Download CENTURIES OF CHRISTENDOM 500–1500 AD (also called Middle

CENTURIES OF
CHRISTENDOM
500–1500 AD
(also called Middle Ages)
Centuries of
Christendom
These centuries are called
The Centuries of Christendom
because this was when Christianity
spread throughout Europe and
came into its full flowering.
EARLY CENTURIES OF
CHRISTENDOM
(500-1000 AD)
The Roman Empire collapsed due
to invasions by Germanic tribal
peoples. Some of these peoples
were: Goths who invaded Italy,
Visigoths who invaded Spain,
Angles and Saxons who invaded
England.
Zones of Cultural Expansion, 500-1500 AD
One of our Eras of World History is called
Era of Zones of Cultural Expansion.
In Europe we can see how the zones worked.
Roman culture spread out to Europe.
Byzantine culture spread out to Russia, and
Islamic culture spread to Spain, Sicily and
Italy and all through the Middle East
between 500 and 1500 AD.
The actual fall of Rome itself occurred in 476
AD when Odoacer, a Germanic/Gothic general,
invaded and deposed the last official Roman
Emperor, Romulus Augustus. So this means, at
that time, Germanic/Goths took over and
assumed rule of Italy.
When Odoacer took command of Rome in A.D. 476, he
removed the powerless emperor Romulus Augustus.
The Western Roman Empire lay like a skeleton fallen in
its own useless armor. To Romans, it seemed the end
of the world. All around the empire, there was war.
Orientus, a Roman poet in the 400s AD, wrote:
“See how swiftly death comes upon the world, and how many
people the violence of war has stricken. Some lay as food for
dogs; others were killed by the flames that licked their homes.
In the villages and country houses, in the fields and in the
countryside, on every road- death, sorrow, slaughter, fires, and
lamentation.”
Thus began a whole new pattern of life in
Europe. The pattern of life consisted of
Romanization of Germanic tribal peoples and
a synthesis of Roman and Germanic cultures.
This synthesis occurred in:
Language
Political Structure
Religion
Jurisprudence
Architecture
LANGUAGE
The Germanic peoples adopted many words
from the Roman’s language which was Latin.
They had never seen oranges, lemons, limes,
and figs so they had no words for these
Mediterranean fruits. So they adopted the
Latin words directly into their languages.
The Germanic peoples also took military
words from Roman military
organization and technical engineering
vocabulary from Latin because Romans
had been so involved building roads,
aqueducts, and basilica. They took Latin
poetry and epics and Roman literature
became models for writers in what later
became French, Italian, Spanish,
German, and English.
POLITICAL STRUCTURES MERGED
The political structure which developed in the Early Centuries of
Christendom was called Feudalism. Feudalism was a synthesis
between Germanic peoples’ rural way of life in forests and
mountains and Romans’ way of life on the latifundia. Germanic
peoples didn’t build cities; they preferred smaller settlements in
hamlets and villages.
When Roman cities were destroyed due to barbarian invasions,
all that was left of the Roman empire were latifundia, the large,
self-sufficient plantations Romans had built.
So the combination of the Germans rural way of life and the
Roman latifundia gave rise to a new decentralized political
structure which was called Feudalism. Feudalism lasted for
hundreds of years.
RELIGIONS COMBINED
Christian missionaries from the Roman Empire sought to
convert Germanic peoples they called “pagans”. They wanted
broad-based support from them so they tried to fuse their
beliefs with pagan practices. Christian shrines were built on
Gothic and Celtic sacred places, mountains, rivers, and
forests.
The festival of Christmas celebrating the birth of Jesus on
December 25th was originally a festival celebrating the
birthday of the Sun God of the Cult of Mithras. This cult had
a meal at midnight and Christians continued this practice
calling it Midnight Mass.
Christian missionaries like Ulfilas and Boniface went out to
convert Germans. One of their strategies was to make
Christian saints coincide with pagan heroes and gods make
worship rituals and ceremonies blend the best elements of
both cultures. They often build Christian churches on the
same mountains and in the same forests where pagans had
constructed shrines to their gods.
When St. Patrick went to convert the Irish he built on
spirits Irish people already believed in. St. Bridget had
originally been a fertility goddess who tended an eternal
flame and finally she ended up a Christian saint.
These conversions show people overcame linguistic,
cultural, and political differences in the interests of crosscultural interaction.
