Western Civilization Exam 3

The Black Death, Hundred Years War

. As a result of the development during the High Middle Ages (1100-1300), Europe may be decentralized, but it's nevertheless prosperous. There are a couple of changes, however, around the 1300s that curtail and diminish this growth. First is a period of NON-MAN MADE climatic change known as the Little Ice Age, when temperatures become much cooler than before. See, in previous years, Europe enjoyed what was called the Medieval Warm Period. Now, despite what Al Gore will tell you, this type of 'global warming,' didn't cause chaos, but rather created growth. The longer the warm period you have in any given year, the longer the growing season. Moreover, during this warm period, you were able to have, for example, vineyards in the north of England (which isn't the case today), and prosperous farming as far north as Greenland. Once this little Ice Age hits, however, you have shorter growing periods, and farming isn't possible in places like Greenland anymore. As a consequence, you have less food, which leads to famine and starvation. So you're having this problem, but that' s not all. On top of this, by the mid-1300s, the Black Death hits Europe. It originates in China, where the plague first appears in rodents, and the fleas on these rodents transmit the disease. Once all the rodents die, the fleas have to find other things to feed off of, so they feed off humans, thus spreading the disease. Furthermore, now that it's in the humans, they spread this plague via the trade routes, where it reaches the Black Sea region by 1346, where it gets transported to the Mediterranean by Italian merchants by 1347, and it pretty much hits all of Western Europe by 1348. The disease manifests itself in humans via the symptoms which include inflamed lymph nodes in the neck, armpit and groin areas. Internal haemorrhaging often discolours the inflammations to a black or purple hue (hence Black Death), called buboes, which gives us the name bubonic plague. The disease kills up to 60-70 percent of its victims. So in Medieval Europe, you have the disease wiping out the entire population of small villages and towns. Now, not all of Europe is hit. The plague does not spread to colder areas, where fleas don't have long to live. So Scandinavia, for example, doesn't suffer, Poland doesn't suffer (incidentally, for some unknown reason, India doesn't get hit AT ALL by the plague, and sub-Saharan Africa avoids the plague as well). Let's talk numbers to give you an idea of how the Black Death managed to decimate any populations it came across. The Black Death killed about 40% of Egypt's population (and Egypt's pre-plague population levels aren't reached until the 19th century). Half of Paris's population of 100,000 people had died. In Italy, Florence's population was reduced from 110,000 or 120,000 inhabitants in 1338 to 50,000 in 1351. At least 60% of Hamburg's and Bremen's population perished.[42] Before 1350, there were about 170,000 settlements in Germany, and this had been reduced by nearly 40,000 by 1450. In crowded cities, it was not uncommon for as much as 50% of the population to die. Europeans living in isolated areas suffered less, whereas monks and priests were especially hard hit since they cared for the Black Death's victims.[44] Because 14th century healers were at a loss to explain the cause, Europeans turned to astrological forces, earthquakes, and the poisoning of wells by Jews as possible reasons for the plague's emergence.[12] The governments of Europe had no apparent response to the crisis because no one knew its cause or how it spread. The mechanism of infection and transmission of diseases was little understood in the 14th century; many people believed only God's anger could produce such horrific displays. There were many attacks against Jewishcommunities.[45] In August 1349, the Jewish communities of Mainz and Cologne were exterminated. In February of that same year, the citizens of Strasbourg murdered 2,000 Jews.[45] By 1351, 60 major and 150 smaller Jewish communities had been destroyed.[46] The Brotherhood of the Flagellants, a movement said to number up to 800,000, reached its peak of popularity. Overall, the plague reduces the world population from about 450 million in 1300 to about 350 million in 1400. And it's not over. The plague will recur in many areas sporadically from about the mid-fourteenth century all the way down to 1600. High death rates cause labour shortages, which in turn generates social unrest. In Western Europe, urban workers demand higher wages, and many leave their homes in search of better conditions. Political authorities try to freeze wages and forbid workers to leave their homes in response. Peasants try to move to lands where they can get better deals, but the attempted restriction on their movements by the authorities who are trying to preserve the feudal system results in conflict between the two groups culminating in a series of rebellions throughout the towns and countryside of western Europe. One of the most famous ones of these was the revolt in France in 1358 known as the Jacquerie. It had been caused by the dislocation that came with the Black Death (as well as the Hundred Years War, which we will talk about in a moment). See, as a result of the Northern French countryside being laid waste to by both English and French forces constantly fighting with each other (scorched earth policy was a method used by both sides in France during this War) as well as being extorted by mercenaries fighting in the war, the peasants rose up and started laying waste to the lands and possessions of the French nobility, whom they felt were not properly protecting them. Indeed, the original reason that the peasants gave for this uprising was that not only were they not protected, they believed that the nobles were also responsible for allowing the French King, John II, to be captured in battle by the English in 1356. The revolt was led by Guillaume Cale, although the revolt itself did not seem to have any real organization. Nor was there really an ideology, save for the possible idea that the peasants thought that, after so much suffering on their part, thought it was time for the nobles to suffer. The historian Froissart writes them off as mindless thugs who destroyed the homes and castles of 150 noble families during the course of the revolt, and that this revolt had spread from the countryside to towns and cities such as Rouen and Rheims, and the citizens of Paris were pressured to offer their support to the Jacquerie in return for them not attacking the capital. The revolt ends when Cale, who is offered parley by the nobility, foolishly walks into their camp near the town of Mello, where he is summarily tortured and decapitated. The revolt then loses steam as the nobility regain their nerve after this: they massacre some of the revolts supporters (such as at Rheims), inflict on them punitive taxation (leading to a good number of the peasants leaving the countryside). England about a generation later witnessed the emergence of the Peasants Revolt in England in 1381. Now, this uprising is not an act of desperation but rather an uprising that resulted from , growing expectations by the peasantry that their lot in life would improve as their status as a live peasant made them in demand. Initially with the Black Death, those peasants left alive enjoyed greater freedom, higher wages, and lower rents. The Aristocracy, believing that this upset the order of things (and depressed their wallets) responded by passing laws which artificially lowered wages or tried to impose old feudal dues. The monarchy also played a part in this under the boy-king Richard II, who attempted to raise revenue by creating a poll tax at the same time. In response, peasants either refuse to pay the tax or end up giving beatings to taxmen who come to try to collect. This small conflict soon turns into a wide-scale rebellion by both peasants in the country and in the towns, when the peasants burn down the manor houses of aristocrats, lawyers, or government officials. In many instances, peasants kill several important officials, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, to vent their rage. Out of the revolt two leaders, Wat Tyler and John Ball, emerge to demand the elimination of the poll tax as well as higher wages. The peasants are personally met by Richard II, who initially agrees to their demands, but then reneges on the deal, proclaiming 'Knaves ye were and Knaves ye shall remain!' and then arrests hundred of the rebels, with the leaders of the revolt being executed. While the revolt was suppressed, it should be noted that the poll tax was eliminated, and most of the rebels end up being pardoned. Also a major development which emerges during this time is the conflict known as the Hundred Years War between France and England (1337-1453). This conflict originates in the fact that the French King kept insisting on treating the King of England as a vassal, which he nominally was by virtue of William the Conqueror's origins. Also a cause was the fact that the EVIL! King Philip IV had died without producing a male heir, making the King of England at the time, Edward III (1327-1377), the closest male heir and most legitimate claimant to the throne, and this was met with opposition by French nobles who wanted the guy with less of a claim to the throne to be king (this guy was later known as Philip VI, 1328-1350). Another cause was the fact the the English had by 1259 renounced all claims to French lands except Aquitaine (Gascony), but this isn't enough for Philip VI, and he seizes the region. As both Edward III and Philip VI were guys who loved luxury, and desired glory and prestige, their personalities clashing can be said to be a major cause of the conflict which lasted for over a century. Ostensibly, the war is fought by the traditional military class of the knights. But over time, it becomes evident that the main determinant of the various battles of the war come down to the performance of ordinary foot soldiers. The thing is, while the French, being jerks, treat their own foot soldiers as smelly peasants only worth of contempt, the English treat their foot soldiers much better and equip them more ably. Better treated soldiers mean better performances. Ostensibly, the English enjoy most of the victories of the war, including those at Crecy (1348) and Poitiers (1356) where Edward III and his son, Edward the Black Prince defeat French forces, the latter battle of which results in an English victory and the capture and ransom of the French King, John II (1350-1364). But for the most part, the Black Prince avoids pitched battles and instead ravages and pillages French lands in order to weaken the French. The Battle of Poitiers leads the French to sue for peace at the Peace of Bretigny in 1359, when the French agree to pay a huge sum to ransom the King, the English gain lands in Aquitaine/Gascony, and Edward III gives up his claim to the French throne (which he did with the outbreak of the war) as long as the French guarantee to respect English sovereignty in Gascony. This marks the end of the first phase of the Hundred Years War. While these are major victories for the English (and the French, predictably, end up surrendering ;), it becomes clear that as much as the English would like to think that they could take over all of France, they can't, they're not strong enough. The only thing is that the treaty ending the first phase never really gets enforced. John II's son, Charles V (1364-1380), renews the conflict and is able to recover the French lands that he's lost. As he knows that French Kryptonite is the term 'set battle,' he avoids them, and proceeds to harass the English fortresses with small bands of men, ultimately capturing them and slowly taking away their bases of operation. While the English are able to nevertheless continue to plunder the French countryside (and the mercenaries who lose their pay when the English leave start living off the French land and pillaging it), things are equalized by Charles V's efforts. By 1396, another truce is called. The War breaks out again in 1415, when the English king Henry V (1413-1422), takes advantage of the fact that the French King, Charles VI (1380-1422), was busy trying to win a civil war he was fighting against the rebellious dukes of Burgundy and Orleans. Henry takes advantage of this and declares war on France, hoping to make a land grab. He invades and smashes the French army at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, in which the French knights are massacred, largely because they fight on a muddy field in heavy rain, thus slowing their mobility and ensuring that they get annihilated by the English longbowmen even before they reach the English lines, while the French lose 6,000 men, the English only lose 300. Henry follows up this victory by re-conquering Normandy, and forging an alliance with the Duke of Burgundy. This causes Charles to sue for peace, signing the treaty of Troyes in 1420, where he gave his daughter to Henry in marriage, and recognizes Henry as heir to the French throne. With this peace, the English not only control Aquitaine but also most of Northern France. Things look great for the English and horrible for the French at this time, and the fact that Charles VI is succeeded by a worthless weakling, Charles VII, doesn't make anything look better for the Gallic cause. Things turn around, however, for the French. Henry V dies unexpectedly in 1422, and is succeeded by the weak boy king Henry VI. The English nevertheless try to continue their conquest of France in 1429 when Charles VII refuses to recognize Henry VI's claims to the English throne. They're stopped, however, by none other than Joan of Arc, a 17-year-old French peasant girl, who's not only deeply religious, she claims that she has had visions of saints commanding her to free France from the tyranny of the English. When she shows up with this story to Charles VII, the king, inspired by her faith and (being French) desperate for any kind of military victory, allows her to accompany the French army to Orleans, which the English were besieging. Under Joan's leadership, Orleans is liberated and this provides inspiration for the French, who are able to turn the war around now that they have military leadership. The English begin losing, and Charles VII, now able to legitimately be crowned as king of France, can be the one thanking her. However, being a perfidious French jerk, Charles sees her as a political threat, and when Joan is captured by the Burgundian allies of the English and put on trial for witchcraft and being in league with Satan (wearing boy's clothes was evidently a sign of this unholy alliance), he doesn't lift a finger to help her. Joan is burnt at the stake in 1431 at the age of 19, her last cries being that it was indeed the agents of God and not Satan who were the one to speak to her and give her the mission to save France. 25 years later, she's posthumously exonerated by a Church court, and in 1920, she's made a saint in the Roman Catholic Church. Joan of Arc's contributions to the war effort make the French fight harder to push the English out. With Henry VI's weak leadership, as well as the deaths of England's best commanders, the French slowly push England out of the country and by 1453, the only place the English still control is the coastal town of Calais, which remains English for another century. This marks one of the few times that the French actually win a war, so make sure to remember it! (I'm SO SORRY, but it's just so damn tempting to make fun of French military prowess, or lack thereof. That and the fact that, according to my family tree, I'm a descendant of the Plantagenets tends to skew my views ;).

Byzantium and Islam

But Roman authority is still in existence. The Roman empire did not really 'fall' in 476, because in the East, you still have the government at Constantinople that has managed to both fight off Sassanid incursions from the East, as well as prevent a barbarian takeover of the government as had happened in Rome. Their roads are still good, they've still got the political institutions, their army isn't as good as it had been round the time of Marcus Aurelius and Gladiator, but it's still a force to be reckoned with. The office of emperor, partly in response to its complete disappearance in the West, while no longer considered as divine in itself, has an aura of divinity. This was first conceptualized by Diocletian who, witnessing that the emperors before him usually ended up on the wrong side of a sword, realized that he needed to create the idea of an emperor who had divine powers in order to dissuade would-be assassins from killing him ('How do you kill a guy that has superpowers, etc.?'). Although under the Christian Roman Empire, the emperor does not claim divinity, he still claims divine favour and sanction for his rule. Consequently, as this agent of God, he sees fit to intervene in theological disputes (because there are many disputes in a Church that is still formulating its overall doctrine), giving his support to those views he considered orthodox, and condemning those he considered heretical. The emperor believes that he needs to hold the uniformity of his religion together so that people can rally around it, and will interfere with Church matters when he sees fit. A couple of examples: In 325, Constantine has to oversee the Council of Nicaea in 325, which was formed to decide whether or not the Christian Church would accept Arianism (the idea that Jesus was a really nice guy but NOT the Son of God) or Orthodoxy (the idea that Jesus IS the Son of God). The Orthodox (later Catholic) belief wins out. Later, emperors have to oversee Councils over the question of Jesus' human and divine qualities. See, the Monophysite Christians believed that Jesus, being the Son of God, was not human but rather was just going through the motions. The duophysite belief, as adopted by the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, believed that Jesus was both human and divine (thus making God's sacrifice of his only Son all the more important). The latter group wins out. But if you think that this is just theologians debating each other, it's not. These are tooth and nail fights were you have people rioting in the streets and are willing to burn down entire cities in order to make their point all the more forcefully. The emperor therefore might feel that he HAS to interfere in Church councils as a way of helping to keep the peace. This is what is called Caesaropapism, where the emperor not only rules as a secular lord, but also plays an important role in ecclesiastical affairs. This is not necessarily a new development, as Augustus, when he was emperor, also attached the office of Pontifex Maximus as one of the duties of the emperor. In the same vein (despite the increasing role of bishops and other church hierarchy—the pope basically being the Pontifex Maximus in the West, for example-- in administering the Church), this is merely a natural extension of that early imperial role, only in a Christian rather than pagan atmosphere. So in the Roman Empire and later the Eastern Roman Empire, you have emperors presiding over Church councils to define Christian dogma. The emperors find it necessary to do so, as this is not just a bunch of bishops arguing with each other, you actually have people out on the streets rioting over the nature of Christ and the question of whether he was the son of God or not. So in 325 at the Council of Nicaea, you have major conflict between those clergy and intellectuals who believe that Jesus is NOT the Son of God but just a really nice guy (Arians) and those clergy who believe he IS the son of God (called Orthodox, and later, Catholic). Constantine essentially sides with the Orthodox and forces everyone to see things his way. Later, you have conflict arising between those who believe that Jesus, as Son of God, was fully divine (and that he was just going through the motions regarding dying for our sins, etc.), called Monophysites (single nature of Christ), and those who believed that Jesus possessed a dual nature as Son of God, being both divine and human at the same time (the latter belief wins out, thanks to its sponsorship by the emperors). THEN you have people arguing over how divine he is (is he 50-50, 60-40, etc?). This, as well as debate over the nature of the Trinity (God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit), are issues that the emperor believes he needs to be in front of so that whole droves of people don't end up killing each other over theological matters. Hence, Caesaropapism. What would have made Augustus cringe if he was around in 500 was that the office of the emperor had become one that enjoyed absolute rule. They were above the law, and wielded absolute power in military, political, judicial, financial, and religious matters with a large centralized bureaucracy to implement their rulings and edicts. They dress not in a modest toga with a laurel wreath, but like Elvis during his days singing 'My Way' at Caesar's Palace. Bejeweled crowns, silk dark purple robes. High officials prostrate themselves before the emperor as his slave and kiss his hands and feet. Some say he can even heal the sick as a result of his connection with heavenly powers. So the emperor isn't really a 'First Citizen' of the Empire, anymore, but rather the Lord of an Eastern absolutist monarchy, more a King of Persia than a Princeps of Rome. Indeed, this clear change of the nature of the emperor from that of First citizen to that of absolute monarch is referred to by historians as the period of the Dominate, which began in 284 under Diocletian, who wanted to keep himself from getting killed. The most important of these Eastern Roman, or Byzantine as they are called to differentiate them from the Romans proper, Emperors was Justinian I (reigned 527-565). Justinian was an energetic emperor who was so dedicated to work that he was called the 'sleepless emperor' by his subjects. He had a wife, Theodora, who had a rather shady past. It was said that she was a dancer at the court of Constantinople (read: Prostitute), and not only could she do things with swans and grain during lascivious public performances (use your imagination), she had in the past shacked up with a governor of Carthage, who then threw her out of bed with no money. So it is said that in order to get back to Constantinople, she slept her way from Carthage, through Africa and Egypt, up through Syria, and all the way back to the imperial capital for the money she made off of her negotiable affections. So Justinian sees something in her, I guess. Thing is, Theodora is shrewd and intelligent as well, and puts her past behind her to become a very able empress, at one point even saving her husband's throne during a major revolt at Constantinople early in his reign, called the Nika Riots, which arose out of fighting amongst chariot fans at the Hippodrome (the Circus) in the capital. These riots, which would have forced Justinian to leave Constantinople had Theodora not told him to man up, were put down only after 30,000 rioters were killed and much of the city burnt down. Theodora, however, could be as much of a hindrance as she was helpful, however, and used to interfere in political and religious matters in such a way that she came into conflict with Justinian. Nevertheless, the emperor loved her deeply, and was beside himself with grief when she died of an unspecified cancer in 548 at the age of 48 (Justinian wept bitterly at her funeral). Justinian during his reign beautifies much of Constantinople (much of which had burned down during these aforementioned riots). The most important building built during this time was the Church of Hagia Sophia ('Divine Wisdom') which still stands today (it was later converted into a mosque during the Ottoman Conquest of the city, but today there's been a bit of negotiation and evidently they have Church services in the back part where no one can see, so one of my old priests told me). Justinian's reign is also important for his codification of Roman law, which had never actually been codified. It's essentially a compilation of Roman Laws from the Republic through the Empire that becomes the definitive law system for the Eastern Roman Empire. This Corpus Iuris Civilis later serves as a source of legal inspiration and becomes one of the major influences for civil law codes throughout Europe. Look at the laws of various European states today, and they all have an influence from Rome as well as the Eastern emperor who finally got around to codifying it. But Justinian isn't just content with doing this. See, it always ate at him that the Western Empire was being ruled by a bunch of stupid lame, smelly barbarians. So he wants to be the emperor who reunites the Roman Empire under his rule. So beginning in 553, Justinian sends his general Belisarius to conquer the kingdom of the Vandals in Africa. The Vandals are really unpopular (despite the fact that they were said to have the most beautiful women in the world in their numbers), and Belisarius is able to attack and dismantle Africa without too much trouble. Justinian then takes advantage of a power struggle in the Ostrogothic court that rules Italy, and has Belisarius invade that region. Initially, Belisarius is extremely successful, managing to re-capture Rome for the empire. Moreover, Eastern Roman troops are able to carve out a foothold for themselves in southern Spain. So it would seem that Justinian is well on his way to reconquering the entire Roman Empire. But there are some problems. The main one is that Justinian can't really financially afford to reclaim the entire Roman empire, and his forces get bogged down accordingly. First, the troops in Spain can't really make any gains and are hemmed in by the Visigothic forces. Second, after the initial successes in Italy, Ostrogothic forces manage to rally against the Eastern Romans and Belisarius' forces get bogged down in a twenty year conflict called the Gothic War which ends up destroying much of Italy. Add to the fact that you have the Sassanid Persians, who see Justinian's preoccupation with the West, and take advantage of it by invading Eastern Roman Territory. Plus, you've got a new tribe of people, the Slavs, threatening Justinian's northern borders. Add to this the fact that you have a MAJOR plague (a MAJOR plague that the book for some reason forgets to mention) hit the Mediterranean at this time, killing off many of the inhabitants of that area, and Justinian's dream of a restored Roman empire disappears. At his death, the borders that include Justinian's conquests remain, but don't let these borders fool you. The population is decimated, major wars are going on in Italy and on the Eastern borders, and the Empire is a lot poorer and in worse shape than it had been when Justinian came to the throne. This isn't entirely Justinian's fault, but in any case events play out over the next 75 years in such a way that make the idea of restoring Rome's old borders becomes an impossibility. After Justinian's death, the Eastern Roman Empire and Sassanid Persia were constantly at war with each other. Persia manages to launch a major invasion of the empire during the reign of Heraclius (610-641), but not only does Heraclius push them out, he manages to invade Persian territory and bring them to heel. But both empires are militarily exhausted. We now move the scene to the south, and talk of events going on in Arabia during this period. See, there was this gentleman called Muhammad, born around the year 570. By this time (the early 600s) he's a successful merchant, and is making a life for himself in the region. By 610, however, he has a religious experience, which leaves him with the deeply held belief that there is only one true deity, called Allah. Allah, Muhammad said, rules the universe, condemns idolatry and worship of other gods, and will soon bring His judgement on the world. Muhammad realized this after visions that were imparted to him by the archangel Gabriel (the overall messenger of God for Jews, Christians, and Muslims), who instructed Muhammad to explain his faith to others. By the 620s, Muhammad is starting to have a following at Mecca. Here he talks to his followers, giving oral recitations of his visions and revelations, which would later be written down and issued as the Koran ('recitation'), the holiest of Muslim books. Muhammad's sayings would also be written down in a slightly less important but STILL REALLY IMPORTANT work called the Hadith. Some of these stories are of Muhammad's life, and I don't want to go too deeply into this, but some are...well, a bit interesting in places. But Muhammad runs into trouble at Mecca, where his new fangled beliefs don't jibe with the polytheistic elites there. Moreover, the elites, mostly merchants, take great offense at Muhammad proclaiming that greed and a love of money was wickedness and that Allah would come and punish those who glorified avarice. Muhammad comes out against the ubiquitous idolatry at Mecca, and this is a threat to those who owned and profited from the many shrines to the deities which attracted pilgrims to Mecca. The best known shrine was a large black rock which was considered to be the house of a deity (it was dedicated to the moon god Hubal) and it also contained 360 idols which either represented days of the year or effigies of the Arabian pantheon. This rock was housed (and as far as I know still is housed) in a cube shaped building called the Kaaba, or Ka'ba, and brought a load of pilgrims and worshippers to Mecca. When Muhammad condemns the idolatry present at the Ka'ba, the elites at Mecca drive him out of the city by 622. So Muhammad and his followers go on a journey referred to as the Hejira ('migration'), where they ended up in the city of Yathrib, which they renamed Medina ('City of the Prophet). With this arrival at Medina, the official Islamic calendar has its starting point. While in Medina, Muhammad organized his followers into a community called the umma (or, 'community of the faithful') and provides that community with a legal and social code. He led this community not only in prayer to Allah, but also in battle against enemies from Mecca as well as other places. Muhammad during this time also looks out for the widows, orphans and the poor in his community, and he instructs his followers that almsgiving is a moral virtue. He begins to refer to himself as the 'seal of the prophets.' That is, before him there were many prophets, including Abraham, Moses, as well as Jesus. Muhammad stated that he believed that Allah was the same god as the God of the Jews and the Christian God. Muhammad goes on to say, however, that he is the prophet to whom Allah has given the most complete revelation of his plan. He is the final prophet through whom Allah would reveal His message to humanity, and this message is what drives the new religion of Islam ('submission'). Now, there are repeated attacks on Medina by the Meccans, but these attacks are repelled by Muhammad and his followers and by this time the adherents of Islam make it into a viable political and military as well as a religious force. Indeed, Muhammad and his followers fight a series of bloody conflicts and by 630, they attack Mecca and conquer the city. They force the elites to adopt Muhammad's faith, impose a government dedicated to Allah (and to this day, non-Muslims, for the most part, are not allowed within the city limits of Mecca), and destroy the pagan shrines, replacing them with mosques. Only the Kaaba escapes being dismantled, but it is cleansed of the idols that reside there, and only the black stone remains. To redefine the Kaaba within the context of Islam, Muhammad proclaims that all Muslims should make a pilgrimage to Mecca and the Kaaba (hajj). In many ways, this goes somewhat against the orders of idolatry, but Muhammad probably believes that, in order to make his religion more popular with the people o f Mecca, he needs to compromise. Muhammad continues to articulate the beliefs of his religion. He states that Muslims, as a condition of their religious obligation, mush adhere to the Five Pillars of Islam: 1) Recognize Allah as the only god and Muhammad as his prophet 2) Muslims must pray to Allah daily while facing Mecca 3) Muslims must fast during the daylight hours of the month of Ramadan 4) Alms should be given to the weak and the poor, and 5) those who are physically and financially able must undertake the hajj and make at least one pilgrimage to Mecca. Beyond these obligations, Islamic holy law (sharia) emerges after Muhammad's death to make it a way of life as well as a religious doctrine. It gives precise guidance on matters such as marriage, family life, crime, political authority, slavery, business relationships, inheritance, etc. These core obligations are later joined by another obligation, that of jihad. Not all Muslims observe the obligation of jihad, which means 'struggle.' Now, Jihad requires those who observe it to fight vice and evil. Jihad can also mean an obligation of Muslims to take up the sword and wage war against infidels who threaten Islam. It can also mean calling on Muslims to struggle against unbelief by spreading the word of Islam and seeking converts to the faith. These last two types of Jihad, then, have led many in the West to define the term Jihad as 'holy war,' although that term and Jihad are not necessarily synonymous at all times. But if you look at the West's only real experience with jihad, you find that But Jihad certainly helps to spread the word of Islam in Muhammad's last years, when his followers bring most of the Arabian peninsula under their control. By 632, Muhammad dies, and his followers wonder who is going to succeed him. The successor can't be a prophet, as Muhammad was the 'seal of the prophets.' So Muhammad's close friend, Abu Bakr, is chosen as a caliph, or deputy, to the prophet, to lead Islam's followers, and to spread the word, enlarging the 'Caliphate' of Islam. So after conquering the Arabian peninsula in 632, the armies of Islam move against those two empires who are exhausted from fighting each other, Eastern Rome and Sassanid Persia. Between 633 and 637, Muslim forces seize Byzantine Syria and Palestine, and took most of Mesopotamia from the Sassanids. During the 640s, they conquer Byzantine Egypt and North Africa. As I've said, Byzantium is completely exhausted after years of war with Persia, so they don't have it in them to successfully resist. In 651, the armies of Islam destroy the Sassanid dynasty and incorporate Persia into their empire, by 711, they move into India in the East, and into Spain in the West, threatening Frankish Gaul. Strangely enough, the Visigothic elites, who were constantly fighting amongst themselves, made for a weak barrier to Islam in Spain, especially when one group of elites invited the leader of the Muslim forces there, General Tariq, to intervene on their behalf. We can't really blame Tariq for taking advantage of the stupidity of these elites to come into Spain and effectively conquer it by the beginning of the 8th century. So in less than 80 years, the Islamic world is immense, stretching from Spain to India. If this means that everything is stable in Islam, it's not (indeed, as we saw with the Romans, a period of rapid expansion can mean growing pains with regard to internal problems, which springs from trying to cope with such growth) . As the Caliphate gets bigger, many argue over who should lead as the caliph (the first four caliphs are from the most powerful Arab clans, but bigger lands and more of the faithful mean different goals and interests with regard to the religious leadership from these added parties, and you see the development of factions trying to realize their own respective goals and interests). Disagreements over the succession of who should be Caliph result, by the 660s, in a schism within Islam. The sect of Muslims known as the Shia or Shiite ('party'), tries to assert that all Caliphs should be a descendant of the prophet Muhammad (they later say that descendants of the prophet are infallible, sinless, and have a divine mandate to rule the Islamic community). The majority of Muslims, the Sunni ('traditionalists'), do not believe that leadership of the Caliphate should be restricted to the family of Muhammad. As a result, there is fighting between the Sunni and Shia factions. To resolve this infighting, a new political dynasty is created to solve the problem over this succession. This government is referred to as the Umayyad Dynasty, or Caliphate. It's made up of the most prominent of the Meccan merchant clans who harness a network of alliances that bring stability to the Islamic community. They have their capital at Damascus, and their government there is centralized. Despite resolving the problem of succession, as well as having a centralized rule, there is resentment amongst the conquered peoples of the new Islamic empire. First, the leaders of the government tend to favour their Arab subjects a bit too much, and their policies favour giving conquered lands to members of the Arab military aristocracy, while everyone else just has to deal (this can, for example, cause major resentment among, say, the Berber population of North Africa, or the Persian population of Iran). Moreover, although the Arabs allowed for the most part some conquered peoples to, say, stay Christian, Jewish, or Zoroastrian rather than convert to Islam (the Koran forbids forced conversion, although some individual Muslim rulers don't necessarily follow this tenet at all times), these peoples are referred to as dhimmi, by the government. The dhimmi not only have to pay a special poll tax, the jizya, to safely observe their religion, but they are subject, basically, to a form of institutionalized discrimination (they have to dress a certain way, they have special building regulations imposed on them by the government, and their openness of worship is restricted). The Muslim rulers probably let them stay around as they are the main tax base, as, strictly speaking, Muslims do not have to pay taxes (that being said, the taxes that are paid by non-Muslims are CONSIDERABLY lower than the taxes they paid under the Eastern Roman Emperors). However, it must be noted that many Muslims would say 'Yes, non-Muslims have to pay the jizya, but it's every Muslim's duty to contribute funds to society via alms, one of the Five Pillars. Seriously, we'll risk our immortal souls if we don't give alms! And Dude, you DO NOT WANT TO GO TO THE ISLAMIC VERSION OF HELL!' So it's not as if the Muslims are depending on non-Muslims to finance their society, because that's not the case. Now, to be fair, the Christians at this point are also very much of the 'my way or the highway' philosophy, and in many places they don't even like the idea of having people of different religions living in their areas AT ALL, and tend to go the way of 'convert or die.' Indeed, as the Church gets more powerful, it tends to look more towards preserving its religious monopoly and would deliver anyone they saw as heretical or unorthodox to the 'secular arm of the law,' which would oblige the Church by either imprisoning or even executing said heretics or non-Christians. Just look at the Jews of the Middle Ages and they pretty much are in the same situation in Europe as they are in the Middle East. So religious toleration is paid lip service in the Koran, at least. But here's the thing. What's interesting in the Koran is that Muhammad at first instructs Muslims to be good to people of the Book. However, this statement is problematic as it only applies to certain Christians and certain groups of Jews in only some geographical regions (i.e. while the Coptic Christians of Egypt are to be tolerated, the Roman Catholics are not). With regard to non-Muslims, dhimmi law emerges. This is when Muslims allow people of other religions to live in their lands, they tend to make them 'know their place,' and when the poll tax is paid, it's implied, in some areas, that these people should be told of their need to convert to Islam (and if they protest, they're pretty much to be scoffed at or ridiculed in the least) This applies to modern times as well, especially if we look at what's happening to Christians in Iraq, Iran, Egypt, and Sudan in the last few years where major violence against these people has taken place; or the Jews in Middle Eastern lands before the emergence of modern Israel. Tolerance of non-Muslim groups tends to swing between either a slight irritation with the fact that these people are living in these lands, or outright violence against them. But that's recent history, let's get back to the seventh century AD/CE. Those non-Arabs who wished to escape such restrictions by converting to Islam did not enjoy access to any of the wealth or positions of authority, which the Umayyad government reserves exclusively for members of the Arab military aristocracy (but not, say, for Berbers or Persians, who are looked down upon and made to feel inferior by the Arabs). So, although Islam enjoys astonishing success in claiming lands from Western China to Spain in less than 100 years, the Islamic world is not without its potential for internal problems/tensions, and those problems will rear their ugly heads for the Umayyads sooner rather than later.. Externally, the Caliphate's neighbours feel VERY, VERY threatened by the Umayyads and their new religion. The Eastern Roman Empire (now referred to as the Byzantine Empire) survives, although territorially it's a shadow of its former self. While it was losing lands in the East, it finds itself losing territory in hard-won Italy to a new band of invaders, the Lombards, which essentially drive through Italy and carve out a kingdom for themselves. So Byzantium must find a way to continue on in a much smaller form. Other kingdoms, such as that of the Franks in Western Europe, are also vigilant about preventing Islam from coming into their lands. So the events of the seventh century pave the way for future conflict between Christian Europe (referred to as 'Christendom'), and the realm of Islam.

