Download Western Civ. 1 J

Western Civ. 1 J
Decline of the Middle
Ages
Unit 4 Study Guide
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CULTURE OF THE HIGH MIDDLE AGES
In the last few lectures, I have been discussing the period known as the High
Middle Ages (1000-1300). It is the period in which the typical medieval institutions reached their fullest development.
In this period, the Church, the guilds, the feudal monarchies, and the universities flourished in their characteristic
forms. This is also the period when the outlook of the Middle Ages reached its zenith and characteristic medieval
ideas found their fullest expression in art and literature. That is my subject for today.
One feature of medieval intellectual life sets it apart from that of the ancient world on the one hand and of
modern times on the other. Art and literature in the High Middle Ages were almost entirely religious in content and in
purpose. There were several reasons for this. The Church played a major, dominant role in intellectual activity. It was
wealthier than any other institution, and it provided most of the money to support and pay for art. The universities
were Church institutions, and so only churchmen were educated at first. For a long time, only they were able to
produce literature. Also, remember that St. Augustine set the tone for medieval thought when he argued that the goal
of all human activity should be salvation.
So, it shouldn’t be a surprise that when Europe began to recover after 1000 and there was money to construct
large buildings again, Europeans usually built churches. There were two types of Church architecture. The earliest
style of church developed in south Europe. It was called Romanesque because it was based on architectural forms
first created by the Romans. The Romanesque churches used round arches to support the roofs and upper parts fo
the church buildings. The round arch was a Roman invention. With round arches, the weight of the roof, ceiling, and
upper part of the building pushes straight down on the walls. The walls have to be very strong to support the
structure. Romanesque churches are massive and solid with small windows and doors. They were decorated with
murals and paintings.
About 1100, a new style developed near Paris and slowly spread to other parts of the north. It is called the gothic
style. The gothic style used pointed arches instead of round ones. With pointed arches, the weight pushes out instead
of down. Reinforcements called buttresses were placed along the outside of the walls to hold the building up and
together.
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Romanesque Architecture
Romanesque cathedrals interior and exterior. Note the paucity of light in the
interior as a result of few windows due to the need to build thick continuous
walls. (Left: interior of the Duomo at Orvietto, Italy. Below: the
Romanesque abby church at Maria Laach in Belgium, built in 1093.
Exterior and interior views of the Cologne
Cathedral in Germany, on of the most
impressive examples of German High
Gothic architecture. Note the amazingly
light interior of the church, lit only by
sunlight through the great stained glass
windows.
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Gothic Architecture
Because buttresses provided support instead of walls, it was
possible to have very large stained-glass windows to light the
church. The windows made the church seem almost
transparent from inside. In the High Middle Ages, light was a
common symbol of divine grace. In a gothic church, grace
seemed to be present everywhere.
Literature of the High Middle Ages
The greatest figure in medieval literature was an Italian
named Alighieri Dante (d. 1321). His most famous work is a
long poem called Divine Comedy. It is deeply religious. The Divine
Comedy deals with the greatest concern of medieval man: how
can one achieve salvation? The poem describes a journey by
Dante through Hell and Purgatory to Heaven. The story
symbolizes the spiritual journey that all human beings must
make to be saved. As he goes through Hell and Purgatory,
Dante is guided by the ghost of the Roman poet Virgil, who
represents the earthly wisdom and learning of the classical
world. Along the way, they meet various persons who
symbolize different earthly sins. With the help of Virgil, Dante
is able to avoid the sins himself and to continue on his way.
Occasionally, however, Dante is unable to go on, and even
Virgil cannot help him. In those places a woman named Lucy
comes down from heaven to assist them. The name Lucy
means light. Light, as we have seen, stands for the grace of
God and divine revelation. At the gate of Heaven, Virgil is left
behind, and Dante is carried upward through the spheres of
the seven planets to God.
The Divine Comedy is a theological argument in verse.
Dante argues that both earthly wisdom and learning and faith
in divine revelation are needed to achieve salvation. As we have
seen, Medieval philosophers spent a lot of time trying to figure
out whether faith or reason was the most important way to
achieve knowledge. Dante argues that salvation is achieved by
using both!
Philosophy
The Scholastic philosophers used logical reasoning to
understand and to explain Christian theology. But early
scholastic philosophers used logical argument only to
supplement faith in. A good example is St. Anselm (d. 1109).
He was the father of scholasticism. Anselm argued that basic
Christian ideas had to be accepted on faith, but he also
believed that Christians could employ reason to prove many of
those ideas and to understand them better. His motto was, “I
believe so that I may understand.”
As an example of his approach, I want to consider one of
his most important logical arguments. He used it to prove that
God exists. Oversimplified, it goes like this: Even people who do
Dante (d. 1321) is considered the greatest poet of the Middle
Ages.
not believe in God have an idea of God in their minds. They
could not have an idea of God, if God did not exist.
This argument is important because it raised a philosophical
problem that all later scholastics argued about. It was called the
problem of the Universals. A Universal is a particular kind of
idea. The first men to discuss the problem of the Universals did
not really think of it this way, but basically it is a simply the
question of what ideas are. In his definition, Anselm assumes
that if we have an idea in our minds, it has to come from
something real outside our minds. Thinkers who believed that
were called realists because they said that ideas are real. Those
who said that ideas are not real but exist only in our minds were
called nominalists. Most of us are nominalists, but almost all
important thinkers before Anselm’s time were realists. Plato
believed that ideas were real, and St. Augustine had agreed with
im. Not surprisingly, most scholastics were realists. They argued
mainly about the relationship between the reality of ideas and
the reality of concrete objects. Th problem of the Universals is
important because it bears directly on whether logic can be used
to discover religious truth.
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The next great scholastic after Anselm was a teacher at and you can deduce the purpose logically on the basis of
Paris named Peter Abelard (d. 1142). He placed far more observation. This is a qualified realist position. Ideas are
emphasis on logical argument and reason to understand real, but only if they can be deduced logically from the way
Christian teaching. He did have great faith in the ability of things actually are. But most important, Aquinas insisted
logical argument to establish theological truth.
that these two types of truth – one based
He wrote logical discussions of such basic
on faith and one based on observation
Christian doctrines as the Trinity. Many
and logical argument would always
conservative Church leaders and thinkers
agree. And he set out to prove logically
objected to the emphasis he placed on
on the basis of observation every
logic. Many of his writings were eventually
single major Christian idea. He was so
condemned by the Church. Because of his
successful that the thought of Thomas
example, however, later thinkers used
Aquinas has become the basis of
reason to examine Christian teachings.
pretty much all Roman Catholic
theology.
