Week 13 Overview and Assignment

The Field Trip Project is Due This Week!
See the link to the Project below and on the Home Page

Welcome to History 1: 
The Flowering of the Middle Ages
(Chapter 11)

1150 ce-1215 c.e.

 

Europe in 1215
Note how large Hungary and the Holy Roman Empire are.
Spain is a heap of small kingdoms waiting to be united.
Italy is disunited as well.

 

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It's good to have you here. Again, at the start of each week, always start by clicking on the Module tab on our Course Website. Click on the Module for that week and read the chapter overview and exploration. This will prepare you well when you come to read the chapter and complete the assignments.  

The Chapter Objectives

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

1. Analyze the relationship between political and cultural change during the Middle Ages.
2. Contrast the trajectories of state development in England, France, and Germany.
3. Identify the major institutional and cultural innovations of the period.
4. Explain the reasons for the successes and failures of the European crusades.

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.) 

The Flowering of the Middle Ages

Last week we saw how the Church, coming into its own, crossed swords with secular rulers over who had control of the churches in each kingdom. That conflict, the Investiture Crisis, was not to abate for some hundreds of years. We see one result of that conflict in the U.S. with our ideal of the separation of state and church. 

The chapter begins with the creation of a new and honored institution in Europe -- the university. The New learning it gave rise to was spearheaded by Peter Abelard, whose dallying with Heloise might almost cause you to forget why Peter is so important to our story of the West. It was he among others who combined Greek rationalism with Christianity in his famous works, where his guiding principle was to question. Question everything. By questioning, according to Peter, the good Christian arrived at the truth. It caused him to arrive at the chamber of Heloise as well. You can read all the details in his work, My Sorrows. 

The university where he taught was one among many where bright men and women flocked to learn Theology -- in much the same way that students today flock to data visualization and predictive analytics. Students and masters (profs) formed guilds and somehow escaped the ridgidity of medieval society, the rigidity we saw in the Alwalton document. Along with the new learning grew new architectural styles, the Romanesque and Gothic. Cathedrals, like Hollywood films, were collective achievements that expressed the highest values of their societies. 

Along with the new architecture, new governmental institutions also appeared. New and more powerful kings consolidated their kingdoms through warfare and marriage. Lawcourts, employing administrators and lawyers, generated lawsuits and lawbooks and a royal bureaucracy to keep tabs on every cent generated in the realm. (We saw that bureaucracy at work when we read the Manor of Alwalton document, made by an official of the King of England.) Whether we talking of Henry 11 of England or Philip II of France, consolidation and conquest were the order of the day. 

The chapter concludes in 1215 with another Crusade and a discussion of the rigse of vernacular high culture -- the culture of troubadors and courtly literature. What these show is the rise of royal courts and the fashionable culture of the prince and courtier -- something we will have reason to return to in the chapters to come.

Some Misconceptions of the History We'll Be Exploring

1. Courtly Literature and the Status of Women

While in many ways courtly literature brought women into new prominence, it is important not to exaggerate this phenomenon. It was restricted to upper-class women, and had little to no impact on the lives of the vast majority. Andreas Capellanus, the theoretician of courtly love, advised that if a man was so unfortunate and ill-advised as to fall in love with a lower-class woman and she refused his favors, he should simply rape her. Clearly the theme of the power of women expressed in courtly literature did not reflect the majority of medieval society.

2. Varieties of Law in the Middle Ages

Law in the Middle Ages could refer to many things. The civil law was Roman law, which was intensively studied in universities even though it was no longer practiced or enforced. The civil law provided the categories through which law was viewed. England’s common law, which had been developed by royal judges, was a separate legal tradition from civil law. Canon law was the law of the church, derived from a multitude of sources, including the Bible, the decrees of popes and councils, and the civil law. The twelfth century saw the codification of canon law, and it was also the subject of university teaching. Several popes were doctors of canon law.

3. The Tournament

The tournament of the twelfth century was not the one-on-one joust with couched lances that we often associate with medieval tournaments, and which became prevalent in the thirteenth century. It was a melee, with several fighters on each side and the use of swords, although sometimes the swords would be wrapped in cloth so as to minimize injury.

Read

For this Week, carefully read in our textbook all of Chapter 11 

Discuss

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

Test Your Knowledge

Finally, please take the Chapter Quiz for this week

The Field Trip Project is Due -- !

Please note the deadline for the Field Trip Project, assigned in early September. It's deadline is this Sunday at 11 p.m. PST. To access it, go here.

The Deadline

As ever, the deadline for all of your work (except your initial Discussion post) is
Sunday, before 11 p.m. Pacific Standard Time. Note this well.