A Short History of the Middle Ages, Volume II: From c.900 to c.1500, Sixth Edition 9781487546984, 9781487547004, 9781487546991, 148754698X

Table of contents :
Cover
Half-Title Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
The Medieval World Today
Epigraphs
Contents
List of Maps
List of Plates
List of Genealogies
List of Figures
Website
Abbreviations and Conventions
Acknowledgements
Note to Readers
Chapter Four Political Communities Reordered (c.900–c.1050)
Chapter Five New Configurations (c.1050–c.1150)
Chapter Six Ambitions Realized and Thwarted (c.1150–c.1250)
Chapter Seven Empires of Land and Mind (c.1250–c.1350)
Chapter Eight Catastrophe and Creativity (c.1350–c.1500)
Sources
Index

Citation preview

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES

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A SHORT HISTORY OF THE GOVERNMENT MIDDLE AGES

THINKING PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION AND POLITICS IN CANADA DAVI D JOHNSON FOURTH EDITION

volume Ii: from c.900 to c.1500 BARBARA H. ROSENWEIN

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London

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© University of Toronto Press 2023 Toronto Buffalo London utorontopress.com Printed in the U.S.A. ISBN 978-1-4875-4698-4 (paper)

ISBN 978-1-4875-4700-4 (PDF) ISBN 978-1-4875-4699-1 (EPUB)

All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without prior written consent of the publisher – or in the case of photocopying, a license from Access Copyright, the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency – is an infringement of the copyright law. Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Title: A short history of the Middle Ages / Barbara H. Rosenwein. Names: Rosenwein, Barbara H., author. Description: Sixth edition. | Also published together in one complete volume. | Includes bibliographical references and indexes. | Contents: Volume II : From c.900 to c.1500. Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20220266840 | Canadiana (ebook) 20220266875 | ISBN 9781487546984 (v. 2 ; softcover) | ISBN 9781487546991 (v. 2 ; EPUB) | ISBN 9781487547004 (v. 2 ; PDF) Subjects: LCSH: Middle Ages. | LCSH: Europe – History – 476–1492. Classification: LCC D117 .R67 2023 | DDC 940.1 – dc23 We welcome comments and suggestions regarding any aspect of our publications – please feel free to contact us at [email protected] or visit us at utorontopress.com. Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders; in the event of an error or omission, please notify the publisher. We wish to acknowledge the land on which the University of Toronto Press operates. This land is the traditional territory of the Wendat, the Anishnaabeg, the Haudenosaunee, the Métis, and the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada and the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario, for its publishing activities.

an Ontario government agency un organisme du gouvernement de l’Ontario

Funded by the Financé par le Government gouvernement du Canada of Canada

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For Sophie, Natalie, Joshua, Julian, and Benji, with love.

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The union of the Roman Empire was dissolved; its genius was humbled in the dust; and armies of unknown barbarians, issuing from the frozen regions of the North, had established their victorious reign over the fairest provinces of Europe and Africa. Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire It may very well happen that what seems for one group a period of decline may seem to another the birth of a new advance. Edward Hallett Carr, What Is History?

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CONTENTS List of Maps  •  x List of Plates  •  xi List of Genealogies  •  xiii List of Figures  •  xiv Website  •  xv Abbreviations and Conventions  •  xv Acknowledgments  •  xvi Note to Readers  •  xvii

Chapter Four Political Communities Reordered (c.900–c.1050)  •  119 Material Culture: Cloth and Clothing  •  157 Chapter Five

New Configurations (c.1050–c.1150)  •  163

Chapter Six

Ambitions Realized and Thwarted (c.1150–c.1250)  •  209

Material Culture: The Making of an Illuminated Manuscript  •  249

Chapter Seven Empires of Land and Mind (c.1250–c.1350)  •  255  Chapter Eight Catastrophe and Creativity (c.1350–c.1500)  •  295 Sources  •  337 Index  •  339



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MAPS The Medieval World Today  •  vi 4.1 Constantinople, c.1100  •  120 4.2 The Byzantine Empire of Basil II, 976–1025  •  123 4.3 Kievan Rus’, c.1050  •  126 4.4 Fragmentation of the Islamic World, c.1000  •  128 4.5 Vikings, Muslims, and Hungarians on the Move, 9th and 11th cent.  •  136 4.6 Europe, c.1050  •  147 5.1 The Byzantine and Seljuk Empires, c.1090  •  165 5.2 The Almoravid Empire and the Empire of Ghana, c.1050  •  169 5.3 Western Europe, c.1100  •  176 5.4 Tours c.600 vs. Tours c.1100  •  177 5.5 The Mediterranean Region and the First Crusade  •  187 5.6 The Norman Invasion of England, 1066–1100  •  193 5.7 The Iberian Peninsula, c.1140  •  195 6.1 The Almohad Empire, c.1175  •  210 6.2 Saladin’s Empire, c.1200  •  212 6.3 Chinggis Khan’s Campaigns  •  213 6.4 The Angevin and Capetian Realms in the Late 12th cent.  •  217 6.5 Spain, Portugal, and North Africa, c.1275  •  221 6.6 Italy and Southern Germany in the Age of Frederick Barbarossa  •  224 6.7 German Settlement in the Baltic Sea Region, 12th to 14th cent.  •  231 6.8 The Fourth Crusade, the Latin Empire, and Byzantine Successor States, 1204–c.1250  •  232 7.1 The Mongol Empire, c.1290  •  257 7.2 The Islamic West, c.1300  •  260 7.3a,b Trade Routes, c.1300  •  264 7.4 Piacenza, Late 13th cent.  •  268 7.5 Western Europe, c.1300  •  274 7.6 East Central Europe, c.1300  •  278 8.1 Dispersion of the Plague, 13th to 15th cent.  •  296 8.2 The Ottoman Empire, c.1500  •  301 8.3 English and Burgundian Hegemony in France, c.1430  •  307 8.4 The Duchy of Burgundy, 1363–1477  •  308 8.5 Western Europe, c.1450  •  313 8.6 Long-Distance Sea Voyages of the 15th cent.  •  332

x

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PLATES 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8

John the Orphanotrophos Orders the Exile of Constantine Dalassenos (12th cent.)  •  122 Silver Hoard from Grimestad, near Kaupang (921)  •  125 Letter from Yshu‘a ha-Kohen to Nahray ben Nissim (1050)  •  129 Fatimid Cemetery at Aswan (11th cent.)  •  130 Oseberg Ship (834)  •  138 The Maccabean Revolt Depicted (first half of 11th cent.)  •  142 Peasants Plowing and Sowing (2nd quarter of 11th cent.)  •  143 The Raising of Lazarus, Egbert Codex (985–990)  •  153

Material Culture: Cloth and Clothing

4.9 4.10 4.11 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7 5.8 5.9 5.10 5.11