But in his own time, he was
The most important scholastic thinker
considered a dangerous innovator. His
was St. Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274). He
a rg u m e n t s b a s e d o n A r i s t o t l e
used philosophical logical argument more
disagreed too much with those of St.
fully than any previous religious writer. He
Augustine
based on Plato. St.
tried to reconcile classical philosophy with
Augustine’s theology was the one that
Christian theology. Why did he bother?
had
always been accepted.
Around 1200, something happened
Aquinas’s extensive use of logic was
that threw scholastic philosophy into an
so controversial that some thinkers
uproar. Four new books of Aristotle were
began to reconsider the whole basis of
brought into Western Europe from the
previous
scholastic thought. The most
Arab lands in Spain. Before this,
extreme and influential reaction came
Europeans possessed only two elementary
St. Thomas Aquinas
from an Englishman, William of
works of Aristotle. They had always
Ockham (d.1349). William insisted that
thought that his ideas were similar to those
it
was
impossible to prove anything about
of Plato and St. Augustine. But the new books revealed that
Aristotle disagreed with Plato in many ways. In particular, God or religion using reason. He argued that Christian
he disagreed about how you could discover the truth about teachings must be accepted on faith without proof. Then he
ideas. Aristotle had stressed that you needed scientific study went even further. He said that it is impossible to prove
and observation before you could draw conclusions about logically the purposes of things as Aristotle had done, or to
things. Now Medieval thinkers considered Aristotle to be deduce an ideal blueprint for the world, as Plato had done.
the greatest of the classical philosophers, and here was It is impossible because universal ideas are not real at all.
Aristotle saying that faith wasn’t really a tool that you could They are merely names (nomina) that we give things in our
minds. William was the true founder of nominalism. Since
use to uncover truth. This was a real shock!
The scholastics of the 1200s had to decide whether to ideas are not real, we cannot know anything about them or
keep their theology based on Plato and St. Augustine or to prove anything about them logically. All we can know about
create a new theology based on Aristotle. St. Thomas or argue about logically are things themselves as we perceive
Aquinas chose to create a new system. He wrote a number them with our senses. The true function of reason is to
of books, but the most important was the Summa understand things better.
Thus, William of Ockham not only challenged the
Theologiae, the Summation of Theology. He argued that
there are two ways to learn the truth about God and efforts of scholastic philosophers to use logic to understand
religion. One way is by studying the scriptures and Christianity, but he also questioned the whole basis of
Christian writings and accepting what God has revealed in ancient philosophy. Reason can be used to understand how
them on faith. The other way was by carefully observing the the world works, but it cannot be used to understand why
world around us. Then, one could demonstrate by logical the world is as it is. That is solely a matter of faith. This is
argument God’s purposes in creating the world and God’s the way that most people in the modern world think.
plan for men. From God’s plan, one can deduce what God Ockham took the first step toward a modern, scientific view
is like. This was Aristotle’s view. Everything has a purpose, that men can have true knowledge only about what they see.
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Conclusion
In the High Middle Ages, Western Europeans created sophisticated art, literature, and speculative thought based on a
Christian religious outlook. Between 1000 and 1300, Western Europe reached heights unparalleled since ancient times in
almost every field of culture. The dominant characteristic of all this culture was it took religious beliefs as its point of
departure. But by 1300, some thinkers, like William of Ockham, were beginning to point the way into new areas of
intellectual activity, such as scientific investigation, in which characteristic European religious ideas were to have only a
limited part to play.
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Decline of
the Middle
Ages
In an earlier lecture, I tried to show by drawing a line on
the board that Medieval civilization was advancing from
1000 to 1300. By 1300, however, the trend had changed.
From 1300 to 1450, medieval institutions were beginning to decline and to decay
again. We saw one example of that in the declining of papal power last time. The
decline and crisis is our subject today.
There is no better illustration of the decline of the medieval order of things in this
period than the fates of the two Roman Empires – the Eastern Roman Empire of the
Byzantines and the Holy Roman Empire of the Germans. By the late 1200s, the old
enemies of Europe, the Moslems, were on the offensive again. They were led by a
family of Turkish rulers known as the Ottoman Turks (1299-1919). Under several
Ottoman rulers, the Turks gradually got control of the Moslem east and began to
penetrate into Eastern Roman lands in Asia Minor and Europe itself.
Europeans responded to Ottoman expansion as they had previously. In 1396 and
1444, there were two new crusades by eastern European knights against the Turks. But
the Turks had well-organized armies and made the first wide use of gunpowder, which
had been introduced from China. Both crusades ended in disastrous defeats, and the
crusading movement ended. Finally, in 1453, the Ottoman ruler Mehmed II
(1451-1481) captured the city of Constantinople. This event ended the Eastern Roman
Empire and gave the Moslems control of large parts of the Balkans including Greece.
Although the Holy Roman Empire of Germany did not formally come to an end
in this period, it did cease to operate as a real government. In 1356, the emperor,
Charles IV of Luxembourg, issued the Golden Bull, which served as a kind of
constitution for the Empire. It made the office of emperor permanently elective, and it
named certain nobles who could vote in the election. The Empire thus became a sort
of loose association of independent states with no real power.
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Mehmed II...
was Sultan of the Ottoman
Empire for a short time from
1444 to 1446, and later
from 1451 to 1481. At the
age of 21, he conquered
Constantinople, bringing an
end to the medieval Byzantine Empire. From this point
onward, he claimed the title
of Caesar in addition to his
other titles.
The local leaders suppressed feudal government and
built stronger institutions in their own states, but they
remained independent. In 1433, the office of Emperor
passed to the family of the Habsburgs, who were Dukes of
Austria (1438-1919). They ignored Germany and tried to
make Austria into a strong state. The Empire continued in
name until 1805, but as Voltaire said of it, “It is not Holy; it
is not Roman; and it is not an Empire.”
England & France
out between Edward III of England(1327-1377) and Philip
VI (1328-1350).
