AP Euro summer work notes
1.1 - The Black Death
The Black Death was a pandemic that swept almost all of Europe from 1346 to 1353, ending in two-fifths of the population being dead.
The pandemic resulted in major social change
Religious persecution
Breakdown of social customs
Resulted in some elements of society, such as kings and guilds, seeing their economic and political power increase.
Europe’s population had been weakened prior to the plague, making it particularly vulnerable to the disease.
Caused by overpopulation, economic depression, famine, and bad health.
The plague was caused by infected fleas that traveled from Asia to Europe using trade routes on ships.
The plague entered Europe through the ports of Venice, Genoa, and Pisa by 1347.
The plague often discolored its victims, and the part most affected by the plague was the victim’s lungs.
Victims often sneezed and wheezed due to their illness, often spreading the illness to others in the process.
Many described the plague as a punishment for sin, and that repentance was a solution.
Doctors often applied herbal medication to victims, often to a good effect.
Other measures taken to prevent and treat the plague were acts such as fumigating rooms and aerating city spaces with herbs and smoke to repel or kill fleas.
Washing and cleaning with scented waters was another method to prevent the plague.
Many believed that corruptions in the atmosphere caused the plague.
Flagellants who were infected beat themselves in ritual penance in a belief that it would bring divine help to them.
The church outlawed any of such processions because of the social disruptiveness and threatening nature of these rituals.
Jews were sometimes scapegoated for the plague by Christians.
Farms declined as a result of the plague.
Many farm laborers died from the plague.
Many serfs (peasants) chose to pursue jobs in craft industries in cities.
Because of the waning demand, agricultural prices fell.
Noble landholders suffered a great decline in power, being forced to pay more in wages while recieving a smaller return.
Peasants revolted due to the plague.
Some landowners converted their arable land to sheep pasture because wool production was more profitable than grains at the time.
Others abandoned farms and leased them to the highest bidder.
In France, taxes on peasants were raised, and this lead to the French peasant uprising, known as the Jacquerie.
Cities and their skilled industries prospered from the effects of the plague.
Cities previously passed laws in their own interests, regulating competition from other areas and controlling immigration.
Post-plague, the reach of these laws extended to include surrounding lands of nobles and landlords, many of which had integrated into urban life.
The omnipresence of death heightened the demand for goods that took skill and craftsmanship to produce.
Examples of such goods are expensive clothes, jewelry, furs, and silk.
The plague killed off many of these artisans, so the prices of these already-rare goods rose to new heights, encouraging workers to migrate and learn how to produce these.
1.2 - The Hundred Years’ War and the Rise of National Sentiment
Many factors contributed to the start of the Hundred Years’ War.
The largest factor to the start of the war was Edward III of England asserting his claim to the French throne after the previous French king died without a remaining male heir.
Edward asserted his claim because he was the grandson of Philip the Fair of France.
The French barons instead selected Philip VI, the first cousin of Charles IV, the king who died.
France and England were also two emerging territorial powers in close proximity.
Edward, an englishman and vassal (subordinate) of Philip VI, controlled some sizable French territories. The French viewed English possession of French land as repugnant.
The two countries fought over control of Flanders.
Flanders was a French fief, but it was dependent and subject to England’s political and economic influence because its main industry, cloth manufacturing, depended on imported wool from England.
Additionally, the French and English did not like one another.
Most battles in the war ended in an English victory before 1415.
These failures by the French were caused by the country still struggling to transition from a splintered feudal system to a centralized modern state.
In an attempt to raise money for the war, French kings did things like depreciating the currency and heavy borrowing from Italian bankers, all of which fueled internal conflicts.
The English military force was much stronger than the French military, reflected in their many wins in battles.
English infantry was more disciplined than the French.
English archers had mastered the longbow.
The longbow could fire six arrows a minute, enough to pierce an inche of wood or the armor of a night at 200 yards (600ft)
The English rulers and governing body was much more competent and organized than the French.
The Hundred Years’ War had three major stages of development, each ending in decisive victory by one side.
Conflict during the reign off Edward III
The Flemish cities in France revolted against France and signed an alliance with England and acknowledged Edward as the king of France.
