Download CHAPTER 9 The West Asserts Itself

CHAPTER 9
The West Asserts Itself: The High Middle Ages, 1050 – 1300
CHAPTER OUTLINE
I.
The West in the East: The Crusades
The papacy gave powerful religious sanctions to Christian military expeditions against
the Muslims in Palestine, leading to eight major Crusades between 1095 and 1291.
A. The Origins of Holy War
The original call for a crusade came in response to the threat that the Muslim Seljuk
Turks posed to Christians in the eastern Mediterranean. Crusaders, a new sort of armed
pilgrim, sought both spiritual and material rewards as they battled to take Jerusalem,
which many identified with Paradise itself.
B. Crusading Warfare
The First Crusade (1095-1099) landed in the Middle East to find Arab states weakened
from fighting the Turks and internal theological dispute. Capturing Jerusalem and
establishing Latin principalities in what is today Lebanon, Israel, and Palestine, this was
the only really successful crusade. Subsequent crusades either failed or, in the case of the
Fourth Crusade, blatantly subverted religious aims to worldly ones.
C. The Significance of the Crusades
The Crusader hold in the Middle East did not last long, nor did the Crusades facilitate the
transmission to Europe of Islamic cultural and intellectual influences, which instead came
via Sicily and Spain. The Crusades did help destabilize the Byzantine Empire, which
made it an easy target for Muslim conquest, but most importantly, they led to the
expansion of European trade, leading to an era of exuberant economic growth.
II.
The Consolidation of Roman Catholicism
New religious orders, intellectual creativity, and the conversion of the last polytheistic
tribes marked one of the greatest periods of religious vitality in Roman Catholicism,
thanks largely to able pope who gave the Church the most advanced, centralized
government in Europe. But the papacy’s intervention in worldly affairs helped undermine
its spiritual authority.
A. The Pope Becomes a Monarch
Vitality depends on unity, and unity requires a clearly defined identity. The Church built
that identity by insisting on ritual uniformity and obedience to the pope. Medieval popes,
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however, had to make their authority real. Pope Gregory VII sought to do this by
pursuing the intertwined objectives of internal reform in the church and independence of
the church from external, secular control. In the process he not only centralized authority
within the church, but also asserted a theory of temporal, as well as spiritual, papal
supremacy.
1. How the Popes Ruled
The actual power of the papacy lay in the sophisticated legal, administrative, and
financial systems that succeeding popes built up and maintained.
Excommunication and interdict were also powerful weapons a pope could deploy
against monarchs.
2. The Pinnacle of the Medieval Papacy: Pope Innocent III
Possessing a clear concept of papal monarchy, Innocent III provided the papacy
with an independent territorial bases, the Papal State; expanded the idea of
crusading to include war against heretics; successfully asserted papal power over
political affairs; and clearly defined both the church’s liturgical rites and its
dogma.
3. The Troubled Legacy of the Papal Monarchy
Innocent’s less capable successors undermined a pope’s spiritual authority as they
continued to blatantly and more aggressively interfere in secular politics. That
eventually made it conceivable and even acceptable for a monarch like King
Philip IV of France to not only accuse Pope Boniface VIII of heresy, but to send
armed men to arrest him, marking the end of papal monarchy.
B. Discovering God in the World
This was an era of unprecedented spiritual awakening, with a reformation of clergy
morals, an increase in lay devotion and monastic vocations, and the success of new
religious orders.
1. The New Religious Orders
The desire for a “purer” monasticism led to the founding of the austere but
popular Cistercian order in 1098. An entirely new, uncloistered form of
monasticism, the friars, emerged with the Dominican and Franciscans, who
devoted themselves to teaching, preaching, and ministering in the world.
2. The Flowering of Religious Sensibilities
Religious enthusiasm and experimentation pushed piety in new directions for all
Christians. Veneration of the Eucharist provided identification with Christ while
veneration of the Virgin Mary popularized a new, more positive image of women.
C. Creating the Outcasts of Europe
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With the rise of religious unity and moral reform was also an increase in the persecution
of those who did not fit into the official idea of Christian society.
1. The Heretics: Cathars and Waldensians
The impulse toward a “purer” Christianity led Cathars and Waldensians to deviate
from Catholic doctrine, earning them the unremitting hostility of Church
authorities, who sought to search out and exterminate the heretics through
inquisition and crusade.
2. Systematic Persecution of the Jews
The Crusades fostered hostility and violence against the Jews, who found
themselves increasingly marginalized, deprived of legal protections, and subjected
to persecution.
3. “The Living Dead”: Lepers
Victims of this feared, disfiguring disease found themselves increasingly
segregated from their communities and classified with heretics and Jews as
“outcasts.”
