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Christian Europe Emerges. 300 – 1200 C.E. Byzantine Empire. 300 – 1200 C.E. Map of Byzantine Empire. Church and State. Roman rule and traditions remained in the Byzantine Empire and Constantinople.
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Christian Europe Emerges 300 – 1200 C.E.
Byzantine Empire 300 – 1200 C.E.
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.
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.
Western Europeans began to view the Byzantine Empire as a crumbling power. Byzantines thought that westerners were uncouth barbarians. Views of Byzantine Empire
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.
Roman vs Byzantine Empire • Create a Venn Diagram comparing the “West” vs the “East”. • The “West” would be the old Roman Empire and the “East” which is the Byzantine Empire.
Questions Orally review questions 1-11.
Early Medieval Europe 300 – 1000 C.E.
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.
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.
Northern Diet Beer Lard or Butter Bread Southern Diet Wheat Wine Olive Oil Medieval Diet
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.
Vassals vs Knights What is the difference between vassals and knights?
Vassals vs Knights • Vassals ruled lands granted to them by their king. Those lands were called fiefs. Within a fiefs, a vassal acted as a local lord and could give portions of it to vassals of his own. Someone might be the vassal of one person, but the lord of another. • Knights were warriors who fought on horseback. In return for land, they pledged themselves as vassals to the king. Only the sons of lords could become knights.
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”, Otto the Great, in 962. • In reality, the Holy Roman Empire was not more than a loose coalition of German princes.
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. • Was the first Western monk. Lived in a cave in Nursia, Italy. • Was considered a hermit and dedicated his life to prayer. • 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.
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.
