Download ESPIRIT Chart You must include main ideas and details in each

ESPIRIT Chart
You must include main ideas and details in each category
Civilization/Nation/Group _____Civilization in Western Europe______
Time Period ___________6th-15th centuries__________________
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Became a common commercial zone
Italian merchants trade cloth manufactured in the Low Countries
Ports and trading fairs were located at Low Countries and France
High rents and taxes were imposed to the serfs
Banking was introduced by Italian businesspeople
Beginnings of capitalism
Rising trade: big exchanges between Europe and the rest of the known world
Luxury products and spices were imported from Asia
A revival of Mediterranean trade: Italian merchants exchanged western goods for goods
form the east.
Trade within the west: exchanges of timber and grain for cloth and metal products from
Italy and the Low Countries
Hanseatic league: alliance between Germany and Southern Scandinavia to encourage
trade.
Royal governments did not interfere with trade. In fact, merchants created their own
commercial law code.
Guilds: grouped people (in the same business or trade), linked to similar ones in other
cities.
Manufacturing workers were employed by capitalists to produce for a wider market.
Manorialism was the system that ruled the relationships between landlords and the
serfs.
Serfs lived on self-sufficient agricultural estates called manors.
Serfs had certain obligations with the lords: they gave the lords some of the crops, in
return for justice and land form the lords.
Nobles used trade to improve their standard of living and adopted new habits
Many conflicts arose between landlords and peasants because of the mistreatments to
the latter ones.
The social inequality: the gap between the lord and the serf. Base of all society.
Western society was not tolerant of merchants, as Muslims and Indian societies were.
Most people were peasants, but some escaped to the cities, which had increased danger
and higher rates of disease.
New limits on the conditions of women. Their work was vital in most families.
New approaches of women’s lives: equality that was promoted by Christianity and the
monastic groups as an alternative to marriage.
Urban women played important roles in commerce. Sometimes were even in charge of
guilds.
However, women did not enjoy certain rights, like property rights, which their Muslim
counterparts did have.
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Charlemagne established a substantial empire in France and Germany.
After his death, the vast kingdom was divided into his heirs. Emerged regional
monarchies.
The kingdoms of Germany and Italy had the strongest position. They called themselves
the Holy Roman Emperors.
Feudalism was the key political and military system that ruled the relationships.
The greater lords provided protection and aid to lesser lords (vassals) in turn owed their
military service, goods, payments and advice.
Feudalism helped to shape what is now France.
In England, it was introduced by William the Conqueror.
Feudalism goal: to centralize the government.
However, the government had several limitations.
The power of the Catholic church continued to limit political claims, because the state
was not supposed to interfere with religious issues.
Another limitation was the aristocrats powerful independent voice.
In 1215, The Magna Carta, was signed by king John, ensuring people’s rights and
limiting the monarchy power.
This limitation also led to the creation of parliaments, as bodies representing not
individual voters but privileged groups such as the nobles and the church.
The key 3 estates: church, nobles, and urban leaders.
Monarchies had absolute power.
Development of nations as political entities.
The west had a very strong expansionist impulse.
Germanic knights and agricultural settlers poured into sparsely settled areas in today’s
Germany and Poland.
In Spain, the small Christian states remained only in northern Spain, and attached the
Muslim rule that held most of the peninsula. This was the reconquista.
The full expulsion of the Muslims was not until the end of the middle Ages, in 1492.
The Crusades, also gave the opportunity to interact with people from the Middle East.
New cultural and economic influences from the Middle East.
Economic interactions: hanseatic league
Christianity was the most adopted religion of the time.
Christianity was strongly linked to the expansion and power for the government.
Many ways of expressing religious devotion expanded widely.
Veneration of Mary, the mother of Jesus, showed the merciful side of Christianity.
Blended western version of Christianity with earthiness and spontaneity.
Religion influenced all the cultural works of the time: art, literature, architecture and
music.
Big conflict between Christian values and desire for a good earthly life.
Christianity was the organizing principal of medieval society.
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Western Europe preserved and interpreted past wisdom.
New level of logical exposition and theology.
More emphasis on human reason rather than just faith.
Peter Abelard: he believed more in reason than in his own faith.
Bernard of Clairvaux: opposed Abelard. He thought it the mystical union with God,
and that the reason was dangerous. All revelations should be given by faith only.
Debates over how prior Mediterranean knowledge and faith could combine, or not.
Higher education was benefited from these debates. Students were being educated in
both “worldly” and religious affairs.
However, westerners did not achieve more advances than the one already done
anciently. They focused on to study past learning.
Development of Gothic styles in architecture.
Vernacular literature helped to develop different European languages (although Latin
was the “official”, many people spoke in their own different languages).
In the 9th century, the moldboard was introduced to the west. It allowed serfs to go
deeper turning of the soil. Helped to work the heavy soils in which the serfs practiced
agriculture.
The three field system