Week 13 Flashcards
Ending the Investiture Controversy
-Concordat of Worms (1122 CE)
~Emperors and Popes
-Power of the Papacy
-In 1122, the Holy Roman Emperors and the papacy wound up settling the Investiture Controversy with the Concordat of Worms
~The Concordat allowed the emperors to still have a voice in choosing bishops, abbots, and other clerical positions, but it denied them their role in investing religious figures with spiritual authority
*This, in essence, meant that the Holy Romans Emperors lost their spiritual authority, and it destroyed one of the main ways they controlled their German territories
**Although there were some Emperors who ruled via military strength and personal magnetism, from this point on the Emperors became increasingly marginal figures due to their lack of centralized authority
-At least in part, the papacy’s victory was due to the new power and the moral authority that the popes earned through the victory of the First Crusade
~The aftermath of the First Crusade, the popes began to use their new authority to reform the Church and expand the papal authority
*They summoned church councils to regulate the Christian faith, collected revenue from bishops and abbots, and called crusades against both the Muslims and their Christian enemies in Western Europe
**In order to do this, the papacy developed a powerful bureaucracy that expansionist-minded popes used to exert their authority and assert the independence of the Church
-The cross that one can see is actually a reliquary that would have held holy objects brought back from the Holy Land by crusaders
~It would have held stones from Jesus’ birthplace or fragments of the Ture Cross that were regarded as relics and allowed people to gain a closer connection with God
Of course, for local churches and the clergy, these objects were moneymakers
**Pilgrims would travel to see these items, stimulate the local economy, and donate to the church or shrine where they were held
**Thus, these relics both raised the profile of churches and enriched them
**It also meant that there were plenty of fake relics circulating in Western Europe (the great Reformation reformer John Calvin once commented that there were enough fragments of the True Cross circulating that they could create a shipload of crosses, which is a slight exaggeration)
-That’s not to say that the growth of papal power went unchallenged
~Within the ecclesiastical hierarchy there were monks, bishops, and other clergies who objected to the idea that the papacy should be concerned with secular affairs
*Popes often spent as much time attempting to control the vast and varied body of clergy as they did arguing with secular leaders
Henry II (r. 1154-1189 CE)
-Henry I, Matilda, and Stephen
-Reforms
~Incersing Revenue
~Bureaucrats
~Justice
-In states like England and France, kings vigorously contested this power in their attempts to centralize their political authority
~Henry II of England is a prime example of this
-Henry II rose to power from less-than-ideal circumstances
~His grandfather, Henry I, died in 1135 without a male heir to take place, but he had a daughter, Matilda, who had been married to the Holy Roman Emperor and later to one of the great lords of France, Geoffery of Anjou
While Henry seems to have wanted Matilda to rule after him, Matilda and Geoffrey were unable to support her claim to the throne, and instead her cousin, Stephen of Blos, became king
**Thus, Henry II’s early years were spent in the company of his mother as they attempted to end the region of Stephen in a series of wars
**While they were unable to actually depose him, they were able to force him to come to an agreement whereby Henry became his heir
-In 1154 Henry Ii became king of England, but through his father he was also the Count of Anjou, and through his great grandfather (William the Bastard) he was the Duke of Normandy
~Through his marriage to Elenor of Aquitaine, he was also th ruler of most of southern France
*In short, he owner more of France than the French kings
-To rule this diverse area, he embarked on a series of reforms to centralize power
~These reforms were badly needed since the chaos and wars that had marked Stephen’s reign meant that the nobility and ecclesiastical hierarchy on England had gotten use to managing their own affairs and were essentially independent from the king
*To bring the nobility to heel, he did two main things
-First, he increased the revenue of the state by forcing nobility to pay him money
~In previous years, the nobility were kept in line via gifts or grants from kings, and it return they owned military service or other things
-Instead of demanding military service from his nobility, Henry II demanded cash that allowed him to employ a more professional army that served continuously and he could employ bureaucrats
~Rather than pulling these bureaucrats from the nobility
*Henry II employed educated individuals-who increasingly attended the universities that began to pop up in the 1100s and came from the lower levels of society
**They rose based off merit, and because they lacked elite family connections to the nobility, they were loyal to Henry II
-Second, he centralized the administration of justice
~Under Stephen and Henry I, justice was primary local and was controlled by local lords
This meant that the local lords prospered from this system since they could levy and collect fines and fees associated with justice
