Download Content Outline HIS/113 1 Week One Content Outline TOPIC and

Content Outline
HIS/113
1
Week One Content Outline
TOPIC AND OBJECTIVES
The High and Late Middle Ages – Western Society Emerges (Ch 10, 11)

Compare manorialism, feudalism, and the rise of the medieval town.

Explain the role of clerics in politics, society, and the rise of the Universities.

Compare the value system of the warrior class to the rest of medieval society.

Discuss the role each estate played in the Crusades.
CONTENT OUTLINE
1. Life on the manor
Economic center of medieval life is the manor peasant houses were clustered in villages on
manors or large estates. That was due in part to the peasants’ need for security and
companionship against the dangers and terrors of a hostile world. However, in some parts of
Europe the clustering was the result of their lord’s desire to keep a close eye on his labor supply.
Lords forced peasants to abandon isolated farmsteads and traditional villages and to move into
small, fortified settlements. In the new villages peasants were obligated to settle disputes in the
lord’s court, to grind their grain in the lord’s mill, and to bake their bread in the lord’s oven—all
primary sources of revenue for the lord. At the center of the village was the church, often the only
stone or brick building in the village. Until the thirteenth century, even the lord’s castle was often
simply a wooden structure. The same sort of monopoly enforced on the lords’ mills and ovens
applied to the church. Villagers had to contribute a tenth of their revenues to the church and to
make donations in order to receive the sacraments.
a. Agricultural innovations
Three field system rotation in the 8th century, peasants began to introduce a three-field system:
one-third of the land was planted in autumn with wheat rye, one-third remained fallow, and onethird was planted in spring with barley, rye, or a leguminous crop such as beans or peas that
added nutrients to the soil. As that innovation became standard after the year 1000, the result
was a greatly increased yield, a minimal increase in labor, and an improved diet
Better plows Traditionally, Europeans had worked their fields with simple plows that
broke up light soils but were unable to turn and aerate the heavy clay soils of northern Europe.
That kind of work could only be done with hoes and shovels—tedious, backbreaking
labor that limited the amount of land that could be cultivated. Increasingly, between the ninth and
the twelfth centuries, a new, heavier kind of plow became common in Europe. This more
sophisticated tool, greatly increased the productivity of agricultural work. However, the equipment
not only was expensive but also required large teams of oxen or, more rarely, horses to pull it.
Such innovations were possible only when lords were willing to invest in agricultural
improvements or when free peasants cooperated with each other and pooled resources.
Feudalism The political basis of medieval society: public power in private hands 1. A political
and economic system of Europe from the 9th - 15th century, based on the holding of all land and
the resulting relation of lord to vassal and characterized by homage, legal and military service of
tenants, and forfeiture. 2. A political, economic, or social order resembling this medieval system.
b. The three pillars of medieval society: those who fight, those who work, and those who
pray (First Estate is Church, Second Estate is Nobles, Third Estate is peasantry)
c. Fiefdoms the estate or domain of a feudal lord and oaths of loyalty
Content Outline
HIS/113
2
1) Obligations to the lord
a) Days of service demesne
b) Percent of crops
c) required to make ritual payments symbolizing their subordination.
2) Difference between peasant and serf
Serf: a person in a condition of servitude, required to render services to a lord, commonly
attached to the lord's land and transferred with it from one owner to another. 2. a slave.
Peasant: 1. a member of a class of persons, as in Europe, Asia, and Latin America, who are
small farmers or farm laborers of low social rank. 2. a coarse, unsophisticated, boorish,
uneducated person of little financial means; a free man
d. Faith ties the community together: oaths made are religious ties; no separation of church
and state as in modern times.
2. The Church
a. Church hierarchy: Pope in Rome, archbishops, bishops, priests
b. Monks, friars, and life in the abbey – communities on the manor model run by the Church
c. Gothic cathedrals
1) Suger (1091–1151): Abbot of the French royal monastery; was one of the last
Frankish abbot-statesmen, a historian, and the influential first patron of Gothic
architecture.
2) St. Denis in Paris innovates with the gothic style (see photo end of notes)
3) Vezelay (see photo end of notes)
d. Monastic reform
1) Benedict rule challenged Supported by both peasants and nobles, Benedictine
monasteries reached their height in the 11th & 12th centuries. Within their walls
developed a religious culture that was one of the greatest achievements of the
Middle Ages. Entry into a monastery was usually reserved for young noble men and
women; they were to remain until the end of their lives, first as novices in the religious
culture of the monastery and later as mature monks and nuns—the professionals in
medieval religion. The essence of the monastic life was the passionate pursuit of
God. The goal was not simply salvation but perfection, and this required discipline of
the body through a life of voluntary chastity and poverty.