Germanic Kingdoms, Church

Now, most of the barbarian kings, upon coming into these lands, are outnumbered by Romans several times over. Not only do the Romans outnumber them, they have the monopoly on economic resources. Moreover, although the barbarian kings considered themselves Christian, they were Arian Christians (that is, people who believe that Jesus is a really nice guy but ISN'T the Son of God), so the barbarians are looked upon as heretics as well. Nevertheless, while some barbarian kingdoms don't last so long, others are able to impose themselves upon the Romans and rule both successfully and effectively. Now, there are four MAJOR kingdoms which emerge from the ruins of the Western Roman Empire, and they are: The Ostrogothic (East Gothic) Kingdom of Italy, the Visigothic (West Gothic) kingdom of Spain, the Kingdom of the Franks (in Gaul) and the kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxons. Let's start with the Ostrogoths. It's the late 480s, and the Eastern Roman Emperor (or, by now, the ONLY Roman Emperor) Zeno (474-475;476-491) has already been overthrown once, has taken back his throne, put down SEVERAL revolts against his rule, resolved a few religious controversies with regard to the nature of Christ, and managed to keep the Goths from destroying his half of the empire. He makes nice with the Ostrogoth King Theodoric, buying him off and telling him it would be a good idea to settle elsewhere. Theodoric asks 'Where?' and Zeno tells him to go West and, serving as Zeno's deputy, attack Odoacer in Italy and reconquer the peninsula for the Empire. Theodoric ostensibly agrees to do so, and duly goes in, kills Odoacer, and then, because Zeno isn't around to stop him (Zeno died in 491 and his successor, Athanasius I, was too concerned with fighting off Persians in the East and trying to promote Monophysite Christianity after his successor had just established Duophysitism as the Christianity of the Empire), declares himself king of Italy in 493. Theodoric, despite being a Hasselhoff-loving, sausage eating, beer swilling German Barbarian, is a BIG fan of the Roman Empire and the traditions of Rome. Theodoric, above all, managed to maintain Roman traditions, both governmentally and culturally. Theodoric, after all, spent his youth as a hostage at the court of the emperor at Constantinople, and consequently received a classical Roman education (he knows Latin and Greek as well as Gothic). Theodoric's idea is to preserve the Roman system (the Romans still have a Senate, they still are ruled over administratively by consuls, etc.), while the Ostrogoths will live by their own laws, and will have control of the army. This 'dual approach' of rule seemed to work for awhile. Theodoric also issues an edict of Toleration for the Jews, keeps his Gothic subordinates from running wild all over Italy, and seems to have issued some sort of tax relief towards the Romans (or at least lip service). He also kept an eye on the Vandal Kingdom, bringing them to heel when they tried to invade Theodoric's newly acquired lands. Moreover, as a way of trying to mute his presence with the Romans, made sure to rule from Ravenna, while at Rome the senatorial aristocracy was considered to be the ruling class there. In all, it looks like nothing has changed. However, later in his reign, Theodoric's initial affability and tolerance is melting away. This is mainly because, in the 520s, the Eastern Roman Empire (first ruled by Justin, but he's old, so Justinian is influencing the government more and more) is starting to make moves to begin to consider a re-conquest of Italy, and Theodoric is feeling threatened. Even though he encourages a continuation of Roman traditions, the Senatorial aristocracy at Rome nevertheless sees Theodoric as an alien barbarian presence, and Theodoric fears intrigue to allow the Romans to come back in and overthrow him. Moreover, the Catholic Church has never sat well with having an Arian Christian ruling over them, and the fact that they see him as a heretic is a source of further discontent with Ostrogothic rule. So Theodoric's rule becomes harsher and harsher, and he seems to brook no criticism by the 520s. Furthermore, he's becoming increasingly paranoid that his regime will be overthrown, and starts getting rid of some of his closest Roman advisors as he views them as a fifth column. First, the philosopher Boethius (his magister officiorum, or his head of court and government sources) comes under suspicion after working to revitalize relations between the Churches of Rome and Constantinople, and is imprisoned and later executed for possible treason (Boethius writes his Consolation of Philosophy while in prison awaiting execution, he is one of the last classical philosophers, and spent most of his life trying to preserve the classical tradition). Boethius' father Symmachus, an ex-consul and prominent Roman, is also executed. Then, Theodoric appoints a Roman Senator, the historian and courtier Cassiodorus in 523 as his next magister officiorum. Cassiodorus has the job of rewriting Gothic correspondence to make it sound more 'Roman'). Cassiodorus outlives Theodoric, and seems to have gone to Greece after the Byzantine reconquest of Italy to write on history and religion in his retirement. He is also considered to have been one of the last Classical writers at Rome. Theodoric dies in 526. It seems that his efforts to keep his kingdom together have seem to have been via force of will, and the succession is insecure at his death (his daughter, Queen Amalasuntha, has only a baby as a possible successor). Moreover, when the Byzantines under Belisarius and Narses invade to reconquer the peninsula for Justinian, and the ensuing Gothic War (535-552) not only ends the dynasty (the last king, Totila, dies in fighting outside of Mt. Vesuvius), but ravages Italy. Indeed, by 568, when the Lombards come into Italy, the Gothic interests are completely destroyed. The Lombards, unlike the Ostrogoths, are complete barbarians who like fighting and don't like Roman culture, so when they invade, many areas in Italy choose to stay with Byzantine rule (indeed, so alien are the Lombards to the Romans, that when one pope sent representatives to the south of Italy where the Lombards had settled, it was advised that missionaries be sent to the Lombards; when the papal representatives arrived at Beneventum, the Lombard capital, they were seen to be worshipping a huge snake!). Rome comes under the rule of a Byzantine duke, and the Byzantine government capital is in Ravenna, so Rome is really seen more as being under the jurisdiction of the pope. What of the West Goths, or Visigoths, in Spain? Well, like the Ostrogoths, they're big fans of Roman culture, and prefer a 'live and let live' existence with the Romans in Spain. For the most part, the bulk of the population was made up of Romans, with a Visigothic military class ruling over them. As the Visigoths know they're in the minority, they're not wanting to rock the boat, and leave Roman administration and practices in place. The only thing is, most Romans are excluded from government. However, the Visigoths seem to be conscious of their shortcomings in candidates for power. Aware that their Arian Christian religion is looked down upon in Spain as heresy, the Visigoths decide to convert to Catholicism in the late 500s, and remove laws preventing the intermarriage of Visigoths and Romans. Consequently, the culture fuses together, and the law is drawn from both Roman and Visigothic sources. The only thing is that, while they manage to stabilize the overall state of the kingdom, the Visigothic aristocrats fight constantly over their kingship. They have no hereditary monarchy, and no real established procedure for choosing new rulers. Church officials try to fill this vacuum, declaring that the person of the king is sacrosanct at the Council of Toledo in 633. However, this doesn't work and the Visigothic Kingdom is constantly subject to instability, where the practice of assassination amongst aristocrats and constant intrigue is an everyday occurrence. Indeed, when the armies of Islam under the Berber general Tariq ibn Ziyad invade Spain in 711 it's, according to one source, because they were invited by a Visigothic family that was a rival to the king (moreover, the Muslims only come in with 7000 men initially). By 716 the Muslims are largely in control of Spain, save for the north (Tariq is sent back to Damascus after only a few years, so that room can be made for an Arab as governor), where they are held off by the Visigothic nobleman Pelagius in the Asturias, as well as by Basques who aren't ones to be controlled. The Muslims establish their rule, in any case, by the middle of the century, and subject non-Muslims to Islamic law where they are treated like second-class citizens. However, the Muslims in this instance aren't looking to convert the Christians too much, mainly because many of them are hiding out in the mountains and the Muslims aren't into the idea of fighting a guerilla war up there, and they don't want to cause widespread unrest, so they have this sort of unspoken agreement with the Christians, where they basically say to each other 'Don't mess with us, and we won't mess with you. But there's gonna be a storm if you try anything.' Now what happens to Britain? Well, Honorius decides to sally out and renounces any claims to Roman Britain in 410. However, while some armies did leave Britain, it's pretty clear that a lot of people in the Roman army decided to stay (indeed, they've got families around), and the idea of a 'Roman Britain' (culture, society, government) probably doesn't die out until the 450s (and that's thanks to my knowledge of Roman Britain from my PhD, so there's something extra for you all!). In any case, Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, show up and start settling on Britain, but meet with stiff resistance from British and Romano-British forces holding out in Cornwall, Wales, and Northern England (indeed, the whole idea of King Arthur, was that he was some sort of Roman general or at least a Romano-British prince who was trying to keep the Roman way of life going, but don't see the movie, it's ridiculous and seems to have this pound of flesh against Christianity!). The Angles, Saxons, and Jutes nevertheless carve out small kingdoms for themselves on Britain, and as they're pagan, Pope Gregory I sees fit to send missionaries to the island at the end of the sixth century. The Frankish Kingdom, carved mainly out of the Roman province of Gaul, was the longest lasting of these Germanic kingdoms. Its first major king, Clovis I, converts to Catholicism in 500 (this gives him an edge that the other Germanic, Arian Christian kings don't have in that Clovis can now enjoy support of one of the last vestiges of the Roman empire, the Roman Catholic Church). When Clovis converts, so do his people, although some things seem to get lost in translation when it comes to the idea of Jesus dying for Clovis' sins (when Clovis was asked about the Crucifixion, he said 'I only wish I were there with a contingent of my best cavalrymen. We could have easily avenged the wrong done against Our Lord!' So he still needs work on the whole 'It was God's plan that Jesus die so that the sins of the world may be redeemed). Clovis is able to use his new Catholic faith as a way of justifying the expansion of his kingdom, mainly against godless pagan barbarian scum. First he defeats the Alamanni in Southwest Germany, defeats the Visigoths and drive them out of Gaul (he states that as they're heretics, they're fair game), and the Burgundians in what is now southeast France. By 510, his kingdom not only includes not only most of Gaul down to the Pyrenees but also Britanny, southwest Germany, and much of what is now the Low Countries. Clovis is considered to be the first major ruler of the Merovingian Dynasty, and he relies on his followers to govern the Roman city-states in his kingdom, with the help of the Gallo-Roman bishops. Clovis manages to fuse Roman and Frankish culture, and dies preserving his succession (mainly by killing off rival relatives). After Clovis dies, his sons divide the kingdom into three regions: Nuestria (in Northern Gaul); Austrasia (consisting of the Frankish Rhineland), and the former kingdom of Burgundy. All three rulers are Merovingian, and they rule with the assistance of their respective nobilities. The ruling class intermarries with the Gallo-Roman senatorial aristocracy, and a new nobility emerges. Thing is, these nobles want to try and get as much power as they can, and whenever they expand their lands and wealth, it's usually at the expense of the monarchy. The main advisor to the king, the Major Domus (Mayor of the Palace) begins to overshadow the king, and over time, the Mayors and the nobles effectively reduce the power of these kings. So by the beginning of the 700s, you have Mayors of the Palace really coming into their own. The mayor of the palace of Austrasia 714, for example, is Charles 'The Hammer' Martel. He is seen mainly as the unofficial ruler of the Franks despite there being kings still in place, and despite this Martel is the one to lead Frankish troops in victory over the Muslim invaders at the Battle of Poitiers (Tours) in 732. With this victory, Charles Martel is not only seen as a defender of the Land, but also the defender of the Christian faith against the Infidels. So despite there being three different Merovingian kings at this time, Charles Martel is seen as the effective ruler of the three kingdoms despite being Mayor of the Palace of only one of them. Despite their success, the Franks after Clovis aren't as big on Roman culture as the Goths are (indeed, they're constantly preoccupied with fighting and war and other things badass), so they don't really see to the upkeep of Roman civilization in Gaul (trade goes down, public buildings fall into disuse, the Franks don't encourage urban life, etc.). By the mid-700s, while the agricultural system of the Romans is still in place, but the Roman governmental structure defers to the German concept of kingship and customary law by this time. So, what is the society of Germanic kingdoms like? Well, they're different from the Germans that Augustus used to rail against post-Teutoburger Wald when 3 of his legions were lost in a treacherous ambush. The Germans of the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries are willing to fuse with the Roman aristocracy, creating a new sort of upper class. Each influence one another: The Franks in Gaul and the Romans there intermarry; the Romans teach the Franks how to construct Roman style villas, while the Franks teach the Romans about Frankish weaponry. Both the Romans and the Germanic peoples put strong emphasis on the family, and the German family unit is patriarchal in nature as well. The German concept of family/kinship influences the way the law in these kingdoms develops, and it's different from Roman law. In Roman law, crimes such as rape or murder were considered an offense not only to the victim but also a crime against society at large as well as the state. Consequently, the Romans try the accused in courts of law, hearing evidence so that they can come to the (hopefully appropriate) verdict. The Germans are different, as things can get personal. See, when you hurt one guy in German society, you aren't just considered to have done him wrong, you've done his FAMILY wrong. So what could happen is that if a crime is committed, things can take one turn and another and before you know it you have a blood feud going on between families, who are killing each other (or dismembering, hacking things off, or slicing extremities off). As this system has a tendency to get out of control, another system arises as a way to redress legal grievances. This system makes use of a fine called a wergeld, which is an amount of money paid by a wrongdoer to a family who the wrongdoer injured or killed. Wergeld means 'gold for a man,' and is the value of a person in monetary terms, and can vary according to one's social status. So this law, which originates in Frankish society with Roman help (Salic Law), might charge a certain amount for an ordinary Frankish barbarian killed, but can charge more if it's a nobleman in the service of the king. When someone is put on trial to pay a wergeld, that person can use either compurgation or the procedure of ordeal to defend himself. Compurgation is where the accused swears an oath that he is innocent of the crime of which he is accused, and he's backed up by a group of twelve to twenty-five 'oathhelpers,' who swear that they think the accused person should be believed (so they're like character witnesses). The procedure of ordeal is where the accused can subject himself to a process in which he hopes that heavenly powers (whether pagan or Christian) will prove his innocence. So if he says 'I'm innocent, and I'll put my hand in this fire to show I am,' then he'll put his hand in a fire in the hopes that God will keep his hand from burning, thus proving him innocent (usually, compurgation was the way to go if you didn't want to risk maiming yourself!). The family structure of Germanic (especially Frankish) families was patriarchal. A woman obeys her father until she marries her husband, then has to defer to her husband's wishes. A widow, however, can hold property without a male guardian. The wergeld of a woman of childbearing age is considerably higher than that of a man, so much so that Salic Law decrees that the price for a childbearing woman's life is equal to that of a nobleman in the service of the king (24,000 denars, and then 8,000 denars after she goes through menopause). This is because she is considered valuable because she can produce children and thus continue the family. Marriages are usually arranged by fathers or even uncles in the family without consideration of the wishes of their children. Prospective sons in law would make a dowry payment which would symbolize the purchase of paternal authority over the bride. Adultery in the case of the woman was looked down upon with a vengeance, as it was believed a woman who slept around polluted herself and her offspring. Consequently, an adulterous woman could be strangled or burned alive; husbands who commit adultery usually get off easy. Divorce is simple, as it's initiated primarily by the husband, who can simply send the ex-wife back to her family. Moving on, let's briefly discuss the fortunes of the Church in the West during this period. This is the time of intellectuals writing on Christian doctrine and belief, and these intellectuals are referred to as the Latin Fathers of the Church. One, St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430), is an African clergyman whose two most important works are Confessions (discussing what Augustine saw as a misspent youth, as well as his journey to Christianity), and City of God, in which he discussed how there are two cities, that of God and that of the World. The City of God would prevail, as its people would love God and be loyal to His City, which would take its place in the Kingdom of God; those in the City of the World would be insecure because of the imperfect nature of human beings. The City of the World, however, was necessary as the rulers of that city are obligated to curb the baser instincts of humans and maintain the peace necessary for Christians to live in the world before they graduate up to the city of God. So basically Augustine was arguing for the necessity of secular government to keep order while people could pursue the Christian life in peace. Augustine is also important for establishing the Christian Church's view on sexual desire (original sin). Augustine nevertheless said that complete abstinence from sex for Christians was impossible, and stated that if you're going to have it, make sure you're married. Augustine therefore looks upon sex as for procreative purposes, while the clergy, who serve a higher purpose, must be celibate (although the whole idea of clerical celibacy during the Middle Ages is a hit and miss one, with many priests having, shall we say, 'housekeepers.'). Another Latin Father of the Church is St. Jerome (345-420), who had a classical background but whose conversion experience led him to put the books of the world in their proper, backseat, place and to read the books of God with great zeal. Jerome is known for translating the Old and New Testaments into Latin, thus creating the Latin Vulgate of the Bible, which is the edition used throughout the Middle Ages in Western Europe. Of course, you can't discuss the Church fathers without discussing the Church. Now, when it comes to leadership of the Church, the bishops of the larger cities of the Roman Empire (Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, Carthage, Constantinople) tend towards being the movers and shakers. Indeed, some of these bishops come into conflict with each other via those Church controversies I've talked about, with one bishop of one city supporting a particular stance, while another bishop of another city supports the other. Indeed, sometimes with these controversies, it was a matter of bishops of various cities fighting amongst each other to see who was the biggest guy on the block, as it were. This happens for a time, but the city that proclaims its supremacy the most stridently is the Church of Rome, led by its bishop, later known as the pope (from the word 'papa'). The bishops of Rome base their claim to leadership on the doctrine of Petrine Supremacy. According to the Gospel of Matthew, when Peter recognizes Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the Living God, Jesus responds that Peter (which means 'Rock'), the Rock, upon him Christ will build His Church, and the gates of Hell will not overcome the Church, and Peter will be given the keys to the kingdom of Heaven. Peter, the bishops of Rome argued, was considered to be the chief apostle and the first bishop of Rome. Subsequent bishops of Rome were seen as the successors of St. Peter or the 'Vicars of St. Peter' (in later centuries this is changed to 'Vicar of Christ.'). Therefore, the Popes, being the successors of St. Peter, should be considered heads of the Church. Although this was diligently argued for by Popes such as Leo I (440-461, the pope who told Attila the Hun that he'd never leave Italy alive if he sacked Rome), who portray themselves as heirs to St. Peter. Indeed, it is semilegendary episodes such as the one of Leo and Attila that are used in the West to assert that the Pope is a position that should be considered independent of the authority of the caesaropapist emperors. This assertion becomes more of a reality as the authority of the emperors in the West wanes, and with the coming of Islam, the takeover of many Christian sees (Jerusalem, Alexandria, Carthage) diminishes the power of those bishops, which the Pope can use to increase the prestige of his own position without imperial interference (especially as the Eastern Romans are kicked out of Italy). Popes such as Gelasius (492-496) assert that there are two ruling powers, spiritual and temporal, with different functions (the kings look to the affairs of the world; the bishops look to making sure their flock is spiritually nourished so that their souls can be saved). Essentially the Popes tried to assert that, while they recognized the temporal authority of the king/emperor, their office was the most important as it dealt in matters eternal rather than ephemeral. This idea of the bishop of Rome as the main authority is entrenched by Pope Gregory I, or the Great (590-604). Gregory is known for not only asserting Rome as the main authority of the Church, but also for his vigorous policy of sending out missionaries to convert various peoples to Christianity. He helps to set up a system of relations with the barbarians that civilize them more over the years and introducing a new type of medieval civilization. He looks to the welfare of Italy during his Papacy, which has been ravaged by the Byzantine and Lombard invasions. He takes charge in Rome now that the senatorial aristocracy has more or less disappeared, looking to build up Rome's defenses against the Lombards, as well as making the papacy the main power at Rome which looked to the welfare of the people (feeding them above all else). Gregory nevertheless makes sure to pay lip service and remain loyal to the emperors in Constantinople, and he does believe them to be the rightful rulers of Italy. Gregory tries to extend papal authority throughout the West, and is successful in doing so. He intervenes in ecclesiastical conflicts, resolving them, was on good terms with Frankish rulers, and sends missionaries to re-convert England to Christianity. Now, Gregory is able to enhance the influence of Christianity in the lives of individuals, placing special emphasis on the sacrament of confession/penance, which requires individuals to confess their sins to their priest and atone for them in order to be granted the priest's forgiveness (the priest is the representative of God, so God is effectively forgiving you when the priest does and you have a clean slate). Indeed, here's one of the extra credits of the exam: Name as many Sacraments as you can and you'll get a point for each (hint: there are seven). Gregory also looks to use monasticism as a way of creating a presence in lands that are either Christian or are newly converted to Christianity. You're also seeing during this time the development of monasticism in Western Europe. Now, monasticism first appeared in the second, third and fourth centuries AD in the East (especially in Egypt under hermits like St. Antony of Egypt and the Roman soldier turned monk Pachomias), when devout Christians, who didn't necessarily want to martyr themselves to the Roman authorities, formed communes away from the temptations of the cities (also called monasteries) where they live to dedicate their lives to holiness (some would go to great extremes to show their faith, such as Simeon the Stylite who lived for 30 years in a basket atop a pillar contemplating God and making himself a tourist attraction in the process!). When Christianity became legal in the fourth century, many people who otherwise may have martyred themselves in the arena to be a witness to their faith, flocked to these communes, leading to their growth and popularity. While your male members of monasteries are referred to as monks, from 'monachus,' meaning someone who lives alone (and, later, you have friars at monasteries), your female monastic members are called nuns and usually live in cloistered communities called nunneries, convents or abbeys (abbeys can be religious institutions with either male or female members). Now, monasticism comes to the West later, around the late fifth century. At this time, each monastery operates with their own rules and regulations, its own procedures and priorities. Some are ascetic, requiring their members to live extremely austere lifestyles that end up sapping their energy. Others don't establish any clear expectations of their recruits, so they might laze around a bit. In light of the inconsistencies of the various monasteries, a man called St. Benedict of Nursia (480-547) emerges to provide a uniform Rule for the monastic community. This Rule requires monks to take vows, lead communal and celibate lives within the monastery, under the absolute direction of the abbot who supervises the monastery. The Benedictine order of monks requires poverty, chastity, and obedience. This is done as a way of creating a uniform rule as a point of reference to instil discipline to monasteries that may be seen as lax, as well as moderate the behaviour of monasteries that require their monks to sleep on spikes in order to constantly remind themselves of Jesus' sacrifice. St. Benedict's sister, St. Scholastica, adapted his rule to apply to the lives of religious women who lived as nuns in nunneries or convents (administered by abbesses). So, in Western Europe during the Middle Ages, most monasteries and convents observed the Benedictine Rule. Nunneries give many women who want to pursue an intellectual life an avenue to do so, as they can't seem to accomplish such a goal in the outside world. With this uniformity and discipline, monasteries become a dominant feature of medieval life. Monasteries help provide order in the countryside. Monasteries, being self-sufficient, have farms, and this helps to increase agricultural production. Monasteries are able to accumulate large land holdings left to them by nobles in their wills (this is a noble's way of trying to get into Heaven), and have authority over the serfs who work those lands. The abbots of these monasteries work with the monks and the serfs to clear forests, drain swamps, cultivate lands, and the fruits of their labours allow them to sell off any surplus they might have, making them wealthier. Monasteries provide social services as well, serving as inns, places of refuge or sanctuary, orphanages, hospitals, and schools. They maintain libraries and scriptoriums, where monks copy works of classical literature and philosophy as well as the Bible and other Christian writings. All the Latin Literature we have (Caesar, Cicero, Marcus Aurelius, St. Augustine, etc.), you can thank the monks for. Monasteries also provide training grounds for individuals who may find themselves working as secretaries or administrators for the lords who can then govern more effectively. Monks also tend to their pastoral duties, preaching Christianity to the population and tending to their spiritual needs. This ENTRENCHES Christianity in countless generations of peasants.

