Final Review:

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Final Review The Middle Ages 1250-1500
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Geography
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Europe in 800
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Europe in 1346
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European Rivers ? Barriers or Highways?
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Political
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Pope Crowned CharlemagneHoly Roman Emperor Dec.
25, 800
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Charlemagnes Empire CollapsesTreaty of Verdun,
843
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Feudalism

• Relationships between lord and vassal based on
  specific contractual obligations of loyalty and
  protection
• Peasants provided labor in return for security
• Controlled through an intricate set of
  obligations, fees, rituals and taxes
• Only the wealthy could engage in warfare, and
  society became divided
• Those who fought (nobles and knights)
• Those who prayed (the clergy)
• Those who worked (peasants and artisans)

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Feudalism
A political, economic, and social system based on
loyalty and military service.
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Feudalism
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National Monarchies

• City-states lacked complexity of modern nations
• Rulers began to establish hereditary claims to
  the thrones
• Bureaucracy of modern nation-state can be seen in
  several nations
• Monarchs had to establish the power to tax
  subjects
• Usually had to get support and approval from
  other political bodies

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Magna Carta

• Great Charter
• Signed in 1215
• Monarchs were not above the law
• Eventually led to the creation of
  Parliament
• Other nation-states created councils and
  representative bodies to limit power of
  monarchs

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The Hundred Years War1337 to 1453

• A series of wars fought by England and France
  over the French throne
• Challenged ideas of medieval warfare as English
  longbows and infantry destroyed French mounted
  knights
• 1429 Joan of Arc helped the French Army break
  the siege of Orleans
• Her success threatened the French Dauphin, so
  Joan was killed
• By 1453, England held only the city of Calais

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Intellectual
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Schools and Universities

• Growth of cities quickened intellectual life
• Universities taught a variety of subjects,
  without the separation of spiritual and material
  subjects
• Theology was the queen of the sciences and
  liberally borrowed from other disciplines to
  elaborate its truths
• Led to the creation of Scholasticism

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Medieval Universities
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Scholasticism

• Mid-13th Century Aristotles philosophies were
  rediscovered
• Pagan ideas regarding logic and the natural world
  were synthesized into Christian dogma to explain
  divine truths
• This intellectual system came to dominate the
  universities until the 18th century
• St. Thomas Aquinas Christian scholar who
  embraced scholasticism
• Note much of the Renaissance was directed
  against what was perceived as the Scholastics
  focus on stale logic and impractical learning

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Religious
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The Medieval Catholic Church

• At the height of its political, spiritual and
  cultural influence
• Pope and Holy Roman Emperor vied for power in
  Central Europe, essentially checking each other
• Growing criticisms of the behavior of the clergy
  and the lack of regularity in church doctrine and
  practice
• Led to the crisis of the Babylonian Captivity

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The Babylonian Captivity and the Great Schism

• 1307 Pope began exile in France
• Not a captive of the French, but prestige of the
  pope decreased due to increased bureaucratic
  apparatus necessary to run the Church and
  increased material wealth
• Great Schism (1378-1417) resulted from efforts by
  French and Italian cardinals to elect a pope
• Ended up with two popes, then three
• Nations of Europe were forced to chose sides

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Opposition to the Catholic Church

• Reformers used the Great Schism as an example of
  why the Church had to change
• John Wyclif (the Lollards) England
• Jan Hus (the Hussites) Bohemia
• Attacked the institutional power and wealth of
  the church and began a call for a simpler
  Christianity
• Council of Constance ended the Great Schism, but
  the foundation was laid for the Protestant
  Reformation

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Artistic
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Illuminated Manuscripts
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Gothic Architectural Style

• Pointed arches.
• High, narrow vaults.
• Thinner walls.
• Flying buttresses.
• Elaborate, ornate, airier interiors.
• Stained-glass windows
• Designed to educate the illiterate population

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Obsession with Death and Dying

• Representations of death became a prominent theme
  in European arts throughout the plague years
• Apocalyptic images featuring the allegoric figure
  of Death attempted to explain the importance of
  the Black Death for European society

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The Danse Macabre
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Technology
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Cannons

• Petrarch wrote "these instruments which discharge
  balls of metal with most tremendous noise and
  flashes of fire...were a few years ago very rare
  and were viewed with greatest astonishment and
  admiration, but now they are become as common and
  familiar as any other kinds of arms.
• Beginning of the end for walled fortifications
• Allowed New Monarchs to consolidate power by
  eliminating fortified towns and castles of
  nobility

