Chapter 14: The Latin West, 1200-1500

Question 1

What was a unifying factor in West Europe?

Answer 1

The church. Church events were held in Latin, while most common folk spoke vernacular.

Question 2

What were common elements of the Latin West?

Answer 2

• Competition and the pursuit of success, which led to achievements
• Effective use of borrowed technology and learning (gunpowder)

(People they “borrowed” technology and learning from didn’t pursue success when they e.g. originated the technology and learning?)

Question 3

What did dealing with the divisions, disasters, and wars in the Latin West during this period purportedly cause?

Answer 3

• unusual progress, works of architecture, institutes of higher learning
• urban culture was transformed and grew
• development of powerful weapons
• more unified monarchies, powerful states (Division caused unity?)

Question 4

Most of Europe was what during this period?

Answer 4

Rural.

Question 5

Population growth during this period led to what?

Answer 5

• Deforestation, swamp draining
• New settlements
• 3 field system- crop yields were grown on 2/3 land, 1/3 = oats- replenished the soil and fed animals

Question 6

Most in Europe faced extreme ___.

Answer 6

Hunger. The life expectancy was 30-35 years.

Question 7

How did the Black Death reach West Europe?

Answer 7

• Mongol armies attacking Kaffa on the Black Sea
• Rats and fleas
• It started in Asia and reached Italy through trade routes.

Question 8

What was the Black Death composed of?

Answer 8

Anthrax and the Bubonic Plague, foul odor, severe pain

Question 9

What were some common responses to the Black Death?

Answer 9

Some people became more religious, others partied

Question 10

What were some consequences of the Black Death?

Answer 10

• It periodically returned to Europe
• Trade decreased, industries dependent on trade decreased
• Labor costs rose- there were fewer people so they could demand more
• Food costs fell- same amt of food fewer ppl
• There were fewer peasants, which eased the transition from serfdom
• Resistance from Lords- widespread revolt
• Peasant revolts led to rural to urban migration
• END OF SERFDOM
• Jewish programs and migrations to E. Europe
• More meat in diet, longer life expectancy.
• Lowered confidence in the church and political institutions
• Lay people sometimes gave last rites rather than absent priests
• Surviving Europeans developed immunity, which they carried to the Western hemisphere
• Decreased trade on the Silk Road
• Higher % of dead priests and doctors

Question 11

What presages the Industrial Revolution?

Answer 11

• mills
• dams

Both were common in the Islamic world, but were used in Europe on a larger scale.

Question 12

What was the Iron Age?

Answer 12

Iron was widely used for armor, nails, horseshoes, and tools

“Iron Age, final technological and cultural stage in the Stone–Bronze–Iron Age sequence. The date of the full Iron Age, in which this metal for the most part replaced bronze in implements and weapons, varied geographically, beginning in the Middle East and southeastern Europe about 1200 BCE but in China not until about 600 BCE. Although in the Middle East iron had limited use as a scarce and precious metal as early as 3000 BCE, there is no indication that people at that time recognized its superior qualities over those of bronze. Between 1200 and 1000, however, the export of knowledge of iron metallurgy and of iron objects was rapid and widespread. With the large-scale production of iron implements came new patterns of more permanent settlement. On the other hand, utilization of iron for weapons put arms in the hands of the masses for the first time and set off a series of large-scale movements of peoples that did not end for 2,000 years and that changed the face of Europe and Asia.” https://www.britannica.com/event/Iron-Age

There were a lot of silver, lead, and copper mines

Question 13

During the 11th and 12th centuries, there was a revival of what?

Answer 13

• Trade, as well as a growth of towns
• Italian cities took the lead
• The 4th crusade helped Venice gain Crete and expand into the Black Sea

Question 14

What was the Hanseatic League?

Answer 14

A northern European association of trading cities that traded in the Baltic

Question 15

What type of economy emerged in the Latin West the 11th and 12th centuries?

Answer 15

A money economy.

Question 16

What led to peasant revolts after the Black Death?

Answer 16

Laborers who survived demanded higher pay after the Black Death. Authorities tried to freeze wages, which led to revolts. Serfdom disappeared, as peasants bought their freedom or ran away.

Question 17

How did the rapid growth of industry change the natural landscape?

Answer 17

• Towns grew and were founded
• Dams and canals changed the flow of rivers
• Quarry pits and mines tunneled into hillsides
• Pollution became a serious problem- wastewater into streams
• Increasing deforestation - timber, acid, farming, burned

Question 18

What was urban growth in the Latin West after 1200 a result of?