Byzantines and Abbasids

Now, the Islamic Empire (the dar-al-Islam) was first under the rule of the Umayyad dynasty, which lasted from 661-750. You'll remember that, despite their successes, one of the biggest problems many had with the Umayyads is that, despite the growing amount of converts to Islam, the people at the top of the Umayyad government were Arabs, and tended to recruit from their own ranks when it came to the top political and military positions, and this left a lot of people out in the cold (for example, the Berbers in Africa or the Persians in Iran). So despite being encouraged to convert, many non-Arab peoples don't have the same access to wealth and positions of power that Arabs do. This is causing alienation. By the early 700s, the Umayyad caliphs are starting to alienate even other Arabs as they are starting to enjoy the trappings that come with power and devote themselves to luxurious living rather than to the moral leadership of the umma (the Muslim community). They care more about the fine foods, the large palaces, the pleasures of the flesh, etc. This leaves the Umayyads, who are Sunni Muslims, open to the criticism and resistance of the Shia faction. Moreover, the conquered peoples are becoming increasingly discontented, and even the Muslim Arab military leaders are becoming embarrassed and disillusioned over the fact that the later Umayyad caliphs care more about luxury than about looking over the spiritual welfare of those who worship Allah. They are also looking to the defeats which the Umayyads have suffered against not only the Byzantines (those failed invasions of Constantinople) but also the loss at battles such as Tours against the Franks. Many are feeling that the Umayyads are remiss in their duties, and their obsession with the creature comforts are leading to a possible lack of attention on military matters which have led to these defeats. So by the 740s, there's a rebellion in Persia led by a descendant of Muhammad's uncle, Abu al-Abbas as-Saffah. He's a Sunni Muslim, but he's willing to ally himself with Shias and with non-Arab peoples to get rid of the Umayyad dynasty (the Shias wouldn't have any trouble with him as he IS a descendant of Muhammad). Al-Abbas' party seizes control of Persia and Mesopotamia. He and his followers openly criticize the government, making much hay of their moral laxity and the fact they've lost their way. By 750 Al-Abbas as-Saffah smashes the Umayyad forces at the Battle of the Zab. Then, on the pretext of reconciling their differences, he offers peace talks and invites the Umayyads to a banquet. During the festivities, though, Abu Al-Abbas has the members of the Umayyad clan slaughtered. After this, he founds the Abbasid dynasty, which is the main source of authority in the dar-al-Islam until 1258. The remaining Umayyads flee to Spain, where they establish a rival government, the Caliphate of Cordoba, which lasts till 1031. But the Abbasid Dynasty dominates during this period. The Abbasid dynasty differs from the Umayyad dynasty for a couple of reasons. First, Al-Abbas does not show any special favour to the Arab military aristocracy, and allows Persians, Egyptians and Mesopotamians, as well as others to rise to positions of power. Second, to symbolically show his dedication to a more well-represented Caliphate, he moves the capital of the dar-al-Islam from Damascus to Baghdad, as a way of making the empire more central and closer to the people that supported him (Mesopotamians, Persians, etc.). Moreover, the Abbasids aren't like the Umayyads in that they're not really into conquering (if you think about it, what kept the Umayyads going for so long was that they were fighting wars, united against the unfaithful etc., but when expansion came to a halt, they kind of lost their momentum). Now, the Abbasids do clash with the Byzantines on and off, with Nomadic peoples from Central Asia, even with the Chinese armies of the Tang dynasty at the battle of Talas in 751, where they defeat the Chinese near Samarkand. This victory not only stops further Chinese expansion into central Asia, but also opens the door for introducing Islam to the Turkish peoples. It also is noted for the fact that two Chinese papermakers, taken prisoner after the battle, introduced papermaking to the Abbasids, which almost certainly had a major influence on their development as a civilization (it's on this paper that you get the Abbasid literature such as 1001 Arabian Nights which document the tales of the Abbasids under its most famous sultan, Harun-al-Rashid, and tell of heroes such as Sinbad, Ali Baba, and Aladdin). Despite these battles against these various peoples, however, the Abbasids aren't really into expanding their political borders, and in any case want to consolidate their power at this time (when Muslim lands are expanded, it's usually being done by autonomous Islamic forces not affiliated with the Abbasid government). Al-Abbas isn't around for this, however, as in 754, only for years after establishing this new dynasty, he contracts smallpox and passes away. So instead of conquering new lands, the Abbasids realize that they have an empire from North Africa to Western China, and they figure that what the dar-al-Islam needs is some work on how its administered (this is a bit of a challenge, considering the cornucopia of various peoples living within it). The Abbasids look to the old Persian empire for how it organizes its state. From the new capital of Baghdad, the Abbasid Caliphs send their orders throughout the entire realm, and in the provinces, governors represent the caliph and implement his policies. In these provinces, ulama (people with religious knowledge), and qadis (Judges) set the moral standards in local communities and resolve any disputes that come around. These two sets of officials aren't priests (there are no such things as priests in Islam), but they are formally educated and know the Koran in and out as well as sharia, so with this knowledge they resolve disputes. Qadis hear the cases, and make their judgement based on the teachings of the Koran as well as what sharia has to say about the matter. Ulama serve as scholars who develop public policy in accordance with the Koran and sharia. Both of these officials are extremely influential and help to ensure the widespread observance of Islamic values. Abbasid Caliphs create a standing army, maintain the network of roads originally built by the Sassanid Persians, establish bureaucratic ministries to further help see over their vast empire, where they are in charge of coinage, taxation, finance, and postal services. I come back to the Abbasid Dynasty's most famous sultan, Harun-al-Rashid. Much of the details of his life are fictitious as he figures in as a major character of the Arabian Nights, but what we know of him is that he builds Baghdad into a MAJOR city. During the reign of Harun and his immediate successors, Islamic civilization generates a good amount of scientific advance that affects us even today. You can thank one individual, the Persian scientist and mathematician, Muhammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī, for the creation of algebra, as well as the invention of the algorithim and the Arabic numeral system (1,2,3,4,5). They also helped to invent the modern studies of chemistry, optics, and made great strides in medicine (at Baghdad Muslim doctors were the first ever to be able to differentiate smallpox from measles), and developments in astronomy which were later used by European astronomers such as Copernicus for the basis of their own studies. The Islamic world is growing. There are new developments in agriculture that helps the population grow, and fuels the power of cities like Baghdad, Delhi, Cairo, Cordoba, Damascus, Tangier, etc. These cities are the centres of specialized industries that can count thousands of craftsmen amongst their numbers (textile, glassware, pottery, leather, iron, steel, paper, etc). It is with paper that the various Islamic governments can keep administrative and commercial records, and makes the publishing and dissemination of books much easier (so there are people reading Averroes, Arabian Nights, treatises on philosophy/theology, etc.). The dar-al-Islam is also no stranger to trade. They've got a network of overland routes, maritime routes, and banks. So there is prosperity. Harun and his successors, while not expanding, are aware of the wider world via war and diplomacy. Harun enjoys successes against the Byzantines. When the Byzantine empress Irene was deposed, Nikephoros I became emperor and refused to pay tribute to Harun, saying that Irene should have been receiving the tribute the whole time. News of this angered Harun, who wrote a message on the back of the Roman emperor's letter and said "In the name of God the most merciful, From Amir al-Mu'minin Harun al-Rashid, commander of the faithful, to Nikephoros,dog of the Romans.Thou shalt not hear, thou shalt behold my reply". After campaigns in Asia Minor, Nikephoros was forced to conclude a treaty, with humiliating terms. Unlike with the Byzantines, Harun enjoys good relations with the empire of Charlemagne. envoys travelling between Harun's and Charlemagne's courts, amicable discussions concerning Christian access to the Holy Land and the exchange of gifts. Notker mentions Charlemagne sent Harun Spanish horses, colourful Frisian cloaks and impressive hunting dogs. In 802 Harun sent Charlemagne a present consisting of silks, brass candelabra, perfume, balsam, ivorychessmen, a colossal tent with many-colored curtains, an elephant named Abul-Abbas, and a water clock that marked the hours by dropping bronze balls into a bowl, as mechanical knights — one for each hour — emerged from little doors which shut behind them. These types of gifts were not uncommon between states who seem to try and one up one another (for example, emperor Leo III tried to negate the Papacy's efforts to realign with the Franks when he sent an impressive gift of a water organ to Charlemagne's father Pepin the Short; the gift, though appreciated, did not have much effect on the new Frankish-Papal alliance). But all of this is good press for Harun. The main problem with him is that, while he has good press, it's during his reign that the Abbasid Empire starts to fall apart. Harun spends much of his reign quelling revolts in his empire. Moreover, there are many different interests who would like to be out from under Abbasid control. Syria was inhabited by tribes with Umayyad sympathies and remained the bitter enemy of the Abbasids and Egypt witnessed uprisings against Abbasids due to mal-administration and arbitrary taxation. The Umayyads had been established in Spain in 755 A.D., the Idrisids in the Maghrib(Morocco) in 788 A.D., and the Aghlabids in Ifriqiya(Tunis) in 800 A.D. Besides, unrest flared up in Yemen, and the Kharijites rose in rebellion in Daylam, Kirman, Fars and Sistan. None of this is helped by the fact that, upon Harun's death in 809, his will apportions the empire between his two sons, who have enough resources each to basically start a civil war in the caliphate. The groups I have already mentioned take advantage of this civil strife, and on top of this, the governors within the Caliphate take advantage as well of this civil disorder and act independently of the caliphs, building up local bases of power. It's also during the 800s that you have peasant rebellions, popular uprisings, and as I have mentioned, the Zanj slave revolt that lasts from 869-883. By the end of the ninth century, much of the caliphate has more or less fragmented into various autonomous states (for example, in the early 900s you have a group of people called the Fatimids throwing off Abbasid rule and effectively taking away a good part of the empire from Palestine and Egypt all the way to Morocco; by the 1100s you have the Seljuk Turks taking over the Near Eastern and Persian possessions of the Abbasids, but they retain the Abbasid caliph as nominal sovereigns). As a result of developments and the Abbasid caliphs are more or less figureheads for the dar-al-Islam from about the mid-900s in the western part of this world onwards, while being figureheads in the eastern part from the 1100s onwards. Now that we've discussed western medieval society, we need to discuss the Crusades, and that brings us back to how the Byzantine Empire fared in the 900s and 1000s. It's by this time that the Byzantines have re-evaluated their role in the Mediterranean. While they still see themselves as Roman emperors, they nevertheless realized that they can't do what Justinian did and try and make the Mediterranean a Byzantine lake. Therefore, they try for goals that are more realistic, fighting wars to get ahold of lands that they know that they can hold onto. In the middle of the 800s, Byzantium is at a low point, losing Sicily to Arab invaders, and holding onto footholds in Italy while the Slavs and Bulgars in the Balkans have driven the Byzantines out except for pretty much Constantinople and its hinterland. They have a firm hold over Anatolia, although the frontier they share with the Abbasid Caliphate is pretty much a no-man's land. So they need to re-prioritise. One of the things that they do is look at the problem of Iconoclasm. Now, although this policy was present through the reigns of Leo III Isaurian (717-741) and Constantine V Konpronymos (a nickname given to him by pro-icon clergy roughly translated as 'Name of Shit,' derived from a rumor that as a baby he crapped in the baptismal font, such was his dedication to heresy, blasphemy, etc. according to the iconodules or supporters of icons), the Iconoclast cause is clearly losing steam as it causes a civil war between Constantine V and a relative of his Artabasdos. By the time of Constantine's death in 775, iconoclasm is unpopular and his successor Leo IV (775-780) starts pursuing a policy of conciliation (his wife, Irene, is a supporter of icons). By 787, a religious council at Nicaea denounces iconoclasm, and the icons are restored. However, further disorder in the empire leads a second bout of Iconoclasm to be initiated by Leo V, although this policy isn't as fanatical as it had been in the 700s. During the reign of Theophilus (829-842), the last Iconoclast emperor, Byzantium was able to hold its own against the Abbasids and the Bulgars, but lost Sicily. It was clear that whether you venerated or didn't venerate icons didn't really matter. So Iconoclasm is ended by Michael III (842-867) in 843. Despite Iconoclasm being a source of conflict between Byzantium and the popes in the West, the removal of this obstacle doesn't make anything better. There is still conflict between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches over a few matters. First, while the Popes desire to increasingly be seen as the heads of the Church, both East and West, the Patriarchs of Constantinople believe that all bishoprics should be autonomous and that no one should really have a say over anyone else, for the most part. The Popes also are coming into conflict with the Byzantine bishops over their acceptance of a rewriting of the Nicene Creed first introduced by Charlemagne (and first appearing as a mistake made by a Spanish monk to translate it from Greek to Latin) of the filioque clause in the Nicene Creed ('translated as the Father and'). See, originally, the Nicene Creed had said that the Holy Spirit proceeds from God the Father alone, while the new addition that was embraced by the Roman Church stated that the Holy Spirit proceeded from God the Father AND the Son). At one point, the Patriarch Photius (who was already being criticized by the popes for being appointed Patriarch by the emperor for solely political reasons) excommunicates Pope Nicholas I until he can get his Greek translation straight. Other conflicts, such as the Azymes controversy, which has the Catholics supporting the use of unleavened bread at the Eucharist, while the Orthodox use leavened bread, also emerge. Although these are smoothed over, there is growing tension between the Catholic and the Orthodox bishops at this point. One of the high points of Michael III's reign is that he sends Ss Cyril and Methodius out to the Slavs, armed with a new alphabet for those people which contain Greek, Latin, and Slavic letters. This Cyrillic Alphabet catches on, and by the 860s the Slavs have been converted to Orthodox Christianity. So there is further grief that Byzantium faces in the 9th century, although it re-emerges as one of the great powers of the period with the establishment of the Macedonian Dynasty (867-1081), where the bulk of its emperors hailed from Macedon. One of the things the emperors around this time do is to regularize the practice of organizing their provinces into themes (a system that had its origins in the 7th and 8th centuries but was the order of the day in the 9thand 10th centuries), which is a type of imperial province under the jurisdiction of a general who looks to both the military and civil administration of the land under his supervision. The emperor closely monitors the general in the theme to avoid decentralization of power and authority, so that the general doesn't get any ideas of starting a revolt. The general recruits into its ranks a segment of the free peasantry in his theme, giving the peasant land in exchange for military service. So, in a way, the theme system creates this class of soldier farmers who are motivated not only to farm the land but defend it if it gets attacked. The theme system helps to stimulate agriculture, and allows the empire to quickly mobilize its military forces, which fight effectively. Now, the thematic armies are more used to defend the provinces. Another part of the army that has more offensive uses is referred to as the tagmata, which accompanies the emperor on campaigns of conquest. This new system allows Byzantium to assemble forces of tens of thousands of men, which fight Arab and Slavic armies to a standstill. The Macedonian emperors, while they see themselves as the true continuators of the Christian Roman Empire, nevertheless sometimes recognize men such as Charlemagne and Otto of Saxony to be 'Western emperors.' While they do this, they nevertheless see these men as barbarian poseurs playing at imperial authority. However, the Byzantines realize they have bigger fish to fry and are willing to swallow their diplomatic pride and focus on what's important. Now, there are several powerful emperors in the 10th and 11th centuries who manage to reclaim lands for the empire. Now, not all of the emperors are generals. Some, such as Constantine VII and Leo VI the Wise, are known for their revamping of imperial administration in order to make it more efficient. But others are more martial. The short reign of John I Tzimiskes (969-976) witnessed that emperor fighting against not only the Slavs, but especially the Bulgar peoples, who had created a rival imperial state in the Balkans. John drives the Bulgars back, captures their emperor and annexes their empire. He also invades the Abbasid Caliphate, effectively capturing Syria (including the old Umayyad city of Damascus), and Lebanon. He almost certainly would have recaptured Jerusalem had it not been for his sudden death in 976. His nephew, Basil II, called the 'Bulgar Slayer' is known for solidifying John's conquests in the Middle East. Basil II also launched a war against a resurgent Bulgaria, completely conquering it, and after one battle, he took 15,000 Bulgarian prisoners, divided them into groups of 100, and blinded 99 out of every one hundred men, leaving the people with their sight intact to lead the blind home. Such actions lead to his nickname, but Bulgaria submits to his rule in 1018. During this period as well, Byzantium regains Crete and Cyprus from a declining Abbasid Caliphate, and pretty much have sway over Syria during this time (while not under their direct rule, it's seen as a Byzantine protectorate). Basil also receives the submission of a group of Slavs known as the Serbs around this time, so for the first time in about 400 years, Basil has managed to bring the entire Balkan peninsula south of the Danube under Byzantine rule. He also enjoys victories in Armenia in the East, regains a foothold in the Crimean peninsula, solidifies Byzantine dominance in southern Italy, and even invades Sicily and manages to get a foothold there. We must also mention that Constantinople, already a major trading centre and a rich city as a result of its location on the trade networks (it's got a silk industry which brings in the cash, and has access to all of the markets from the East; China, Persia, etc.), becomes even richer and more financially sound during this time as a result of the booty captured from these campaigns. So by the end of his reign in 1025, Byzantium is the most powerful state in the Eastern Mediterranean. It's strong militarily, it provides a school system for its population that gives essentially a classical education (so unlike in Western Europe, most people in the Byzantine Empire can read and write). During this time, there are several religious developments which should be mentioned. Russia during Basil's reign turns away from paganism and converts to Orthodox Christianity. The Kievan State that dominated Russia at this time was led by the competent yet vicious Vladimir I, who as a condition of his marriage to Basil's sister Anna, converted to Christianity in 987/988 making the possibility of onion domed churches a reality. Russia also adopts the Cyrillic Alphabet. So it's during the Macedonian Dynasty where religious controversies take a back seat, the empire is truly re-organized better for defense and offense, emperors are more competent, and many of the empire's neighbors are converting to Christianity, thus making the empire less threatened. Indeed, until the late 11th century, Byzantium is truly enjoying a revival.

