Medieval Kingdoms in Europe

1. Medieval Kingdoms in Europe Feudalism

2. Introduction • King Charlemagne created a strong monarchy in the Carolingian empire after the fall of Rome, but it did not survive his death in 814. his grandsons fought for control of the empire and then split it into three parts. Weak royalty and invasions by the Muslims, Magyars, and Vikings weakened the power of the royals and strengthened the nobility. Throughout Europe, the need for security encouraged the growth of feudalism, one of the defining institutions of medieval society. • The Carolingian Empire was weakened inside and out after Charlemagne’s death. Local nobles became more important as people turned to them for the protection the the empire could no longer provide. The result was feudalism.

3. The End of the Carolingian Empire Guiding Question: What internal and external factors after Charlemagne’s death weakened kingdoms in Europe? • The Carolingian Empire began to fall apart soon after Charlemagne’s death in 814. • Less than thirty years later, his grandsons divided the Empire into three kingdoms: • The Western Frankish Lands • The Eastern Frankish Lands • The Middle Kingdom • Local rulers gained power while the Carolingian rulers fought each other. • Invasions in the different parts of the old Carolingian world added to the process of disintegration.

4. Western Europe was beset by a wave of invasions. • The most powerful invaders of the time were the Norsemen, or Northmen, of Scandinavia, also called the Vikings. • The Vikings were warriors, and they were superb shipbuilders and sailors. • Their ships were long and narrow, and were able to carry 50 men. • The size and shape of the ships allowed them to sail up European rivers and attack places far inland. • By the mid-ninth century the Vikings had begun to build various European settlements. • The ruler of the west Frankish lands gave one band of Vikings land at the mouth of the Seine River, forming a region of France that came to be known as Normandy. • The Frankish policy of settling the Vikings and converting them to Christianity was a deliberate one. As a result of their conversion to Christianity, the Vikings soon became a part of European civilization.

5. The Development of Feudalism Guiding Question: Why did the collapse of governments lead to the new political and social order known as feudalism? • The Vikings posed a large threat to the safety of people in Europe. • Rulers found it more and more difficult to defend their subjects as organized governments such as the Carolingian Empire were torn apart. • People started to turn to local nobles to protect them. • To survive, it became important to fins a powerful lord who could offer protection in return for service. • This led to a new political and social order known as Feudalism. • At the heart of Feudalism, was the idea of vassalage.

6. Knights and Vassals • Warriors swore an oath of loyalty to their leaders and fought in battles for them. • The leaders, in turn, took care of the warriors’ needs. • By the eighth century, a man who served a lord in a military capacity was known as a vassal. • For almost 500 years, warfare in Europe was dominated by heavily armored cavalry (soldiers on horses), or knights as they became known. • The knights had great social prestige and formed the backbone of the European aristocracy. • With the breakdown of royal governments, the more powerful nobles took control of large areas of land. • When these lords wanted men to fight for them, they granted each vassal a piece of land that supported the vassal and his family. • In the early middle ages, when wealth was based primarily on land, it was the best gift a lord could give to his vassal.

7. The Development of Feudalism

8. The Feudal Contract • The grant of land from a lord to a vassal became known as a fief. • Vassals with fiefs came to hold political power. • As the Carolingian Empire fell, the number of separate, powerful lords and vassals increased. • Instead of a single government, many different people now maintained order. • Feudalism became increasingly complicated. • The vassals of a king could have their own vassals, and those vassals could, in turn, have their own vassals.

9. The Feudal Contract • It was an honorable relationship between free man and implied no sense of servitude. • Feudalism became characterized by a set of unwritten rules – known as the feudal contract – that determined the relationship between a lord and his vassal. • The major obligation of a vassal to his lord was to perform military service. • The lord also had responsibilities toward his vassals. • The lord supported his vassal by giving him land, and also to protect his vassal militarily, or by taking his side in a dispute.

10. The Nobility of the Middle Ages • In the Middle Ages, the nobility was dominated by men whose chief concern was warfare. • These lords and vassals formed an aristocracy of people that held political, economic, and social power. • They were all warriors and the institution of knighthood united them all. • The younger generations of knights had no responsibilities, so they had little else to do than fight in competitions.

