The Middle Ages in Europe 11/05/2010

I. The Middle Ages – Overview

A. What?

1. lasts for a very long time, but considered more of a transition period b/w Roman
period and the Renaissance; intermediate/transitional period; also a period in it’s own
right that is very creative period and important period in terms of setting the
groundwork for the distinctive culture that arises in Western Europe; lot’s of aspects
of Western European culture that we know of today originated in the Middle Ages
2. but also a creative/important period in its own right in terms of setting the ground
work for distinctive culture in western Europe
3. not a “dark age”; image of it as the “dark age” where nothing every happened is not
the case; it was quite a fertile an intellectually/culturally fertile period
4. but a lot of the development happened in the second of the middle ages, so historians
want to differenciate between the Early Middle Ages, or the Dark Ages, and the High
Middle Ages; no set date that divides the two b/c there was a transition b/w the early
and high as well
a. Easeiest way to think about it: Early Middle Ages from around the fall of
Rome to somewhere around 1000-1100 CE and High Middle Ages are from
about 1000-1400
5. foundation of new European society

B. Where?

1. western Europe (not including places like Russia or the Balkins (Bulgaria, Serbia,
etc.) b/c they’re under the influence of the Byzantine empire and are developing in a
different cultural orbit
2. another place that is tricky to categorize is Spain because during the Early Middle
Ages, it’s conquered by the Islamic caliphates
a. often as you get into the High Middle Ages in Spain, you have a patchwork
of
3. influence/are in a different environment/orbit)
C. When?

1. Early Middle Ages (aka “the Dark Ages”?)

a. fall of Rome-1000 or 1100 CE

2. Later Middle Ages (High Middle Ages)

a. ~1000-1400 or 1450

3. more dates/time period—listen

 4. Middle Ages ends earliest in southern Europe, specifically in Italy, which means that
the Renaissance, the next big period, in the late 1300s and into the 1400s; in Northern
Europe, however (i.e. France, England, Germany) doesn’t really begin until late
1400s/early 1500s; so Renaissance in northern Europe is people like Shakespeare
(quintessential Renaissance writer)
II. Early Middle Ages
A. Situation at end of Western Roman Empire
1. Population decline, esp in cities
a. Less food, etc.
2. Political fragmentation—series of Germanic kingdoms
3. peasants worried about their safety, so increasingly limited their mobilityserfdom
a. retreat to subsistence agricultural economy
b. need for a stable labor supply on side of the lord
4. decline of long-distance trade (still in Islamic world and Eastern, but no demand or
population or income to support it)
5. cultural regression in general
B. Politics (476-900 CE)
1. End of W. Roman Empire = power vacuum
a. Fragmentation into Germanic kingdoms
2. There was one brief moment seemed like it might be under one empire again—
Charlemagne; his family had usurped power and his family had held power of Mayor
of the Palace (basically like saying Grand Vesuer); Charlemagne’s ancestor, Charles
Martel (who won the Battle of Tour) worked for the Merovingian kings; Charles’s
family deposed Merovingian kings and became king of the Franks; Pepin the Short
was the one to depose the M’s; Charlemagne is a descendent of Pepin the Short
a. Brief reestablishment of centralized rule; empire of the Romans

i. Charlemagne (c. 800 CE)

b. crowned Emperor by pope—a good deal for both?

i. continued to cement relationship b/w King of the Franks and pope,

but pope also gives him title of King of the Romans
ii. in order to cement relationship w/ pope, got him lots of land around
Rome and such,
 Pope used to earn much more land than just the Vatican,
which is just a small part of Rome
 Pope wanted land b/c in pre-industrial societies, land equaled
power and money
  didn’t have a steady source of income; relied on donations
from kings, etc.
 with the land, could now become more than just a political
leader
c. Bureaucracy?

