Skim and scan the following passage and answer the following question.
1.What changes happened in agriculture in the Central Middle Ages?
2.What changes happened in towns and cities in the Central Middle Ages?
3.What changes happened in education in the Central Middle Ages?
4.What changes happened in the church in the 11 century?
5.How did Magna Carta come into being?

Reading

From the 11th century through the 13th century, Europeans remade their world. They revived old cities and built new ones, created universities, reformed the church, waged aggressive wars, and made and unmade powerful kings and emperors. Although still weaker and less prosperous than the Islamic world and less sophisticated than the Byzantine Empire, the West became an important world power.

Agriculture During the Central Middle Ages
Agricultural innovations during the Central Middle Ages allowed peasants to greatly increase their amount of food production. Heavier plows and more resilient agricultural tools made arable land more productive. Windmills and watermills became widely used to process grains. In addition, peasants began using a rotating crop system in which two fields were planted and one field was left fallow.

From the 10th century through the 12th century, as the invasions of Europe by outside forces ended and the population began to grow, the European countryside was transformed by peasant labor. Farmers made new lands available for cultivation by draining marshes and cutting down forests. Such newly cleared lands were called assarts. The peasants who did this backbreaking labor often gained favorable terms for themselves from their lords in exchange. Many peasants adopted a new, heavy plow that dug deeper furrows and increased crop production. At first these plows were pulled by oxen. Later, with the invention of the horse collar, peasants were able to make use of horses, which were more efficient than oxen. In the course of the 12th century, peasants began to use metal tools and to reinforce their wooden tools and plowshares with iron. Female peasants benefited from the introduction of water mills and wind mills, which freed them from grinding flour by hand.

Territorial lords encouraged agricultural improvements because they profited from them as much as the peasants did. They offered to reduce the obligations of peasants who cleared uncultivated lands. They turned yearly dues of hens, eggs, and farm labor into a fixed money rent. This benefited the peasants, who could attend to their own plots of land. It also benefited the lords, who could employ workers when needed and spend the rest of their money on luxuries. Some of the lords’ new wealth came from their monopoly on mills and ovens. The peasants were obliged to use the lords’ mills to grind flour and the lords’ ovens to bake bread, and they paid a fee for this privilege.

Medieval Town
During the Middle Ages, towns and cities frequently grew out of trading sites. As traders and craftsmen came to sell their wares to local lords and bishops, permanent trading settlements were sometimes established near castles or monasteries. Trade was very important to the economies of medieval towns, which often featured crowded and lively markets and fairs.

Towns and cities began to appear throughout Europe in the Central Middle Ages. The greatest number of these were in the western half, in The Netherlands, Germany, France, and Italy. Some towns developed out of trading sites as merchants and craftsmen came to trade and sell their wares at castles, cathedrals, and monasteries around Europe. Often permanent trading settlements were built. Innkeepers opened hotels to put up travelers, and other people built their homes nearby. Sometimes these commercial centers became towns and cities.

Lübeck, Germany
The city of Lübeck was an important center of trade during the Middle Ages. Lübeck contains some of Europe’s finest examples of medieval Gothic architecture.

The most important commercial towns and cities were located along the Baltic Sea in the north and along the Mediterranean coast in the south. The northern cities, such as Lübeck, Hamburg, Gdańsk, and Stockholm, traded raw materials such as salt, fish, furs, timber, amber, and wax. In the southern cities, the wares were lighter and more precious: spices, fine cloths, perfumes, medicines, and dyes. In the 12th century, major Italian cities such as Genoa, Florence, and Venice were engaged in long-distance trade. Venice subjected many of the cities on the shores of the Adriatic Sea to its rule, and its merchants traded regularly in Byzantine and Islamic ports.

Medieval Walled Town
During the Middle Ages, many towns and cities were ringed by walls or other fortifications for defense. This picture shows the walled city of Florence, Italy.

Other towns and cities, such as Rome, Marseille, Paris, and Trier, grew up in and around the shells of old Roman cities. Italian cities such as Pisa and Genoa developed on sites that had once been Roman towns, expanding in new directions. Genoa, for example, had been nothing but a small town with a fort under the ancient Romans. Starting in the 10th century, however, its inhabitants took advantage of the nearby sea. They used the small profits that they made from farming to build ships, and they used the ships to defend themselves, as well as to raid and trade. As the city grew more prosperous, it grew in size and population.

Most medieval cities were not planned. They looked very different from modern American cities built on rational grids. Almost all medieval cities had at least three centers: the marketplace, the church or cathedral, and the castle. Because these were the most important places in the towns, the homes of settlers tended to congregate around them. Streets were not paved and were dark, narrow, and dirty. Most people lived on the top floor of two-story buildings, with warehouses or shops below. Buildings were crowded together because most cities were ringed by earthen or stone walls for defense, and everyone tried to fit inside. Periodically the population grew too large and new walls had to be built. Medieval cities were small compared to modern cities. Paris had less than 100,000 people at its height at the end of the 13th century. The large cities of Italy, such as Genoa, Florence, and Venice, had more than 25,000 people, but in Germany cities were large if they had more than 10,000 inhabitants. Many urban areas had just a few thousand citizens.

Most medieval towns had separate districts for different crafts and professions: The butchers tended to live in one district, the shoemakers in another, the cloth workers in a third. This pattern reflected the fact that the crafts were organized into guilds, which were both religious clubs and trade associations that set standards for their members. Guilds controlled everything having to do with their specific craft, from setting prices and establishing manufacturing processes to mandating the number of employees any one shop could have. Because the guild was so involved in every aspect of the craft, members often formed a very tight community and tended to congregate together in one area of a town or city.

Some of the most colorful events in towns and cities were fairs. Fairs were markets and festivals rolled into one. They attracted foreign merchants and traders who bought and sold luxuries and exchanged a great deal of money. Kings, dukes, and other princes sponsored fairs, providing protection for the merchants and assigning them places to stay in town. They reduced normal taxes and tolls, and in return they took a percentage of the profits. Fairs usually took place during church festivals, and sometimes they were even set up on church grounds. In London, for example, the fair of Saint Bartholomew was held in a monastic cemetery. It lasted for three days each year, and it was so popular that merchants were frequently forced to set up their booths beyond the walls of the cemetery. Other fairs were held in open fields. Entertainers, money changers, and other hangers-on added to the activity of fair days. Merchants, moneylenders, and buyers found fairs convenient places to do business. Fairs were also important sources of income for their sponsors.

Growth of Italian Cities
During the Middle Ages, some Italian cities gained the right to govern themselves and the areas around them. By the late Middle Ages, northern Italy was divided into a collection of city-states, regions dominated by their chief city. The shaded areas surrounding each city on this map represent the city’s area of influence.

Although there was a great diversity of people in the cities—humble street cleaners and powerful merchants, day laborers and master craftsmen, servants and financiers—all were united by a sense of common identity as city dwellers. They wanted no overlords. They declared that serfs who came to a city and lived there for a year and a day were free. They asked the kings and princes who ruled over them to allow them to govern themselves. Cities that became independent in this way were called communes. Some communes gained their independence by paying lords to grant it to them, while others governed alongside their lord. Still others battled violently for rights of self-governance. At Laon, in France, members of the commune killed the bishop who ruled the city. The king of France intervened and stopped the revolt, but eventually he recognized the commune's authority. All communes were not always so fortunate, however, and many were never allowed to become independent.

Communes in Italy were particularly successful. They gained the right not only to govern themselves but also to rule the farmland and villages around them. By the 13th century, northern Italy was divided politically and economically into competing city-states, regions dominated by their chief city.

Since the Carolingian period, churches and monasteries had run schools to educate boys who were going to become priests and monks. In the 11th and 12th centuries new types of schools were developed in some cities. These schools were different from the old ones because they were usually located in city cathedrals rather than in monasteries, and they were dedicated to more advanced studies than the other schools. For this reason, they attracted students and teachers not just from the neighborhood but from all over Europe who were interested in studying subjects such as philosophy, medicine, and law. Many of the students who attended these schools went on to careers in the church. Others became lawyers and doctors, often serving wealthy merchants and their families. Still others became civil servants and worked for princes or kings.

Development of Universities
Universities began to develop in western Europe in the 13th century, most notably at Paris, France, and Bologna, Italy. Instruction in medieval universities often took the form of lectures, with teachers, who were called masters, reading aloud from a text while students followed along.

Cambridge University
Cambridge University in Cambridge, England, was founded in the 13th century. It is one of the oldest educational institutions in Europe and one of the most prestigious universities in the world.

France and Italy led the way in developing these city schools. Italy and southern France were famous for their schools of law and medicine. Northern France, especially Paris, was known for its schools of philosophy and theology.