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Longbow

• High rate of fire and penetration power
• Contributed to the eventual demise of the
  medieval knight
• Used particularly by the English to great effect
  against the French cavalry during the Hundred
  Years' War (1337-1453).
• Longbow helped New Monarchs to create
  cost-effective standing armies, to maintain and
  expand power

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Printing Press

• Developed in 1439 by Johann Gutenberg
• Made possible the dissemination of knowledge to a
  wider population
• Lead to more egalitarian society
• Laid the foundation for the Renaissance,
  Reformation and Enlightenment

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Economic
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Towns and Commerce

• Towns acted as magnets for skilled labor, ideas,
  and goods
• Typically lay outside of the feudal structure
• Banded together in leagues to protect
  independence and promote commerce
• Hanseatic League German trading centers in the
  Baltic region, controlled the herring market

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Hanseatic League
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Medieval Trade
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Medieval Guilds
Guild Hall
Medieval Guilds A Goldsmiths Shop

• Central institutions of most towns
• Commercial Monopoly
• Controlled membership apprentice ? journeyman
  ? master craftsman
• Controlled quality of the product masterpiece
• Controlled prices No Free Market!

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Agricultural Improvements

• Three-crop field rotation
• Iron plow
• Windmills
• More land brought under cultivation
• Helped produce a food surplus
• Increased trade networks

By 1300, population at an all-time high of 75
million
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Social
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Social Order

• A new social order had evolved by 900 that was
  distinctively medieval.
• Alfred the Great of England a kingdom needs men
  of prayer, men of war, and men of work.
• Tripartite view of society
• The Clergy
• The Landed Nobility (knights)
• The Peasantry and Village Artisans
• A fourth emerged after the 13th century middle
  class merchants townspeople
• burgesses in English, bourgeoisie in French,
  burghers in German

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Gender Roles

• Womens roles limited by legal and economic
  prescriptions
• Many women did find ways to express autonomy,
  initiative, and talent within these parameters
• Noblewomen often ran the manors in the absence of
  their warrior husbands
• Younger noblewomen joined convents
• Allowed them to pursue intellectual and spiritual
  pursuits outside the control of men
• Ideal of courtly love and chivalry placed women
  at the center of an important cultural tradition

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Chivalry A Code of Honor and Behavior

• Chivalry began as the code of conduct for mounted
  warriors.
• Chivalry highly esteemed certain masculine,
  militant qualities.
• Military prowess
• Generosity
• Loyalty, the glue that held feudal society
  together.

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Gender Roles

• Cities and towns relied upon the labor of women
  in the food preparation, brewing and the
  production of cloth
• Peasant and serf women labored alongside husbands
  in mowing hay, tending the vegetables, or
  harvesting
• Domestic chores actually played a minor role for
  most women

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The Medieval Manor

• A powerful lord controlling the lives of an often
  large number of dependents.
• He required payments and services from them and
  regulated their ordinary disputes.
• The structure of individual manors, and the dues
  owed by peasants, varied tremendously across
  Europe.
• Parallel sets of vertical bonds of associations
• Feudal lords and vassals entered into political
  bonds
• Lords and peasants entered into economic bonds.

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The Medieval Manor
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Life on the Medieval Manor
Serfs at work
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The Black Death Causes

• By 1300, the large population explosion had
  outgrown the food supply.
• Progressively weakened by malnutrition, Europes
  population was highly vulnerable to disease
• Devastation resulted from the Black Death
  (1348-1351)
• Killed about 40 of the European population
• More important were the psychological and social
  costs of the disease

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The Black Death

• Disease carried by fleas on rats, so urban areas
  were devastated
• Many believed that this was Gods punishment for
  living too well
• 60 of theclergy diedtreating thedisease,
  causingpeople toquestion thepower of thechurch

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The Black Death

• Led to persecutionof Jews, who wereblamed
  forpoisoning the wells
• Caused a laborshortage that undermined the
  feudal structure
• Allowed peasants to bargain for improved labor
  conditions and payment
• Note Did not affect Eastern Europe as much as
  Western/Central Europe, which allowed the feudal
  system to last much longer

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Attempts to Stop the Plague
FlagellantsSelf-inflicted penance for our
sins!