i. counts and missi dominici

ii. creates beginnings of bureaucracy by appointing gov officials

throughout
iii. but realizes that this place is politically fragmented, so needs people
to be loyal
iv. tax collectors called counts, but he doesn’t want counts to think they
can be whatever on their own b/c of so much count, so missi dominci
are special envoys that go check on the counts to make sure they’re
doing their jobs right (like on the satraps in Persia and with Chandra
Gupta in India w/ his imperial spies)

v. ultimately, Charlemagne’s efforts to create a centralized empire was

unsuccessful because the trend towards political fragmentation was
too intense
 Charlemagne’s son inherited the empire, and upon his (Louis
the Pious) death
 Louis had 3 sons that all wanted the empire

vi. his attempt to re-centralize is ultimately unsuccessful
vii. brief period of cultural flowering, too
 sponsored scholars who came to his court

 corresponded w/ the Abbasid caliph

 even proposed marriage to Empress Irene of Byzantine

empire, at which point the pope intervened and said that
Irene wasn’t the true/rightful ruler of Byzantine
 sponsored schools, which he needed to train the next
generation of government officials
 promoted schools, scholars, and relations with the outside
world
 d. kingdom split into 3 pieces among grandsons

i. each one wanted to inherit

ii. Germanic kings practiced partible inheritance

 each son and/or daughter receives part of the empire

 but then your wealth dilutes throughout degenerates, so

primogeniture develops (only the oldest son inherits)
C. But overall, DECENTRALIZATION of power
1. Starts of “feudalism”
a. Weak king, and the king in order to get loyalty will divide up his kingdom
among his loyal servitors or vassals
i. Technically owns all the land, but to get his warriors to support him,

he gives them (te servitors) land

ii. dukes then use the same idea and subdivide land for people who
work for them
iii. servitors can then concentrate full-time on fighting/war; will come to
the assistance to the king and provide him with soldiers; will provide
random for the king (i.e. Richard the Lionheart); Loyalty in
exchange for land
b. idea of reciprocity—everyone gets something out of it, but very decentralized

c. techinically lord can take back land, but over time ownership of land became
hereditary and it was difficult for lords to keep loyalty of his vassals (also a
problem in Japan, where they created the Bushido code, which was designed
to promote loyalty; similar to the idea of chivalry, which was given a
religious tether)
i. in chivalry, emphasis on being good to women

d. lords and vassals

D. Economy

1. Manorialism—basically means ‘the manor’

a. originally a manor was not just the house, it was the entire estate
b. a manor comprised of lots of fields; most of the fields were worked for the
benefit of the lord, which allowed the lord to full-time fight
 c. land worked by peasants tied to the land, so could also work and made land
valuable
d. model was that all villagers lived together in town and went out together to
lord’s land to work
i. also had very small bit of own land
e. lord’s home was like a big, fortified citadel almost, which made sense b/c
that’s where everyone went for protection (lord’s duty to protect them in
exchange for their labor)
f. the lord's demesne (sounds like domain)
i. lord’s use only to go hunting, etc.
ii. any peasant in the lord's demesne sentenced to death (no wood,
going for rabbit, etc.)
g. goal was to be self-sufficient
i. peasants were churning butter, weaving own cloth, making beeswax,
etc. (can see why not much reason for trade)
h. low agricultural output, so not much for trade

E. new wave of invasions!

1. Vikings from north in Scandinavia (today’s Sweden and Norway)

a. Normandy, where the norse-man ends up

b. had great long boats and looted and pillaged usually, but sometimes stuck
around, like in Normandy and Russia
i. traveled along Baltic into northern Russia; traded and conquered as
they went
 known as the Verangians (aka Rus, which was the origin of
the name Russia)
 the Rus were the ones to convert to Orthodoxy

c. made it as far as Greenland (settlement in Greenland and the Americas well

before Christopher Columbus); great maritime technology
2. Magyars
a. Came into area that is present-day Hungary
b. Maryar is the language spoken in Hungary
3. Muslims
a. Active conquering and trading in Mediterranean
b. Italy, southern France, and controlled Spain
 after about 1000 CE, things begin to change and we begin to see the country borders and names
we are familiar with now (i.e. France, Normany, Germany aka Holy roman Empire, Hungary, etc.)
 -by 1300, begin to see very large kingdoms in Spain (some remain Islam, some Christian)
and those places will eventually form basis of kingdoms of Aragon and Castile (they unite
with Ferdinand and Isabella)
 -Portugal becomes a separate country