In the Hundred Years War, the French steadily lost
ground to the English almost until the end. The English
won several major battles because their armies were much
better organized than those of the French. Until late in the
war, the Valois armies were made up mostly of mounted
knights doing service as vassals. They were poorly
organized, poorly disciplined, and generally unreliable.
But the English army relied much more heavily on
professional infantry. They were foot-soldiers armed with
long spears and long-bows (explain). Since the Norman
Conquest, there had been some non-feudal forces in
England recruited from all landowners. Many of these men
were small farmers who fought on foot. By the 1200s, it was
an established rule in England that only the oldest son of a
noble was a noble. Younger sons were commoners. Since
You should remember that John of England had lost only nobles were knights, the number of knights declined.
Normandy to Philip Augustus. The Plantagenets still
The armies of foot soldiers were not completely
controlled some lands in southern France and resisted
independent
from feudalism because great lords were
French king’s attempts to control them. The Capetian
allowed
to
hire
companies of infantry to fight for them. But
family came to an end in 1328, and the French throne
the
armies
themselves
were not feudal armies of knights
passed to less able kings, the Valois (1328-1589). War broke
even though the feudal lords
controlled them to some extent.
This system is sometimes called
“bastard feudalism.”
The two countries which had made the most progress in
strengthening government – England and France – also
experienced serious difficulties in this period. The problems
arose out of a great feudal war, called the Hundred Years
War (1337-1360, 1415-1453). The war grew out of the
longstanding feudal relationship between the kings of
England and the kings of France.
The French were also hampered
in the second stage of the war by
quarrels between the kings and
another branch of the Valois
family which ruled the large
feudal state of Burgundy. In
1363, King John of France
(1350-1364) gave the Duchy of
Burgundy to one of his younger
sons as a payment for not
becoming king. The Dukes of
Burgundy thereafter tried to
make Burgundy independent of
the French king and a strong state
in its own right.
Picture above shows English archers repelling French cavalry.
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In the second stage of the war,
the Dukes of Burgundy allied
with the English against France.
With their superior armies and
the aid of the Burgundians, the
English almost succeeded in
taking over all of France by the
1420s and 1430s.
War of the Roses
Surprisingly enough, the English kings were also
weakened by the Hundred Years War as well as by internal
quarrels. The power of the English kings was always
weakened when they tried to use English to support their
interests elsewhere. In order to get the lords to help him in
France, Edward III had to concede to Parliament the right
to approve all taxes for the war. After Edward’s death, the
throne was further weakened by quarrels among his
descendants who wanted to control the government.
Because Edward lived so long, his eldest son died before
he did. So, the crown went to his eleven-year-old grandson
Richard II (1377-1399). In 1399, Richard was deposed by
his cousin, the Duke of Lancaster. He and his family ruled
until 1461 to the disapproval of Richard’s other relatives. In
1455, the Lancaster kings were opposed by their cousins the
family of the Duke of York. This set off a civil war between
the House of Lancaster and the House of York. It lasted
thirty years (1455-1485). The war is called the War of the
Roses because the popular symbol of the Yorkists was a
white rose and that of the Lancasters was a red rose.
The continuing conflict between the Yorks and the
Lancasters weakened both, and ultimately allowed a cousin,
Henry Tudor, to defeat Richard III and end the War of the
Roses in 1485. Henry Tudor became Henry VII, and
founded the Tudor Dynasty, which lasted from 1485 to
1603.
The Black Death
Besides the weakening of political institutions which I
have just described and the weakening of the Church which
I discussed last time, the period after 1300 was also a time of
economic difficulty. To some extent, the economic problems
grew out of conditions that had nothing to do with the
economic system. The wars disrupted trade and placed a
heavy burden on resources. The spread of Turkish power
helped to restrict trade although it did not eliminate it
entirely. We saw earlier that most important trading areas in
Italy and north Europe depended on easy access to sources
of luxury items in the Eastern Mediterranean. It had been
easier and cheaper to trade in this region when it was in the
hands of Christians of the Eastern Roman Empire or of
the various crusader states.
Henry Tudor founded the Tudor Dynasty in England.
producers and consumers. It also made men reluctant to
travel freely and so reduced the volume of trade. Ironically,
in the long run the Black Death resulted in an enormous
boost to the European economy. With roughly one third of
the European population dead, the survivors gained greater
wealth which, in turn spurred economic growth. More dead
also meant fewer laborers, which increased demand for
workers and meant that the surviving workers would make
greater incomes. These factors would lead to a revival of
trade and manufacturing that would characterize the
Renaissance.
Another external factor in economic decline was a
disastrous outbreak of the bubonic plague, known as the
Black Death. It began in 1348 and raged unchecked for
about three years. It is estimated that one-fourth of the
people of Western Europe died of the disease in this threeyear period. This meant a drastic drop in the number of
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Decline of Medieval Institutions
But the major problems resulted more immediately from the way that the medieval economy was organized. We saw
earlier that more advanced economic activities – trade and manufacturing – were carried out by the guild system.
Problems arose because the manufacturing guilds gradually became more important. The masters of the guilds, who
controlled the industries in the cities, gradually expanded their shops employing more apprentices and journeymen to
produce goods for them. At the same time, they refused to approve any new masterpieces, so that journeymen had more
difficulty in opening new shops. The masters wanted to restrict competition. The cities came to have more and more men
who worked for wages and who had no chance to open their own shops. This, combined with heavier taxes to support
wars, led to labor unrest and even to revolts in some of the cities. There was a serious revolt in Paris in 1358.
In agriculture, manoralism had been declining ever since the re-emergence of cities and towns. There were several
reasons for this. Towns offered serfs an alternative means of making a living and made it harder to control them. In
addition, the lords of the manor wanted to be able to buy some luxury items which were being imported in trade. When
money was reintroduced, lords tended to convert the labor services of serfs to rent paid in cash. Thus the serfs became
merely renters instead of bound persons. This gave serfs more freedom, but it also deprived them of some rights which
they had traditionally had under manoralism. One important right was the right to use common land. Most manors had
some land, either pastures or woods, which all serfs could use together for their common benefit. Now the lords began to
take over these lands for their own purposes. For example, some of it was converted to pasture for sheep since wool was in
great demand. So there were peasant revolts as well as labor revolts.