Medieval Life

Okay, today we're going to talk a little bit about medieval life, and if we have time, we'll go into how during the period from 1000-1300, how medieval states emerged and fared. As I've said in a previous lecture, Medieval Europe witnessed the doubling of its population from 1000 to 1300 (from 38 million to around 74 million people), although the rate of growth varied from region to region (for example, while the populations of Italy, France, England, and Germany doubled or more than doubled, in places like Poland or Hungary, you only see a population increase of 1 million and 500,000, respectively). Now, much of this population growth is possible because of a phenomenon known as the Medieval Warm period, where the climate was warmer and you could do things like farm in Greenland or have vineyards in Northern England (neither of which you can do now). Warmer weather means longer growing seasons, which means more food for everyone. At the same time this is happening, many people are taking advantage of such a situation and are improving their own farming techniques. Forested areas are cleared for cultivation (and the timber is used for fuel, houses, mills, bridges etc.) and swampland is drained (in the Netherlands, people are even reclaiming land). By 1200, the amount of land available for farming is more than any time before or since. On top of this, people are using new technological advances to improve their crop output. Farmers make use of the carruca, the heavy, wheeled plow made of iron which is much more easier to use than its predecessor the aratum, which was lighter, wooden and couldn't break the ground as deeply as the carruca could (in northern Europe, it wasn't of much use because of the heavy clay soils north of the Alps). The carrucais made of iron can turn over heavy soils, allowing them to drain, and can be pulled by oxen. Horses are used for better farming techniques as well, as a new collar which placed the main weight around the horse's shoulders meant that they could be hitched up and used to plow the land faster when oxen were either too slow or not available. This period also witnesses the creation of horse shoes, which give horses better traction, thus allowing them to do their job more efficiently. Using a heavy wheeled plow leads to the emergence of cooperative agricultural villages. This happens mainly because the carruca is so expensive that everyone has to pool their resources in order to buy one. Moreover, as it can take many animals to perform this new sort of work, individual farmers within these communities can't afford a whole team of animals, so the villagers have to share them. As well as animal power and new forms of plows, people are building mills powered by water to grind grain into flour, and to increase water power, people are starting to build dams in some areas. Where rivers can't be dammed in some areas, people use wind power and windmills instead. This period also witnesses the shift from a two field to a three field system in some places. This can be defined as a form of crop rotation. In the early Medieval period, under the two field system, only half of the fields are planted while the other half lie fallow in order so that the land can gain its fertility. With the three field system, one field can be planted in the fall with grains such as rye and wheat. In the second field, spring grains such as oats or barley and vegetables such as peas or lentils are planted. The third field is allowed to lie fallow. When the fields are rotated, only one third, rather than half, the land lies fallow at any given time. The rotation of the crops therefore prevents the soil from becoming exhausted so quickly. As a result, your crop yield increases, and there's more food for everyone. Now, the three field system isn't used everywhere (for example, it isn't present in the Mediterranean, nor does it have a monopoly on farming practice in northern Europe), but it nevertheless also contributes to the growing crops and thus to a larger population. These developments lead lords, who see that the growing populations in the villages and towns are leading to higher food prices, to try to grow crops for profit. So what some of them start doing is leasing land to their serfs, who are then are paid by the lord to grow these crops (or they have their rents at a fixed price as an incentive to grow crops for profit). As a result, although the serf is still dependent on his lord, the serf in essence becomes a free peasant as this new arrangement no longer makes him legally tied to the land. Now the lord can collect rents from the free peasant rather than just operate the manor on his own. The free peasant pays the lord, and whatever he has leftover as his crop he can either live on or sell for a profit. Peasant activity is largely determined by the annual seasons. Summer and Fall, of course, are more hectic. The peasant's basic food staple is bread, so it's necessary to have an adequate harvest that can keep you going through the winter months. In October, the peasants, as well as harvesting their summer crops, would plant winter once during this time. They would slaughter any excess livestock, as there would usually be only so much fodder to keep only the minimum of animals alive. The slaughtered cattle would then be butchered and salted in order to preserve it for winter use. In February and March, the land gets plowed for spring crops (oats, barley, peas, beans, lentils, etc.). Early summer was a time that wasn't as hectic, although peasants might use this time to weed the lands, as well as shear the sheep. All year round, the peasant/serf doesn't only look to his own land, but also to the land of his lord (the demesne). They also grow vegetables and fruits, which fill out the remainder of their diet. Now, peasants and serfs aren't as hard worked as you'd think. Indeed, peasants could thank the Catholic Church for this, as their many feast days and holidays (holy days) would mean days off so that they could commemorate the lives of Christian saints, or the special events in the life of Jesus and his family. The three great feasts of the Catholic Church are Christmas (replacing the old Roman holiday of the Saturnalia), Easter, and Pentecost. Many other days are dedicated to the Virgin Mary or other saints. Indeed, fifty days out of the year (which was what these festivals would add up to) meant days off for the peasantry. Not bad, to be honest, considering in this country you're lucky if you can get two or three weeks off for the entire year! Now, there's other info in the book on a peasant's life, but as this is a big topic, I'm going to move up to see how the aristocracy operated. Now, in the Middle Ages, the men who made up the aristocracy were largely drawn from a military class. They make up the dukes, counts, barons, viscounts (and even in some cases bishops and archbishops) who serve the king, hold extensive lands thanks to the feudal system, and hold most of the political, economic, and social power. As we found, kings and nobles depend on knights for military protection. Ostensibly, knights had little more than peasants, but over time (and with being depended upon for so long) knights are able to increase their social status and start joining the ranks of nobility, so much so that in many areas noble and knight are synonymous terms, as the noble probably got his job by kicking someone's ass for the king. Now, as knights are military in nature, they spend a lot of time exercising their sword hands. Not only do they fight foreign enemies, they're also known for fighting each other. The Catholic Church tried to stop this, or more specifically by limiting it by requiring knights to uphold what was called the 'Peace of God.' The Church, beginning in the 1000s, encouraged knights to take oaths to respect churches, places of pilgrimage and to refrain from attacking civilians or other non-combatants (clergy, poor people, merchants, women, etc.). That being said, it's still acceptable for knights to kill each other. The Church also tries to institute the 'Truce of God,' which forbids fighting on Sundays as well as Feast days. Sometimes, to diminish fighting, the Church would recruit knights to fight in non-Christian lands, which we will see when we discuss the Crusades. Indeed, the Church tries to repaint the knight in a Christian context. They receive their arms as a knight in a religious ceremony, weapons are blessed by a priest, and the nobles, when fighting on behalf of the Church, have both an outlet for their love of war, as well as religious justification for it. It's quite strange, killing for a living while at the same time being a member of a religion where it is a sin to kill, and a constant, almost schizophrenic tension exists between these two roles of a noble. Again, we'll discuss this more when we talk about the Crusades. Nobles of course, live in what we know as castles, which are scattered across the landscape. Castles vary considerably in their design, but they have two common features: they are permanent residences for the noble family and his household of knights, retainers, and servants, and they are defensible fortifications (in many cases surrounded by a small body of water known as a moat). At the heart of the castle is the keep, a large multistoried building that is the core of the castle, possessing kitchens, stables, storerooms, bedrooms, a great hall for greeting guests, etc. As the Middle Ages progressed, you're seeing more and more castles being built which are larger, have thicker walls for defense, as well as more detailed interiors. Now, there's a rite of passage for the male noble who would become a knight. At age 7-8, aristocratic boys get sent one of two places: they are sent away to a clerical school to pursue a religious career, or they are sent to another nobleman's castle, where they prepare for the life of a noble. Their chief instruction is military, where they learn how to joust, hunt, ride, and handle weapons. They may also learn to read and write. After being an apprentice to a knight, at the age of 21 or thereabouts the young man would be officially 'knighted,' where a sponsor would take a sword, place it on the candidate, and touching him three times with the flat of the blade would proclaim him a knight (it used to be where the sponsor would give the new knight a smack to bring him into knighthood). The Church, hoping that the knights can behave, help to influence a code of civilized behavior that comes to be known as chivalry. This is a code of ethics that knights are expected to obey. This code requires that knights defend the Church, defend the defenseless, and do not attack unarmed knights. It implied that knights should fight only for glory (although for the most part this wasn't always followed, because Sir Cedric has to get paid at the end of the day), so not all chivalrous behavior was always followed. Once a guy is a knight, he returns to his father's home, and cannot become lord until his father dies. The knight, therefore, has a lot of free time on his hands, and usually gravitates to warfare more often than not (hence, there's a lot of small scale private warfare going on in this period). But by the 1100s, as a way to keep war from happening everywhere and all the time, events called tournaments began to appear, where knights had a place to channel their love of war. Basically, the Church knows that knights want to fight, so tournaments are the substitute for war, where knights can fight each other free for all on horseback with blunted weapons in a set fight known as the melee, with the last man standing winning the fight. During the fight, the downed knight becomes a 'prisoner' of the knight who 'captured' him, and thus had to pay a 'ransom,' thus making coming to a tournament a profitable action for the knight. As well as this, the melee eventually gets displaced by the joust as the main attraction of the tournament, where two knights ride towards each other with long lances, trying to unhorse one another. Knights can make A LOT of money as a result of fighting in tournaments. For example, William Marshall, advisor to Henry II as well as King John of England and knight extraordinaire, defeated over 200 knights in an eight month span, and managed to make so much money that his skills allowed him to make a living off of it. While the Church looked down upon tournaments, they could not deny that in many cases it was less destructive than all out war, and allowed knights to get their military training when war did come along. With regard to aristocratic women, while they could legally hold and inherit property, more often than not they were under the control of men, be they husbands or fathers. Aristocratic women have important roles to play, however, especially if their men are on Crusade, at the king's court, or at war. In such cases, the wives have to manage the estate, supervise financial accounts, and making sure everyone in the castle (and there are A LOT of people in the castle) were all getting fed. This requires an immense amount of logistical and financial skill, which to be honest would make a lot of these ladies' husbands go 'HUR?' The husband might be able to take on 50 infidels with nothing but a fruit knife and come out on top, but the lady runs the castle and makes sure the knight has something to come back to, ensuring that everything is going smoothly at home. Aristocratic girls get married in their teens (usually around 15-16) and are expected by their husbands to start carrying out such duties immediately. Girls are first sent to other castles of nobles before this, and are trained as ladies-in-waiting, learning how to sew and weave, as well as to be instructed in all the skills of how to run an estate. They also learn how to read and write, dance, sing, play instruments, etc. Now, not all women are subservient lambs, and you see very strong women emerging who advise and sometimes rival or even dominate their husbands. Eleanor of Aquitaine (1122-1204), for example, was the heiress to the Duchy of Aquitaine in Southern France and is considered to be the richest woman in Europe not only during the medieval period, but some would say, ever. She was first married to King Louis VII of France (1137-1180) and even accompanied her husband on Crusade (although she might have been using the time sleeping with the odd knight in her tent while her husband was away fighting). Eleanor bears no sons to Louis VII, and as a result the marriage gets annulled. She then marries count Henry of Anjou on the rebound, and this man later becomes Henry II of England as well as duke of Normandy (1154-1189). She bears him daughters as well as three sons (Geoffrey, John, and Richard the Lionheart) and, when fighting with her husband, usually uses these sons to rise up in revolt against Henry in 1173-1174. Although she gets imprisoned by her husband for such a role, she continues with an active role in politics after her husband's death in 1189, managing to be the driving force to get Richard I (r. 1189-99) released from captivity in Austria while he's on his way back from Crusade, and serving as an advisor to her son John (1199-1215) in the first part of his reign. Also noteworthy is Queen Blanche of Castile (1188-1252), who ends up being queen of France. She rules as regent during her son Louis IX's minority, and is the most powerful force in France during the 1220s and 1230s. She keeps French nobles who want to take her son's authority away at bay, defeats Henry III of England (John's son) when he tries to incite a rebellion so that he can reconquer Normandy, and is Louis IX's chief advisor when he comes of age. So powerful is her personality that one medieval chronicler wrote that 'She ruled as a man.' Now, I've gone over the revival of trade in a previous lecture quite briefly, but if you're interested you can look at how during this time trade gets revived on a large scale during this period. This revival of trade leads to a growth of cities, as this growing class of merchants needs places where they could live as well as build warehouses to store their goods. Now, at the end of the Roman Empire, especially north of the Alps, towns and cities really declined, and the Old Roman cities, although many of them still exist, nevertheless have dwindled. When trade gets revived, many of these merchants settle in these old cities, and are followed by craftsworkers and artisans who have learned their skills at the manors, and have come to the city to manufacture objects that they can then sell to the merchants. So as a result, by the 1100s, you're seeing cities get bigger, and the old town walls have to be replaced by new ones when the growing population outgrows the early medieval city limits. So these cities are basically founded or refounded when groups of artisans or merchants establish a settlement, usually next to a castle or a monastery, as they are most probably closely located next to the trade routes that are re-emerging. Indeed, such cities as Hamburg or Richborough are called such because 'burg' and 'borough' were fortresses or walled enclosures before becoming proper cities. The merchants or artisans consequently get called 'burghers,' or bourgeoisie. Over time, this merchant class is getting rich, and is starting to demand from the lords greater freedom to live their lives. Townspeople who are profiting from this merchant class are also interested in getting more rights or liberties, and it's by this time that the lords, who see opportunities to get rich from this renewal of trade, are willing to grant them. So by the 1100s, you're seeing a lot of townspeople obtaining charters of liberties from their lords that grant them the privileges they want, such as the ability to bequeath goods or sell property, be free of any military obligations to the lord, write down urban laws guaranteeing these freedoms, and the right for serfs to become free peasants after living 'a year and a day' in the town (this allows runaway serfs to avoid capture and become free persons within the city). Most towns get all these basic rights, but some are able to even govern themselves and choose their own officials and run their own courts of law (although the former group is much larger than the latter). When townspeople didn't get these rights, they would form communes to cause trouble for their lords until they get what they want. Communes first appear in Italy, where many of the communities are under the rule of bishops, who were usually supported by the Holy Roman Emperors (more on them in a later lecture). In the 1000s, you have a lot of people forming communes to resist the rule of their bishops, and work with the nobility to overthrow them. These communes can then take the reins of government and can create new offices (such as consuls, or city councils) to rule themselves. So you're getting a lot of communes in Italy, such as Pisa, Milan, and Genoa. Communes also appear in Northern Europe in places such as France, but here they don't have the support of the nobles necessary to overthrow the existing system and rule themselves. So communes organized to overthrow a secular lord are usually suppressed, while revolts against bishops are usually successful. While in Italy, communes have more liberty (especially when the power of the Holy Roman Emperors—more on them later—decreases), in places such as France and England, they are almost always subject to royal authority. So there are varying degrees of self-government in cities in medieval Europe. So who are the citizens of these cities? Well, they're the males that have proof of being born in the city, or have proof of having lived there for some time. In many of these cities, citizens elect members of a city council that ran the city (in Italy and Southern France, these city councilors are referred to as consuls, not to be confused with the old Roman Republican office). The city councilors don't just run the city, they also act as magistrates to resolve disputes. Usually only the wealthiest families and their leaders (called Patricians, not to be confused with the Roman term) are elected to such offices. Later, many cities start to introduce an office that signifies the nominal head of the city government, the mayor. City governments would keep a close watch on the affairs of their community, perhaps seeing to delegate responsibility to some citizens to fight fires; to construct warehouses to stockpile food in the event of a famine; and to supervise the establishment of a standard form of weights and measures used in the markets to avoid any shenanigans. Crime isn't a major problem in these medieval cities, mainly because of the small size of the population (if you know everyone and everyone knows you, then it's harder to be a thief, for example). If you get caught for murder, you're usually executed; for lesser crimes, you can be branded, fined, flogged, put in the stocks for a couple of days, or expelled from the city. For a long time, cities are small when compared to Byzantine and Muslim cities, such as Constantinople, Damascus, Baghdad, or Cairo. Nevertheless, the foundations are laid for these cities growing and managing to dominate Europe by the beginning of the Early Modern period. What's life like in a medieval city? Well, you're surrounded by stone walls for defense. These are expensive to build, so space is precious. As a result, streets are narrow and winding, while houses are crowded against each other. This is so much so, that you have many houses in the cities trying to increase their floorspace by building balconies. Since everyone is crowded together and you have them using fire for heat or light, the threat of a fire in the city is great. For the most part, streets are unpaved until the 1200s. Medieval skylines are dominated by the towers of castles, but especially by churches or later by medieval cathedrals (if the bishop lived in the city). Churches populate cities and, for example, in London there were 120 of them. Most of the people who live in the cities are merchants involved in trade or artisans making goods necessary for that trade. Sometimes these guys have their own districts, where there are warehouses, inns for visiting merchants to stay, and taverns. Artisan sections of the city are usually divided by craft lines. Cities are usually dirty, and are rife with the smells of human and animal waste (remember, the medieval people lost access to that fine Roman plumbing). In some cases, city governments require citizens to collect their own garbage and take it outside the town to dump. The cities are polluted as well by the use of coal as well as from the exhaust coming from wood fires. The water, too, can be polluted, as you may have a butcher dumping any waste he might have in the river or a leather tanner doing the same thing. City governments, consequently, in many cases require these guys to relocate downstream to avoid polluting the city's water supply (this is only partly effective). Indeed, people rely on wells for drinking water or on any conduits leftover from the old Roman aqueducts. Private and public baths exist in medieval towns, although many of these are looked down upon as being permissive (women and men walking around naked and socializing=bad, that sort of thing). For merchants and artisans, home life and work life are often intertwined, and these guys teach their trades to their children.

Carolingians, Charlemagne

Remember how I was talking about how the pope had been sick of dealing with the Byzantines but couldn't get rid of them as they were their default 'protectors?' Well, we're going to talk about that story today. The Byzantines had been driven out of most of Italy by the year 751 by the Lombard Kingdom, which wasn't exactly friendly to the papacy (Byzantium is still in Italy, but their presence is relegated to the south, around Apulia and Calabria). So the pope, Stephen II, looks west and sees a possible candidate for a new protector. What's west? Well, by the eighth century, the only real player to look to is the Frankish Kingdom. The Frankish Kingdom is still ruled by the Merovingian dynasty, but after the victory and supremacy of Charles "The Hammer" Martel, the dynasty is becoming increasingly inconsequential and the position of Mayor of the Palace is seen as the real power. His son, Pepin the Short (751-768) actually takes things a step further and deposes the last Merovingian king, giving him a tonsure and sending him off to a monastery. Pepin claims the crown for himself, and founds the Carolingian Dynasty. Pepin is friendly with the pope, and his actions are approved by the Vicar of Christ (upon Pepin's crowning, he was anointed Old Testament style with holy oil by a papal representative). The close relationship that Pepin and the pope enjoy leads Stephen II to take things one step further. Realizing that the Byzantines are gone and the Lombards are not friendly, Stephen secretly travels over the Alps to ask Pepin for protection. Upon meeting the Frankish King, he agrees to reconsecrate him and forges an alliance with him. Pepin, now protector of the Church, invades Italy in 754 and 756 to force the Lombards to behave, but leaves them their kingdom. Moreover, to show that he was truly the protector of the Church, he gives a donation of the old lands of the Byzantine Exarchate to Stephen and the Church, and the Papal States are created (and last over 1000 years). So the Franks and the Church are clearly working well together. The Frankish star is rising, especially with the accession of Pepin's son Charles the Great (or Charlemagne, Carolus Magnus, where we get the term Carolingian from). Charlemagne was a fierce warrior, a decisive guy, a good statesman and highly intelligent (despite the fact that he's completely illiterate, Charlemagne is trilingual, knowing Frankish, Latin, and Greek). Charlemagne is responsible for expanding his lands during his rule, from 768 to 814. Fighting 54 campaigns during his reign, Charlemagne extinguishes the Lombard Kingdom in 773, deposing its last King Desiderius in 774 and adding those lands to his empire. He campaigns in Bavaria and southwest Germany in the 780s, and it is during this time that Charlemagne completely destroys the Avars (who have been giving everyone trouble since the 500s) as a political entity. He invades Saxony but meets with stiff resistance (indeed, one of the low points of his reign was that he ordered a mass execution of Saxons that totaled about 4,500), but manages to subdue it by 804, converting those lands to Christianity. He beats up on the Slavs, and is even able to expand a little into Spain despite stiff resistance from the Basque peoples in the north who ultimately frustrate his plans there (The Song of Roland describes this ill-fated campaign). In any case, by the year 810, Charlemagne and his empire are the dominant force in Western Europe. Charlemagne governs his empire well. While there is no system of taxation throughout his empire, Charlemagne is able to utilize his royal estates for the resources he needs to maintain his empire. To ensure the loyalty of the nobility, Charlemagne grants parts of his royal lands to nobles who have been loyal to him for life. The administration of the empire depends on counts, the king's chief representatives in local areas, while margraves (counts of the border districts) governed the more dangerous border areas. Counts and margraves serve as judges, military leaders, and the king's agents. The counts had for a long time managed to play a dominant role in Merovingian politics (and was one of the reasons why the Merovingians were weakened by the eighth century), but Charlemagne makes sure they are brought to heel so they don't get any ideas about challenging his rule. So what he does is he makes sure the counts have to serve not just as the head guys in their family lands, but instead are moved around every few years to govern other lands as a way of keeping them from getting too comfy. Charlemagne also make sure to make the office of count appointed, and not hereditary. As another check on the counts, Charlemagne introduced the use of the missi dominici (the messengers of the lord king), groups of two men (one lord, one church official, so basically a very twisted buddy cop film) who are sent out to local districts to ensure that the counts were doing what the king wanted them to do. Despite these measures, the Carolingian empire is fairly inefficient, mainly because of the difficulty to travel from one area of the empire to another (the Franks, being a bunch of barbarians, kind of forgot the fact that the ghost of Julius Caesar does NOT come down and use some sort of awesomeness magic to miraculously upkeep the Roman roads). Charlemagne finds it difficult to cover a lot of land and more quickly transport himself from one end of his realm to another (he even has plans to build a canal connecting the Rhine and Danube to ameliorate this problem, but never realizes the plans). Consequently, Charlemagne has to use his own force of personality to ensure the personal loyalty of his counts, and beat up on those who fall out of line. As Charlemagne is one of the few people who's over six feet tall and is a guy who can crush your head, loyalty is usually kept. Charlemagne works well with the Church. As well as ensuring their continued possession of the Papal States, Charlemagne works with the pope to ensure that all offices are filled with competent men, creates new bishoprics and archbishoprics as new lands are converted, restores old bishoprics, restores old churches, builds new ones, and sees to it that the clergy are doing their jobs. As a result, he is seen as the premier Christian ruler in Europe during this time. Charlemagne is so powerful that, as the years go by, the pope sees him as the true defender of Christendom. Indeed, when in 799, people in Rome rebel against the authority of Pope Leo III (795-816), Leo flees to Charlemagne, who then helps the embattled pope to regain authority. When Charlemagne next visits Rome in 800, Pope Leo proceeds to invite him to a chapel to celebrate Christmas Mass. Not knowing what is going to happen other than, well, Mass, Charlemagne walks into the chapel, sees Pope Leo standing at the altar with a big smile on his face, wearing a wedding dre...no, just kidding. The pope is holding a crown for Charlemagne, and has made the decision to crown Charlemagne emperor. We don't know if Charlemagne wanted this, but he certainly did not say no to the crown when it was offered him. The proclamation of Charlemagne as emperor of the west brings him to the height of his power. Now, there is some problem here, and this might be an argument for Charlemagne's reluctance to claim imperial power before this time. Who's the only real emperor before this? If you said, the Byzantine emperor, you'd be correct. Indeed, when the Byzantines, or Eastern Romans, hear of Charlemagne being proclaimed emperor of the Romans, they are PISSED. Fighting even breaks out between Byzantium and the Frankish kingdom, mostly via naval battles where the Franks get the snot kicked out of them. Nevertheless, after some negotiations, the Byzantines agree to recognize Charlemagne as emperor of the West, but NOT of the Romans. The crowning of Charlemagne as emperor of the West is important, as it shows that the west is trying to create its own identity. It no longer wants to be subject to a relatively powerless emperor in the East who is constantly trying to assert his rule in the west, and involvement. It's also a big marker for the Church, as when the pope crowned Charlemagne, not only was the pope trying to ensure secular protection of the Church, he was also trying to make a power play to be able to influence how the secular authorities carried out their rule. Basically, this action says that, if you want to rule, you have to be crowned by the officials of the Church, who are essentially giving you the western version of the Mandate of Heaven, called in Europe the Divine Right of Kings. Charlemagne also initiated what was called the Carolingian Renaissence. While Charlemagne himself was illiterate, he was nevertheless intellectually curious and wanted to revive learning within his realm. He staffs his officials with learned men as well as clergy, and the monasteries at this time were responsible for preserving and copying down the great classical Latin works (Caesar, Cicero, Tacitus, Suetonius, Lucretius, Marcus Aurelius, what have you). They usually did this in the scriptoria of the monasteries, where they would, of course, copy down the Bible as well in order to make more copies of books. The Carolingians copied these works onto parchment or sheepskin rather than papyrus (the Muslims don't really export this so the Carolingians have no access to it) and then bound them in covers that were decorated to the hilt with jewels and precious metals. Sheepskin parchment was very expensive, as it evidently took an entire herd of sheep to make a Bible. The Carolingians usually wrote in a handwriting style of Carolingian miniscule, which was printing rather than cursive and much easier to read than the old Merovingian script. About 8,000 manuscripts survive from the Carolingian period and 90 percent of the Ancient Roman Latin works survive because of these monks. Charlemagne promotes learning by establishing a palace school and encouraging all scholars from all over Europe to come teach, write and research here. They came from Italy, Spain, Germany, Ireland and England. Best known is Alcuin of York, an intellectual monk who served as Charlemagne's adviser on ecclesiastical affairs from 782-796, and headed up the palace school. Alcuin concentrated on the teaching of Latin and adopted Cassiodorus' sevenfold division of knowledge known as the Liberal Arts. One of the reasons that Charlemagne wants to encourage a revival is that it's a way of showing himself as an emperor as well as a preserver of Western Europe's Roman heritage. Indeed, his official seal carried the words 'Renewal of the Roman Empire.' What's life like in the Carolingian world? Well, it's a lot like those Germanic Kingdoms, with some differences. Marriages in Frankish society are arranged by fathers or uncles to meet the needs of the extended family. Wives are expected to be faithful, although husbands can get away with a concubine on the side (Charlemagne had several, actually). The Church sees this as a bit libertine, so it increasingly tries to emphasize the role of Christianity in marriage and serves as a way of moderating these practices. The Church, for example, makes sure to increase the quantity of blessings it gives to marriages, which in Frankish society were civil. Over time, the Church strengthens the idea that a wedding is only truly valid if it's done by a priest. Moreover, the Church began to stipulate that girls over fifteen had to give their consent to her father/uncle's choice of husband or her marriage would not be valid in the eyes of the Church. So the Church is starting to look out for the rights of women with regard to this matter. The Church, to try and curb the use of concubines, emphasized monogamy within marriages, as well as the permanent nature of the marriage (a Frankish Church council in 789 decreed it as an unbreakable sacrament, condemning the practice of concubinage as well as easy divorce). Under Charlemagne's immediate successor, the Emperor Louis the Pious, the Church established the right to prohibit divorce except in VERY special, specific circumstances. This was not greeted well by the common people, and divorce wasn't really stamped out until the 1200s. There's more emphasis on a nuclear family than an extended family, and young couples are establishing their own households rather than being part of a larger family unit. Regarding sexuality, the early Church Fathers (St. Peter, the first pope, being the exception) stressed that celibacy and complete abstinence from sex constituted an ideal state superior to marriage. Throughout the early middle ages, the Church hierarchy tried to enforce clerical celibacy, but this was impossible to enforce. Now, not all people have to remain celibate, and can marry. But emphasis is put on sex in marriage for pro-creational purposes, but not for pleasure. Contraception is frowned upon. Homosexuality, which was never illegal in the Roman Republic or Empire, is declared so by Justinian I in his Codex, recommending that homosexuals caught in the act should be castrated. However, in the West, the Church actually were much more flexible in their treatment of homosexuals, who are treated less harshly than married couples who practice contraception. The Church condemns both abortion and infanticide, both of which were fairly common in the Roman Empire. It can't, however prevent infanticide, mainly because it can't enforce it. The Church, however, encourages people to, instead of killing their unwanted children, leaving them on the doorsteps of Churches, monasteries, and convents to be raised as monks and nuns. Speaking of monasteries, they're serving another function in the medieval world, that of hospitality. Monasteries, as well as aristocratic households, were expected to provide a place for weary travelers to stop and rest for the night so they're not robbed and bummed on the road by a robber. In Burgundian law, anyone who refused someone hospitality would be fined. Hospitality is a sacred duty, and monasteries are no slouchers about this. They have guest houses, one for rich travelers and the other for the poor, and everyone received room and board for their stay. This didn't always happen, however, and while you would get hospitality in some areas, you wouldn't in others. Now, there's a bit on diet and health that you can read if you want, but I'd like to get ahead to the end of Charlemagne's empire. See, Charlemagne died in 814, and his son, Louis the Pious, became emperor. Although a very nice, highly religious, guy, Louis isn't a strong ruler, and he's unable to control the Frankish aristocracy or even his four (!) sons, who fight amongst each other continuously. Indeed, it's during the 830s that the Frankish empire sees a whole lot of civil war between Louis' sons, which is not ended until after Louis the Pious' death when the three surviving brothers sign the Treaty of Verdun in 843, agreeing to divide the realm amongst them. Charles the Bald (843-877) obtains the western Frankish lands; Louis the German (843-876) receives the eastern Frankish lands, and Lothar (840-855) receives the title of Emperor and a Middle Kingdom that goes from the North Sea down to Central Italy. Now, this corridor of the middle kingdom would be a constant battleground for Louis the German and Charles the Bald. Indeed, it's at this time when you have the unofficial creation of France from Charles' kingdom, and Germany from Louis' kingdom. This rivalry will continue (hint: France isn't very good at it). Now, this division is made for political reasons, with Frankish custom allowing for a division of the kingdom amongst multiple sons. But by the late 800s, the western Frankish are speaking a Romance language derived from Latin known as French, while the Eastern Franks are speaking German. These three kingdoms don't last. There's continued war and squabbling between the brothers as well as between their respective descendants. Powerful aristocrats who formerly served as counts would take advantage of this and become the real movers and shakers, and internally what was Charlemagne's empire was a mess by this time. Moreover, new foreign enemies start to attack in the invasions of the 800s and 900s. The first wave of attackers are the Muslims, who build up sea bases all over the Mediterranean and begin a series of mass pirate attacks, raiding the southern coasts of Europe, especially Italy. In 846, some of these pirates sailed up the Tiber and sacked the Vatican Hill of Rome, storming into the Basilica of St. Peter and violating the tomb of that saint. Muslim raiders also took Sicily from the Byzantines, destroyed the Carolingian bases in northern Spain, and even had pirates' coves in Southern France. One group of Berber Muslim Pirates, sick of the fact that they were always getting treated by crap by their Arab overlords, actually said, screw this, and invaded Southern Italy, establishing the Emirate of Bari, which lasted from 847-871. Also invading Europe are the Magyars, who are a people from Western Asia. They come into Europe when the Byzantines, constantly being harassed by the Bulgars, encourage the Magyars to invade Bulgar lands. This causes the Bulgars to encourage a neighboring people of the Magyars, the Pechenegs, to attack the Magyars. The Magyars, now under pressure move into west and central Europe in the late 800s, and start raiding the entirety of the place. They are only quashed on August 10, 955, by King Otto I of Germany who, outnumbered two to one, defeats them. The Maygars decide to quit while they're ahead and proceed to convert to Catholic Christianity, and settle down to found the Kingdom of Hungary. But the worst invaders are the Vikings. They are the northmen that come from Scandinavia and constitute, pretty much, the final Germanic migration. We don't know why they start moving towards Europe proper at this time. Some say overpopulation, some say a love of money, others just say that, hey, the Vikings needed an outlet for the adventure they craved, so that they could perform valiant badass deeds to guarantee a place in Valhalla, the banquet hall of the Gods, where they could party, drink and fornicate for all eternity. It's all very Zeppelin. Vikings live in a warrior society, so they're experienced warriors. They're also really good at building boats and sailing them. These are the two reasons why they were so successful. They would sail up and down the coasts of Europe in their longboats, which would carry about fifty men. Initially, the Vikings would raid frequently, usually in small scale and sporadic ways. By the late 800s and 900s, however, Viking raids are more regular, larger scale, and consequently more devastating during this time. Vikings usually carry out their raids in the summer, but in later years they would establish winter settlements in Europe from which to use as a base for further conquest, raiding, or even settlement. Vikings would sack villages and towns, burn down churches, and defeat local military forces with relative ease. This frightens the hell out of Western Europe (and to an extent the Islamic world, which saw its share of Viking raids). In France, one monastery was burnt down and rebuilt so many times by the Vikings that it had to move inland, but even when it did this, the Vikings would just travel a little farther and sack it again (this is just one instance of MANY). Now, there are different groups of Vikings, some go to Ireland. Some go to England, some go to the Rhineland, some move to Russia, navigate through the rivers there and end up the Black Sea where they attack or trade with the Byzantine Empire depending on what kind of mood they're in. They settle in some areas but explore others, and in the ninth and tenth centuries discover Iceland and Greenland in the west, as well as even North America, where they establish a settlement in what is now New Foundland. Their raiding comes to a close at the end of the tenth century, as by this time, the lands of the Vikings (Norway, Sweden, Denmark) and their kings both convert to Christianity, and the kings tended to try and put a leash on any new raiding. In any case, with these invasions, Europe needs protection, and, in the absence of a Caesar or a Charlemagne to come save you, they need something else. Well, the cornerstone of this society is what is referred to as Feudalism. It's quite decentralized in nature, and here's how it works. Say I'm a nobleman with a lot of land. Now, the thing is, what with Viking invasions or Magyar barbarians trying to sneak into my castle to try and get it on with my daughter, I need protection. I've got men to help me defend my lands, but it's not enough, with what I've got I can't maintain order in my lands. So here's what I'm going to do. I find out that you have a badass army of badassery. I've got money and I've got land, while you have an army. Here's what we'll do, not only will I give you money, I'll give you a grant of my land to rule over, and all you have to do is swear fealty (loyalty) to me. I am your lord and you will be my vassal. The good news is, that you don't have to be responsible for cultivating the land, the people who already live in that area will be responsible for farming, etc. All you have to do is basically look to building or maintaining the public works in those lands, resolve any disputes, administer justice, and come help me with defending these lands in case someone wants to attack me. But here's the thing. Although you are a vassal and I am your lord, you can take your lands and money and grant them to people who you want to be your vassals, so you can also be a lord (but don't forget, you're still my vassal). We'll all live off of the surplus agriculture we've extracted from the farmers in our lands. Now, this system will create a web of relationships that go from the lowest vassal, through your earls, dukes, etc. up to a king of the land, but it's all decentralized. Now, there is always the danger that a duke below might want to pursue his own interests and try and start a war, but the thing is that all the other vassals might side with the king to crush the duke. So while there is the problem of chaos ensuing in all of this decentralization, the trick is to build strong relationships in this community of nobles and lords to ensure enough loyalty so that this doesn't happen. Medieval society works largely like this. So, how does feudalism work in a practical manner? Well, at the bottom you have a group of peasants referred to as serfs. Now, while serfs aren't slaves, they aren't free either. Serfs are on the lord's land, and have to obey the lord. Now, serfs are given an allocation of land to farm, and in exchange they provide the lord with labour services as well as a portion of the serf's harvest as tax. So, the serf cultivates the land, and is able to do so with the tools and animals the lord has provided him. The thing is, since they're tied to the lord, they don't have any opportunity to move to different lands to find a better deal if the particular lord is a right bastard. Indeed, serfs can only move if they get permission from their lord (and they have to pay a fee if, say, they want to marry another serf who works for a different lord). But these guys are at the bottom in medieval society, although they are the backbone at the same time. The availability of serfs leads to them being one of the main economic ingredients of feudalism: the Manor system. A manor is a large estate with fields, meadows, forests, domestic animals, and serfs who are bound to the land. The lord of the manor is a prominent military/political figure who governs the manor and administrates justice when necessary. They also are responsible for maintaining the mills, bakeries, breweries, wineries, or overseeing the craft industries such as smithies, textiles, leather tanners, etc. The manor system leads to economic development, and in the absence of large cities at this time, this helps economic growth. With new farming methods coming in around the same time, you have more food, which means you have a growing population. Between 1000 and 1300, the population of western Europe more than doubles from 36 million to 79 million, and with this increased population, you're seeing the revival of towns and cities, and the growth of existing cities (such as the ones built by the Romans, like Paris, Toledo, London, Cologne, as well as the appearance of newer cities, such as Venice in Northern Italy). With this increase of productivity, trade is happening more and more between western Europe, Byzantium, Northern Europe, and the Muslim lands which in turn links W. Europe up with the Far East trade. Not all trade goes through the Mediterranean, however. For example, the Hanseatic League in Northern Europe consists of several cities in that region banding together to create an independent trade network that spans from London in England to Novgorod in Russia. Within trade networks such as these, you're seeing the development of guilds that establish standards of quality for the goods traded, as well as the increased presence of merchants, artisans and craft workers (of both sexes), etc.

