6. Europe and the World Flashcards
Rosenwein titled this chapter Empires of Land and Mind. What is an ‘empire of mind’?
Scholastis created Summae (compendia), attempting to sum up all knowledge, human and divine. Theirs were “empires” of the mind, claiming to embrace everything on earth and in heaven. Each scholastic synthesis was soon challenged by another like normal empires. Royal governments increased their power and prestige; yet they were elastic enough to allow for – and manipulate – newly minted representative institutions. Musicians and artists elaborated flexible new forms of expression. But ecological disaster in the form of famine threatened to disrupt these harmonies. For example, Thomas Aquinas’s summae (sing. summa) were empires of the mind, written to harmonize all that was known through faith and reason. Using the technique of juxtaposing contrary positions, as Abelard had done in his Sic et Non and Peter Lombard in his Sentences. So link teleological knowledge and human life. Attempt to order science with religious theory. Some think the empire of the mind should be accessible to all but some think you are chosen by god which leads to the thought that it is only god who can know this.
Mental empires were fragile. The Franciscan John Duns Scotus (1265/1266–1308) cast doubt on the possibilities of human reason. Like Bonaventure, he argued that even the most erudite could know truth only by divine illumination. But unlike Bonaventure, he argued that this illumination came not as a matter of course but only when God chose to intervene. Duns Scotus’s God was willful, not reasonable, and He alone determined whether human reason could soar to divine knowledge. Further unraveling the knot tying reason and faith together was William of Ockham (d.1347/1350), another Franciscan who played down the reach of reason altogether. It was apt only for things human and worldly. His theories were of a piece with a new movement among fourteenth-century scholars to direct their attention to human institutions such as coinage and government and to abstractions such as space, time, and motion.
What consequences did the establishment of the Mongol empire have for European commerce and culture?
At the height of its power, (mid 13th- mid 14th century), the Mongol Empire fostered the “Mongol exchange.” At the core of this was the desire for goods to circulate. Constant trade, gift-giving, and an empire-wide monetary system based on silver all served to emphasize the generosity of the khans, create status symbols for the elites, and foster ties of loyalty and dependency from everyone else. To be sure, contemporary Europeans, too, valued these things. What was different in the Mongol realm was the sheer expanse of their networks. The Mongols patronized and attracted artists, poets, and scientists. They wanted – and could pay for – fine silks, fashionable clothing, musicians, porcelain tableware, and costly weapons. They facilitated the Eurasian pathways that inspired merchants such as the Italian Polo brothers to trade with China and that enabled Franciscan missionaries there to set up a Church, complete with bishops and archbishops. In a sense, the Mongols initiated the taste for exploration, exotic goods, and missionary opportunities that culminated in the European “discovery” of what they called the Americas.
The empire of lally in Africa went through places like giro and brought slaves and golds
The Baltics fur and timber
The Atlantic trade from Italy through the sea northern Africa and southern spain instead of land two Italian cities as they had a fleet venice and genoa
On Map 7.2 we see an orange blob that Rosenwein has labelled ‘alluvial gold’. What is this, and why is this gold so important for the developments described in this chapter?
Alluvial are the most common type of placer gold, and are often the richest. They contain pieces of gold that have been washed away from the lode by the force of water, and have been deposited in sediment in or near watercourses or former watercourses.
Carbon dating places Plate 7.3 in c.1300, when the young man, clearly of high status, would have been subject to Malian rule, possibly under Mansa Musa, whose control of the alluvial gold along the Senegal River contributed to his wealth, reputation, and power
Alluvial gold is found in Mali and regions along the north coast of the Gulf of Guinea (the so-called Gold Coast) so gave them lots of power
Empire of Mali (mid-thirteenth until the early fifteenth century). Its origins are recounted in the oral epic Sunjata, sung for centuries by Mande bards. Sunjata was first written down in the seventeenth century.