In the 13th century many of these schools were organized into universities, the direct ancestors of modern American and European universities. By the end of the Middle Ages, there were nearly 80 universities throughout Europe, not only in France, Italy, and Spain, but also in the empire—at Prague, Heidelberg, and Cologne—in Poland, and in Scandinavia. They were largely self-governing, enforcing their own rules about dress, classroom activities, and the materials taught. Teachers, called masters, decided when the students were ready to get their degrees or to be allowed to teach. Students and teachers often clashed with city authorities. This sometimes led to student and master protests, to demands for special privileges, and to measures that strengthened the universities’ self-government. For example, in 1200 a brawl broke out between students and the police in Paris. Some students were killed, and the masters were outraged. The king of France feared that the masters would leave the city and thus deprive him of the prestige and commercial vitality that their presence gave to his kingdom. To prevent this, he recognized the clerical status of the students. From that time on, if students were arrested they were tried by church courts, not royal courts. As church courts tended to be lenient, this privilege pleased both masters and students.

Court of Justinian I
In the 6th century, Byzantine emperor Justinian I organized the first written compilation, or code, of Roman law. The compilation, which became known as the Justinian Code, influenced the development of the civil law system in many countries.

Almost all universities taught the so-called seven liberal arts. The most important of these were the first three, called the trivium: grammar (what would now be called reading and writing), rhetoric (literature and more complicated kinds of writing), and logic. While learning these, students might also study some or all of the other four, called the quadrivium. These were mathematical and scientific subjects: arithmetic (what would now be called number theory), geometry (number relations), music (proportions and harmonies), and astronomy. Some students also studied theology, which was considered the highest and most profound subject, since it was the study of God and his works. When they had successfully completed their studies, students became masters. The courses of study were not the same in all universities, however. At Bologna, in Italy, students studied the laws of the Roman Empire. In the early 12th century, scholars had rediscovered this huge and systematic body of laws, which seemed to cover every problem. At Salerno, also in Italy, students studied medical treatises, observed dissected animals, and learned current theories about the body derived from the works of Greek philosopher Aristotle. They learned about Aristotle from Arab scholars, who had rediscovered, translated, and commented on his writings. Most classes in medieval schools were taught as lectures in which the teacher read a text aloud and commented on its important or difficult passages, while the students followed along, often with a copy of the text. Other classes were organized as discussions in which both masters and students asked questions and prodded one another to provide and support their answers. These were often very lively meetings, and students greatly enjoyed the engaging atmosphere of the classroom.

Abelard and Hélo?se
The 12th-century scholar Peter Abelard was one of the most famous theologians and philosophers of his time. In 1117 he began tutoring Hélo?se, the niece of a French cleric. Abelard and Hélo?se soon became secret lovers, but were forced to separate after being discovered by Hélo?se’s uncle. The two lovers retired to monasteries, and although they kept in touch by writing, they did not see each other again.

Although only boys and men attended schools and universities, men were not the only scholars. The 12th-century scholar Héloïse was the most famous female scholar of the Middle Ages. After receiving an early education at a convent school near Paris, Héloïse began private lessons with the most brilliant master of the day, French philosopher Peter Abelard. Abelard taught her logic. She taught him about the ancient philosophers Plato and Socrates, and she convinced him of the importance of writing down his thoughts. The two soon became secret lovers, but they were discovered by Héloïse's uncle, who had Abelard castrated. The couple rarely saw each other after that, but they remained in touch through writing. Abelard was the most important scholar of the 12th century. He revolutionized teaching methods with his book Sic et Non (Yes and No, 1123?), which set contradictory statements from different texts side by side. Rather than resolve the contradictions himself, Abelard required his students to ask questions and come up with their own answers. Abelard's theological writings were similarly daring. They probed the meaning of God through the use of logic. Many of Abelard's contemporaries were outraged by these writings and accused Abelard of heresy (belief in doctrine contrary to that of the church). Abelard died a broken man, but his impact on learning remained.

Saint Thomas Aquinas
Education in the 13th century was shaped profoundly by the work of Italian philosopher and theologian Saint Thomas Aquinas. The writings of Aquinas attempted to reconcile the philosophy of Aristotle with the ideas of Christian theology. Aquinas employed both reason and faith in the study of metaphysics, moral philosophy, and religion.

In subsequent centuries, scholars continued to use Abelard's method of setting contradictory texts next to one other. But instead of letting the readers or students decide the answers for themselves, these scholars added long and careful resolutions to each problem. These resolutions were based on the newly rediscovered philosophy of Aristotle as well as on contemporary Christian thinking. This school of thought is called Scholasticism.

The best-known scholastic is Saint Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas was born in Naples, in southern Italy, in 1225 and was educated in Cologne (in Germany) and Paris. He wrote important philosophical studies in Latin called summae (summaries). For example, Aquinas's Summa Theologica was a multivolume work on God and God's creation. Aquinas divided each topic into smaller ones, and then subdivided each of these further, treating each subdivision as a yes or no question. He presented texts first on one side, then on the other. He then gave his own answer and explained away the contradictions as best he could.

It may seem that the writings of the Scholastics had little to do with the concerns of ordinary people, but this is not so. Students flocked to the city schools because they found them exciting. They thought that logic was the key to knowing about life and about themselves. Ordinary townsmen, who did not go to school, were nevertheless keenly interested in what was taught there. They wanted to know, for example, if their own moneymaking and commerce would condemn them to hell or allow them into heaven. The Scholastics answered such questions. Thomas Aquinas himself taught how to reconcile moneymaking with a Christian life. Although townspeople could not read the writings of Aquinas directly, preachers, who could read Latin and then preach it in words understandable to ordinary folk, popularized his and other Scholastic teaching.

Illumination from Scivias
German composer and mystic Hildegard of Bingen wrote devotional songs and poetry inspired by intense visions she experienced. She became the head of an order of nuns in 1136 and went on to found two other orders. Shown here is an illumination from her book of visions called Scivias. It was printed in 1179, the year of her death.

Not all learning went on in the city schools, and not all of the important scholars taught at universities. Other 12th-century centers of learning were the monasteries, most of which were out in the countryside. Many respected scholars came from these monasteries. For example, the Cistercian abbot Saint Bernard of Clairvaux wrote sermons and treatises on love, faith, mystical union with God, and Christian knighthood. His contemporary Hildegard of Bingen, abbess of a convent in Germany, wrote down visions that she had, composed music and chants for her nuns to sing, and wrote a play for them to act out. This play was called Ordo Virtutum (Play of Virtues, mid-12th century) and is one of the earliest known examples of a morality play—a musical story depicting the battle between good and evil.

Pope Gregory I
Gregory I, known as Gregory the Great, became pope in 590 and effected great changes in the Roman Catholic church. He increased the power of the papacy, and used the papal office to govern a large area around Rome during a time of little civil administration. Gregory’s writings about saints, including Saint Benedict, helped the growth of Benedictine monasteries in the Middle Ages.

The role of the papacy began to change drastically during the Central Middle Ages. During Late Antiquity the pope was a very important bishop, since he was the bishop of Rome, but he was not the head of the Christian church. He shared that honor with the eastern patriarchs and the Byzantine emperor. In the next few centuries, however, the papacy began to develop greater importance. At the end of the 6th century, Pope Gregory I, known as Gregory the Great, worked to increase the power of the papacy. He made the papacy a major landowner in Italy, kept law and order in the region around Rome, maintained good relations with the Franks, and sent missionaries to convert the English to Christianity. The popes of the 7th and 8th centuries built on Gregory's legacy. They created and ruled a papal state in central Italy, formed an alliance with the Carolingians to protect it, and declared independence from the Byzantine Empire. They even forged a document called the Donation of Constantine that allegedly gave the papacy the right to rule the entire western half of the Roman Empire.

The Carolingians put a temporary end to the growth of papal power. They supported the popes as models of piety and priestly behavior. Nevertheless, the Carolingians acted as the heads of the church. They appointed bishops and abbots. When the church needed reform, the Carolingians took on the job themselves. They opened schools for priests and made certain that the religious texts used in the churches were authentic and readily available. In short, they saw themselves as the heads of both church and state.

In France the end of the Carolingian dynasty in the late 10th century meant that churches came under the control of regional powers. To the east, however, Otto I and his successors continued many Carolingian practices, including using the imperial title first bestowed on Charlemagne in 800. They appointed bishops in Germany and Italy and used them as government officials. They also occasionally appointed and deposed popes. Like the Carolingians, they considered themselves responsible for church reform.