11. The Nobility of the Middle AgesThe Young Knights • In the twelfth century, tournaments – contests in which knights could demonstrate their fighting skills – began to appear. • By the late twelfth century, the joust – individual combat between two knights – had become the main part of the tournament. • This was the place for young knights to fight for the honor of a woman, and the place where a young woman would be able to choose her husband.

12. The Nobility of the Middle AgesChivalry • In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, under the influence of the Catholic Church, chivalry, an idea of civilized behavior, gradually evolved among the nobility. • Chivalry was a code of ethics that knights were supposed to uphold. • In addition to their oath to defend the church and defenseless people, knights were expected to treat captives as honored guests instead of putting them in dungeons and cells. • A knight was expected to treat aristocratic women with respect and tenderness.

13. The Nobility of the Middle AgesAristocratic Women in the Middle Ages • Although women could legally hold property, most remained under the control of men – of their fathers until they married and of their husbands if they married. • However, aristocratic women still had quite some power in the household. • Because the lord or vassal was often away at war or court, the lady of the castle had to manage the estate and the household accounts. • The lady of the house was also responsible for maintaining the food supply and all the other needed supplies for the household.

14. Medieval Kingdoms in Europe Peasants, Trade, and Cities

15. The New Agriculture • In the Early Middle Ages, Europe had a relatively small population. In the High Middle Ages, however, populations increased dramatically – nearly doubling between 1000 and 1300 from approximately 38 million to 74 million people. • What cause this increase? • For one thing, the invasions decreased, allowing for peace and settlement. • For another, the peace allowed for agriculture to increase and for new agricultural technologies to develop. • The climate changed during the High Middle Ages, resulting in improved growing conditions.

16. The Manorial System • Landholding nobles were a military elite. • A manor was an agricultural estate that a lord ran and peasants worked. • Although free peasants continued to exist, increasing numbers of free peasants became serfs, or peasants legally bound to the land. • Serfs had to give labor services, pay rents, and be subject to the lord’s control.

17. The Manorial System • A serf’s labor services included working the lord’s land, which made up one-third to one-half of the cultivated land scattered throughout the manor. • Peasants used the rest of the estate’s land to grow food for themselves. • Serfs usually worked about three days a week for their lords and paid rents by giving the lords a share of every product they raised.

18. The Manorial System • Lords had a variety of legal rights over the serfs on their estates. • Even with these restrictions, however, serfs were not slaves. • It was also the lord’s duty to protect his serfs, giving them the safety to farm the land. • The houses of poorer peasants consisted of a single room. • There was little privacy in a medieval household.

19. The Agricultural Seasons • The seasons of the year largely determined peasant activities. • In every season, the serfs worked not only their own land but also the lords’ lands. • They also tended the small gardens next to their dwellings, where they grew the vegetables that made up part of their diet. • The basic staple of the peasant diet, and of the medieval diet in general, was bread. • The men tended to the wheat and the vegetables,while the women made the dough for the bread.

20. The Revival of Trade • Medieval Europe was an agricultural society in which most people lived in small villages. • In the 1000’s and 1100’s, however, Europe experienced a revival of trade and an associated growth of towns and cities.

21. The Growth of Cities • The revival of trade led to the revival of cities. • With the revival of trade, merchants began to settle in the old Roman cities. • They were followed by craftspeople or artisans – people who had developed skills and saw a chance to make goods that the merchants could sell. • Many new cities or towns were also founded, especially in northern Europe. • Usually a group of merchants built a settlement near a castle because it was located along a trade route or river or because the lords of the castle would offer protection. • The merchants and artisans of these new cities came to be called bourgeoisie, from the German word burg, meaning ‘a walled enclosure’.

22. The Growth of Cities • Most towns were often part of a lord’s territory and were therefore subject to his authority. • However, townspeople needed freedom to trade. They wanted their own unique laws and were willing to pay for them. • Lords and kings, in turn, saw that they could also make money and sold to the townspeople the liberties they wanted. • By 1100, townspeople had numerous rights from local lords. These included he right to buy and sell property, freedom from military service to the lord, a written law that guaranteed townspeople their freedom, and the right for an escaped serf to become a free person after living a year and a day in the town.

