Download Section 4 The Church and Society

Chapter 15
Medieval Europe
SECTION 4
THE CHURCH AND SOCIETY
I. Religion and Society (pgs. 544-552)
 The Catholic Church played an important role in Medieval
Europe and used its powers to uphold its teachings.
 Between 1050 and 1150, more monasteries were built and new
religious groups were started.
New Religious Orders
 The Cistercian (sihs-thur-shuhn) order of monks was founded
in 1098.
 The most famous Cistercian monk was Bernard of Clairvaux
(klar-voh).
 Clairvaux helped promote the Second Crusade and defended
the poor against the rich.
 In the 1200s, several new religious orders were created.
 The men in these orders were called friars – comes from the
Latin word “brother.”
 Friars were different from monks in that they traveled around
preaching.
 They could not own property or personal wealth and lived by
begging.
 Francis of Assisi founded the first order of friars in 1209 who
became known as Franciscans.
 A Spanish priest named Dominic de Guzman founded another
group of friars called Dominicans.
The Role of Religion
 In medieval Europe, daily life revolved around the Catholic
Church.
 MASS – Catholic worship services (Sundays/holy days)
 SACRAMENTS – rituals done in church (communion)
 SAINTS – holy men and women who had died (Mary)
 RELICS – bones/personal belongings of Saints (power/healing)
What Was the Inquisition?
 The Catholic Church was very powerful in medieval times and
wanted everyone to accept the Church’s teachings.
 Heresy (hehr-uh-see) is having religious beliefs that conflict
with Church teachings.
 To combat heresy, the pope established a court called the
Inquisition (ihn-kwuh-zih-shuhn).
 People brought before the Inquisition were urged to confess
their heresy and ask for forgiveness.
 Those who confessed were punished and allowed to go back to
the Church.
 Those who did not were considered guilty and tortured and
turned over to political leaders , who could execute them.
How Were the Jews Treated?
 Many Europeans hated Jews for:
1) Refusing to become Christians
2) Being moneylenders who charged interest, which was
considered a sin.
 Hatred of Jews is known as anti-Semitism (she-muh-tih-zuhm)
 Christian mobs killed thousands of Jews and many were forced
out of their homes.
 II. Medieval
Culture
Medieval Art and Architecture
 Architecture in the Middle Ages reflected the importance of religion.
 People built large churches, called cathedrals.
 Two popular architectural styles of that time are:
 1) Romanesque – rectangular buildings with long, rounded roofs, huge
pillars, and thick walls
 2) Gothic – ribbed vaults, pointed arches, flying buttresses, large stained
glass windows.
The First Universities
 Oxford University in Oxford, England was founded in 1231 and
was one of the first universities established in Europe.
 Universities were also opened in Bologna (buh*loh*nyuh), Italy
and Paris, France.
Who Was Thomas Aquinas?
 Thomas Aquinas (uh*kwy*nuhs) was a Dominican friar who
began a new way of thinking and studying theology called
scholasticism (skuh*las*tuh*sih*zuhm).
 Scholasticism combined Church teachings with reason and the
teachings of Aristotle.
 Aquinas also emphasized the idea of natural law.
 He claimed that natural law gave people certain rights that the
government should not take away:
1) right to live
2) right to learn
3) right to worship
4) right to reproduce
Medieval Literature
 During the Middle Ages, people generally spoke and wrote in
Latin.
 In addition, each region developed its own vernacular
(vuhr*na*kyuh*luhr), or everyday language.
 During the 1100s, new literature was written in vernacular:
 1) troubadour (troo*buh*dohr) poetry – love poems, often about a knight
and lady
 2) heroic epic – stories of brave knights fighting for kings/lords