On June 23, 1340, Edward beat the French fleet in the Battle of Sluys.
He attempted to invade france after this battle, but these efforts failed.
In 1346, Edward attacked Normandy.
After many easy victories, the English seized the port of Calais.
A truce was forced in late 1347 because of exhaustion on both sides and the spreading of the Black Death.
In 1356, the English had their biggest victory.
They routed the French cavalry and captured the French king after the political order of France broke down.
After this the power in France laid with the Estates General.
Led by powerful merchants, they demanded rights similar to the ones in the Magna Carta.
The estates general was too divided to be a proper instrument for government.
The privileged in France rose taxes for the war and to repair properties.
This lead to the Jacquerie, a series of bloody rebellions lead by the common folk.
This revolt was quickly put down by the nobility, however.
On may 9, 1360, England forced a treaty of peace on the French.
This ended Edward’s vassalage to the king and affirmed his sovereignty over the English territories in France. This was unrealistic, and many people thought that it wouldn’t last.
In the late 1360’s, the French had struck back. By the time Edward died in 1377, they had beaten the English back to the coast.
French defeat and the treaty of troyes
After Edward died, Richard II took over.
During his reign, England had its own Jacquerie.
In June 1381, peasants and artisans revolted with the underprivileged classes. They were lead by a secular priest, John Ball, and Wat Tyler, a journeyman.
This revolt was crushed within the year.
Under Henry V, England recommenced the war.
The English army routed the French at Agincourt in October of 1415.
The Burgundians allied with the French forces after this, promising to bring victory over the English.
In September 1419, the duke of Burgundy was assassinated, stopping this dream.
The Treaty of Troyes in 1420 proclaimed Henry V as successor to the French king, Charles VI.
However, both died within months of eachother, causing the infant king Henry VI of England to be pronounced king of both France and England.
This fulfilled the goal that Edward III had of the ruler of England also being the ruler of France.
The French did not accept Henry VI as their king, and instead viewed King Charles VII as the true king of France.
Charles VII, with the national feeling inspired by Joan of Arc, rallied his cause to take France back and gathered a coalitionm.
Joan of Arc and the war’s conclusion
Joan of Arc
Was a peasant from Domremy who presented herself to Charles VII in 1429.
She declared that the King of Heaven had called her to deliver the besieged city of Orleans from the English.
Charles was skeptical, but he was willing to take anything to change the fate of the French.
He ended up giving Joan his leave.
When Joan arrived at Orleans with new troops, the English force was exhausted by a six-month long siege at their point of withdrawal.
Joan and the forces successfully drew the English out of Orleans, followed by many other victories attributed to Joan.
Joan was not a military expert, but she gave soldiers a sense of pride and national identity.
The Roman Catholic Church declared her a saint in 1920.
The war ended with the French having a new sense of national pride.
1.3 - Ecclesiastical Breakdown and Revival: The Late Medieval Church
There were ominous developments when papal power had reached its height.
As the papacy was transformed into a great secular power, the church was spiritually weakened despite its political strength increasing.
After, the church as a papal monarchy increasingly parted company with the church as the body of the faithful.
Under Poper Urban IV, the papacy established the court Rota Romana, tightening and centralizing the church’s legal proceedings.
The centralization of the church undermined the power of local religious authorities like bishops.
There was much internal strife, with many that were loyal to the church protesting changes.
The church’s spirituality was undermined in the thirteenth century.
Because imperial power in Italy fell, the papacy in Rome switched to being on the defensive against their old allies, being people that showed resistance to the italian emperor
Boniface VIII and Philip the Fair
Boniface VIII came to rule when both England and France were maturing as nation-states.
In England, formal parliaments had been developed by Henry III.
In France, Philip IV the Fair wanted to end England’s continental holdings and increase French power in places like Flanders and the Holy Roman Empire.
Boniface discovered that the papal monarchy of the early thirteenth century was no match for the political juggernauts in the late thirteenth century.
The Royal Challenge to Papal Authority
When Boniface became pope, England and France were on the verge of war.
Only England dealing with rebellion in Scotland prevented Edward I from invading France.
Both countries taxed the clergy heavily under the pretext of preparing for a crusade.