Woman’s Woolen Cap (468–651)  • 157 Guillaume de Machaut, Le Remède de Fortune (c.1350–1355)  • 158 Brunswick Chasuble (early 15th cent.)  • 160 Isfahan Mosque Courtyard (c.1086)  •  167 Isfahan Mosque North Dome (1088–1089)  •  168 Almería Silk (first half of 12th cent.)  •  171 Marble Tombstone from Almería (12th cent.)  •  172 A Sculptor at Work, Modena Cathedral (early 12th cent.)  •  179 A King Invests a Bishop (c.1100)  •  183 Henry IV Kneels before Countess Matilda (1115)  •  185 Crac des Chevaliers (12th and 13th cent.)  •  190 Sénanque Monastery Church, Interior (c.1160)  •  200 Modena Cathedral, Interior (early 12th–14th cent.)  •  202 Modena Cathedral, West Facade (early 12th cent. with 13th-cent. additions)  •  203 5.12 Adam and Eve, Modena Cathedral (early 12th cent.)  •  204 6.1 Kutubiyya Mosque (2nd half of 12th cent.)  •  211 6.2 Mongol Armor (bef. 1368?)  •  214 6.3 The Great Seal of King John (1203)  •  219 6.4 Chartres Cathedral, Interior (1195–1230)  •  240 6.5 Chartres Cathedral, South Portals (early 13th cent.)  •  242 6.6 Chartres Cathedral, Stained Glass: Death of the Virgin (1205–1215)  •  244 6.7 San Francesco at Assisi (Upper Church; completed by 1253)  •  246

Material Culture: The Making of an Illuminated Manuscript

6.8 6.9 6.10 7.1 7.2

Hamburg Bible (1255)  • 249 Miniature of Saint Dunstan (12th cent.)  • 250 Codex Aureus (870)  • 251 Traveling in the Mongol Empire (early 14th cent.)  •  256 Hall of the Ambassadors, Comares Palace, Alhambra (mid-14th cent.)  •  261

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7.3 7.4 7.5 7.6 7.7 7.8 7.9 7.10 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 8.6 8.7

Rao Pectoral (c.1300)  •  262 Expelling the Jews (14th cent.)  •  270 The Golden Bull (1356)  •  276 Chalice (c.1300)  •  281 Book of Hours (c.1260–1270)  •  282 The Motet Le premier jor de mai (c.1280)  •  286 Giotto, Scrovegni Chapel, Padua (1304–1306)  •  287 Giotto, Lamentation of Christ, Scrovegni Chapel (1304–1306)  •  288 Lancing a Bubo (2nd half of 15th cent.)  •  297 Illustration in A Dispute between the Body and Worms (1435–1440)  •  299 “Star Ushak” Carpet, Anatolia (late 15th cent.)  •  303 Building Complex, Edirne (1484–1488)  •  304 The Massacre of the Rebels at Meaux (15th cent.)  •  315 Giovanni Toscanini or Fra Angelico, The Nymph of Fiesole (1430–1440?)  •  320 Filippo Brunelleschi, Florence Cathedral Dome and Lantern (1420–1446)  •  323 8.8 Rock-Crystal Cup of Philip the Good (1453–1467)  •  325 8.9 Hubert and Jan van Eyck, Ghent Altarpiece, Interior (1432)  •  326 8.10 Albrecht Dürer, Portrait of Oswolt Krel (c.1499)  •  328 8.11 Lopo Homem, Pedro Reinel, Jorge Reinel, and Antonio de Holanda, The Miller Atlas (1519)  •  330

xii

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PLATES 

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GENEALOGIES 4.1 4.2 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 6.1 6.2 7.1 7.2 7.3 8.1 8.2

Alfred and His Progeny  •  148 The Ottonians  •  151 The Great Seljuk Sultans  •  166 The Comnenian Dynasty  •  174 The Salian Kings and Emperors  •  181 The Norman Kings of England  •  192 The Capetian Kings of France  •  196 The Angevin Kings of England  •  216 Rulers of Germany and Sicily  •  223 The Mongol Khans  •  259 Henry III and His Progeny  •  269 Louis IX and His Progeny  •  271 Kings of France and England and the Dukes of Burgundy during the Hundred Years’ War  •  306 Yorkist and Lancastrian (Tudor) Kings  •  309

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FIGURES 5.1 5.2 6.1 7.1 8.1

Plan of Fountains Abbey, a Cistercian Monastery Founded 1132  •  199 Modena Cathedral, Cut-Out View  •  205 Chartres Cathedral, Cut-Out View  •  241 Single Notes and Values of Franconian Notation  •  286 Building the Florence Cathedral Dome (1429–1470)  •  324

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WEBSITE For practice questions about the text, maps, plates, and other features – plus suggested answers – please go to www.utphistorymatters.com There you will also find all the maps, genealogies, and figures used in the book.

ABBREVIATIONS AND CONVENTIONS Abbreviations c. cent. d. emp. fl. pl. r. sing.

circa. Used to indicate that dates or other numbers are approximate. century date of death emperor flourished. This is given when even approximate birth and death dates are unknown. plural form of a word dates of reign singular form of a word

Conventions All dates are Ce/ad unless otherwise noted (the two systems are interchangeable). The dates of popes are not preceded by r. because popes took their papal names upon accession to office, and the dates after those names apply only to their papacies. The symbol / between dates indicates uncertainty: e.g., Boethius (d.524/526) means that he died sometime between 524 and 526. The Church as an abstract institution is capitalized. But when a church is a physical building in a particular place, the word is not capitalized. Similarly, the abstract State is capitalized, but when state refers to an individual polity, it is not.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I thank Riccardo Cristiani for reading all chapters and providing pertinent suggestions and cautions. He also authored two “Material Culture” inserts, which I have lightly updated here. I am similarly indebted to Albrecht Diem, who read and commented on all the chapters and wrote the website questions. This sixth edition has benefited enormously from maps produced by medievalist and cartographer Erik Goosman, whom I thank most warmly. I owe a debt of gratitude as well to archaeologist Elizabeth Fentress, who generously read and critiqued my discussion of Volubilis/Walila, a North African site; and to sinologist Robert Hymes, who clarified various hypotheses about the original location of the medieval variant of the plague. I am equally grateful to all the readers, many anonymous, who made suggestions for improving earlier editions of A Short History of the Middle Ages. A full list of names of the many scholars who helped with particular sections would begin to sound like a roll call of medievalists, both North American and European; I hope they will forgive me if I thank them collectively here. At UTP, I am indebted to Judith Earnshaw, Natalie Fingerhut, Tania Therien, and Alexandra Grieve. Matthew Jubb at Em Dash Design beautifully enhanced the “look” of the book.

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NOTE TO READERS This new edition continues to stress the changing nature of history by making clear where historians have changed their minds or disagree about key issues. History is not a set of “facts,” though those (when known!) are useful. Equally important, if not more so, are the interpretations and connections that historians constantly make – and remake – of those facts. In keeping with recent research, this edition also continues and expands its wide purview, placing new emphasis on global connections where relevant. Although the term “Middle Ages” was coined for a period in European history, I do not find it particularly meaningful except to refer to a chronological slice of time, around 300 to 1500. That period of time was equally experienced everywhere. But the particular focus of medieval history – which I take to be the whole region once ruled by Rome, plus the successors of that Empire, plus the permutations experienced by those successors, including their conquests and their conquerors – impels me to bring in the rest of the world where its history intersects with that of the heirs of Rome in important ways.

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CHAPTER FOUR

H I G H L I G H TS Fatimids proclaim a Shi‘ite caliphate 910 The Shi‘ite Fatimid caliphate dominates Egypt and North Africa, signaling the decline of the Abbasids and of the Sunni form of Islam in the Islamic world.

Umayyad ruler of al-Andalus takes the title of caliph 929 The tenth century sees the height of Umayyad power in al-Andalus, but a century later, their caliphate splits into taifas (Islamic principalities).

