The Middle Ages

The Middle Ages 1066-1485

Main Ideas  What terms come to thought?  What ideas?  Where was the Middle Ages? Any one specific location?  Who led the Middle Ages? Any one specific group?

Map of Medieval Europe

The Middle Ages: The Myth • We think of knights in shining armor, lavish banquets, wandering minstrels, kings, queens, bishops, monks, pilgrims, and glorious pageantry. • In film and in literature, medieval life seems heroic, entertaining, and romantic.

The Middle Ages: The Reality • In reality, life in the Middle Ages, a period that extended from approximately the 5th century to the 15th century in Western Europe, could also be harsh, uncertain, and dangerous.

The Battle of Hastings • In October 1066, a daylong battle known as the Battle of Hastings ended the reign of the AngloSaxons and began the Norman Conquest.

Some Important Historical Events:

1066 Norman Conquest KNOW THIS DATE • William of Normandy (called William the Conqueror), who already controlled northern France, invaded and conquered England in 1066 C.E., with the decisive victory at the Battle of Hastings.

• Old French became language of power, commerce, and religion in England • End of Old English (looks/sounds very German; the language of Beowulf) • French merged with Old English to produce Middle English, the language of Chaucer—close enough to modern English that we can recognize it.

Some Important Historical Events:

Domesday Book commissioned by William the Conqueror in 1087: • Census, land register, and income record to create a tax roll • Can learn a lot about commerce, absolutely everything that everyone owned • Learn a lot about common names and daily life

• According to the Domesday Book, slavery was fairly commonplace. • Lists 10% of England’s people as slaves. • Germanic tribes also enslaved Slavic neighbors (thus the word slavery). • Africans were sold across the Islamic world. • Can see original copy in the British Library (a museum of manuscripts)

The Feudal System • The Anglo-Normans brought a new language, French, and a new social system, feudalism, to the country. • Feudalism was not just a social system, but also a caste system, a property system, and a military system.

The Feudal System • The basic chain of feudalism was as follows: 1. God 2. Kings 3. Nobles (Barons, Bishops, etc.) 4. Knights- who did not own land 5. Serfs or peasants- who did not own land

The Three Estates • The three estates (social classes) in the Middle Ages were Aristocracy (kings and their vassals), Clergy (Those who prayed- priests, monks, nuns, friars, etc.), and the Commons (everyone else- doctors, lawyers, clerks, yeomen, etc).

Knighthood • The primary duty of males above the serf class was military service. Boys were trained at an early age to become warriors. • After training was complete, the boy was “dubbed” or ceremonially tapped on the shoulder. He was then a knight, had the title or sir, and had full rights of the warrior caste.

Knighthood • Knighthood was grounded in the feudal ideal of loyalty. Knights had a system of social codes that they were not permitted to break.

Women in the Middle Ages • Women had no political rights because they were not soldiers in a primarily military system. • Women were always subservient to men. • A woman’s husband or father’s position in the feudal system determined her position.

Chivalry • Chivalry was a system of ideals and social codes governing the behaviors of knights and gentlewomen. • Chivalry codes included oaths of loyalty to the overlord, observing certain rules of warfare and courtly love. • Courtly love was nonsexual. • Chivalry brought about an idealized attitude about women, but did not improve their actual position in life. • Chivalry gave rise to a new form of literatureromance.

The Effect of Cities and Towns • Eventually, the increasing population in cities and towns made the feudal system close to obsolete. • The city classes were lower, middle and upper-middle.

The Crusades • The Crusades (1095-1270), a series of wars waged by European Christians against Muslims, were waged during the period. • The prize of The Crusades was Jerusalem and the Holy Land.

Some Important Historical Events:

CRUSADES: • 8 crusades in total over 200 • 1095 years—the last 7 failed • Pope Urban II called for a horribly due to disease, holy war against the cold, hunger, and battles. Muslim Turks who controlled what he saw as • Another negative effect from the point of view of the the Christian Holy Land of Christian Western Palestine. Europeans: galvanized • Pope said if you died Muslims and gave them a fighting in a crusade, you stronger foothold/following would go to heaven. in the Middle East; the opposite of their goal.

Some Important Historical Events:

CRUSADES,cont.: SOME BENEFITS TO EUROPE: • Increased trade and new merchant class. • Increase in art and education: Greek language and Plato studied again; philosophy, math.

