Transcript Europe in the Middle Ages

Europe in the Middle Ages
• What led to the rise and fall of feudalism?
• How did the Crusades affect European society?
• What was the Renaissance?
Setting the Scene
 A.D. 500 the Roman Empire (western Europe) was in
ruin – nomadic tribes from northern Europe and Asia.
 Small kingdoms developed
 Laws, literature, and learning from the Empire was lost
 Cities shrank, trade slowed (too dangerous to travel),
peasants fled from invaders
 Vikings were the most feared attackers
 Raid and colonize – Northern England and Ireland
 900s – settled in northern France (“Normans”), Iceland, and
Greenland
Feudalism
 European leaders enlisted nobles for:
 Military assistance and loyalty
 In return for:
 Land and protection
 Manor (land a noble received)
 Self-sufficient estate
 Serfs – men and women bound to the land by their labor
(worked in exchange for a share of the crops and protection
from attackers)
Rigid Class System
 Noble Class – managed estates, hunted, engaged in
battle
 Men held most of the power (some women inherited land
from male relatives)
 Serfs – unending physical labor
 Lords received the largest portion of the crops, but
sometimes also required workers to pay fees (marriage or
inheritance taxes)
 Some obtained their freedom, but most remained tied to
the land
 Considered property and their status was passed down to
their children.
Church
 No sense of national identity in feudal Europe and little
awareness of the outside world (manor and church only)
 Roman Catholic Church – political and social force
 Led by the pope
 Center of activity
 Only institution to carry on traditions from the Roman Empire
 Art, culture (music, tapestries, illuminated manuscripts, cathedrals)
 Politically – settled disputes between kingdoms and negotiate
political alliances
 Monks and Nuns lived in monasteries or convents
 Worshiped, studied scripture, preserved ancient Greek and
Roman writing
Decline of Feudalism
 New farm equipment increased the amount of land that
could be farmed
 Farm laborers could not produce enough food for large
armies and townspeople
 Military strength grew
 Vikings would no longer take by force, what they couldn’t
get by trade
 Trading towns and cities replaced manors as the focus of
economic activity
 Serfs moved from manors to towns – work for wages or farm
rented plots
Crusades
 1096-1200s – waves of Christian crusaders fought
Muslims for control of the Holy Land
 Southwest Asia – sacred to Jews, Christians, and Muslims
 Muslims groups had held the Holy Land since the 600s
 Fell to the Seljuk Turks (Muslims from central Asia) in
1071
 Prevented Christians from visiting the holy city of Jerusalem
 1st Crusade: European Christian invaders captured
Jerusalem – retaken later by Muslims
 Later Crusades were never as successful for the Europeans,
but they had important consequences for trade…
Trade
 Banks and merchants in the Italian city-states funded
the Crusades in return for trading privileges.
 Italian traders brought back rare spices, fine silks, etc. from
Muslim lands… Europeans demanded more.
 Trade changed Europe’s political and social order
 Merchants and bankers formed the bourgeoisie (middle class)
 Political stability was necessary for trade to flourish (fighting
feudal nobles could not provide this)
 But a central government under a strong king or queen could –
bourgeoisie supported monarchs
Renaissance
 Rebirth of European learning and artistic creativity.
 Crusades had helped end the isolation Europe had faced
from the rest of the world.
 Brought back classical Greek and Roman works and new ideas
in science, technology and philosophy from the Byzantine
Empire (eastern half of the former Roman Empire) and the
Islamic world.
 European scholars wanted to understand the physical world
 Clues from Arab mathematics and sciences
 Arab maps and geographic studies – world beyond Europe
 Compass and Astrolabe invention
 Began in Italy (14th century) and spread across Europe
 Johannes Gutenberg –invention of the printing press (cultural
diffusion)
 Commerce (banks and treasuries continued to try and outdo
one another to make profit) – funding building projects and
individual artists (da Vinci and Michelangelo)