**To reform this systems, Henry II established s system in which justices would travel from town to town in a circuit
**At each town, they would summon an assembly of local notables (the ancestors of the grand jury we know today) who would keep track of who had committed a crime and then report those crime to these circuit judges who would then investigate and hear the cases
**This allowed the king’s power to extend to the local level of society, which both undermined the authority of the local nobility but also funneled money into Henry II’s pockets
Relationship with the Clergy
-Ecclesiastical Courts
-Thomas Becket (1119-1170 CE)
~Archbishop of Canterbury (1162 CE)
~Martyrdom
~Sainthood
-Henry II also attempted to exert control over the increasing clergy, but here he faced substantial problems
~The clergy, seeing the victory of the papacy over the Holy Roman Emperors, resisted his attempts to limit their rights and privileges
(In particular, he attempted to limit the power of the ecclesiastical courts, or at least get a governmental voice into the process
In the Middle Ages, the clergy were not subject to the same laws as everyone else
**If a member of the clergy committed a crime, they were really iconic representations of clerical independence and authority
**Henry II saw ecclesiastical courts as a violation of his authority and ability to centralize the administration of justice under his banner
**This is not to say that he wanted to do away with them, but rather he wanted to have a state representative involved in the initial hearing, and if the clergyman was found guilty, they would need to be tried and punished by the state as well
-This reform program ran into trouble due to Henry II’s Archbishop of Canterbury
~Thomas Becket, Becket came from a non-elite background, served as the Archbishop of Canterbury (the most important ecclesiastical office in England) as a cleric, and eventually became Henry II’s Lord Chancellor (he was one of the most important bureaucrats in England)
*During this time, he developed a very close relationship with Henry II, and they seem to have become close friends
-In 1162, Becket was elected as the Archbishop of Canterbury, possibly because Henry II hoped that Becket would support his reform program
~Instead, Becket either became a staunch believer in the power of the Church or those ideals just came to the surface
Rather than supporting Henry II, Becket opposed his reform efforts and in 1164 he fled to France to avoid punishment for opposing the crown
**There he wrote letters threatening to excommunicate Henry II and all those who opposed him
**His greatest threat was to place England under interdict, which meant that no non-essential church services would be allowed
**This threat eventually forced Henry II to back down, but when Becket returned to England in 1170, he wound up being assassinated by knights attempting to curry favor with Henry II
-Almost immediately after his death, people began to report visions of Becket and stories circulated that he was performing miracles
~The Church declared him to be a saint in 1173 and held him up as a martyr for clerical independence
The object that one can see as a reliquary meant to hold one of Becket’s relics with a depiction of his death that comes from the years following his canonization
**While later bishops and popes were able to use the example of Becket to enforce their authority, Henry II was not particularly harmed by the controversy
**He eventually did a public penance for Becket’s death, but his reforms were not destroyed even though he had to back down from his attempts to regulate and control the ecclesiastical courts
-So, by the time Henry II died in 1189, his reforms resulted in the creation of a powerful centralized state, as least in England
~His French possessions were always somewhat troublesome, but despite the best efforts of Becket, he was able to create a state that dominated the majority of England and France
Unfortuately, his children were idiots
**Richard the Lionhearted is fondly remembered today due to inaccurately romantic tales, but he was an absentee king who left to join the Third Crusade and did not bother actually governing what his father left him
**Richard died young, but his brother, John Lackland, is justifiably remembered today as a disaster who lost most of his French possessions and ran afoul of the greatest of the medieval popes, Pope Innocent III
Pope Innocent III (r. 1198-1216)
-Innocent III was a lawyer who became pope in 1198
~Until his death in 1216, he attempted to gain authority over the entirety of Western Europe
*He intervened in German politics in an attempt to support his candidate for Emperor, he placed John and England under the interdict when they disagreed on who should become the Archbishop of Canterbury, he called multiple crusades (including the Fourth Crusade which went awry and wound up attacking the Byzantine Empire and the Albigensian Crusade aimed against “heretics” in southern France), and in 1215 he summoned and presided over the Fourth Lateran Council
-The Fourth Lateran Council was one of the most important events in the history of medieval Christianity
~Bishops, abbots, and other clergy from across Western Europe gathered in Rome to discuss the nature of Christianity
*When the Council concluded, they left behind a series of canons that governed every aspect of life and society
-In the first Canon, one can see the full outline of Christian belief that one needs to believe in order to be considered Christian
