chapter 8 agricultural innovations led to an expansion of europe’s population and changing...

Chapter 8

• Agricultural innovations led to an expansion of Europe’s population and changing conditions for those who worked the land.

• Harnessing the Power of Water and Wind

Those Who Work: Agricultural Labor

• New Agricultural Techniques– Three-Field Cultivation

• The increased use of animal power required peasants to cultivate more land for fodder and hay.

• At that time, peasants were used to the two-field system, which means half the land was planted and half was unplanted.

• To accommodate the need to cultivate more land – manors slowly adopted a three-field system.

• In the 3 field system1/3 was planted in spring, 1/3 in fall, and 1/3 was unplanted.

• Villagers began to plant legumes, and it vastly improved their diets.


• The Population Doubles– Life Span

• Infant and child deaths were high due to diseases and accidents, and mortality rates were higher than today.

• Once a person made it past childbearing or warfare years they would usually have a life-span like people today.

• Western Europeans expanded their settlements and their agricultural lands

– New Freedoms• Peasants left to go east for promises of no food or wine tax.


– Environmental Consequences• To build new settlements people clear-cut huge

swaths of forest.• When using the slash-and-burn method, it left

clouds of smoke and ash hanging in the air.• Settlers dumped human waste and animal remains

in the rivers.• In the cities, coal burning sent dangerous

pollutants into the air.

Chapter 8

• Medieval towns offered an ambiguous mix of opportunities and limitations for many residents as these towns flourished with the increase in trade.

Those Outside the Order: Town Life

• Communes and Guilds: Life in a Medieval Town– Communes and Guilds

• When townspeople couldn’t peacefully obtain the liberties they desired they formed communes to stage violent revolutions.

• The communes elected their own officials, regulated taxation, and conducted business.

• Communes were not democratic, and were governed by the rich citizens.

• Tradesmen within the towns formed guilds, or organizations to protect their interests and control the trade and manufacturing.

• The guilds regulated products like gold work, shoes, and bread, and they managed their own membership and set prices.

• Children worked their way up from apprentice, to journeymen, and finally to guild master.


– Urban Jews• Many medieval towns had a significant population of Jews.• By the eleventh and twelfth centuries Christian merchants

and craftsmen viewed the Jews as competition, they didn’t let Jews into the guilds or let them own land.

• Jews became involved in money-lending because it was against Christian beliefs.

• The Widening Web of Trade– Champagne Fairs

• The French count of Champagne hosted fairs for merchants to sell goods

• The count collected sales tax from all transactions.• Fairs also drew thieves, con-artists, actors, and prostitutes.


– Hanseatic League• An association that united to capitalize on the

prosperous northern trade.• At its height, the League included 70 or 80 cities,

led by Lubeck, Bremen, Cologne, and Hamburg.

• The Glory of God: Church Architecture– Gothic Architecture

• Abbot Suger wanted a church that reached up toward the heavens and that was filled with light.

• Pointed arches instead of round & fly buttresses are Gothic characteristics.


– Stained Glass• Glassblowers added metallic oxides to make

colors & artists fitted the colored glass to form pictures and designs

• The Rise of Universities– Advanced Degrees

• Interested students could continue and receive a doctorate degree.

• Some students would move from school to school to do studies in different curricla.


• Scholasticism: The Height of Medieval Philosophy– Anselm and Abelard

• Anselm was the earliest medieval philosopher to explore the religious applications of dialectic, and his motto was “faith seeking understanding.

• He argued that because God was perfect he must exist, he wrote a number of works on logic, and his treatise Why God Became Man became the most important explanation of the central Christian mystery.

• Abelard taught critical thinking in his work called Yes and No.• He impregnated and married a 17 year old girl that he

tutored. The girl’s uncle castrated him, their child was raised by relatives, and they both entered monasteries.


– Thomas Aquinas• An Italian churchman whom may regard as the

greatest scholar of the Middle Ages. He wrote many works such as commentaries on biblical books, philosophy, and a work used for converting heretics, Muslims, and Jews.

• His most important work was the Summa Theologiae – Summary of Theology


• Discovering the Physical World– Hildegard of Bingen

• An abbess and mystic in Germany• Had visions and wrote about them• Her writings showed university scholarship• She wrote a medical text Of Causes and Cures that included

cures, drugs, and knowledge about women.– Experimental Science

• An Oxford master, Robert Grosseteste challenged his students to develop an experimental method to question the ancients.

• Roger Bacon continued the work, and is credited with helping develop scientific method

• Bacon showed the value of experimentation over pure logic.

Chapter 8

• Nobles and knights refined the ideals of chivalry in the poetry and literature that accompanied the feudalistic social order.

• Castles: Medieval Homes and Heavens– Living Quarters

• The interior contained a deep well.• There was a large public hall where residents ate, played

games, and entertained themselves.• There were private chambers for the lord and lady where

they slept, bore children, and stored valuables.