Christ Giving the Keys to Saint Peter
This fresco by Perugino depicts Jesus Christ giving Saint Peter the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Catholic doctrine states that Jesus appointed Saint Peter to be the first pope, which established a link between Jesus and the papacy. This link is known as apostolic succession, whereby the pope is seen as the heir to the apostles. The papacy enjoyed great power due to this doctrine. The advantages taken by certain popes of this and other doctrines eventually led to criticism by many Christian reformers.

In the 11th century, more and more churchmen, monks, and laymen began to feel the need to change the church. At first they concentrated on two abuses: clerical marriage and simony (paying money or giving gifts in return for a church office). Clerical celibacy, which demanded that priests and bishops abstain from sexual relations and therefore not marry, had been an ideal since Late Antiquity, but until the late 11th century it was almost never enforced. With the 11th-century reforms, priests and bishops were forced to renounce their wives if they were married; if they were single, they were required to abstain from marriage throughout life.

Unlike celibacy, simony was a new issue. Few people saw anything wrong with payments for church office before the 11th century. Until then, payments were understood to be a type of gift—tokens of friendship, support, and good relations. However, the commercial revolution made people aware of the potentially crass uses of money. They saw that goods had price tags and that gifts had easily calculated monetary value. They began to think of gifts and payments for church offices as crass cash purchases.

In the mid-11th century, Emperor Henry III, who ruled both Germany and Italy, took an active role in church reform. He refused to take money or gifts in exchange for appointing bishops to church offices, although he still considered it his right to appoint bishops, even the pope. The popes were beginning to disagree, however. They were coming to see themselves as the successors of Saint Peter, Jesus’ disciple and traditionally understood to have been the first bishop of Rome. Therefore, 11th-century popes felt that they were more than just ordinary bishops. Beginning in this period, the popes asserted their own leadership of the Christian church and their independence from the emperor.

Relation of Church and State
After the Gregorian Reform of the late 11th century, the power of kings and emperors over the church began to decline. This painting shows how the church viewed the relationship between church and state. The pope is shown in the center of the picture, with other representatives of the church to his left. To the right of the pope, and seated slightly lower, is the Holy Roman emperor, and to his right, other representatives of lay government.

The most important of these popes was Gregory VII, who ruled from 1073 to 1085. Gregory gave his name to the church reform movement: the Gregorian Reform. Even before Gregory’s time, however, the papacy had succeeded in depriving the emperor of his traditional power to name the pope. In 1059, a few years after the death of Henry III, the papacy took advantage of the weakness and youth of Henry’s successor, Henry IV, to decree that henceforth popes would be elected by the cardinals—the chief clerics that surrounded the pope in Rome. However, Pope Gregory VII was not content with just free papal elections; he was determined to make the church completely independent from the emperors. He believed that independence could be achieved only if regional rulers, princes, and emperors stopped appointing all churchmen.

The chief point of Gregory's reform program was to end lay investiture. Investiture was the ritual by which a priest or bishop became a churchman and received his office. Lay investiture meant that a layman—a man who was not a churchman—controlled the ritual. Gregory wanted to end the power of emperors to invest churchmen, a power that they had exercised since the time of Charlemagne.

Henry IV at Canossa
Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV, along with his wife and young son, spent three days barefoot in the snow at Canossa, in northern Italy. Pope Gregory VII had excommunicated Henry following a clash over secular control of the empire, and Henry was seeking readmission to the Church, which the pope granted.

Gregory's goal struck at the very heart of the imperial office and royal power as it had developed up until his time. The emperor was anointed just as churchmen were, and he had always played a key religious role, but Gregory denied him any place in church leadership. Both emperor and pope gathered their supporters and went to war over the issue. Their struggle, known as the Investiture Controversy, was not a movement for the separation of church and state, but it was the beginning of such an idea. In both the Byzantine and Islamic worlds, the ruler remained (and in the Middle East remains even today) a religious figure. In the West the idea that the church and the state were separate entities developed gradually. The Gregorian Reform and the Investiture Controversy were important steps in this process.

Emperor Henry V
Henry V, emperor of what would come to be known as the Holy Roman Empire, engaged in a long series of disputes with the Roman Catholic church in the early 12th century over his authority to appoint church officials, known as lay investiture. During the controversy, Henry took Pope Paschal II prisoner when the pope refused to crown him. The Concordat of Worms in 1122 resolved the disputes.

The conflict broke out over the appointment of the bishop of Milan. Emperor Henry IV defied Gregory's decree against lay investiture and appointed his own man to be bishop. The two sides denounced each another. Henry called a council that asked Gregory to resign. In response, Gregory excommunicated Henry, expelling him from the church and its promise of eternal salvation. This was a rarely used penalty and was shocking at the time. Gregory also forbade anyone to serve Henry as king, cutting him off from his supporters. Henry had no choice but to find the pope, do penance, and be received back into the church. Gregory and Henry met at Canossa, high in the Italian Alps. The emperor stood in the snow for three days, begging for forgiveness. Now it was the pope who had no choice—as a priest, he had to pardon a penitent sinner. He lifted the excommunication.

In the end, however, Canossa did not resolve the question. War raged in Germany and Italy as the two sides fought for supremacy. In 1122 the struggle ended in a compromise with the Concordat of Worms. The emperor was permitted a small role in investiture: He was allowed to give the worldly trappings—the lands and physical churches—that belonged to the church office. The pope got the right to give the spiritual symbols of the office, the ring and staff, which were the most important. As a result of the Investiture Controversy, the papacy gained recognition as the head of the Christian church.

The First Crusade
In response to the announcement by Pope Urban II of a Crusade to the Holy Land in 1095, Christian forces from western Europe converged on Constantinople, where they united with Byzantine forces to attack Seljuk armies in Anatolia and Muslim armies in Syria and Palestine. By 1099 the Crusaders had achieved their goal—the capture of the city of Jerusalem. However, Christian territories acquired during the First Crusade were gradually lost over the next 200 years. Jerusalem was recaptured by Muslim forces in 1187, and the last Christian stonghold in the Holy Land fell in 1291.

The reforms of Gregory VII greatly increased the power and prestige of the papacy. In 1095 Byzantine emperor Alexius I Comnenus appealed to Gregory’s successor, Pope Urban II, for help against the Seljuk Turks, an Islamic group that was attacking the Byzantine Empire. Urban was able to use the new power of the papacy to unite people behind his cause, which in addition to aiding the Byzantines had a far greater goal: to reclaim the important cities of the Holy Land—especially Jerusalem—from the Muslims. Urban crossed the Alps to France and called upon the Franks to stop fighting one another and to use their weapons against the Muslims instead. The audience, gathered in a field to hear the pope's words, cried out, "God wills it." The First Crusade was launched.

The First Crusade was an armed pilgrimage—a journey to a sacred place that had both religious and worldly purposes. For knights, it was a chance to express their piety and gain booty. For princes, equally pious, it was also an opportunity to carve out new territories. For churchmen, it was a chance to utilize warfare for Christian ideals. Other folk also went on the Crusade. Some were foot soldiers. Others were servants. Some kept the war machines in good repair. Women went along as well, some to accompany their husbands, some to participate in a holy cause, and some to earn money as prostitutes.

The Crusader States
In the aftermath of the First Crusade (1096-1099), Europeans carved out four states in Palestine, on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Many castles and fortresses were built to protect the states from Muslim forces. However, the Muslims gradually recaptured the territory, and European presence in Palestine ended with the fall of the city of Acre in 1291.

The First Crusade was made up of many different armies, each under a different leader. Some of these armies were badly armed and not authorized by the pope. These consisted largely of peasants and poor people from the towns. On their way across Europe, some of these peasant armies made a detour to massacre Jews in the Rhineland, in what is now western Germany. This was the first, but not the last, attack on the Jews of Europe. Other armies, better armed, arrived at Constantinople and began their march south toward Jerusalem.

The First Crusade won its objective, due largely to the disunity of the Muslim defenders. The Crusaders conquered a thin wedge of territory down the coast of the Mediterranean leading to Jerusalem. They set up states there and named their leaders as rulers. These states were very weak, however, and had to be continually defended by new crusades. The states were gradually reconquered by the Muslims during the 13th century, with the last one falling in 1291. The First Crusade was important not because of the land that it conquered but because it was the first example of European expansionism. It set the stage for the discovery of the Americas, the establishment of European colonies in Asia and Africa, and the political domination of the world by Europeans.

Knight Templar
The Knights Templar was established to protect Christian pilgrims to the city of Jerusalem after the First Crusade (1095-1099). They later became a powerful political and military force in both Palestine and Europe. Templars traditionally wore a white tunic with a red cross on it.

