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Chapter 7: The Rise of Europe
The so-called Middle Ages span roughly the years 500-1500, beginning with
the fall of the western half of the Roman Empire and ending with a series
of developments that ushered Western Europe toward the forefront of
global expansion. The title of this chapter, then, refers to the arc of history
that eventually led Western Europe to the brink of its world domination.
 The first half of this period – 500-1000 – used to be known as the
“Dark Ages” because Western Europe slipped into a long period of
decline that saw it politically divided, decentralized and generally
rural, with little trade or contact with other regions. Historians now
view it somewhat more favorably as a period of vital blending of
Greco-Roman, Germanic and Christian traditions.
 Germanic tribes that conquered parts of the Roman Empire included
Saxons, Goths, Vandals and Franks, the last of which settled into
what would later become France. These peoples at first had no cities
or written laws, governing according to tribal customs. Between 400
and 700, they carved Western Europe into numerous small
kingdoms.
 When the Frankish warrior king Clovis converted to Christianity in
496, it set an important precedent helping to solidify what would later
be called Christendom (the land of Christians). And a later Frankish
ruler, Charlemagne, put together an empire temporarily uniting
Germany, France and the northern half of Italy in the 8th and 9th
centuries. He ruled his empire by appointing nobles to rule local
regions, or provinces, and kept an eye on them by sending out missi
dominici – officials that traveled around to ensure grievances were
being heard and justice was being carried out. But because his
grandsons fought one another for control of the empire, it was split
into three separate regions by the Treaty of Verdun in 843 – and
Western Europe again became politically fragmented and
decentralized.
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Read “A New Emperor of the Romans” (p. 30) and explain what
long-term complications arose after Pope Leo III crowned
Charlemagne Emperor of the Romans.
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 Because Western Europe was politically fragmented and
decentralized (i.e., there was no powerful empire in charge of it all), it
was susceptible to repeated waves of invasions coming from the
north (by Vikings), the south (by Muslims), and the east (by
Magyars). The Vikings were expert sailors from Scandinavia
(modern Norway, Denmark and Sweden) whose vessels could sail the
oceans as well as navigate down through Europe’s major rivers. They
raided as well as traded, eventually settling in England, Ireland,
northern France and parts of Russia, where they mixed with local
populations.
 Because law and order was fragile in this fragmented world
threatened by constant invasion, a loosely organized system of rule
called feudalism emerged. Feudalism was a set of legal and
economic customs held together by the mutual obligations between
lords and their vassals, or lesser lords. These obligations among
nobles were outlined by an exchange of pledges known as the feudal
contract.
 A lord would grant his vassal a fief, or landed estate, that could be
anywhere from a few acres to hundreds of square miles and would
include not only the land but also peasants to work the land and any
towns or buildings that might exist on it. The lord promised to
protect his vassal, and in return, the vassal pledged loyalty to his lord
and agreed to provide the lord with 40 days of military service each
year, as well as money payments and advice. The sons of lesser lords
often trained to become mounted warriors called knights.
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Read the handout “A Vassal Pledges His Loyalty” and explain the
weakness in the feudal system that John of Toul’s pledge shows.
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 The economic component of feudalism was anchored by the
lord’s estate, or manor, which was a self-sufficient community
that usually included the lord’s manor house, a village church,
workshops, a water-powered mill for grinding grain, fields for
growing grain and vegetables, pastures for animals, and woodlands
for lumber. Almost everything needed for daily life – crops, milk
and cheese, bread, beer, cloth, leather goods, fuel – could be
produced within the manor. The only outside purchases were for
things unavailable locally, such as salt and iron. Providing the labor
were serfs, which were peasants who were bound to the land.
These people could not be bought and sold like slaves, but they
could not leave the manor without the lord’s permission, and if
the manor was granted to a new lord, the serfs went with it. They
seldom ventured beyond 10 or 20 miles from birth to death.
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Explain why you think a serf during the Middle Ages might have
been content to live without the basic freedoms we now take for
granted.
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 The only unifying institution in Europe during the Middle Ages
was the Roman Catholic Church, whose missionaries converted
Anglo-Saxons in England and Germanic peoples on the continent
so that by the late Middle Ages, Western Europe was a Christian
civilization that viewed with suspicion anyone who didn’t belong
to the faith.
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Read and summarize “The Role of the Parish Priest” (p. 39-40)
and “The Importance of the Village Church” (p. 40) ... and
answer the map skills questions at the top of p. 40.
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 During the Middle Ages, some men and women withdrew from
worldly life to live as monks and nuns in monasteries or convents.
Under the Benedictine Rule, which was created by a monk
named Benedict for the monastery of Monte Cassino in central
Italy around 530 but later was used to regulate monastic life across
Europe, monks and nuns took vows of obedience, poverty and
chastity. They worked in fields as farmers and in libraries as
scholars, copying Greek and Roman works into Latin, the
language of the Church. Some became missionaries spreading
Christianity throughout western and central Europe.
 The pope was the spiritual leader of the Roman Catholic Church.
During the Middle Ages, they claimed papal supremacy –
authority over all secular rulers, including kings and emperors –
and thus exercised great secular (non-religious) power as well.
Anyone who disobeyed the Church’s canon law faced
excommunication, meaning they could not receive the
sacraments and were therefore condemned to hell for eternity.
Nobles and kings were kept in line with the interdict, an order
excluding an entire town, region or kingdom from receiving
sacraments and proper Christian burials.
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Read “An Agricultural Revolution” (p. 45-46) and explain why
agricultural production began to improve in medieval Europe.
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 As population began to rise and the threat of invasion began to
diminish, there was a revival of trade and travel by the 1100s.
Chinese silks, Asian spices and Byzantine gold jewelry began to
filter into western Europe by way of Venice. In the 1200s,
German towns along the Baltic Sea formed the Hanseatic
League, a voluntary association designed to protect their
trading interests by taking action against robbers and pirates,
building lighthouses and training ships’ pilots.
 The sites of seasonal trade fairs eventually evolved into
Europe’s growing list of medieval cities, a few topping 100,000
inhabitants by the 1300s. A legal document called a charter was
established with the local lord or king outlining a town’s rights
and privileges, and the town’s merchants would in turn pay the
lord or king a yearly fee. Most charters stipulated that runaway
serfs that had lived in the town for a year and a day were now
legally free – a development that hastened the end of serfdom.
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Read “A Commercial Revolution” (p. 48-49) and describe what
characterized the beginnings of modern business practices.
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 By the year 1000 the social order was beginning to change with
the beginnings of the middle class, made up of merchants,
traders and artisans. The middle class clashed with the nobles
and clergy as its members began to assert their political will.
Merchants and artisans then formed associations called guilds,
which dominated town life. Each guild represented workers in
one occupation, such as weavers, bakers or goldsmiths. They
made rules to protect the quality of their goods, regulate hours
of labor, and set prices. They taxed their members and spent
the money on town improvements or social services, such as
operating schools and hospitals, and providing support for the
widows and orphans of their members. Women were included,
dominating some trades and in some cases having their own
guilds.
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Read “Town and City Life” (p. 50) and explain what medieval
cities were like.
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