23. The Political Systems of Cities • Over time, medieval cities developed their own governments for running the affairs of the community. • In many cities, the citizens elected the city council members, who served as judges and city officials and who passed laws. • Elections were rigged so that only patricians – members of the richest and most powerful families – were elected to the public office.

24. The Layout of the Cities

25. The Layout of the Cities • Medieval cities were surrounded by stone walls. • Walls were expensive to build walls, so the cities were packed tightly. • The had narrow streets and the houses were crowded against one another, with the second and third stories built out over the streets. • Often dirty, cities smelled from animal and human waste. • Air pollution was also a fact of life. Smoke from wood fires or from the burning of cheap grades of coal filled the air. • Considerably more men than women lived in these cities.

26. Women in Medieval Cities • Women were expected to supervise the household, prepare meals, raise the children, and manage the family’s finances. • Sometimes, when a master craftsman died, his widow carried on his trade. It was thus possible for women in medieval towns to lead quite independent lives.

27. The Guilds • From the 1000’s on, craftspeople began to organixw themselves into guilds, or business associations. Guilds played an important role in the economic life of cities. • Craft guilds directed almost every aspect of the production process. • They set the standards for the quality of the articles produced and even fixed the price at which the finished goods could be sold. • Guilds also determined the number of people who could enter a specific trade.

28. Medieval Kingdoms in Europe The Growth of European Kingdoms

29. Introduction • The domination of society by the nobility reached its high point between 1000 and 1300 – the High Middle Ages. • At the same time, monarchs started extending their power and learning from their mistakes. • This struggle for power frequently led to conflict between kings and nobles.

30. England in the High Middle Ages Guiding Question: How did society and the legal system in England evolve after 1066? • Angles and Saxons, Germanic peoples from northern Europe had invaded England early in the fifth century, since then England had been ruled by Anglo-Saxon kings.

31. The Norman Conquest • In 1066, an army of knights under William of Normandy landed on the coast of England and and successfully invaded. • William was then crowned king of England. All his knights were granted fiefs and all nobles swore an oath of loyalty to him as the sole ruler of England. • The Norman ruling class spoke French, but the marriage of the Normans with the Anglo-Saxon nobility gradually merged Anglo-Saxon with French to form a new language: English. • William also developed more fully the system of taxation and royal courts begun by earlier Anglo-Saxon kings.

32. Henry II and the Church • The power of the English monarchy increased during the reign of Henry II. • Henry increased the number of criminal cases being tried in the king’s court. • Devised means to take property cases from local courts and move them into the royal courts. • By expanding the power of the royal courts, Henry expanded the overall power of the king. • Because the royal courts could be found throughout Europe, a body of common law – law that was common to the whole kingdom – was created and began to replace laws that varied from place to place. • Henry was less successful at imposing royal control over the church. • He tried to claim the right to punish clergymen in the royal courts.

33. Henry II and the Church Thomas à Becket, archbishop of Canterbury and the highest-ranking English cleric, claimed that only the Roman Catholic Church courts could try clerics. An angry king publicly expressed the desire to be rid of Becket: “Who will free me from this turbulent priest?” Four knights took the challenge, went to Canterbury and murdered Becket. Faced with public outrage, Henry backed down in his struggle with the Church.

34. The Magna Carta • Many English nobles resented that the monarchy was gaining so much power. • The nobles rebelled during the reign of King John. • They stormed his home and forced him to sign a document, the document became known as the Magna Carta. • The feudal system recognized that both sides had obligations to the other. The Magna Carta put that in writing: that both sides of the political game had obligations. • The Magna Carta strengthened the idea that the monarchy’s power was limited, not absolute.

35. The Representative Government • In the rule of Edward I, the Parliament emerged. • It was composed of two knights from every county, two people from every town, and all the nobles throughout England. • The Parliament of Edward I granted taxes, discussed politics, and passed laws.