~In order to monitor and regulate this belief, they instituted Canon 21, which decreed that all Christians should confess their sins as least once a year to their parish priest so that they could be corrected from their errors
*Other canons regulated the behavior of bishops and clergy (attempting to ensure that they lived chaste, sober, and holy lives)
**Perhaps most importantly, though, in order to champion the prescribed from the Christianity, the Canons of the Fourth Lateran Council also railed against heresy and the presence of non-Christians (particularly Jews and Muslims [referred to as Saracens]) in Christian society
-Indeed, this defining of that was true Christianity by defining what is was not, of defending the faith and society through the prosecution of those threatening the stability of the Christian order, was a key characteristic of both the Fourth Lateran Council, but the drive for centralization in the 1100s more in general
~By pointing to individuals who were dangerous, who were “others,” states and the Church were able to reinforce their power and authority
*This really can to the fore in Western Europe with the persecution of Jews and heretics
The Jews in the Early Middle Ages
-Restrictions
~Agobard of Lyon (820s CE)
-State property
~Persecution
-In the early Middle Ages, the Jewish communities of Western Europe were a normal part of society
~They had lived in Western Europe ever since the Jewish Diaspora of the 100s CE
While there were various restrictions placed on them in the later Roman Empire, in the Byzantine Empire these were often overlooked
**(They were forbidden to own Christian slaves, convert Christians, and repair synagogues)
**This little Byzantine glass jar is currently in the MET
**It is decorated with Jewish symbols, but what is really cool about it is that the MET notes that it was probably produced by someone working for both Christians and Jews since nearly identical jars survive that were decorated fro a Christian audience
-The same thing happened in the West
~In the Merovingian and Carolingian period, no one really cared about those restrictions
-The Jewish population of the West was a normal part of society
~They owned property, they were prominent artisans and merchants, they had Christian servants, and they served in the courts of the Merovingian and Carolingian kings
*We know about this from a variety of sources, including the letters of Agobard of Lyon in the 820s CE
-Agobard was a bishop in southern France who began to write letters to the court of Louis the Pious complaining that the Jews were living normal lives and no one was paying attention to the traditional restrictions of keeping different religious apart
-However, he was widely considered a nutcase
~No one listened to him, least of all Louis the Pious
-Instead, in the early Middle Ages, states tended to protect the jewsish population where possible by giving them various privileges
~While it might sound odd, starting in the Visigothic Kingdom of Spain, the Jews were considered property of the state
*This was considered a benefit since it meant that any crimes committed against the Jewish communities were taken directly to the king’s courts rather than the local courts that might be biased against them
**This slowly spread across Western Europe, and while in the short term this was a protection against unlearned locals, in the long term it meant that they lacked legal protection from avaricious lords
-That’s exactly what started to happen
~Starting in the 1000s, as lords needed money to centralize, the property of the Jews was a prime target
*Lords who needed cash could seize their land without consequence
**In urban areas, Jewish artisans were typically driven from their jobs by the emerging guilds (which typically did not allow Jewish masters)
Religious Anti-Semitism
-Blood Libel Accusations
~William of Norwich (1144 CE)
~Conspiracy Theories
~Host Desecration
-Opportunistic Bullshit
-During and after the First Crusade, this began to develop a strong religious tone to it
~Starting in the 1100s, Christians in Western Europe began to believe that Jewish communities were enemies of Christ who were killing Christian children so that they could use their blood in their obscene religious ceremonies (an accusation known as Blood Libel) and plotting the downfall of Christian society
*These ideas had their roots in the Bible (the Book of revelation mentions that some among the Jewish population are actually a part of the synagogue of Satan), but we can date the origins of blood libel back to a very precise date
-In 1144, a boy named William was found dead outside the English city of Norwich
~His mother claimed that the Jews killed him, but the bishop and sheriff refused to listen to her
*However, six years later, a new bishop and a new sheriff revived the claims as people began to suggest that William was performing miracles near the site of his tomb and that he was actually a martyr
**One can see a depiction of his death from the 1400s
-These stories spread across Western Europe
~Accusations of ritual child murder appeared across England in the late 1100s, the first in France occurred in 1171, and they spread from there
*When they occurred, the Jewish populations’ land and property was seized, some were forced to convert, and those who refused would wind up executed
-The Prioress’ Prologue and Tale work provides a depiction of one of these accusations written by one of the greatest poets in the history of England, Geoffery Chaucer