Boniface took a stand against this, seeing this as an assault on traditional clerical rights.
He issues a bull which forbid taxation of the clergy without papal approval.
Edward 1 retaliated by denying the clergy the right to be heard in royal court, denying them the protection of the king.
Philip the Fair forbade the exportation of money from France to Rome, denying the papacy revenues it needed to operate.
Boniface was also under siege by Italian enemies.
The Colonnas family, Boniface’s family’s rivals, the Gaetani, and followers of Saint Francis of ASsisi wanted to invalidate Boniface’s election because Celestine V had been forced to resign office.
Boniface’s fortunes seemingly revived in 1300, a “Jubilee year”.
All Catholics who visited Rome and met certain conditions had penalties for their unexpiated sins remitted.
With all these pilgrims coming into Rome, Boniface reinserted himself into international politics.
After a confrontation with Boniface, Philip arrested Boniface’s Parisian legate, whose independence Philip had opposed.
The legate was tried and convicted of heresy and treason.
Philip then demanded that Boniface recognize the royal process taken against the legate. He could only do this if he was prepared to surrender his jurisdiction over the French episcopate.
After this dispute, Philip unleashed a ruthless antipapal campaign.
Two royal apologists rebutted papal claims to the right to intervene in secular matters.
Boniface made a last stand against state control of national churches.
He issued the bull Unam Sanctam.
This statement of papal power declared royal, temporal authority to be subject to the spiritual power of the church.
After Unam Sanctam, the French and their allies moved against Boniface.
Philip’s chief minister denounced Boniface to the French clergy as a heretic and criminal.
In August 1303, his army caught the pope at his retreat in Anagni, beat him up, and nearly executed him before a populace returned him to Rome.
Boniface died in October 1303.
Boniface’s successor, Benedict XI, excommunicated chief minister Nogaret for his deed, but there was to be no lasting papal retaliation,
Benedict’s successor, Clement V, was forced into French subservience.
A former archbishop of Bordeaux declared that Unam Sanctam should not be interpreted as a way of diminishing French royal authority.
The papal court was moved to Avignon on the border of France in 1309.
Clement made it his residence to escafe a strife-ridden Rome and pressure from Philip.
Boniface’s humiliation affected future popes to come.
Popes never again seriously threatened rulers, despite continuing excommunications and political intrigue. The relationship between church and state tilted in favor of state, and control of religion fell in the hands of monarchies.
The Avignon Papacy
The avignon papacy was under strong French influence.
After finding itself cut off from its Roman estates, the papacy had to get funds through papal taxes.
Pope Clement VI began the practices of selling indulgences.
The church developed doctrine on purgatory to make the purchase of indulgences more compelling.
The Avignon papacy had a reputation for materialism and political scheming.
Pope John XXII was the most powerful Avignon pope and tried to restore papal independence and return it to Italy.
This goal of his lead him into war with the power ruling Visconti family of Milan, as well as a contest with Emperor Louis IV.
After John had challenged Louis’s 1314 election as emperor, Louis deposed him and put an antipope in his place.
Louis then enlisted in the help of the Spiritual Franciscans, whose views John had condemned as heresy.
Two pamphleteers wrote tracts for the royal cause, being William of Ockham and Marsilius of Padua, both who had been excommunicated or declared heretical.
Marsilius stressed the independent origins and autonomy of secular government.
He wrote that in the clerical judgement of kings, spiritual crimes must await eternal punishment and that transgressions of divine law were to be punished in the next life.
Pope John made the papacy a sophisticated international agency.
The more the Curia, or papal court, mastered the european money economy, the more vulnerable it became to secular criticism.
John’s successor, Benedict XII’s papacy became entrenched in the city of Avignon, seemingly forgetting Rome.
Benedict began to build the great Palace of the Popes to reform both papal government and the religious life.
Benedict’s successor, Pope Clement VI, placed papal policy in lockstep with the french.
Opposition to the Avignon papacy
Monarchies took strong action to protect their interests as Avignon’s fiscal tentacles probed new areas.
The second half of the 14th century saw legislation restricting papal jurisdiction and taxation in France, England, and Germany.
