Chapter 12Crusades 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_vatic

an29.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 wealthy2. 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 declined2. 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.

Click icon to add picture• 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.