Christian Europe Emerges

300 – 1200 C.E.

Byzantine Empire

300 – 1200 C.E.

Map of Byzantine Empire

Byzantine Empire Video

Church and State

• Roman rule and traditions remained in the Byzantine Empire and Constantinople.

• The Byzantine emperor appointed the patriarch of Constantinople and intervened in church matters.

• Religious differences and doctrinal disputes abounded, but polytheism was eliminated.

Constantinople

Church of Hagia Sophia

External Threats

• Byzantine Empire did not break up because of unity of political and religious power.

• Foreign threats included:– Goths and Huns in North– Sasanids in East

• Attacked for over 300 years

Losing Power

• Muslim Arabs took wealthy provinces of Syria, Tunisia, and Egypt from Byzantines.

• Permanently reduced power of Empire.

• Empire also experienced declining relations with the popes and princes of Western Europe.

• Formal break between Latin and Orthodox Churches in 1054.

Society and Decline of Urbanism

• Byzantine Empire experienced a decline of urbanism similar to Rome.

• Middle class people moved out of cities and into rural areas.

• Byzantine society was then characterized by a HUGE gap between wealth of aristocrats and poverty of peasants.

Family Life

• Family very rigid• Women confined to

homes and wore veils if they went out.

• Byzantine women ruled alongside husbands between 1028 and 1056.

• Women did not take refuge in nunneries.

Economic Intervention

• At this time, emperors would:– Set prices– Controlled provision of grain to capital– Monopolized trade on certain goods

• Results:– Constantinople was well supplied.– Cities and rural areas lagged behind in wealth

and technology.

Views of Byzantine Empire

• Western Europeans began to view the Byzantine Empire as a crumbling power.

• Byzantines thought that westerners were uncouth barbarians.

Cultural Achievements

• Put together collection of Roman laws and edicts under the title Body of Civil Law.– Became basis of Western European civil law.

• Developed technique of making domed buildings.– Italian renaissance architects adopted dome

in 15th and 16th centuries.

Early Medieval Europe

300 – 1000 C.E.

From the Roman Empire to Germanic Kingdoms…

Fifth Century C.E.

• Roman Empire breaks down

• Europe is politically fragmented

• Germanic kings ruling a number of different kingdoms

• Western Europe continues to suffer invasions as Muslim Arabs and Berbers took Iberian Peninsula and go into France.

Charlemagne & the Carolingians

• The Carolingians united various Frankish kingdoms into a larger empire.

• Under Charlemagne, this empire includes Gaul and parts of Germany and Italy.

• Empire was subdivided by Charlemagne’s grandsons and never united again.

Charlemagne

Charlemagne’s Empire

Charlemagne’s Church

Vikings

• Attacked England, France, and Spain in the late eighth and ninth centuries.

• Settled Iceland and Normandy, from which the Norman William the Conqueror invaded England in 1066.

A Self-Sufficient Economy

• Fall of Roman Empire brings about:– De-Urbanization– Decline in Trade

• Without domination of Rome’s “Great Tradition,” regional elites become self-sufficient and local “small traditions” flourished.

Vassals

• Vassals held most of a king’s realm

• Most vassals granted substantial parts of land to their vassals.

• Kings were weak because they depended on vassals.

Fief

• Kings and nobles granted land (fief) to a man in return for a promise to supply military service.

• By 10th century, fiefs became hereditary.

Administration

• Kings and nobles had limited ability to administer and tax their realms.

• Power was further limited by their inability to tax the vast landholdings of the Church.

• Most medieval people saw the lord’s manor as government.

Manors

• Self-Sufficient farming estates

• Primary centers of agricultural production

• Manors grew from need for self-sufficiency and self-defense.

Typical Manor Layout

Medieval DietNorthern Diet• Beer• Lard or Butter• Bread

Southern Diet• Wheat• Wine• Olive Oil

Lord of the Manor

• Had almost unlimited power over his agricultural workers.– Agricultural Workers = Serfs

• Conditions of agricultural workers varied

• Tradition of a free peasantry survived in some areas

Early Medieval Society in West

• Class of nobles emerged and developed into mounted knights.

• Landholding and military service became inseparable.

• Military service to a lord = feudalism

Military Security

• Need for security leads to the development of new technology:– Stirrup– Bigger Horses– Armor and Weapons of the knight

• Equipment was expensive, so knights needed land to support themselves.

Knight’s Equipment

Horse Bit

Spur

Women

• Noble women were pawns in marriage politics.

• Women could own land.

• Non-noble women worked alongside the men.

The Western Church

The Structure of Christian Faith

• Christian faith and Catholic church, headed by the Pope, were sources of unity and order in the fragmented world of medieval Europe.

• Church hierarchy tried to deal with challenges to unity by calling councils of bishops to discuss and settle questions of doctrine.

Politics and the Church

• Popes sought to combine their religious power with political power by forging alliances with kings.