Not all conversions were easy. Some pagan tribes
“not yet cleansed” resisted attempts to convert to
Christianity. In one famous incident, Boniface
encountered resistance among German pagans. So
he felled one of their sacred oaks to show he was
serious. He then used wood from that oak to build
a chapel for a monastery on that site. In some areas
harsh measures were used to convert and pagans
were told if they did not agree to be baptized, bury
dead in the ground, give up meat during Lent, and
renounce their pagan rituals, they would be hanged,
beheaded, drowned, or burned at the stake. In the
700’s AD Saxons were converted “partly by wars,
partly by persuasion and partly by gifts.” “The
fierce necks of the Saxons finally bowed to the light
yoke of Christ, although coerced.”
Jurisprudence (Law)
Jurisprudence in Europe was more influenced
by Roman culture than German culture. When
Christians began converting pagans they used
Roman language (Latin), Roman law, and
Roman administration to set up a structure.
This structure consisted of an administrative
hierarchy with the Pope in Rome as its head and
bishoprics, dioceses, and village priests as
elements of the hierarchy.
The Roman Catholic Church also had its own
courts called curia and its own laws called
canon law.
The Eastern Roman Empire
came to be the
The Byzantine Empire
It was when Emperor Constantine created
a second capital of the Roman Empire in
330 AD that the Byzantine Empire really
began. The large, cosmopolitan city which
used to be called Byzantium was renamed
Constantinople.
Ethnographically, the Roman empire had never been
a single unit. There were Greeks, Bulgars, Dacians,
Slavs, Armenians, Egyptians, etc.
Although the Western Empire collapsed in 476 AD,
the Eastern empire survived and endured for about
another thousand years with its capital at
Constantinople.
From 450 AD onward, rulers of the Eastern Empire
in Constantinople were patriarchs, crowned by the
Eastern Orthodox Church. The Roman Catholic
Church had begun to split into two sects due to
decisions by Church councils and use of Greek in
Eastern churches and Latin in Western Churches.
By 1054, the two sects officially split.
The two sects differed in Authority Figure
(Pope in Rome, Patriarch in Constantinople
and in each state), Rites (Eastern had more
ceremonies and worshipped icons as symbols
of the divine), and Teachings (Eastern
believed in clerical marriage, didn’t believe
there would be a fire in Purgatory, didn’t
believe Mary remained a virgin when she
gave birth to Jesus, and didn’t believe Mary
ascended into Heaven.)
Emperor Justinian of Eastern Roman Empire, called Byzantine Empire
527-565 AD
Theodora, Justinian’s wife
Holy Sophia Eastern Orthodox Cathedral
Some Eastern Orthodox faithful were
iconolaters while others were iconoclasts.
Life on Medieval Manors
in Western Europe
Social Classes
•  Kings (crowned and anointed “by the grace of
God”)
•  Nobles (loyal to king, but dominant on fiefs)
•  Vassals (loyal to nobleman on manor)
•  Serfs
A feudal ladder was formed, with a set of
relationships from serfs to king with
contractual, loyal relationships. This social
structure became the basis for social
hierarchies in Europe which became
entrenched and acquired the prestige of
Endemic Warfare
•  Warfare occurred between kingdoms and between nobles across
the various regions
•  Knights swore to defend the king (or lord) only 40 days a year, so
warfare was part-time. Hierarchy and unity of command, seen in
many armies, did not exist. Warfare often consisted of single
battles, no clear strategies, and a lack of discipline.
•  The knights’ military values of defending personal honor and
displaying courage in battle were linked to Christian values of
truthfulness, mercy, and loyalty. These values, taken together,
came to be known as the code of chivalry. Because this code was
connected with Christianity, it was taken seriously. Knights were
supposed to defend the weak and be generous to the poor. In this
code lay the roots of international law as church clergy tried to
enforce it.
•  Over the centuries medieval warfare has been romanticized,
glamorized, and stereotypes hardened into fact.
In Medieval Warfare
•  Violence and carnage were commonplace.
•  After battles, villagers looted corpses and ate
horses
•  Injured knights were left to die of infections
•  Falls from mounts resulting in back injuries were
often fatal
•  Combatants, left on fields, bled to death or died
from shock and overexposure.
•  The victor sometimes mercifully returned to the
battlefield to kill those injured, but still alive.