~These stories expanded until it was not just individual Jewish communities deciding to murder Christians, it was a plot had been the cause of suffering across Western Europe
*The Jews were the ones who had betrayed Christian Spain to the Muslims in 711; the Jews were the ones who had opened the gates of cities to the Vikings in the 800s and 900s; the Jews were the ones who had encouraged Muslims to attack pilgrims and destroy Christian shrines in the holy Eucharist (an accusation of Host Desecration)
-At no point did the Jewish population of Western Europe engage in a vast conspiracy to destroy Christian society
~These stories were complete and utter bullshit that became the basis for anti-Semitic propaganda that has persisted to the modern day
*However, as these stories spread, religious authorities and governments were able to use these ideas to prosper
**When governments needed cash to centralize, why not blame the Jews for society’s problems, throw in an accusation of host desecration to get Christians riled up, and then expel them from society while seizing their property along the way
-A few years later, once the memory faded, they could always be invited to come home (as long as they paid for the privilege)
~Rulers walked away richer than before, and they looked like pious Christians protecting their communities
*We can see how the Church hierarchy used and benefited from these ideas in the canons of the Fourth Lateran Council
-As rumors of Jewish perfidy spread, Jewish communities gradually began to be singled out so that they would not interact with Christian populations
~In order to clearly distinguish them from “normal” society, Canon 68 decreed that Jews and Muslims who wandered among good Christians needed to be singled out via badges and other sartorial signifies so the Christians would know to avoid them
*WHile decreeing that Muslims and Jews had to wear special badges might seem somewhat minor compared to the larger anti-Semitic violence that was mentioned; this is the sort of idea that the clerical hierarchy used in order to increase the moral authority in the West
Heretics
-Questions
-Catharism
-Local Christianity
-The other group that began to be singled out in the late 1100s were heretics
~Starting in the mid-1100s the Church hierarchy became increasingly concerned with heresy
While it was not much of a problem with the early Middle Ages, due to the growth of urbanization and education, people began to question the teachings of the Church
**Why should the clergy be the only ones to teach and preach?
**Why was the Bible only in Latin and not in vernacular languages that everyone could read?
**Why were the clergy so concerned with politics rather than with piety and care for the poor?
**According to the Church hierarchy, this meant that people began to develop their own beliefs and ideas as well as alternative bishops and rulers
-In Southern France, these heretics evolved into a dualistic religious tradition known as Catharism that believed that the world was torn between the forces of light and dark
~These heretics had their own bishops and priests and had adopted a variety of traditions and beliefs (they were so weird, they were actually vegans)
All of these heretical movements were intrinsically opposed to the Church and sought to destroy it at any coast
**As a result, they needed to be identified, offered the chance to come back to the Church, and if they refused, then they needed to be punished
**In the case of the Carthars, it took the Albigensian Crusade (twenty years of war) and the constant presence of ecclesiastical authority to end their threat to the church
-Much like accusations that the Jews were killing Christians children, this was almost entirely bullshit
~Actually, lots of people had questions about the Church, and Christianity varied widely across Western Europe
At local level of society, people believed a wide variety of things that did not necessarily jibe with the Church’s teachings
**These people did not necessarily have a strong organization or desire to destroy the Church; they were simply practicing their traditional beliefs the way they had for centuries
**The Albigensian Crusade was really just a power grab by the papacy and the French crown to take control of southern France, an area that had long resisted their rule
**However, in order to centralize their authority, clerical and secular authorities recast these people as organized heretics who needed to be defined and controlled
-One can see this in the canons of the Fourth Lateran Council through its definition of belief in the first canon and its insistence of confession
~While it took centuries for these ideas to actually permeate down to the local levels of society, this was one of the main ways that the Church centralized authority over society and transformed people into “proper” Christians
Papal Decline
-Philip IV the Fair (r. 1285-1314)
~Taxes
-Pope Boniface VIII (r. 1294-1303)
~Unam Sanctam
-Over the course of the 1200s, the papacy and the secular states of Western Europe continued to centralize
~However, by the late 1200s, the continuing focus of the papacy on cementing their secular control over the states of Western Europe began to take a toll on their moral authority
*They began to seem less like clergy and more like secular rulers, and as a result, they began to be treated as secular rulers