Summation
To sum up, after advancing for 300 years, medieval Europe began to run into difficulty. Now the question we should
ask is “Why?” To some extent, it was a matter of bad luck. Many major problems arose accidentally and at the same time.
The Black Death, for example, was mostly chance. But I have been trying to build a case for a more fundamental historical
examination. The decline came because the institutions developed for medieval Europe had reached the limit of their
effectiveness.
Most institutions and ideas which characterize a civilization have their own built-in limitations. They will work for a
while, but to continue, they have to be able to adjust and change. They eventually reach a point where they can no longer
change very readily; then there is a crisis. That is what happened in this case. Medieval institutions had run their course.
Feudalism was the basis of government and of ideas about government, but it was not capable of providing the orderly life
that more advanced civilization needed. The guild system was beneficial, maybe even necessary, when commerce and
industry were just beginning, but eventually, it became a bar to further progress. The same can be said of other medieval
institutions.
Sometimes when devices of a civilization become outmoded and inflexible, the civilization is unable to adjust, and it
falls. But in the case of Western Europe, an adjustment did take place. The result was a new leap forward after 1450.
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Unit 4 Study Guide — The Middle Ages
Part I — Lecture 29-34
Unlike the other units in this course, my lectures and the book seem to go their separate
ways. This guide will be formatted to the on line lectures and I will give page numbers in
the text that cover the material in the lecture. So, here goes.
From Classical to Medieval
By the late 400s the outlook of the ancient world had been replaced by a new,
medieval view of life. Using the on-line lecture, contrast the life style and world
view of Roman citizens and thinkers in the Roman Republic and Empire, with
those of people in the Late Roman Empire and into the 500s (the Early Middle
Ages.
✓ How did their perception of the material world change?
✓ How did they organize the universe?
✓ How were perceptions of the world colored by Neoplatonism? By
Christianity?
Identify the following:
Neoplatonism
Plotinus
Aristotle
The One
St. Paul
Gospel of John
St. Augustine of Hippo
Visi-Goths
The City of God
Original Sin
Boethius
Monasticism and Monastic Preservation
An important aspect of life in the Middle Ages is called monasticism. Monasticism grew
out of a desire among many early Christians to give up the world and get away from the
tainting influences of other people and society, a very early example of “getting off the
grid.” The earliest of these folks appeared in the Near East and Egypt and they were
hermits, that is, people who left communities and societies to live alone in the desert
and wasted places. hermits were a bit of a liability for the leaders of the early Chhurch.
They were essentially “loose cannons;” they had visions and developed ideas about
their faith that wasn’t entirely orthodox and preached their ideas. Additionally, they were
often in danger from wild beasts and bad people and could meet these with only their
faith, which wasn’t always enough. As a result, first in Egypt, and then throughout the
East, and, by the mid-500s, in Western Europe, Church leaders built monasteries in
which to house these hermits, and created monastic communities where individuals
could pray and contemplate in peace with the support of a whole community of fellow
monks. Church and monastic leaders, realizing that these Christian communities
required rules, began to frame rules under which monks would live.
Using your text and lectures, identify the following:
Saint Anthony
conversion of England
St. Simeon the Stylite
St. Augustine (of Canterbury)
St. Benedict of Nursia
abbess
proper “work of God”
celibacy
abbot
Copying manuscripts
nuns
Cassiodorus
Irish missionary monks
Divine and human Readings
Saint Columba
liberal arts
Lindisfarne
trivium and quadrivium
Pope Gregory the Great
the Venerable Bede
The Byzantine Empire
Historians often call the surviving Roman state in the East the Byzantine Empire
because the capital was in Constantinople, which had previously been known as
Byzantium. But the people who lived in it never called it anything but the Roman
Empire, and they always thought of themselves as being Romans.
In the beginning, it roughly consisted of the eastern half of the Roman Empire, but in a
thousand years of history, it periodically grew and shrank. The Empire had its greatest
extent under the emperor Justinian (527-565). His armies re-conquered large territories
in the West. They destroyed the kingdom of the Vandals in North Africa and brought that
land back under Roman control. More important, they recaptured Italy from the
Ostrogoths. The Byzantines ruled Italy for nearly a century.
But for most of the Middle Ages, the Byzantine rulers were mainly concerned to protect
the territory they had in the eastern Mediterranean. In this region, they had two
principal groups of enemies. In Europe their enemies were the Slavs. The Slavs were
the last great group of Indo-European barbarians to appear. The Slavic languages
include Russian, Polish, and various others.
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A few questions:
✓ Study the reign of the Emperor Justinian. What made him remarkable? How does
he figure into the preservation and codification of Roman Law?
✓ Identify the Empress Theodora. What makes her a remarkable person?
✓ Discuss the achievements of the Emperor Theodosius.
Identify the following terms related to the Byzantine Empire from your various sources:
Constantinople
iconoclasts
Code of Justinian
Emperor Leo III
caesaro-papism
Patriarch of Constantinople
Council of Nicaea
autocrator
Iconoclasm
basileus
Byzantium
Islam
Islam means the act of surrendering oneself to god. A person who does this is called a
Muslim. The Muslims have a simple creed. It is “there is no god but Allah and
Mohammed is his prophet.” Allah is the same god as the God of the Christians and the
Jews. Mohammed is considered to be the founder of the religion of Islam. He was born
in the Arabian city of Mecca around 570.
Mecca was at a sort of crossroads. Identify and discuss the various states that
influenced life in Mecca as a result of trade. Mecca was also a center of religious
thought and activity. What were the various strains of religious thought and practice that
were present in Mecca in the early 600s that would have had an influence on the young
Mohammed?
Identify the following terms about Mohammed using the text, and the on-line and inclass lectures:
Arabia
Archangel Gabriel
Mecca
Yathrib
the Hashim family
Medina
Khadija
Battle of Badr
Night of Power
Mohammed died in 623. His death caused a succession crisis. The Meccan elite
supported one all of Mohammed's generals, Abu Bakr, who became the Caliph, that is
the leader of all Islam. Under the leadership of Abu Bakr and his successors, Muslims
spread their control over a large territory that included Syria Palestine (taken from the
Byzantine Empire), the Sassanian Empire (Persia and Mesopotamia), the Abyssinian
Empire (East Africa), North Africa (ruled by Germanic kings) and Spain. All of these
territories had as their dominant religion some form of Christianity before the Muslim
invasions. Christians were not forced to convert to Islam, but had to pay a special tax
(the jizya) or convert (or die). Needless to say, poorer Christians who could not afford to
pay were often forced to convert.