Peacemaking
•  It could be that the Middle Ages, more than any other period,
shaped modern peace principles and practices.
•  The fusion of Roman and Germanic peace traditions brought
compromises: Romans offered Germanic peoples land and
citizenship in exchange for taxes, military service, and nonaggression pacts. During Germanic festivals, Edward Gibbon
in his famous book The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
said: “The sound of war was hushed, quarrels suspended,
arms laid aside, and the restless Germans had the opportunity
to taste the blessings of peace.”
•  The conversion of the Germanic peoples to Christianity was a
unifying force. Christian kingdoms had reciprocal obligations,
mutual recognition, and investiture by popes and bishops
which gave the people much in common and brought stability
and order.
Christianity as a Force for Peace
•  Christ himself allied with the sick, the poor
and the outcast. He preached “Blessed are
the peacemakers for they shall be called
children of God” in his first sermon.
•  The cross as a Christian symbol stands for
self-sacrifice for the good of other people.
•  Christianity sometimes justified war to
combat evil
Just War Doctrine
•  Came from writings and speeches of Cicero, St. Augustine, St.
Ambrose, and St. Thomas of Aquinas all who assumed taking a
life is immoral except under limited circumstances.
•  peaceful alternatives must be exhausted,
•  war must be declared by a competent authority,
•  the war must have a just cause such as self-defense or
protecting the innocent,
•  there must be right intentions including restoring peace,
minimizing violence, and treating the enemy as human beings
•  the means must be proportional to the cause, that is, the
probable good must be weighed against the evil war will cause
and a reasonable calculation of the probability of success made
•  By the 900’s there was the Pax Dei (Peace of
God), a clergy-led movement prohibiting attacks
on church grounds and on unarmed churchmen
and peasants, merchants and traders.
•  By the 1100’s Treuga Dei (Truce of God)
prohibited violence on holy days which were
signaled by church bells
•  By late 1100’s King Richard of England
commissioned knights to keep peace, they were
called Justices of the Peace. They mediated
disputes, tried to prevent crime, and gave out
punishments.
While the Roman empire could guarantee peace
and enforce it, the multitude of medieval kingdoms
required a multidirectional approach to
peacemaking. Treaties were signed between rulers:
•  Pax Nicephori between Charlemagne and
Byzantine Empire 803 AD
•  Treaty of Bonn between West and East
Franconia 921 AD
•  Pactum Warmundi an alliance between crusader
kingdom of Jerusalem and Venice, 1123 AD
•  Treaty of Windsor between England and
Portugal, oldest interstate treaty, 1386 AD
Monks as an Influence for Peace
•  St. Francis of Assisi (1181-1226) the saint of peace,
founded a monastic order. His famous prayer is:
Lord make me an instrument of your peace
Where there is hatred, let me sow love
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith
Where there is despair, hope
Where there is darkness, light
Where there is sadness, joy
•  St Anthony, St. Pachomius, and St. Benedict all lived
under rules for “peace and charity” loving one’s enemy
in a peaceful communal and spiritual life
Invasions of Vikings, Magyars, and
Muslims
700 – 1000 AD
Viking ships had a low draft, that is the keel beneath the waterline
was low even when the ships were full. This meant they could easily
travel up and down rivers without going aground.
Norwegian Vikings’ Northern
Atlantic Voyages
•  Ingolfur Arnarson arrived in Iceland in 874 and settled in
Reykjavik (Cove of Smoke) named after the geothermal steam
rising from the earth. In the next decades many Norse
chieftains, their families and slaves settled fleeing the harsh rule
of King Haraldur.
•  Eric the Red left Iceland with 25 ships to settle Greenland in
985, 14 ships survived the journey.
•  In 1000 AD Leif Eriksson, son of Eric the Red, left Greenland
on a voyage south and discovered Newfoundland. He called it
Vinland (Wineland). All together he made 5 voyages from
Greenland in the 10 years the settlement in Newfoundland
lasted.
Eric the Red left Iceland for
Greenland in 983 AD
Magyars’ (Hungarians) invasions of Italy,
Moravia and Bavaria from the east in 800’s AD
Muslim invasions of Spain – 711 AD
Attempts to establish Empires in the Early
Middle Ages
Europe was so decentralized in the Early
Middle Ages with people finding security
living on feudal manors that two attempts to
establish Empires failed.