2) Cluny in France: Independent communities called priories The monastery of Cluny,
in saving souls through prayer, became the first international organization of
monastic centers. Cluny had abbeys and dependent communities, called priories,
throughout Europe. The abbots of Cluny were among the most powerful and
influential people in Europe during the eleventh and twelfth centuries—considered as
equals with kings, popes, and emperors.
3) Cisterian reforms: Robert of Molesme at Citeaux (1098) The Cistercian life was a
return to literal observance of the Rule of St Benedict. Rejecting the developments
the Benedictines had undergone, the monks tried to replicate monastic life exactly as
it had been in Saint Benedict's time; indeed beyond it in austerity; the return to
manual labor, especially field-work, Cistercian architecture is considered one of the
most beautiful styles of medieval architecture; in relation to fields such as agriculture,
hydraulic engineering and metallurgy, the Cistercians became the main force of
technological diffusion in medieval Europe.
Content Outline
HIS/113
3
4) Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179): Mystic, visionary, author and Abbess of
Disibodenberg in Rhine Valley
4. The Crusades: 8 crusades in 200 years; in 1095 Pope Urban II (1088–1099) urged
Western knights to use their arms to free the Holy Land from Muslim occupation. In return
he promised to absolve them from all of the punishment due for their sins in this life or the
next. Nobles and commoners alike responded with enormous enthusiasm; the crusaders
took Jerusalem in 1099 and established a Latin kingdom in Palestine. For more than two
centuries, bands of Western warriors went on armed pilgrimage to defend that kingdom.
a. Crisis of the Church / Crusades The reason and cause of the crusades was a war
between Christians and Muslims which centered around the city of Jerusalem and the
Holy places of Palestine. The City of Jerusalem holds a Holy significance for all 3 major
religions. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem commemorated the hill of
crucifixion and the tomb of Christ's burial. Pilgrims throughout the Middle Ages made
sacred pilgrimages to Jerusalem. In 1065 Jerusalem was taken by the Turks, who came
from the kingdom of ancient Persia. 3000 Christians were massacred and the remaining
Christians were treated so badly that throughout Christendom people were stirred to fight
in crusades. These actions aroused a storm of indignation throughout Europe and
awakened the desire to rescue the Holy Land from the grasp of the "infidel."
1) Threat of Islam
2) Tensions between faiths The Great Schism = 2 Popes are elected an Italian, who
took the name of Urban VI (1378–1389) vs a Frenchman, Clement VII (1378–1394), who
took up residence in Avignon. The Church now had two heads, both with reasonable
claims to the office.; also witches, saints, and heretics; Spanish Inquisition;
3 The chaos created by the Holy Land of the faiths
b. The role and values of the warrior and the peasant class
c. Pope Urban II
1) Famous speech summoning crusaders (pg 261)
2) Clermont, France (1095)
Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem The Latin kingdom of Jerusalem was the first major experiment in
European overseas colonization. Its rulers, a tiny minority of Western knights who established a
feudally structured monarchy modeled on the European society they had known, reigned over a
vastly larger population of Muslims and Eastern Christians. Although the Christian rulers were not
particularly harsh, they made little effort to absorb or even to understand the native population.
Crusaders were uninterested in converting Muslims, and their efforts to impose Roman forms of
Christian worship and organization alienated the indigenous Christian population of the kingdom.
In art, culture, architecture, and social values, the crusaders remained Latins, absorbing only
some lessons of military architecture, adopting some of the food and spices, and
making some accommodation in their clothing and housing to the climate of the area. Otherwise,
the Latin kingdom played a negligible role as a bridge between the Eastern and Western worlds.
3) Success of First Crusade (only #1 & 6 were wins, all other losses)
12 Crusades—all but the first few were considered failures.
a) Children’s Crusade of homeless people, outcasts
b) Crusades and their legacy Although military failures, the Crusades appealed
particularly to younger sons and knights who hoped to acquire in the east the
status that constricting lineages denied them in the west.
c) Tensions between Western World and Islam
d) Violence in the Holy Land (Middle East)Exchange of new ideas
Content Outline
HIS/113
2.
a.
b.
c.
3.
4
1) Unknown copies of ancient masters (Aristotle) Aristotle’s conclusions: a world
without an active, conscious God; a world in which everything from the
functioning of the mind to the nature of matter could be understood without
reference to a divine creator.
