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“The middle ages showed us the

results of thinking without

experimentation, our present century shows us what

experimentation without thinking

leads to.”

Arthur Schopenhauer

AN AGE OF FIEFS AND FAITH

Within the new kingdoms of Western Europe, a highly fragmented and decentralized society with great local variation emerged

Thousands of independent, self-sufficient, and largely isolated landed estates or manors emerged

Powerful lords were in constant competition Lesser lords and knights swore allegiance to

greater lords thus becoming vassals -Vassals received land and booty in return for

military service to their lords (Feudalism)

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Roman slavery gave way to serfdom. Serfs were not personal property and could not be arbitrarily thrown off the land. They were allowed to live in families but they were bound to masters’ estates as peasant laborers. E

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Self-Sufficiency Each manor was largely self-

sufficient, growing or producing all of the basic items needed for food, clothing, and shelter.

To meet these needs, the manor had buildings devoted to special purposes, such as: The mill for grinding grain The bake house for making bread The blacksmith shop for creating

metal goods.

Isolation

These manors were isolated, with occasional visits from peddlers, pilgrims on their way to the Crusades, or soldiers from other fiefdoms.

The Feudal System

Under the feudal system, the king awarded land grants or fiefs to his most important nobles, barons, and bishops, in return for their contribution of soldiers for the king's armies.

Nobles and Vassals Nobles divided their land

among the lesser nobility, who became their vassals. Many of these vassals became so powerful that the kings had difficulty controlling them.

The Peasants

At the lowest level of society were the peasants, also called serfs or villeins.

The lord offered his peasants protection in exchange for living and working on his land.

Hard Work & High Taxes Peasants worked hard to

cultivate the land and produce the goods that the lord and his manor needed.

They were heavily taxed and were required to relinquish much of what they harvested.

Bound by law and custom…

It is the custom in England, as with other countries, for the nobility to have great power over the common people, who are serfs. This means that they are bound by law and custom to plough the field of their masters, harvest the corn, gather it into barns, and thresh and winnow the grain; they must also mow and carry home the hay, cut and collect wood, and perform all manner of tasks of this kind.

-- Jean

Froissart, 1395 

MEDIEVAL LIFE

Cooperation and Mutual

Obligations

KING

LORDS (VASSALS TO KING)

KNIGHTS (VASSALS TO LORDS)

Fief and Peasants

Military Aid

Food Protection Shelter

Food Protection Shelter

PEASANTS (SERFS)Pay Rent

Fief and Peasants

Food Protection Shelter

Farm the Land

Homage Military Service

Loyalty

FEUDALISM: POLITICAL SYSTEM

Decentralized, local government

Dependent upon the relationship between members of the nobility

Lord and his vassals administered justice and were the highest authority in their land

MANORIALISM: ECONOMIC SYSTEM

Agriculture the basis for wealth

Lands divided up into self-sufficient manors

Peasants (serfs) worked the land and paid rent In exchange for protection

Barter the usual form of exchange

Serfs owed various payments and services to their lords

In return, a serf family received a small farm and as much protection as the lord could provide

In the absence of a central Roman authority, the only available security lay in these communities, where the ties to kin, manor, and lord constituted the primary human loyalties

Feudalism in Western Europe was a world apart from the stability of life in imperial Rome or its continuation in Byzantium

Also filling the vacuum left by the collapse of a central government was the Roman Catholic Church

-Its hierarchical organization of popes, bishops, and priests was modeled on the Roman Empire

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The Roman Catholic Church began the process of converting many of Europe’s “pagan” peoples, sometimes peacefully and sometimes through coercion. The Church provided unity and stability during a time of political fragmentation. E

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December 25th was selected as the birthday of Jesus, for it was associated with the winter solstice, the coming of more light and the rebirth of various deities

By 1100, most of Europe had embraced Christianity

The Roman Catholic Church provided a cultural unity in a time of political fragmentation

But there were controversies involving the Church too

-The Investiture Controversy during the eleventh and twelfth centuries developed as Church officials, kings and emperors debated who had the right to make Church appointments

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Eventually, the Church won the right to appoint its own officials while secular rulers retained an informal and symbolic role in the process.

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The pace of change in the West picked up considerably in the several centuries after 1000

For the preceding 300 years, Europe had been subject to repeated invasions from every direction

-Muslim armies conquered Spain -Magyar (Hungarian) invasions from the east -Viking incursions from the north -But by 1000, these invasions had been

checked and invaders absorbed into settled societies

Greater security and stability accelerated the tempo of change

Also a generally warming trend after 750 reached its peak in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, enhancing agricultural production

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Commonly called the High Middle Ages, a new period of expansion and growth occurred.