Much more pure and easily accessible than mining
The emperor gave the gold as gifts and spent it
Oral source from mali
Rosenwein writes on p. 269 that Europeans had no interest in pluralism. ‘Europeans resisted hearing multiple voices; rather, they were eager to purge and purify themselves of the “pollutants” – among them Jews, lepers, heretics, and sexual non-conformists – in their midst’. To what extent could this ‘xenophobia’ be seen as a result of policy, and to what extent was it a response to more general changes in the world
Jews
* Canon 68 of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) forbade sex between Jews and Christians and, to that end, demanded that all Jews wear visible markers of their identity
* Rumours of ritual crucifixion of Christian children and blood libel
* These charges became strong after printing
* Execution and mascre of jews in England France spain and Germany
* Henry III 1240s and 1250s gave harsh tax by the endof his reign many were in poverty
* In England called usurers to vilify them
* Blois 32/40 jews living there murdered for killing a boy but no body was found 1171
* King Louis IX burned two dozen cartloads of ancient rabbinic Bible commentaries in 1242
* As a result of the 1306 decree, perhaps 125,000 French Jews – men, women, and children – became refugees in the Holy Roman Empire, Spain, and Italy. Most of the few who were later allowed to return to France were wiped out in popular uprisings in the early 1320
Lepers and Beggers
* 1321 massacre in the south of France accused of poisoning wells
Heretics
* The inquisition in south of France mid Rhineland and Italy
* Bernard Gui, an inquisitor in Languedoc from 1308 to 1323, gave out 633 punishments. Nearly half involved further imprisonment, a few required penitential pilgrimages, and forty-one people (6.5 per cent of those punished by Bernard) were burned alive.
* Many former heretics were forced to wear crosses sewn to their clothing, rather like Jews, but shamed by a different marker.
Sexualities
* Gregorian reform, priests were strictly barred from marrying, and their chastity was touted as the foundation of their power and virtue. Priestly “sexuality” was unthinkable
* Burchard of Worms prescribed penances for “sexual sins.”
* Arnoud he was tortured and held in a tower. Then, pronouncing his sentence, the inquisitors had him “placed in iron chains in the strictest prison, to be fed a diet of bread and water for life
* Rolandina Roncaglia by the magistrates of Venice. Born with male genitals, she nevertheless passed for years as a woman and practiced prostitution with men. The judges refused to accept her gender change and sentenced her to be burned to death as a man, Rolandino, for “sodomitic sin
- Expelling the Jews meant confiscating their property and calling in their loans while polishing an image of zealous religiosity. Burning lepers was one way to gain access to the assets of leprosaria and claim new forms of hegemony. Imprisonment and burning heretics and sodomites put their property into the hands of secular authorities.
What is meant by ‘worlding’? How is this concept applicable to the text by Marco Polo?
The act or process of bringing a people, culture, nation, etc., into a global sphere of influence, especially the sphere thought of as dominated by Western countries. Polo writing about asia helps to do this
On p. 60, Chism describes Ibn Battuta’s travels as “a cosmopolitanism in process—and that process is painful, full of disturbing emotions, cultural resistances, acute vulnerabilities, and harsh alienations”. Do you recognize this characterisation in the assigned fragment?
- Arrest someone that looks like a foreigner that has fled
- Muslim merchants don’t look after there own money it is given to a designated muslin merchant or a fundunq
- Travellers always accounted for in the fundunq
- Saw things that didn’t please him only left the house when necessary
Marco Polo Provenance
Marco Polo (1254-1324) was the son of a Venetian trader, who was active in the Black Sea trade. He wrote one of the best-known travellogues of the period: Le Divisement du Monde (called Il Milione in Italian), which was written down by Rustichello of Pisa, his cell-mate during a spell of inprisonment in Genua. This travelogue describes the remarkable journey to the Far East which he undertook age 17 in 1271 with his father Niccolò and his uncle Matteo. It would only end decades later, in 1295, when he finally returned to Venice. We read a short extract on his visit to China in the days of the Kublai Khan (1215-1294). He is famous in particular for his account of the mogul empire. He speaks at least four languages not that exceptional but still useful. Wealthy Christian. Not same religious motivation as ibn he is going as part of his trading job instead.