2) Science and technology (accounting, mathematics, algebra)
3) Opened trade for luxury goods such as spices
Medieval towns
Growth of cities such as Paris, Genoa, and Pisa
Medieval fairs: Champagne provides opportunity for exchange and interaction
Rising capitalism in the cities
1) Part of the Crusades’ legacy
2) Selling, trading, and the rise of banking or banco—Italian for bench—where bankers
would count money
3) Cities, such as Venice, where the duke or doge regulated and controlled business
4) Communal government
a) Guild system to protect industry: quality of goods, such as carvers, and
protecting workers from competition
b) Guild competition and parades
5) Medieval universities Bologna and Paris became the undisputed centers of the new
educational movements.
1) Bologna specialized in the study of law; Paris became the center for study of the
liberal arts and of theology during the twelfth century. The city’s emergence as the
leading educational center of Europe resulted from a convergence of factors. Paris
was the site of an important cathedral school as well as of a monastic school,
a) Urban intellectuals
b) Peter Abelard (1079-1142)
c) Scholastic Method: trying to reconcile faith and reason
d) Universities at Bologna, Paris, Oxford
France and England at war
a) 100 Years War The first issue was conflicting rights to Gascony in southern
France. Since the mid-thirteenth century, the kings of England had held Gascony
as a fief of the French king. Neither monarchy was content with this arrangement,
and for the next 75 years kings quarreled constantly over sovereignty in the
region. The second point of contention was the close relationship between
England and the Flemish cloth towns. The manufacturing centers were the
primary customers for English wool. Early in the fourteenth century, Flemish
artisans rose up in a series of bloody revolts against the aristocratic cloth dealers
who had long monopolized power. The count of Flanders and the French king
supported the wealthy merchants, while the English sided with the artisans. The
third dispute concerned the royal succession in France. Charles IV (1322–1328),
the son of Philip IV the Fair, died without an heir. The closest descendant of a
French king was the grandson of Philip the Fair, King Edward III of England
(1327–1377). Edward, however, was the son of Philip’s daughter Isabella. The
French aristocracy, which did not want an English king to inherit the throne and
unite the two kingdoms, pretended that according to ancient Frankish law, the
crown could not pass through a woman. Instead, they preferred to give the crown
to a cousin of the late king, Philip VI (1328–1350), who became the first of the
Valois kings of France. At first the English voiced no objection to Philip’s
accession, but in 1337, when the dispute over Gascony again flared up and
Philip attempted to confiscate the region from his English “vassal” Edward III, the
Content Outline
HIS/113
5
English king declared war on Philip. Edward’s stated goal was not only to recover
Gascony but also to claim the crown of his maternal grandfather.
b.Battle of Agincourt: Welsh longbow mows down French cavalry. The great
nobles continued to serve as heavily armored horsemen, but professional companies of
foot soldiers raised by individual knights made up the bulk of the army. The professional
companies consisted largely of pikemen and, most importantly, of longbowmen. Although
not as accurate as the crossbow, the English longbow had a greater range. Moreover,
when massed archers fired volleys of arrows into enemy ranks, they proved extremely
effective against enemy pikemen and even lightly armored cavalry.
c. Battle of Crecy (1346) French loss The first real test of the two armies came at
the Battle of Crécy in 1346. There an overwhelmingly superior French force surrounded the
English army. Massing their archers on a hill, the English rained arrows down on the French
cavalry, which attacked in a glorious but suicidal manner. The English victory was total. By
midnight they had repelled16 assaults, losing only 100 men while killing more than 3000
French.
d) Joan of Arc The heir to the French throne, the dauphin, was the weak-willed and
uncrowned Charles VII (1422–1461). To him came Joan of Arc (1412–1431), an illiterate but
deeply religious girl who bore an incredible message of hope. She claimed to have heard the
voices of saints ordering her to save Orléans and have the dauphin crowned according to
tradition at Reims. Charles and his advisers were more than skeptical about the brash peasant
girl who announced her divinely ordained mission to save France. Finally convinced of her
sincerity, if not of her ability, Charles allowed her to accompany a relief force to Orléans. The
French army, its spirit buoyed by the belief that Joan’s simple faith was the work of God, defeated
the English and ended the siege. That victory led to others, and on 16 July 1429 Charles was
crowned king at Reims. After the coronation, Joan’s luck began to fade. She failed to take Paris,
and in 1431 she was captured by the Burgundians, who sold her to the English. Eager to get rid
of the troublesome girl, the English had her tried as a heretic. Charles did nothing to save his
savior. After all, the code of chivalry did not demand that a king intervene on behalf of a mere
peasant girl, even if she had saved his kingdom. She was burned at the stake in Rouen on 30
May 1431.
