Download Life in the Middle Ages

The New Agriculture
• Population in Europe doubled between 1000-1300.
• Food production increased because of:
• Increased stability and peace
• Climate changes which improved growing conditions
• More land was cleared for cultivation.
• Technological advances:
• Water and wind power
• The use of iron to make scythes, axes, hoes, saws,
hammers, and nails.
• The iron carruca, a heavy, wheeled plow with an iron
plowshare pulled by animal teams.
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Growth of Farming Villages
Crop Rotation: shift from 2-field to 3-field system of crop rotation.
The Manorial System
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Social Hierarchy:
• Medieval landholding nobles: Knights (needed time to train for war).
• Peasants : worked the lords’ manors on the fiefs (land) of the vassals.
• Serfs: Peasants legally bound to the land.
• By 800, probably 60% of western Europeans were serfs.
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Land Usage
• Up to one-half of a manor’s lands typically belonged to the lord.
• Serfs paid rent by giving a share of what they raised for themselves.
• They also paid to use the lord’s pastures and fishing ponds, and paid for
services like having their grain milled into flour.
Obligations and Rights
• The serfs obligated to tithe to the village church (usually 10% of produce).
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 Serfs, however, were not slaves.
Daily Life of the Peasantry
• Homes
• European peasant life was simple
with little privacy.
• The peasants’ one or two-room
cottages were built with wood
frames surrounded by sticks.
• Spaces in between filled with
Straw and rubble and plastered
over with clay.
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Seasonal life
• The seasons largely determined peasant life and work.
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Holidays
• A peasant’s life was not all labor because of the numerous Catholic
feast days, or holidays.
• More than 50 days a year were essentially holidays.
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Church
• The village church was a crucial part of the manorial system.
• Probably they saw God as a force to be appeased to help with the
harvest.
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Women
• Women worked the fields and had children.
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Diet
• The staple was bread baked in community ovens.
• Peasants usually ate meat only on feast days such as Easter and
Christmas.
• Peasants raised vegetables and fruit, and made cheese.
Grains were important also for making ale, the most common drink of the
poor in Northern Europe.
The Revival of Trade
• Growth of towns and cities
• Italian cities especially Venice).
• Flanders – the area along the coast of present-day Belgium
and northern France – traded in northern Europe.
• To encourage exchange between Flanders and Italy, the counts
of Champagne in northern France held six trade fairs a year.
Commercialism
• Demand for gold and silver arose at trading fairs and markets.
• A money economy – an economic system based on money
rather than barter –arose.
• Trading companies and banks began to manage the
exchange and sale of goods.
• These new practices were part of the rise of commercial
capitalism.
The Growth of Cities
• Expanding trade led to a revival of cities.
• Merchants began to settle in the old Roman cities.
• Merchants settled near castles for protection and
proximity to trade routes.
• Artisans followed.
• The merchants and artisans of these cities later came to be
called burghers or bourgeoisie, from the German word
burg, which means “a walled enclosure.”
•
Medieval cities were comparatively small (5000 people).
• Exceptions:
• London (40,000)
• Venice, Florence, and Milan (more than 80,000)
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The towns were tied to the lords and land around them.
• Lords wanted to treat the townspeople as vassals or serfs, but the inhabitants
saw things differently.
• By 1100, townspeople had:
• The right to buy and sell property
• Freedom from military service to lords
• Laws guaranteeing their freedom.
• Escaped serf became free person after living a year and a day in a town
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Some towns had the right to govern themselves.
• Only male citizens could vote (born in city or lived there a long time)
• Elections rigged so that only “patricians” (wealthy/powerful families) were
elected
Daily Life in the Medieval City
• City walls
• Medieval towns were
surrounded by stone walls,
which were expensive.
• Space inside was tightly filled.
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Fire: wooden houses up to the 14th century
The cities and towns were dirty and smelled of
human and animal waste.
• Blood from slaughtered animals and chemicals
from activities such as tanning went into the
rivers.
• Rivers not used for drinking water, relied on
wells instead.