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Central Beliefs of Islam
Identify and explain the following terms from your various sources:
Shiite
sharia
Sunnite
Muslim creed
jihad
Ramadan
Five Pillars of Islam
arranged marriage
Qur’an
Mecca
Hadith
The religion of Islam controls and regulates practically every human and social activity.
A few examples…
•
•
•
•
The religion has special dietary and culinary requirements.
Women are kept from public view.
Muslims practice polygamy––the Koran limits the number of wives to four.
The reward for complying with all the various regulations involved in the religion of Islam is
paradise
. I might add that no non-Moslem is allowed in Mecca or Medina at any time.
Franks and the Carolingian Empire
Who were the Franks and how, and when, did they come to take up residence in
Northern Gaul?
But after the last emperor was deposed in 476, a powerful leader named Clovis
(481-411) united all the Franks both in Gaul and across the Rhine into Germany into a
single independent state.
So, how did Clovis manage to establish himself as the king of the Franks? well 1st, he
employed the traditional method of murdering all of his male relatives. Clovis then
converted to Nicene Christianity, which enabled the Franks to integrate well among
their Celto–Roman subjects. Clovis also allied himself with the bishops of Gaul and
used them and the Church to help in his administration of his kingdom. Clovis inherited
a structurally stable state. He used his authority to make war on the Visigoths and
successfully conquered and converted many of them. He founded the Merovingian
dynasty.
In the latter part of the 7th century the Merovingians were visited by a series of very
weak boy kings. As the Kings became weaker, the mayors of the palace, essentially
the stewards of the king, became increasingly stronger and more in charge of the
governing of the Franks. The infrastructure left over from the old Roman state began to
fall apart. And as this happened the office of mayor of the palace became hereditary.
Identify the following terms from your various sources that are related to the
Merovingians and early Carolingians:
Clovis
Pope Stephen II
Mayors of the Palace
anointed and appointed
Charles Martel
Papal States
Pepin the Short
Carolingians
Lombards
Charles the Great (Charlemagne_
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Charlemagne
What is so great about Charlemagne?
Charlemagne was an Empire builder, really the first in Western Europe since the fall of
Rome. What particular goals drove him to build his empire?
What was the significance of Charlemagne’s coronation as Emperor?
What powers did a Roman emperor have that most Germanic kings could only dream of
having? How did Charlemagne employ those powers?
Identify the following terms from your text and your various sets of notes:
Lombards
“Emperor of the Romans”
Einhard
Carolingian Renaissance
Saxons
scriptoria
Slavs
Carolingian miniscule
Avars
palace school
counts
concubines
missi dominici
Louis the Pious
Christmas Day, 800
celibacy
Pope Leo III
In 843 under the Treaty of Verdun, Charlemagne’s old Empire was officially split up into
three kingdoms as shown on the map above. But the fighting continued among the
various Frankish claimants and Kings, and that is unfortunate because it means the
Franks will be too busy fighting each other to adequately defend their territories from
various other groups of interlopers, especially the Vikings, the Magyars, and the
Saracens.
Unfortunately, the more orderly society that Charlemagne’s Empire provided did not last
very long, not long enough to bring about a real revival of learning in Western Europe as
a whole. Education remained confined largely to the Church. It did not spread widely to
the Frankish nobles as Charlemagne had hoped. But the Carolingian Renaissance did
prevent any more ancient books from being lost. Ninety percent of the Roman books
that exist today can be traced back to copies made in Carolingian times.
Lecture 32 — Vikings and Magyars and Moors! Oh, My!
Charlemagne’s achievements were impressive. But after his death, the strong
government that he created rapidly collapsed for many reasons. When Charlemagne’s
son, Louis the Pious, died, his Empire was divided into three parts among his three
sons. The parts roughly compromised France, Germany, and north Italy. His sons were
not strong enough to control the counts. The local leaders took over the lands that they
had been given and quickly made themselves independent of central authority. even
worse, the three brothers began to fight with each other for dominance and territory.
Even so, some orderly government might have lasted, if it had not been for the fact that
Western Europe now began to be attacked again from the outside.
There were three main groups of attackers. In the east, Germany was invaded by an
Asiatic people called the Magyars. They were the ancestors of the modern Hungarians.
In the south around the Mediterranean, France and Italy were raided by Moslems from
Spain and North Africa. But the most serious invaders were pirates who attacked the
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northern western coasts. They were the famous Vikings or north men who came from
Scandinavia. One group was strong enough to capture a stretch of territory on the north
coast of France (Normandy). They settled there permanently. Others sailed up the rivers
into the interior of Germany and, especially, France raiding along the banks. Under
these pressures, any semblance of government collapsed. By 850, Western Europe fell
into a state of chaos worse than any that had existed since the Roman Empire.
The Vikings
Who were the Vikings? Where did they come from, and why did they begin raiding and
plundering Western Europe when they did?
“Vikings” is really a misnomer of sorts. A better term for these people would be
Norsemen (northmen). the word viking actually refers to what they did rather than who
they were. Using Dr. Price’s in-class lecture notes, explain.
Different groups of Norsemen raided different places. Using your text explain.
Magyars
Who were the Magyars and where did they come from?
What part of Europe did they threaten, and what event finally stopped their expansion in
955?
Saracens:
Saracens were it Islamic Moorish peoples from North Africa they began to make attacks
1st in the Mediterranean taking the islands of Corsica, Sardinia, and Sicily. They
attacked the southern coast of France and even at one time attempted to attack and
sacked the city of Rome.
Lecture 33 — Manorialism and Feudalism
People had to find some way to organize their lives, both politically and economically.
Over time Medieval Europeans developed new, but relatively primitive ways of restoring
economic and political order. The economic system they developed is called
manoralism and the political system is called feudalism.
Explain feudalism. What was its purpose and what kinds of relationships did feudalism
create between lords and vassals?
Within the feudal contract, each participant owed certain obligations to the other. What
obligations did the lord owe to his vassal? What did the vassal owe to his lord?
Manorialism was also a contractual relationship. What was the purpose of manorialism?
Who were the participants? What obligations did the lord owe his serf? Serfs to their
lord?
