1113th Centuries The High Middle Ages The Total Society

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11-13th CenturiesThe High Middle AgesThe Total
Society
SEE SPIELVOGEL, cc 9-10
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The Christian Vision

• Paul of Tarsus Augustine
  Thomas Aquinas

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The Total Society Ideal

• Reform Movement (monastic)
• Unified under Christian faith
• Hierarchical in authority
• Oriented towards heaven
• Dedicated in prayer devotion
• Papacy the central authority
• Paul/Augustine core faith Aquinas theology
• Dante (comprehensive eternal divine judgment)

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Total Society An ideal or a reality?

• The down side
• Power struggles
• Worldly interests
• Cynical, skeptical people
• cf., negative images in Dante, Chaucer

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• Heroes / Villains
• of the
• Total Society view

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Emperor Justinian (c.452-565) from San Vitale
at Ravenna
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The Coronation of Charlemagne (800)
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Henry IV at Canossa (1077)
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The 13th Century The High Middle Ages

• Evidence for/against the Total Society
• Religious orders created (178ff)
• Crusades show power of religious vision (184ff)
• Theology in a proto-renaissance (162ff)
• Semi-orthodox/heretical groups (180ff)
• Papacy is at its peak (179ff)

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AGE OF RELIGIOUS ENTHUSIASM

• Monte Cassino decline of Benedictines
• End of The Age of Benedict
• Now a gentlemans club?

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1. RELIGIOUS ORDERSDominic (1170-1221) Francis
(1182-1226)- 13th century sees creation/growth
of new orders- Social mandate beyond monastery-
Different from Carthusians, Cistercians (monastic)
Francis
Dominic
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2. The Crusades(1096-1270)

• complex factors1. Rise of Turks (eg.,1070)2.
  weak Byzantines3. ambitious Italian cities4.
  Total Society vision(URBAN II call to unity)

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Urban II http//www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/urb
an2-5vers.html

• From the confines of Jerusalem and the city of
  Constantinople a horrible tale has gone forth and
  very frequently has been brought to our ears,
  namely, that a race from the kingdom of the
  Persians, an accursed race, a race utterly
  alienated from God, a generation forsooth which
  has not directed its heart and has not entrusted
  its spirit to God, has invaded the lands of those
  Christians and has depopulated them by the sword,
  pillage and fire it has led away a part of the
  captives into its own country, and a part it has
  destroyed by cruel tortures it has either
  entirely destroyed the churches of God or
  appropriated them for the rites of its own
  religion.

COUNCIL OF CLERMONT 1095
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URBAN II

• They destroy the altars, after having defiled
  them with their uncleanness. They circumcise the
  Christians, and the blood of the circumcision
  they either spread upon the altars or pour into
  the vases of the baptismal font. When they wish
  to torture people by a base death, they perforate
  their navels, and dragging forth the extremity of
  the intestines, bind it to a stake then with
  flogging they lead the victim around until the
  viscera having gushed forth the victim falls
  prostrate upon the ground. Others they bind to a
  post and pierce with arrows. Others they compel
  to extend their necks and then, attacking them
  with naked swords, attempt to cut through the
  neck with a single blow.

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Belvoir Castle (Galilee)Historical anomaly?
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Crusader Crosses Holy SepulcherEvidence of
medieval piety
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3. A Highly Developed Theology 13th Century
Scholasticism - Universities grow- Age of
Aquinas- Rediscoveries of ancient texts -
kind of proto-renaissance
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EnthusiasmSemi-Orthodox? - Beguines

• Order of women
• Semi-autonomous
• Economically stable
• Simple vows
• Mystics, spiritual advisors

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4. Semi-Orthodox Religious MovementsBeguines
(Bruges)
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Enthusiasm?Radical HereticsAlbigensians /Cathars

• Dualism good vs. evil
• Docetism Jesus seems to suffer
• Aseticism take to extremes
• Reject Old Testament radically unorthodox
• Reject ROME enemy to total society

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Radical heresy, brutal conflict Albigensians

•      Lords, ladies and their little children,
  women and men stripped naked, all these men
  slashed and cut to pieces with keen-edged swords.
  Flesh, blood and brains, trunks, limbs and faces
  hacked in two, lungs, livers and guts torn out
  and tossed aside on the open ground as if they
  had rained down from the sky. Marshland and good
  ground, all was red with blood. Not a man or a
  woman was left alive, neither old nor young, no
  living creature, unless any had managed to hide.
  Marmande was razed and set alight(1219)

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Three Exemplary Papacies
Gregory VII Innocent III
Boniface VIII
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5. Papacy at its Peak

• Gregory VII
• Innocent III
• Boniface VIII