Download Post-Classical Europe - Miami Beach Senior High School

Postclassical Europe: The
Emergence of Christendom
Mr. Ermer
World History AP
Miami Beach Senior High School
Recovering After Rome’s Fall
 Christianity provides cultural unity in diverse Western
European kingdoms
 Western Europe dominated by many post-Roman, Germanic
kingdoms
 Elites maintain ties to Classical World by speaking Latin and spreading
Christianity
 Western Church, and the Bishop of Rome (Pope), free from political control
 Western Europe is mostly rural, lacking in trade, economically poor
 Byzantine Empire in the east, also Christian, keeps Roman
traditions alive
 Eastern Church tightly controlled by Byzantine emperors
 Byzantine Empire richer, more urban than the west
Europe After the Fall of Rome:
Eastern Christendom
 330 CE: Constantine builds a new Roman capital—Constantinople—on
site of ancient Greek colony of Byzantium
 Constantinople well defended, heavily walled
 Eastern half of empire wealthier, more urban; 476 CE Rome collapses
 Eastern empire survives for another thousand years
 Constantinople=Nova Roma (“New Rome”), seeks to preserve old Roman heritage
 “Germanic influence” (boots, trousers, long hair) is forbidden by Byzantine emperors
 Emperor Justinian (527-565) attempts to reestablish old Roman Empire
 Byzantine government highly centralized
 Emperors called “peer of the Apostles”=God’s representative on Earth
 Bureaucrats and aristocrats trained in Greek rhetoric
 Western Europeans, Arabs, and Turks chip away at the empire
 1453: Constantinople falls to the Ottoman Empire, Byzantine Empire collapses
Justinian’s Roman Empire
Byzantine Church & State
 Caesaropapism: Emperor is head of state and church (“caesar” & pope)
 Appointed a patriarch to lead the Christian church based in Constantinople
 Emperors made decisions about Christian doctrine, saw church as gov’t office
 Emperors build many churches around Constantinople and empire
 Justinian’s Haiga Sophia church, churches filled with icons
 Christianity becomes identity of the empire, engages public
 Small differences between the Latin Church in the West and the Greek
Church of Byzantium begin to widen
 Both the Pope in Rome and the Patriarch in Constantinople claim authority
 1054: Pope and Patriarch excommunicate each other
 After 1054, two Christian churches exist
 Eastern Orthodox Church, ruled by the patriarch of Constantinople
 Roman Catholic Church, ruled by the Bishop of Rome (pope)
The Hagia Sophia
Byzantium & The World
 Following the fall of Rome, Byzantium continues the struggle against Persia
 Constant war weakens both, allows for Arabs to take vast territory
 Byzantine military uses “Greek fire” and Roman tactics to control smaller borders
 Byzantines benefit from position between European and Asia trade routes
 Takes over the silk trade and production for the Mediterranean region
 Coins widely used, become status symbol in poorer western European kingdoms
 Preserved the knowledge of the Greeks, Christianized Slavic peoples
 Cyril and Methodius invent new alphabet to translate Bible to Slavic languages
 988: Byzantines convert people of Kievan Rus to Orthodox Christianity
 Vladimir of Kiev converts to Orthodox Christianity to unite people & expand trade
 Moscow later known as “third Rome”
Rebuilding Western Europe
 Western Europe far removed from world’s main trading routes
 Main centers of population separated by geography, cultures diverge
 In time before and after the Fall of Rome, Roman society in decline
 Disease, warfare, violence, hunger, rural population on the rise
 Agricultural production, urban population, literacy, trade on the decline
 Germanic peoples rise as the dominant peoples of Western Europe
 Roman citizens (who referred to Germanics as barbarians) now marginalized
 Roman objects and institutions retained high prestige among Germanics
 Some Germanic kings wish to restore “Roman Empire” on German terms
 Charlemagne, of the Carolingian Empire crowned “Holy Emperor of the Romans”
 Otto I of Saxony crowned emperor, renames kingdom Holy Roman Empire
Charlemagne’s Carolingian Empire
Western Christendom
 Rise of Feudalism as result of war and instability after the fall of Rome
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Highly fragmented and decentralized society ruled by landowning, warrior elites
Roman style slavery gives way to new system of serfdom
Fiefdoms
Vernacular languages replace Latin
 Centralized and Hierarchical Roman Catholic Church fills many voids
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Education, Welfare, Administrative and Political functions in some areas
Organized around Pope, bishops, priests—retains Latin as official language
Monasteries
Power brings wealth, and sometimes corruption to the Church
 Germanic spirituality blended with Christian theology
 Church authorities vs. Secular authorities
 Investiture of Bishops, Investiture Controversy
Feudalism
The Manor System
The High Middle Ages (1000-1300)
 Germanic migrations & invasions by outsiders = much change
 Muslims, Magyars, and Vikings invade from three different sides
 By 1000, invasions end and invaders absorbed into European society
 Climate change and human engineering = better agriculture, more cities
 Trade begins to increase, Italians begin to trade outside Western Europe
 Urbanization=merchants, artisans, bankers, universities
 Guilds, apprentices
 Agricultural technology increases productivity
 Water and animal powered grain mills, larger looms
 Women’s rights limited, some professional rights, educated at convents
 Territorial states with common cultures expand, but decentralized
 Great Lords sometimes recognized as kings, but power limited by feudalism
 Italian city-states retain independence (Venice, Milan, Genoa, Bologna)
 German principalities remain independent, loosely bound by Holy Roman Emp.
