Week 14 Overview and Assignment

Welcome to History 1 -- Western Civilizations

The Medieval Synthesis -- and Its Cracks
(Chapter 12)
1215-1340

St. Louis -- Louis the 9th -- arch rival of the Pope in 1260.
He represented the New Monarchs that began to appear at this time, eager to create states that could rival Rome.

The Chapter Objectives

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

1. Explain the relevance of the concept of medieval synthesis to religion, politics,
   and culture.
2. Trace the decline of papal power and prestige from its height under Innocent III to the Avignon papacy.
3. Explain the relationship between medieval society and its marginalized “others,” including Jews, lepers, and heretics.
4. Contrast the failure of the Empire with the success of smaller states, such as France.

 

The Medieval Synthesis and Its Cracks

This week's chapter begins with a close examination of the Catholic Church in Europe. It's power was supreme, its officers (monks, bishops, cardinals) asserted the church's power in every part of every kingdom. Such control is hard to imagine today. But there were cracks -- eruptions of heresy and non-believers that the church attacked on many fronts, mainly through the inquisition. To reach out to more of the faithful, lay piety spread and new orders were taken into the fold of the church, such as the Dominicans and Franciscans. Jews were seen as a special problem, were ghettoized and persecuted, and were also held up as object lessons for the faithful to show how one might "go wrong." 

Meantime, Scholasticism -- the fusion of Greek rationality and Christianity -- formed the 'medieval synthesis' that forms part of our chapter heading for this week. The masterly figure here was Thomas Aquinas, whose Summa Theologica brought together all the knowledge of the medieval world in one, all-embracing work. What Aquinas had done for the Church and theology, Dante Alighieri did for the more secular world, creating in his Divine Comedy a picture of the Christian afterlife. In it, a vast panorama of medieval society -- its beliefs and customs and heroes and villains -- was offered for the entertainment and edification of the faithful. 

The "cracks" noted in the chapter heading point to not only growing division within the Catholic Church but also the growing power of its chief rivals, the secular Kingdoms. Strong kings, such as Frederick II of the Holy Roman Empire and Louis IX of France, eagerly sought to extend control over their realms, and this meant snatching at treasure and prerogatives once reserved to the Catholic Church. Pay special attention to Philips IV's testing of Pope Boniface in 1301 -- a key episode in the struggle for power at this time between the Church and State.

But these problems paled in comparison to those that appeared at the beginning of the fourteenth century (1300 c.e.). Declining agricultural productivity and bad weather combined to bring famine to Europe, checking population growth and driving people from their lands in search of food. This tragedy was followed by a terrible plague, the Black Death, which arrived in Europe via the trade that had flourished in the Mediterranean in the preceding century. This disease took the lives of over a third of the population.

People reacted to the disaster with fear and despair, and in the case of peasants and urban workers, with revolt. The church was criticized for not bringing comfort and order, but it was absorbed in an internal crisis, as disputed papal elections led to controversy and the simultaneous rule of several popes.

England and France engaged in a violent war, the Hundred Years' War, which devastated the lives of civilians and transformed the feudal order. We will explore that war in the next module. Finally, in the east, new empires arose and threatened the borders of Europe.

These disasters undermined the feudal order, bringing fears of the world ending, and because of these systemic changes, the structures of social, political, economic, and cultural life would be transformed once again -- as we'll see. 

Some Misconceptions About the History We'll Be Exploring

1. Race, Religion, and Anti-Semitism

Anti-Semitism  —  the hatred of Jews  —  has taken many different forms in Western history. During the Middle Ages, hatred of the Jews was principally directed against Jews as a religious community, rather than a race or an ethnic group. Jews who left the Jewish religious community through conversion to Christianity were generally accepted into the Christian community. This began to change in the fifteenth century.

2. Intellectual Pluralism in the Medieval Church

Many people suffer from the stereotype that the Catholic church in the Middle Ages sought to control intellectual life with an iron hand. This is not true. The church and the universities were intellectually pluralist institutions where masters were allowed to disagree on fundamental issues, so long as they did not go against those propositions the church had dogmatically asserted to be true.

3. Braveheart

The movie Braveheart is one of the most popular recent films dealing with the thirteenth century. It is extremely historically inaccurate. William Wallace, the hero of the film, is claimed to be the real father of Edward II of England. In reality, he died several years before Edward was born. 

4. Institutional and Ad Hoc Inquisitions

People often confuse the inquisitions of the Middle Ages, created to deal with specific challenges, with the institutional inquisitions of the fifteenth century and early modern periods such as the Spanish and Roman Inquisitions, permanent bureaucracies that handled a variety of cases. The inquisitions of the thirteenth century were individual events, not established institutions.

The work this week is minimal. Why? In the hopes that you will use this extra time to start your final essays. They're important. 

 

Read

For this Week, carefully read in our textbook, The Making of the West, all of Chapter 12.

 

The Final Examination

The Final Examination is now viewable/accessible. It will remain open until its deadline. Please read this assignment, worth a large part of your final grade, carefully. If you have questions about it after reading it carefully, post your question in the Q&A forum. The Examination can be accessed by clicking here. A link to it can also be found to it on the Home Page under the Essential Links.

Test Your Knowledge

Finally, please take the Chapter Quiz for this week.

 

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.

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