Battle of Lechfeld 955 The victory of Otto I over the Hungarians at Lechfeld is a triumph that leads to his coronation as emperor in 962 and to the establishment of the Ottonian dynasty, which lasts until 1024.

Reign of Basil II the Bulgar-Slayer 976–1025

Peace of God

Basil expands the borders of the Byzantine Empire and successfully staves off the ascendency of the dynatoi (powerful regional leaders).

989 This movement in the Church begins in the tenth century in the south of France. It calls on the nobility to protect ecclesiastical and other property from armed depredations. The Truce of God, declared a bit later, declares certain periods during which warfare among Christians is prohibited.

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Scandinavian and East Central European rulers convert to Christianity c.1000 The conversion of the Scandinavian regions, much like that of East Central Europe, suggests that the adoption of the Christian religion goes hand in hand with monarchical power.

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FOUR

POLITICAL COMMUNITIES REORDERED (c.900–c.1050) The large-scale centralized governments of the ninth century dissolved in the tenth. The fission was least noticeable at Byzantium, where, although important landowning families emerged as brokers of patronage and power, the primacy of the emperor was never effectively challenged. In the Islamic world, however, new dynastic groups established themselves as regional rulers. In Western Europe, the Carolingian Empire collapsed and new political entities – some extremely local and weak, others quite strong and unified – emerged in its wake.

BYZANTIUM: THE STRENGTHS AND LIMITS OF CENTRALIZATION By 1025 the Byzantine Empire once again touched the Danube and Euphrates Rivers. Its emperors maintained the traditional cultural importance of Constantinople by carefully orchestrating the radiating power of the imperial court. At the same time, however, powerful men in both town and countryside gobbled up land and dominated the peasantry, challenging the dominance of the central government.

The Imperial Court The Great Palace of Constantinople, a sprawling building complex begun under Constantine, was expanded and beautified under his successors. (See Map 4.1.) Far more than just the symbolic emplacement of imperial power, it was the central command post of the Byzantine Empire. Servants, slaves, and grooms; top courtiers and learned clergymen;

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th

th

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cousins, siblings, and hangers-on of the emperor and empress lived within its walls. Other courtiers – civil servants, officials, scholars, military men, advisors, and other dependents – tried to live near the palace, for they were “on call” at every hour. The emperor had only to give short notice and all were expected to assemble for impromptu but nevertheless highly choreographed ceremonies. These were in themselves instruments of power; the emperors manipulated courtly formalities to indicate new favorites or to signal displeasure. The imperial court assiduously cultivated the image of perfect, stable, eternal order. The court was mainly a male preserve, but there were powerful women at the Great Palace as well. Consider Zoe (d.1050), the daughter of Constantine VIII. Contemporaries acknowledged her right to rule through her imperial blood, and through her marriages she “made” her husbands, Romanus III and Michael IV, into legitimate emperors. She and her sister even ruled jointly for one year (1042). But their biographer, Michael Psellus, a courtier who observed them with a jaundiced eye, was happy only when Zoe married: “The country needed a man’s supervision – a man at once strong-handed and very experienced in government, one who not only understood the present situation, but also any mistakes that had been made in the past, with their probable results.”1 There was also a “third gender” at the Great Palace: eunuchs – men who had been castrated. Unable to procreate and thus deemed less potent than other men, exotic because they were both male and yet not quite, they were chosen to occupy some of the highest government offices – financial, administrative, and military. Consider the career of John the Orphanotrophos. (So called because he ran an orphanage among his many other functions.) He was castrated by his parents because they intended for him to become a courtier. He began his career as a favorite of Emperor Basil II (r.976–1025). Thereafter, he served two more emperors and then engineered the elevation to the imperial throne of his brother, Michael IV (r.1034–1041) and his nephew, Michael V (r.1041–1042). Plate 4.1 suggests the power that contemporaries attributed to him, for he is shown enthroned as he orders the exile of Constantine Dalassenos, a powerful military commander and governor who had challenged the regime of Michael IV. Eunuchs were status symbols, markers of the emperor’s supreme power. Originally foreigners, they were increasingly recruited from the educated upper classes in the Byzantine Empire itself, even from imperial families, though John the Orphanotrophos seems to have come from a middle-class background. Eunuchs accompanied the emperor during his most sacred and vulnerable moments – when he removed his crown; when he participated in religious ceremonies; when he dreamed at night. They hovered by his throne. No one, it was thought, was as faithful, trustworthy, or spiritually pure as a eunuch.

Map 4.1 (facing page) Constantinople, c.1100

1 Michael Psellus, Zoe and Theodora, in A Short Medieval Reader, ed. Barbara H. Rosenwein (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2023), pp. 117–22 and in Reading the Middle Ages: Sources from Europe, Byzantium, and the Islamic World, 3rd ed., ed. Barbara H. Rosenwein (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018), pp. 200–5.

Byzantium: The Strengths and Limits of Centralization

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Plate 4.1 John the Orphanotrophos Orders the Exile of Constantine Dalassenos (12th cent.). The Synopsis of Histories, a chronicle by John Skylitzes (d.1101), was copied and lavishly illustrated. This miniature depicts the time when, according to Skylitzes, eunuch John the Orphanotrophos was ruling on behalf of his brother, the epileptic Emperor Michael IV. Determined to punish Constantine Dalassenos, he here sends him into exile. Reading the scene from right to left, we see the Orphanotrophos stretching out his hand to command Dalassenos to be off; on the left, the unhappy exile is rowed out to sea.

A Wide Embrace and Its Tensions Emperor Basil II (r.976–1025), with whom John the Orphanotrophos got his start, liked to portray himself as a tireless warrior. Certainly, his epitaph reads that way: nobody saw my spear at rest, ... but I kept vigilant through the whole span of my life ..., marching bravely to the West, and as far as the very frontiers of the East.2 As ruler of the Byzantine Empire for nearly fifty years, Basil built on the achievements of his predecessors. They had pushed the Byzantine frontiers north to the Danube (taking half of the Bulgarian Empire), east beyond the Euphrates, and south to Antioch, Crete, and Cyprus (see Map 4.2). Basil thus inherited a fairly secure empire except for the threat from Rus’, further to the north (for this new political entity, see below, pp. 125–27). This he defanged through a diplomatic and religious alliance, as we shall see (p. 127). But if his borders were secure, Basil’s position was not. It was challenged by powerful landowning families from whose ranks his two predecessors had come. Members of the provincial elite – military and government officers, bishops, abbots, and others – benefited from a general quickening of the economy and the rise of new urban centers. They took advantage of their ascendency by buying land from still impoverished peasants as yet untouched by the economic upswing. No wonder they were called dynatoi (sing. dynatos), “powerful men.” Already, some forty years before Basil came to the throne, Emperor Romanus I Lecapenus (r.920–944) had bewailed in his Novel (New Law) of 934 the “intrusion” of the rich 2 Epitaph of Basil II, in Reading the Middle Ages, pp. 199–200.