• Finally did so by choosing a German king to be “Holy Roman Emperor” in 962.– In reality, the Holy Roman Empire was not

more than a loose coalition of German princes.

Holy Roman Empire Map

Power Struggle

• Secular rulers in the Holy Roman Empire argued that they should be able to appoint bishops who held land in fief.

• Popes disagreed

• Concordat of Worms .– a compromise in 1122– Popes could appoint bishops– Kings could assign where they worked

Origins of Monasticism

• Developed in Egypt in the 4th century on the basis of previous religious practices such as:– Celibacy– Devotion to Prayer– Isolation from Society

Benedict of Nursia

• Lived from 480 – 547 C.E.

• Organized monasteries and supplied them with a set of written rules which governed all aspects of ritual and daily life.

Functions of Monasteries

• Centers of literacy and learning.

• Refugees for widows and other vulnerable women.

• Inns and orphanages.

• Managed their own estates of agricultural land.

Monasteries

Control

• Difficult for Catholic church to exercise oversight over monasteries.

• Reform development started by monastic establishment in 11th century.– Abbey of Cluny sought to improve the

administration and discipline of monasteries.

Three Legal Traditions

• Western Europe developed:– Germanic feudal law– Canon (church law)– Roman law

• Presence of conflicting legal theories and legal jurisdictions was a significant characteristic of Western Europe.

Kievan Russia

900 – 1200

Geography

• Includes territory from the Black and Caspian Seas in the south to the Baltic and White Seas in the north.

• Territory includes series of ecological zones running from east to west.

• Several navigable rivers.

Kievan Russia

Map

Agriculture

• Poor agricultural land

• Short growing season

• Primitive farming technology

• Food production was low and trade was necessary to feed the people

Early History

• Inhabited by a number of peoples of different language and ethnic groups whose territory shifted from century to century.

• Emerged to a pattern of:– Slavs in the east– Finns in the north– Turkic tribes in the south

Trade

• Forest dwellers, steppe nomads, and farmers traded with each other.

• Long-distance caravan trade linked Russia to the Silk Road.

• Varangians were active traders on the rivers.

• Khazar Turks built a trading kingdom at the mouth of the Volga River.

Rus

• Societies of western Slav farmers ruled by Varangian nobles.

• Most important cities = Kiev and Novogorod– Both cities were centers of trade

Kiev and Novogorod

• Had populations of 30,000 to 50,000– Much smaller than Constantinople or large

Muslim cities

• Kiev, Novogorod, and other urban areas were centers for craftsmen and artists.– Their social status was higher than peasants.

Vladimir I

• In 980, he became Grand Prince of Kiev.

• Chose Orthodox Christianity as the religion of his state.

• Imitated the culture of the Byzantine Empire:– Built churches– Adopted the Cyrillic alphabet– Oriented his trade toward the Byzantines.

Spread of Christianity

• Spread very slowly in Kievan Russia.

• Pagan customs and polygamy persisted until the 12th century.

• Christianity eventually took over and became very powerful in the 12th century.– Clergy even functioned as tax collectors for

the state.

Decline

• Caused by:– Internal political struggles– Conflict with external foes

• Decline happened after 1100.

Western Europe Revives

1000 – 1200

Reviving Western Europe

• Population and agricultural production increased in the period from 1000-1200.– Caused resurgence of trade– Enabled kings to strengthen control

• Revival because of– New technologies– Appearance of self-governing cities

New Technology

• Heavy moldboard plow

• Horse collar

• Breast-strap harness

Italy and Flanders

• These two cities were the beginning of the emergence of independent, self-governing cities.– Relied on manufacturing and trade for income– Had legal independence so laws could favor

manufacturing and trade

More cities emerge…

• Venice became a dominant sea power– Traded in Muslim ports for spices and other

goods

• Ghent imported wool from England and wove it into cloth for export

With trade came…

• Increase in use of high-value gold and silver coins– Rarely been used in early medieval Europe

• During the mid-twelfth century Europeans began minting silver and gold coins.

The Crusades

1095-1204

Roots of the Crusades

• Series of Christian military campaigns against Muslims in eastern Mediterranean from 1100 to 1200.

Reasons for Crusades

• Religious zeal

• Knights’ willingness to engage in church-sanctioned warfare

• Desire for land on part of younger sons of European nobility

• Interest in trade

The Holy Land

• Holy Land made focus of Crusades because of:– Tradition of pilgrimages,– Muslim control of Christian religious sites– Byzantine Empire requests for help against

Muslims

The First Crusade

• 1095 – Pope Urban II initiated First Crusade by telling Europeans to stop fighting each other and fight the Muslims instead.

Impact of Crusades

• Limited impact on Muslim world.

• Crusaders ended Europe’s intellectual isolation when Arabic and Greek manuscripts gave Europeans access to work of ancient Greek philosophers.

• Crusades had significant impact on lifestyle of European elites.