Chapter 8

• Kings in the High Middle Ages struggled against their nobles to exert centralized authority, transforming the map of Europe in the process.

Those Who Fight: Nobles and Knights

• The Ideals of Chivalry– Jousts and Tournaments

• Mock battles were an activity required by chivalrous knights – some knight received injuries or even died in the tournaments

• Young men won horses and armor in the contests, which the church repeatedly banned.

• The Literature of Chivalry• In Praise of Romantic Love

– Courtly Love• Andrew the Chaplain wrote the book The Art of Courtly Love

which were rules only for nobility.• Nobles were encouraged to take women they wanted by

force.

The Rise of Centralized Monarchies

• England: From Conquest to Parliament– Conquest of England

• In 1066 Edward the Confessor died without an heir, and the Anglo-Saxon Witan crowned Harold Godwinson as king.

• Harold Godwinson defeated Harold Hardradi as he tried to claim the crown.

• William of Normandy, Edward the Confessors cousin, claimed the throne, and killed Harold Godwinson in the Battle of Hastings. Duke William was then known as William the Conqueror.


– Henry I and II• William’s son Henry I was an administrator for his father, and

he set up departments for him.• The financial department became important for making sure

that wealth remained in the monarchy• Henry II expanded royal control of justice in the land, and he

sent justices with royal authority around the countryside.• Henry II’s wife brought a large estate in France that was

decreased by their son Richard I.

– Magna Carta• The “Great Charter” asserted that kings were not above the

law.


– Parliament

• The Spanish Reconquer Their Lands– The Reconquest

• On the Iberian Peninsula, kings and nobles still fought over the issue of Centralization, but a larger political problem – the reconquest of Muslim lands overshadowed this concern.

• Land that in other countries might have been held by the nobility emerged as small individual kingdoms – Aragon, Castille-Leon, and Navarre.

• With the threat of the Muslims constantly lurking on their borders, they simply could not afford to focus on unifying the Iberian kingdoms.


– The Reconquest (cont.)• Each Iberian kingdom pursued its expansion

southward at the expense of the Muslims.• Kings then consolidated their hold on the new

lands by establishing Christian settlers and building castles on the border lands

• Encouraging town settlements which brought in profitable taxation.

• With this policy, the Iberian Peninsula became a hub for the fertile exchange of ideas among the three religious cultures.


• France and Its Patient Kings– Capetian Dynasty

• The Feudal scheme gradually spread across northern Europe. Lords at the level of Counts became, in turn, the Vassals of Dukes. In the year 987 the Great Lords of France chose Hugh Capet as their king and became his Vassals. The Kings of France enjoyed little real power for another 200 years, but the descendants of Hugh occupied their throne for eight centuries, until the French Revolution.

• Perhaps most important, the Capetians were fortunate enough to produce sons to inherit their throne.

• The kings had to wrestle with the problem of the extensive English holdings in France.


– Capetian Dynasty (cont.)• Philip II (1180-1223) made great strides in centralizing his

lands by directly addressing the English holding. In wars against the English, Philip finally defeated King John and took over the English lands of Normandy, Maine, and Anjou.

– Louis IX• The fortunes of the Capetians were dramatically forwarded

by Louis IX (1226-1270) whom many consider the greatest of the medieval kings.

• Cared for the poor and sick, and he achieved a distinction highly unusual for a king.

• He took an interest in law and justice and wanted royal justice to be available to all his subjects.


– Louis IX (cont.)• His advisors began to copify the laws of France.• Finally Louis confirmed the Parliament of Paris – a Court, not

a Representative Assembly as the highest court in France– It held this position until 1789.

– Louis IX died while on Crusade.

– He was proclaimed a saint by the church.

– Philip IV• King Philip IV “The Fair” (1285-1314) believed that the

greatest obstacle to his power was Edward I of England.• Philip engaged in intermittent wars against Edward from

1294-1302.


– Philip IV (cont.)• In 1302, Philip needed the support of the realm in his

struggles against the Pope and the raise money.• He summoned representatives from church, nobility and

towns to the first meeting of the Estates General.• As these men gathered to advise their king, they sat

according to the medieval order, those who prayed, fought, and worked.

• This triple arrangement, so different from the two Houses of Parliament that grew up in England, helped diffuse each groups power, allowing kings to maintain tight control.

• By the end of the thirteenth century, the French Monarchy was the best-governed and wealthiest in Europe. It was a power to be reckoned with.


• The Myth of Universal Rule: The Holy Roman Empire– Saxon Dynasty

• Early in the tenth century, the last direct descendant of Charlemagne died.

• The German Dukes recognized the need for a leader.• In 919 elected Henry of Saxony (modern day Germany) to be

King.• His descendants held the German Monarchy until 1024.• The most powerful of this line of Kings was Otto I (936-973)

who restored the title of Emporer.• Like Charlemagne, Otto fostered a revival of learning in

Germany in literature and art.