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Naples

Dalassa

Empire at Basil’s accession (976) Empire at Basil’s death (1025)

into a village or hamlet for the sake of a sale, gift, or inheritance.... For the domination of these persons has increased the great hardship of the poor ... [and] will cause no little harm to the commonwealth unless the present legislation puts an end to it first.3

Map 4.2 The Byzantine Empire of Basil II, 976–1025

The dynatoi made military men their clients (even if they were not themselves military men) and sometimes seized the imperial throne itself. Basil had two main political goals: to stifle the rebellions of the dynatoi and to swell the borders of his empire. When the powerful Phocas and Scleros families of Anatolia, along with much of the Byzantine army, rebelled against him in 987, he created his own personal Varangian Guard, made up of Rus troops. Once victorious, Basil moved to enervate the dynatoi as a group. He reinforced the provisions of Romanus’s Novel and others like it by threatening to confiscate and destroy the estates of those who transgressed the rules. He changed the system of taxation so that the burden fell on large landowners rather than on the peasants. He relieved the peasants and others of local military duty in the themes by asking for money payments instead. This allowed him to shower wealth on the Varangian Guard and other mercenary troops. 3 Romanus I Lecapenus, Novel, in A Short Medieval Reader, pp. 115–17 and in Reading the Middle Ages, pp. 177–79.

Byzantium: The Strengths and Limits of Centralization

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At the same time, Basil launched attacks beyond his borders: south to Syria and beyond; east all the way to Georgia and Armenia; southwest to southern Italy; and west to the Balkans, where he conquered the whole of the Bulgarian Empire and reached the Adriatic coast. Basil’s victory over the Bulgarians used to be considered his defining feat, and in the fourteenth century he was given the epithet “Bulgar-Slayer.” But more recently historian Catherine Holmes has stressed the importance of Basil’s administrative – rather than military – achievements as he secured sufficient stability at the borders of Byzantium to ensure his government’s fiscal health. By the time of Basil’s death in 1025, the Byzantine Empire was no longer the tight fist centered on Anatolia that it had been in the dark days of the eighth century. On the contrary, it was an open hand: sprawling, multi-ethnic, and multilingual. (See Map 4.2.) To the east it embraced Armenians, Syrians, and Arabs; to the north it included Slavs and Bulgarians (by now themselves Slavic speaking) as well as Pechenegs, a Turkic group that had served as allies of Bulgaria; to the west, in the Byzantine toe of Italy, the Byzantine Empire included Lombards, Italians, and Greeks. There must have been Muslims right in the middle of Constantinople: a mosque there, built in the eighth century, was restored and reopened in the eleventh. The emperor employed Rus as his elite troops (the Varangian Guard), and by the mid-eleventh century, his mercenaries included “Franks” (mainly from Normandy), Arabs, and Bulgarians as well. All this openness went only so far, however. Toward the middle of the eleventh century, the Jews of Constantinople were expelled and resettled in a walled quarter in Pera, on the other side of the Golden Horn (see Map 4.1 on p. 120). Even though they did not expel Jews so dramatically, many other Byzantine cities forbade Jews from mixing with Christians. Around the same time, the rights of Jews as “Roman citizens” were denied; henceforth, in law at least, they had only servile status. The Jewish religion was condemned as a heresy. Ethnic diversity and the emergence of the dynatoi fueled regional political movements that further threatened centralized imperial control. In southern Italy, where the Byzantines ruled through an official called a catapan, Norman mercenaries hired themselves out to Lombard rebels, Muslim emirs, and others with local interests. In the second half of the eleventh century, the Normans began their own conquest of the region. On Byzantium’s eastern flank, dynatoi families rose to high positions in government. The Dalasseni family was fairly typical of this group. Its founder, who took the family name from Dalassa, a city near Caesarea in Anatolia, was an army leader and governor of Antioch at the end of the tenth century. One of his sons, Theophylact, became governor of “Iberia” – not Spain but rather a theme on the very eastern edge of the Empire. Another, Constantine (the man exiled by John the Orphanotrophos), inherited his father’s position at Antioch. With estates scattered throughout Anatolia and a network of connections to other powerful families, the Dalasseni sometimes defied the emperor (as Constantine did Michael IV) and even coordinated rebellions against him. From the end of the tenth century, imperial control had to contend with the decentralizing forces of provincial dynatoi such as these. But the emperors were not dethroned, and Basil II triumphed over the families that challenged his reign to emerge even stronger than before.

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The Formation of Rus’4 One element of his strength came with his alliance with the Rus. Known as Vikings in the West, the Rus originally came from Scandinavia, where petty kings gave their warrior followers the opportunity to acquire wealth by supplying them with weapons and housing and by controlling regional agricultural production, indigenous crafts, and long-distance trade. Consider Birka, a settlement in eastern Sweden with access to the Baltic Sea. A powerhouse of manufacture as well as exchange, it and places like it produced the items – pendants, amulets, jugs, beads, bridles, and weapons – that the Rus brought with them to the region of Lake Ladoga and Novgorod (Lake Ilmen). (See Map 4.3.) Viking Birka had town ramparts, a market, houses, wells, track-ways, water barricades, and a large round hillfort. Archaeologists have excavated its numerous grave mounds, revealing a cosmopolitan and warlike culture. Beneath some mounds are simple burial pits, but others contain coffins (the nails still survive), and still others boast large chambers full of weapons, sewing tools, beads, and sometimes include feather beds for the corpse; a few make room for horses. Many people were buried with adornments: clothing, brooches, arm rings, and finger rings – including one inscribed in Arabic, “To Allah,” though the owner probably had no idea of its meaning. Recently DNA analysis has shown that the most remarkable grave at Birka was that of a woman. She was fully dressed, outfitted with a large set of weapons, and accompanied by two horses. Whether she was a warrior or not, she certainly had a very high status in this clearly stratified society. Perhaps she had taken on the persona of a Valkyrie – the armed divine female escorts of fallen heroes to the other world’s Hall of the Slain. Or perhaps she was indeed a fighter in Viking raids. It is well known that women accompanied men on their long-distant journeys. The Vikings who went to Lake Ilmen, Novgorod, and eventually still further, to the region of Kiev (Kyiv), trapped animals for furs and captured people – the indigenous Slavs inhabiting these regions – as slaves. Taking advantage of river networks and other trade routes that led as far south as Iraq and as far west as Austria, they exchanged their human and animal cargos for silks and silver, forming crucial links between east and west, north and south. Such links explain why an Arabic-style finger ring was found in a grave at Birka and why Abbasid silver coins were hoarded there and at many other Scandinavian sites (see Plate 4.2). Other long-distance traders in the region were the Khazars, a Turkic-speaking people, whose powerful state, straddling the

Plate 4.2 Silver Hoard from Grimestad, near Kaupang (921). This coin hoard from Norway boasted seventy-seven Islamic coins as well as arm rings, neck rings, rods, and other silver items, some of them already cut into “hacksilver” to exchange by weight. Hoards similar to this – some with copper and counterfeit coins as well – have been found throughout Russia, in Europe along the Rhine River, in northern Poland and Germany, and, of course, in Scandinavia.