High Medieval Politics

Right, we got a social glimpse of Medieval life in the last lecture, so now let's look at the political history. The main regions we'll be looking at today are England, France, Spain, Germany and Italy. Of course, we don't have much time left in the semester, so I'll try and go over each briefly and still attempt to be coherent about it. What you're seeing here between 1000-1300 is the growth of regional, European kingdoms. It's not the Roman Empire, and each kingdom has its own way of doing things. So what's the way of doing things for a king during this time? Well, in theory, kings are regarded as the heads of their respective kingdoms who were expected to lead their vassals into battle, but their powers overall are strictly limited. Kings have a duty to honor the rights and privileges of his vassals, and if he didn't, those vassals could and would rebel. Weak kings could be overthrown and replaced by another dynasty. Kings do, however, have some legitimacy about them that gives them some protection: their accession and actions during their reign seemed sanctioned by God, as they were anointed in holy oil as Old Testament kings were and supported by the Church. They could also increase their power via marriage and war alliances, and whatever conquests they make gives them resources and revenue with which they could reward their followers and thus increase their credibility. Over the course of 1000-1300, kings made real efforts to try and increase their actual power. Some were more successful than others. Let's start with England. Now, after the Romans left in the 5th century, England was under the sway of the Anglo-Saxon invaders, who set up kingdoms in the area, none of whom really dominated the island of Britain. By the 1000s, these kings are pushed aside when the Vikings invade in 1016 and establish their rule over England. The Dane King Canute (1016-1035) nevertheless allowed English institutions to continue undisturbed, and gives his support to the Catholic Church in order to solidify his rule. He's very powerful, so much so that his courtiers are unbelievably sycophantic to him, and to prove a point, he went with his courtiers to the ocean and set his throne by the sea shore and commanded the tide to halt and not wet his feet and robes. Yet "continuing to rise as usual [the tide] dashed over his feet and legs without respect to his royal person. Then the king leapt backwards, saying: "Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings, for there is none worthy of the name, but He whom heaven, earth, and sea obey by eternal laws." He then hung his gold crown on a crucifix, and never wore it again "to the honour of God the almighty King".[94] This incident is usually misrepresented by popular commentators and politicians as an example of Cnut's arrogance, and was probably a way to both get the support of the Church, appear wise, and a way to avoid having his courtiers be 'yes men.' His dynasty doesn't last that long after his death, and Anglo-Saxon rule is reinstated in 1042 under King Edward the Confessor (1042-1066). Edward is known for his piety (hence, Confessor) if not much else. Upon his death, the kingship is taken by Harold Godwinson, a member of one of England's leading noble families. His rule is challenged by a cousin, William of Normandy (aka William the Bastard), who states that Harold swore to him that William would be heir to the throne, and even did so in front of the high altar of a chapel (actually what happened is that William and Harold were talking and joking while Harold was in Normandy, and when Harold joked that William could be King of England, so the story goes, William pulled away a curtain to reveal a high altar, making Harold's joke a religious oath). When Harold refused to give up the crown, William with a large military force left Normandy to invade England. Normally, William didn't stand a chance. However, Harold found that at the same time William was invading, a Viking force under Harald Hadrada invaded the north of England intending to restore Viking rule there. Harold had to march up and defeat the much larger Viking force, then march down to Hastings, where William's army was located. While the forces were equal in numbers, Harold's army is so tired from fighting one battle already then marching down the countryside, are too tired to fight. Moreover, they are met by scores of Norman knights on horseback and archers drawn from William's vassals. Therefore, William is able to wear down Harold's forces, and Harold is killed in battle. With his death, William the Conqueror is able to advance to London and be proclaimed King of England on Christmas day 1066. William (r. 1066-1087) as King treats England as his possession, taking one fifth of the land as his demesne (domain). The other four fifths are awarded to either William's loyal nobles or the Church. Each of the nobles are vassals, and were responsible for providing a certain amount of knights to the royal army. These vassals, of course, are allowed to subdivide their land and award it to sub-vassals if they wished. By 1086, however, he has these sub-vassals swear fealty to him at the Oath of Salisbury Plain (near Stonehenge). Therefore, all sub-vassals now owed their loyalty to the king over that of their immediate lords. William changes much. Under the Anglo-Saxon monarchy, the king had only limited lands while the nobles had the lion's share and acting rather independently of the crown. Under William, the Normans establish a system where all nobles lands are fiefs granted to them by the king. This is the beginning of the English crown as a centralized monarchy. Moreover, the Norman French (most of the kings up to John spoke French as their main language) intermarry with the Anglo-Saxons, and this creates the beginnings of what we know of as the English language. William keeps the Anglo-Saxon administration in place in which counties (shires) are divided into hundreds (or groups of villages). In each shire, the sheriff is the chief royal officer responsible for leading military forces, collecting tolls and taxes, and presiding over the county court. William, however, replaces the Anglo-Saxon sheriffs with Normans, and develops more fully the taxation policy. William, it must be said, is not only King of England but also still Duke of Normandy (which makes him, nominally a vassal to the King of France). However, at this time the King of France ain't that powerful, but in later years English possessions in France will be a bone of contention between the two powers. William's youngest son Henry I (1100-1135), is the last able successor of his dynasty, and manages to make the crown richer by further organizing the tax system as well as the courts. With his death, however, there is a problem in the succession, and England plunges into civil war for about 20 years. Out of this conflict emerges the Plantagenet family, an offshoot of William's family, under King Henry II (1154-1189). Henry is a great king who is especially good at developing administrative and legal institutions which strengthens royal government. Henry strengthens the office of the exchequer (royal treasury), and via royal officials receives taxes collected by the sheriffs, The sheriffs then receive receipts in order so that people can't get double taxed and so that everything is in order. Henry II strengthens the royal courts, which hear more and more criminal cases, and manages to take away property cases from the local courts and assign them to the royal ones. By expanding the jurisdiction of the royal courts, Henry was expanding his own power, and by extension, this ends up bringing more money into his coffers (if you have to pay a fine in a case, for example, it goes to the royal crown). Henry II manages to create a royal court monopoly in England, and as a result of a uniform creation of laws that replace local ones, Henry II is considered to be the father of what is known as English Common Law. Henry isn't as successful bringing the Church under his control (this is always a problem for many, as we will see). Henry II, for example, claimed the right to punish clergymen in court if they were found guilty of an offense. His friend, St. Thomas Becket, comes into conflict with this as Becket is the Archbishop of Canterbury and the highest cleric in the realm. Becket argued endlessly with the king, asserting that only Church courts could try clerics, and exasperated, Henry at dinner shouted 'Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?!' The knights standing next to him took him at his word, and proceeded to march down to Canterbury Cathedral where Becket was kneeling before the high altar saying a Mass, and they put a sword in his head. This is a major scandal across Europe, and in order to regain some credibility in the eyes of the Church, Henry doesn't only have to give deference to papal courts that clerics can appeal to should they be found guilty in an English court, he also has to be publicly whipped by the Becket's successor as an act of penance. Henry's reign is successful, and he's not only the King of England, but also a BIG part of France (his marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine only helps in these holdings), as well as Wales and a good part of Ireland. Indeed, he has great hopes to be a new Charlemagne. Unfortunately, he doesn't get along with his wife (he sleeps around, bearing many a bastard child), who bears him three sons, all of whom (under her direction) rebel against him in 1173-1174. Despite putting down the revolt, Henry nevertheless is hurt by this, and on his deathbed in 1189, when his sons, with Eleanor's help, have all but deposed him, declares 'All my sons are bastards.' Henry's eldest son, Richard I, known as 'Lion Heart' for his fighting skills, rules England from 1189-99. He's not really a King of England, however, as he only spends six months of his reign in Britain. Most of his time he spends fighting to keep his holdings in France, or is in the Holy Land during the Third Crusade (1189-1192). At one point, Richard, on his way back from Crusade, gets captured by the duke of Austria, who he insulted, and has to be ransomed by his mother. When he dies in 1199, it's not in a blaze of glory. He's besieging a small castle in France, which is defended by a lone peasant with a bow and arrow and a frying pan for a shield. The peasant gets off a lucky shot, and hits Richard in the leg. He contracts gangrene and dies. Richard is replaced by his unpopular younger brother John (1199-1216), who has made an art form of collecting taxes from his subjects as well as increasing royal power. The thing is, John wasn't as charismatic as his predecessors, and is usually portrayed as a petulant tyrant (especially in the Robin Hood tales). His nobles, however, resent his rule, and John's credibility is lessened when he loses Normandy, Maine, Touraine and Anjou, his ancestral homelands, in 1205 to the French King. When he attempts to re-conquer these lands, not only is he spectacularly unsuccessful, he gets a papal interdict slapped on him as well as his kingdom by Pope Innocent III for attacking a fellow Christian power, and many of the English barons rise up in rebellion. At Runnymede in 1215, John is forced to sign the Magna Carta (or Great Charter), originally a wish list by the barons expecting John to limit his power and set up rules as to what a lord can and cannot do with regard to his vassals. While this must be considered a feudal document, it nevertheless is the first step in the concept that the power of the English monarch should be limited, and not absolute. John's son, Henry III (1216-1272) rules a long time but his only real contribution to England is the building of Westminster Abbey. His son, Edward I Longshanks (1272-1307) is a MUCH MORE POWERFUL king. He is the man who is the first to try and unite all the lands of Britain into a single kingdom. While he completely pacifies Wales during his reign, his efforts to conquer Scotland are at first successful (giving him the nickname 'Hammer of the Scots') but ultimately fall apart (thanks to both William Wallace and especially Robert the Bruce). Edward nevertheless manages to get back some of the royal power that John lost, but he is known for creating the first English Parliament. The English Parliament was not what we know Parliament to be today. Indeed, at first it was just a meeting of the King's council of barons and prelates of the Church. However, in 1295 when Edward was in need of extra funds, invites two knights from every county and two residents from each city to attend the King's council and consent or turn down new taxes. So it's in 1295 that we have the first English Parliament. Indeed, it's in this Parliament that two houses emerge: the nobles and prelates make up the House of Lords, and the knights and residents of the towns make up the House of Commons. The Parliament grants Edward I taxes, discusses political issues, and handled some judicial affairs. This is another real step in England where the King is not seen as an absolute lord, but rather as the senior official who consults with his subordinates on how to best run the kingdom. This is a unique form of monarchy. Turning away from England, we now turn to France. By the 900s, France is under the nominal rule of the Capetian Kings. Although they are recognized as king, these kings have very little power, and the only direct control they have is around the area of Paris and north central France known as the 'Ile-de-France.' Most of the power lay in the hands of the nobles (such as the Duke of Normandy or Aquitaine). The French King, therefore, has to spend the next few hundred years making himself the main force in his realm. This task begins to be performed under Philip II Augustus (1180-1223), a crafty and intelligent monarch who sees that the main handicap to his rule is the dominance of the Plantagenets in France. Therefore, Philip waits for both the strong kings Henry II and Richard I to die, then wages war upon the weak King John, and takes away the lands from him I've already mentioned. As a result, Philip quadruples royal income and enlarges the power of the French King. To run these newly conquered lands, Philip creates the beginnings of a bureaucracy by appointing royal officials to administer justice and collect taxes within them. Tres bien! Philip is followed by Kings who don't necessarily conquer new lands but rather marry into them and consolidate them. King Louis IX (later St. Louis, 1226-1270), tried to look out for the rights of his people by sending out agents to check the abuses of his officials after hearing complaints from the peasantry. Moreover, as he was a DEEPLY religious man, he took part in two of the Later Crusades, although they both fail and he dies of plague in Egypt. Nevertheless, his piety gets him canonized and he's now St. Louis (despite persecuting the Jews, expelling all who engaged in usury in his Kingdom and confiscating their property to finance one of his Crusades, as well as publicly burning 12,000 copies of the Talmud...well, anti-Semitism was pretty much par for the course in medieval Europe, so....). Another French King Philip IV the Fair (1285-1314), is perhaps the most effective in strengthening the French Monarchy. By enlarging his original household for administrative purposes, Philip creates three major branches of royal administration to help the King rule more effectively: the Parlement, or royal court; a council for advice; and a chamber of accounts for finances. These are the beginnings of a royal bureaucracy. Moreover, Philip in 1302 summons members of the church, nobility and towns to meet with him, thus inaugurating the first meeting of the first French parliament, the Estates-General (in these meetings, the king can ask representatives of these groups to change laws, create new ones, or raise taxes). Despite these contributions to French royal power, Philip is a bit of an arsehole (his name, the Fair, referred to his looks rather than his state of mind); Philip, in his drive for money, confiscates all of the wealth of the Jews, then expels them from his kingdom. He sees a financially successful group of Crusader Knights, the Knights Templar, as very very rich, and decides to arrest them all on trumped up charges of devil worship, heresy, and sodomy, executing them all so that he can seize their wealth. Moreover, he comes into a disagreement with Pope Boniface VIII (1294-1303) and has him seized and beaten so badly that the man dies of his wounds as well as kidney stones and general humiliation. Philip then has the papacy moved from Rome to Avignon, making the pope more of a French puppet at this time. Basically, Philip is burning, burning, burning in Hell. I'll discuss more of the Papacy in a bit. With regard to Spain, when we last left it, the peninsula was mostly under Muslim control, with a few Christian kingdoms holding out in the north. Spain under Islam did prosper, and the Muslim capital of Cordoba not only exceeding 300,000 people, but was one of the first cities in Europe to have street lighting. However, Muslim rule, comparably tolerable for its Christian and Jewish populations, was beginning to weaken by the end of the 900s AD. The Christian rulers in the north take advantage of this, and soon see the Reconquista (or Christian 'reconquest,' they called it) as a major goal to fulfill, a sacred duty. So by 1000, you're seeing these small Christian kingdoms in the north (Leon, Castile, Navarre, Aragon, Catalonia) established, and trying to work together (or independently) to whittle away at the Muslim held lands. The fact that Muslim rule is not unified during this time is something that these small Christian kingdoms (with the help of the French nobility to the north) take advantage of. So you have on-and-off campaigns in which Christian states take breaks from fighting each other to get together and fight the Muslims. This is not a black and white struggle, but rather needs to be seen in shades of gray (it's not Christian vs. Muslim straight down the line). The reconquista is an intermittent conflict, which might simmer down at some points and boil over at other times. Indeed, many of the military personalities, Christian or Muslim, may have been flexible in their loyalties. So you might see Muslim fighters fighting for Christian kings one moment, then sultans the next. Same's true for the Christians, who might fight for a Christian lord one moment, but then be employed by the local emir (El Cid, the most famous of all Spanish Christian knights, was known to fight for Muslim as well as Christian rulers if they had common goals or even if the money was right). El Cid uses both Christian and Muslim patrons to carve out his own kingdom of Valencia in West central Spain in 1094, for example, but dies before he begets any heirs. You see major gains by the Christian kingdoms in the 1100s, when they manage to wrest about half of the peninsula away from the Muslims. This slows, mainly because the Christian kingdoms needed to consolidate their gains. By the 1200s, Christian rulers again take the offensive, with the kingdoms of Portugal, Castile, and Aragon being the most powerful and making the most gains. Victories such as that by Alfonso VIII of Castile (1155-1214) at the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa see the Muslim forces crushed and the Christians gaining a major advantage. By 1250, the Muslims hold only the kingdom of Granada in the south (which has GREAT architecture by the way!). Now, when the Christians come in to the formerly Muslim held lands, a policy of repartimiento is followed. The lands captured are divided up, with the best lands being given to nobles and high ranking Church officials, while the rest might be allocated to common soldiers. Many Muslims flee when the Christians come in, but some stay and are allowed to keep their religion (it should be noted that it wasn't until the mid-16th century when the Catholic rulers of Spain demanded that any non-Catholics convert to Holy Mother Church), working as craftsmen or farmers. Now, there's no uniform way as to how the kingdoms treat the Muslims who stay. In Aragon, while they're allowed to openly practice their religion, they've got to pay high rents. In Castile, for example, King Alfonso X, who styled himself 'The King of Three Religions,' did not engage in such punitive measures and encouraged a continued co-existence between Catholics, Jews, and Muslims without too much trouble (this changes over the years, of course). The Christian rulers, realizing that many have fled these conquered lands, encourage colonization of these areas by Christian settlers, providing incentives for people to move back. ' Now onto Germany. In the 900s, Germany begins to be dominated by the Saxon kings. Indeed, the most notable of these kings is Otto of Saxony, who aggressively invades other states, marches into Italy to quell disputes there, and secures the interests of the Church. The popes see another opportunity to create an emperor, and in 962, Otto is proclaimed ruler of what is called the Holy Roman Empire by Pope John XII. Now, the French philosopher Voltaire once joked that this state was 'Neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire.' This is pretty much true. Over the roughly 1000 year existence of the Holy Roman Empire, it's not exactly holy as its emperors are constantly coming into conflict with the popes over religious matters which I won't go into, and they might look to ally themselves with the rulers of other Western European states to combat any imperial aims to interfere in the Church (take a medieval history class, it's VERY interesting). It's not Roman, as the rulers of the state are German, and they don't really have political jurisdiction over Rome. And it's not really an empire. When you think of an empire, you think of a huge geographical entity covering not thousands but hundreds of thousands, millions of square miles of land, ruling over a variety of different peoples and cultures. The Holy Roman Empire rules largely over only Germany and northern Italy. This Holy Roman Empire is strengthened by a series of kings known as the Salian Kings. While they are able to create a strong German kingdom, at the same time, they make in roads into the Italian cities in the North. Nevertheless, the nature of the Holy Roman Emperors presents a problem, as the position is an elected one. So while some rulers have strong, forceful personalities that allow them to get elected regularly, the nobles sometimes intentionally elect weaker rulers as a way to be the real power behind the throne. To compensate for this, the Holy Roman Emperors rely on their ability to influence and sometimes control the Church, being able to select bishops and abbots who are capable administrators who can outmaneuver the nobles. But the higher ups in the Church (in some cases the popes) will have a problem with this over the years, and we'll discuss that in the next lecture. Holy Roman Emperors, as a way to bypass the German nobles, attempt to make inroads into Italy as well, which is a ripe target as there's no real centralized authority there (also, the emperor can always use the excuse that he's trying to protect the Papal states in the center of the peninsula). In the north of Italy, you have nobles of different cities fighting amongst one another, in the center you have the Papal states, and in the south you have various Italian cities, Muslims, and Byzantines all fighting amongst each other in a centuries long battle royale (which isn't really solved until a group of Normans under Robert Guiscard ('the cunning') and his brother Roger manage to not only conquer southern Italy, but also Muslim Sicily by 1130. In any case, the German Holy Roman Emperors see taking over Northern Italy as a tempting target, especially since the cities there are so divided after overthrowing their bishops. The Hohenstaufen Dynasty, especially under Emperors Frederick I Barbarossa (Red Beard, 1152-1190) and his grandson Frederick II (1212-1250) try to realize the dream of expanding into Italy. Frederick I is not only a strong German king, but also a man who saw Italy as a place where he could get a good load of revenue should he take it over (he could also justify himself as Holy Roman Emperor). However, his attempts to conquer the Italian cities were constantly frustrated, either by the Pope (who feared that Frederick would want to try and incorporate the Papal States into his empire) or by the Italian cities themselves who stopped fighting each other long enough to team up and keep Frederick from conquering them. With the support of the Pope, the Italian cities get together to form the Lombard League to stop Frederick from taking over and defeat him at the battle of Legnano in 1176. Frederick nevertheless is able to exact tribute from these cities in peace negotiations, where the cities will pay tribute to Frederick if he would only leave them alone. Moreover, he marries his son Henry VI (1190-1197) to the heiress of the Norman kingdom of Southern Italy, thus giving the Holy Roman emperor a claim to most of the Peninsula (and the pope is crapping his pants on this one as such a situation essentially encircles both him and his domain). Frederick is known for other matters, such as being the first real monarch to promote the restoration of Roman Law in the West, encouraging the study of Justinian's Corpus Iuris Civilis. Moreover, he attempted to be a Christian emperor and joined the Third Crusade with a large army (however, when stopping on the way to the Holy Land to bathe in the Saleph River in what is now Turkey, the aged and probably senile Frederick forgets to take off his armor, and is weighed down by both it and the currents, and drowns in 1190 (his army falls apart afterwards). The other great Holy Roman Emperor is Frederick II, Frederick I's grandson. Frederick II, as his mother was the heiress to Southern Italy, grew up in Sicily, and had been exposed to Sicily's diverse peoples and religions (during this time you had Italians, Greeks, Arabs, and Normans in Sicily as well as Christians, Muslims and Jews). Frederick is therefore considered to be a more cosmopolitan gentleman than Frederick I. He was crowned king of Sicily in 1198, king of Germany in 1212, and emperor in 1220. He spent almost all his time in Germany until being crowned emperor, and once he left Germany in 1220, he never came back. He agreed to let the German nobles pretty much run the show in the north, in return for a good part of their revenues. What he really wanted to do was create a centralized state in Italy which would be dominated by the kingdom of Sicily that he ruled from his capital at Palermo. In this goal, he too would be frustrated by the popes and the northern Italian cities who did not want to be ruled by him. It should be known that the Popes and the Church in general were never very friendly to Frederick II, as he was raised in Sicily and considered himself a religious skeptic (he used to crack blasphemous jokes about Jesus, Moses, and Muhammad, making one wonder if he didn't secretly author a medieval version of South Park that we don't know about), he was believed to have been influenced by the Muslims there. Indeed, he was excommunicated twice by Pope Gregory IX for not honoring a pledge to go on crusade in the Holy Land (Frederick got up the Pope's nose and ended up going to the Holy Land on a diplomatic mission, and walked away with an agreement from the Sultan to make Jerusalem more or less a free city for Christian pilgrims). Moreover, Frederick II issued religious toleration for Muslims and Jews in Sicily, and even recruited Muslims into the army as well as his personal bodyguard. If you read the Church source in the book on the life of Frederick II (p. 283), you'll find that they take a dark view of him, highlighting his rather twisted intellectual pursuits (read a few from the book). His court was known for its enthusiasm for all things artsy and intellectual (Frederick himself spoke six languages fluently: Sicilian, Latin, German, French, Greek, and Arabic). He's noted for the promotion of the study of Aristotle, and founding the University of Naples in 1224, which later boasted St. Thomas Aquinas as one of its most famous alumni. At his court in Palermo were poets, scientists, lawyers, artists, you name it, and he took an interest in all their work. Also there was a menagerie for the animal-loving Frederick, containing giraffes, cheetahs, leopards, exotic birds, and an elephant. Frederick also took great interest in astronomy as well as astrology, and authored a book on falconry. He was in many ways a Renaissance man before the Renaissance, and is considered to be one of the most colorful characters of the Middle Ages. When he dies, the Holy Roman Emperors, over time, become less and less influential, none as powerful as either Frederick II or his grandfather.

