Transcript Important Middle Ages Historical Events - The Official Site

FROM LEGEND TO HISTORY
 England is a small island that
includes Scotland and Wales.
 England has been invaded and
settled many times.
 Whatever we think of as
“English” must owe something
to these invaders.
Between 800 and 600 B.C., two
groups of Celts from southern
Europe invaded the British Isles.
Brythons (now spelled “Britons”)
settled on the largest Island,
Britain.
Gaels, settled on the second
largest island, known to us as
Ireland.
 These were tall, blond Celtic
warriors.
 Their religions was animism. They
believed they saw spirits
everywhere. They believed these
spirits or gods has to be constantly
placated.
 They looked to their priests called
Druids to settle disputes between
them and the gods.
This is an enormous pile of
megalithic stones about
thirteen and a half feet high.
Some believe this was used by
the Druids for religious rites.
These particular stones are
only found in Wales 300 miles
away from where they are
located. A great mystery is
how the stones, some
weighing more than 80 tons,
were moved to their present
location and arranged in their
original positions.
 Beginning with a campaign led by
Julius Caesar in 55 B.C. culminating
in one organized by the Emperor
Claudius in the first century A.D., the
Britons were conquered by the
legions of Rome.
 The Romans provided organization
that prevented further serious
invasions of Britain for several
hundred years.
 The Romans brought Christianity to Britain around
300 AD. This led to both Christian and pagan
themes in their literature.
 Because other European countries were rebelling,
the Romans left England around 410 AD.
 The Romans left roads, villas, and public baths but
no central government.
 Without Roman control, Britain was a country of
separate clans.
 The result was weakness and successful invasions
by non-Christian people from the Germanic regions
of continental Europe in the mid-fifth century.
 The Angles and Saxons from Germany
took over most of Britain.
 The language of the Anglo-Saxons
became dominant.
 The area became known as Englalond
or England.
 The Celts retreated to Wales. One of
their most heroic leaders was Arthur,
who in legend became known as the
“once and future king.”
 During the Anglo-Saxon rule the country was
divided into small kingdoms with its own
“king.”
 King Alfred of Wessex, known as Alfred the
Great, led the Anglo-Saxons against the
invading Danes. He helped to create a
cohesive English society from small fractious
kingdoms, restored cities destroyed during
invasions, and revived an interest in learning
and the English language.
 In the 8th and 9th centuries, the Danes (a group of
Vikings) crossed the North Sea and eventually
took over parts of England where Danish law
replaced that of the Anglo-Saxons.
 In 878, Alfred forced the Danes out of Wessex.
 He began the reign of the Wessex kings in the
South of England.
 They ruled until the Anglo-Saxons were defeated
by the last conqueror of England: William, Duke
of Normandy who landed in England in 1066.
 In 596 AD there was an attempt to
convert Anglo-Saxons to Christianity.
 In 597 AD Saint Augustine converted
King Ethelbert of Kent to Christianity.
 He set up a cathedral in Canterbury
in Kent and became the first
Archbishop of Canterbury or leader
of the Church in England.
 During this time not all converted to
Christianity.
 King Ethelbert convereted King Raedwald to
Christianity but Raedwald’s wife kept her old
religion.
 Raedwald had some connection with a tribe
from Swedish Jutland called Geatas or
Geats.
 These were the people of Beowulf, the great
Anglo-Saxon epic.
One of the most
important
archeological sites in
England were the
burial mounds of
Sutton Hoo in the land
of King Raewald. It was
filled with treasures of
gold, silver, and bronze
– scepters, swords,
shields, and rings.
 The Sutton Hoo burial site
was discovered in 1939.
 Remains of a boat were
discovered and a large
burial chamber containing
numerous artifacts.
 The artifacts suggest a
Christian element
intermingled with pagan
ritual.
 Warfare was the order of the day
(between principalities , between tribes,
between clans, and between settlers and
new invaders).
 Law and order was the responsibility of
the leader in any given group.
 Fame and success , even survival, were
achieved through loyalty to such a leader,
especially during war, and success was
measured in fights from the leader.
 Men made a name for themselves by
gaining riches and defeating foes.
 Loyal dependency was basic to Anglo-Saxon life.
 It came from a need to protect the group from
terrors of an enemy-infested wilderness.
 They lived close to their animals in single-family
homesteads, wooden buildings that surrounded a
communal court or chieftain’s hall.
 This cluster of buildings was protected by a
wooden stockade fence.
 This contributed to a sense of security, the close
relationship between leader and followers, and to
the Anglo-Saxon tendency toward community
discussion and ruled by consensus.
 Their religion came with them from Germany
and had much in common with what we
think of a as Norse or Scandinavian
mythology.
 Some deities included Thunor/Thor and
Odin.