4 Rus without the apostrophe is used for the people; Rus’ for the state.

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Black and Caspian Seas, dominated part of the silk road in the ninth century. The Khazars were ruled by a khagan (meaning khan of khans), much like the Avars, and, like other pastoralists of the Eurasian steppes, they were tempted and courted by the religions of neighboring states. Unusually, their elites opted for Judaism. The Rus were influenced enough by Khazar culture to adopt the title of khagan for the ruler of their own fledgling ninth-century state at Novgorod, the first Rus polity, but they did not embrace Judaism. Eventually northern Rus moved south – to the region of Kiev – but this was not easy, for the area was already populated by Slavs and others. Moreover, Kiev was very close to the Khazars, to whom it is likely that the Kievan Rus at first paid tribute. While on occasion attacking both Khazars and Byzantines, Rus’ rulers saw their greatest advantage in good relations with the Byzantines, who wanted their fine furs, wax, honey, and – especially – slaves. In the course of the tenth century, with the blessing of the Byzantines, the Rus brought the Khazar Empire to its knees. Nurtured through trade and military agreements, good relations between Rus’ and Byzantium were sealed through religious conversion. By the mid-tenth century, quite a few Christians lived in Rus’. But the official conversion of the Rus to Christianity came under Vladimir (r.980–1015). Ruler of Rus’ by force of conquest (though from a princely family), Vladimir was anxious to court the elites of both Novgorod and Kiev. He did

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so through wars with surrounding peoples that brought him and his troops plunder and tribute. Strengthening his position still further, in 988 he adopted the Byzantine form of Christianity, took the name “Basil” in honor of Emperor Basil II, and married Anna, the emperor’s sister. Christianization of the general population seems to have followed quickly. Vladimir’s conversion was part of a larger process of state formation and Christianization taking place around the year 1000. In Scandinavia and East Central Europe, as we shall see, the end result was Catholic kingships rather than the Orthodox principality that Rus’ became. Given its geographic location, it was anyone’s guess how Rus’ would go: it might have converted to the Roman form of Christianity of its western neighbors. Or it might have turned to Judaism under the influence of the Khazars. Or, indeed, it might have adopted Islam, given that the Volga Bulgars had converted to Islam in the early tenth century. It is likely that Vladimir chose the Byzantine form of Christianity because of the prestige of the Empire under Basil.

DIVISION AND DEVELOPMENT IN THE ISLAMIC WORLD While at Byzantium the forces of decentralization were relatively feeble, they carried the day in the Islamic world. Where once the caliph at Baghdad or Samarra could boast collecting taxes from Kabul (today in Afghanistan) to Benghazi (today in Libya), in the eleventh century a bewildering profusion of regional groups and dynasties divided the Islamic world. Yet this was in general a period of prosperity and intellectual blossoming.

The Emergence of Regional Powers The Muslim conquest had not eliminated, but rather papered over, local powers and regional affiliations. While the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates remained strong, they imposed their rule through their governors and army. But when the caliphate became weak, as it did in the tenth and eleventh centuries, old and new regional interests came to the fore. A glance at a map of the Islamic world c.1000 (Map 4.4) shows, from east to west, the main new groups that emerged: the Samanids, Buyids, Hamdanids, Fatimids, and Zirids. But the map hides the many territories dominated by even smaller independent rulers. North of the Fatimid Caliphate, al-Andalus had a parallel history. Its Umayyad ruler took the title of caliph in 929, but in the eleventh century he too was unable to stave off political fragmentation. The key cause of the weakness of the Abbasid caliphate was lack of revenue. When landowners, governors, or recalcitrant military leaders in the various regions of the Islamic world refused to pay taxes into the treasury, the caliphs had to rely on the rich farmland of Iraq, long a stable source of income. But a deadly revolt lasting from 869 to 883 by the Zanj – black slaves from sub-Saharan East Africa who had been put to work to turn

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q

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Map 4.4 Fragmentation of the Islamic World, c.1000

marshes into farmland – devastated the Iraqi economy. Although the revolt was put down and the head of its leader was “displayed on a spear mounted in front of [the winning general] on a barge,” there was no chance for the caliphate to recover.5 In the tenth century the Qaramita (sometimes called “Carmathians”), a sect of Shi‘ites based in Arabia, found Iraq easy prey. The result was decisive: the caliphs could not pay their troops. New men – military leaders with their own armies – took the reins of power. They preserved the Abbasid line, but they reduced the caliph’s political authority to nothing. The new rulers represented groups that had long awaited their ascendency. The Buyids, for example, belonged to ancient warrior tribes from the mountains of Iran. Even in the tenth century, most were relatively new converts to Islam. Bolstered by long-festering local discontent, one of them became “commander of commanders” in 945. Thereafter, the Buyids, with help from their own Turkish mercenaries, dominated the region south of the Caspian Sea, including Baghdad. For a time, they presided over a glittering culture that supported (and was in turn celebrated by) scholars, poets, artists, and craftsman. Yet already in the eleventh century, competition between Buyid princes led to the regionalization and fragmentation of their state, an atomization echoed elsewhere in the Islamic world and in much of Western Europe as well. 5 Al-Tabari, The Defeat of the Zanj Revolt, in A Short Medieval Reader, pp. 89–93 and in Reading the Middle Ages, pp. 171–76.

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The Fatimids The most important of the new regional rulers were the Fatimids. They, like the Qaramita (and, increasingly in the course of time, the Buyids), were Shi‘ites, taking their name from Muhammad’s daughter Fatimah, wife of Ali. The Fatimids professed a particular form of Shi‘ism called Isma‘ilism. The Fatimid leader claimed not only to be the true imam, descendant of Ali, but also the Mahdi, the “divinely guided” messiah, come to bring justice on earth. Because of this, the Fatimids were proclaimed “caliphs” by their followers – the true “successors” of the Prophet. Allying with the Berbers in North Africa, by 910 the Fatimids established themselves as rulers in what is today Tunisia and Libya. Within a half-century they had moved eastward (largely abandoning the Maghreb to the Zirids), to rule Egypt, southern Syria, and the western edge of the Arabian Peninsula. They cultivated contacts far beyond their borders as well: across the Mediterranean to Europe and Byzantium and beyond to India and China. Islamic religious scholars often served as the human links among these regions, financing their many voyages to noted centers of learning by acting as merchants or mercantile agents. A flourishing textile industry kept Egypt’s economy buoyant: farmers produced flax (not only for Egypt but for Tunisia and Sicily as well); industrial laborers turned the plant fibers into linen; tailors cut and sewed garments; and traders exported the products from each phase or sold them at home. Public and private investment in both the agricultural and industrial sides of flax production guaranteed its success. We know about this vibrant Egyptian society in part because of a trove of archival materials left by the Jewish community of Fustat. Following custom, the Jews there established a geniza – a repository for anything containing the name of God. While materials in genizot were usually destined for burial, the ones at Fustat just kept piling up, starting in the eleventh century and continuing for a thousand years. In effect, the geniza at Fustat served as the garbage dump for everything in Hebrew that was worn out or no longer needed. The documents from the Fatimid period – including letters, amulets, contracts, lawsuits, even shopping lists – reveal a cosmopolitan, middle-class community that served as a linchpin for the trade that flourished across the Mediterranean Sea and beyond. Plate 4.3 shows one side of some of the thousands of letters found in the geniza. Written by a Jew living in Alexandria to the wealthy and influential Nahray ben Nissim, a Jewish communal leader in Fustat, the letter suggests some of the vast networks involved in commerce as well as their perils – in this case piracy and enslavement. Wealthy and sophisticated, the Fatimids created a new capital city, Cairo, filling it with palaces, libraries, shops, pavilions, gardens, private houses, and mosques which, following the Shi‘ite practice of calling the congregation to prayer from the mosque door or roof, lacked minarets. As Shi‘ites, too, they emphasized the commemoration of the dead (though Sunni Muslims often did so as well), hence the large Fatimid cemetery at Aswan (see Plate 4.4), filled with mudbrick tombs and mausolea (buildings for burials). Muhammad had

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Plate 4.3 Letter from Yshu‘a ha-Kohen to Nahray ben Nissim (1050). “Greetings,” begins this long letter, showering praise on Nahray before recounting the immediate issue: three captive Jews have been brought to Alexandria by traders from Amalfi, who are anxious to sell them. (For Amalfi, see Map 4.6 on p. 147.) Before their capture (or purchase) by the Amalfitans, the three had been taken from their ship by Byzantine pirates, robbed of their merchandise, and enslaved. Now in Alexandria, these Jews must be ransomed, and Yshu‘a is trying to raise the money and provide for their upkeep. But even with the “bargain price” offered by the Amalfitans and a bit of money offered in donation by others in Alexandria, he still needs forty dinars. Indirectly, and with plenty of flattering words, he asks Nahray, highly reputed for his charity, to help.

