Week 12 Overview and Assignment

 




Welcome to History 1: 

Commercial Quickening and Religious Reform

(Chapter 10)

1050 ce-1150 c.e. / a.d.

Troyes, France -- an Outdoor Museum
and Notable Fair Site. Fairs in Medieval  Europe were the Amazons
of their day.



The Medieval Troyes -- a model in the Vauluisant Museum, Troyes.
Note the city walls, the town's compactness, and the cathedral
in the center of the model (clustered with buildings).


It's good to have you here. 

The Chapter Objectives

After reading and studying this chapter, students should be able to:

  1. Define the commercial revolution and its impact on urban development and trade.
  2. Explain the different kinds of church reform movements and the conflicts between the papacy and the Holy Roman Emperors created by the Gregorian reforms.
  3. Analyze the relationship between church reform movements and the Crusades.
  4. Analyze the revival of monarchies in England, France, and the Holy Roman and Byzantine Empires as products of the commercial revolution and church reform movements.

 

Self-test yourself by answering these questions. They are not to be handed in however.

Please read your textbook this week so that you are able to answer these key questions. If you can't answer them after "finishing" the chapter, you have a critical piece of information about your reading comprehension level. Re-read often or read more slowly, actively. (To learn how to improve your reading comprehension, please go to our First Week Module and click on the section "How to Read a History Textbook Chapter." Then apply what you've learned.) 


Commercial Quickening and Religious Reform

In the High Middle Ages (700 to 1000 c.e./a.d.), people were organized into a social order in which everyone knew his or her place. These orders were arranged by function—laboring upon the land, praying, or fighting. There was little room in this social order for those few who resided in towns and engaged in the increasingly important activities centered on trade. City dwellers were vastly outnumbered by the peasantry living in the countrysides.

After the year 1000, however, advances in agricultural techniques led to an increase in population growth and the city felt this increase immediately. Trade also quickened, and was accompanied by the growth of cities. The nobility constructed fortified houses across Europe and resisted the centralizing tendencies of kings.

The prosperity of the age was accompanied, as it often is (see China today) by a flowering of intellectual life. The Western Christian Church (that is, Catholicism) also gathered strength and began to exert more authority over secular and spiritual matters. Resistance to this interference led to criticism of the church in some quarters, such as the local nobility. The church responded by making some reforms and repressing its critics.

Outside of Europe, life quickened as well: the growing threat of the Muslim empire led to a call for the crusades by the Catholic church, and many Europeans traveled to faraway lands in defense of Christianity -- what some historians believe was a jihad against the infidel.

Some Common Misconceptions
About the History We'll Be Exploring

 

  1. The Isolated West

It is commonly believed that western Europeans had little or no contact with other parts of the world. While this may be true for some isolated villages, the commercial revolution shows that Europeans, especially those living by the Mediterranean, had extensive contact with Muslim kingdoms through their trading networks. Through their Muslim contacts, Europeans were also connected to trading networks that extended across Africa and Asia.

  1. Absolute Monarchy

The image of medieval kings being able to act without restraint is common, but inaccurate. There were many constraints on a monarch’s power, particularly from the nobles and the church. The term “absolute monarchy” simply does not apply to medieval monarchs, no matter how strong. They were always dependent on the goodwill of their nobility and the church.

  1. The Crusades

The subject of the crusades still evokes passionate responses, even more so after 9/11 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many people believe there is a direct link between the crusades and events in the early twenty-first century. On the other hand, the crusades have also long captured the imagination with images of chivalry and adventure that are often at odds with what actually happened during those centuries. For these reasons, the crusades always present some difficulty. 

 

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Read

For this Week, carefully read in our textbook, Making of the West, all of Chapter 10 in the Sherman text.

The Field Trip Project

Yes, the deadline for this two-pronged assignment is rapidly approaching. To access the Project again, look for the link for it, every week, on the homepage. You can also go HERE. 

Discuss

Go to the Discussion Forum for this week and contribute to this week's Discussion topics.

Test Yourself

Finally, please take the Chapter Quiz for this week. 


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