Identify and discuss manorialism. Of manor lords and serfs, who owed what to whom?
What did each get out of the relationship?
Identify and explain the following terms from your various sources:
vassalage
stirrup
vassal
overlord
fief
subinfeudation
mutual obligations
suzerain
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manor
serfs
demense
tithe
Medieval Kingship
At this point in the lectures, I used Germany, France and England as examples of the
problems of Early Medieval kingship, the various factors that hinder the growth of feudal
monarchies into stronger monarchies and the various players who are involved in the
continuing struggle of medieval kings to build a stronger monarchy that transcends the
feudal contract.
In order to create a stronger monarchy, what impediments did kings have to remove?
Who were the chief competitors with the monarchs and why did they resist a stronger
monarch?
Of Germany, France and England, which country developed the strongest monarchy
and which the weakest?
Germany— The Holy Roman Empire
[Lectures on German to 1200, Text 226 and elsewhere]
The government of medieval Germany was based on feudalism, but it had some
unusual features. Germany was divided into several large feudal states, each led by a
great lord with many loyal followers who would support him in war. Some lords were
descended from administrators of Charlemagne, but the major leaders could trace their
positions back further than that. They were descended from early Germanic chiefs who
led the older independent Germanic tribes that Charlemagne had conquered. These
men were called Stem Dukes, tribal leaders.
Each Stem Duke ruled a territory whose people had their own customs, their own laws,
and sometimes their own Germanic dialect. Their subjects felt a strong loyalty to them
dating back to the time when they had been leaders of independent tribes. As feudalism
spread, this loyalty strengthened; the principal subjects became vassals of the dukes.
There was a German king, and theoretically, he was the feudal overlord of the various
other lords in Germany, but he was a weak ruler at best. What advantages did German
kings have over their vassal lords? What advantages did the lords have over the king?
In what ways, if any did this change between the late 800s and the 1300s?
Otto I (936-973)
Otto I is often considered the first strong German king, and during his reign, Otto was
able to increase his authority over his lords somewhat. Consider the following:
What effect did Otto’s victory over the Magyars at Lechfeld in 955 have on Otto’s
reputation and prestige?
How was Otto able to strengthen his prestige and authority with the help of the pope?
How in the world did Otto’s Germany become the Holy Roman Empire and what did that
“empire” entail?
How did the use of Church administrators help Otto strengthen his authority over his
kingdom? What advantages did Church administrators offer the king over feudal lords?
After Otto helped the pope regain his lands, Pope John XII proclaimed Otto the new
Roman Emperor in the West in 962. This act created the Holy Roman Empire, but it also
created an uncertain relationship between the pope and Holy Roman Emperors. Why?
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France through the 1200s
After 843 there is a great deal of decentralization in the old Empire of the Carolingians.
Even though by 1000 things that calm down the monarchy in both France and those
areas that would become Germany had become considerably weakened by the
depredations of Vikings and Muslims in Moors. In West Frankland, that is what today
would be modern France, Kings had used up a great deal of their land, giving it away to
vassals.
The french kings by the mid 900s were much like German kings at the same time. The
monarchy was elective, and when an old king died, the great lords of France elected a
new one. If the old king had been a pretty good politician, and if he had a suitable son,
he might be able to convince the great lords to elect him, but there were no guarantees.
In 987 the lords of France came together to elect a new King. They elected Hugh Capet.
Hugh was count of Paris. Why did the great lords elect him? From their point of view,
what were Hugh’s weaknesses? What lands did he hold?
Over the next few generations the Capetian monarchs managed to become
considerably stronger rulers. Using your lecture notes, explain how the early Capetian
kings increased their prestige and authority. Pay attention to the following:
✓ What means did these early kings use to create order and a good environment
for trade and travel?
✓ How did these kings use marriage to increase their authority?
✓ How did the city of Paris, which was on Capetian lands, become an aasset rather
than a liability for Capetian rulers?
✓ How did the happy coincidence that one Capetian monarch after another had a
suitable male heir change the French monarchy?
Identify the following Capetian monarchs. What did they do to increase the power,
authority and prestige of the French Monarchy? Also identify the terms on the list.These
kings and terms can best be studied from the lectures, but you might also use the index
in the text to look them up for further study. See next page:
Philip II Augustus
Normandy
Plantagenets
King John of England
contumacious vassal
Battle of Bouvines
baillis
Louis IX
St. Louis
“model Christian king”
Philip IV, the Fair
taxation
Estates General
England to 1300
England was the last of the Roman provinces to be added into the Empire during the
reign of the Emperor Claudius. In the early 400s the Romans withdrew and England
was quickly invaded by Germamic peoples who set up small Germanic-style kingdoms
throughout England.
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The German invaders were pagan, and the indigenous population had been
christianized during the Roman period. Rechristianization in in the north was undertaken
by Irish monks, while the south was reconverted by missionaries from Rome, most
especially, St. Augustine of Rome See page 2 above).
In 850, a group of Danish Vikings conquered most of the eastern territory in England
and set up a Danish kingdom called the Danelaw. Alfred the Great, the king of Wessex,
the last remaining large Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, united all of the other Anglo-Saxon
kingdoms, defeated the Danes and united England under one Anglo-Saxon king. Alfred
and his successors created a society in England that was quite different from the feudal
system of the Continent.
Identify and define the following terms from your text and the lectures:
shires
sheriffs
earls
shire militia (fyrd)
Edward the Confessor
Harold Godwinson
Harald Hardrada
William the Bastard
Battle of Stamford Bridge
Battle of Hastings
William the Conqueror
Domesday Book
Norman England
William created a system that was a mixture of traditional Anglo-Saxon institutions and
Norman feudal traditions. How did this new system work? How did it increase the
authority of the king over feudal tradition?
The most important royal asset that english kings had to increase their authority was the
development of the Common Law. What was Common Law and what made it
“common”?
What was Canon Law and how was it applied, and to whom?