Charlemagne
Otto I of Germany (Saxony) 936-973
Christianity
The Roman Catholic Church became a
powerful influence in Europe. With a
hierarchy consisting of the Pope in Rome,
Bishops who headed bishoprics, subdivisions
called dioceses, and village priests, they set up a
vast administrative structure. Popes allied
themselves with Noblemen and Kings and
together they established Christianity as the
basis of European civilization. They became
distinct from the Byzantine Empire and the
Muslim caliphate in Bagdad, Harun al-Rashid.
The Roman Catholic Church also had its own
courts called curia and its own laws called
canon law. People suspected of violating
canon law would be brought before church
curia and questioned. Crimes considered
violations against canon law were: heresy,
sorcery, blasphemy, usury, sodomy, and
incest. These were considered violations
against God’s divine order.
Christianity had many strengths.
Beliefs
Profound beliefs were among the main
strengths of the Catholic Church.
These beliefs included: love of
neighbor, forgiveness of sins, and hope
of eternal salvation in heaven.
Worldview
The Christian understanding of the world
was rationally and emotionally appealing to
scholar and peasant alike. This included a
world which was made by God’s decree and
guided by God’s goodness. This view
included angels, saints, heaven, purgatory,
and hell and salvation in heaven through
prayer and good works. The church was
powerful because of its grip on the hearts
and minds of millions of ordinary people and
its ability to console and guide their spirits.
SEVEN SACRAMENTS
Christian rituals included the 7 sacraments of
baptism, communion, confession,
confirmation, matrimony, and extreme unction
at death. These rituals marked important
passages and high points of people’s lives.
People celebrated with friends and family and
had a priest’s blessings.
Cathedrals, Music, and Art
Magnificent cathedrals were an
expression of faith and devotion. They
were a manifestation of people’s faith
and a focal point of pride and unity in
the community.
Literature
Canterbury Tales Pilgrims
Scene from Divine Comedy by Dante
Monks and Monasticism
Christianity favored voluntary celibacy. They
thought the spirit was more sacred than the
body and someone celibate would have time to
devote to reaching a deeper spiritual
fulfillment. Monks devoted their time to
prayer, manual labor as a form of prayer, and
reading the Bible. Monasteries and convents
conferred holiness on the entire region in
which they were located, and people were
proud to live near them.
Cathedral of Santiago, Spain
Nuns and Convents
Christianity also had weaknesses
• Intolerance for Jews, Muslims, homosexuals,
and witches
• Insistence on conformity of beliefs and
persecution of heretics
• Fanaticism
• Special courts called Inquisitions where
heretics were questioned and sentenced
• Harsh punishments for those convicted of
crimes
• Crusades- 200 years of battles against
Muslims to retake the Holy Land
Spanish Inquisition
Instigated by Ferdinand and Isabella to unite Spain
under Catholicism and purge the country of
heretics. Inquisitors interrogated suspects. People
who didn’t conform to Catholic beliefs such as
Jews and Muslims were brought before a special
court and were questioned, even tortured until they
confessed. Thousands of Jews were accused and
their property was seized.
This was a dark period in Christian history.
WITCHES
In the Early Centuries of Christendom the Church
wasn’t concerned about witches and tolerated magical
practices.
But in the Late Centuries of Christendom the Church
contended with heretical sects such as Albigenses and
Catheri who believed in a radical dualism between good
and evil. This was when Church leaders began to think
witchcraft came from the Devil. As a result the Pope in
the 1200’s called for Inquisitions for cases involving
sorcery and heresy. Actual prosecution of witches was
often carried out in local church courts.
From 1450-1700 during the Protestant Reformation a
time when people were questioning traditions and there
was rapid economic and social change, thousands of
women were scapegoated as witches and were drowned,
hanged, or burnt at the stake for sorcery.
In the 1400’s the Inquisition in Spain tried and executed thousands of
witches for sorcery and heresy. They were accused of holding ceremonies
called Sabbat which imitated the Christian mass. Painting by Francisco
Goya, 1797
Malleus Maleficarum (Hammer Against Witches) (1487)
contained a compilation of arguments supporting the
persecution of witches claiming women are susceptible to
temptation by the devil and witchcraft because they are soft,
light-minded, and fickle.