• Increase in religious inspiration due to dedication to God; art, architecture. • Crusades also greatly contributed to a secular kind of hero-worship of knights (shown in tapestries, tales).

St. Thomas a Becket • Thomas a Becket, the archbishop of Canterbury, was murdered in his own cathedral by four knights because he too often sided with the pope instead of the King Henry who had appointed him to the position. • Becket’s murder enraged the common people who deemed him a martyr and they lashed out against King Henry which weakened the kings power in his struggle with Rome.

The Magna Carta • The Magna Carta was signed by King John in 1215. • The Magna Carta was a document that limited the Church’s power.

The Hundred Years’ War • The English and French entered into the Hundred Years’ War (1337-1453) because two English kings were claiming they were to take the French throne. • This war showed that England was no longer represented by the armor clad knight but by the green clad yeoman. Common people were taking up the fight for their country.

Commercial Networks

The Black Death • The Black Death, or bubonic plague, struck England in 1348-1349. • The Black Death was highly contagious and killed approximately one third of the population. • The Black Death caused the end of feudalism.

Plague/Black Death: • Took out 54 million • 1/3 of population wiped out • Defining event(s) of the Middle Ages • Spread by fleas which lived on rats • A lack of cleanliness added to their vulnerability: crowded with poor sanitation; ate stale or diseased meat; primitive medicine (people were often advised to not bathe b/c open skin pores might let in the disease). • Highly contagious disease nodules would burst around the area of the flea bite.

In 1347, Italian merchant ships returned from the Black Sea, one of the links along the trade route between Europe and China. Many of the sailors were already dying of the plague, and within days the disease had spread from the port cities to the surrounding countryside. The disease spread as far as England within a year.

Some Important Cultural Changes: 1. Flowering of Poetry about Courtly Love

2. Peasant Uprisings and Plague (1/3 of population at one point)

Some Important Cultural Changes: Flowering of Poetry About Courtly Love: • For nobles only • Troubadours (professional singers) sang of courtliness, brave deeds, and Romantic love accompanied by a harp or lute. • Courtly love poetry praised an idealized, distant, unattainable lady love (e.g. Beatrice in Dante’s Divine Comedy) • Artificial passion with strict rules.

• For instance, a loved one could be married to someone else. • Developed in literature –stories of unrequited love and heroic knights. • E.g., Arthurian legends in France; best is Lancelot by Chretien de Troyes about the court of King Arthur, a Celtic chieftain of 6th century Britain who fought the Anglo-Saxon invaders.

Flowering of Poetry About Courtly Love, cont.:

• As often seen in lit/art: Told in manner of late Middle Ages with forbidden love, knightly combats, and colorful pageantry.

• Hearty, masculine culture of early Middle Ages was giving way to a more tranquil, confident, and leisurely society. • Over time, a noble’s castle became more of a theater for refined pleasures than a barracks for fighting men.

Some Important Cultural Changes:

Peasant Uprisings & Plague • Guilds grew in late middle ages. • Craftsmen each had their own guild: ropemakers, armorers, mailmakers, master dyers, stonemasons, weavers, etc. • Plague freed many from vassalage and opened up

• Difficult hierarchical training program from apprentice to master and job placement. Functioned as a union of sorts. Guilds became very rich and powerful over time. • Origin of freemasons, for instance.

Common Elements between the Rich and the Poor in the Middle Ages: • Subservience to God’s church • Church played a big role—birth, baptism • Church owned a third of all the land in Europe • Church played a big role in politics. • Belief that great cathedrals should be erected

• Belief in God, heaven, and hell • All actions had consequences (good life led to a good experience in heaven).

Romanesque Architecture: prevalent during 9th-12th century • • • •

Rounded Arches Barrel Vaults Thick walls Darker, simplistic interiors • Small windows usually at the top of the wall • Circular Rose Window usually on the West Side

Rose Window • The basic round rose window was developed as part of the Romanesque period but developed further and was used in Gothic Architecture. • Notice the Romanesque style top left versus the Gothic style bottom left (from the cathedral of Notre Dame). Intricate stone tracery is used in the

Gothic Architecture: prevalent in W. Europe from 12th – 15th Cen. C.E. Features:

• • • • •

Pointed arches High, narrow vaults Thinner walls Flying buttresses Elaborate, ornate, airier interiors • Stained-glass windows

•Everything reaches to heaven, to God