Feudalism

• Middle Ages - trade declined, intellectual life receded, the united Roman state was replaced, and only the Roman Catholic Church remained powerful

• High Middle Ages - classical thinkers

• Feudalism - exchanges of land for loyalty

  • A monarch granted tracks of land to lords in return for owed service

  • Lords provided land to knights in return for protection

  • Lords provided land to peasants in return for labor

• Manorial system - large estates called manors provided economic self-sufficiency and defense; serfs spent entire lives on a manor and were tied to the land in a three-field system for crop rotation

• Monarchies grew powerful at expense of feudal lords by employing bureaucracy

Roman Catholic Church and the Crusades

• Holy Roman Empire - Germany; lay investiture controversy about whether secular leaders rather than the pope could invest bishops with symbols of office

• Norman England - a fusion of Normans (descendants of Vikings) and Anglo-Saxons

• Magna Carta - forced William the Conqueror to limit his power and required kings to respect certain rights

• English Parliament - increased rights of nobility

• The Hundred Years’ War - England and France with English won; spread gunpowder weapons

• Christians vs Muslims - Muslims conquered Spain, and Christians wanted to reconquer it during the Reconquista

• Great Schism - Christian Church in Europe was divided into 2 branches; the Roman Catholic Church dominated Europe and the Orthodox Church was powerful from Greece to Russia

• The Church - provided people with a shared identity

  • Established first universities; artwork focused on religious themes

• Church and State - Church held power in the feudal system and had a hierarchy of regional leaders

• Monasticism - Christian clergy went to monasteries to meditate and pray; same economic functions as manors; women as nuns

• Reform - clergy supported charities and were a considerable political influence, which led to corruption theological disagreements that drove reformers to shatter the unity of the Church (Martin Luther)

• Crusades - Europeans wanted to reclaim Holy Land after they were under the control of Muslims; military campaign and access to trade routes resulted in the Crusades; popes, kings, and the Church used spiritual authority to recruit believers

  • 1st Crusade - victory for Christendom; promoted cultural exchange between Europe and the Middle East

  • 4th Crusade - Levant (Venice transported Crusaders to the Middle East) and Islamic forces won

Economic and Social Changes

• Marco Polo - Italian with a description of the customs of the people he met; described Mongols and sparked curiosity about Asia leading cartography or mapmaking

• Social change - long-distance commerce started a middle class known as the bourgeoisie including merchants

• Urban growth and commerce → larger cities, advances in agriculture and population growth, and the growth of towns and markets

• Bubonic plague - the Black Death killed ⅓ of the population, increased demand for labor, and gave serfs bargaining power

• Little Ice Age - lower temperatures reduced agriculture and increased disease and unemployment

• Jews - Jews lived in the Iberian Peninsula and were taken by European Christians

  • Antisemitism - Jews were thought of as outsiders and untrustworthy; were expelled from Europe and moved to eastern Europe

• Muslims -  faced discrimination and moved to southeastern Europe; contact with traders in Muslim caliphates opened the trading world