Peasants, Trade, and Cities

The New Agriculture

• In the early Middle Ages, Europe had a relatively small population.

• In the High Middle Ages, however, population increased dramatically.

• What caused this huge increase in population?

  • For one thing, conditions in Europe were more settled and peaceful after the invasions of the early Middle Ages had stopped.

  • In part, food production increased because a change in climate during the High Middle Ages improved growing conditions.

  • Changes in technology also aided the development of farming.

• Many of these new devices were made from iron, which was mined in various areas of Europe.

  • Because of the weight of the carruca, six or eight oxen were needed to pull it.

  • However, oxen were slow.

• The use of the heavy-wheeled plow also led to the growth of farming villages, where people had to work together.

• The shift from a two-field to a three-field system of crop rotation added to the increase in food production.

  • The three-field system meant that only one-third, rather than one-half, of the land lay fallow at any time.

The Manorial System

• A manor was an agricultural estate run by a lord and worked by peasants.

• Although free peasants continued to exist, increasing numbers of free peasants became serfs, or peasants legally bound to the land.

  • A serf’s labor services included working the lord’s land.

  • The serfs paid rents by giving the lords a share of every product they raised.

• In the feudal contract, lords and vassals were tied together through mutual obligations to each other.

• Even with these restrictions, however, serfs were not slaves.

Daily Life of the Peasantry

• The life of peasants in Europe was simple.

  • Their cottages had wood frames surrounded by sticks, with the spaces between sticks filled with straw and rubble and then plastered over with clay.

  • Roofs were simply thatched.

  • The houses of poorer peasants consisted of a single room.

  • A hearth in the main room was used for heating and cooking

• The seasons of the year largely determined peasant activities.

• A new cycle of labor began in October, when peasants worked the ground for the planting of winter crops.

  • In every season, of course, the serfs worked not only their own land but also the lords’ lands.

  • Peasants did not face a life of constant labor, thanks to the feast days, or holidays, of the Catholic Church.

• Religious feast days, Sunday mass, baptisms, marriages, and funerals all brought peasants into contact with the village church, a crucial part of manorial life.

• The position of peasant women in manorial society was both important and difficult.

• Though simple, a peasant’s daily diet was adequate when food was available.

  • Numerous other foods were added to the peasant’s diet: vegetables from the household gardens; cheese from cow’s or goat’s milk; nuts and berries from wood- lands; and fruits, such as apples, pears, and cherries.

  • Chickens provided eggs and sometimes meat.

  • Grains were important not only for bread but also for making ale.

The Revival of Trade

• Medieval Europe was basically an agricultural society in which most people lived in small villages.

• The revival of trade in Europe was gradual.

  • During the chaotic times of the early Middle Ages, large-scale trade had declined.

• By the end of the tenth century, however, people were emerging with both the skills and products for trade.

  • Venice, for example, had emerged by the end of the eighth century as a town with close trading ties to the Byzantine Empire.

    • Venice developed a mercantile fleet (a fleet of trading ships) and by the end of the tenth century had become a major trading center.

• While Venice and other northern Italian cities were busy trading in the Mediterranean, the towns of Flanders were doing the same in northern Europe.

  • The location of Flanders made it an ideal center for the traders of northern Europe.

• By the twelfth century, a regular exchange of goods had developed between Flanders and Italy.

• As trade increased, demand for gold and silver coins arose at fairs and trading markets of all kinds.

• Slowly, a money economy—an economic system based on money, rather than barter—began to emerge.

  • New trading companies and banking firms were set up to manage the exchange and sale of goods.

  • All of these new practices were part of the rise of commercial capitalism, an economic system in which people invested in trade and goods in order to make profits.

The Growth of Cities

• The revival of trade led to a revival of cities.

• Towns had greatly declined in the early Middle Ages, especially in Europe north of the Alps.

  • With the revival of trade, merchants began to settle in the old Roman cities.

• Many new cities or towns were also founded, especially in northern Europe.

  • The merchants and artisans of these cities later came to be called burghers or bourgeoisie, from the German word burg, meaning “a walled enclosure.”

• Medieval cities were small in comparison with either ancient or modern cities.

• Most towns were closely tied to the land around them because they depended on the food grown in the surrounding manors.

  • Townspeople needed freedom to trade.