 -begin to see a whole new map developing

F. Roman Catholic Church
1. N. Europe converted to Christianity
a. Some Pagan rituals became Christian rituals (i.e. eggs and rabbits b/c it’s
happening around the time of the return of spring, which means fertility in
agricultural society and rabbits have lots of babies and eggs are also symbols
of fertility, so spring is like the earth returning to fertility/life)
b. missionaries very helpful in converting European populations

c. the church helps to provide structure and society through

2. Only instituion providing structure and stability

a. Monasticism—St. Benedict

i. became not just ____ centers, but also economic centers

b. preservation of learning-scriptoria

i. only Christian texts, but classical texts nonetheless

ii. monks copied and recopied texts

3. Growth of pope’s power

a. Gregory the Great—papal supremacy

i. one to come up with the Petrine Theory (explaining why the pope
should be superior to the other patriarchs)
 not favored in the East

 one of the many things leading to Great Schism in 1054

4. during Early Middle Ages, pope getting rich and powerful and you have kings that
have less power, but will eventually get more and the two powers will clash
 a. pope able to confer political legitimacy on the ___, which is one the reasons
they wanted alliances (saw how Clovis was king of the Franks; Charlemagne
did that—crowned emperor of the Romans by pope); Church was so wealthy,
though, that people began to question that wealth in high middle ages,
check outline/recording
III. The Beginning of revival?
A. C. 900-1000 CE
1. Couple things happen help to get Europe on the rebound
2. invasions end!
3. For centuries, European economy had just been agricultural subsistsance, but a series
of new technological innovations allowed for much more food to be produced, which
meant population growth, rebirth of cities and towns, more long-distance trade, etc.
a. Innovation: crop rotation
i. People understood that when you always plant the same crop in the
same land, it depletes the soil
 left some pieces of land fallow (w/o stuff) (

 but with half of your land fallow, it means you can’t grow as
much and you’d just have one kind of food
ii. three field system allowed for more food and more kinds of food to
be grown
iii. increased crop yields quite dramatically, and meant that the land
wasn’t being depleated quite as fast
iv. (not the same as the equal fields system in China)

b. innovation: mordblow plow

i. allows you to get deeper down into the soil

ii. helpful if the soil is rocky

iii. has a particular type of harness/yolk that allowed animal to pull the
plow
 before would just tie a rope to the animal’s neck

c. innovation: metal horseshoes

d. learned more about fertilizers

e. ^all of those things together helped increase crop yields

4. regional trade began to revive (this is the real start up again of trade); temporary
settlements became permanent, and institutions that made towns and such grew up
around them
a. fairs—listen

b. became economic and cultural centers

c. bishops began to try to attract pilgrims (visitors) to their cities

i. pilgrims will also trade/spend money because they are tourists

d. built beautiful new churches

i. most famous: Notre Dame Cathedral

ii. before had Romanesque architecture, but now more Gothic

architecture
iii. interior of gothic churches had lots of light and windows, so to keep
the building up you needed flying buttresses
e. revival of learning  cathedral schools, universities

i. cathedral schools not only helped train future generations of priests,

but also gov administrators and such
ii. out of cathedral schools sprung universities

 university was a collection of students that got together b/c

they wanted to study a certain topic
 had itinerant professors (basically chose own professors)

