CULTURE OF THE HIGH MIDDLE AGESIn 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 institu-tions 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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Decline of the Middle Ages

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Unit 4 Study Guide

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Romanesque ArchitectureRomanesque 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.

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!

PhilosophyThe 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

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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Dante (d. 1321) is considered the greatest poet of the Middle Ages.

The next great scholastic after Anselm was a teacher at Paris named Peter Abelard (d. 1142). He placed far more emphasis on logical argument and reason to understand Christian teaching. He did have great faith in the ability of logical argument to establish theological truth. He wrote logical discussions of such basic Christian doctrines as the Trinity. Many conservative Church leaders and thinkers objected to the emphasis he placed on logic. Many of his writings were eventually condemned by the Church. Because of his example, however, later thinkers used reason to examine Christian teachings.

The most important scholastic thinker was St. Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274). He used philosophical logical argument more fully than any previous religious writer. He tried to reconcile classical philosophy with Christian theology. Why did he bother?

Around 1200, something happened that threw scholastic philosophy into an uproar. Four new books of Aristotle were brought into Western Europe from the Arab lands in Spain. Before this, Europeans possessed only two elementary works of Aristotle. They had always thought that his ideas were similar to those of Plato and St. Augustine. But the new books revealed that Aristotle disagreed with Plato in many ways. In particular, he disagreed about how you could discover the truth about ideas. Aristotle had stressed that you needed scientific study and observation before you could draw conclusions about things. Now Medieval thinkers considered Aristotle to be the greatest of the classical philosophers, and here was Aristotle saying that faith wasn’t really a tool that you could use to uncover truth. This was a real shock!

The scholastics of the 1200s had to decide whether to keep their theology based on Plato and St. Augustine or to create a new theology based on Aristotle. St. Thomas Aquinas chose to create a new system. He wrote a number of books, but the most important was the Summa Theologiae, the Summation of Theology. He argued that there are two ways to learn the truth about God and religion. One way is by studying the scriptures and Christian writings and accepting what God has revealed in them on faith. The other way was by carefully observing the world around us. Then, one could demonstrate by logical argument God’s purposes in creating the world and God’s plan for men. From God’s plan, one can deduce what God is like. This was Aristotle’s view. Everything has a purpose,

and you can deduce the purpose logically on the basis of observation. This is a qualified realist position. Ideas are real, but only if they can be deduced logically from the way things actually are. But most important, Aquinas insisted

that these two types of truth – one based on faith and one based on observation and logical argument would always agree. And he set out to prove logically on the basis of observation every single major Christian idea. He was so successful that the thought of Thomas Aquinas has become the basis of pretty much all Roman Catholic theology. But in his own time, he was considered a dangerous innovator. His arguments based on Ar i s to t le disagreed too much with those of St. Augustine based on Plato. St. Augustine’s theology was the one that had always been accepted. Aquinas’s extensive use of logic was so controversial that some thinkers began to reconsider the whole basis of previous scholastic thought. The most extreme and influential reaction came from an Englishman, William of Ockham (d.1349). William insisted that

it was impossible to prove anything about God or religion using reason. He argued that Christian teachings must be accepted on faith without proof. Then he went even further. He said that it is impossible to prove logically the purposes of things as Aristotle had done, or to deduce an ideal blueprint for the world, as Plato had done. It is impossible because universal ideas are not real at all. They are merely names (nomina) that we give things in our minds. William was the true founder of nominalism. Since ideas are not real, we cannot know anything about them or prove anything about them logically. All we can know about or argue about logically are things themselves as we perceive them with our senses. The true function of reason is to understand things better.

Thus, William of Ockham not only challenged the efforts of scholastic philosophers to use logic to understand Christianity, but he also questioned the whole basis of ancient philosophy. Reason can be used to understand how the world works, but it cannot be used to understand why the world is as it is. That is solely a matter of faith. This is the way that most people in the modern world think. Ockham took the first step toward a modern, scientific view that men can have true knowledge only about what they see.

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St. Thomas Aquinas

ConclusionIn 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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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 Byzan-tine Empire. From this point onward, he claimed the title of Caesar in addition to his other titles.

Decline of the Middle

Ages

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 & FranceThe 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.

You should remember that John of England had lost Normandy to Philip Augustus. The Plantagenets still controlled some lands in southern France and resisted French king’s attempts to control them. The Capetian family came to an end in 1328, and the French throne passed to less able kings, the Valois (1328-1589). War broke

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 only nobles were knights, the number of knights declined.

The armies of foot soldiers were not completely independent from feudalism because great lords were allowed to hire companies of infantry to fight for them. But the armies themselves were not feudal armies of knights

even though the feudal lords controlled them to some extent. This system is sometimes called “bastard feudalism.”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.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.

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Picture above shows English archers repelling French cavalry.

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.

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 three-year period. This meant a drastic drop in the number of

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.

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Henry Tudor founded the Tudor Dynasty in England.