**Since they lacked a strong military and relied upon respect fro abstract moral principles, kings and lords discovered that they were fairly easy to push around when no one would come to their defense
-In the early 1300s, the King of France, Philip IV the Fair (he was called the Fair not because of his evenhandedness but because he was very pretty) needed money, but he needed new sources of revenue
~While states taxed the clergy on occasions, Pope Boniface VIII resisted Philip’s demands for revenue and in 1302 he issued one of the great statements of papal supremacy, Unam Sanctam
In this document, Boniface argued that the papacy had been given spiritual authority over all people and things, and as a consequence, secular authorities and powers were subject to them
**It was one of the greatest statements of Papal authority, but unlike earlier monarchs, Philip responded by sending agents to humiliate and arrest Boniface
**For three days he was humiliated and held prisoner and died the following year (note that this depiction of his death is probably an exaggeration)
**In the end, Philip got what he wanted, although he still needed money
-In 130 he also expelled the Jews from France (seizing their property) and attacked the Knights Templar (seizing their property as well)
~Regardless, fro the rest of the 1300s, the papacy entered a long period of decline as their authority as dismissed and the efforts of Innocent III and others to turn the Papacy into the true power brokers of Western Europe foundered
Agricultural Revolution
-Horseshoes and Horse Collars
-Heavy Plows
-Three-Field Crop Rotation
-Around 1000, cities began to grow in Western Europe for really the first time since the decline of Rome
~At least in part, an agricultural revolution drove this expansion
People began to use horseshoes, which enabled horses to gain more traction while plowing, and they started to use horse collars to harness horses to plow and other pieces of equipment
**These allowed the horse to pull harder without coking themselves
**These innovations enabled farmers to move to heavier plows that cut through the clays and heavy soils of northern Europe more effectively
**Prior to this point, people used scratch plows, which were basically sticks that got forced into the soil via manual force
*****While these worked great in the area around the Mediterranean where the soil was dry and light, in the heavy, wet clays of Northern Europe, they were not particularly useful
-These new, heavy plows used a metal blade to cut the sod and turn the soil, which allowed for better aeration and incorporation of fertilizers
~While there were few truly effective fertilizers in the Middle Ages, during this period farmers began to innovate by developing three-field crop rotation, which allowed the soil to become better fertilized through the planting of nitrogen-rich crops and allowing some portions to lie for a year
Finally, one also sees farmers expand onto land that previously was considered marginal and unproductive
**This increased the total area of available farmland
**The combination of all these techniques led to more food, which meant the population could expand
Urban Growth
-Migrations
~Freedom
-Urban industrial Processes
-More food and more people led to urban growth as, across Western Europe, cities began to attract migrants
~These people went to cities for many of the same reasons that they do today; education, jobs, marriage, and freedom
*That last one might not be as relevant today as it once was, but most peasants and serfs were bound to the land where they lived through oaths and agreements
-They could live on a lord’s land, but they owned labor or produced for that lord, could not move or marry without the lord’s agreement, and had to use the mill or other equipment owned by the lord
~Moving to a city or town was a way for peasants to escape the control of landlords and knights who controlled the countryside
*In many areas (particularly Germany) one could live in a town for a year and become free, which was a substantial motivation for many people who did not like having their lives controlled by brutal and mercurial lords
-It’s a good thing that people wanted to move to the cities, though, since cities were, death traps that needed a constant influx of people in order to grow and survive
~Because of disease and generally unsanitary conditions, people died younger and children did not survive infancy as often as those in the countryside
-Realistically, pretty much every aspect of town life found and did cause health problems
~In large cities, open sewers or cesspits held human waste while waste from pigs, horses, and other urban animals was left in the streets until carted away
There were numerous regulations on early industrial processes, but they were often ignored or conveniently forgotten
**Blacksmiths and brewers created noise and smoke on a day-to-day basis, butchers were not supposed to butcher animals within the city walls but often did, and tanneries created immense amounts of noxious fumes and waste that was difficult to clean up and dispose of (tanning hides often required vats of urine or dog/bird feces)
**Fire was a constant danger due to wooden buildings and thatched roofs, clean water could be difficult to find, and people were often crammed into small rooms
Merchant and Craft Guilds
-Organization
~Masters
~Journeymen
~Apprentices
-Town Government
-Guilds developed to regulate the industrial process of urban areas
~Guilds came in two main types: merchants and crafts
Merchants guilds controlled the trade in particular items while; craft guilds controlled the production of certain items or sets of items