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Plate 4.4 Fatimid Cemetery at Aswan (11th cent.). Five hundred miles south of Cairo, an exuberant architectural imagination held sway at the Fatimid cemetery at Aswan. Here a series of mausolea with cubic bases topped by domes are particularly inventive in the ways in which they manage the zone that bridges dome and base by using octagonal structures with wing-like projections.

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prohibited ostentatious burials, but that ban was skirted as long as the tombs were open to the elements. That accounts for the many windows in the mausolea at Aswan. The Fatimids achieved the height of their power before the mid-eleventh century. But during the rule of al-Mustansir (1036–1094), economic and climatic woes, factional fighting within the army, and a rebellion by Turkish troops weakened the regime. By the 1070s, the Fatimid caliphate had lost most of Syria and North Africa to other rulers.

The Umayyads of al-Andalus The Umayyad rulers at Córdoba experienced a similar rise and fall. Abd al-Rahman III (r.912–961) took the title caliph in 929 to rival the Fatimids and to assume the luster of the ruler of Baghdad. “He bore [signs of ] piety on his forehead and religious and secular authority upon his right hand,” wrote a court poet of the new caliph.6 An active military man backed by an army made up mainly of Slavic slaves, Abd al-Rahman defeated his rivals and imposed his rule on all of al-Andalus. Under the new caliph and his immediate successors, Islamic Iberia became a powerful centralized state. Even so, regional elites sought to carve out their own polities. Between 1009 and 1031 bitter civil war undid the dynasty’s power. After 1031, al-Andalus was split into small principalities, taifas, that were ruled by local strongmen. Thus, in the Islamic world, far more decisively than at Byzantium, newly powerful regional rulers came to the fore. Nor did the fragmentation of power end at the regional level. To pay their armies, Islamic rulers often resorted to granting their commanders iqta – lands and villages – from which the iqta-holder was expected to gather revenues and pay their troops. As we shall see, this was a bit like the Western European institution of the fief. It meant that even minor commanders could act as local governors, tax-collectors, and military leaders. But there was a major difference between this institution and the system of fiefs and vassals in the West: while vassals were generally tied to one region and one lord, the troops under Islamic local commanders were often foreigners and former slaves, unconnected to any particular place and easily wooed by rival commanders.

Cultural Unity, Religious Polarization The emergence of local strongmen meant not the end of Arab court culture but a multiplicity of courts, each attempting to out-do one another in brilliant artistic, scientific, theological, and literary productions. The Buyids created what one modern scholar, Joel L. Kraemer, has called a renaissance of literary culture echoing that of Greek antiquity. The Fatimids embroidered on Islamic themes. Equally impressive was the Umayyad court at Córdoba, the wealthiest and showiest city of the West. It boasted seventy public libraries 6 Ibn ‘Abd Rabbihi, Praise Be to Him, in A Short Medieval Reader, pp. 93–98 and in Reading the Middle Ages, pp. 179–84.

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in addition to the caliph’s private library of perhaps 400,000 books. The Córdoban Great Mosque was a center for scholars from the rest of the Islamic world, while nearly thirty free schools were set up throughout the city. Córdoba was noteworthy not only because of the brilliance of its intellectual and artistic life but also because of the role women played in it. Elsewhere in the Islamic world there were certainly a few unusual women associated with cultural and scholarly life. But at Córdoba this was a general phenomenon: women were not only doctors, teachers, and librarians but also worked as copyists for the many books widely in demand. Male scholars were, however, everywhere the norm, moving easily from court to court. Ibn Sina (980–1037), who began his career serving the ruler at Bukhara in Central Asia, is one famous example. In the West, his name was Latinized as Avicenna. From Bukhara he traveled westward to Gurganj, Rayy, and Hamadan before ending up for thirteen years at the court of Isfahan in Iran. Sometimes in favor with regional governors and sometimes decidedly not (he was even briefly imprisoned), he nevertheless managed to study and practice medicine and to write numerous books on the natural sciences and philosophy. His pioneering systematization of Aristotle laid the foundations of future philosophical thought in the field of logic. Despite its political disunity, then, the Islamic world of the tenth and eleventh centuries remained in many ways an integrated culture. This was partly due to the model of intellectual life fostered by the Abbasids, which even in decline was copied by the new regional rulers. It was also due to the common Arabic language, the glue that bound the astronomer at Córdoba to the merchant at Cairo. Writing in Arabic, Islamic authors could count on a large reading public. Invented in China, paper was introduced to the Islamic world in the eighth century. Baghdad and Damascus became centers of production, turning rags into sheets that were sold throughout Islamic lands and beyond. Notes such as the letter in Plate 4.3, were written on paper. Finer manuscripts and books were churned out quickly via a well-honed division of labor: scribes, illustrators, page cutters, and binders specialized in each task. Though unknown in Europe and scorned in Byzantium, paper was behind the extraordinary intellectual, fanciful, and practical written outpouring that characterized the medieval Islamic world. Children were sent to school to learn the Qur’an; listening, reciting, reading, and writing were taught in elementary schools along with good manners and religious obligations. Although a conservative educator like al-Qabisi (d.1012) warned that “[a girl] being taught letter-writing or poetry is a cause for fear,” he also insisted that parents send both boys and girls to school to learn “vocalization, spelling, good handwriting, [and] good reading.” He even admitted that learning about “famous men and of chivalrous knights” might be acceptable.7

7 Al-Qabisi, A Treatise Detailing the Circumstances of Students and the Rules Governing Teachers and Students, in Reading the Middle Ages, pp. 211–13.

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Educated in similar texts across the whole Islamic world and speaking a common language, Muslims could easily communicate, and this facilitated open networks of trade. With no national barriers to commerce and few regulations, merchants regularly moved from one region to another, dealing in various and sometimes exotic goods. From England came tin and salt; ivory, slaves, and gold arrived from Timbuktu in west-central Africa. Slavic regions and Rus’ supplied slaves, gold, amber, and copper. Merchants from Islamic lands set up permanent headquarters in China and South-East Asia to sell flax and linen from Egypt (as we have seen), pearls from the Persian Gulf, and ceramics from Iraq. Much of this trade was financed by enterprising government officials and other elites, whose investments in land at home paid off handsomely. Ironically, only the religion of Islam pulled Islamic culture apart. In the tenth century the split between the Sunnis and Shi‘ites widened as various sects elaborated on the foundations of their divergent beliefs. One example comes from the Buyid period in Baghdad, when the Imami (or Twelver) strand of Shi‘ism found an eloquent spokesman in al-Mufid (d.1022). The use of reason (guided by revelation) in theology and the need for interpretation in jurisprudence were at the core of al-Mufid’s teachings. He argued that the imamate (the true successors of Muhammad) resided not in the caliph nor in any political ruler. Rather, it inhered in men of great religious learning, and it would continue to do so until the end of time, when the Mahdi – the Islamic redeemer – would reappear. Imami quietism – its dissociation of Shi‘ism from political power – was useful to the Buyids. Ruling a primarily Sunni population in Iraq and bolstered by a mainly Sunni Turkish army, the Buyids allowed the Abbasid caliphs to remain at Baghdad, yet deprived them of a political role. Much like the Buyids, many of the other new dynasties – the Fatimids and the Qaramita especially – took advantage of the splintering of Islamic beliefs to bolster their power.