• Baths
• Medieval cities had private and public baths.
• The great plague closed them in 14th century
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Women
• Supervise household, raise children
• Help with husband’s craft
• Women carried on trade when husband died
Industry and Guilds
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Rise of Guilds
• Beginning in the 11th c., craftspeople organized into business associations called
guilds.
Craft guilds directed almost every aspect of the production process
• Set standards for quality & fixed prices
Ranks
• Apprentice: A person who wanted to learn a trade (not paid but provided for).
• Journeymen: After learning for 5-7 years, apprentices became journeymen (paid).
• Masters: After journeymen produced a masterpiece.
The Papal Monarchy
• Popes gained control of territories in Italy called the “papal
states.”
• The Church became increasingly involved in the feudal system.
• Lords chose them as vassals
• They carried out military duties and other feudal services (not
spiritual)
• Lay Investiture
• Secular (“lay”) rulers often chose nominees to Church offices
• By the 11th c. Church leaders realized the need to be free
from the interference of lords in the appointment of Church
officials.
Investiture Controversy
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Pope Gregory VII decided to ban lay investiture.
• Henry IV, the German king, replaces Gregory’s choice for
bishop of Milan
• Pope Gregory excommunicates Henry IV
• Henry apologizes
• Henry dethroned by German princes
• Pope supports new German “king”
• Henry names “antipope” Clement III
• Civil War – Henry wins and marches on Rome
• Pope Gregory flees
• Henry IV abdicates thrown due to his unpopular
support for Clement III
• In 1122 a new German king and a new pope reached an agreement
called the Concordat of Worms (compromise: elected by Church,
submitted to king as his lord)
Interdict
•
The 12th c. popes wanted to strengthen papal power
• Pope Innocent III
• The Catholic Church reached the height of political power
• Innocent III especially used the interdict to strengthen his power
• Interdict: prohibited priest from giving sacraments (Christian
rites) to particular group of people.
• People would then put pressure on ruler to get these rites back
New Religious Orders
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Cistercians
• Extremely strict (dissatisfied with lack of discipline in Benedictine monetary)
• Activists in spreading Christianity
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Women
• The number of women joining religious houses grew dramatically
• Most nuns came from the landed aristocracy
• Convent gave women freedom to pursue academic and other pursuits
•
Female intellectuals like Hildegard of Bingen
• Hidegard had gift of prophecy (visions)
• Hildegard contributed to music, especially Gregorian chant
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Franciscans
• The Franciscans emerged in the 13th c.
• Saint Francis of Assisi founded the Franciscans.
• Was rich and gave away his belongings – became a monk.
• Franciscans rejected all property and lived by working and begging for food.
• Unlike many other religious orders, the Franciscans lived in the world and undertook
missionary work.
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Dominicans
• The Dominicans also emerged in the 13th c.
• The Spanish priest Dominic de Guzman founded the Dominicans to defend Church
teachings from heresy.
 Heresy: The denial of basic Church doctrines.
Inquisition
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The Church’s wish to discover and deal
with heretics led to the Inquisition,
or Holy Office.
•
This court was instituted to try
heretics, and it developed a regular way
to deal with them.
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Christians of the 13th c. believed:
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Using force to save souls from
damnation was the right thing to do.
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Those accused were typically tortured
until they confessed.
• If confessed: public penance such as
flogging.
• If did not confess: execution
Popular Religion in the High Middle Ages
• Sacraments
• The sacraments of the Catholic Church, such as baptism,
marriage, and Communion, were very important to
ordinary people.
• The sacraments were a means for receiving God’s grace and
were necessary for salvation.
• Only clergy could give the sacraments, which made people
dependent on the clergy.
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Saints
• Venerating saints
(worshipping them) was
also important to people.
Relics
• Emphasis on the saints was
tied to the use of relics,
usually bones of saints or
objects connected with the
saints, because they
believed that saints could
ask favors of God.
Pilgrimage
• Medieval Christians also
believed that a pilgrimage
to a holy shrine produced a
spiritual benefit.
• Especially to holy city of
Jerusalem