Transcript Chapter 12 - The Official Site - Varsity.com

Chapter 12
Crusades and Culture in the Middle Ages
Lesson One
• The popes of the Catholic Church had claimed supremacy
over the affairs of the church.
• The Church also became involved in the feudal system.
• Chief officials of the church received their appointments as
grants from nobles and became their vassals.
• Church officials, bishops and abbots, often cared more about
their wealth and often neglected their spiritual duties.
• By the 11th century, Church leader realized the Church
needed to be free from lord’s interference in Church
business
• Secular (worldly) leaders chose nominees and gave them
symbols of their office, a practice known as lay investiture.
• Pope Gregory VII decided to fight this practice believing he
had been chosen by God to reform the Church.
• He issued decrees or order that the pope’s authority
extended over all the Christian world, including rulers.
• If rulers did not accept this, he would replace them.
Pope Gregory VII Papal Decree 1075
• “We decree that no one of the clergy shall
receive the investiture with a bishopric or abbey
or church from the hand of an emperor or king
or of any lay person.”
• The struggle between Henry IV of the Holy
Roman Empire and Gregory VII became known
as the Investiture Controversy.
The Church Supreme (pg. 237)
• Popes after Gregory focused more on increasing the
power of the Church rather than focusing on the
spiritual needs of its members.
• The Church reached the peak of its power under
Innocent III who strongly believed in papal supremacy.
• His favorite tool was the interdict which forbids
priests from giving the sacraments (Christian rites or
rituals) to a particular group of people.
• The purpose was for people to exert pressure on their
ruler to abide by the decrees of the papacy.
New Religious Orders (pg. 238)
• The Cistercian Order was founded in 1098 by a group
of monks who were unhappy with the lack of
discipline of their own Benedictine monastery.
• The Cistercians were strict; they required more time
for prayer and more time for manual labor.
• The Cistercians were best known for taking their
religion to people outside of the monastery.
Women in Religious Orders
• Female intellectuals found convents a haven for their
activities. Most educated women of the Middle Ages
were nuns.
• Hildegard of Bingen was one of the first important
female composers and contributor of early Church
music (normally reserved for men only).
Franciscans and Dominicans (pg. 239)
• The Franciscans were founded by St. Francis of Assisi.
• Although born into a wealthy family, he abandoned all
worldly goods to live and preach in poverty.
• Followers took a vow of absolute poverty, agreeing to
reject all property and live by working and begging for
their food.
• They lived among the people preaching repentance
and aiding the poor.
• The Dominican Order was founded by Dominic’ de
Guzman, a Spanish priest.
• Their purpose was to defend the Church against
heresy—the denial of basic church doctrine.
The Inquisition (239)
• The Church created a court called the Inquisition, or
Holy Office, to deal with heretics.
• The courts’ job was to find and try heretics.
• Those who confessed performed public penance and
received punishment such as flogging.
• The Inquisition eventually added torture as a way to
extract confessions. Those who refused to confess were
subject to execution by the state.
• Methods or torture used were burning, beating and
suffocating.
• More severe methods were the torture rack, the stocks,
water torture, and the iron maiden.
• http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/vatican/esp_vatican29.
htm#The Tortures
Religion in the High Middle Ages (240)
• People depended on the Church from birth to death due to
sacraments (rites) such as baptism, marriage, and the
Eucharist (Communion).
• Only the clergy could administer these rites.
• Medieval Christians also believed in taking pilgrimages to
holy sites because it would produce a spiritual benefit.
• Jerusalem was the greatest shrine but also the most
difficult to reach due to Muslim control.
Lesson 2—The Crusades (241)
• The Crusades started when the Seljuk Turks took
control of the Holy Land.
• Pope Urban II launched the Crusades—military
expeditions carried out by Christians to reclaim the
Holy Lands (Jerusalem and Palestine) from the infidels
or unbelievers—the Muslims.
The pope promised “All who die…shall have
immediate remission (forgiveness) of sins.”
• Most Crusaders were knights seeking adventure while
others joined for the opportunity to gain wealth and
earn titles. Others joined due to religious zeal.
• The First Crusade re-captured Jerusalem in 1099 after a
horrible massacre of its inhabitants.
• Muslim forces regained control in 1187 under the
infamous general Saladin.
• The Crusaders attempted but never regained the Holy
Land.
• Nicholas of Cologne led a “children’s crusade” to the
Holy Lands until the pope ordered them to go home.
• Those who didn’t were captured and sold into slavery
in North Africa (about 20,000).