Medical Papacy

Right. Today we're going to talk about the Papal Monarchy and how it fared during the High Middle Ages. See, after the fall of the Carolingian Empire, the Papal States were in trouble as they no longer seemed to have a viable protector (the successor states of Charlemagne's empire were less than reliable). Indeed, in 846, only about a generation after the death of Charlemagne, Muslim raiders came into Rome and sacked it, violating the Tomb of St. Peter. With the death of the last 'strong' pope, John VIII, in 882 (he tried to convince all of the political players in the area to fight further Muslim invasions of Italy, and was assassinated for his pains), the Papacy fell into a dark period. By this time, it had become a plaything at first of the leading Roman noble families, and this nadir culminated in a period known as the Pornocracy. It is called this because of how the real deciders of who would be pope were the concubines of some of the previous Vicars of St. Peter. Sometimes the new pope would be one of their favorites, other times it might even be the bastard child of a pope and one of his concubines. This system yielded us popes such as John XII, who was made Bishop of Rome at age 17, and being a dissolute Roman prince, turned the papal palace into a whorehouse, ordaining deacons in horse stables, and invoking the names of the Roman Gods regularly. Moreover, when John XII was deposed, he fled to a farm house where he proceeded to hide but was discovered by the farmer's wife. Being a dissolute Roman prince, he got close to the lady, but was then discovered by the farmer while in the act of having relations with the man's wife, and the indignant cuckold dispatched the pontiff with an axe! So it's not the best of times for the papacy. Moreover, tying its power to that of secular lords has its price. Bishops and abbots, for example, might become entangled in secular affairs, especially when their lands and offices are sometimes considered to be fiefs when they are given to the churchmen by the nobility. As a result, nobles tended to choose bishops, etc. from the leading noble families (i.e. people they knew, or could 'work with'), and these guys tend to be people who are more concerned with worldly affairs than actual church and religious matters. There is also the problem of simony, or the selling of religious offices, during this period. Moreover, the constant attacks on monasteries by Vikings and Magyars during this period ensures that discipline within the monasteries becomes more and more lax over time. What's a Church to do? Well, by the early 900s, there emerges the Cluniac Reform movement. This happens when William, Duke of Burgundy, founds the abbey of Cluny in eastern France. This monastery is sort of a 'reboot' to reintroduce the Benedictine rule for monasteries, where monasteries can get back to the discipline and stability that existed before the troubles of the mid-ninth century. The abbots chosen, it should be noted, were dedicated to re-creating this ideal. Duke William is experimenting here, and stipulates in his charter creating the monastery that no secular authority will hold sway over the monastery, and it is hoped that this will preserve the ideals of monasticism (so it's basically a case study). The Cluny monastery corrects abuses by assigning its monks to less copying of manuscripts and more manual labor (idle hands being the Devil's work and all that) and more community prayer. This seems to work, and as a result hundreds of new monasteries are founded using the Cluniac ideal. Indeed, this need for reform goes past the monasteries and into the papacy. Indeed, by the 1000s, the Papacy is able to reclaim some credibility via a new era of reform. The main goal of reform is to free the Church from secular interference by lords, especially in the election of Church officials. This issue was especially taken up with a great degree of enthusiasm by Pope Gregory VII (1073-1085). Gregory is an intense man, and he was absolutely certain that with his election, that he was chosen by God to reform the Church. He claims that he is God's 'vicar on earth' and that the pope's authority extends all over Christendom. Rather than the nobles having the power to depose clergymen, Gregory asserts that he is able to depose rulers (especially Holy Roman Emperors, who the popes more often than not crowned personally) if they disobey him. Gregory is especially keen to eliminate lay investiture (interference of non clergy in elections, as well as their participation in the installation of prelates). Gregory says that to eliminate this means freedom for the Church, so that it can run its own affairs. If rulers did not accept these 'divine' wishes, then they could be deposed. Gregory, of course, comes into conflict with Holy Roman Emperor/King of Germany Henry IV over this matter, which begins what is called the Investiture Controversy. Henry IV has a problem with this, because for years Kings of Germany had been able to appoint bishops and use them as vassals, which was especially convenient as the German Kings could then utilize them as a counterweight to the powers of the nobles who more often than not wanted a weak king. If the status quo changed and the clergy were chosen by the Church and not the king, then Henry IV would be at the mercy of nobles who wanted to diminish his power. So by 1075, when Gregory issues a decree forbidding clerics from receiving investiture from lay people, including emperors and kings, he comes into conflict with Henry when the latter, in the hopes of establishing German power in Italy, wants to invest the new bishop of Milan (ruler of the city of Milan at the time). Both Gregory and Henry back competing candidates for this position. The pope realizes that Henry isn't going to back down on this one and threatens the king with excommunication if he doesn't heel. Henry responds by calling a synod of German bishops (all appointed by him), and proceeds to declare that the bishops have voted to depose the pope. Now it's personal, and Pope Gregory smacks Henry down not only with a bull of excommunication, but also the stipulation that his subjects no longer have to have allegiance to him. Now Henry's wetting his armor, because this means that the German nobles, never a fan of centralized power, can run roughshod over the king and have things their own way. Indeed, the nobles get together with the bishops of Germany, and proceed to invite Pope Gregory up to Germany to choose a new king and depose Henry. Henry, however, realizes he needs to do something fast, such as reconcile with the pope. So he intercepts the pope in Northern Italy, in the town of Canossa. Henry knows he has to look sorry about all of this, so he appears in a hairshirt and all to show his penitence and asks the pope for forgiveness of his presumptions and transgressions. But Gregory decides to leave him waiting barefoot in the snow for three days before allowing him to enter the castle, get on his knees and kiss the papal toe. This gets Henry back the power he wants, but the reconciliation doesn't last forever (indeed, Gregory excommunicates Henry again in 1077). Henry gets the upper hand by chasing Gregory out of Rome in the 1080s, but Gregory uses his Norman allies in south Italy to chase Henry out and help reinstall him. The Roman population, however, is pissed off by the fact that the Normans were acting like a bunch of barbarians, and then kick Pope Gregory out along with them. Gregory is forced to exile into Salerno where he dies in 1085, bitterly claiming on his deathbed "I have loved justice and hated iniquity; therefore I die in exile." Gregory is known also for trying to reinstate an amicable relationship with the Byzantine emperors in the East, and even put forth plans to amass an army to take back the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem from the Muslim 'infidels.' More on those plans in a bit. The Investiture Controversy continues years after both Pope Gregory and Henry have shed this mortal coil. By 1122, however, Pope Calixtus II and Emperor Henry V make nice, and establish what is referred to as the Concordat of Worms. It's essentially a compromise. First, under this agreement a bishop would be chosen by Church officials. Then, to make the emperor happy, the new bishop would then pay homage to the king as his secular lord, and the bishop would then be given the temporal powers that were traditionally included in his office by the lord. Then, to complete the process, the bishop would then receive the symbols of his spiritual office from a papal representative. This episode is only one of many that mark the struggles between pope and kings. The Church is fighting for its freedom from secular lords, but at the same time the pope not only claims spiritual authority over all other Church officials, he is also making claims that he should be able to depose kings under certain circumstances. The pope, indeed, is trying to make himself the 'referee of Christendom,' and this can only lead to further conflict. By the late eleventh and twelfth centuries, however, continuing in their efforts to reform the Church, are building their power base. By the 1100s, the Church has a clearly organized, hierarchical structure, with the pope and the papal curia of cardinals to elect new ones, on top. So its Pope College of Cardinals Archbishops (controlling a large region called archdioceses) Bishops (who control a diocese) Priests (who head up the parishes that make up the diocese). The bishops choose all the priests in the diocese and is responsible only to the pope. This new hierarchical system makes it much harder for kings and emperors to interfere in the Church. By the 1200s, the Catholic Church is able to use this system to become very, VERY powerful. This is the period of the Papal Monarchy, which held considerable sway not only over church matters, but also over secular ones. The most powerful Pope during this period is none other than late-thirtysomething Innocent III (1198-1216). Innocent believes in complete papal supremacy, and is the first pope to refer to himself as Vicar of Christ. Memo to Kings: don't F--- with Pope Innocent III. He'll smack you with either excommunication or what's called an interdict (a decree that can be posed on a region or a country rather than just a person, forbidding priests to dispense the sacraments to the general population in the hope that the people, deprived of the sacraments and thus under threat of going to Hell should they not die in a state of grace, would put pressure on the secular ruler to obey the pope's wishes). Innocent forces King Philip II of France to take his wife back after that king tried to force French bishops to annul his marriage. Innocent not only smacks John of England down with excommunication for invading France during this time (remember, Christian rulers aren't supposed to fight one another), he also forces John to accept the papal candidate for the Archbishop of Canterbury. He forces the election of the Holy Roman Emperor in 1201, which the German nobles duly obey. Innocent is also known for his decrees against the Jews (this was at a time when European Kings, first portraying themselves as protectors of the Jews, usually ended up fleecing them of their money, renounced their protection of them, and exiled them from their respective kingdoms). Innocent decrees at the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 that Jews should wear distinguishing clothing to differentiate them from Christians, and that Jews should be put into ghettos, walled enclosures meant to separate them from the Christians. Innocent III also is known for playing a major part in the launching of the Albigensian Crusade in France against the Cathars (Albi being one of the main Cathar strongholds). The Cathars were a reemergence of the old religion of Manichaeism, which was first followed then denounced by St. Augustine. Augustine's other big influence is Manichaeism. Manichaeism was one of several Gnostic religions that flourished during this period. Gnostic religions (from gnosis, meaning knowledge) promised its believers a secret knowledge, hidden from non-believers, which will lead to salvation. Gnostic religions are intensely dualistic (ther's always a battlefield between Good vs. Evil). Like all Gnostic religions, Manichaeism held that darkness and the physical world were manifestations of evil, while light was a manifestation of good. This whole belief system was founded by the prophet Mani (216-277), who was born in Persia and raised as a member of a Christian sect, but a series of revelations led him to leave Christianity and found this new religion. Manichaeism believed that Light and Darkness existed originally separately, without knowledge of each other. The realm of light is ruled by the Father, and consisted of five orderly elements (Fire, Water, Air, Ether, and Light). The realm of Darkness, overseen by the Prince of Darkness, consisted of five disorderly elements, and upon learning of the realm of Light, the Prince tried to conquer it. To defend the realm of Light, the Father produced the Mother of the Living, who in turn produced the Primal Man. The Primal Man therefore used the five elements to battle Darkness, but he was overcome and the demons of Darkness, devoured his Light. Light then became trapped in evil physical matter. In order to rescue the Light, the Father creates the Living Spirit. Together the Primal Man and the Living Spirit continued their battle against the darkness, and from the corpses of the demons they killed created Heaven and Earth. They formed the Sun and the Moon from liberated bits of Light. Plants and animals were performed by the abortion and ejaculation of demons (these demons, after all tried to imprison the Light, and this was the only way to get the Light out of them). The demons, overcome by lust, copulated, and gave birth to the first human couple, Adam and Eve (this happened before the battle). But after the battle against the Darkness, Adam received the true nature of his state from the Primal Man. One of the central beliefs of Manichaeism is that every human being has two warring souls, one that was part of the Light, and one that was part of the Darkness. Human sin was caused by the activity of the evil part of the soul. Salvation would come when the good part of the soul was freed from matter and could return to the realm of pure Light. Through lust and procreation, the Darkness tries to imprison more and more bits of Light within matter. Through Mani, the true revelation of this knowledge will allow believers to liberate the Light within themselves and achieve salvation. Now, this Manichaeism was basically recycled in the twelfth century thanks to the Bogomil Heresy that arose in the Byzantine Empire during this time, then found its way over to Southern France. According to the Cathars, the Catholic Church as a materialistic institution had nothing to do with God and was inherently evil, so there's no need to accept its authority. Pope Innocent III says 'come again?' and proceeds to petition the nobles of northern France to launch a crusade against the heretics in the south. The nobles agree, and the Albigensian Crusade begins in 1209 and lasts another two decades. During this time, Southern France is devastated by the war, with thousands of heretics (and some innocent, good Catholics) being slaughtered. The most infamous episode was at Bézier, when seven thousand men, women and children took refuge from the Crusaders in a Church. The bishop there ordered the Church to be burnt, and when a Crusader responded by saying that there were good Catholics in the Church as well as Cathars, the bishop responded 'Kill them all. God will know His own.' Indeed, after the worst parts of the Crusade are over, the Church decides to create the Holy Office of the Inquisition to deal regularly with heretics. But I've gotten ahead of myself, and have been mentioning a lot about Crusades. How do the Crusades come about? Well, remember when I was talking about how the Byzantines had made a comeback by the death of Basil II in 1025 under the Macedonian Dynasty? Well, after Basil, the emperors do crap jobs of trying to hold Byzantine power together. The reign of the powerful Basil II is followed by the reigns of rather talentless wastes of space, who care more about intrigue in Constantinople than in strengthening the empire. Indeed, it is a lack of good leadership that allows for a group of nomads from the East called the Seljuk Turks to invade the empire and defeat their armies soundly at the battle of Manzikert in 1071. So complete is this defeat, that Byzantium loses much of its holdings in Anatolia, holding only the coastline. Add to this that you have invasions from a group of Normans running around the Mediterranean, who take over Sicily, pushing the Byzantines off that island, and also take over Byzantine southern Italy. You also have internal revolts which don't do the empire any favours, where the theme system breaks down and lands fall into the hands of wealthy landowners (who have gotten it mainly through the generals running the themes, who are also aristocrats), who turn the free peasantry basically into their serfs. With less free peasantry, you have less farmers paying taxes (the wealthy landowners are exempt), and you also have less of a recruitment pool for the army, which leads to an increasing dependence on mercenaries, who can't be trusted. So by 1081, an emperor known as Alexius I Comnenus comes to the throne and spends the first fourteen years of his rule stabilizing the empire. His empire is on the defensive, and he needs more men to recapture those lands that have been lost by his predecessors, especially against the Muslim Turks who now reside in most of Anatolia. So Alexius sends a message to the Pope, Urban II, asking that he petition the various rulers of the West to send a large military force to help the emperor gain back these lands for Christianity. This is problematic, as about a generation previously, in 1054, the Eastern Orthodox and Western Catholic Churches have had enough of each other's differences and have slapped each other with a bill of excommunication, thus causing the Schism of the Eastern and Western Churches that wasn't ended until the pontificate of Pope John Paul II. Alexius realizes that their two churches have split, but appeals to Urban that his empire, a Christian one (albeit a 'schismatic' Christian one in the eyes of the Pope), needs help. Urban is able to set his differences aside and calls a council in Claremont, France, to discuss the matter. The only thing is, when Urban appeals to the rulers of western Europe at the Council of Claremont in 1095, he makes helping Alexius not the main subject of this sermon (although he notes the importance of such help), but rather treats helping Alexius as a stepping stone for marching to the Holy Land and recapturing Jerusalem for Christianity. Thus begins the first of many Crusades, where armies of the West would try to establish themselves in the Holy Land. Now, the Seljuk Turks have not only undermined the Abbasids, they have also undermined the Byzantines, as I mentioned in the last lecture, which leads us to an appeal to Pope Urban II from Byzantine emperor Alexius I for military help against the Muslims. Urban makes his appeal at the council of Claremont in 1095, but sort of makes Alexius' appeal take a back seat to his larger agenda of having armies of western Roman Catholic Christians capture the Holy Land from Muslim authorities. Hence, the Christian form of jihad, the Crusades. He proclaims that if one 'takes up the cross' and dies on Crusade, then that person will automatically go to heaven. Why is Urban switching gears from merely helping Alexius to a wide-scale invasion of the Holy Land? Well, first of all, merely 'helping out the Byzantines, who are a schismatic group of Christians,' probably wouldn't sell as well, but everyone can identify with Jerusalem. Moreover, Urban II sees what's going on in Western Europe, with lords and kings fighting seemingly endless small-scale wars with each other. So with calling the Crusade, Urban II hopes to export a lot of the violence going on and channel it into something constructive, like recapturing the Holy Land for Christianity, and he hopes that many lords will heed the call. Initially, the Crusade isn't immediately responded to by the various kings, dukes, lords, etc. and their military forces. Immediately after Urban's speech at Claremont, however, a zealous preacher called Peter the Hermit starts going through France, Germany, and the Low Countries to recruit various peoples for the Crusade called by Urban. Peter not only wants to recapture the Holy Land, he also wants revenge on the Seljuk Turks who stopped him when he tried to make pilgrimage to Jerusalem years before and was captured, imprisoned, and tortured without reaching his goal. So, about a year after Urban's speech, 1096, Peter has brought together a ragtag army of poor knights, enthusiastic peasants (women included) which set out for Palestine without training, discipline, weapons, supplies, or even a plan. Peter, leading what is called the People's Crusade, is all about whipping the emotion up to get people to follow him, but isn't much about the details. So he starts out with this 'army,' such as it is, of 40,000 people, who make their way to the Holy Land via Constantinople. Many in this 'army' die on the way, or become disillusioned and return to their homes. When Peter's army does reach Constantinople, it numbers about 30,000 and shows up in front of the emperor Alexius. Alexius has this look on his face of 'What the F---!' After all, when he asked for a disciplined military force, he meant a disciplined military force, not a group of pilgrims. He greets them cordially at first, but this band of tens of thousands soon start to cause chaos in Constantinople, and Alexius tries to get Peter to leave. Alexius realizes that these people will probably be cut to pieces as soon as they go into Turkish held territory, but Peter is undeterred. So Alexius, thinking 'Fine, I really hope that Jesus materializes out of the sky to give you help, as you'll REALLY need it,' ships the pilgrims across the Bosporous to Turkish held territory, and they are summarily cut to pieces by the Turks, with the remnant fleeing back to Constantinople. So the initial advance into the Holy Land doesn't go very well. It is by this time, however, in 1096-7, that French and Norman nobles are able to organize a more disciplined, respectable military force that shows up at Constantinople. Alexius sees this army and starts to go 'Okay, well, now we're talking.' He starts to talk with the leaders of these forces, and tries to impress upon them that he wants them to retake Byzantine territory from the Turks, and that this should be their main priority. He argues, fine, take the Holy Land, but help me re-conquer my lost territory first and then you'll have a proper base from which to launch your invasion of the Holy Land. The Crusader knights have other ideas. See, religious piety is not really the priority for a lot of these guys. Many of the leaders in the Crusader armies are 'second sons.' That is, these are aristocrats who don't have any lands in their possession, as any lands have been left to their older brothers. Therefore, many of these Crusader Knights are hoping that if they do go on Crusade, then they can conquer areas of the Holy Land and carve out lands which they can rule. So they come into conflict with Alexius, and there's a lot of intrigue which goes on that creates resentment between the Crusaders and the Byzantines. In any case, the Crusaders start their journey to the Holy Land from Constantinople in 1096. By this time, the Muslim world is fragmented and there's a lot of in-fighting as I have mentioned previously, so the Crusaders are able to take advantage of this and make a surprising amount of progress. In 1097 and 1098 they manage to capture the Levant cities of Edessa and Antioch, and in 1099 they capture Jerusalem. This isn't a peaceful offensive, various sources (most notably that of Anna Comnena, Alexius I's daughter) speak of the general barbarity of the Crusaders, who use violence more often than diplomacy to resolve their problems. This is especially true in 1099, when the leader of the Crusaders, Godfrey de Boullion, captures Jerusalem and puts not only thousands of Muslims in the city to the sword, but also Jews, Orthodox Christians, and even Catholics who are unfortunately in the city at the time (it's said that the blood that flowed in Jerusalem so much that it came up to Godfrey's waist). True to their original intentions, Godfrey and the Crusader Knights carve out their own states of the lands that they conquered, with Godfrey establishing the Kingdom of Jerusalem and becoming its first monarch. A state to the north of Jerusalem, the Kingdom of Edessa, is also created and ruled by Crusader Knights. This initial success doesn't last forever. The Crusader states last unmolested for about 50 years until the various Muslim states band together, realizing that their division has allowed all of this to happen. The Kingdom of Edessa falls to the Turks in 1144, cutting off Jerusalem from European support. This sparks the Second Crusade (1145-1149), when Western European forces try to recapture it. They seek support from Manuel I Comnenus, Byzantine emperor during this time. Manuel is wary of the Crusaders, who up to this time have been pretty self-seeking (he's also made a lot of gains back for Byzantium without Crusader help and sees them as a threat, especially since some of these Crusader forces are taking the scenic route to the Holy Land and trying to plunder Byzantine cities in Greece). The Crusade more or less runs into trouble when Manuel alerts the Turks across the border that the crusaders are coming, and the Turks harass the forces all the way through Asia Minor to Antioch, and when they do try to take Edessa they are defeated, and the whole thing ends ignominiously. After the Second Crusade, the Kingdom of Jerusalem is still vulnerable, and finds that it's facing a new enemy, the legendary king Saladin, who has formed the powerful Ayubbid dynasty based out of Egypt, and makes capturing Jerusalem a priority. He defeats the crusader forces of Jerusalem in a brilliant battle known as the Horns of Hattin in 1187, and recaptures Jerusalem shortly thereafter. Saladin makes a real effort to show himself as a 'good winner,' and acts chivalrously to the Christians of Jerusalem, allowing them to either leave the city peacefully under escort, or if they want to stay then they can pay a special tax (this tax is also open to Christian pilgrims who want to visit Jerusalem). The fall of Jerusalem, as well as a desire to protect the remaining Christian enclaves in the Holy Land, brings on the Third Crusade (1189-1192), led for the most part by the English King Richard I Lionheart (1189-99), a king known mostly for fighting in wars outside his kingdom rather than actually ruling his own country (he spent only six months in England for his entire reign). Richard retakes much of the lost territory (including Acre, where he finds he cannot feed the prisoners of war he captures, so he kills all 5,000 of them), but for the most part Saladin fights him to a standstill, and Richard never takes Jerusalem, but has to sue for peace and heads back home. Saladin does not long survive his victory, dying in 1193, his body worn out because of a lifetime of almost perpetual warfare. By the early 1200s, there's another shot at the Holy Land, the Fourth Crusade (1202-1204). Military leaders during this Crusade band together with financiers from Venice, who organize the logistics so that they can transport 30,000 crusaders to the Holy Land. The only thing is, that the Venetians have been cooking the books and telling the Crusaders that they have more money than is true. So the Venetians, when they tell the Crusaders this, say that they way they can make up the shortfall is to start attacking Christian cities and using the spoils to finance the Crusade. So the crusaders start by conquering the Italian port of Zara. They then go to Constantinople, where the Byzantine imperial family is in the middle of a power struggle, and the Venetians (who are the main commercial rivals of the Byzantines) manipulate the crusaders into attacking that city and overthrowing the emperor. So the Fourth Crusade, meant to recapture Jerusalem, ends up capturing Constantinople and massacring the population (thus ensuring Venetian dominance in trade in the Mediterranean, yup, the Venetians involved in this are probably in Hell even as we speak). The Crusader knights are able to explain themselves to the pope, saying that they are getting rid of Christian schismatics (the Byzantines were, after all, Greek Orthodox, and could technically be considered heretical), and are able to establish a Crusader state there, called the Latin Kingdom of Constantinople. Crusader forces never reach Palestine in this one, and Byzantine forces, who are in exile, manage to recapture Constantinope in 1261. However, by this time, Byzantium is in such decline that it never enjoys the power it had before 1204, and they are easy targets for when the Ottoman Turks come in by 1453 to capture Constantinople and establish the Ottoman empire. So much for Christian unity. There are other crusades after this (the King of France, St. Louis, tries to invade Egypt first and then capture Jerusalem from there, but this fails; there is a Children's Crusade, where a ragtag bunch of kids think that, with their innocence, they can succeed where the adults have failed, but they show up in the Holy Land an promptly get sold into slavery), but these are never as successful as the First Crusade have been. By the end of the thirteenth century, many of the Crusader states are destroyed (most notably by the Mamluk government in Egypt, ruled over by its Sultan Baybars), and the Europeans don't go back to the Holy Land in force again until World War I. The military and political objectives of the Crusades ultimately fail, but they do make somewhat of a positive contribution in that there's a large scale exchange of information during these times. This is where you're getting Aristotle's works, Islamic science, Arabic numerals, etc. being sent back over to Western Europe, as well as technological knowledge. These events also lay the groundwork for Western Europe increasingly trading with the Islamic world after the Crusades (which, of course, are dominated by the Venetians, such as the Polo family).

