Chapter 13: Europe in the Middle Ages, 850-1400 CE Flashcards
Fief
1) Where: Europe
2) When: 8th-12th century CE
3) Who: Lords and their vassals(knights).
4) What: Portion of land given to vassals in exchange for the vassals’ loyalty.
5) Why: Fiefs were given to vassals by their lords so that the vassals would remain loyal and continue to serve their lord diligently.
Vassal
1) Where: Europe
2) When: 8th-12th century CE
3) Who: Vassals were knights who served their particular lord.
4) What: Vassals were part of the feudal system that developed in Europe in the 8th century CE.
5) Why: Vassals developed during the late Dark Ages in Europe because many lower class sought protection and support from the upper class.
Invading Groups of Medieval Europe (Vikings, Magyars, Muslims)
1) Where: Europe and the Middle East
2) When: 800-1400 CE
3) Who: Vikings, Magyars, Muslims as invaders
4) What: Vikings invaded (by ship) large sections of continental Europe and Britain.
5) What: Magyars raided villages as far as Spain and the Atlantic coast, subduing northern Italy, Bavaria, Saxony, Rhineland, and Burgundy.
6) What: Muslims succeeded in invading areas in Italy and Spain.
7) Why: All three invading groups invaded in order to attain riches and wealth.
8) Why: Muslims also invaded in order to spread their beliefs in what is also sometimes referred to by some as jihad.
William the Conqueror (Doomsday Book)
1) 11th century CE
2) Europe: England
3) As William the Conqueror subdued the rest of England, he distributed land to his Norman followers and required all feudal lords to swear an oath of allegiance to him as king.
4) William retained the Anglo-Saxon institution of sheriff.
5) In the late 11th century, William decided to conduct a systemic survey of the entire country to determine how much wealth there was and who had it.
6) A priest and six local people swore an oath to answer truthfully; because they swore, they were called jurors and from this small body of local people, the jury system in English-speaking countries gradually evolved.
7) The records collected from the entire country, called The Domesday Book, provided William and his descendants with vital information for governing the country.
Eleanor of Aquitaine
1) 12th to 13th century CE
2) France
3) Was Duchess of Aquitane then later Queen of France and of England
4) Married King Henry II of England.
Phillip II
1) 12th to 13th century CE
2) France
3) The work of unifying France began under Philip II, called Augustus because he vastly enlarged the territory of the kingdom.
4) By the end of his reign, Philip was effectively master of northern France; his descendants acquired important holdings in southern France, and by the 14th century most of the provinces of modern France had been added to the royal domain through diplomacy, marriage, war, and inheritance.
5) Won the French province of Normandy from Henry II’s son John (12th to 13th centuries CE) in the early 13th century.
Otto I
1) 10th century CE
2) Central Europe: Germany
3) The basis of Otto’s power was an alliance with and control of the church.
4) He asserted the right to control church appointments.
5) Bishops and abbots had to perform feudal homage for the lands that accompanied the church office; this practice was later called lay investiture.
6) Under Otto I and his successors, a sort of confederacy (a weak union of strong principalities), later called the Holy Roman Empire, developed in which the emperor shared power with princes, dukes, counts, archbishops, and bishops.
Lay Investiture and Pope Gregory VII
1) 11th century CE
2) Europe: Holy Roman Empire
3) In the late 11th century CE, Cardinal Hildebrand was elected as Pope Gregory VII.
4) Gregory believed that the pope, as the successor of Saint Peter, was the vicar of God on earth and that papal orders were the orders of God.
5) He insisted that the church should be completely free of lay control, and in the late 11th century he ordered clerics who accepted investiture from laymen to be deposed, and laymen who invested clerics to be excommunicated–cut off from the sacraments and the Christian community.
6) Gregory excommunicated church officials who supported Henry IV of the Holy Roman Empire, and suspended him from the emperorship.
7) In the late 11th century CE, Henry arrived at the pope’s residence in Canossa in northern Italy and, according to legend, stood outside the snow for three days seeking forgiveness; as a priest, Gregory was obliged to grant absolution and readmit the emperor into the Christian community.
8) Although the emperor bowed before the pope, Henry regained the emperorship and authority over his subjects, but the controversy encouraged German nobles to resist any expansion in the emperor’s authority.
9) The nobles gained authority, subordinating knights and reducing free men and serfs to servile status.
10) When this Investiture Controversy was finally settled in the early 12th century CE by a compromise, the nobility held the balance of authority in Germany.
Holy Roman Empire (Frederick Barbossa)
1) 12th Century CE
2) Central Europe: Germany
3) Frederick Barbossa of the house of Hohenstaufen tried valiantly to make the Holy Roman Empire a unified state.
4) He made alliances with lay princes and churchmen to become his vassals.