4) The Great Schism. In 1377, Pope Gregory XI (1370–1378) returned from Avignon to Rome
but died almost immediately upon arrival. Thousands of Italians, afraid that the cardinals would
elect another Frenchman, surrounded the church where they were meeting and demanded
an Italian pope. The terrified cardinals elected an Italian, who took the name of Urban VI (1378–
1389). Once elected, Urban attempted to reform the curia, but he did so in a most undiplomatic
way, insulting the cardinals and threatening to appoint sufficient non-French bishops to their
number to end French control of the curia. The cardinals soon left Rome and announced that
because the election had been made under duress, it was invalid and Urban should resign. When
he refused, they held a second election and chose a Frenchman, Clement VII (1378–1394), who
took up residence in Avignon. The Church now had two heads, both with reasonable claims to the
office. The chaos created by the so-called Great Schism divided Western Christendom. In every
diocese, when a bishop died his successor had to be appointed by the pope. But by which
pope? To whom did taxes go? Who received the income from the sale of indulgences or
benefices? Did appeals in the Church courts go to Rome or to Avignon? More significantly,
since each pope excommunicated the supporters of his opponent, everyone in the West was
under a sentence of excommunication. Could anyone be saved?
5) War of the Roses
At the outset, English royal administration had been more advanced
Content Outline
HIS/113
6
than the French. The system of royal agents, courts, and parliaments had created the expectation
that the king could preserve peace and provide justice at home while waging successful
and profitable wars abroad. As the decades dragged on without a decisive victory, the king came
to rely on the aristocracy, enlisting its financial assistance by granting the magnates
greater power at home. War created powerful and autonomous aristocratic families
with their own armies. Under a series of weak kings those families fought among themselves.
Ultimately, they took sides in a civil war to determine the royal succession. For 30 years,
from 1455 to 1485, supporters of the house of York, whose badge was the white rose, fought the
rival house of Lancaster, whose symbol was the red rose, in the sort of dynastic struggle
that would not have seemed out of place in the disintegrating German Empire. The English Wars
of the Roses, as the conflict came to be called, finally ended in 1485 when Henry Tudor of the
Lancastrian faction defeated his opponents. He inaugurated a new era as Henry VII (1485–1509),
the first king of the Tudor dynasty. By the end of the fifteenth century, England and France had
survived with their central monarchical institutions largely intact, although their aristocracies still
shared an important role in the exercise of power.
Content Outline
HIS/113
7
St. Denis Cathedral, Paris, France
Gothic architecture is a style of architecture that flourished during the high and late
medieval period. It evolved from Romanesque architecture and was succeeded by
Renaissance architecture.
Originating in 12th-century France and lasting into the 16th century, Gothic architecture
was known during the period as "French work" (Opus Francigenum), with the term
Gothic first appearing during the latter part of the Renaissance. Its characteristic features
include the pointed arch, the ribbed vault and the flying buttress.
Gothic architecture is most familiar as the architecture of many of the great cathedrals,
abbeys and churches of Europe. It is also the architecture of many castles, palaces, town
halls, guild halls, universities and to a less prominent extent, private dwellings.
It is in the great churches and cathedrals and in a number of civic buildings that the
Gothic style was expressed most powerfully, its characteristics lending themselves to an
appeal to the emotions. A great number of ecclesiastical buildings remain from this
period, of which even the smallest are often structures of architectural distinction while
many of the larger churches are considered priceless works of art and are listed with
UNESCO as World Heritage Sites. For this reason a study of Gothic architecture is
largely a study of cathedrals and churches.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic_architecture
Content Outline
HIS/113
Cistercian architecture (Italy) Santa Maria Arabona
Vezelay (Basilica)
8
Content Outline
HIS/113
The Later Middle Ages, 1300–1500
1305–1377 Babylonian Captivity (Avignon papacy)
1337–1452 Hundred Years’War
1347–1352 Black Death spreads throughout Europe
1358 Jacquerie revolt of French peasants; Etienne
Marcel leads revolt of Parisian merchants
1378 Ciompi revolt in Florence
1380 Death of Catherine of Siena
1378–1417 Great Schism divides Christianity
1381 Great Rebellion of English peasants
1409–1410 Council of Pisa
1414–1417 Council of Constance ends Great Schism
1415 Jan Hus executed
1431 Death of Joan of Arc
1455–1485 English Wars of the Roses
9