**In some cities, this meant that there were hundreds of guilds, each one controlling a certain element of the commercial life of the city
**Thus, some guilds controlled goldsmiths and the production of gold items, and other guilds controlled basic foodstuff (the production and sale of bread for example)
-Masters, independent shop owners, ran the guilds by regulating what prices could be charged, the quality of items, and who could sell
~Below the masters were journeymen, individuals who worked for wages, and apprentices, younger children who learned a trade and provided labor in exchange for room and board
Maters regulated who could become an apprentice, how much, journeymen could be paid, when they could get married, and almost every other aspect of their lives
**Often guilds are compared to the labor unions of today, but that’s not accurate
**Guilds were monopolies or cartels in which the maters controlled workers and prices to make sure that everyone profited and order was maintained
-Over the course of the 1000s and 1100s, these guilds became increasingly powerful as Europe began to recover economically and trade resumed
~BEcasue of their control over the basic economic levels of everyday life, guilds began to take more of a role within town governments, allying with local nobility for the defense of everyone
In areas of Northern Europe (like England and France), monarchs could control these communities, although they often sold rights over their cities to guilds to raise funds
**However, in Northern Italy and Germany, where there was a lack of centralized control from a monarchy, these cities became independent communes that governed themselves
**Great cities such as Siena, Florence, and Milan became independent city-states that, while nominally under the authority of the Holy Roman Emperor, continually fought for their freedom
Universities
-Monastic Schools
-Cathedral Schools
-Universities
~Conflict with Towns
-Most medieval guilds don’t exist anymore, but they still are with us today, one of the most important of the medieval guilds, universities
~Universtities started in the 1000s due to increasing demand for educated individuals
Governments and the clergy needed educated people who could run their states as they tried to collect taxes and centralize authority
**Prior to this point, monasteries were the main institution responsible for education
-Monastic schools educated the clergy and occasionally the children of elites
~However, these schools were always small, and in the 1000s, monastic reformers began to increasingly argue that they should be less connected to the world and more focused on their spiritual lives (this was a part of the same reform moment that led to the rise of popes like Gregory VII)
As a result, monastic schools could not meet the growing demand for education
**As a consequence, we see the growth of cathedral schools
**Individual teachers started to teach in the cloister of cathedrals
****They would attract students based on their charisma and teaching ability, the presence of students attracted more teachers, and more teachers attracted more students
****Over the course of the 1000s, these cathedral schools developed into major educational institutions that attracted thousands of students from all across Europe
-This diverse body of students and masters often ran into trouble since they did not speak the local languages (they spoke Latin to one another) and were foreigners in a strange land
~As a result, townspeople would take advantage of them, jacking up the prices for booze, food, and supplies
*As a result, these students and masters started to organize into guilds known as Universitas (university) for self-protection
-At the top were masters, teachers who possessed advanced degrees in theology, law, or other subjects
~Below them were bachelors (journeymen), who possessed basic degrees, would teach, and were in the process of earning more advanced degrees as well
*Below them were the normal students (apprentices) who were trying to earn their basic degrees in the liberal arts
**These were all men, no women were allowed
**While these universities lacked the material resources and industrial production that enabled the other guilds to have a voice in government, they were consumers who helped spur the urban economy, so their voice was less based on their material resources and more on the fact that, when challenged or when conflict occurred, they could simply move to other areas and take their business with them
-Conflict happened fairly frequently since students and masters were considered part of the Church
~As a result, they were not subject to local courts or police
*Instead, they were subject to ecclesiastical courts, which tended to treat the clergy fairly leniently
-Similarly, it was considered a sin for individuals to manhandle the clergy or assault them
~So, in the end, one had thousands of pre-teens or teenagers who were sent off to live in storage cities and were told that the local police could not actually prosecute or touch them in a serious way
In the Middle Ages, this meant that students tended to drink, gamble, consort with prostitutes, and break the law o a regular basis knowing that they would only receive minor punishments