 The religion of the Anglo-Saxons seems to
have been more concerned with ethics –
with the “manly” virtues of bravery, loyalty,
generosity, and friendship – than with the
mystical aspect of reality.
The Anglo-Saxons had
communal halls that
served three purposes:
1. Shelter
2. Place for holding
meetings
3. Space for
entertainment
 Entertainment was provided by skilled
storytellers or bards.
 The bards (sometimes called scops) were
not considered inferior to warriors.
 To the Anglo-Saxons, creating poetry was as
many as fighting, hunting, or farming.
 Poets sang to the accompaniment of a harp.
 Bards had a large supply of traditional heroic
tales, narratives that reflected the ideals of a
people constancy under the threat of
annihilation by work, disease, or old age.
 Anglo-Saxon literature is often elegiac, or
mournful.
 They stress the transience of a life
frequently identified with the cold and
darkness of winter.
 For the non-Christian Anglo-Saxon, only
fame in poetry could make them - - or at
lest their name or memory of their lives - live beyond death.
 Since these poets kept the name and
memory alive of those who achieved
fame, that is possibly why they were so
honored in society.
 Christianity, for those who believed, supplied a source of
hope.
 Monasteries in this period were the center of faith and
learning.
 The monasteries probably preserved some of the older
traditions.
 Very possibly it was the monks who wrote down and
reworked great works of popular literature of this time such
as Beowulf.
 These workers from the older oral tradition were composed
in the vernacular, or the language of the people (at that
time Old English).
 The major works of learning were written in Latin, the
language of the Church. wrote the Ecclesiastical History of
the English People and gives the first major source about
early English history.
 Latin remained the language of serious study until the time
of King Alfred who used Old English in his Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle.
 Anglo-Saxon or Old English poetry was sung
or recited aloud.
 It was usually accompanied by the harp to
provide a regular rhythm or beat.
 Most Old English poetry is more like a
musical system, concerned with time rather
than with the number of syllables. Thus, it is
the regular amount of time between primary
stresses or beats than syllables that is
important. The number of syllables in the
individual lines of Beowulf varies but each
line always has four primary stresses.
 Anglo-Saxon poetry uses alliteration, the repetition of
consonant and vowel sounds at the beginning of
words.
 Instead of rhyme, the verse line is divided into two
halves, separated by a rhythmical pause or caesura and
joined by the use of a repeated consonant or vowel
sound in both halves of the line.
 Anglo-Saxon poets used kennings, descriptive
compound words that evoke vivid images.
Beowulf, the major work of the AngloSaxon period, used four ready-made
formulas. These include the following:
1.Voyaging on the sea
2.Greeting a stranger
3.Eating feast
4.Receiving or giving riches.
2. The Middle
Ages
(1066-1485)
 In 476, warriors attacked the city
of Rome and ended more than
800 years of glory.
 The next 1000 years were called
the Middle Ages.
 When Rome fell, life in Europe was
hard. Very few could read and
write, and there was little hope
conditions would improve.
 During this time the government was not powerful.
 Most Europeans were peasants, living in small villages
and working year after year on strips of land
controlled by nobles.
 To protect themselves and their peasants, nobles
worked out a complex set of agreements.
 A powerful noble would grant portions of land,
sometimes called a feudum, to those with less power.
In exchange for the land, a lesser noble pledged his
loyalty and military services.
 Through these arrangements, called feudalism, nobles
created armed forces to provide some security for
people in their homes.
 Feudalism was a caste system, a property system, a
military system, and a system of social behavior.
 It was based on the religious concept of hierarchy
and God was the supreme over-lord-landownergeneral.
 The king could appoint people as his barons and
they could appoint vassals of their own, etc.
 The feudal system did not always work. When an
overlord was weak, the system broke down.
 Still it carried a sense of form and manners that
impacted the life, art, and literature of this time.
 This was seen fully in the institution of knighthood
and in the related practice, or code or chivalry.
 Since the primary duty of a male above the serf class
was a military obligation to his lord, boys were
trained from an early age to become warriors.
 They were often trained in other homes so the
strictness of their training could b ensured.
 At the end of the training was a “dubbing” – the tap
on the shoulder with a sword that had originally been
a hard, testing blow.
 In this ceremony the trainee became a knight.
 This gave him the title of “sir” and the full rights of
the warrior caste.
 Knighthood was firmly based in the feudal ideal of
loyalty and was intricately related to a whole system
of social codes. To break any one of them would
undermine the knight’s position and institution of
knighthood.
 Feudalism is a hierarchical system in which
every man is another man’s vassal (or
servant).
 There was hardly any movement from one
position/title at all through the system in the
early Middle Ages.
 Kings were at the top of the hierarchy; they
collected from the barons.
