritual head of Western Europe and the
temporary absence of strong rulers in Germany or
France. The Byzantine emperor, Alexius I, also issued a call for help. Pope
Urban’s speech appealed to thousands of people of all classes and provided
the motivation for eight crusades that took place from 1095–1270.
Travel, trade, and cross-cultural interactions increased dramatically in
Europe during this period of pilgrimage, and a new global consciousness and
spirit of inventiveness began to arise. However, the pilgrimages also played a
role in the spread of the Plague.
The Plague
In 1347, several Italian merchant ships returned to Sicily from a trip to
the Black Sea. When the ships docked, many of those on board were found to
be dying of a mysterious illness. Within days the disease—which turned out to
be bubonic plague— spread throughout the port city and to the surrounding
countryside. In England people called the plague “The Black Death” because
of the black spots it produced on the skin of people afflicted with the disease.
Medieval medicine had nothing that could treat or prevent bubonic plague,
and the terrible killer spread like wildfire across Europe, transmitted
primarily by rats and made worse by unsanitary conditions.
After five years one-third of Europe’s population had died, and in all the
plague killed about 50 million people. Survivors lived in constant fear of the
plague’s return, and the disease did not disappear until the 1600s.
The Magna Carta and the Parliamentary System
The first three centuries (1000–1300) of the second millennium are
called the High Middle Ages. This period witnessed rapid and radical change:
growing populations all over the European continent, a lessening of isolation
as more and more groups of people came in contact with one another,
improvements in many work techniques, and the establishment of the first
parliamentary systems of government.
The Magna Carta represented a milestone in constitutional thought and
influenced governments not just in the Middle Ages but for many centuries to
come—including the United States. Proclaimed in June 1215, the Magna
Carta was a contract or agreement between England’s King John and the
vassals who were nobles under his power. King John had plotted against his
brother King Richard III and murdered his cousin to become king. He
quarreled with the Pope, making both the Church and the nobles his enemies.
When King John ordered people to pay heavy taxes to support his wars, the
nobles revolted, and forced him to sign a “Magna Carta” or “Great Charter.”
The power of English rulers over nobles had been growing for the previous
200 years. But now, through the Magna Carta, the law limited a monarch’s
power. For the first time in English history, political rights were guaranteed
and the concept that not even the king was above the law was established. It
was drawn up initially to safeguard only the rights of the feudal nobles and to
limit the power of the king. However, the principles of Magna Carta would
later extend to the protection of liberties for the English people of all classes,
and laid the foundation for the English constitutional monarchy and
parliamentary system.
The 100 Years War
The name the Hundred Years’ War has been used by historians since the
beginning of the nineteenth century to describe the long conflict that pitted the
kings and kingdoms of France and England against each other from 1337 to
1453. Two factors lay at the origin of the conflict: first, the status of the duchy of
Guyenne (or Aquitaine)-though it belonged to the kings of England, it remained
a fief of the French crown, and the kings of England wanted independent
possession; second, as the closest relatives of the last direct Capetian king
(Charles IV, who had died in 1328), the kings of England from 1337 claimed the
crown of France.
Theoretically, the French kings, possessing the financial and military resources
of the most populous and powerful state in western Europe, held the advantage
over the smaller, more sparsely populated English kingdom. However, the
expeditionary English army, well disciplined and successfully using their
longbows to stop cavalry charges, proved repeatedly victorious over much larger
French forces: significant victories occurred by sea at Sluys (1340), and by land
at Crecy (1346) and Poitiers (1356). In 1360, King John of France, in order to
save his title, was forced to accept the Treaty of Calais, which granted complete
independence to the duchy of Guyenne, now considerably enlarged to include
almost a third of France. However, his son Charles V, with the help of his
commander in chief Bertrand du Guesclin, by 1380 had succeeded in
reconquering almost all the ceded territory, notably by a series of sieges.
After a hiatus, Henry V of England renewed the war and proved victorious at
Agincourt (1415), conquered Normandy (1417-1418), and then attempted to have
himself crowned as the future king of France by the Treaty of Troyes (1420). But
his military successes were not matched by political successes: although allied
with the dukes of Burgundy, the majority of the French refused English
domination. Thanks to Joan of Arc, the siege of Orleans was lifted (1429). Then
Paris and the lle-de-France were liberated (1436-1441), and after the French
army had been reorganized and reformed (1445-1448), Charles VII recaptured
the duchy of Normandy (the Battle of Formigny, 1450), and then seized
Guyenne (the Battle of Castillon, 1453). The end of the conflict was never
marked by a peace treaty but died out because the English recognized that the
French troops were too strong to be directly confronted.
English territory in France, which had been extensive since 1066 (see Hastings,
Battle of) now remained confined to the Channel port of Calais (lost in 1558).
France, at last free of the English invaders, resumed its place as the dominant
state of western Europe.
1. What caused the Middle Ages or Dark Ages?
2. What was the social, political and economic system that
governed life in the Middle Ages as a means of survival?
Explain how this was a system worked as a means of survival.
3. Briefly explain the Crusades, 100 years’ War and Black Death.
4. How did these 3 events help bring an end to the Middle Ages.
Give at least 3 specific examples.