  • By 1100, townspeople were getting numerous rights from local lords.

  • The people in almost every new town and city gained these basic liberties.

• Over a period of time, medieval cities developed their own governments for running the affairs of the community.

• Elections were carefully rigged to make sure that only patricians—members of the wealthiest and most powerful families—were elected.

Daily Life in the Medieval City

• Medieval towns were surrounded by stone walls.

  • Because the walls were expensive to build, the space within was precious and tightly filled.

  • The danger of fire was great. Dwellings were built mostly of wood before the fourteenth century, and candles and wood fires were used for light and heat.

• The physical environment of medieval cities was not pleasant.

  • Cities were also unable to stop water pollution, especially from the tanning and animal-slaughtering industries.

• Private and public baths also existed in medieval towns.

• There were considerably more men than women in medieval cities.

Industry and Guilds

• The revival of trade enabled cities and towns to become important centers for manufacturing a wide range of goods, such as cloth, metalwork, shoes, and leather goods.

• From the eleventh century on, craftspeople began to organize themselves into guilds, or business associations.

  • Craft guilds directed almost every aspect of the production process.

• A person who wanted to learn a trade first became an apprentice, usually at around the age of 10, to a master craftsperson.

  • After five to seven years of service during which they learned their craft, apprentices became journeymen and worked for wages for other masters.

  • Journeymen aspired to become masters as well.

• To do so, they were expected to produce a masterpiece, a finished piece in their craft.

Christianity and Medieval Civilization

The Papal Monarchy

• Since the fifth century, the popes of the Catholic Church had claimed supremacy over the affairs of the Church. They had also gained control of territories in central Italy that came to be known as the Papal States.

• At the same time, the Church became increasingly involved in the feudal system.

• By the eleventh century, church leaders realized the need to be free from the interference of lords in the appointment of church officials.

  • Secular, or lay, rulers usually both chose nominees to church offices and gave them the symbols of their office, a practice known as lay investiture.

• Realizing the need to be free from secular interference in the appointment of church officials, Pope Gregory VII decided to fight this practice.

  • Elected pope in 1073, Gregory was convinced that he had been chosen by God to reform the Church.

  • Gregory VII soon found himself in conflict with Henry IV, the king of Germany, over these claims.

• The struggle between Henry IV and Gregory VII, which is known as the Investiture Controversy, dragged on until a new German king and a new pope reached an agreement in 1122 called the Concordat of Worms.

• Besides his concern over lay investiture, Pope Gregory VII also tried to improve the Church’s ability to provide spiritual guidance to the faithful.

• During the papacy of Pope Innocent III in the thirteenth century, the Catholic Church reached the height of its political power.

  • Innocent III’s actions were those of a man who believed that he, the pope, was the supreme judge of European affairs.

  • To achieve his political ends, Innocent used the spiritual weapons at his command

  • His favorite was the interdict.

  • An interdict forbids priests from giving the sacraments (Christian rites) of the Church to a particular group of people.

New Religious Orders

• In the second half of the eleventh century and the first half of the twelfth century, a wave of religious enthusiasm seized Europe.

• In the eleventh century, more new orders arose and became important.

• The Cistercians were strict.

  • They ate a simple diet, and each had only a single robe.

  • The Cistercians played a major role in developing a new, activistic spiritual model for twelfth-century Europe.

• Women were also actively involved in the spiritual movements of the age.

  • Female intellectuals found convents a haven for their activities.

  • Most of the learned women of the Middle Ages, especially in Germany, were nuns.

• This was certainly true of Hildegard of Bingen, who became abbess of a religious house for females in western Germany.

• In the thirteenth century, two new religious orders emerged that had a strong impact on the lives of ordinary people.

  • They were the Franciscans and the Dominicans.

• The Franciscans were founded by Saint Francis of Assisi. Francis was born to a wealthy Italian merchant family in Assisi.

  • The Franciscans became very popular.

  • The Franciscans lived among the people, preaching repentance and aiding the poor

  • Unlike other religious orders, the Franciscans lived in the world

• The Dominican order was founded by a Spanish priest, Dominic de Guzmán.

  • Dominic wanted to defend Church teachings from heresy—the denial of basic Church doctrines.