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Population increase led to deforestation and by 1300, the forest cover of Europe had been reduced to about 20 percent of the land area

The increased production associated with agricultural expansion stimulated growth in long-distance trade, much of which had dried up in the aftermath of the Roman collapse

-One center of commercial activity lay in Northern Europe from England to the Baltic coast

-Another trading network centered on the northern Italian towns such as Florence, Genoa, and Venice and their trading partners in the Islamic and Byzantine worlds

Urbanization was proceeding as towns and cities attracted new groups of people

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Merchants, bankers, artisans, and university-trained professionals were attracted to cities and towns and many groups organized themselves into guilds or associations of people pursuing the same line of work in order to regulate their respective professions. E

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While women were initially active in a number of urban professions, by the fifteenth century, opportunities for women were declining

Men increasingly took over these previously women-dominated professions (due to technological progress that replaced some hand work) and trained their sons as apprentices

But religious life provided opportunities for women

-As in Buddhist lands, nunneries offered relative freedom from male control

A further sign of change lay in the growth of territorial states with more effective institutions of government commanding the loyalty of subjects

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Since the disintegration of the Roman Empire, Europeans’ loyalties had focused on the family, the manor, or the religious community, but seldom on the state. But in the eleventh through the thirteenth century, the nominal monarchs of Europe gradually and painfully began to consolidate their authority, and the outlines of French, English, Spanish, and Scandinavian states began to appear with distinct languages and cultures.

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THE CRUSADES

Beginning in 1095, the Crusades or a series of “holy wars” captured the imagination of the West

Europeans believed that the Crusades were wars undertaken at God’s command and authorized by the pope as the Vicar of Christ on earth

Crusaders were offered an indulgence, which removed the penalties of any confessed sins as well as various material benefits

The most famous Crusades were those aimed at wresting Jerusalem and the holy places of Christendom from Islamic control

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But by 1291, the Muslim forces had recaptured all of the temporary Christian states established in the eastern Mediterranean. The Crusades were “successful failures” for the Europeans for they never permanently controlled the “Holy Land” but they received many new ideas from the Islamic golden age.

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The Crusades demonstrated a growing European capacity for organization, finance, transportation, and recruitment, made all the more impressive by the absence of any centralized direction for the project

But also tremendous cruelty, as Crusaders slaughtered Muslims and Jews

Crusading was not limited to targets in the Islamic Middle East

-Christians, both Spanish and foreign, waged war for centuries to reclaim the Iberian Peninsula from Muslim hands

-Scandinavian and German warriors took part in wars to conquer, settle, and convert lands along the Baltic Sea

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Even the Byzantine Empire and Russia, both Eastern Orthodox Christian lands, were also on the receiving end of Western crusading, as were Christian heretics and various enemies of the pope in Europe itself. Crusading, in short, was a pervasive feature of European expansion, which persisted as Europeans began their oceanic voyages in the fifteenth century and beyond.

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Interaction with the Islamic world had long-term consequences

-Spain, Sicily, and the Baltic region were brought permanently into the world of Western Christendom

-A declining Byzantium was furthered weakened by the Crusader sacking of Constantinople in 1204 and left even more vulnerable to Turkish conquest

-In Europe, popes strengthened their positions, at least for a time, in their continuing struggles with secular authorities

-Tens of thousands of Europeans came into personal contact with the Islamic world, from which they picked up a taste for the many luxury goods available there, stimulating a demand for European goods

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Europeans also learned techniques for producing sugar on large plantations using slave labor, a process that had incalculable consequences in later centuries as Europeans transferred the plantation system to the Americas. E

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Muslim scholarship, together with the Greek learning it incorporated, also flowed into Europe, largely through Spain and Sicily

The cross-cultural contacts born of crusading opened channels of trade, technology transfer, and intellectual exchange

But cross-cultural contacts also hardened cultural barriers between peoples

-The rift between Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism deepened further

-Christian anti-Semitism was both expressed and exacerbated as Crusaders massacred Jews in a number of European cities on their way to Jerusalem

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European empire building, especially in the Americas, continued the crusading spirit.

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As the hybrid civilization of the West evolved, it was clearly less developed in comparison to Byzantium, China, India, and the Islamic world

Its cities were smaller, its political authorities weaker, its economy less commercialized, its technology inferior to the more established civilizations

But Europeans proved quite willing to engage with and borrow from the more advanced civilizations of the east

-When the road to China opened in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Europeans, including the merchant-traveler Marco Polo, were more than willing to take the long journey

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Technological borrowing was evident in agriculture and war. Gunpowder was invented in China, but Europeans were probably the first to use it in cannons, in the early fourteenth century, and by 1500, they had the most advanced arsenals in the world. E

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In addition, a three-way struggle for power among kings, warrior aristocrats, and church leaders, all of them from the nobility, enabled urban-based merchants in Europe to achieve an unusual independence from political authority

This paved the way to a more thorough development of capitalism in later centuries

A further feature of this emerging European civilization was a distinctive intellectual tension between the claims of human reason and those of faith

Earlier cathedral schools became “zones of intellectual autonomy”

A new interest in rational thought

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Slowly, the scientific study of nature, known as “natural philosophy” began to separate itself from theology.

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A mounting enthusiasm for rational inquiry stimulated European scholars to seek out original Greek texts

The integration of political and religious life in the Islamic world, as in Byzantium, contrasted with their separation in the West

In the West, there was more space for the independent pursuit of scientific subjects

So, as change accelerated in the High Middle Ages, so too did a new way of looking at the world and this borrowing, adapting, and emphasis of rational thought in Western Europe would have profound repercussions for world history

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STRAYER QUESTIONS

What replaced the Roman order in Western Europe?

In what ways was European civilization changing after 1000?

What was the impact of the Crusades in world history?

In what ways did borrowing from abroad shape European civilization after 1000?

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Why was Europe unable to achieve the kind of political unity that China experienced? What impact did this have on the subsequent history of Europe?

In what different ways did classical Greek philosophy and science have an impact in the West, in Byzantium, and in the Islamic world?

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