– Salian Dynasty• The Ottonian Dynasty ended in 1024, and the German

nobles selected Henry III (1039-1056) from another branch of the Saxon family, the Saxon Dynasty of Germany.

• He was an able king who looked for ways to exert more control in his lands, and he increasingly used Bishops and Abbots that he appointed as his administrators.

• When his son Henry IV (1056-1106) tried to continue that policy, he ignited a firestorm of debate called the “Investiture controversy”

– Hohenstaufen Dynasty• The Emperor Fredrick I (1152-1190) known as Barbarossa,

or Red-Beard, elected from the house of Hohenstaufen.


– Hohenstaufen Dynasty• Came close to establishing a consolidated German Empire• He had inherited Burgandy and Swabia.• Invaded Italy to subdue Lombardy in the north.• The wars in Italy drained rather than strengthened the

Emperors’ resources.

– Hapsburg Dynasty• The German princes wanted to preserve the freedoms they

had acquired under Fredrick II, so they elected a man they considered a weak prince – Rudolph of Habsburg – as emperor.

• Medieval German emperors had little hope of holding their so-called empire together.

Chapter 8

• Church leaders also stove toward centralization, which often led them into conflicts with secular leaders and the Muslim and Byzantine empires.

• A Call for Church Reform

Those Who Pray: Imperial Popes and Expanding Christendom

• The Investiture Controversy • The controversy between Gregory and Henry was triggered

by the question of who should appoint or invest bishops in Germany, a matter that was as much political as religious.

– Concordat of Worms• In 1122 the new emperor, Henry V, negotiated a compromise

in the investiture controversy, the Concordant of Worms.• Pope and emperor decided the pope could invest new

bishops with their symbols of office, indicating the priority of the church over its churchmen.

• The Emperor could be present at and influence the elections of bishops.


– Thomas Becket• Tensions persisted between clergy and lay rulers who

wanted to strengthen their own rule in their home territories. In England, the struggle took the form of a deadly clash between King Henry II and his archbishop, Thomas Becket.

• Becket wanted to preserve the church’s right to be exempt from legal authority Henry was using to consolidate his power over his land. A small group of knights seeking to please their king split Becket’s head with their swords.

• Becket quickly became a martyr, Henry was forced to compromise with the pope to gain forgiveness for the murder.

• Henry had to let the papacy be the court of appeal from English ecclesiastical courts, which brought the English church more closely into the sphere of Rome.


– Innocent III• By the beginning the beginning of the 13th century, popes

could with some accuracy claim that they presided over a universal Christiandon.

• Innocent was able to exert leadership over princes of Europe, and he insisted that many kings obey him.

• He fought heretics and wanted to clarify Christian belief.• He called the Fourth Lateran Council, in 1215.


• Christians on the March: The Crusades, 109– Islam Strengthened

• In the eleventh century, Islam gained strength

C. 1280 CIMABUE MADONNA AND CHILD ENTHRONED


– Pope Urban’s Call• Urban called for Christians to begin a holy war

against the newly strengthened Muslims

– Crusader States• The crusader principalities served as outposts of

western European culture in the East

– Subsequent Crusades• The Second Crusade was urged on by Bernard of

Clairveaux


–Knights Templars• Protected pilgrims and served as bankers

for those traveling to the Holy Land.• They grew so powerful that many began to

resent their strength and organization

–Crusaders Expelled• In 1291, the Muslims seized the last

crusader outpost on the Asian mainland


• Criticism of the Church– Waldensians

• Valdes gave up all his material possessions in order to wander, beg, and preach

• Churchmen were threatened by his implicit criticism of churches decorated with gold

• The pope condemned Valdes as a heretic in 1181

• The Church Accommodates: Franciscans and Dominicans


– Francis of Assisi• Founded the Franciscan movement• The son of a wealthy Italian merchant• Had an experience that inspired him to give up all

his earthly goods, but he survived by begging, and helped care for the poor people of Assisi and other nearby towns.

• His demeanor and preaching style had a broad appeal.


– Dominican Order• The Franciscans appealed to those who believed in a poor

and humble church.• The Dominicans were led by Dominic de Guzman, who

believed that heresy could be fought through preaching.• In 1217, Pope Honorius approved the “Order of Preachers”,

who took an oath of poverty and lived among the people instead of in monasteries.

• They emphasized preaching and study at universities to ensure that their preaching was strictly orthodox.

• The Dominicans appealed to people’s minds, and the Franciscans spoke to their hearts.

• The Church Suppresses: the Albigensian Crusade and the Inquisition


– Albigensian Crusade• They were threatening to the church because their

ideas struck at the heart of the Christian belief.• The pope called a crusade against them in 1209.• During the crusades 20 years thousands of people

were massacred.

– The Inquisition• In the mid 13th century, the church established a

new court – the inquisition – designed to stomp out threatening ideas.

chapter 8 agricultural innovations led to an expansion of europe’s population and changing...

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