  • Dominic believed that a new religious order of men who lived lives of poverty and were capable of preaching effectively would best be able to attack heresy.

• The Church’s desire to have a method of discovering and dealing with heretics led to the creation of a court called the Inquisition, or Holy Office

• If an accused heretic confessed, he or she was forced to perform public penance and was subjected to punishment, such as flogging.

• The Christians of the thirteenth century believed the only path to salvation was through the Church.

Popular Religion in the High Middle Ages

• The sacraments of the Catholic Church were central in importance to ordinary people.

• Other church practices were also important to ordinary people.

• Jesus Christ’s apostles, of course, were recognized throughout Europe as saints.

• Of all the saints, the Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus, was the most highly regarded in the High Middle Ages.

• Emphasis on the role of the saints was closely tied to the use of relics.

• Medieval Christians also believed that a pilgrimage to a holy shrine produced a spiritual benefit.

The Culture of the High Middle Ages

The Rise of Universities

• The university as we know it today, with faculty, students, and degrees, was a product of the High Middle Ages.

  • The word university comes from the Latin word universitas, meaning “corporation” or “guild.”

• The first European university appeared in Bologna, Italy.

  • Students began their studies at a medieval university with the traditional liberal arts curriculum, or course of study.

  • Teaching at a medieval university was done by a lecture method.

  • No exams were given after a series of lectures.

• After completing the liberal arts curriculum, a student could go on to study law, medicine, or theology.

  • Theology—the study of religion and God—was the most highly regarded subject of the medieval university

• Those who had earned doctor’s degrees were officially able to teach, although they also pursued other careers.

The Development of Scholasticism

• As we have seen, theology was the most highly regarded area of study at medieval universities.

  • Beginning in about the twelfth century, the study of theology in the universities was strongly influenced by a philosophical and theological system known as scholasticism.

  • The chief task of scholasticism was to harmonize Christian teachings with the works of the Greek philosophers.

• In the twelfth century, largely because of the work of Muslim and Jewish scholars, western Europe was introduced to the works of Aristotle.

• In the thirteenth century, Saint Thomas Aquinas made the most famous attempt to reconcile Aristotle with the doctrines of Christianity.

  • Thomas Aquinas is best known for his Summa Theologica, or A Summa of Theology (summa was a summary of all the knowledge on a given subject).

• Aquinas’s fame is based on his attempt to reconcile the knowledge learned through the Bible and other Christian writings with the knowledge learned through reason and experience.

Vernacular Literature

• Latin was the universal language of medieval civilization.

• However, in the twelfth century, much new literature was being written in the vernacular— the language of everyday speech in a particular region, such as Spanish, French, English, or German.

• Perhaps the most popular vernacular literature of the twelfth century was troubadour poetry, which was chiefly the product of nobles and knights.

• Another type of vernacular literature was the chanson de geste, or heroic epic.

Architecture

• The eleventh and twelfth centuries witnessed an explosion of building in medieval Europe, especially building of churches.

• Basilicas were rectangular buildings with flat wooden roofs. Romanesque builders used this basic plan but replaced the flat wooden roof with a long, round stone arched structure vault (called a barrel vault), or with a cross vault, in which two barrel vaults intersected.

  • Because stone roofs were extremely heavy, Romanesque churches required massive pillars and walls to hold them up.

• A new style, called Gothic, appeared in the twelfth century and was brought to perfection in the thirteenth.

  • One innovation was the replacement of the round barrel vault of Romanesque churches with a combination of ribbed vaults and pointed arches.

  • Another technical innovation was the flying buttress—a heavy, arched support of stone, built onto the outside of the walls.

• Gothic cathedrals were built, then, with relatively thin walls.

• The Gothic cathedral, with its towers soaring toward Heaven, bears witness to an age when most people believed in a spiritual world.

The Late Middle Ages

The Black Death

• The Middle Ages in Europe had reached a high point in the thirteenth century.

• In the fourteenth century, however, some disastrous changes took place.

• Especially catastrophic was the Black Death.

  • The Black Death was the most devastating natural disaster in European history.

  • Bubonic plague was the most common form of the Black Death.

  • Usually, the path of the Black Death followed trade routes.

  • Out of a total European population of 75 million, possibly as many as 38 million people died of the plague between 1347 and 1351.

  • People at the time did not know what caused the plague.