 origns of diplomas—when professors thought you had

learned enough, gave you a certificate
 being a student became somewhat disreputable (listen to
recording for why)
o origin of town gown clashes sometimes still hear
about (local people of town don’t like college
students b/c too loud, their drinking, etc.; this
behavior
  but eventually universities that started out with single subject
groups of scholars became more permanent, and then were
able to get money from wealthy people and were able to
erect buildings, which is the origins of campuses
5. beginnings of new monarchies

a. beginnings of renewed power for kings; kings begin to see themselves as

controlling their entire domain, as opposed to being just one feudal lord
i. important monarchies included France, England, and Holy Roman
Empire (basically Germany)
ii. increasingly those 3 monarchies will come into conflict w/ feudal
system and the pope
IV. The High Middle Ages

A. Economic revival
1. contact w/ Byzantine, Muslim worlds through trade
a. Crusades helped a lot because when you’re off trying to fight, etc., English
people saw things they had never seen before
b. demand stimulated for luxury goods b/c people wanted to preserve treasures
of new lands
c. carpets, silks, jewels, pepper, spices, etc. (lots to want!)

d. not only had trade in good, but also had trade of ideas and people that came
from Crusades
e. renewed knowledge of the classical worlds
2. area that revives first economically is Italy; growth of city-states in Italy
a. control of long-distance trades, banking
b. diff Italian city-states become involved in Mediterranean trade

c. finds very lucrative living in transporting Crusaders from West to East (i.e. in

Fourth Crusade)

d. but no kings in Itlay, just small city-states

i. some ruled by dukes, some by merchang oligarchies

ii. but most of their wealth from trade

 e. develop/borrow new economic institutions to facilitate trade, including idea
of banking
i. lending money in western Europe was distasteful b/c lending and
charging interest meant that you were engaging in practice of usury
(means you’re profiting off of lending money), so had to figure out a
way to get around that prohibition
 in order to do so/justify it, had a variety of theological
reasons
 allows you to speculate/pull your resources/possibly invest
in more risky endeavors
 could now also lend to new monarchs who want to build up
new army, fight against neighbors or pope, etc., and so
needed to borrow money (couldn’t get all their money from
taxes), and that’s how many Italians got rich—lend them
money
f. kings that were trying to increase power and gain more revenues like cities;
saw in tem a natural ally
3. cities elsewhere

a. monarchs like cities b/c it limited the power of the lords

i. people gave monarch their taxes, who said they would protect them
from the lords should the lords misbehave
ii. lords lost revenue

b. towns were often very unpleasant b/c they were crowded, disease-ridden, etc.
with narrow streets and high buildings
i. not much sunlight

ii. everything was wood, so fire bad

iii. no indoor plumbing; the sewer was your front stoop

c. dominated by guilds

i. provided for economic and social fabric of the city

ii. people who made the same good who decided how much would be
produced and how much it would be sold for and who could actually
participate/produce the guild
 iii. two types of goods: merchant guilds and craft guilds

 merchant guilds were more geographical (who traded in

same area)
 craft guilds made the same thing, lived together, worked
together; didn’t see each other as competitors, saw each
other as friends and was a close-knit community
o anti-competitive

o craft guilds also worked to achieve a basic economic

security of the guild; made sure that members were
economically secure (that was the principle purpose
of the guild
o you start at the gulid on the very bottom level, which
is the apprentice (usually a child, taken into a
master’s workshops who did low level tasks and was
given food and lodging); after apprenticeship, they
would become a journeyman (essentially a wage
laborer; could be hired as a laborer by another
workshop; did this for a while and honed your
skills); had to prove that you could produce goods
like all the other masters, so had to create a
masterpiece, and if your masterpiece was approved
by the guild, you could become a master and open
your own shop
iv. allowed for greater specialization; people in cities not only
benefitted, but people from country could also buy these things, too
 labor specialization!

get notes from Friday

V. High Middle Ages

A. revival of intellectual life

1. interest in classical authors (Aristotle)

a. St. Thomas Aquinas—Scholasticism

 i. enthusiasm for knowledge, but as time went on to call someone a
scholastic was almost a dirty word
b. Universities

