Notes on Middle Ages, Church

BHS WORLD HISTORY, MR. PAHL

600 AD Pope Gregory the Great

• Waves of invaders swept across Europe
• Wars raged
• Trade slowed to a trickle
• Towns emptied
• Learning virtually ceased
• Europe isolated and backward
• But it had great potential of resources: forests, minerals, rich earth, rivers for trade
• The Germanic tribes who migrated across Europe were farmers and herders. Their culture was different than the Romans.
• They had no cities and written laws. They lived in small communities governed by unwritten customs. They had kings who led them in war. Warrior nobles swore oaths of loyalty and fought for the king in exchange for weapons and booty.
• Between 400 and 700 the Germanic tribes carved up Europe into small kingdoms, the strongest the Franks.
• 481 Clovis became king of the Franks. He converted to Christianity and earned the support of the Roman Catholic Church

• Islamic invasion, birthed in 632.
• Within 200 years created a major new civilization.
• Battle of Tours, 732 Frankish warriors under Charles Martel defeated Muslims.
• Muslim knowledge superior.
• They kept alive the classics during the time Europe was in the Dark Ages
• Charlemagne, Holy Roman Emperor
• Charles Martel grandson, Charlemagne, around 800 built an empire across France, Germany, part of Italy.
• The Pope crowned him king
• Eastern emperor in Constantinople did not approve
• C. promoted learning
• Asked Alcuin to run schools: logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy
• C. died 814, empire fell apart
• Magyars and Vikings attack
  
  

• Swearing oath
• Need to defend homelands
• Lords (Dukes, Counts) – lesser lords (vassals) – peasants
• Fief was granted in exchange for loyalty

• Vassal
• Fief
• Knight
• Chivalry
• Troubadour
• Manor
• serf

• Secular
• Sacrament
• Canon law
• Excommunication
• Interdict
• Tithe
• Anti-Semitism

• Religion was woven into the fabric of the medieval world. (Explain meaning of "Middle Ages")
• Church split into eastern and western churches.
• Western Church became Roman Catholic Church: controlled spiritual life and was also the most powerful secular force in Western Europe.
• Hierarchy. Pope claimed to have authority over all secular rulers.

• Common people believed that all people are sinners.
• The only way to avoid the tortures of hell – participate in the sacraments
• Through these one could obtain salvation: eternal life in heaven.
• Church had its own laws – canon law.
• For those who would not obey them – excommunication. Thus no sacraments, thus, hell.
• Interdict – denying the sacraments to a whole region

• New towns began appearing about 1000.
• 1000-1300 is called the High Middle Ages

• New technologies
• Iron plows
• Horse harnesses – fields could be enlarged, more crops planted
• Windmills – no longer stream bound for grinding grain
• 3 field system grain, legumes, fallow
• Results: increased food production, population increases

• As foreign invasions declined, and feudal warfare, traders reappeared
• Armed caravans
• Regular trade routes
• Venice—Adriatic Sea—Flanders

• Feudalism…
• Defining it by what it’s NOT…a market economy
• In a market economy people work for money, and then use money to buy things they need.
• In a feudal economy people do not work for money; they work to get the basic life necessities

• Peasants traded farm goods and animals
• Lords, nobles, wealthy churchmen alone had money to buy woolens, sugar, swords, silk.
• Wintering merchants attracted artisans
• These centers developed into cities

• Two prosperous areas: Flanders and n. Italy

• Merchants sought charters for towns

• Need for capital led to banks
• Partnerships
• Insurance
• Bill of Exchange
• Lords needed money to buy things
• Thus peasants began to sell farm products so they could pay their rent with money, not labor
• A new class appeared next to the old social order (nobles, clergy, peasants): middle class: merchant, trader, artisan
• Craft guilds, merchant guilds, sometimes competing
• Apprentice, journeyman, guild masters

• Heritage—pride resurrected in the Greek and Roman past…
• Religious change. Reading encouraged, attitude toward the creation, to be used to advance man, thus the technological…
• Purely technological factors; plow, food production, horses, encouraging transport

• Feudal monarchs had limited power
• Nobles and the church had as much power – or more – than the king.
• Nobles and the Church had their own courts, collected their own taxes and fielded their own armies.
• Rulers still tried to centralize power. They set up courts attempting to undermine feudal or Church courts. They developed taxes, built armies, organized gov.
• Norman conquest. Harold took English throne when his brother-in-law Edward died.
• Duke William of Normandy also claimed the throne.
• The issue would be settled on the battlefield.
• The Norman had the backing of the Pope. William the conqueror crossed the English Channel, Battle of Hastings. Xmas Day, 1066

William:

• Domesday Book census (for tax collecting…)
• Kept a lot of land for himself.
• Had all vassals swear first allegiance to him.
• Monitored the building of castles

Henry II

• -had traveling justices enforce royal law…leading to a common law, a law the same for all people.
• In time, people chose royal courts over those of nobles
• The treasury was benefited because there were fees for royal courts.
• He also brought the beginnings of today’s grand jury and trial jury.
• Conflict with the Church: Henry said he had the right to try clergy in the royal courts.
• Common law began—common to all people
• Thomas Becket, Bishop of Canterbury, opposed him; Becket murdered

• Henry’s son John, clever and cruel king
• Placed under interdict from the Pope
• John had to accept England as a fief of the papacy
• His nobles confronted him in 1215 and had him sign the Magna Carta
• Two main ideas: nobles have rights and the king is under law
• Parliament developed from this

France

• No unified kingdom as in England
• Nobles elected Hugh Capet, count of Paris, to be king, 987
• His own lands smaller than many of his vassals
• What he did to increase his power:
• Made his throne hereditary, lasted 300 years
• Added to his lands by pitting rival nobles against each other
• Won the support of the Church
• Capetians built an effective bureaucracy. Gov’t officals collected taxes and imposed royal law
• By establishing order they gained the backing of the new middle class of townspeople.

Philip II - early 1200s

• He did not appoint nobles, but middle class people to government positions
• (They would owe him loyalty)
• Granted many new town charters
• Organized a standing army
• Introduced a new national tax
• Warred against the Albigenses in s. France, "heretics", to get their lands.

1226 Louis IX

• Sent out roving officials to check on local officials
• Outlawed private wars
• Ended serfdom in his lands
• Generous, noble, devoted to justice
• By his death in 1270, France was an efficient centralized monarchy
• Kings got into clashes with the Pope (Boniface VIII)
• Pope forbade the king to tax the clergy, but the king said he would arrest priests who did not pay
• Pope beaten by kings men
• Then a French pope was elected and he moved the headquarters to Avignon in s France

The king (Philip IV) set up the Estates General with representatives of clergy, nobles, townspeople.

(Never gained the power of the purse or served as a balance to royal power…)

• Kings trying to build central control
• Hurdle: Power and organization of Church
• Appointment of church officials (lay investiture)

• The players during the 4 or so major crusades:
• Western Christians
• The Pope
• Forces of Islam (Saladin, 12^th Century)
• Byzantine forces in Constantinople
• Merchants in Venice
• 1^st successful; 4^th manipulated by merchants in Venice who turned it into an attack on their commercial rivals in Const.
• Cultural diffusion

• Famine, disease, war, and death Four horsemen of the Apocalypse
• Religious Reform
• Church wealthy; some priests and monks behaved like ordinary feudal lords
• Reform movements: St. Clare, Franciscan, Cluniac, Benedictine
• Gregory VII (1073-1085):
• Priests must not marry
• He quarreled with Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV over lay investiture
• Gregory excommunicates Henry
• Emperor appealed to Pope on knees in snow of a n Italian winter
• Mid 1300s the end of the world seemed to have come
• These famines, wars, and Black Plague marked the transition from the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the early modern age.
• Ship from Genoa, left Black Sea port of Caffa and sailed for Messina, Sicily.
• Sailors were sick and dying, then townspeople
• 1347-1350 About 1 in 3 died in Europe, worse than any war.
• 35 million killed in China
• Many in Europe blamed Jews for the plague, saying they poisoned the wells.
• Thousand of Jews were slaughtered

• Survivors wanted higher wages
• Guilds would not accept new members
• Peasants revolted, artisans sought for more power
• Scandal in the Church
• Why did God spare some and kill others?
• The Babylonian Captivity of the Church (70 years in Avigon)
• Lavish, pleasure loving Papacy.
• 1378-1417 Two or three Popes. Rome v Avignon

In England, John Wycliff challenged Church corruption

• The Bible, not the Church, is the source of truth.
• W. translated the Bible into English
• John Huss (Jan Hus) his followers in Bohemia (Czech R)
• Hundred Years War
  
• 1337-1453 England v France
• Early English successes:
• The longbow. 6 feet long, powerful

For the French:

• Joan of Arc led to several victories, until the English captured her and tried her for witchcraft
• Now the new weapon was from France: the cannon, taking back most of France
• Result of 100 years war: France gained sense of nationhood; Parliament gained the "power of the purse"

Now that Europe is stronger, it gets ready for a new place on the world stage.

Population expanded

• Manufacturing grew.
• Feudalism was dying. Monarchs needed large standing armies, not feudal vassals.
• Increased trade. Spices, sugar, cotton for European cloth.