    • Many believed that it either had been sent by God as a punishment for their sins or had been caused by the devil.

• Some reactions became extreme, leading to an outbreak of anti-Semitism—hostility toward Jews

• The death of so many people in the fourteenth century also had severe economic consequences.

• Landlords were now paying more for labor while their incomes from rents were declining.

The Decline of Church Power

• The popes of the Roman Catholic Church reached the height of their power in the thirteenth century.

• The European kings had grown unwilling to accept papal claims of supremacy by the end of the thirteenth century.

• This is evident in a struggle between Pope Boniface VIII and King Philip IV of France.

  • To gain new revenues, Philip said that he had the right to tax the clergy of France.

  • Philip IV refused to accept the pope’s position and sent French forces to Italy to bring Boniface back to France for trial.

• The new pope took up residence in Avignon, in southern France.

• From 1305 to 1377, the popes lived in Avignon.

• At last, Pope Gregory XI, perceiving the disastrous decline in papal prestige, returned to Rome in 1377.

  • Gregory XI died soon after his return to Rome.

• Five months later, a group of French cardinals declared the election invalid and chose a Frenchman as pope.

  • This pope promptly returned to Avignon.

  • Because Urban remained in Rome, there were now two popes, beginning what has been called the Great Schism of the Church.

• The Great Schism, which lasted from 1378 to 1417, divided Europe.

• A church council finally met at Constance, Switzerland,and ended the schism in 1417.

• Meanwhile, the crises in the Catholic Church had led to cries for reform.

• A group of Czech reformers led by John Hus called for an end to the corruption of the clergy and the excessive power of the papacy within the Catholic Church.

• By the early 1400s, then, the Church had lost much of its political power.

The Hundred Years’ War

• Plague, economic crisis, and the decline of the Catholic Church were not the only problems of the late Middle Ages.

• In the thirteenth century, England still held one small possession in France, known as the duchy of Gascony.

  • The war began in a burst of knightly enthusiasm.

• The French army of 1337 still relied largely on its heavily armed noble cavalrymen.

• The first major battle of the Hundred Years’ War occurred in 1346 at Crécy.

  • The Battle of Crécy was not decisive, however.

• The English simply did not have enough resources to conquer all France.

  • Nevertheless, they continued to try.

• The English king, Henry V, was especially eager to achieve victory.

• At the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, the heavy, armor-plated French knights tried to attack Henry’s forces across a field turned to mud by heavy rain.

  • The French cause, now seemingly hopeless, fell into the hands of Charles, the heir to the French throne, who governed the southern two thirds of the lands of France.

• Joan of Arc was born in 1412, the daughter of prosperous peasants.

  • In February 1429, Joan made her way to Charles’s court, where her sincerity and simplicity persuaded him to allow her to accompany a French army to Orléans.

  • Joan had brought the war to a decisive turning point but did not live to see its end.

  • Joan of Arc’s achievements, however, were decisive.

Political Recovery

• In the fourteenth century, European rulers faced serious problems.

  • In the fifteenth century, however, recovery set in as a number of new rulers attempted to reestablish the centralized power of monarchies.

• Some historians have spoken of these reestablished states as the new monarchies.

• The Hundred Years’ War left France exhausted.

• The development of a strong French state was greatly advanced by King Louis XI, who ruled from 1461 to 1483.

• Known as the Spider because of his devious ways, Louis strengthened the use of the taille—an annual direct tax, usually on land or property—as a permanent tax imposed by royal authority.

• The Hundred Years’ War had also strongly affected the English.

• As the first Tudor king, Henry VII worked to create a strong royal government.

• Spain, too, experienced the growth of a strong national monarchy at the end of the fifteenth century.

• Two of the strongest kingdoms were Aragon and Castile.

  • When Isabella of Castile married Ferdinand of Aragon in 1469, it was a major step toward unifying Spain.

  • Ferdinand and Isabella also pursued a policy of strict conformity to Catholicism.

• Unlike France, England, and Spain, the Holy Roman Empire did not develop a strong monarchical authority.

• After 1438, the position of Holy Roman emperor was held by the Hapsburg dynasty.

• In eastern Europe, rulers found it difficult to centralize their states.

• Since the thirteenth century, Russia had been under the domination of the Mongols