 As God’s deputy on earth (“Divine right of
kings”), no one can question the king’s
authority.
 These were important noblemen.
 They were rich and powerful.
 They collected from the lords, the lords
collected from the peasants, etc..
 Land was almost the only form of
wealth; rank and power were
determined by the amount of land one
had.
 Bishops worked within the church.
 They were often of equal power to the
barons.
 They had property and wealth.
A fief was a grant of land given
directly by the king. In return,
noblemen gave the king soldiers in
wartime.
 First and foremost a lord was a
knight by profession.
 They provided men and arms for
barons and kings.
 They also often raided each others’
properties.
Manor: estate.
Lord: head of a manor.
Lady: wife of the lord.
Knight: the lord/son of a lord.
Vassal: under lord/feudal tenant.
Serfs: workers, bound to the lord of
the castle; 4/5 of the income went to
the lord; no chance to change life if a
serf; no way to work the way up; no
time for pleasure, etc.
 Peasants were also known as
serfs/villeins/slaves.
 Lived on the lord’s manor.
 Everything on the manor – land,
animals, dung, homes, clothes,
belonged to the lord of the manor.
 Peasants could not leave the manor
property without permission.
 More than 90% of the population were
peasants or slaves, according to the
Domeday Book.
 Freeman owned their own land
independently of a lord.
 In early feudalism, freemen were
limited to the Lord’s appointed
officials, and a few merchants and
craftsmen (much more in later
middle ages as economy changed).
Example Layout of a
Middle Ages Manor
 The peasant woman’s life was predictable –
childbearing, housework, and hard field work.
 For women of a higher station there were
household supervision and childbearing.
 A woman was always subservient to a make,
whether husband, father, or brother.
 She had no political rights.
 Depending on the social standing of her
husband or father, she commanded a certain
respect, and in the chivalric system that
became much more important than she had
been before.
 Chivalry was a system of ideals and behavior
codes that governed both knight and
gentlewoman.
 It included the following: adherence to one’s
oath of loyalty to the overlord, the
acceptance of certain ruled of warfare, and
the adoration of a particular lady (not
necessarily one’s wife for purposes of selfimprovement.
 The idea that by revering and acting in the
name of a lady the knight would become
braver and better is an important element in
that aspect of chivalry which is called courtly
love.
 Courtly love probably had its source in the
religious cult of the Virgin Mary, and in its
ideal form it was nonsexual.
 A knight might wear the colors of his lady in
battle, he might glorify her in words and be
inspired by her, but she was in every way
“above him”; she remained, like the Virgin,
inviolate on her pedestal.
 This provided built-in drama for poets and
storytellers.
 The great contribution of chivalry was an
improved and even idealized, attitude
toward women. Chivalry also gave rise to
the form of literature known as the
romance.
 While medieval society centered around the feudal
system, an increasing number of people were living in
the towns and cities which would eventually render
the feudal system obsolete.
 City classes of people developed – the lower, middle,
and upper middle.
 These people made their living outside of the feudal
system and their world was not defined by any lord’s
manor but by cities such as London and Canterbury.
 The new merchant class had its own tastes in the arts
and could pay for what it wanted; therefore, much of
what is medieval art is not aristocratic. It is middle
class, even the “people’s” art.
 The people of the cities were free. They were not
bound to institutions such as knighthood and chivalry.
 Their freedom of ballads can be seen in the ballads of
the time.
There were several specific events that
radically influenced the course of English
history and English life.
 William of Normandy (called William the
Conqueror), who already controlled
northern France, invaded and conquered
England in 1066. The decisive victory was at
the Battle of Hastings.
 Hastings was a town on the channel that
divided England from France.
 William defeated and killed King Harold of
England, the last of the Anglo-Saxon kings.
 This began the Norman Conquest, an event
that brought about changes in England.
 It was not William’s goal to eliminate the
Anglo-Saxons so their culture mixed in with
the Normans’.
 Old French became the language of power,
commerce, and religion in England.
 End of Old English (the language of Beowulf)
 French merged with Old English to produce
Middle English, close enough to modern
English that we can recognize it.
 This was the language of Chaucer’s time.
 This was commissioned by William the
Conqueror in 1087.
 This was a census, land register, and income
record to create a tax toll so everyone could
be taxed based on what they owned.
 One can learn a lot about commerce and
what everyone owned.
 One can learn a lot about common names.
 The original copy of the Domesday Book is in
the British Library.
 The Crusades were a series of wars waged in the
11th, 12th, and 13th centuries by Christian Europe
against the followers of Muhammad, with Jerusalem
and the Holy Land as the prize.
 They began in 1096 when Pope Urban II called for
this holy war and he said anyone who died fighting in
a crusade, would go to heaven.
 There were 8 Crusades that lasted over 200 years.