One result of the Crusades was the development of military religious orders. Members of the order known as the Knights Templar, for example, were both monks and knights. They lived together in communities according to a rule, but their main job was to defend the roads that pilgrims used to come to Jerusalem once the First Crusade had captured that city. Soon they became Crusaders themselves, maintaining castles and troops in the Holy Land. The Templars, as they were called, became extremely popular and very wealthy. Similarly, the Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem, who were known as the Hospitalers, grew out of the needs of the new states established by the Crusaders. At first, the Hospitalers spent their time serving the sick, especially the poor and pilgrims. Their hospital at Jerusalem was huge, with separate wards for men and women and even tiny cots for babies. It became the model for numerous hospitals in Europe. However, the Hospitalers themselves gradually grew less interested in caring for the sick than in defending the Crusader states.

In the 12th and 13th centuries many European kings became more powerful by refining and centralizing existing institutions and by regularizing their role as lords over their vassals. This centralization made it easier to control the lands of the kingdom and to raise armies. European kings also tapped new sources of wealth by establishing more efficient means of taxation. However, not all monarchies grew during this time. German kings lost power, and Germany fragmented into regional principalities.

Bayeux Tapestry
Depicting the Norman conquest of England by William I and the events leading up to it, the 11th-century Bayeux Tapestry is one of the most famous tapestries in the world. The inscriptions worked into the design help describe the action, and the depictions of costume, arms, and other details are faithful to reality.

In the 9th and 10th centuries King Alfred and his successors had united the various principalities of England under one king. In 1066, however, English king Edward the Confessor died without an heir. Three men competed for the throne: Harold, an English nobleman; Harald III, the king of Norway; and William, duke of Normandy. When Harald III invaded England in 1066, Harold defeated him. Harold in turn was killed by William about a week later at the Battle of Hastings. William quickly took the crown of England and ruled as William I.

William I of England
William I, known as William the Conqueror, was king of England from 1066 to 1087. As king, William reorganized the system of lords and vassals in England, making all landholders swear loyalty to him rather than to their separate lords. William also ordered an exhaustive survey of the wealth in his realm. The written results, known as the Domesday Book, helped determine the revenues owed him by his subjects.

The new king kept about 20 percent of the land for himself and divided the remainder among his major vassals—barons and important churchmen—giving them the land as fiefs. The barons then gave some of their land as fiefs to their knights. In this way William introduced the Norman system of lords and vassals into England. He depended on the military service of his barons and their vassals, as well as on their aids (payments to him). The king also depended heavily on the English peasants. They grew the crops and tended the livestock that were essential to the kingdom, and the dues they paid were important sources of revenue for the king. In order to keep track of his resources, William ordered his officials to draw up detailed surveys of the land, people, livestock, and crops, as well as the dues that were owed the king. The summary of these reports, which was called Domesday Book, told him exactly what resources and revenues he could expect each year.

Domesday Book
Compiled in 1086 under the direction of William I of England, Domesday Book was a meticulous survey of estates in England.

The English king’s political roles were often quite complicated. For example, William did not give up being duke of Normandy when he became king of England. Instead, he merely incorporated England into his existing domain. His conquest drew England into close relations with the rest of Europe. These relations became even closer after the count of Anjou—a principality in what is now western France—married William's granddaughter. When their son Henry II became king of England in 1154, England became part of a vast territory that included more than half of what is now France. In England Henry was king. On the European continent, he was duke of Normandy and count of Anjou, and he held similar titles for his other continental possessions.

The English king held all these lands, except England, as a vassal of the French king. As long as the monarchs were on good terms, this posed little problem. However, as competition and tensions increased between the two, this relationship came to be a distinct disadvantage for the English king, who was bound by the customs of lords and vassals to serve the king of France.

Henry II
English King Henry II, one of the most powerful rulers of his time, made lasting changes to Britain’s judicial system. In the late 12th century he established a centralized system of justice and began implementing modern court procedures.

Henry II strengthened the monarchy’s control over England by establishing a new centralized system of justice. He declared that crimes such as murder and arson were crimes against the king, no matter where in the kingdom they were committed. He ordered local juries to meet in each district every year to name people suspected of such crimes and to bring them before the king's judges. (This is the origin of the American grand jury.) He also set up a system of traveling justices to hear property disputes and other civil cases.

By standardizing laws and punishments throughout his kingdom and by putting the law in the hands of royal officials instead of local barons, Henry II began to establish Englishcommon law—law that applied to all of England. These changes united England under one set of laws and under one system of justice. This system of justice gave the king not only power and prestige but also money: He collected fines from criminals and fees from civil cases. Twelfth-century English kings were rich. Money flowed to the royal treasury from courts, lands, taxes on cities, knightly aids, and other sources.

Seal of King John
King John of England affixed this seal to Magna Carta. Magna Carta was a major step in the development of constitutional government in England. It guaranteed that life, liberty, and property were not to be taken from members of the nobility without judgment of that person’s peers and only by process of the law of the land.

The strength of English kings provoked jealousy and competition. On the continent, French kings maneuvered to take English territory that they felt was theirs. In England, the monarchy demanded more and more money from the barons to fight the French, and the barons banded together against the king to assert their rights. Both of these developments came to a head during the reign of Henry II's son John. He lost important continental territory to the French king in a series of wars. In England the barons forced John in 1215 to assent to their demands in a document called Magna Carta.

Magna Carta
King John of England set his seal to Magna Carta on June 15, 1215. The document limited the power of the English monarchy and granted rights to John’s vassals. Many English legal traditions, including the right to trial by jury and equal access to courts for all citizens, had their origins in Magna Carta.

Magna Carta outlined the barons' customary rights and prohibited the king from changing anything without their consent. More importantly, however, it stated that all free men in England had certain rights that the king had to respect. As the definition of free man became broader—in 1215 it applied only to the barons, their vassals, and a few townspeople—Magna Carta came to be seen as a declaration of liberty for all Englishmen.

Magna Carta did not really weaken the power of the king, but it did change it. From that point on, the king had to work with his barons. Previous kings had met and consulted with their barons (in meetings that were the origins of the English Parliament), but they had not in any sense been obligated to do so. After Magna Carta, if the king refused to work with his barons he suffered hostility and occasionally even open rebellion.

In 1264, at the end of the reign of Henry III, the barons actually captured the king and began to rule on their own (see Barons' War). To increase their base of support, the barons called a Parliament consisting not only of the barons but also of representatives of the towns, the so-called commons. Even though Henry's son Edward I soon regained control of the government, he and succeeding kings recognized that English royal power depended on the support of representatives of both the barons and the commons.

At the time that William conquered England, the king of France was one of the weaker rulers in his kingdom. In fact, it was his kingdom only in the sense that most of its counts and dukes were technically his vassals. The king effectively ruled only the region around Paris.

Nevertheless, a number of factors worked to enhance the power of the French monarchy. The Paris region was prosperous, and Paris itself was an important center for scholars, merchants, and craftspeople. French kings collected taxes, tolls, and dues there. Their very weakness insulated them from political challenges. For example, the king of France invested churchmen just as the emperor did, but the pope did not bother challenging him during the Investiture Controversy. Despite this perceived weakness, French kings were strong enough to overcome the castellans in the region around Paris. In their struggles with the castellans, the kings of France gained the moral support of major churchmen, including Suger, the abbot of Saint-Denis, one of the most important monasteries in France. Suger praised the early-12th-century king Louis VI as a Christian soldier who fought on behalf of God and the Christian church. In this way, Suger gave the monarch the honor of a hero and the glory of a Crusader. By the end of the 12th century, the French monarchy had gained both prestige and a solid territorial base.

Coronation of Philip II
Shown here is the 1180 coronation of King Philip II of France. Serving as king until his death in 1223, Philip established France as a leading European power.

French king Philip II built on this foundation in the late 12th century. To expand his territory, he used his position as lord in a clever way. King John of England was technically a vassal of Philip because of his French possessions. After John married the fiancée of another of Philip's vassals, Philip summoned John to his court for violating his oath of loyalty. John refused to appear, and Philip claimed all of John's continental fiefs. Then he established a strong mercenary army to repel John’s attempts to retake the territories. By 1205 Philip was master of Normandy, Anjou, and other northern French territories formerly held by the English king. In 1214 Philip put an end to John's resistance in the Battle of Bouvines. Unhappiness with John's loss of territory in France and with his increasing taxation to pay for military campaigns helped provoke the barons in England to draw up Magna Carta.

Philip matched his battlefield victories with administrative reforms. He employed educated masters as his officials to collect taxes and administer royal estates. The king created a central archive to hold written copies of royal decrees. Like the kings of England, he had his justices travel from region to region to hear cases and appeals. Despite these reforms, however, royal administration and law were never as efficient and widespread in France as they were in England.