**When challenged, they were quick to enforce their rights through mob violence if necessary
**In Paris, the University of Paris want on strike in 1229 when students were manhandled and arrested after causing a riot when they refused to pay their bar tab
**They left the city for two years until the city agreed to respect their rights and guaranteed their freedom
The Liberal Arts
-The Trivium and Quadrivium
-Scholasticism
~Debates
-As normal students, they would primarily be studying the liberal arts, which was usually divided into two: the trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric) and the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music [meaning the mathematical logic behind the music, not actually playing musical instruments])
~In this, they primarily focused on reading the works of Aristotle and other classical authors, as well as Muslim commentators on Aristotle (Ibn Rushd)
In the morning, these lectures would typically consist of masters reading a work to students and then pushing them to explain what it meant
They (or a class recorder) would write this down as quickly as they could, and at the end of the class, they would have their own copy of the text plus the notes provided by the master
*In the afternoon, they might attend supplementary lectures led by the bachelors in order to explain more difficult texts or ones that would contribute to what they learned in the morning
**One of the main things and the works of the Church Fathers who wrote in the third and fourth centuries CE
**While these works might seem to disagree on various matters, students learned that this was not necessarily the case and that through a detailed analysis of every aspect of a text, scholars could understand the true meaning of a work
-Rather than learning about these works in order to practically apply them to the world, students were trained to use these ideas in debates
~Students and masters would engage in formal arguments in which individuals would need to use the works that they had learned about to develop arguments both for and against a question
*This style of learning is known as scholasticism
**If focused less on the practical application of ideas or experimentation and more on constructing and understanding formal arguments which were designed to combine the great classical authors (Aristotle) with Christian learning in order to make sense of the world
-Looking back on this form the modern, it’s pretty clear that this type of learning was not ideal when it came to topics such as science and medicine since it inhibited the advancement of scientific and medical knowledge in favor of understanding classical works on these topics within a Christian context
~Regardless, starting in the 1100s, it is people educated at these universities who start to enter governments and the Church as bureaucrats who actually ran the day-to-day operation of the state
*They began to displace the traditional nobility and created a new set of governing ideals in which education and written records trumped the customs and oral culture that had dominated the structure of society in the 900s and 1000s
Women and Sexuality
-Inferiority
~Classical and Christian
-Noble and Common Work
-Marriage
~Regulations
~Reality
-Conditions for women varied from place to place and from time to time in the Middle Ages, but regardless, people in the Middle Ages inherited the medical and social ideas of the classical Greeks and Romans that argued for the fundamental, biologically based, inferiority of women
~This was combined with Christian traditions regarding the fall of mankind resulting from the sin of Eve, and the work of the Church fathers who argued that women were incapable of ruling the needed to be guided and governed by men
-At the top level of society, women were expected to produce male heirs
~It was their primary duty, and their lives essentially revolved around pregnancy and the production of children
Some were able to escape that fate by joining convents, and at the upper tiers of society, some women were able to run their own states and served as regents for their children
At the lower levels of society, women were expected to work at every level of economy
*They worked in fields sowing seeds, picking weeds, and gleaning after the harvest (going through fields picking up grain that was on the ground)
**In cities, they worked in shops, produced or manufactured cloth, and did everything in between
-However, no matter where they were or when they were working, they were paid less than men, their work was valued less than a man’s, they were forced into occupations where the work was less prestigious, and they were seen as fundamentally inferior to the men they worked alongside (so things haven’t changed that much)
~As guilds developed, women were usually not allowed to become masters, journeymen, or apprentices, but they were still expected to learn the trade of their parents or husband and work
-When it came to marriage, there was a bit of a difference between elites and lower classes
~During the Merovingian period, elites occasionally had multiple wives, and divorce was reasonably common
*While bishops and priests complained about both practices, they had little authority to actually enforce the idea of life-long monogamy
It was not until the Carolingian period that an increasing relationship between the Chruch and the Carolingian monarchs meant that monogamy among elites became the expected norm and divorce ceased to exist
***At least in part, the Church had trouble enforcing its belief about marriage because marriage was not a sacrament, and they had no control over the actual ceremony
-Canon 51 of the Fourth Lateran Council attempted to regulate marriage