The last 7 failed due to disease, cold, hunger, and
battles.
 Another negative effect was it gave Muslims a
stronger foothold which was the opposite of their
goal.
There were several benefits to Europe due to
the Crusades. These included the following:
 Increase in trade.
 Increase in the merchant class.
 Increase in art and education. The Greek language
and Plato were studied again as well as philosophy
and math.
 Increase in religious inspiration due to dedication
to God. This can be seen in art and architecture.
 They also greatly contributed to a secular kind of
hero-worship of knights. This can also be seen in
art forms such as tapestries and literature.)
 Thomas was a Norman who had risen to great power
as chancellor (prime minister) under his friend King
Henry II (reigned 1154-1189).
 At this time all Christians belonged to one church –
the Church of Rome.
 This meant that King Henry was the vassal of the
Pope, who was the head of the Church and the
representative of God.
 When Henry appointed his trusted friend Thomas as
Archbishop of Canterbury, or head of the Church in
England, Henry hoped to gain the upper hand in
certain disputes between the Crown an the Roman
Church.
 Ironically, as archbishop Thomas took the part of the
Pope against the king and certain of the English
barons and bishops.
 In December of 1170, in a particular rage
against his old friend, Henry expressed a wish
for the archbishop’s death.
 He ranted, “Will no one rid me of this
meddlesome priest?”
 Four of Henry’s knights took his words literally
and murdered Becket in the cathedral at
Canterbury.
 The result was the cult of St. Thomas the
Martyr, also known as the “holy blissful
martyr.” This was a popular reaction against
the king, and a significant setback for the
monarchy in its struggle with Rome for power
in England.
 This event led to all kinds of liberties and taken by several of
the ecclesiastics (clergymen).
 Since the state had lost its position to exert power over the
church, the Church became corruption.
 A positive effect, however, was the cultural unity it brought.
 The Church continued to be the center of learning in the
medieval period, just as with was before in the Anglo-Saxon
days.
 The Church’s language, Latin, was the international tongue
of statesmen and educated people.
 The Pope, was king of all kings, and his “kingdom” had no
boundaries.
 The Church’s monasteries were the libraries and publishers
of the time,
 The Church maintained a unified system of belief and
symbol which transcended the conflicting national cultures
of Europe.
Important Middle Ages Historical Events:
The Magna Carta
 The event that made England have more independent
and democratic tendencies was the signing of the
Magna Carta (the “Great Charter”) by King John at
Runnymede in 1215.
 John, who was strongly backed by the Pope, was forced
by the English barons forced him to sign the document.
 The signing was a defeat for central papal power.
 The document was written by aristocrats for
aristocrats, but the barons had no interest in the rights
of the common people.
 But in later years, the document became the basis for
English constitutional law in which such rights as trial
by jury and legislative taxation were established.
 War is usually associated with nationalism; however,
in the early Middle Ages there were no nations as
we know them today.
 What might be considered the first great national
war was waged by England against France.
 The war was based on the claims of two English
Kings – Edward III (reigned 1327-1377) and Henry V
(reigned 1413-1422) – to the throne of France, the
Hundred Years’ War (133-1453) was fought on the
continent.
 This war which lasted 116 years, involved national
heroes as the Black Prince, the most famous warrior
in English history, who wore black armor and the age
of sixteen commanded a wing of his father’s army.
 This war caused a great deal of unrest , and for the
English, was militarily unsuccessful.
 It was important, however, as a factor in the gradual
development of a British national consciousness.
 After his war the English were no longer Anglo-Norman
but better represented by the yeoman, or small
landowner, that formed a great deal of the English
armies in France and became a dominant force in the
emerging, non-feudal England.
 With the demise of both castle and knight as symbols
of significant military power.
 With the emergence of the yeoman class, modern
democratic England was born.
 With this new society the old ideals of chivalry lived on
only in stories.
In 1347, Italian merchant ships
returned from the Black Sea one of
the links along the trade route
between Europe and China. Many of
the sailors were already dying of the
plague, and within days the disease
had spread from the port cities to the
surrounding countryside. The
disease spread as far as England
within one year.
The Plague took out 54 million people.
1/3 of Europe’s population was wiped out.
It was one of the defining events of the
Middle Ages.
It was a highly contagious disease spread by
fleas from infected rats.
A lack of cleanliness added to their
vulnerability. Cities were crowded with poor
sanitation, ate stale or diseased meat, and
medicine was primitive (people were often
advised to not bathe because open skin pores
might let in the disease.
It was a highly contagious disease where
nodules would burst around the area of the
flea bite.
 The plague caused a labor shortage and
inevitably gave the lower class more leverage
than they had ever had against their
overlords.
 One long term result was the freedom of the
serfs, which knocked out the last support of
feudalism.