On the other hand, the French king's prestige was without equal. In the 13th century, Louis IX, grandson of Philip II, was revered for his generosity and piety. After his death, he was canonized as Saint Louis. Saint Louis was well known for his evenhanded justice, which he often gave out personally. Sitting in the shade of an oak tree near his castle, he listened to petitioners and disputants of every sort. His decisions were praised for their fairness. Even a saint could not hear all the cases that had to come before the king, however. To deal with this, Louis created the Parlement of Paris as a royal law court with trained professional judges. (Despite the similarity in spelling, the French Parlement, a court, was very different from the English Parliament, a representative institution.)

There were no saint-kings in Germany. The Investiture Controversy badly weakened the power of the German king (or emperor; since the king of Germany was always the emperor as well, there was little distinction). During the wars unleashed by that controversy, the princes of Germany—the counts, dukes, and other nobles, including churchmen—carved out regions for themselves. In Italy, most of which had also been under imperial control, the communes (independent cities) did the same, subjecting the surrounding countryside to their rule.

Frederick I
Frederick I was king of Germany and emperor of what would come to be known as the Holy Roman Empire. He wished to restore the glory of the Roman Empire, but his differences with the popes of Rome led to Italian allegiances against him, which thwarted his ambitions. Frederick drowned at Cilicia en route to join the Third Crusade.

Frederick I became emperor in 1152, and he partially revived imperial power. Although he recognized the rule of the German princes over their territories, he insisted that they become his vassals. As their lord, he became their acknowledged head. Similarly, Frederick did not challenge the pope's leadership of the church, but he insisted that he alone ruled the empire, which was (in his view) as sacred and important as the church itself. Earlier emperors had accepted the view that the church was above the empire; Frederick said the two were equal. Finally, Frederick married the heiress of Burgundy and Provence, giving him a strong territorial base.

Henry the Lion
German prince Henry the Lion became duke of Saxony and Bavaria in the middle of the 12th century. Holding territory in both Germany and Italy, Henry was a powerful figure. His power, however, brought him into conflict with German king Frederick I, who deprived Henry of his lands in 1180.

The great problem for Frederick I was that, as emperor, he also claimed jurisdiction over Italy. He could not just leave Italy alone, yet his attempts to exert influence there stirred up opposition from the papacy and the communes. Frederick's armies were initially successful in northern Italy, but the cities joined together in the Lombard League and allied themselves with the pope to fight him. At the Battle of Legnano in 1176, they defeated Frederick decisively. Frederick’s defeat contributed to increasing political fragmentation in Italy. In the north were city-states, in the center were the papal states, and in the south were various principalities and kingdoms. Meanwhile, the princes of Germany ruled their territories with relatively little interference. When one of the princes, Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony and Bavaria, became so powerful that even the other princes feared him, Fredrick I was able to use his position as lord to claim Henry's principality. But the other princes forced Frederick to divide Henry's duchy among them rather than keep it for himself. Unlike the king of France, the king of Germany could not hold on to confiscated territory.

Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II
Frederick II, emperor of what was to become known as the Holy Roman Empire, was in continual conflict with the papacy. He was excommunicated in 1227 for failing to lead a Crusade, but was reinstalled when he successfully conquered Jerusalem the following year. His problems with the church were not over, however, and he was excommunicated two more times in the next 20 years.

In fact, the more territory the German kings had, the more opposition rose against them. Frederick I's grandson, Frederick II, was heir not only to Germany but also to Sicily and southern Italy on his mother's side. Hoping to retain both, Frederick II and his heirs ended up with neither.

The popes feared that Frederick would conquer the papal states. When he renewed his grandfather's attempts to take control of northern Italy, Frederick found himself fighting the pope as well as the Lombard League. The popes excommunicated Frederick repeatedly, although by this time such punishments had lost some of their punch. Finally, in 1248, Pope Innocent IV deposed Frederick and called a crusade against him and his entire dynasty. Frederick died two years later.

After Frederick died, the pope invited a Frenchman, Charles, the count of Anjou, to take Sicily from Frederick’s son. Soon another family, the house of Aragón, was competing for the same kingdom. The long wars that these two powers fought left southern Italy and Sicily impoverished.

The conflict between Frederick II and the papacy also profoundly affected Germany. To gain the support of the German princes and their recognition of his sovereignty, Frederick gave them even more rights. He allowed them to inherit their principalities, mint coins, and control all the cities in their territories.

After Frederick's death, the princes could not agree on a king. Between 1254 and 1273—a period known as the Great Interregnum—two kings disputed the throne, both foreigners and neither one effective. When in 1273 the princes finally did elect a German king, Rudolf I of Habsburg, he based his power on his wife’s inheritance in Austria. He and his successors made no attempt to exert imperial rule over either Germany or Italy, although they held the title of emperor and ruled over what they henceforth called the Holy Roman Empire. Germany remained a country of principalities until the 19th century.

Santiago de Compostela Cathedral
Santiago de Compostela Cathedral is the historic burial-place of Saint James, one of the apostles of Jesus Christ. Construction on the granite structure, located in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, began in the late 11th century. The cathedral was the goal of several medieval pilgrimages and remains a site of religious devotion.

In the 11th century, Spain was a multicultural society. Most of it consisted of separate Islamic principalities called taifas. There, although the rulers and most of the population were Muslim, Jews and Christians were tolerated and allowed to worship in their own ways. To the north, Christian kings ruled a narrow fringe of land. They took advantage of the disunity of the taifas to demand yearly tribute payments from them. As a result, the northern Christian kingdoms were extremely wealthy.

Rather than invest in manufacturing or commerce, the Christian kings invested their money in monasteries, churches, and war. In the second half of the 11th century they began what came to be known as the Reconquista, the slow reconquest of all of Spain from the Muslims. King Alfonso VI united most of the northern Christian kingdoms under his rule, and then he turned to the south, attacking the taifa of Toledo. One of his vassals, Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar (called El Cid, from an Arabic word meaning "lord"), conquered the taifa of Valencia for himself and held it until his death in 1099. Meanwhile, crowds of people from the rest of Europe—especially from France—flocked to Spain to visit the relics of the apostle Saint James at Santiago de Compostela, to settle as merchants or peasants, or to fight in the wars. Popes proclaimed many of these wars Crusades.

The Spanish Crusaders provoked a new Islamic group, the Almohads, to come from North Africa to help defend the taifas. The Almohads, who recognized the supremacy of the caliph at Baghdād, tied Islamic Spain to the rest of the Islamic world culturally and economically. In the 12th century, even while they battled against the Almohads, the Christians of Spain took advantage of this fact to absorb the learning of the Islamic world. Important Arabic works of philosophy, science, and medicine poured into Europe by way of Spain.

Alhambra in Granada, Spain
The Alhambra complex sits on a hill at the base of the Sierra Nevada mountain range in Granada, Spain. The Alhambra is made up of three distinct areas: a fortress known as the Alcazaba, extensive gardens called the Generalife, and the royal palace. The Alcazaba, parts of which date to the 11th century, is the oldest part of the complex. During the 13th and 14th centuries, Spain’s Moorish rulers built the Generalife and the royal palace in the Islamic architectural style. This photo faces the Alcazaba, with parts of the royal palace showing in the background.

By the middle of the 12th century, Christian Spain consisted of three important kingdoms: Portugal (which continues as a separate country today), Castile, and Aragón. All three were united in their goal of the total reconquest of Spain from the Muslims. They even agreed on how to divide up Almohad territory before they conquered it. In 1212 a battle fought at Las Navas de Tolosa nearly destroyed the Almohad forces, and by 1248 only Granada, a small strip of territory along the southern coast of Spain, remained under Muslim rule.

After conquering Muslim territory, the Spanish kings allowed the peasants to remain on the land and work, but they let their Christian followers take over as landlords. Kings, however, like their soldiers, preferred plunder to commerce. Teeming cities were emptied of their Muslim artisans and merchants. The conquerors settled on great estates, but as Muslim peasants fled their harsh conditions, the landlords turned to cattle ranching rather than farming. Much of southern Spain remains ranch country to this day.

The papacy that developed after the Investiture Controversy has been called a monarchy. Like kings, the popes issued laws and hired masters to collect revenues and judge cases. They were deeply involved in the great political events of their day. They even declared wars: The crusade that Pope Innocent IV called against Frederick II was no armed pilgrimage like the Crusades to the Holy Land—it was part of the pope's battle for supremacy in Italy. The papacy's victory in the Investiture Controversy made it the effective head of the church. The Concordat of Worms in 1122 provided a workable solution to the problem of lay investiture. After an enormous struggle, the church reform movement ended clerical marriage in most parts of Europe. It largely eliminated simony as well.