Answer 18

Continued growth in trade and manufacturing. Cities in n. Italy benefitted from maritime trade with the eastern Mediterranean, as well as the Indian Ocean and East Asia

Question 19

What did westward Mongol expansion do in regard to trade?

Answer 19

Opened trade routes from the Mediterranean to China

Question 20

What happened with the wool trade in Europe in the 13th century?

Answer 20

English taxes rose, and it became more profitable to turn wool into cloth in England instead of exporting it to Flanders.

Exports from England fell, but rose again with the help of spinning wheels and specialists.

Florence became the center for high-quality wool-making.

Question 21

Trading cities in Europe offered people more social freedom than rural places. Why?

Answer 21

Most Italian and German cities were independent and some were royal charters, so there was no authority of local nobles.
They were autonomous and could adapt to changing market conditions faster than in China and the Islamic world controlled by imperial authorities.
Social mobility was easier in the Latin West, anyone who lived in a chartered city for over a year could claim freedom.

Question 22

What were home to most of Europe’s Jews?

Answer 22

Cities. The largest population was in Spain. They had official protection but were still persecuted.
Only Rome left them undisturbed for centuries before 1500.

Question 23

What were guilds?

Answer 23

Associations of craft specialists that regulated business practices of members and prices charged.

They trained apprentices and promoted interests with the government.

Question 24

Who did guilds deny membership to?

Answer 24

Jews and outsiders.

Question 25

By the 15th century, there was a new class of wealthy merchants. What was it?

Answer 25

Bankers. They handled financial transactions of merchants and officials.

Question 26

What city was the center of new banking services?

Answer 26

Florence.

Question 27

What did the Medici family do?

Answer 27

Operated banks in Italy, Flanders, and London. They controlled the government, and were patrons of the arts.

Question 28

What banking family was the greatest, with 10x the wealth of the Medicis?

Answer 28

The Fuggers of Augsburg

Question 29

Why were Jews important money lenders?

Answer 29

They were not bound by church laws like Christians. Christian bankers had to profit indirectly from loans because the Latin Church condemned charging interest.

Question 30

What are some characteristics of Gothic cathedrals and where did they originate?

Answer 30

• Pointed arches
• Tall vaults and spires
• Flying buttresses
• Large stained glass windows

They originated in 12th-century France.

Question 31

What was the Renaissance?

Answer 31

The rebirth of Greco-Roman learning. It started in northern Italy and northern Europe.

Question 32

What were Dominicans and Franciscans?

Answer 32

New religious orders that became talented professors to colleges.

Question 33

The Latin West was the first part of the world to establish what?

Answer 33

Universities.

Question 34

What did universities in Bologna, Montpellier, Salerno, Paris, and Oxford specialize in?

Answer 34

• Bologna: law
• Montpellier and Salerno: medicine
• Paris and Oxford: theology

Question 35

What was scholasticism?

Answer 35

Efforts made by theologians to synthesize rediscovered works of Aristotle and Avicenna with the Bible

Question 36

What did Dante Alighieri write about?

Answer 36

His journey through the 9 circles of Hell and 7 terraces of Purgatory, entry into Paradise.

Question 37

What did Geoffrey Chaucer write?

Answer 37

The Canterbury Tales, a portrayal of medieval people and attitudes.

Question 38

Dante influenced the literary movement of what and reformed what?

Answer 38

Humanists, people interested in humanities, grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history, and ethics.

He reformed secondary education by introducing curriculum centered on the language and literature of Greco-Roman antiquity.

Question 39

What did humanists do?

Answer 39

Tried to duplicate elegance of classical Latin or Greek, some followed Dante and wrote vernacular

Worked to restore Greco-Roman writing and the Bible

Question 40

What technological improvements revolutionized printing in 1450?

Answer 40

1. Movable pieces of type with individual letters
2. New ink for printing on paper
3. Printing press- a mechanical press that pressed ink type onto paper

Question 41

What did Johann Gutenberg do?

Answer 41

He perfected printing and printed the Gutenberg Bible, the first book in the West printed from movable type

Question 42

What were some famous Renaissance artists?