5) He became embroiled in the affairs of Italy, hoping to cash in on the wealth Italian cities had gained through trade.
6) He led six expeditions into Italy, but his brutal methods provoked revolts; thus, the disgruntled cities, allied with the papacy, defeated Barbossa in the late 12th century.
7) Barbossa was forced to recognize the autonomy of the Italian cities.
8) Meanwhile, back in Germany, Frederick’s absence allowed the princes and other rulers of independent provinces to consolidate their strongholds and their rule.
Louis XI (Parlament of Paris)
1) 13th Century CE
2) France
3) Was famous in his time for his concern for justice.
4) Each French province, even after being made part of the kingdom of France, retained its unique laws and procedures, but Louis IX created a royal judicial system.
5) Established the Parlement of Paris, a kind of supreme court the welcomed appeals from local administrators and from the courts of feudal lords throughout France.
Henry II (Common Law)
1) 12th Century CE
2) France
3) Inherited the French provinces of Normandy, Anjou, and Touraine in northwestern France.
4) When Henry married Eleanor of Aquitaine in the mid 12th century CE, he claimed lordship over Aquitaine, Poitou, and Gascony in southwestern Spain as well.
5) under Henry II, England developed and extended a common law–a law common to and accepted by the entire country.
6) Each year, Henry sent out circuit judges (royal officials who traveled in a given circuit or district) to hear civil and criminal cases; wherever the king’s judges sat, there sat the king’s court.
7) Slowly, the king’s court gained jurisdiction over all property disputes and criminal actions
Fourth Lateran Council
1) Early 13th century
2) England
3) Henry II disliked this system because the clergy controlled the procedure and because many suspicious people seemed to beat the system and escape punishment, but he had no alternative.
4) In the early 13th century, the church’s Fourth Lateran Council forbade priest’s’ participation in such trials,–meaning the trials in which a person was bound hand and foot and dropped into a lake or river to see if he or she would float (an innocent person would sink whereas a guilty person would float) and because God determine guilt or innocence, a priest had to be present to bless the water–effectively ending them; royal justice was desacralized.
5) In the course of the 13th century, the king’s judges adopted the practice of calling on twelve people to decide the accused’s guilt or innocence.
6) This trial by jury was only gradually accepted; medieval Europeans had more confidence in the judgement of God than in that of ordinary people.
Magna Carta
1) 13th century
2) England
3) When John’s (12th century to 13th century) military campaign failed in the early 13th century, it was clear that the French lands that had once belonged to the English king were lost for good; his ineptitude as a soldier in a culture that idealized military glory turned the people against him.
4) The barons revolted and in the early 13th century, forced him to attach his seal to Magna Carta–the “Great Charter,” which became the cornerstone of English justice and law.
5) Magna Carta signifies the principle that the king and the government shall be under the law and that everyone, including the king, must obey the law.
6) If a government is to be legitimate, the theory emerged, then government must operate according to the rule of law.
7) Some clauses of Magna Carta contain the germ of the ideas of due process of law and the right to a fair and speedy trial.
8) A person may not be arbitrarily arrested and held indefinitely in prison without being accused of crime and brought to trial.
9) Every English king in the Middle Ages reissued Magna Carta as evidence of his promise to observe the law.
The Abbey of Cluny
1) Established in the early 10th century CE
2) France
3) The abbey of Cluny in Burgundy was established by William the Pious, the duke of Aquitaine, in the early 10th century CE.
4) Duke William declared that the monastery was to be fee from any feudal responsibilities to him or any other lord, its members subordinate to the pope.
5) The first two abbots of Cluny set very high standards of religious behavior and stressed strict observance of The Rule of Saint Benedict.
6) Cluny came to stand for clerical celibacy and the suppression of simony (the sale of church offices).
7) In a disorderly world, Cluny represented religious and political stability; laypersons placed lands under Cluny’s custody and monastic houses under its jurisdiction for reform.
Hildegard Bingen
1) Late 11th century to late 12th century
2) Holy Roman Empire
3) She wanted the church to approve of her visions and wrote first to St. Bernard of Clairvaux, who answered her briefly and dismissively, and then to Pope Eugenius, who encouraged her to write them down.
4) Her first work was Scivias (Know the Ways of the Lord), a record of her mystical visions that incorporates vast theological learning.
5) Hildegard left her abbey in the mid 12th century to found the convent of Rupertsberg near Bingen; there she produced Physica (On the Physical Elements) and Causa et Curae (Causes and Cures), scientific works on the curative properties of natural elements; poems; a mystery play; and several more works of mysticism.
6) She was the only woman ofn her time whose opinions on religious matters were considered authoritative by the church.
7) Eighty of her compositions survive, most of them written to be sung by nuns in her convent.