Using the text and your various sets of notes, identify and explain the following terms:
sheriff
Richard I
royal justice
John Lackland
Henry II
Battle of Runnymede
writs
Magna Charta (or Magna Carta)
trial by combat
curia regis
trial by ordeal
pariaments
jury trial
Edward I
grand jury
Model Parliament of 1295
Thomas á Becket
Rise of the Medieval Papacy
Another important theme of the Middle Ages is the importance of the Western Church—
the Roman Catholic Church—and the gradual rise in power of the Bishop of Rome, the
pope, from an important leader within Christianity to the supreme spiritual authority
within the Western Church. By the mid-1200s, the pope held complete authority over
the Church in the West and could also boast about his power over secular lords and
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princes as well. By the middle of the 1300s, a series of conflicts between popes and
secular rulers had the effect of diminishing papal prestige and authority, not only in
secular affairs, but even in spiritual affairs. In two lectures in class and on line, Dr. Price
discusses the events and accomplishments (and failings) of medieval popes that
brought them to the highs of Pope Innocent III and his immediate successors, and the
lows of the French papacy and the Great Schism of the papacy.
Identify and explain the following terms from your text and the various lectures:
Petrine Theory
Canossa
Bishop of Rome
excommunication
Cluniac Reform
interdiction
monks
Concordat of Worms
Pope Nicholas II
Canon Law
papal selection
Innocent III
Cardinal Clergy
Fourth Lateran Council
Pope Gregory VII
transubstantiation
investiture
seven sacraments
Investiture Struggle
plenitude of power
Henry IV (Holy Roman Emperor)
Vicar of Christ
Bishop of Milan
Answer the following questions concerning the rise of the papacy:
✓ Explain the Petrine Theory. did clergy in the early accept the theory? Did they
necessarily accept the authority of the Bishop of Rome over the clergy of
Europe?
✓ In order to exercise greater authority over the Western Church, what did popes
have to accomplish?
✓ How did Holy Roman Emperors complicate the papal struggle for supremacy
over the Church?
✓ Explain the Investiture Struggle. How did Pope Gregory’s reform change the
traditional ways that Church leadership (bishops and archbishops) had been
chosen in the past? What is investiture? How did European rulers react to
Gregory’s reform is the Holy Roman Emperor Henry the IV is an example?
✓ Between Henry IV and Pope Gregory VII, who won? How humiliating was it for
the loser?
✓ Pope Innocent III has been labeled as the greatest of the Medieval popes. Why?
✓ What were the decisions of the Fourth Lateran Council? What effects did these
new Church policies and doctrines have on the Church, on the prestige of the
clergy and on relationships between clergy and their congregations?
The Crusades
As I note in my on-line lecture, the crusades were one of the distinctive phenomena of
the Middle Ages and one of the most important developments of the period after 1000.
In the 600s and 700s, Arabs spread their control and Islam throughout areas of the
Eastern Mediterranean, North Africa, Mesopotamia and Spain that had previously been
Christian. The Arabs were relatively tolerant rulers requiring Christians and Jews living
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in these conquered areas to practice their religion so long as they paid the jizya (the
religious tax). Christian pilgrims were welcome to come to the Holy Land and worship at
the Christian sacred sites. In fact the pilgrims brought wealth to Jerusalem and other
towns in the Holy Land that might have languished otherwise.
✓ How did the incursion of the Seljuk Turks into the Eastern Mediterranean around
1050 begin to change the
relationship between the
Muslim East and the Christian
lands?
✓ Who were the Seljuk Turks?
✓ What request did the
Byzantine Emperor Alexius
Comnenus make to Pope
Urban II?
✓ How did Urban II change the
meaning of the Emperor’s
request in his famous speech
at the Council of Clermont?
Why did Urban change the
call to arms to the knights of
Europe?
✓ Why did crusaders undertake
such a difficult feat? What
were the two most important
ideals of European knights,
and how did a crusade
dovetail those activities so
nicely?
✓ What was a plenary
indulgence, and how did
indulgences figure into the
desire of Europeans to go
and fight in the Holy Land?
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Identify and explain the following terms from your lectures and the text (the text breaks
the crusades up quite a bit. Look up crusades in the index and study the various ones,
especially 288-296, on their various pages):
Seljuk Turks
Crusader States
sultan
“ideal feudalism”
Manzikert
Second Crusade
Holy Land
Third Crusade
Alexius Comnenus
Saladin
Pope Urban II
Fourth Crusade
Council of Clermont
Sack of Constantinople
Peace of God
Children’s Crusade
plenary indulgence
military orders
Peasants’ Crusade
Knights of the Temple of Jerusalem
First Crusade
Knights of the Hospital of Jerusalem
A few more questions:
✓ Identify the crusader states formed after the First Crusade.
✓ Why were the crusader states considered “ideal feudal states”?
✓ How do the Templars and the Hospitalers and other military orders reflect the twin
ideals of medieval European men?
✓ Although in the end the crusades failed in their goal to retake the Christian areas of
the Eastern Mediterranean, in what ways did the crusades have emphatic effects on
Western Europe? Were there any long-term effects on the Middle East and the
Muslim World?
✓ How did the crusades contribute both economically and culturally to the
developments of the High Middle Ages?
Decline of the Papacy
The decline was connected with great changes that began in Europe in the 1100s.
Using your lectures, define and discuss the various changes in the European economy,
society and politics that began in the High Middle Ages that led to the decline of papal
authority. these changes took place during a period of popular religious enthusiasm.
What contributed to that enthusiasm?
In the past, the leaders of reform in the Church were the monks. Why were the
traditional monastic orders ill equipped to deal with the new social and economic, and
spiritual, problems that appeared in the High Middle Ages? How did new orders called
mendicant orders attempt to rectify the situation?
Identify the following terms from the lectures and your text. Again, the text does not
follow the lectures here, so you will have to make judicious use of the index:
vita apostolica
Waldensians
Cathars
St. Francis of Assisi
Franciscans
St. Dominic
Dominicans
mendicants
Fourth Lateran Council
Pope Gregory IX
the Court of the Inquisition
“Hounds of God
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The Conflict Between Pope Boniface VIII and Philip the Fair
Boniface and Philip were involved in two separate conflicts. What issues did they
contend over? What were the immediate consequences of each of these contentions?
Who won? Who lost? How did these conflicts affect the authority of the king of France?
The papacy?
Interestingly, these struggles generated a lot of written arguments for and against each
player’s positions. Identify the following documents and writers and what they wrote.