Decline of Medieval InstitutionsBut 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 AgesPart I — Lecture 29-34Unlike 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 MedievalBy 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:

NeoplatonismPlotinusAristotleThe OneSt. PaulGospel of John

St. Augustine of HippoVisi-GothsThe City of GodOriginal SinBoethius

Monasticism and Monastic PreservationAn 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 AnthonySt. Simeon the StyliteSt. Benedict of Nursiaproper “work of God”abbotnunsIrish missionary monksSaint ColumbaLindisfarnePope Gregory the Great

conversion of EnglandSt. Augustine (of Canterbury)abbesscelibacyCopying manuscriptsCassiodorusDivine and human Readingsliberal artstrivium and quadriviumthe Venerable Bede

The Byzantine EmpireHistorians 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:ConstantinopleCode of Justiniancaesaro-papismCouncil of NicaeaIconoclasm

iconoclastsEmperor Leo IIIPatriarch of Constantinopleautocratorbasileus

Byzantium

IslamIslam 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 in-class lectures:ArabiaMeccathe Hashim familyKhadijaNight of Power

Archangel GabrielYathribMedinaBattle of Badr

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 IslamIdentify and explain the following terms from your various sources:ShiiteSunnitejihadFive Pillars of IslamQur’anHadith

shariaMuslim creedRamadanarranged marriageMecca

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 EmpireWho 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:ClovisMayors of the PalaceCharles MartelPepin the ShortLombards

Pope Stephen IIanointed and appointedPapal StatesCarolingiansCharles the Great (Charlemagne_

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CharlemagneWhat 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:LombardsEinhardSaxonsSlavsAvarscountsmissi dominiciChristmas Day, 800Pope Leo III

“Emperor of the Romans”Carolingian RenaissancescriptoriaCarolingian minisculepalace schoolconcubinesLouis the Piouscelibacy

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 VikingsWho 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.MagyarsWho 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 FeudalismPeople 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:vassalagestirrupvassaloverlord

fiefsubinfeudationmutual obligationssuzerain

manorserfsdemensetithe

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Medieval KingshipAt 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 1200sAfter 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 AugustusNormandyPlantagenetsKing John of Englandcontumacious vassalBattle of Bouvinesbaillis

Louis IXSt. Louis“model Christian king”Philip IV, the FairtaxationEstates General

England to 1300England 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:

shiressheriffsearlsshire militia (fyrd)Edward the ConfessorHarold Godwinson

Harald HardradaWilliam the BastardBattle of Stamford BridgeBattle of HastingsWilliam the ConquerorDomesday Book

Norman EnglandWilliam 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:sheriffroyal justiceHenry IIwritstrial by combattrial by ordealjury trialgrand juryThomas á Becket

Richard IJohn LacklandBattle of RunnymedeMagna Charta (or Magna Carta)curia regispariamentsEdward IModel Parliament of 1295

Rise of the Medieval PapacyAnother 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 TheoryBishop of RomeCluniac ReformmonksPope Nicholas IIpapal selectionCardinal ClergyPope Gregory VIIinvestitureInvestiture StruggleHenry IV (Holy Roman Emperor)Bishop of Milan

CanossaexcommunicationinterdictionConcordat of WormsCanon LawInnocent IIIFourth Lateran Counciltransubstantiationseven sacramentsplenitude of powerVicar of Christ

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 CrusadesAs 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 TurkssultanManzikertHoly LandAlexius ComnenusPope Urban IICouncil of ClermontPeace of Godplenary indulgencePeasants’ CrusadeFirst Crusade

Crusader States“ideal feudalism”Second CrusadeThird CrusadeSaladinFourth CrusadeSack of ConstantinopleChildren’s Crusademilitary ordersKnights of the Temple of JerusalemKnights 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 PapacyThe 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 apostolicaWaldensiansCatharsSt. Francis of AssisiFranciscansSt. Dominic

DominicansmendicantsFourth Lateran CouncilPope Gregory IXthe Court of the Inquisition“Hounds of God

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The Conflict Between Pope Boniface VIII and Philip the FairBoniface 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 LaicosPierre Dubois

John of Paris (Jean Quidort)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 Papacypapal election of 1378Urban VClement VII

the Great SchismConsiliarismMeister EckhartCatherine 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 AgesIn 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:universitasthe University of Bolognathe University of PariscollegiaMaster of the Artsdoctor

Doctor of LawDoctor of MedicineScholasticismSt. AugustineAristotlefaith 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 AgesUnderstand the difference between Romanesque and Goth architecture.Identify the following from your text and your various lecture sources:vernacular literatureDante AlighieriDivine ComedyVirgilBeatrice PetrarchBoccaccio

DecameronGeoffrey ChaucerCanterbury TalesChristine de PizanThe Book of the City of LadiesGiotto

Scholastic PhilosophyDescribe 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:reasonfaithSt. AnselmPeter AbelardSt. Thomas Aquinas

Summa TheologiaeNominalismWilliam of OchamNominalism

The Decline of the Middle AgesFrom 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 EmpireOttoman TurksMehmet IIgunpowder

Charles IV of Luxembourgthe Golden BullHabsburgs

England and FranceThe 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 EnglandPhilip AugustusCapetian DynastyEdward III PlantagenetPhilip IV ValoisGasconylongbow

Battle of CrècyJohn II (of France)Battle of PoitiersDuke of BurgundyJoan of Arc

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 IIILancasterYorkRichard IIHenry IV

ParliamentRichard IIIHenry Tudor (Henry VII)Tudor Dynasty

The Black DeathThe 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:MongolsBlack SeaConstantinoplebubonic plaguepneumonic plague

Genoabuboesflagellantsars moriendidans 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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