Early Medieval Europe

So what is medieval society like? Well, the cornerstone of this society is what is referred to as Feudalism. It's quite decentralized in nature, and here's how it works. Say I'm a nobleman with a lot of land. Now, the thing is, what with Viking invasions or Magyar barbarians trying to sneak into my castle to try and get it on with my daughter, I need protection. I've got men to help me defend my lands, but it's not enough, with what I've got I can't maintain order in my lands. So here's what I'm going to do. I find out that you have a badass army of badassery. I've got money and I've got land, while you have an army. Here's what we'll do, not only will I give you money, I'll give you a grant of my land to rule over, and all you have to do is swear fealty (loyalty) to me. I am your lord and you will be my vassal. The good news is, that you don't have to be responsible for cultivating the land, the people who already live in that area will be responsible for farming, etc. All you have to do is basically look to building or maintaining the public works in those lands, resolve any disputes, administer justice, and come help me with defending these lands in case someone wants to attack me. But here's the thing. Although you are a vassal and I am your lord, you can take your lands and money and grant them to people who you want to be your vassals, so you can also be a lord (but don't forget, you're still my vassal). We'll all live off of the surplus agriculture we've extracted from the farmers in our lands. Now, this system will create a web of relationships that go from the lowest vassal, through your earls, dukes, etc. up to a king of the land, but it's all decentralized. Now, there is always the danger that a duke below might want to pursue his own interests and try and start a war, but the thing is that all the other vassals might side with the king to crush the duke. So while there is the problem of chaos ensuing in all of this decentralization, the trick is to build strong relationships in this community of nobles and lords to ensure enough loyalty so that this doesn't happen. Medieval society works largely like this. So, a break down. I, the lord of these lands, am having a problem with these guys: Zeppelin cancelled their dates... These guys: And, well, for the sake of making it interesting, this thing: Defeat all of these problems for me, the lord, and you will get this: And the lady you saved from that pesky dragon: It's all about providing protection for the overall lord, who has something in it for you if you help him out. So, how does feudalism work in a practical manner? Well, at the bottom you have a group of peasants referred to as serfs. Now, while serfs aren't slaves, they aren't free either. Serfs are on the lord's land, and have to obey the lord. Now, serfs are given an allocation of land to farm, and in exchange they provide the lord with labour services as well as a portion of the serf's harvest as tax. So, the serf cultivates the land, and is able to do so with the tools and animals the lord has provided him. The thing is, since they're tied to the lord, they don't have any opportunity to move to different lands to find a better deal if the particular lord is a right bastard. Indeed, serfs can only move if they get permission from their lord (and they have to pay a fee if, say, they want to marry another serf who works for a different lord). But these guys are at the bottom in medieval society, although they are the backbone at the same time. Behold, Western Europe's backbone! The availability of serfs leads to them being one of the main economic ingredients of feudalism: the Manor system. A manor is a large estate with fields, meadows, forests, domestic animals, and serfs who are bound to the land. The lord of the manor is a prominent military/political figure who governs the manor and administrates justice when necessary. They also are responsible for maintaining the mills, bakeries, breweries, wineries, or overseeing the craft industries such as smithies, textiles, leather tanners, etc. The manor system leads to economic development, and in the absence of large cities at this time, this helps economic growth. This period also witnesses the shift from a two field to a three field system in some places. This can be defined as a form of crop rotation. In the early Medieval period, under the two field system, only half of the fields are planted while the other half lie fallow in order so that the land can gain its fertility. With the three field system, one field can be planted in the fall with grains such as rye and wheat. In the second field, spring grains such as oats or barley and vegetables such as peas or lentils are planted. The third field is allowed to lie fallow. When the fields are rotated, only one third, rather than half, the land lies fallow at any given time. The rotation of the crops therefore prevents the soil from becoming exhausted so quickly. As a result, your crop yield increases, and there's more food for everyone. Now, the three field system isn't used everywhere (for example, it isn't present in the Mediterranean, nor does it have a monopoly on farming practice in northern Europe), but it nevertheless also contributes to the growing crops and thus to a larger population. 3 field system These developments lead lords, who see that the growing populations in the villages and towns are leading to higher food prices, to try to grow crops for profit. So what some of them start doing is leasing land to their serfs, who are then are paid by the lord to grow these crops (or they have their rents at a fixed price as an incentive to grow crops for profit). As a result, although the serf is still dependent on his lord, the serf in essence becomes a free peasant as this new arrangement no longer makes him legally tied to the land. Now the lord can collect rents from the free peasant rather than just operate the manor on his own. The free peasant pays the lord, and whatever he has leftover as his crop he can either live on or sell for a profit. Peasant activity is largely determined by the annual seasons. Summer and Fall, of course, are more hectic. The peasant's basic food staple is bread, so it's necessary to have an adequate harvest that can keep you going through the winter months. In October, the peasants, as well as harvesting their summer crops, would plant winter once during this time. They would slaughter any excess livestock, as there would usually be only so much fodder to keep only the minimum of animals alive. The slaughtered cattle would then be butchered and salted in order to preserve it for winter use. In February and March, the land gets plowed for spring crops (oats, barley, peas, beans, lentils, etc.). Early summer was a time that wasn't as hectic, although peasants might use this time to weed the lands, as well as shear the sheep. All year round, the peasant/serf doesn't only look to his own land, but also to the land of his lord (the demesne). They also grow vegetables and fruits, which fill out the remainder of their diet. Now, peasants and serfs aren't as hard worked as you'd think. Indeed, peasants could thank the Catholic Church for this, as their many feast days and holidays (holy days) would mean days off so that they could commemorate the lives of Christian saints, or the special events in the life of Jesus and his family. The three great feasts of the Catholic Church are Christmas (replacing the old Roman holiday of the Saturnalia), Easter, and Pentecost. Many other days are dedicated to the Virgin Mary or other saints. Indeed, fifty days out of the year (which was what these festivals would add up to) meant days off for the peasantry. Not bad, to be honest, considering in this country you're lucky if you can get two or three weeks off for the entire year! Behold, your Union Rep, with whom Our Lord Jesus is well pleased! Now, there's other info in the book on a peasant's life, but as this is a big topic, I'm going to move up to see how the aristocracy operated. Feudalism is not only the main political and economic ingredient of medieval Europe, but contributes to the social organization of it as well. Medieval commentators wrote that medieval society was made up of three estates of 'Those who pray, those who fight, and those who work.' The first estate, those who pray, were the clergy of the Roman Catholic Church (priests, bishops, cardinals, popes). They owe their loyalty to the Church rather than to secular rulers. Those who fought came from the second estate, the ranks of nobles. The third estate makes up the bulk of the population, and is constituted of serfs and peasants who cultivate the land. Now, those who pray and those who fight enjoy their various sets of rights, but more often than not, in order to protect their own position in society, are prepared to deny the third estate access to those same rights. Now, in the Middle Ages, the men who made up the aristocracy were largely drawn from a military class. They make up the dukes, counts, barons, viscounts (and even in some cases bishops and archbishops) who serve the king, hold extensive lands thanks to the feudal system, and hold most of the political, economic, and social power. As we found, kings and nobles depend on knights for military protection. Ostensibly, knights had little more than peasants, but over time (and with being depended upon for so long) knights are able to increase their social status and start joining the ranks of nobility, so much so that in many areas noble and knight are synonymous terms, as the noble probably got his job by kicking someone's ass for the king. My resume includes royal pest control and decapitation, with a specialization of disembowelling someone in order to strangle them to death with their own intestines... Now, as knights are military in nature, they spend a lot of time exercising their sword hands. Not only do they fight foreign enemies, they're also known for fighting each other. The Catholic Church tried to stop this, or more specifically by limiting it by requiring knights to uphold what was called the 'Peace of God.' The Church, beginning in the 1000s, encouraged knights to take oaths to respect churches, places of pilgrimage and to refrain from attacking civilians or other non-combatants (clergy, poor people, merchants, women, etc.). AWWWW! But I wanted to brutalize the general population! That being said, it's still acceptable for knights to kill each other. The Church also tries to institute the 'Truce of God,' which forbids fighting on Sundays as well as Feast days. Sometimes, to diminish fighting, the Church would recruit knights to fight in non-Christian lands, which we will see when we discuss the Crusades. Indeed, the Church tries to repaint the knight in a Christian context. They receive their arms as a knight in a religious ceremony, weapons are blessed by a priest, and the nobles, when fighting on behalf of the Church, have both an outlet for their love of war, as well as religious justification for it. It's quite strange, killing for a living while at the same time being a member of a religion where it is a sin to kill, and a constant, almost schizophrenic tension exists between these two roles of a noble. Again, we'll discuss this more when we talk about the Crusades. Nobles of course, live in what we know as castles, which are scattered across the landscape. Castles vary considerably in their design, but they have two common features: they are permanent residences for the noble family and his household of knights, retainers, and servants, and they are defensible fortifications (in many cases surrounded by a small body of water known as a moat). At the heart of the castle is the keep, a large multistoried building that is the core of the castle, possessing kitchens, stables, storerooms, bedrooms, a great hall for greeting guests, etc. As the Middle Ages progressed, you're seeing more and more castles being built which are larger, have thicker walls for defense, as well as more detailed interiors. Now, there's a rite of passage for the male noble who would become a knight. At age 7-8, aristocratic boys get sent one of two places: they are sent away to a clerical school to pursue a religious career, or they are sent to another nobleman's castle, where they prepare for the life of a noble. Their chief instruction is military, where they learn how to joust, hunt, ride, and handle weapons. They may also learn to read and write. After being an apprentice to a knight, at the age of 21 or thereabouts the young man would be officially 'knighted,' where a sponsor would take a sword, place it on the candidate, and touching him three times with the flat of the blade would proclaim him a knight (it used to be where the sponsor would give the new knight a smack to bring him into knighthood). Knight: Ah, a smack is nothing! Back in my day they'd immolate half of your face to welcome you into knighthood! The Church, hoping that the knights can behave, help to influence a code of civilized behavior that comes to be known as chivalry. This is a code of ethics that knights are expected to obey. This code requires that knights defend the Church, defend the defenseless, and do not attack unarmed knights. It implied that knights should fight only for glory (although for the most part this wasn't always followed, because Sir Cedric has to get paid at the end of the day), so not all chivalrous behavior was always followed. Once a guy is a knight, he returns to his father's home, and cannot become lord until his father dies. The knight, therefore, has a lot of free time on his hands, and usually gravitates to warfare more often than not (hence, there's a lot of small scale private warfare going on in this period). But by the 1100s, as a way to keep war from happening everywhere and all the time, events called tournaments began to appear, where knights had a place to channel their love of war. Basically, the Church knows that knights want to fight, so tournaments are the substitute for war, where knights can fight each other free for all on horseback with blunted weapons in a set fight known as the melee, with the last man standing winning the fight. During the fight, the downed knight becomes a 'prisoner' of the knight who 'captured' him, and thus had to pay a 'ransom,' thus making coming to a tournament a profitable action for the knight. As well as this, the melee eventually gets displaced by the joust as the main attraction of the tournament, where two knights ride towards each other with long lances, trying to unhorse one another. Hopefully doing so with a winning smile... Knights can make A LOT of money as a result of fighting in tournaments. For example, William Marshall, advisor to Henry II as well as King John of England and knight extraordinaire, defeated over 200 knights in an eight month span, and managed to make so much money that his skills allowed him to make a living off of it. While the Church looked down upon tournaments, they could not deny that in many cases it was less destructive than all out war, and allowed knights to get their military training when war did come along. Sir William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke. That being said, jousting was EXTREMELY DANGEROUS, and could be known to kill people and in part fell out of fashion in the mid-1500s as a consequence. Some of the more famous victims of jousting include King Henry II of France (reigned 1547-1559), who died after sustaining a severe head wound. Moreover, let us look at the one guy who was one of the biggest wannabe jousting champions of them all, Henry VIII of England (ruled 1509-1547). Now, Henry was never this thin as you see when you see Jonathan Rhys-Meyers playing him, but he was considered to be one of the great athletes amongst the monarchs of Europe back in the day. He loved keeping in shape, and loved hunting, playing tennis, and ESPECIALLY JOUSTING. As he was muscular and in shape, he could eat anything he wanted. However, although he loves jousting, jousting doesn't love him, and in the 1530s, Henry sustained both a massive leg wound and a massive head wound after a joust that sent him into a two day coma. When he re-emerged, he was in too bad a shape to take part in athletic contests or exercise any more, but nevertheless continued to eat like he did when he was in shape (he was a big comfort eater). Hence, what results is the Henry VIII you've probably seen in the history books. All 400 pounds of him... Elvis: Damn! That man is BIG! All of a sudden, I don't feel so bad about myself...thank you very much! Supposedly the head wound sustained by Henry (doctors compared it to getting in the head by a moving car at 30 miles an hour) may have addled his brain (he used to either fly in to rages over nothing or start crying uncontrollably at the drop of a hat), which (you never know, according to a History Channel I saw and all so...grain of salt) might explain his launching of the English Reformation, the brutalization of his population, and the execution of two of his six wives. His leg became infected and never fully healed, so basically it used to smell up the palace something horrid, so that even his own nobles didn't want to be in the same room with him because of the smell (imagine being one of his six wives when he's in the mood for love!) So yeah, jousting probably fell out of fashion mainly because it was just massively dangerous. Now, I've talked of peasants and serfs, as well as lords and knights. So I've covered the second and third estates. But what of the first estate, that of the church? Well, the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church in the religious life of western Europe, as I have said, has its roots in the fall of Roman authority in the West, and when people can't look to their secular leaders as those people are coming and going, they look for stability in their spiritual leader, who is embodied by the pope. This sense of identity of the primacy of the Roman Church is instilled first by Pope Leo I (the guy who stood up to Attila when he tried to sack Rome, but also argued that his see, the bishopric of St. Peter, called the Rock of the Church by Jesus Christ himself, is the centre of the Christian faith). This idea of the bishop of Rome as the main authority is entrenched by Pope Gregory I, or the Great (590-604). Gregory is known for not only asserting Rome as the main authority of the Church, but also for his vigorous policy of sending out missionaries to convert various peoples to Christianity. Gregory the Great (pope from 509-604) Now, Gregory is able to enhance the influence of Christianity in the lives of individuals, placing special emphasis on the sacrament of confession/penance, which requires individuals to confess their sins to their priest and atone for them in order to be granted the priest's forgiveness (the priest is the representative of God, so God is effectively forgiving you when the priest does and you have a clean slate). You're also seeing during this time the development of monasticism in Western Europe. Now, monasticism first appeared in the second, third and fourth centuries AD in the East (especially in Egypt), when devout Christians, who didn't necessarily want to martyr themselves to the Roman authorities, formed communes away from the temptations of the cities (also called monasteries) where they live to dedicate their lives to holiness. When Christianity became legal in the fourth century, many people who otherwise may have martyred themselves in the arena to be a witness to their faith, flocked to these communes, leading to their growth and popularity. Once upon a time, this was REALLY popular... While your male members of monasteries are referred to as monks (and, later, you have friars at monasteries), your female monastic members are called nuns and usually live in cloistered communities called nunneries, convents or abbeys (abbeys can be religious institutions with either male or female members). Now, monasticism comes to the West later, around the late fifth century. At this time, each monastery operates with their own rules and regulations, its own procedures and priorities. Some are ascetic, requiring their members to live extremely austere lifestyles that end up sapping their energy. Others don't establish any clear expectations of their recruits, so they might laze around a bit. In light of the inconsistencies of the various monasteries, a man called St. Benedict of Nursia (480-547) emerges to provide a uniform Rule for the monastic community. St. Benedict of Nursia This Rule requires monks to take vows, lead communal and celibate lives within the monastery, under the absolute direction of the abbot who supervises the monastery. The Benedictine order of monks requires poverty, chastity, and obedience. This is done as a way of creating a uniform rule as a point of reference to instil discipline to monasteries that may be seen as lax, as well as moderate the behaviour of monasteries that require their monks to sleep on spikes in order to constantly remind themselves of Jesus' sacrifice. St. Benedict's sister, St. Scholastica, adapted his rule to apply to the lives of religious women who lived as nuns in nunneries or convents. So, in Western Europe during the Middle Ages, most monasteries and convents observed the Benedictine Rule. With this uniformity and discipline, monasteries become a dominant feature of medieval life. Monasteries help provide order in the countryside. Monasteries, being self-sufficient, have farms, and this helps to increase agricultural production. Monasteries are able to accumulate large land holdings left to them by nobles in their wills (this is a noble's way of trying to get into Heaven), and have authority over the serfs who work those lands. The abbots of these monasteries work with the monks and the serfs to clear forests, drain swamps, cultivate lands, and the fruits of their labours allow them to sell off any surplus they might have, making them wealthier. Monasteries provide social services as well, serving as inns, places of refuge or sanctuary, orphanages, hospitals, and schools. They maintain libraries and scriptoriums, where monks copy works of classical literature and philosophy as well as the Bible and other Christian writings. All the Latin Literature we have (Caesar, Cicero, Marcus Aurelius, St. Augustine, etc.), you can thank the monks for. Monasteries also provide training grounds for individuals who may find themselves working as secretaries or administrators for the lords who can then govern more effectively. Monks also tend to their pastoral duties, preaching Christianity to the population and tending to their spiritual needs. This ENTRENCHES Christianity in countless generations of peasants. By the high Middle Ages (1000-1300), the increasing growth of Europe creates a strong demand for educated individuals who can deal with law, politics, and theological issues. The various bishops, especially of those sees in France and Italy, respond to this demand by organizing schools at their cathedrals. These schools have well-known scholars as their master teachers, and the curriculum is based mainly on literature and philosophy. Students read the Bible, the writings of Church fathers, classical Latin Literature, and the few works of Plato and Aristotle that were available in Latin. Some schools also offered instruction in law, medicine and theology. Over time, the students and teachers of these schools form academic guilds and persuade political authorities to grant charters to guarantee their rights. Students demand a high standard of quality from their teachers, and Cathedral schools start vesting these teachers with the right to bestow academic degrees and to control the curriculum within their own institutions. Cathedral schools therefore get transformed into Universities. Oxford University: A place that was at first about learning about God, but has been transformed into a playground for over-privileged entitled rich kids who lord it over you because their daddies got them into this place (full disclosure: Dr. Hurley is a graduate of the University of Liverpool, so you can consider the source). The foundation of Universities coincides with Western Europe's rediscovery of the works of Aristotle (and you can thank the Muslims as well as the Byzantines for keeping these works in existence). Latin translations of Aristotle start appearing around the 1200s, and Aristotle influences almost all branches of thought. This leads to the development of scholastic theology, or Scholasticism, where scholastic writers seek to synthesize the beliefs of Christianity with the logical rigour of Greek philosophy. St. Thomas Aquinas, who in this picture looks a LOT like a holier version of Gov. Chris Christie... The most famous of the scholastic theologians is St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), who argued that Aristotle understood the workings of the world better than any other philosopher. He reconciles Aristotle with Christianity by saying that there is no contradiction between the two. Aristotle understands the natural world, but Christianity supplements his philosophy by explaining that the natural world is part of the divine plan. His Sumna Theologica, a very, very long and well-thought out work, essentially creates the basis for the influence of Greek Philosophy and especially Aristotelianism with the modern thought of the Roman Catholic Church. Incidentally, Aristotle made the rounds in the middle Ages in Islam and Judaism as well as Christianity. The Muslim philosopher Ibn Rushd (Averroes), whom St. Thomas Aquinas could claim as an influence, was a past master at logic, a polymath, and excelled at interpreting both Platonic and Aristotelian thought. He also wrote on astronomy, music theory, theology, physics, politices, psychology and even medicine in which he may have discovered the existence of Parkinson's disease, and was the first academic to write on the subject of erectile dysfunction as well as its treatment. A Jewish example of the influence of Aristotelianism is the philosopher, physician, and rabbi Moses Miamonides, who interpreted scripture, the Talmud, as well as the law in an Aristotelian context. You're seeing the development of monasteries, universities, as well as a sophisticated theology, but there are developments in the popular sphere of religion as well. Popular piety is strong, and as well as recognizing Jesus as lord and saviour, entails observance of the sacraments of the Church and devotion to the saints of the Church. Sacraments are holy rituals that bring spiritual blessings on the servants. There are seven of them (baptism, the Eucharist (communion), confession, marriage, holy orders, confirmation, and anointing of the sick or last rites). All of these sacraments are important, but Eucharist is the most popular, as its presence in the Mass reminded Christians of Jesus' last meal before his sacrifice. Partaking in the sacraments keep individuals within good standing with the Church, and conscientious believers go to Church weekly, the most devout daily. Christians at this time believe that this good standing and regular observance of the sacraments would protect them from sudden death and help them prosper (or, if they did die, they would most certainly go to Heaven). Popular Christianity in the West also leads to devotion to the saints, religious individuals which God held in high esteem. Saints were supposed to enjoy special influences with God and are believed in Catholicism to be able to intervene on behalf of a living individual. So you've got people frequently invoking the names of saints who have a reputation for helping people. The most popular saint, of course, is the Blessed Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ. Within Catholicism, she personifies the Christian ideal of womanhood, love, and sympathy, and she is believed to have aided her devotees at every opportunity possible. During the 1100s and 1200s, hundreds of churches and cathedrals are dedicated to her, most notably the cathedral of Notre Dame ('Our Lady') in Paris. A few pictures of these first 'skyscrapers' of Western Europe Notre Dame, Paris. Don't feed the pigeons, they'll crap on you as thanks... Lincoln Cathedral in England, finished around 1300. The tallest building in the world at the time (a title it snatched away from the Pyramid of Khufu at Giza in Egypt). Devotional cults to saints also generate the veneration of relics of these saints (whether it be their actual remains, their clothes, or even Jesus' Crown of Thorns), and these relics were believed to have a bit of the spiritual powers of their owners left in them, and serve as a point of honour for various cathedrals where they are kept. Indeed, by the late Middle Ages, if you want to build a new cathedral, you HAVE to have the relic of one saint or another. Relics become so important, that pilgrimages are organized, where pilgrims trek long distances to the places where the relics are kept, and in this pilgrimage the pilgrim honours the saint and shows his faith and piety. Pilgrimages are so popular, that there are networks of them, and a travel industry emerges to accommodate them (inns on the way to the Cathedral, guidebooks to tell the pilgrim what to look out for, as well as telling them what roads to avoid lest they be overtaken by highwaymen, etc.). Hence Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, in which you have a whole group of people travelling to Canterbury Cathedral and the shrine of St. Thomas Becket, telling stories on the way... A LOT of stories, and all in Middle English....