THE WEST: FRAGMENTATION AND RESILIENCE Political fragmentation was equally true in Western Europe. Historians speak of “France,” “Germany,” and “Italy” in the post-Carolingian period as a shorthand for designating broad geographical areas, and that will be the practice in this book as well. But there were no national states, only various regions with more or less clear borders and rulers with more or less authority. In some places – in parts of “France,” for example – regions as small as a few square miles were under the control of different lords who acted, in effect, as independent rulers. Yet this same period saw consolidated European kingdoms beginning to emerge. To the north were England, Scotland, and two relatively unified Scandinavian states – Denmark and Norway. Toward the east were Bohemia, Poland, and Hungary. In the center of Europe, a powerful royal dynasty from Saxony, the Ottonians, came to rule an empire stretching from the North Sea to Rome.

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New Peoples Arrive in the West Three new peoples arrived in Western Europe during the ninth and tenth centuries: the Vikings, the Muslims, and the Magyars (called Hungarians by the rest of Europe). (See Map 4.5.) While in the short run, they wreaked havoc on previous arrangements of land and people, in the long run, they were absorbed into the European population and became constituents of a newly prosperous and aggressive European civilization.

Vikings While some Scandinavians made forays eastward toward Novgorod, others traveled to western shores. A few went to fight for foreign kings and share in the fruits of their victories. Others raided under Viking leaders. Traveling in long, narrow, and shallow ships powered by oars, wind, and sails (see Plate 4.5), they navigated the coasts and rivers of France, England, Scotland, and Ireland, terrorizing not only the inhabitants but also the armies mustered to fight them: “Many a time an army was assembled to oppose them, but as soon as they were to join battle, always for some cause it was agreed to disperse, and always in the end [the Vikings] had the victory,” wrote a chronicler in southern England.8 Some Vikings crossed the Atlantic, making themselves at home in Iceland or continuing on to Greenland or, in about 1000, reaching the coast of the North American mainland. While the elites came largely for booty, lesser men, eager for land, traveled with their wives and children to settle where the Vikings had a foothold, especially in Ireland, Scotland, and England. In France, they gave their name to the region of Normandy, a word deriving from “Northmen,” another term for the Vikings. A small contingent of Vikings settled for a short time far across the Atlantic, at L’Anse aux Meadows. These attempts to find new homes, many of them lasting and successful, led Judith Jesch recently to reconsider the Viking “invasions” as better termed a “diaspora.” In Ireland, where their settlements were in the east and south, the newcomers added their own claims to rule an island already fragmented among several competing dynasties. In Scotland, however, in the face of Norse settlements in the north and west, the natives drew together under kings who allied themselves with churchmen and other powerful local leaders. Cináed mac Ailpín (Kenneth I MacAlpin; d.858) established a hereditary dynasty of kings, and by c.900, most people in Alba, the nucleus of the future Scotland, shared a common sense of Scottish identity. England underwent a similar process of unification. Initially divided into small and competing kingdoms, it was weak prey in the face of the Vikings. By the end of the ninth century, the newcomers were plowing fields in northeastern England and living in accordance with their own laws, giving the region the name Danelaw. In Wessex, the southernmost English kingdom, King Alfred the Great (r.871–899) bought time and peace by 8 The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, in A Short Medieval Reader, pp. 129–30 and in Reading the Middle Ages, pp. 233–34.

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Map 4.5 Vikings, Muslims, and Hungarians on the Move, 9th and 11th cent.

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Plate 4.5 Oseberg Ship (834). This large ceremonial ship was found buried in a grave mound near the Oslo fjord in 1904. Within were the skeletons of two women, one more than eighty years old, the other in her early fifties. They were accompanied by high-quality artifacts, delicate foods (such as fruits, berries, and walnuts), and many animals and birds. Wooden carvings, including those of the ship’s prow and stern-post, attest to the intricacy and finesse of Viking workmanship, characterized by interlaced animal motifs.

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paying tribute to the invaders with the income from a new tax, later called the Danegeld. (It eventually became the basis of a relatively lucrative taxation system in England.) In 878, inspiring the previously cowed English to follow him, Alfred led a series of raids against the Vikings in his kingdom, eventually camping outside their stronghold until their leader surrendered and accepted baptism. Thereafter the pressure of invasion eased somewhat as Alfred reorganized his army, set up a network of strongholds (burhs), and created a fleet of ships – a real navy. An uneasy stability was achieved, with the Vikings dominating the east of England and Alfred and his successors gaining control over most of the rest. On the Continent, the invaders were absorbed above all in Normandy, where in 911 their leader Rollo converted to Christianity and received Normandy as a duchy from the Frankish king Charles the Simple. Although many of the Normans adopted sedentary ways, some of their descendants in the early eleventh century ventured to the Mediterranean, where they established themselves as rulers of petty principalities in southern Italy. From there, in 1061, the Normans began the conquest of Sicily.

Muslims Sicily, once Byzantine, was the rich and fertile plum of the conquests achieved by the Muslim invaders of the ninth and tenth centuries. That they took the island attests to the power of a new Muslim navy developed by the dynasty that preceded the Fatimids in Ifriqiya. Briefly held by the Fatimids, by mid-century Sicily was under the control of independent Islamic princes, and Muslim immigrants were swelling the population. Elsewhere (apart, of course, from Iberia) the Muslim presence in Western Europe was more ephemeral. In the first half of the tenth century, Muslim raiders pillaged southern France, northern Italy, and the Alpine passes. But these were quick expeditions, largely attacks on churches and monasteries. Some Muslims established themselves at La GardeFreinet, in Provence, becoming landowners in the region and lords of Christian serfs. They even hired themselves out as occasional fighters for the wars that local Christian aristocrats were waging against one another. But they made the mistake of capturing for ransom the holiest man of his era, Abbot Majolus of Cluny. Outraged, the local aristocracy finally came together and ousted the Muslims from their midst.

Magyars (Hungarians) By contrast, the Magyars remained. “Magyar” was and is their name for themselves, though the rest of Europe called them “Hungarians,” from the Slavic “Onoghur,” a people already settled in the Carpathian basin in the seventh century. Before moving into the Danube region from the Urals, the Magyars practiced settled farming alongside the animal husbandry that required annual pasturing migrations. Herding cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, and horses, they were organized by clans. Because they were renowned as horsemen and effective warriors – experts at using bows and arrows, sabers, and combat axes – they

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were employed in military enterprises by European and Byzantine rulers. Between 885 and 902, the Hungarians, as we may now call them, conquered much of the Carpathian basin for themselves. From there, for over fifty years, they raided into Germany, Italy, and even southern France. At the same time, however, they worked for various western rulers. Until 937 they spared Bavaria, for example, because they were allies of its duke. Gradually they left off pastoralism in favor of settled farming, and their polity coalesced into the Kingdom of Hungary (see below, p. 156). This is no doubt a major reason for the end of their attacks. Nevertheless, the cessation of their raids was widely credited to the German king Otto I (r.936–973), who won a major victory over a Hungarian army at the battle of Lechfeld in 955.