• 3 Major Effect of the Crusades:
1. Italian port cities became extremely wealthy
2. The first organized attacks of Jews occurred since
Jews were viewed as the murders of Christ.
3. They eventually helped to break down feudalism.
• By 1400, strong nation-states began to form.
Lesson 3—Architecture (245)
• In the 12th and 13th centuries, Gothic cathedrals began
to replace Romanesque as two major innovations led
the way.
1. Round barrel vaults
Pg. 246
2. Flying buttress—a heavy arched support of stone
built into the outside of the walls. They made it
possible to distribute the weight of the church’s
vaulted ceilings outward and down.
• They had relatively thin walls and beautiful stained
glass windows.
Universities
• The first university was in Bologna, Italy.
• European universities were operated as guilds or
corporations (for profit).
• The most important subject to study was theology—
the study of religion.
• Scholasticism was a philosophical movement to
reconcile faith and reason (as taught by the ancient
Greeks).
Page 247
• Thomas Aquinas wrote in Summa Theologica that
reason, without faith, could only reveal truths about
the physical world, not spiritual truths.
• Humans, through reason, could arrive at natural law,
which is part of God’s eternal law, and determine the
difference between good and evil.
Vernacular Literature (247)
• Latin was the universal language of medieval Europe.
• In the 12th century, literature began to be written in
the vernacular—the language of everyday speech in a
particular region.
• Troubadour poetry was the most popular. It told of
the love between a knight and a lady who inspires
him.
• Another type was the heroic epic. It described battles
and political contests.
• English author Geoffrey Chaucer wrote The
Canterbury Tales, a collection of stories told by a
group of 29 pilgrims representing the entire range of
English society.
Chaucer's
pilgrims depart
from the Tabard
for Canterbury by
Gerritt
Vandersyde
Lesson 4—The Late Middle Ages (248)
• A decades long famine in the 14th century may explain
the high mortality rates of the Black Death, the most
devastating natural disaster in European history.
• Bubonic Plague was the most common form of the
Black Death. It was spread by black rats infested with
fleas carrying a deadly bacterium.
• It began on October of 1347 and followed common
European trade routes.
• Of a total European population estimated to be
around 75 million, possibly more than one-third died
between 1347-1351.
• People did not know what caused the plague and
believed God sent it as a punishment for their sins.
• Extreme reaction led to anti-Semitism—or hatred and
hostility towards Jews.
• Some were falsely accused to starting the plague by
poisoning town wells.
• Effects of the plague:
1. Trade declined
2. Massive deaths led to a shortage of workers
249
3. Massive deaths led to a decline in demand for food
and prices fell.
4. Many serfs gained their freedom
• Church problems in the 1300s led to a decline in the
Church’s power.
The Great Schism (250)
• The Great Schism occurred when Italian cardinals and
French cardinal both elected a pope. The French pope
was in Avignon and the Italian pope was in Rome.
• Each denounced the other as the Antichrist. Church
power declined as people lost faith in the Church
since the pope was supposed to be the true leader of
Christendom.
250
• The schism ended when the competing popes either
resigned or were deposed and a new pope was
elected that was acceptable to all.
• Church crises led to calls for widespread Church
reform.
• John Wyclif’s disgust with clerical corruption led him
to attack papal authority.
Calls for Church Reform
• Jan Hus, a Czech, called for an end of clerical
corruption and to excessive papal power within the
Church.
• He was accused of heresy and was burnt at the stake
in 1415. Hus’s ideas would later have an impact on
the German monk Martin Luther.
The Hundred Years’ War (251)
• The cause of the Hundred Years’ War was a struggle
for land between France and England.
• The war proved to be an important turning point in
the nature of warfare as peasant foot soldiers, not
knights, won the chief battles of the war.
• A French peasant girl, Joan of Arc, helped to save the
French monarch and win the war.
• She was deeply religious and claimed to have visions
and believed that saints has commanded her to free
France.
• Though only 17, Joan was allowed to lead the army of
France. Joan turned the war for an eventual French
victory although she did not live to see it.
• She was captured by the English and turned over to
the Inquisition to be tried for witchcraft.
• She was found
guilty and burned
at the stake.
Joan of Arc depicted on
horseback in an
illustration from a 1505
manuscript.
253
• The Hundred Years’ War lasted from 1337-1453.
• A weaker England saw the War of the Roses break out
as noble factions sought to control the monarch until
Henry VII took power.
• Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon married
taking a major step toward the unification of Spain. In
1492, they expelled all Jews and Muslims who refused
to convert to Catholicism.