Answer 42

• Giotto
  (di Bondone) “Giotto (born 1266/67 or 1276, Vespignano, near Florence [Italy]—died January 8, 1337, Florence) was the most important Italian painter of the 14th century, whose works point to the innovations of the Renaissance style that developed a century later. For almost seven centuries, Giotto has been revered as the father of European painting and the first of the great Italian masters.” https://www.britannica.com/biography/Giotto-di-Bondone
• Jan van Eyck- invented oil paints
  “(born before 1395, Maaseik, Bishopric of Liège, Holy Roman Empire [now in Belgium]—died before July 9, 1441, Bruges) was a Netherlandish painter who perfected the newly developed technique of oil painting. His naturalistic panel paintings, mostly portraits and religious subjects, made extensive use of disguised religious symbols. His masterpiece is the altarpiece in the cathedral at Ghent, The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb (also called the Ghent Altarpiece, 1432)” https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jan-van-Eyck
• Leonardo da Vinci
  “(born April 15, 1452, Anchiano, near Vinci, Republic of Florence [Italy]—died May 2, 1519, Cloux [now Clos-Lucé], France) was an Italian painter, draftsman, sculptor, architect, and engineer whose skill and intelligence, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal. His Last Supper (1495–98) and Mona Lisa (c. 1503–19) are among the most widely popular and influential paintings of the Renaissance. His notebooks reveal a spirit of scientific inquiry and a mechanical inventiveness that were centuries ahead of their time.” https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leonardo-da-Vinci
• Michelangelo
  “di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni ([…]March 1475 – 18 February 1564), […] was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet of the High Renaissance. Born in the Republic of Florence, his work was inspired by models from classical antiquity and had a lasting influence on Western art. Michelangelo’s creative abilities and mastery in a range of artistic arenas define him as an archetypal Renaissance man, along with his rival and elder contemporary, Leonardo da Vinci.[3] Given the sheer volume of surviving correspondence, sketches, and reminiscences, Michelangelo is one of the best-documented artists of the 16th century. He was lauded by contemporary biographers as the most accomplished artist of his era.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelangelo , unfortunately

Question 43

Who fostered artistic blossoming in Italy and Flanders?

Answer 43

Wealthy merchants and prelates. Cosimode Medici spent $ on paintings, sculptures, public buildings

Question 44

What was adopted all over the world from the Renaissance?

Answer 44

Universities, printing, oil painting

Question 45

What developed in w. Europe in parallel with economic and cultural revivals?

Answer 45

Stronger and more unified states and armies

Question 46

What changes in weaponry brought the central military role and system of estates of knights into question?

Answer 46

• Armor-piercing crossbow, metal-tipped arrows
• Professional crossbowmen
• Firearms

Question 47

What was the Great Western Schism?

Answer 47

A period when rival papal claimants at Avignon and Rome vied for the loyalties of Latin Christians.

“Western Schism, in the history of the Roman Catholic Church, the period from 1378 to 1417, when there were two, and later three, rival popes, each with his own following, his own Sacred College of Cardinals, and his own administrative offices.” https://www.britannica.com/event/Western-Schism

Question 48

What was the Hundred Years War?

Answer 48

a long conflict between the King of France and his vassals. The power of the French monarchy vs. vassals grew out of marriage alliance. Princess Isabella of France married King Edward II of England to ensure vassals remained loyal to the monarchy. None of the 3 brothers were chosen as the male heir.

“Hundred Years’ War, intermittent struggle between England and France in the 14th–15th century over a series of disputes, including the question of the legitimate succession to the French crown. The struggle involved several generations of English and French claimants to the crown and actually occupied a period of more than 100 years. By convention the war is said to have started on May 24, 1337, with the confiscation of the English-held duchy of Guyenne by French King Philip VI. This confiscation, however, had been preceded by periodic fighting over the question of English fiefs in France going back to the 12th century.” https://www.britannica.com/event/Hundred-Years-War

Question 49

What did Joan of Arc do?

Answer 49

She brought English gains in the Hundred Years’ War to a halt and wore knight’s armor, rallied French troops. In the final battles, the French used large cannons to demolish castle walls.

Question 50

What were new monarchies in France and England like?

Answer 50

They had a greater centralization of power, more fixed boundaries, and stronger representative institutions.

Question 51

A shift in power to monarchs and away from the nobility and church did not do what?

Answer 51

Deprive nobles of social privileges and special access. They found new ways to check royal power, like representative institutions.

Question 52

How did Spain and Portugal grow into centralized states?

Answer 52

Through marriage alliances, struggles between kings and vassals, mergers, warfare, and the reconquest of Iberia from Muslim rule. This offered the nobility large landed estates where they could get rich without having to work.