LATE CENTURIES OF
CHRISTENDOM
Agricultural Improvements
Agriculture During the Late Middle Ages
Agricultural innovations during the Late Middle Ages allowed peasants to
greatly increase their amount of food production. Heavier plows and more
resilient agricultural tools made arable land more productive. Windmills
and watermills became widely used to process grains. In addition,
peasants began using a rotating crop system in which two fields were
planted and one field was left fallow.
Growth of Cities and Trade
Medieval Town
During the Middle Ages, towns and cities frequently grew out of trading sites. As traders and
craftsmen came to sell their wares to local lords and bishops, permanent trading settlements
were sometimes established near castles or monasteries. Trade was very important to the
economies of medieval towns, which often featured crowded and lively markets and fairs.
Rebirth of Cities
England in 1087
Rise of Universities
1100 – 1300 AD
Crusades
1100-1300 AD
Saladin
Richard the Lionhearted
Three monastic orders engaged in the Crusades: Knights of Templar,
Knights of St. John Hospitalers and Teutonic Knights. They helped
Christians and killed Muslims.
Rise of Kingdoms in 1200’s
When King John of England in 1215 agreed to abide by this charter, he limited his
power and gave rights to his vassals. The rights of life, liberty and property and trial by
jury and equal access to courts originated with Magna Carta.
Hundred Years War
1337-1453
Edward III in robe with French and English emblems 1338
Battle of Agincourt, 1415, English victorious
Joan of Arc
BLACK DEATH PLAGUE
Causes
•  Increasing trade since Mongols secured overland
routes and sea routes from the Indian Ocean and the
Black sea went to Sicily and Genoa
•  Urbanization brought population density which
favored the spread of contagious diseases
•  A little ice age from 1250-1350 which resulted in a
reduced food supply and malnutrition among people
with resistance to disease at a low point
•  People at the time thought it was a malign
conjunction of the planets causing the air to
vaporize and become poison
•  The hand of the devil or the wrath of God
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•  Yersinia pestis bacteria, oriental rat flea which carries
bacteria, and black rat which hosted the flea. Flea bites
and infects a host with the bacteria.
Death lays claim to a victim
Effects of the Black Death plague in Marseille, France
Plague victims being blessed
•  They died by the hundreds, both day and night, and all were thrown
in ... ditches and covered with earth. And as soon as those ditches
were filled, more were dug. And I, Agnolo di Tura ... buried my five
children with my own hands ... And so many died that all believed it
was the end of the world.
—The Plague in Siena: An Italian Chronicle
How many valiant men, how many fair ladies, breakfast with their
kinfolk and the same night supped with their ancestors in the next
world! The condition of the people was pitiable to behold. They
sickened by the thousands daily, and died unattended and without
help. Many died in the open street, others dying in their houses,
made it known by the stench of their rotting bodies. Consecrated
churchyards did not suffice for the burial of the vast multitude of
bodies, which were heaped by the hundreds in vast trenches, like
goods in a ships hold and covered with a little earth.
—Giovanni Boccaccio
People reacted
•  “No bells tolled and no one wept because everyone
expected death”
•  “In these days was burying without sorrowe and
wedding without friendship.”
•  In Sienna work on cathedral abandoned owing to a
loss of workers and the “melancholy and grief” of the
survivors
•  Nuns at Hotel de Dieu in Paris “having no fear of
death, tended the sick with all sweetness and
humility”
•  Villagers seen dancing to drums and trumpets, when
asked why, said they could keep the plague from
them “by the jollity that is in us.”
Effects of Black Death Plague
Hanseatic League formed
Lubeck, Germany
Innovations in Metallurgy
Innovations in Shipbuilding
Innovations in Mining
Guilds formed
Europeans’ Borrowed Technology
from China
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Marco Polo
Magnetic Compass
Gunpowder
Papermaking
Printing Press
Iron Casting
Richard Wallingford’s mechanical clock 1300’s
Magnetic compass
Gunpowder
Cast iron cannon in China
1370’s -Ming Dynasty
First picture of English cannon used in a war
between England and Scotland in 1326
First image of a European cannon in Siege of
Orleans in Hundred Years’ War 1429
Chinese document printed with movable
bamboo characters
Movable metal type used by Johann von
Gutenberg for printing press
Great Schism in Roman Catholic
Church
SITUATION FOR
Women in the Middle Ages