Ibn Battuta Provenance
Ibn Battuta (1304- 1369)
Reports on the extensive travels (1325-1354) of the Moroccan sunni Muslim scholar). This global traveller had his observations (a.o. about China) written down about half a century after Marco Polo. He started travelling from a trip mecca and decided he wanted to see more. Questioning if he really did travel that much or if he used other sources to write but he writes as if he is travelling so minimal distance from events. His account shows there isn’t a unified image of islam. For example he couldn’t understand someone who was also speaking Arabic as he spoke a more modern version of Arabic instead of traditional
How can you compare the context of production and the motivation behind each text?
Ibn wants blessings from other Islamic people
On which specific aspects of the new modes of lives they encounter does each author focus on> How is that explained by their own cultural context?
More distance in marco polo giving more of an anthropology account but Ibn focused on his own feelings and discoveries
Marco focuses on political structures talks about outpost supervised by armies and the battle of nya and there is a focus on how relgion particuallyy how Christianity is practice
Ibn is more cultural and religious throughout the whole source
How does each author relate to and describe their own religion in these strange lands? How is that explained by their own cultural contexts?
Marco polo accounts a man who wants to become Christian but his nobility wouldn’t support it shows that Christianity is the best and anyone who knows about it would want to be Christian and depicts the nyans as christians
Ibn infidels are anyone who inst muslim article says there is worst words to be used that is a moderate term. Feels out of place anyone with remote similarity feels familiar. The muslims were happy to meet other muslims.
Polo more harsh with other religions Christianity was more aggressive than islam at that time so describe religion in very different ways
How do both texts depict the tolerance (or lack there of the Mongols for other religions?
o I mean there doesn’t seem to be much mention in the text by Ibn Battuta. More so that he was negatively perceiving them, rather than the other way round. They gifted their paintings and works to people.
There was a mention that kings would have portraits painted of foreigners/guests and if those guests for some reason were to flee or had to flee the country, the portraits would be passed around countries. If an individual was found who looked like the portrait they would be arrested. –> potentially shows how the Mongols did dislike anything relating to crime and would attempt to abolish those who opposed them and committed negative acts against their empire.
Each religion has its own community. Separated tolerance though.
Moments where there is tolerance but also not.
o Marco Polo –> that Christianity and the Western way WAS superior over the Mongols.
Attempting to convert the Mongol ruling class to Christianity in an attempt of Christianising the world and presumably influencing the classes below to convert as well.
Tolerance through the way the Kahn talks about the religion. Respect. Consideration. Not marginalising anyone.
Depicts tolerant image of the Kahn. –> insisting on the Kahn being tolerant allows Marco Polo to be like, if he could be Christian he would be but he had to please the many religions within the Mongol empire. It would undermine his own argument.
Why are these texts good examples of the changes of the 13 and 14 centuries that we described in the previous seminars?
Growing globalisation
Strengthening of culture can be seen by looking at other culture you get a better sense of who you are
Why do Chism and Kinoshita speak of worlding and cosmopolitanism?
Marco money to be made ibn culture to be gained
How can you link these sources to out broader discussion about other race and gender?
Mongol women were more free dependent and powerful similar to theou
A positive othering
Revision advent Black Death in Europe
- Venetians in Tana
- Spring 1346 to 1347: plague crosses the Black Sea to
Constantinople - Trade embargoes
Actors and Connection
* Politics, colonization, conflict
* Trade and food commodities:
import grain
* Environment and climate
* Rodents (rats & marmots), fleas,
bacteria, disease
* Revision: Eurocentric & urban
global environmental human
and animal disease reservoirs
Narratives about the Late Middle Ages
Traditional historiographic views on
the 14th and 15th centuries:
- Decline, crisis, turmoil, stagnation,
disintegration
Famine - Disease
- War
Rosenwein coincidence crisis
and opportunities
* Transition into:
* Renaissance
* Capitalism
* Modernity
* Reformation
New research insights:
Complexity and diversity per region
Long-term developments and roots development of states
Interaction humans & environment,
climate
Revision & debate: plague