2. writing in the vernacular

a. works that people made were more accessible to audiences

b. the languages that great writers used came to form the basis of the literary
languages of each of the languages they wrote in
i. i.e. Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales tells story of pilgrims (religious
people going to see holy cathedral); risqué, sex, drinking, jokes; the
language that Chaucer used became the basis for medieval English
language (others copied him, etc.) and it was the start of the
Medieval English Vernacular
ii. Song of Roland helped form literary language of French

iii. the Divine Comedy (by Dante)

 wrote in an early form of Italian and helped create literary

language of Italian
VI. High Middle Ages—Religion
A. Growth of “popular” religiosity
1. People wanted to be at the forefront of religious practices/create a more direct and
personal relationship with God; connection of the common people to religion called
“popular” religion or religiosity
2. Rise of saints, cults, and relics
a. saints—people who sacrificed themselves for ____ (i.e. Virgin Mary)
b. people believed that holiness could transfer in tangible ways (i.e. from saints

to others), and one way that that could happen was through relics, which
were usually some physical object or piece of a holy object or person
i. thought that if they touched them, some of that holy power would
transfer to you (esp in illness)
ii. whole tourists communities; cathedrals all wanted relics of certain
people/things—whole new market/industry to sell relics; wanted to
attract pilgrims who would then spend money, etc.
3. holiness/connection to the divine through objects also visible through sacraments
a. sacrament—ritual or practice designed to take you from cradle to grave
(sacrament of baptism, of marriage, of ___ (the last one))
b. Eucharist—wasn’t practiced much before
 i. recreate the last supper

ii. during a particular moment in the catholic mass, priest takes bread
and wine and it becomes the actual blood and body of Jesus
 transubstantiation—mystical transformation during mass

 people wanted to touch it

 physical = direct/best

B. people during this time questioned church hierarchy and wanted a closer relationship with
God, so there were many reform movements that challenged the Church’s institutions
(sometimes accepted, sometimes rejected); religious reform movements
1. challenges to Church teachings and institutions

a. monks weren’t necessarily obeying their vows and were living lavish lives

b. church moving itself too far from communities

c. new groups in cities called friars (most important were the Franciscan Friars)

i. their monks, who were called friars, should live among the
community and should spread God’s word and help people and be an
example
ii. many of these groups opened schools, hospitals, etc. and did good
words
iii. known as mendicant friars b/c instead of living in monasteries where
their needs were all provided for, they begged and relied on
donations
d. allowed regular/lay people (laity) have a more personal and direct relatinship
to God without the priests
e. lots of criticism of Church hierarchy (corrupt; could buy yourself into the
church; about who you knew/how wealthy you were)—people protested this;
would later become a big issue in the next big split of the church
f. Hussites—followers of Jan Hus

i. lead by Jan Hus (lived in Prague in Czech Republic) who criticized

the Church and was executed
ii. rejected materialism of the Church; didn’t want so much _____
 iii. one of the ways Church responded to criticisms and such was to
create new office of the Inquisition
 office that would investigate and root out heresy/incorrect
belief
 still exists today

 Council of Nicea (met to create the correct church doctrine)

 have been trying to deem what was to be correct and what

was to be heresy since the beginning, and if people were
found as heretics the church would turn them over to the
government to deal with them
 *church did not execute, that was the government, but the
two were very close
o especially important/true in Spanish Inquisition;
used to get rid of some political officials
iv. back then, it was considered okay to torture someone to confess;
once they confessed, you forgave them and they were back into the
church, but if you did not confess you were given to authorities as a
heretic
 like trial by ordeal

v. this blows up in _____  Protestant Reformation

VII. Comparisons

A. economic base

B. interaction with wider world

C. religion—government/church relations

D. political organization

E. urbanization

F. learning/technology

G.
11/05/2010
11/05/2010