Thomas à Becket
Thomas à Becket was made archbishop of Canterbury by King Henry II of England in 1162. Becket resisted Henry’s attempts to control the affairs of the Catholic church. Over time their conflicts grew bitter. Four of Henry’s knights, acting on their own, murdered Becket. Shortly thereafter the Catholic church in Rome declared Becket a saint.

With these accomplishments behind them, the popes turned to strengthening the system of church courts, in which clerics were tried. These courts gave penalties far more lenient than those given out by kings and princes. Henry II of England, who was developing his own system of justice, tried to weaken the church courts in his kingdom. He wanted clerics accused of crimes to be tried in royal courts. On this matter, the archbishop (head bishop) of England, Saint Thomas à Becket, supported the pope and opposed Henry bitterly. Their conflict raged for years, until a few of Henry's men murdered Becket in his cathedral in 1170. Instead of solving Henry’s problem, this action made it much worse. Widespread indignation and condemnation of the act forced Henry to back down and to do penance for the murder. Church courts remained important in England.

The papacy became a court of appeals. Bishops whose elections or appointments were disputed went to Rome to have their cases decided. Abbots who were in conflict with other monasteries over land or rights went to the pope to get his ruling. Providing lawyers, judges, and notaries to write things up in the proper form cost money, and the papacy charged for these services. The papal curia, or court, became a major revenue collecting agency, and the papacy gained wealth and power.

As the head of the church, the pope also became more involved in the lives of ordinary Christians. In 1215 Pope Innocent III presided over the bishops and other clerics called to meet at the Fourth Lateran Council. The council's rulings covered many aspects of personal conduct. They required all Christians to hear Mass and confess their sins at least once a year. They declared marriage to be a sacrament, a rite through which God's grace was received. Because of this, marriages had to be announced in advance, and priests were to decide whether they should take place.

The council dealt harshly with Jews and heretics (Christians who taught or believed doctrines other than those of the official church). It required Jews to wear badges or other signs to distinguish them from their neighbors. It ordered rulers to rid their lands of "heretical filth" or lose their territories. Some of these laws had been declared by the church at earlier councils. By bringing them together and adding more laws, the Fourth Lateran Council showed its determination to reform the world according to one ideal image—the image held by the church.

As rulers grew wealthy and successful, their courts became busy places. In addition to the lord’s family and servants, knights, clerics, and other officials all gathered at the court of their lord. To amuse and impress their courts and their guests, rulers and their families were eager to host entertainers and musicians. These court entertainers sang songs and told stories that provided the beginnings of a new kind of literature, one that used the vernacular, the language of everyday life, rather than Latin.

Vernacular writing had existed for some time in England, as Anglo-Saxon was an official language of government and of the church. But on the continent the first vernacular works were poems sung by 11th-century troubadours in southern France (see Troubadours and Trouvères). Originally, many troubadours were nobles who composed poems and songs and performed them for their assembled courts; later troubadours traveled from one princely court to another, performing their works for payment and then moving on.

Troubadour poetry used clever rhyme schemes and ingenious meters—similar to the beat of modern popular songs—to entertain audiences and hold their attention. The poems were about love, longing, the joys and sorrows of youth, and the beauties of nature. They were sung, often with the accompaniment of musical instruments such as flutes, bells, and harps and other stringed instruments. Most households could not afford to have such entertainers every day, and troubadours were most often present for large festivals and tournaments.

Tournament
This 15th-century illuminated manuscript page from the Romance of Tristan shows ladies watching knights participate in a tournament.

Tournaments were great gatherings at court. There, amid much noise and excitement, knights could show off their courage and their skill in the use of weapons. Knights fought against one another in groups, in what was called a melee, or one–on-one, with each riding on horseback in a joust. The knights who were victorious in tournaments gained horses, money, and fame for their skill and bravery. Those who lost were lucky if they gave up only their horses: Early tournaments differed little from actual combat, and knights were often severely injured or killed. In the 13th century, however, rulers and others began to impose rules to make tournaments safer.

King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table
The semilegendary King Arthur is probably the most well-known king in all of English literature. Tales of Arthur and his knights span several centuries and many different languages. The so-called Round Table, the meeting place of Arthur and the knights, was round so that no one member seemed favored over the others.

The skill and bravery of knights in both tournaments and war were often celebrated in poems and stories. Long epic poems were written in the vernacular to celebrate the prowess of knights in battle. Knights did not want to be known only for their physical strength, however. Poems called romances celebrated the virtues of knights: their loyalty, generosity, piety, and polite behavior. Romances generally took place in a fantasy world, such as the court of King Arthur. They told of great knights, such as Lancelot, who were witty at court, gentle with ladies, devoted to God, and brave in battle—and who often got into trouble trying to be all these things at the same time. When Lancelot's lady, Guinevere, told him to do his worst in battle to prove his love for her, the poor knight had to make a fool of himself in a tournament until she reversed her command.

These ideals of love and bravery were expressed primarily in literature, but real knights both inspired these poems and tried to live up to them. Chivalry, which comes from the French word for horse, cheval, was the knight's way of combining bravery, honor, generosity, piety, and courtesy.

Lancelot
In Arthurian legend, Lancelot, left, is one of King Arthur’s fiercest warriors. But when Arthur discovers that his wife, Queen Guinevere, has been having a love affair with Lancelot, the king and the knight become bitter enemies.

It is unclear how much knightly behavior in the Middle Ages was truly chivalrous, but there is little doubt that this is how knights thought of themselves. The biographer of William the Marshal considered William a model of chivalry. After years of brave battling in tournaments, William was noticed by Eleanor of Aquitaine, the wife of Henry II of England. William served Eleanor by coaching one of her young sons in the skills of a warrior. William was pious as well, going to the Holy Land on a Crusade and gaining fame for his fighting there. Later in life he was richly rewarded. He married well, and although he was from fairly lowly origins, he became King John's most important adviser.

Layout of a Castle
This diagram illustrates some of the typical features of a medieval castle. The prominent central keep had thick walls and contained everything necessary to sustain inhabitants in the event of an attack. Many castles also had a moat encircling them for further protection.

Medieval courts were crowded places and castles were generally small and cramped. Although they were marvels of engineering, especially the great stone castles built high on hills, they were built for defense, not for comfort or family life.

Medieval Siege
Much of medieval warfare consisted of trying to capture castles by laying siege to them. During a siege, attacking armies surrounded a castle and tried various means to gain access to the inside. This illustration shows some of the major weapons that attacking armies used, as well as some methods defenders used to thwart the attack. One of the main weapons used by attacking armies was a siege tower. Siege towers were large wooden structures. They were wheeled into position next to the castle so that attacking soldiers could climb up the rear of the tower and attempt to cross over to the castle walls.

One characteristic castle type was the so-called motte-and-bailey. It consisted of a tower built high on a mound, or motte, surrounded by a ditch and a wooden or stone stockade. Sometimes peasant families huddled just outside the castle, in an enclosure surrounded by yet another wall. Castles were prestigious in addition to being practical, and in the 12th century lords liked to build castles that were very high and impressive. To make them more difficult targets, castles were sometimes built in round or wedge shapes. This helped deflect enemy artillery stones. Water moats helped prevent enemies from digging under the walls and undermining the castle from below.

Much of medieval warfare consisted of trying to capture castles. This was called a siege. Two principal weapons were used. One of these was the battering ram, a very thick beam of wood tipped with iron that was suspended from a frame. The battering ram was moved right next to the enemy's castle and the beam was swung back and forth to break through the wall. The other major weapon was the catapult, a mechanical device that hurled stones with great force against the castle walls from a distance. In addition to these weapons, attacking armies had other techniques. Armies would often try to dig underneath the walls to either gain access to the castle or to cause the walls to collapse. Sometimes armies tried to weaken the castle's defenders by hurling dead horses or dead men over the walls to frighten or sicken those inside. Once the defenders were weakened, the attackers would lower themselves onto the walls from large wheeled towers that were moved next to the castle.

Bodiam Castle
Bodiam Castle was built in the 14th century in Sussex, England. A deep, water-filled moat surrounds the castle.

Very often none of these tactics worked, and the castle had to be starved into submission. This could take a long time. The occupying army had to support itself on the countryside, which it plundered for food and fodder. If the defenders of the castle had enough supplies on hand, they could sometimes hold out until the invading army gave up and went home. See also Fortification and Siege Warfare.

The most extraordinary buildings of the Middle Ages were the churches. Toward the end of the 11th century, a style of church building called Romanesque was prevalent. Beginning in the mid-12th century and becoming more and more popular in the next few centuries was the style called Gothic.