Invasions of Europe
Europe, A.D. 1160
The Crusades
 1095: Constantinople is under attack by Turkish Muslims
 Emperor Alexius I asks Pope Urban II for help
 Pope decides to order Christian soldiers to free Jerusalem from the “infidels”
 1095-1291: Western European Christians rule four Crusader kingdoms
 High organization, finance, transport, and recruitment despite decentralization
 Crusader cruelty = distrust between Muslim Middle East & Christianity
 Sacking of Constantinople (1204-1261)
 Effects of the Crusades
 Transfer of knowledge, technologies, agriculture from Middle East to Europe
 Reintroduction of classical Greek thought/philosophy
 Jews also targeted across Europe as infidels
 Noblemen sell their land and free serfs before leaving to fight, as lords lose
power, kings take more power creating centralized states
 Increased trade with the East expands wealth of kingdoms, Italian city-states
 Portugal, Spain, England, France emerge as powerful kingdoms by 1400
The Middle Ages In Perspective
 The Middle Ages = European Dark Age
 Politically weaker, less commercialized, technologically inferior to rest of world
 China, India, Muslim World, Byzantium all more successful civilizations in Middle Ages
 Europeans willing to borrow from others, especially China and Arabs
 Marco Polo’s voyage to China; compass, paper, gunpowder, sternpost rudder
 Technological Advancements
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Northern European heave plow (wheeled and made of iron)
Windmills
Geared mechanisms
Cannons
 Political fragmentation = militarism, frequent war, gunpowder revolution
 Common language (Latin, later French) facilitate communication
 Political independence of merchant class helps business
 Parliaments democratize government function
 First Estate (Clergy), Second Estate (Nobility), Third Estate (Urban Merchants)
Faith & Reason In Western Europe
 Tension between human reason and faith
 Christianity emerged in world suffused with Greek rationalism, later forgotten
 Universities and political independence increases need for reason
 Legal systems provide independence
 Rise of “Natural Philosophy”, reintroduction of Greek thought
 Scholasticism
 Melding of Aristotlean philosophy and Christian theology
 Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica and the Five Proofs of God
 Separation of church and state in Western Europe = more scientific study
 Byzantium and Islamic world seem much less scientific inquiry
 Emphasis on history, literature, art, and philosophy rather than science
Thomas Aquinas’ Five Proofs of God
Reason
Reasoning
Conclusion
Motion: All things must be set
into motion, by another moving
object
There must have been something
that moved first, on its own,
setting all else into motion
God is the first mover
Cause & Effect: For something to
happen, or exist, something else
must cause it to do so
There must have been one thing
that existed before a cause
God is the first cause, everything
else is the effect
Transition: All things are in
transition between existing and not
there must have been something
that always existed, since there
cannot be a time where nothing
existed
God is that which always existed
Degree: All things are degrees of
the perfect form (Plutonic FormsAllegory of the Cave)
For goodness to exist, there must
be a perfect, complete goodness,
from which all other goodness
comes
God is the complete goodness
Design: The world is too perfectly
ordered, for it to have come from
chaos without a plan
There must have been a designer
for the world, and all the things in
it
God is the ultimate designer