Clericis Laicos
John of Paris (Jean Quidort)
Pierre Dubois
Unam Sanctum
When these struggles were over, they really weren’t over. Boniface’s death began a
period of French domination of the Church. After two years of an ineffectual successor
to Boniface, Philip was able to influence papal elections, and, in 1304, the Cardinal
Clergy elected a Frenchman on to the Throne of St. Peter (by the way, what is the
Throne of St. Peter?). For the next 73 years a French pope ruled the Church from the
papal city of Avignon (just a stone’s throw from France.
Identify and explain the following terms:
The Babylonian Captivity of the Papacy
the Great Schism
papal election of 1378
Consiliarism
Urban V
Meister Eckhart
Clement VII
Catherine of Siena
What effect did the Great Schism have on the Papacy? On European politics and
religion? What do you think the overall effect of having two popes had on the people of
Europe, on the authority of the papacy?
The High Middle Ages
In what ways were the High Middle Ages any different from the period that preceded
them? What brought about those changes?
The growth of guilds were the result of both the renewal of trade and the expansion of a
new class in Medieval Europe called the bourgeoisie.
What is the bourgeoisie? What were the guilds? Hoe were trade guilds different from
craft guilds?
Discuss the various ways that guilds improved trade, organized business activity and
trained new masters in the various crafts.
The growth of cities made it possible to have formal education again, and educational
institutions that are still with us gradually emerged during this period. This is one of the
most important aspects of the recovery of Europe. Before 1000, the only formal
education in Western Europe was provided by small schools in the monasteries or in
the cathedrals of bishops and archbishops. It was from them that universities
developed. The Church maintained these schools largely to teach clergy Latin and other
basic subjects needed for their work.
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Define and explain the following terms relating to High Medieval education from the
lectures and the text:
universitas
Doctor of Law
the University of Bologna
Doctor of Medicine
the University of Paris
Scholasticism
collegia
St. Augustine
Master of the Arts
Aristotle
doctor
faith and reason
How did the changes that took place in the High Middle Ages help kings increase their
power and authority?
Culture of the High Middle Ages
Understand the difference between Romanesque and Goth architecture.
Identify the following from your text and your various lecture sources:
vernacular literature
Decameron
Dante Alighieri
Geoffrey Chaucer
Divine Comedy
Canterbury Tales
Virgil
Christine de Pizan
Beatrice
The Book of the City of Ladies
Petrarch
Giotto
Boccaccio
Scholastic Philosophy
Describe the new ideas that emerged among philosophers in the universities. how did it
differ from both classical pagan and the philosophy/theology of the Earlier Church
thinkers? How did the ideas of Aristotle conflict with the ideas of St. Augustine?
Identify and explain the following terms from your sources:
reason
Summa Theologiae
faith
Nominalism
St. Anselm
William of Ocham
Peter Abelard
Nominalism
St. Thomas Aquinas
The Decline of the Middle Ages
From 1300 to 1450, medieval institutions were beginning to decline and to decay again.
We saw one example of that in the declining of papal power last time.
This period saw a great many changes—the end of the Byzantine Empire, the lose of
cohesion within the Holy Roman Empire, the rise of central monarchies, conflicts over
long-established feudal traditions and settlements, the fall of the papacy (discussed in
an earlier lecture), and the spread of the Black Death—all of which had profound effects
on Western Europe.
Why was the fall of the Byzantine Empire to the Turks in 1453 of profound importance in
Western Europe?
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What was the Golden Bull? Who wrote it and what did it signify for the history of the
Holy Roman Empire?
Identify the Following terms:
Byzantine Empire
Charles IV of Luxembourg
Ottoman Turks
the Golden Bull
Mehmet II
Habsburgs
gunpowder
England and France
The two countries which had made the most progress in strengthening government –
England and France – also experienced serious difficulties in this period. The problems
arose out of a great feudal war, called the Hundred Years War (1337-1360, 1415-1453).
The war grew out of the longstanding feudal relationship between the kings of England
and the kings of France. A conflict over the French succession led to a long conflict
between the two powers called the Hundred-Years War.
What was the cause of the war? Who were the claimants to the French throne? (See
your text, pages 308-312) in addition to your notes.
Identify and explain the following terms fro your sources:
King John of England
Battle of Crècy
Philip Augustus
John II (of France)
Capetian Dynasty
Battle of Poitiers
Edward III Plantagenet
Duke of Burgundy
Philip IV Valois
Joan of Arc
Gascony
longbow
What was the outcome of the war? How was France affected? England?
The “War of the Roses”
Edward III reigned over England for 50 years. His reign was, in fact, simply too long. By
the time that he died, he had outlived all of his immediate heirs, which led to a long
conflict over the throne of England that a waggish professor gave the name “the War of
the Roses,” a label that has become traditional. Why did this witty fellow call this
struggle the “War of the Roses”?
Using your text and the lectures, identify and explain the following terms:
Edward III
Parliament
Lancaster
Richard III
York
Henry Tudor (Henry VII)
Richard II
Tudor Dynasty
Henry IV
The Black Death
The spread of an epidemic called the Black Death is in many ways the most significant
cause of change in Europe in in this lecture. It not only wiped out a significant fraction of
the people who lived in Western Europe in the fourteenth century, but it brought about
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significant social, political, spiritual and economic changes that would ultimately bring
about the end of the Middle Ages.
Where did the Black Death come from? When and where did it most likely arrive in
Europe? How is the bubonic plague carried?
Using your various sources, identify and explain the following:
Mongols
Genoa
Black Sea
buboes
Constantinople
flagellants
bubonic plague
ars moriendi
pneumonic plague
dans macabre
Another important result of the Black death was a period of economic and social
dislocation that changed the balance of society and the Medieval economy in the late
1300s and 1400s.Study the text (pages 305-308). Note the peasant revolts that took
place in France and England. Dr. Price also notes that the long term effects of the
plague changed the European economy in a number of ways. Among the most
important was an economic upturn that began in the towns as a smaller number of
people shared the wealth of those who had not survived the plague and manor lords
dismissed serfs because of a decreased demand in the towns for food (the dead do not
eat). Many serfs moved to towns and became a part of a growing labor force. In doing
so they had to adapt to a changing way of life based not of the agricultural rhythms of
the year, or the sacred calendar of the Catholic Church, but on the requirements of daily
labor. In the long run, these changes ushered in a more modern conception of time and
labor and helped ring out the Middle Ages and ring in the period we call Early Modern.
How does the appearance of clocks in towns all over Western Europe at this time
illustrate the point?
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