Cathedral Group at Pisa
This group of buildings, built from 1053 to 1272 at Pisa, in Italy, includes a campanile (bell tower), better known as the Leaning Tower, rear right; a cathedral, center; and a baptistery, left. The tiers of open colonnades (series of columns) throughout the group are characteristic of the Romanesque style of architecture, which preceded the Gothic style in western Europe. The campanile began leaning during construction due to the settling of the foundation.

Romanesque architecture was the style of the churches of the great Benedictine monasteries. Their most characteristic feature is the round arch. These arches are used for the doors and windows of the church, as well as for the church’s vault, the structure that supports the ceiling. Because the round arches give the vault a tunnel-like appearance, they are often called tunnel or barrel vaults. Romanesque churches are very large and were built with thick stone walls to hold the weight of the heavy arched vaults. Inside the church, the walls were decorated with paintings of important religious scenes or events in the lives of the saints. Massive columns leading from floor to vault were decorated with sculptures depicting scenes from the Bible or from other religious texts. Because there were no rugs or tapestries, the sounds of the monks' prayers echoed from one end of these churches to the other.

Tympanum of the Portal of St. Pierre
This tympanum depicts the second coming of Christ as King, sitting in judgment at the end of the world. It is located in the church of St. Pierre, Moissac, France, and was built between 1115 and 1135. The figure of Christ is surrounded by an angel, lion, eagle, and ox, representing the four evangelists Matthew, Mark, John, and Luke, respectively.

Outside, at the west end, many Romanesque churches had three portals, or doorways. The central one was the main entrance to the church and was much taller and wider than the other two. Along the sides of the portals were columns with sculpted biblical scenes. Above each portal was a tympanum, a half circle filled with figures that usually depicted a major event in the life of Christ or a scene of the Second Coming. See Romanesque Art and Architecture.

Gothic Cathedral in Palma
The gothic cathedral in Palma is noted for its beautiful interior, which was partially designed by the famous Spanish architect Antoni Gaudi. Palma is located on the Spanish island of Mallorca in the Mediterranean sea and is the capital of the Balearic Island chain.

During the 12th and 13th centuries people began to want lighter, more soaring church buildings. These ideas led to the style called Gothic. Churches built in the Gothic style are higher and more compact than Romanesque churches, and they appear lighter even though they are not. Gothic churches use pointed arches rather than round ones, making their vaults seem to soar. Their windows, also pointed, open up to give more light. Stained glass gives the light a jewel-like glow. Unlike Romanesque churches, Gothic churches do not have walls that bear the weight of the vault. This job is done by the flying buttresses, arches outside the church that evenly distribute the vault’s weight and carry it to the ground. Thus the inside of a Gothic church looks delicate, with light shining through huge windows and without the imposing walls of Romanesque churches, but the outside of a Gothic church looks like a porcupine bristling with flying buttresses. Even the stained glass looks gray and massive from the outside.

Building a Cathedral
Churches and cathedrals were the most important buildings in many medieval towns and cities. Building a cathedral was always a community effort, as it was very expenisve and cathedrals often took decades to complete. However, cathedral construction also benefited the economy of the community, as it employed local masons, carpenters, glaziers, and other workers.

In this way Gothic churches express a mystery. On the outside they give no hint of what they will look like within. The churchmen and architects who designed and built these churches intended these buildings to express still another mystery—the wonder of God. Suger, the abbot of the monastery of Saint-Denis, got the idea for such a church from the writings of a Christian mystic who went by the name of Dionysius and who wrote at the beginning of the 6th century. Dionysius taught that God was the "Divine light," the source of all things seen. Suger built his church so that the light streaming through the sacred stories depicted in his stained glass windows would act like this divine light. He wanted the light’s glow to illuminate the mind of the worshiper and lead him or her to God. The Gothic church building itself was meant to be part of the religious experience.

The Gothic style became popular for city churches, especially large cathedrals. It was first adopted by the cities in the region around Paris, and later cities in the rest of France, England, The Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Germany, and even central Europe began building cathedrals in the Gothic style. Since Gothic churches were enormously expensive and took years—sometimes centuries—to build, they were always community enterprises. City guilds raised money to help build them. Some guilds even paid for their own stained glass windows. In turn, church construction created new jobs for city carpenters, stone masons, glass cutters, and many other workers. See Gothic Art and Architecture.

Statue-Columns at Chartres Cathedral
These representations of saints, found on the columns around the north transept of the cathedral at Chartres, France, were built between 1132 and 1240. Although the style is still influenced by Romanesque art, it is more naturalistic, with the statue-columns more three-dimensional and less tied to the wall behind them than sculpture had been in earlier architecture.

During the period in which Romanesque and Gothic architecture were important, other related arts flourished as well. Sculpture played an important role in both Romanesque and Gothic churches; in fact, much of the sculpture of this period was done for churches and cathedrals. However, Romanesque and Gothic sculpture is substantially different from each another. For example, the scenes on Romanesque tympana and columns are often carved in relief—that is, they are not fully three-dimensional or carved in the round. Gothic sculpture, in contrast, is usually freestanding and fully three-dimensional. In addition, Gothic sculpture is much more animated and lifelike in comparison with the often stylized, linear feeling of Romanesque sculpture. Gothic figures turn, bend, sway, and sometimes even smile. Manuscript illuminations continued to be important in this period as well. With the rise of universities and a better-educated public, city dwellers were able to buy manuscripts, which were prestigious items to have. Many students considered it fashionable to have an illuminated manuscript of the latest edition of the Bible. Kings and nobles usually had a good basic education, and they too valued beautiful books. By the 13th century, books were produced in city workshops as well as at courts and monasteries. A great range of books were illustrated. These included not only religious texts such as the Bible, but also works such as Aristotle's philosophy, law books, and vernacular romances.

Since Late Antiquity monks had played an important role in medieval society. In fact, monks were considered essential to the salvation of everyone. Monks were thought to be models of virtue and piety, and consequently their prayers were considered more effective than the prayers of other people. Therefore the monks had the job of beseeching God to forgive the sins of others and to give them eternal life. Monks’ prayers were even considered essential for the well-being of kingdoms. Because of this, many kings and nobles contributed large amounts of land or money to monasteries, and as a result many monastic orders grew very wealthy and powerful.

All monks lived according to a rule, or code, that governed their daily routine. There were many of these rules, but the most important was the one written by 6th-century abbot Saint Benedict. The Benedictine Rule envisioned monasteries as self-sufficient units in which the monks lived and worked together. Monasteries were designed rather like villages, with groups of buildings surrounded by gardens and fields. The monks slept together in a dormitory, rose together for the morning prayer, read together, ate meals together, and shared the chores. Benedict expected that peasants would do most of the work in the fields, although the monks might occasionally have to help. For the most part, however, the monks' days were filled with tasks, such as kitchen work, that were separated by periods of prayer. Seven times a day and once at night the monks went to the monastery church to pray. Their prayers were always chanted. The music that is today known as Gregorian chant is one version of the chanting prayer style of Benedictine monks. See Benedictines.

In the Merovingian period, the Benedictine Rule was only one of many monastic rules in use, and an enormous variety of monastic practices existed throughout the Merovingian kingdoms. These practices ranged from those of the monastery of Saint Maurice at Agaune, where the monks were divided into groups with different schedules to ensure that some monks would be praying at every moment, to those of the monasteries founded by Saint Columbanus, who emphasized penance and confession. Carolingian kings tried to end this diversity. As part of their drive to unify their empire politically and spiritually, they reformed the monasteries and forced them to follow a slightly modified version of the Benedictine Rule. The Carolingians called in leaders of church choirs from Rome to teach all the monks to chant the same prayers to the same tune. The lasting legacy of these efforts was to make the Benedictine Rule the monastic standard. When the Carolingian Empire fell apart, monasteries became absorbed into the social and political life of each region. During the Viking, Magyar, and Muslim invasions, monasteries—which had rich storehouses and precious ornaments—were frequently attacked. Some monasteries were destroyed and some monks were killed or forced to move.

After the invasions ended in the 10th century, kings and princes, anxious to show their generosity and piety and to ensure the salvation of their souls, began founding and restoring monasteries. The most famous and successful of these new monasteries was Cluny, in modern France, founded in 910 by William, duke of Aquitaine. In order to ensure that the monastery remained free from the control of his family and of regional political powers, William donated it to Saint Peter. This meant that it was under papal protection. However, it was not subject to papal domination. During the 11th century many people across Europe considered Cluny a model monastery. Donations of land and money poured in as the monks carried out their careful, solemn, and lengthy prayers. The monks did very little work besides this "work of God," as they called it. In their view, to do it properly they needed the richest ornaments, the finest robes, and the most magnificent church. Cluny’s church was the largest in Europe until the new Saint Peter's of Rome was built during the Renaissance. Pope Urban II blessed its main altar on his way to preach the First Crusade. Pope Urban described the Cluniac monks as the "light of world," and in fact Cluny's 10th- and 11th-century abbots were considered saints. They were asked to help reform other monasteries according the Cluniac model. Still other monasteries informally adopted Cluny's lifestyle of splendor and prayer. Eventually, Cluniac monasteries were established across France and in Spain, Germany, England, and Italy.