In England, Parliamanet passed statutes that restricted payments and appeals to Rome.
In France, the Gallican or “French liberties” regulated ecclesiastical appointments and taxation.
The pragmatic Sanction of Bourges recognized the right of the French church to elect its own clergy with no papal interference.
In Germany and Switzerland, local governments limited and overturned traditional clerical privileges and overturned traditional clerical privileges and immunities.
John Wycliffe and John Huss
The lay religious movements that attacked the late medieval church most successfully were the english Lollards and bohemian Hussites.
The Lollards looked to John Hycliffe’s writings to justify their demands
Moderate to extreme Hussites turned to the writings of John Huss.
Both Wycliffe and Huss disclaimed the extremists who revolted in their names.
Wycliffe was a theologian and philosopher.
His worked served the anticlerical policies of the English government initially.
He was a major intellectual spokesman for the rights of royalty against the secular pretensions of popes.
Wycliffe strongly supported reducing the power of the papacy.
His views brought justification to government restriction in England.
For Wycliffe, personal merit and morality were the true basis of religious authority.
The Lollards were the English advocates of Wycliffe’s teaching.
These people championed clerical poverty and joined with the nobility and gentry in confiscating clerical properties.
After the peasant’s revolt in 1381, Lollardy was viewed as subversive.
In 1401, the heresy became a capital offense.
In Bohemia, heresy coalesced with a strong national movement.
The University of Prague became the new center for Bohemian nationalism and a religious reform movement.
The religious movement began within the bounds of orthodoxy and was led by local intellectuals and preachers such as John Huss.
The Czech reformers were critical of traditional ceremonies and superstitious activities.
The Hussites taught that bread and wine remained the bread and wine after priestly consecration and questioned the validity of sacraments performed by priests in mortal sin.
Wycliffe’s teaching appeared to have influenced the movement early.
Traffic between England and Bohemia had been established for decades, and Bohemian students studied at Oxford returning home with Wycliffe’s writings.
Huss became the leader of the pro-Wycliffe faction at the University of Prague.
In 1410, this lead to his excommunication and Prague was placed under papal interdict.
In 1414, Huss spoke to the the Council of Constance under a safe-conduct pass, believing he would convince his strongest critics of the truth of his teaching.
Within weeks of his arrival, he was imprisoned and accused of heresy.
He died at the state on July 6, 1415.
The execution of Huss and Jerome of Prague was retaliated by fierce revolt in Bohemia.
Militants set to transform Bohemia into a religious and sopcial paradise under the military leadership of John Ziska.
1.4 - Medieval Russia
How did Mongol Rule shape Russia’s development?
Politics and Society
Prince Vladmir of Kiev’s successor, Yaroslav the Wise, developed Kiev into a political/cultural center, with significant architecture.
After his death, rivalry among the Russian princes divided Russians into three cultural groups being the Great Russians, White Russians, and Little Russians (Ukranians).
Other principalities also challenged Kiev’s dominance, making it one of several national centers.
Government in these principalities combined monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy.
The largest social division was between free men and slaves.
Free men were the clergy, army officers, wealthy landowners or boyars, townspeople, and peasants.
Slaves were mostly prisoners of war or debtors working off their debts.
Mongol Rule
In the 13th century, Mongol armies swept through China, much of the Islamic world, and Russia.
Genghis Khan invaded Russia in 1223, and Kiev fell to Batu Khan, his grandson, in 1240.
Russian cities became principalities of the segment of the Mongol Empire known as the Golden Horde.
The Golden horde included southern Russia and its capital was Sarai..
The Mongol conquerors stationed their officials in all the principal Russian towns to oversee taxes and conscription of Russians into Mongol armies.
This forced integration between Mongols and Russians created more cultural divisions between russia and the west.
The Mongols left Russian political and religious institutions mostly intact, and brought many Russians prosperity due to their far-flung trade.
Princes of Moscow became wealthy under the Mongols
These princes took control of the territory surrounding Moscow as Mongol rule weakened.
Ivan III the Great would bring all Mongol rule in Russia to an end in 1480 by bringing all of northern Russia under Moscow’s control.
After this, Moscow replaced Kiev as the political and religious center of Russia.