~In the ideal world of the clergy, people would register with their local church about their desire to get married, and the priest would announce that marriage in a church in order to summon any witnesses that could show that there was an impediment that might cancel the marriage (that one partner was already married, or the people were too closely related [they could not be related within five generations], or one partner was infertile)
*As long as no one showed up to announce something along those lines, the marriage would take place in front of the church (as opposed to in the church) with the priest supervising
**All that was necessary was for the couple to be of the correct age and to give vows of present consent (“I take you, X, to be my wedded wife”) or future consent (“I will take you, Y, to be my wedded husband”) That’s it
-It actually, very few people actually followed those rules and while divorces did not exist, annulments could certainly be arranged
~At the top of society, marriages were typically carefully managed and arranged affairs, and the actual wishes of the bride and groom were somewhat secondary to the dynastic politics involved
*The aristocracy of Western Europe was pretty closely connected, and so the rulers regarding how closely related two people could be were typically ignored, broken, or bent with the approval of the clergy
**If the marriage did not work out, families could suddenly “discover” the family relationship, thus annulling the marriage and freeing the couple up to marry new people
***Because dynastic legacies were at issue, the sexuality of these elites women was closely controlled so that men could be assured that any male children were actually theirs
-At the lower levels of society, people met the same that they do now (often in bars and taverns), they courted similarly to how they do today (over drinks and with gifts of rings or other items), and they did not worry about church regulations
~Because marriage just consisted of giving vows, people could get married without the presence of a priest, without any government regulation, and without the approval of their families
*These were known as clandestine marriages (something that Canon 51 rails against)
**This meant that litigation over marriages is pretty common, particularly since men had an odd habit of promising marriage when they wanted sex, then walking away, and they resented women taking them to court to prove that the couple had actually exchanged vows
*** At this level of society, people did not need to resort to the fancy legal doctrines or ideas of the elites
**If marriages did not work out, couples simply parted
**One might leave and move to another town and get remarried since people would not know they were already married
Courtly Love and Chivalry
-The Ideal Knight
-The Ideal Love
-Fantasy versus Reality
-Marie de France (late 1100s, early 1200s?)
-Courtly love and chivalric literature developed in southern France at the courts of the nobility, particularly the court of Eleanor of Aquitaine in the mid and late 1100s
~Eleanor had inherited the Duchy of Aquitaine from her father, endured a failed marriage to the king of France that wound up being annulled, and married Henry II of England
*Over the course of the 1200s, these ideas became popular across Western Europe and even began to trickle down into the popular stories of the lower classes
When one thinks of knights on horseback riding to the aid of a noble lady, of the legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, or any stereotypically romantic medieval work, that’s probably a legacy of this literature
-This literature celebrates women’s role in affairs of the heart and created fantasies that provided a vision of the world in which noble women were celebrated and adored by perfect knights who embodied chivalric values
~These knights were poor but rich in spirit
They were true Christian soldiers who fought to protect the innocent, widows, and orphans, and they were paragons of justice and order
**They served proper kings that lived in perfect castles and dispensed true justice that never erred
**These stories have a fairly set format
**One of these perfect knights falls in love with the noble lady who is typically married (often to a cruel and evil lord)
**The knight gradually wins over the lady through gifts and great deeds, they consummate their love in some way, and eventually, the lady’s husband finds out
***Sometimes these stories end well and the lovers are united in the end, but often these stories end in the tragic death of everyone involved
-The great historian Barbara Tuchman, ends when the lady’s husband discovered that his wife has a knight lover
~These knights were poor but rich in spirit
*They were true Christian soldiers who fought to protect the innocent, widows, and orphans, and they were paragons of justice and order
**They served proper kings that lived in perfect castles and dispensed true justice that never erred
These stories have a fairly set format
****One of these perfect knights falls in love with a noble lady who is typically married (often to a cruel and evil lord)
**The knight gradually wins over the lady through gifts and great deeds, they consummate their love in some way, and eventually the lady’s husband finds out
****Sometimes these stories end well and the lovers are united in the end, but often these stories end in the tragic death of everyone involved