Just as Urban was praising Cluny, a reaction was setting in. The Cistercian monastic order was founded in 1098 as a rebellion against the rich and elaborate life at monasteries such as Cluny. The Cistercians thought that the Benedictine Rule should be followed without any modifications. They refused to add any prayers or to use precious objects in the church service. They rejected even minor frills such as dying their robes black, and so they wore white robes, the color of raw wool. Because of this, they were called the white monks. Cistercian churches were built of stone, without decoration—they had no paintings and no sculpture. The Cistercians did not follow the Benedictine Rule entirely, however. There were two kinds of Cistercian monks: those of the choir, who chanted the prayers, and the conversi (converts), who worked in the fields. The two types of monks did not live together. Instead, Cistercian monasteries were divided into two parts, each with a dormitory, a dining room, and a kitchen. Even the church was divided down the middle by a screen. The choir monks had the eastern half and the conversi got the western portion. None of this was in the Benedictine Rule. The Cistercians embraced a lifestyle of simplicity, but as a group they became very rich. Many Cistercian monasteries were involved in raising sheep as well as in producing cereal crops. They sold their goods in the towns for large profits and also sought special privileges for themselves such as exemptions from tolls. They bought up town properties and became part of the commercial world. The Cistercians were only one of many new monastic orders that appeared in the 12th century. Many of these orders were responding to the money economy of cities, and like the Cistercians, they rejected riches. Unlike the Cistercians, many of them abandoned commerce altogether. The Carthusians, for example, established monasteries on mountaintops, far away from other people. They lived in separate cells and came together only for prayer.

Saint Francis Fresco Cycle
In this fresco by 14th-century Italian artist Giotto, Francis of Assisi receives papal confirmation for the rule of his Franciscan order. Francis, a mystic and preacher, was canonized by the Roman Catholic church in 1228, two years after his death. The Franciscans went on to become a powerful and influential order in the church.

Other orders responded to the needs of women who wanted to lead a religious life under a formal rule. Women had lived in convents before the 11th century, and there had even been mixed monasteries, where monks lived in one area and nuns in another. In the 11th and 12th centuries, bishops, laymen, laywomen, and religious reformers founded an extraordinary number of new convents. One example is Fontevrault, founded by Robert of Arbrissel on land in western France that had been donated by a local noblewoman. The convent housed mainly women, although there were some men, and was ruled by an abbess. Soon Fontevrault inspired the creation of other convents in the region.

Franciscan Monk
The first order of Franciscan monks was established in 1208 in Italy. Franciscans were itinerant preachers who took vows of poverty and were devoted to charity. They spent their days preaching, serving the sick, and working at crafts.

The most radically new religious order of the Middle Ages, the Franciscans, was created at the beginning of the 13th century. Saint Francis of Assisi, the son of a successful Italian cloth merchant, did not set out to found an order. He simply wanted to adopt a life of poverty and itinerant preaching. Francis traveled from town to town to preach to city dwellers. He accepted no money for his work, and when he gained followers, he did not let them accept any money either. The Franciscans spent their days preaching, serving the sick, and working at crafts. Calling themselves friars, or little brothers, the Franciscans soon became numerous and in need of organization. In 1217 they were divided into provinces according to the country they worked in: Italy, France, Germany, Spain, and the Holy Land. Women joined the Franciscans as well, but they were not allowed to travel and preach. Lay people joined as the so-called Third Order. They remained married and continued doing their normal work, but they promised to live devoutly, pray regularly, and observe the church's fast days.

Increasing piety went hand in hand with aggression. The First Crusade was followed by more in the 12th and 13th centuries. Europeans also expanded into Spain and eastward along the Baltic coast during this period. At the same time, they began to turn on non-Christians and heretics within their own society with increasing fury.

Popes called many Crusades during the 12th and 13th centuries. In addition, armed troops were periodically sent east to help defend the crusader states, the regions in the Holy Land conquered by Europeans. Through much of this, the ideal of the Crusades remained essentially the same: armed pilgrimages for Christian purposes. However, the Fourth Crusade, which was called by Pope Innocent III in 1199, was a turning point.

Far fewer troops turned out for the expedition than had been expected. Although the pope wanted the Crusaders to go straight to the Holy Land, he was unable to control them. Their leaders could not pay the Venetians, who had been hired to take the army from Italy to Jerusalem. The Venetians decided to ask for help in place of payment. Hoping to gain trading privileges through force, the Venetians convinced the Crusaders to attack Constantinople. In 1204 the Crusaders broke through the walls of Constantinople and sacked it. Innocent III complained, but he also told the Crusaders to stay where they were and to keep control of the city. Thus a crusade against Muslims turned into a siege of a Christian city. From that time on, little distinction existed between a Crusade and any other kind of war.

 On the northeastern fringes of Europe a push similar to the Spanish Reconquista was taking place against the Slavic peoples of the Baltic coast. German duke Henry the Lion joined with the king of Denmark to support this movement, and churchmen preached on its behalf. In the course of the 13th century, German peasant settlers and Cistercian monks moved into northeastern Europe, joining the Slavs. Unlike the Holy Land, the Baltic coast was permanently brought under European Christian control.

Jews in the Middle Ages
Jews were discriminated against and persecuted throughout much of the Middle Ages. Although at first these persecutions were sporadic, after 1215 the Catholic Church forced all Jews to wear badges. This made Jews easily recognizable, and attacks against them increased. This picture portrays a Jewish Seder, a Passover meal, in the 14th century.

Within the heart of Europe, Christians isolated the Jews in their midst, persecuting and attacking them. The first attacks on Jews began with the First Crusade in the 11th century. Before that time, however, Jews had been forced out of the countryside and into the cities by the spread of the seigniorial system. There they had taken up a variety of trades. However, the rise of guilds, which were not just for trade but were also religious institutions, pushed many Jews out and into the one profession without a guild: moneylending. As moneylenders Jews were both necessary and hated. In the new commercial society, almost everyone needed to borrow money at one time or another, but they resented having to pay their loans back with interest. In the course of the 12th century, hateful stories about Jews were created and published. For example, Jews were accused of killing Christian children for their Passover celebrations. This so-called blood libel led many Christian communities to kill or expel their Jews. In various towns and cities of Europe, Jews suffered lynchings and other attacks. Although Jews looked like their neighbors, artists began to depict them with ugly faces and strange hats. In 1215 the Fourth Lateran Council forced all Jews to wear badges. From then on it was easy to tell them apart from Christians, and persecutions increased. Kings called Jews their personal serfs. They borrowed from them and taxed them. They also persecuted them, confiscating their goods and even at times expelling them from their kingdoms. King Philip II of France banished the Jews from his royal domain in 1182; King Edward I expelled them from England in 1290. These kings profited in the short term from these expulsions because they got all the property that the Jews left behind. They also enhanced their prestige as zealous Christian rulers. Finally, they pleased people who were in debt to the Jews. The persecution and expulsion of Jews was part of a general attempt by Christian leaders to define, control, and “purify” all of European society.

Heretics were also persecuted. One such group was the Albigenses in the south of France. They believed that the world was divided between the two opposing forces of Good and Evil. They had their own bishops, their own rituals, and a large following. At first the church tried to convert the Albigenses. The Dominicans were an order of friars much like the Franciscans that was originally set up to preach against the beliefs of the Albigenses and bring them back to the church. However, Pope Innocent III declared a Crusade against the Albigenses in 1208. Much of southern France was laid waste by the Crusade, although some of the Albigenses managed to escape.

In the 13th century, to stamp out the Albigenses and other heretics entirely, the church established inquisitorial courts. Historians sometimes call these courts, their trials, imprisonments, and punishments the Inquisition. Other historians see too much variety and change over time to give them one name. These courts were charged with seeking out, trying, and sentencing persons guilty of heresy. They called on people accused of heresy to confess and repent. Those who did not were burned. Those who did were forced to wear large yellow crosses on their clothing. This kept them isolated from other Christians, and it advertised their penance. Some heretics were considered so dangerous to others that they were kept in prison even after they had confessed. The Inquisition remained a powerful force in Europe far beyond the Middle Ages, into the 17th century.

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