Decline of Byzantium in the West, Rise of the Carolingians

With the coming of Islam, the Eastern Roman, or Byzantine Empire, by around 700, is reduced in size, losing its possessions in Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and Africa to the armies of the caliph. Its previous efforts to take over Italy have been frustrated by the Lombard invasions, and it only holds fragmented parts of Italy (which do include Rome, which is nominally under the emperor's rule but really more under the rule of the pope). In the Balkans, their possessions are threatened by tribes of Slavs and Avars, and their claim to those lands is never ironclad at this time. Byzantium's pre-eminence and reputation is highly damaged. However, although the Byzantines have been beaten to a pulp by the Muslims, the Muslims can't seem to get rid of them. As well as being frustrated in the West, the Umayyad Caliphate makes repeated attempts to capture Constantinople, but can't. They try to do so mainly via naval operations (the Muslims are fast learners and work quickly, and soon put together a navy to be reckoned with). They try to attack Constantinople first in the 670s, and then again in the campaign of 717, but they are soundly defeated. Why? Well, as the armies of Islam are coming from the sea, the Byzantines adapt and start equipping their ships with something called Greek Fire. Greek Fire is a mix of oil, sulphur, and pitch that, when lit, burns hotly and continuously. The Byzantines manage to channel this fire viFa some sort of hose, and put this on their ships to make the early medieval version of a flamethrower. So when Muslim armies sail up to the Byzantine navy to try and defeat them, they see an admiral on one ship looking uncannily like Tony Montana from Scarface, manically proclaiming 'Say hello to my little friends!' They then find that the Byzantines are launching these continuous flames at their ships which, of course, destroy them (the ships being made of wood at this time), and soon find themselves suffering defeat after defeat on the sea. So by 717, the Muslims are halted by the Byzantines in the East. In the West, the Muslim conquest of the Visigothic Kingdom in Spain (the Visigoths were very good at fighting amongst each other and as a result the Muslim forces were actually invited into the peninsula!) opens Gaul to attack. However, when the Muslims invade in the 730s, they are met by the forces of Mayor of the Palace Charles 'The Hammer' Martel. A Mayor of the Palace was basically the chief advisor/administrator/general to the Frankish Kings. Charles Martel meets the Muslim forces at the battle of Poitiers (Tours) in 732, led by Abd al-Rahman, with the Muslims outnumbering the Franks. During the battle, Charles has some of his scouts break off and ride into the Umayyad camp to cause trouble. When the Umayyads see that Franks are in their camp (and perhaps stealing whatever plunder/booty is there), many of them break way from the battle and the Muslim armies, as a result of this surprise and disorganization (this on top of the fact that General al-Rahman didn't feel the need to gather any military intelligence before coming into battle) turns the battle into a victory for the Franks. Charles Martel, although he's only the Mayor of the Palace and not the King, is seen as the real protector of the Gauls, and he and his successors will use this to later displace the weakening Frankish Dynasty of the Merovingians and replace it with the Carolingians. It is these two conflicts, that with the Byzantines and with the Franks, that essentially halts the advance of Islam in Europe. Despite fighting off the Muslims, there is continuous tension between western Europe and Byzantium in the East, which can be seen in the following religious development. See, the Byzantines had a REALLY HARD TIME dealing with the fact that they were no longer the dominant power in Europe. They've been reduced to a shadow of their former selves, having to watch helplessly while people they see as uncouth, illiterate barbarians rule the lands in the west they believe to be rightfully theirs. Moreover, they have had to resign themselves to the fact that these Arabian infidels have invaded and stolen their lands to the east and the south. So by 717, you have this one emperor, Leo III (the Isaurian), doing some soul searching. Having defeated the armies of Islam, he looks to where the empire has gone wrong, and concludes that the problem is religious in nature. See, he looks around and sees all of these religious images, known as icons, and finds that the population is doing strange things with them. Icons have been prevalent in the eastern church for awhile, but many people are putting WAY too much emphasis on them. Some people, at their children's baptisms, are holding up icons of saints to stand in as godparents (so you can have people claiming that their child's godfather is the Archangel St. Michael). Some are even chipping off the gold from icons and consuming it, believing that it will give them magical powers. Leo III believes that such emphasis on icons has led the people of the empire to engage in wide-scale idolatry, and that this is the main reason why the empire is suffering. God in the Old Testament is pretty clear of what His opinion is on idolatry, and Leo comes to the conclusion that the empire is being punished for carrying out such a practice. To ameliorate this situation and thus gain God's favour, Leo III embarks on a policy of iconoclasm ('the breaking of icons'), outlawing their use and further creation and smashing the existing ones. He hopes by doing this, that God will show favour to the empire once again and grant it prosperity and success. All it seems to do, however, is create resentment amongst ordinary people in the empire, with whom icons are popular. Moreover, the rather obnoxious behaviour of the iconoclasts (they come into churches during mass and basically start smashing everything) makes the policy deeply unpopular. Leo (and later his son Constantine V) are undeterred by such unpopularity, and attempt not only to implement this policy in their lands, but also in lands outside of their direct rule. See, although the Byzantine emperors have lost much of the lands gained by the armies of Justinian, they still see themselves as the emperors of Rome, and believe that they can still act like Constantine or Justinian. This is a high-handed, and unrealistic mentality, and whenever the emperors try to tell people to follow policies such as Iconoclasm in the West, it creates general resentment in the West, who are starting to believe more and more that the Byzantines are just a bunch of regional Greeks who fancy themselves Roman emperors. Indeed, the Byzantines do more to alienate themselves from the rest of Europe than anything else. By the 700s, this is especially true with regard to Byzantium's relations with the pope in Rome. See, for years and years and years, the Byzantines (or Eastern Romans), with their Caesaropapist beliefs, had more or less seen the pope as an Eastern Roman/Byzantine official who should be an agent for imperial religious policy. Now, in the West, with the lack of any real leadership during a time when states rise and fall, many in that area see the pope as a rallying point, the spiritual leader of the West who still remains when kings have come and gone, and the guy who TRULY looks to the well-being of Christians everywhere. Initially, the popes work with the Byzantine emperors, whom at the time they still saw as Roman emperors. But that close relationship was in the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries. By the eighth century, the popes are aware of their growing role in the West, and quite frankly are sick of the condescending (and sometimes rough) treatment they have received from the Byzantines in the past. The role of Byzantium in the West has become increasingly irrelevant, but the fact that they don't seem to recognize this and keep acting as if they are still the Roman Empire is pissing a lot of people off. So when the pope is told to implement this Iconoclastic policy, he tells the emperor where to go, that those in the West, who don't eat icons like those Greek freaks of the East, are not going to all of a sudden get rid of all religious imagery just because the emperor hundreds, in some cases thousands, of miles away in Constantinople tells them to. The pope believes that Leo's policy of Iconoclasm is destructive, and even heretical (per se, it's not heretical, but the fact that the Muslims do not allow religious imagery leads the papacy to think that Leo wants to turn Christianity into some new form of Islam), so he's not going to follow it. Moreover, it reflects one of the many frustrations that the Western church had with the Eastern church. The East tended towards forming doctrine in an almost too technical, micromanaging way, constantly changing and rearranging it and always debating over points that to us might seem like 'nit picking' ('If Jesus is the Son of God, is he fully divine or both divine and human?' 'Are the personalities of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, reflective of three different personalities or One Divine Will?' 'Should you use leavened or unleavened bread for the sacrament of Holy Communion?') . The popes, on the other hand, tended towards determining a doctrine and STICKING WITH IT, as they believed that to make any changes in doctrine led to conflict within the Church and violence without. And this is pretty illustrative of how the popes, despite being originally patronised by the Roman Emperors, were cooling to the idea of being told what to do by an emperor in Constantinople. The Byzantines have gradually lost influence in Italy, so they can't exactly enforce the policy's implementation there. In any case, the policy of Iconoclasm is ultimately unsuccessful (just go to a Greek Orthodox church today and look at how unsuccessful it was!). The only thing it really managed to do was to help widen an already increasingly widening gap between Western and Eastern Christendom. But up to this point, the pope had depended on Byzantine arms for protection. He realized that he needs a new guardian, and starts looking around in the West for one. He finds that the kingdom willing to be the most accommodating is that of the Franks, who had converted to Christianity in the fifth century. Remember how I was talking about how the pope had been sick of dealing with the Byzantines but couldn't get rid of them as they were their default 'protectors?' Well, we're going to talk about that story today. The Byzantines had been driven out of most of Italy by the year 751 by the Lombard Kingdom, which wasn't exactly friendly to the papacy (Byzantium is still in Italy, but their presence is relegated to the south, around Apulia and Calabria). So the pope, Stephen II, looks west and sees a possible candidate for a new protector. What's west? Well, by the eighth century, the only real player to look to is the Frankish Kingdom. The Frankish Kingdom is still ruled by the Merovingian dynasty, but after the victory and supremacy of Charles "The Hammer" Martel, the dynasty is becoming increasingly inconsequential and the position of Mayor of the Palace is seen as the real power. His son, Pepin the Short (751-768) actually takes things a step further and deposes the last Merovingian king, giving him a tonsure and sending him off to a monastery. Pepin claims the crown for himself, and founds the Carolingian Dynasty. Pepin is friendly with the pope, and his actions are approved by the Vicar of Christ (upon Pepin's crowning, he was anointed Old Testament style with holy oil by a papal representative). The close relationship that Pepin and the pope enjoy leads Stephen II to take things one step further. Realizing that the Byzantines are gone and the Lombards are not friendly, Stephen secretly travels over the Alps to ask Pepin for protection. Upon meeting the Frankish King, he agrees to reconsecrate him and forges an alliance with him. Pepin, now protector of the Church, invades Italy in 754 and 756 to force the Lombards to behave, but leaves them their kingdom. Moreover, to show that he was truly the protector of the Church, he gives a donation of the old lands of the Byzantine Exarchate to Stephen and the Church, and the Papal States are created (and last over 1000 years). So the Franks and the Church are clearly working well together. The Frankish star is rising, especially with the accession of Pepin's son Charles the Great (or Charlemagne, Carolus Magnus, where we get the term Carolingian from). Charlemagne was a fierce warrior, a decisive guy, a good statesman and highly intelligent (despite the fact that he's completely illiterate, Charlemagne is trilingual, knowing Frankish, Latin, and Greek). Charlemagne is responsible for expanding his lands during his rule, from 768 to 814. Fighting 54 campaigns during his reign, Charlemagne extinguishes the Lombard Kingdom in 773, deposing its last King Desiderius in 774 and adding those lands to his empire. He campaigns in Bavaria and southwest Germany in the 780s, and it is during this time that Charlemagne completely destroys the Avars (who have been giving everyone trouble since the 500s) as a political entity. He invades Saxony but meets with stiff resistance (indeed, one of the low points of his reign was that he ordered a mass execution of Saxons that totaled about 4,500), but manages to subdue it by 804, converting those lands to Christianity. He beats up on the Slavs, and is even able to expand a little into Spain despite stiff resistance from the Basque peoples in the north who ultimately frustrate his plans there (The Song of Roland describes this ill-fated campaign). In any case, by the year 810, Charlemagne and his empire are the dominant force in Western Europe. Charlemagne governs his empire well. While there is no system of taxation throughout his empire, Charlemagne is able to utilize his royal estates for the resources he needs to maintain his empire. To ensure the loyalty of the nobility, Charlemagne grants parts of his royal lands to nobles who have been loyal to him for life. The administration of the empire depends on counts, the king's chief representatives in local areas, while margraves (counts of the border districts) governed the more dangerous border areas. Counts and margraves serve as judges, military leaders, and the king's agents. The counts had for a long time managed to play a dominant role in Merovingian politics (and was one of the reasons why the Merovingians were weakened by the eighth century), but Charlemagne makes sure they are brought to heel so they don't get any ideas about challenging his rule. So what he does is he makes sure the counts have to serve not just as the head guys in their family lands, but instead are moved around every few years to govern other lands as a way of keeping them from getting too comfy. Charlemagne also make sure to make the office of count appointed, and not hereditary. As another check on the counts, Charlemagne introduced the use of the missi dominici (the messengers of the lord king), groups of two men (one lord, one church official, so basically a very twisted buddy cop film) who are sent out to local districts to ensure that the counts were doing what the king wanted them to do. Despite these measures, the Carolingian empire is fairly inefficient, mainly because of the difficulty to travel from one area of the empire to another (the Franks, being a bunch of barbarians, kind of forgot the fact that the ghost of Julius Caesar does NOT come down and use some sort of awesomeness magic to miraculously upkeep the Roman roads). Charlemagne finds it difficult to cover a lot of land and more quickly transport himself from one end of his realm to another (he even has plans to build a canal connecting the Rhine and Danube to ameliorate this problem, but never realizes the plans). Consequently, Charlemagne has to use his own force of personality to ensure the personal loyalty of his counts, and beat up on those who fall out of line. As Charlemagne is one of the few people who's over six feet tall and is a guy who can crush your head, loyalty is usually kept. Charlemagne works well with the Church. As well as ensuring their continued possession of the Papal States, Charlemagne works with the pope to ensure that all offices are filled with competent men, creates new bishoprics and archbishoprics as new lands are converted, restores old bishoprics, restores old churches, builds new ones, and sees to it that the clergy are doing their jobs. As a result, he is seen as the premier Christian ruler in Europe during this time. Charlemagne is so powerful that, as the years go by, the pope sees him as the true defender of Christendom. Indeed, when in 799, people in Rome rebel against the authority of Pope Leo III (795-816), Leo flees to Charlemagne, who then helps the embattled pope to regain authority. When Charlemagne next visits Rome in 800, Pope Leo proceeds to invite him to a chapel to celebrate Christmas Mass. Not knowing what is going to happen other than, well, Mass, Charlemagne walks into the chapel, sees Pope Leo standing at the altar with a big smile on his face, wearing a wedding dre...no, just kidding. The pope is holding a crown for Charlemagne, and has made the decision to crown Charlemagne emperor. We don't know if Charlemagne wanted this, but he certainly did not say no to the crown when it was offered him. The proclamation of Charlemagne as emperor of the west brings him to the height of his power. Now, there is some problem here, and this might be an argument for Charlemagne's reluctance to claim imperial power before this time. Who's the only real emperor before this? If you said, the Byzantine emperor, you'd be correct. Indeed, when the Byzantines, or Eastern Romans, hear of Charlemagne being proclaimed emperor of the Romans, they are PISSED. Fighting even breaks out between Byzantium and the Frankish kingdom, mostly via naval battles where the Franks get the snot kicked out of them. Nevertheless, after some negotiations, the Byzantines agree to recognize Charlemagne as emperor of the West, but NOT of the Romans. The crowning of Charlemagne as emperor of the West is important, as it shows that the west is trying to create its own identity. It no longer wants to be subject to a relatively powerless emperor in the East who is constantly trying to assert his rule in the west, and involvement. It's also a big marker for the Church, as when the pope crowned Charlemagne, not only was the pope trying to ensure secular protection of the Church, he was also trying to make a power play to be able to influence how the secular authorities carried out their rule. Basically, this action says that, if you want to rule, you have to be crowned by the officials of the Church, who are essentially giving you the western version of the Mandate of Heaven, called in Europe the Divine Right of Kings. Charlemagne also initiated what was called the Carolingian Renaissence. While Charlemagne himself was illiterate, he was nevertheless intellectually curious and wanted to revive learning within his realm. He staffs his officials with learned men as well as clergy, and the monasteries at this time were responsible for preserving and copying down the great classical Latin works (Caesar, Cicero, Tacitus, Suetonius, Lucretius, Marcus Aurelius, what have you). They usually did this in the scriptoria of the monasteries, where they would, of course, copy down the Bible as well in order to make more copies of books. The Carolingians copied these works onto parchment or sheepskin rather than papyrus (the Muslims don't really export this so the Carolingians have no access to it) and then bound them in covers that were decorated to the hilt with jewels and precious metals. Sheepskin parchment was very expensive, as it evidently took an entire herd of sheep to make a Bible. The Carolingians usually wrote in a handwriting style of Carolingian miniscule, which was printing rather than cursive and much easier to read than the old Merovingian script. About 8,000 manuscripts survive from the Carolingian period and 90 percent of the Ancient Roman Latin works survive because of these monks. Charlemagne promotes learning by establishing a palace school and encouraging all scholars from all over Europe to come teach, write and research here. They came from Italy, Spain, Germany, Ireland and England. Best known is Alcuin of York, an intellectual monk who served as Charlemagne's adviser on ecclesiastical affairs from 782-796, and headed up the palace school. Alcuin concentrated on the teaching of Latin and adopted Cassiodorus' sevenfold division of knowledge known as the Liberal Arts. One of the reasons that Charlemagne wants to encourage a revival is that it's a way of showing himself as an emperor as well as a preserver of Western Europe's Roman heritage. Indeed, his official seal carried the words 'Renewal of the Roman Empire.' What's life like in the Carolingian world? Well, it's a lot like those Germanic Kingdoms, with some differences. Marriages in Frankish society are arranged by fathers or uncles to meet the needs of the extended family. Wives are expected to be faithful, although husbands can get away with a concubine on the side (Charlemagne had several, actually). The Church sees this as a bit libertine, so it increasingly tries to emphasize the role of Christianity in marriage and serves as a way of moderating these practices. The Church, for example, makes sure to increase the quantity of blessings it gives to marriages, which in Frankish society were civil. Over time, the Church strengthens the idea that a wedding is only truly valid if it's done by a priest. Moreover, the Church began to stipulate that girls over fifteen had to give their consent to her father/uncle's choice of husband or her marriage would not be valid in the eyes of the Church. So the Church is starting to look out for the rights of women with regard to this matter. The Church, to try and curb the use of concubines, emphasized monogamy within marriages, as well as the permanent nature of the marriage (a Frankish Church council in 789 decreed it as an unbreakable sacrament, condemning the practice of concubinage as well as easy divorce). Under Charlemagne's immediate successor, the Emperor Louis the Pious, the Church established the right to prohibit divorce except in VERY special, specific circumstances. This was not greeted well by the common people, and divorce wasn't really stamped out until the 1200s. There's more emphasis on a nuclear family than an extended family, and young couples are establishing their own households rather than being part of a larger family unit. Regarding sexuality, the early Church Fathers (St. Peter, the first pope, being the exception) stressed that celibacy and complete abstinence from sex constituted an ideal state superior to marriage. Throughout the early middle ages, the Church hierarchy tried to enforce clerical celibacy, but this was impossible to enforce. Now, not all people have to remain celibate, and can marry. But emphasis is put on sex in marriage for pro-creational purposes, but not for pleasure. Contraception is frowned upon. Homosexuality, which was never illegal in the Roman Republic or Empire, is declared so by Justinian I in his Codex, recommending that homosexuals caught in the act should be castrated. However, in the West, the Church actually were much more flexible in their treatment of homosexuals, who are treated less harshly than married couples who practice contraception. The Church condemns both abortion and infanticide, both of which were fairly common in the Roman Empire. It can't, however prevent infanticide, mainly because it can't enforce it. The Church, however, encourages people to, instead of killing their unwanted children, leaving them on the doorsteps of Churches, monasteries, and convents to be raised as monks and nuns. Speaking of monasteries, they're serving another function in the medieval world, that of hospitality. Monasteries, as well as aristocratic households, were expected to provide a place for weary travelers to stop and rest for the night so they're not robbed and bummed on the road by a robber. In Burgundian law, anyone who refused someone hospitality would be fined. Hospitality is a sacred duty, and monasteries are no slouchers about this. They have guest houses, one for rich travelers and the other for the poor, and everyone received room and board for their stay. This didn't always happen, however, and while you would get hospitality in some areas, you wouldn't in others. Now, there's a bit on diet and health that you can read if you want, but I'd like to get ahead to the end of Charlemagne's empire. See, Charlemagne died in 814, and his son, Louis the Pious, became emperor. Although a very nice, highly religious, guy, Louis isn't a strong ruler, and he's unable to control the Frankish aristocracy or even his four (!) sons, who fight amongst each other continuously. Indeed, it's during the 830s that the Frankish empire sees a whole lot of civil war between Louis' sons, which is not ended until after Louis the Pious' death when the three surviving brothers sign the Treaty of Verdun in 843, agreeing to divide the realm amongst them. Charles the Bald (843-877) obtains the western Frankish lands; Louis the German (843-876) receives the eastern Frankish lands, and Lothar (840-855) receives the title of Emperor and a Middle Kingdom that goes from the North Sea down to Central Italy. Now, this corridor of the middle kingdom would be a constant battleground for Louis the German and Charles the Bald. Indeed, it's at this time when you have the unofficial creation of France from Charles' kingdom, and Germany from Louis' kingdom. This rivalry will continue (hint: France isn't very good at it). Now, this division is made for political reasons, with Frankish custom allowing for a division of the kingdom amongst multiple sons. But by the late 800s, the western Frankish are speaking a Romance language derived from Latin known as French, while the Eastern Franks are speaking German. These three kingdoms don't last. There's continued war and squabbling between the brothers as well as between their respective descendants. Powerful aristocrats who formerly served as counts would take advantage of this and become the real movers and shakers, and internally what was Charlemagne's empire was a mess by this time. Moreover, new foreign enemies start to attack in the invasions of the 800s and 900s. The first wave of attackers are the Muslims, who build up sea bases all over the Mediterranean and begin a series of mass pirate attacks, raiding the southern coasts of Europe, especially Italy. In 846, some of these pirates sailed up the Tiber and sacked the Vatican Hill of Rome, storming into the Basilica of St. Peter and violating the tomb of that saint. Muslim raiders also took Sicily from the Byzantines, destroyed the Carolingian bases in northern Spain, and even had pirates' coves in Southern France. One group of Berber Muslim Pirates, sick of the fact that they were always getting treated by crap by their Arab overlords, actually said, screw this, and invaded Southern Italy, establishing the Emirate of Bari, which lasted from 847-871. Also invading Europe are the Magyars, who are a people from Western Asia. They come into Europe when the Byzantines, constantly being harassed by the Bulgars, encourage the Magyars to invade Bulgar lands. This causes the Bulgars to encourage a neighboring people of the Magyars, the Pechenegs, to attack the Magyars. The Magyars, now under pressure move into west and central Europe in the late 800s, and start raiding the entirety of the place. They are only quashed on August 10, 955, by King Otto I of Germany who, outnumbered two to one, defeats them. The Maygars decide to quit while they're ahead and proceed to convert to Catholic Christianity, and settle down to found the Kingdom of Hungary. But the worst invaders are the Vikings. They are the northmen that come from Scandinavia and constitute, pretty much, the final Germanic migration. We don't know why they start moving towards Europe proper at this time. Some say overpopulation, some say a love of money, others just say that, hey, the Vikings needed an outlet for the adventure they craved, so that they could perform valiant badass deeds to guarantee a place in Valhalla, the banquet hall of the Gods, where they could party, drink and fornicate for all eternity. It's all very Zeppelin. Vikings live in a warrior society, so they're experienced warriors. They're also really good at building boats and sailing them. These are the two reasons why they were so successful. They would sail up and down the coasts of Europe in their longboats, which would carry about fifty men. Initially, the Vikings would raid frequently, usually in small scale and sporadic ways. By the late 800s and 900s, however, Viking raids are more regular, larger scale, and consequently more devastating during this time. Vikings usually carry out their raids in the summer, but in later years they would establish winter settlements in Europe from which to use as a base for further conquest, raiding, or even settlement. Vikings would sack villages and towns, burn down churches, and defeat local military forces with relative ease. This frightens the hell out of Western Europe (and to an extent the Islamic world, which saw its share of Viking raids). In France, one monastery was burnt down and rebuilt so many times by the Vikings that it had to move inland, but even when it did this, the Vikings would just travel a little farther and sack it again (this is just one instance of MANY). Now, there are different groups of Vikings, some go to Ireland. Some go to England, some go to the Rhineland, some move to Russia, navigate through the rivers there and end up the Black Sea where they attack or trade with the Byzantine Empire depending on what kind of mood they're in. They settle in some areas but explore others, and in the ninth and tenth centuries discover Iceland and Greenland in the west, as well as even North America, where they establish a settlement in what is now New Foundland. Their raiding comes to a close at the end of the tenth century, as by this time, the lands of the Vikings (Norway, Sweden, Denmark) and their kings both convert to Christianity, and the kings tended to try and put a leash on any new raiding. In any case, with these invasions, Europe needs protection, and, in the absence of a Caesar or a Charlemagne to come save you, they need something else. Well, the cornerstone of this society is what is referred to as Feudalism. It's quite decentralized in nature, and here's how it works. Say I'm a nobleman with a lot of land. Now, the thing is, what with Viking invasions or Magyar barbarians trying to sneak into my castle to try and get it on with my daughter, I need protection. I've got men to help me defend my lands, but it's not enough, with what I've got I can't maintain order in my lands. So here's what I'm going to do. I find out that you have a badass army of badassery. I've got money and I've got land, while you have an army. Here's what we'll do, not only will I give you money, I'll give you a grant of my land to rule over, and all you have to do is swear fealty (loyalty) to me. I am your lord and you will be my vassal. The good news is, that you don't have to be responsible for cultivating the land, the people who already live in that area will be responsible for farming, etc. All you have to do is basically look to building or maintaining the public works in those lands, resolve any disputes, administer justice, and come help me with defending these lands in case someone wants to attack me. But here's the thing. Although you are a vassal and I am your lord, you can take your lands and money and grant them to people who you want to be your vassals, so you can also be a lord (but don't forget, you're still my vassal). We'll all live off of the surplus agriculture we've extracted from the farmers in our lands. Now, this system will create a web of relationships that go from the lowest vassal, through your earls, dukes, etc. up to a king of the land, but it's all decentralized. Now, there is always the danger that a duke below might want to pursue his own interests and try and start a war, but the thing is that all the other vassals might side with the king to crush the duke. So while there is the problem of chaos ensuing in all of this decentralization, the trick is to build strong relationships in this community of nobles and lords to ensure enough loyalty so that this doesn't happen. Medieval society works largely like this. So, how does feudalism work in a practical manner? Well, at the bottom you have a group of peasants referred to as serfs. Now, while serfs aren't slaves, they aren't free either. Serfs are on the lord's land, and have to obey the lord. Now, serfs are given an allocation of land to farm, and in exchange they provide the lord with labour services as well as a portion of the serf's harvest as tax. So, the serf cultivates the land, and is able to do so with the tools and animals the lord has provided him. The thing is, since they're tied to the lord, they don't have any opportunity to move to different lands to find a better deal if the particular lord is a right bastard. Indeed, serfs can only move if they get permission from their lord (and they have to pay a fee if, say, they want to marry another serf who works for a different lord). But these guys are at the bottom in medieval society, although they are the backbone at the same time. The availability of serfs leads to them being one of the main economic ingredients of feudalism: the Manor system. A manor is a large estate with fields, meadows, forests, domestic animals, and serfs who are bound to the land. The lord of the manor is a prominent military/political figure who governs the manor and administrates justice when necessary. They also are responsible for maintaining the mills, bakeries, breweries, wineries, or overseeing the craft industries such as smithies, textiles, leather tanners, etc. The manor system leads to economic development, and in the absence of large cities at this time, this helps economic growth. With new farming methods coming in around the same time, you have more food, which means you have a growing population. Between 1000 and 1300, the population of western Europe more than doubles from 36 million to 79 million, and with this increased population, you're seeing the revival of towns and cities, and the growth of existing cities (such as the ones built by the Romans, like Paris, Toledo, London, Cologne, as well as the appearance of newer cities, such as Venice in Northern Italy). With this increase of productivity, trade is happening more and more between western Europe, Byzantium, Northern Europe, and the Muslim lands which in turn links W. Europe up with the Far East trade. Not all trade goes through the Mediterranean, however. For example, the Hanseatic League in Northern Europe consists of several cities in that region banding together to create an independent trade network that spans from London in England to Novgorod in Russia. Within trade networks such as these, you're seeing the development of guilds that establish standards of quality for the goods traded, as well as the increased presence of merchants, artisans and craft workers (of both sexes), etc.