4. The Invention of Sexual Crimes
The church first legislated against homosexual relations in 1179, and male
“sodomites” were, like heretics, Jews, and lepers, identified as outcasts and
subjected to persecution. Male church authorities, however, appear to have been
unable to imagine female homosexuality.
III.
Strengthening the Center of the West
In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, western Europe reached new heights of political
and economic might as kings, especially in England and France, achieved unprecedented
power within their kingdoms, and sophisticated merchants bound Europe together in an
extensive trading network.
A. The Monarchies of Western Europe
In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the monarchs of France and England, in contrast to
overextended empires and underdefended city-states, were able to form stable borders,
develop permanent, impersonal bureaucracies to manage finance and administration,
establish themselves as the ultimate, or sovereign, authority and make the law the object
of their subjects’ fundamental loyalty, in the process laying the foundations of modern
nation states.
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1. Expansion of Power: France
The kings of France achieved unity through military conquest and administrative
reform, aided by a lucky streak of dynastic continuity.
2. Lord of All Lords: The King of England
Claiming all land in England by right of conquest, William I of England made
sure that every bit of it was held, directly or indirectly, as a fief from the king.
William’s great-grandson, Henry II, further enhanced royal power by using
sheriffs to enforce the king’s will and making the king’s justice available to all,
although he was unable to overturn the church’s legal privileges and immunities.
Although Henry’s son John was forced to concede some limitations to royal
power in regard to the barons, John’s grandson Edward I increased royal power
through legal reforms and the foundation of Parliament.
3. A Divided Regime: The German Empire
Lacking the feudal or legal foundations for building monarchical authority that
the kings of England and France had, German emperors had to rely on forceful
personality and military skill to make themselves effective. They also faced the
ongoing hostility of popes wary of any consolidating of royal power so
territorially close to the papacy, and thus Germany and Italy remained disunited.
B. The Economic Boom Years
Building on the foundations of the agricultural and power revolutions of the eleventh
century, advances in transportation networks facilitating long-distance trade, the creation
of new business techniques needed for long-distance trade, and the development of cities
made possible an economic boom.
IV.
Medieval Culture: The Search for Understanding
In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the West re-engaged with classical Greek
philosophy, and theologians tried to reconcile that philosophy’s rational approach with
their religious faith. Ancient Roman and Muslim influences as well helped bring about a
cultural and intellectual flowering.
A. Revival of Learning
A tremendous increase in medieval education emerged from the monasteries and
cathedral schools, especially the latter, as Europeans began to embrace large-scale
learning, in which the Church was still the dominant force.
1. Scholasticism: A Christian Philosophy
Out of a growing need for training in logic, the cathedral schools began to train its
students in methods of critical reasoning, which gave rise to scholasticism. A
broad philosophical and theological movement that dominated medieval thought,
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scholasticism relied on the use of logic as learned from Aristotle to interpret the
Bible and early Christian writers. In their lectures and disputations, scholastics
considered all subjects, even sacred ones, open to their rational inquiry.
2. Universities: Organizing Learning
Arising from the schools, medieval universities formulated the basic educational
practices still in place today, such as curricula, examinations, and degrees.
3. The Ancients: Renaissance of the Twelfth Century
Between 1140 and 1260 a flood of Latin translations of ancient Greek works
brought Christian thinkers into a greater familiarity with the philosophical method
of reasoning, and, like Jewish and Muslim thinkers, they were anxious to
demonstrate that philosophy did not contradict the truth of their faith. This quest
to reconcile philosophy and faith found its most successful resolution in the work
of Thomas Aquinas, who distinguished between natural truth and revealed truth,
both coming from God, with the latter perfecting and completing the former. Both
Aquinas’ work and that of the jurists revealed a new systematic approach to
things.
B. Epic Violence and Courtly Love
A remarkable flowering of vernacular literature occurred as orally-transmitted epics were
written down, and troubadours created a new literary form, the courtly love poem, which
introduced the idea of romantic love and idealized women.
C. The Center of Medieval Culture: The Great Cathedrals
Most European cathedrals were built between 1050 and 1300, symbolizing the soaring
ambitions and imaginations of their era, and were centers for all kinds of arts.
1. Architecture: The Romanesque and Gothic Styles
The arched stone roofs of Romanesque cathedrals created an intimate, comforting
space, but gave way to the high pointed arches of the Gothic style that evoked
feelings of mystical awe.
2. Music and Drama: Reaching God’s Ear and the Christian’s Soul
Whether plainchant or polyphony, liturgical music was a form of enhancing the
mystical experience of worship, and liturgical plays, intended for education as
well as worship, began the Western dramatic tradition.
V.
Conclusion: Asserting Western Culture
For the first time since the Roman Empire, the West, looked both inward and outward,
measured itself, defined itself, and promoted itself as it matured into its own selfconfident identity and extended its power outside of Europe itself.
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The West cultivated critical methods of thinking that produced an almost limitless
capacity for creative renewal and critical self-examination. This is what has most
distinguished the West ever since.
TIMELINE
Insert the following events into the timeline. This should help you to compare important
historical events chronologically.
Magna Carta
Murder of Thomas Becket
First Crusade
Albigensian Crusade
______ 1096-1099
______ 1170
______ 1208-1213
______ 1215
TERMS, PEOPLE, EVENTS
The following terms, people, and events are important to your understanding of the chapter.
Define each one.
Crusades
Excommunication
Investiture Controversy
Canon law
Curia
Interdict
Mendicant friars
Eucharist
Transubstantiation
Circuit court
Grand jury
Trial by jury
Magna Carta
Scholasticism
Twelfth-century Renaissance
Thomism
Courtly love
Troubadours
Gothic
Romanesque
Plainchant
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Polyphony
Pope Urban II
Pope Innocent III
Gregory VII
Albigensian Crusade
Philip II Augustus
Louis IX
William I, the Conqueror
King Henry II
Frederick II
Champagne fairs
Thomas Aquinas
MAP EXERCISE
The following exercise is intended to clarify the geophysical environment and the spatial
relationships among the important objects and places mentioned in this chapter. Locate the
following places on the map.
Vezelay
Clermont
Marseilles
Damascus
Jerusalem
Cairo
Pickup map from Kishlansky study guide, page 75
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MAKING CONNECTIONS
The following questions are intended to emphasize important ideas within the chapter.
1. What were the causes and consequences of the Crusades? How did the goals of these
interventions change over time?
2. How did the Roman Catholic Church consolidate its power in Europe? How was the law
a mechanism for control in the Catholic world?
3. What issues within the church prompted the founding of the new religious orders?
4. What factors contributed to the economic boom during the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries?
5. Discuss scholasticism. What role did it play in the revival of learning in the medieval
world?
DOCUMENT QUESTIONS
1. How does “The Love of Tristan and Iseult” typify courtly love? What are the “ennobling
possibilities” of their love?
2. The “Crusaders Massacre the Jews of Rhineland Germany” depicts the actions of Jewish
martyrs. What is the role of martyrdom in Christianity, Islam, and Judaism? What are
other famous stories of martyrdom?
PUTTING LARGER CONCEPTS TOGETHER
1. How did the consolidation of Roman Catholicism in Europe actually contribute to the
creation of a unified European identity? What was the role of the Inquisition in this
process?
2. Explore the connections between European economic growth in the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries and the cultural renaissance of the same period. What is the significance of
where this renaissance takes place?
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SELF-TEST OF FACTUAL INFORMATION
1.
Which statement about the Crusades is not true?
A.
B.
C.
D.
2.
The Investiture Controversy centered around the Pope's determination to
A.
B.
C.
D.
3.
Jews.
lepers.
homosexuals.
Albigensians.
A French king known for his justice, piety, and chivalry was
A.
B.
C.
D.
6.
Dominic
Clare of Assisi
Bernard of Clairvaux
Peter the Hermit
In its efforts to defend the faith, the Church categorized some groups as heretics, such as
A.
B.
C.
D.
5.
issue dispensations.
adjudicate disputes over inheritance.
control appointments to church offices.
retake the Holy Land.
Who founded a mendicant order for men to combat heresy, teach, and preach?
A.
B.
C.
D.
4.
Three reigning monarchs participated in the Second Crusade.
The Crusades revitalized and strengthened the Byzantine Empire.
The Fourth Crusade seized Constantinople.
Crusaders held Jerusalem for almost 90 years.
Louis IX.
Hugh Capet.
Philip I.
Philip II.
Which statement about the Magna Carta is true?
A.
B.
C.
D.
It recognized representatives of the "commons."
It required the king to respect feudal privileges.
It established circuit courts to administer the king's justice.
It reduced the jurisdiction of feudal courts.
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7.
Thirteenth-century German emperors
A.
B.
C.
D.
8.
The Persian philosopher whose commentaries on Aristotle influenced Catholic
scholasticism was
A.
B.
C.
D.
9.
Fulcher.
Maimonides.
Avicenna.
Al-Ghazali.
Which statement about Thomas Aquinas is not true?
A.
B.
C.
D.
10.
Could not exercise control over powerful independent-minded German dukes.
Intervened in Italy.
Belonged to the Hohenstaufen dynasty.
All of these.
He wrote Summary of Theology.
He differentiated between natural truth and revealed truth.
He engaged in verbal disputations with Peter Abelard.
He tried to reconcile faith and reason.
Which is not a characteristic of Romanesque cathedrals?
A.
B.
C.
D.
flying buttresses
intimate, dark cozy atmosphere
rounded arch
barrel vault
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