Public Power and Private Relationships The invasions left new political arrangements in their wake. Unlike the Byzantines and Muslims, European rulers had no mercenaries and no salaried officials. They commanded others by ensuring personal loyalty. The Carolingian kings had had their fideles – their faithful men. Tenth-century rulers relied even more on ties of dependency: they needed their “men” (homines), their “vassals” (vassalli). Whatever the term, all were armed retainers who fought for a lord. Sometimes these subordinates held land from their lord, either as a reward for their military service or as an inheritance for which services were due. The term for such an estate, fief ( feodum), gave historians the word “feudalism” to describe the social and economic system created by the relationships among lords, vassals, and fiefs. During the last half century, however, the term has provoked great controversy. Some historians argue that it has been used in too many different and contradictory ways to mean anything at all. Was it a mode of exploiting the land that involved lords and serfs? A condition of anarchy and lawlessness? Or a political system of ordered gradations of power, from the king on down? Scholars have used all of these definitions. Another area of contention is the date for the emergence of feudal institutions – around the year 1000, as used to be argued? Or in the twelfth century, as more recent historians maintain? In this book the word feudalism is generally avoided, but the institutions of personal dependency that historians associate with that term cannot be ignored. As for when they took hold, the answer depends on the region – in most of France by the late tenth century, in much of Germany in the twelfth, and in many parts of Italy never.

Lords and Vassals Personal dependency took many forms. Of the three traditional “orders” recognized by writers in the ninth through eleventh centuries – those who pray (the oratores), those who fight (the bellatores), and those who work (the laboratores) – the top two were free. The pray-ers (the monks) and the fighters (the nobles and their lower-class counterparts, the knights) participated in prestigious kinds of subordination, whether as vassals, lords, or

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Plate 4.6 The Maccabean Revolt Depicted (first half of 11th cent.). To illustrate a battle of the Maccabees against the Syrians, the artist drew warriors decked out in wild colors. On the left, the army of Judas (the leader of the Jews) attacks the enemy. Some of the fighters wear chainmail armor; all are protected by helmets, and most hold shields and spears. The artist included stirrups in other battle scenes but forgot to include them here. As for the Syrian army: according to 1 Macc 6:35–37, it used elephants, “and upon the beast there were strong wooden towers ... and upon every one [were] thirty-two valiant men, who fought from above.” Never having seen elephants, the artist made them up.

both. Indeed, they were usually both: a typical warrior was lord of several vassals and the vassal of another lord. In Plate 4.6 the artist has depicted the battle of the Jewish Maccabees against Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the Seleucid ruler of Syria who invaded Jerusalem in 167 bce, by drawing on his imagination, the images of the warriors he found in other books, and his own observations of the knights of his day. The manuscript in which this illustration comes was made in a Catalan monastery, proof (if any were needed) that monasteries participated in the world of the warriors. Monasteries normally had vassals to fight for them, and their abbots in turn served as vassals of a king or other lord. At the low end of the social scale, poor vassals looked to their lords to feed, clothe, house, and arm them. At the upper end, vassals looked to their lords to enrich them with more fiefs. Some women were vassals, and some were lords (or, rather, “ladies,” the female version). Many upper-class laywomen participated in the society of warriors and monks as wives and mothers of vassals and lords and as landowners in their own right. Others entered convents and became oratores themselves. Through its abbess or a man standing in for her, a convent was itself often the “lord” of vassals. Vassalage was considered to be voluntary and public. The personal fidelity that the Carolingian kings required of the Frankish elites became more general, as all lords wanted the same assurance from their retainers. Over time a ceremony of deference came increasingly to mark the occasion: a man (a vassal-to-be) knelt and placed his hands together (in a position we associate with prayer) within the hands of another (his lord-to-be) who stood: this was the act of homage. The kneeling man said, “I promise to be your man.” He then rose and promised “fealty” – fidelity, trust, and service – which he swore with his hand on relics or a Bible. Then the vassal and the lord kissed. In an age when many people could not read, a public moment such as this represented a visual and verbal contract, binding the vassal and lord together with mutual obligations to help each other. On the other hand, these obligations were rarely spelled out, and a lord with many vassals, or a vassal with many lords, needed to satisfy numerous conflicting claims. “I am a loser only because

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of my loyalty to you,” Hugh of Lusignan complained to his lord, William of Aquitaine, after his expectations for reward were continually disappointed.9

Lords and Peasants At the lowest end of the social scale were those who worked: the peasants. In many regions of Europe, as power fell into the hands of local rulers, the distinction between “free” and “unfree” peasants began to blur; many peasants simply became “serfs,” dependents of lords. This was a heavy dependency, without prestige or honor. It was hereditary rather than voluntary: no serf did homage or fealty to his lord; no serf and lord kissed each other. Indeed, the upper classes barely noticed the peasants – except as sources of labor and revenue. In the tenth century, the three-field system became more prevalent, and the heavy moldboard plows that could turn wet, clayey northern soils came into wider use. Such plows could not work around fences, and they were hard to turn. They produced the characteristic “look” of medieval agriculture – long, furrowed strips in broad, open fields. Peasants knew very well which strips were “theirs” and which belonged to their neighbors. A team of oxen was normally used to pull the plow (see Plate 4.7), but horses (more efficient than oxen) were sometimes substituted. The result was surplus food and a better standard of living for nearly everyone. In search of still greater profits, some lords lightened the dues and services of peasants temporarily to allow them to open up new lands by draining marshes and cutting down forests. Other lords converted dues and labor services into money payments to provide themselves with ready cash. Peasants, too, benefited from paying fixed rents immune to

Plate 4.7 Peasants Plowing and Sowing (2nd quarter of 11th cent.). To decorate a calendar page for the month of January, an artist in England chose to show peasants plowing and sowing seed for the spring crop. The peasants in this picture are very prosperous, for they have the most up-to-date and wellequipped plow: not only is it pulled by four oxen, relieving the burden on the driver, but it also has wheels, a coulter (behind the wheel) to dig into the earth, and a moldboard to turn and aerate the soil.

9 Agreement between Count William of the Aquitainians and Hugh IV of Lusignan, in A Short Medieval Reader, pp. 106–11 and in Reading the Middle Ages, pp. 190–95.

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inflation. As the prices of agricultural products went up, peasants became small-scale entrepreneurs, selling their chickens and eggs at local markets and reaping a profit. In the eleventh century, and increasingly so in the twelfth, peasant settlements gained boundaries and focus, becoming real villages. The nucleus might be a lord’s castle – not a luxurious chateau but rather a defensive earthwork-and-timber structure. And/or it would be a church with its declared “protected zone,” including a cemetery, many houses of the living, and the barns, animals, and tools belonging to them. Boundary markers – sometimes simple stones, at other times real fortifications – announced not only the physical limits of the village but also its identity as a community. Villagers depended on each other: peasants had to share oxen or horses to pull their plows and they needed craftspeople to fix their plow wheels and shoe their draft animals. Variety was the hallmark of peasant society. In Saxony and other parts of Germany, free peasants prevailed. In France and England, most were serfs. In Italy, peasants ranged from small independent landowners to leaseholders; most were both, owning a parcel in one place and renting or leasing another nearby. Where the power of kings was weak, peasant obligations became part of systems of local rule. As landlords consolidated their power over their manors, they collected not only dues and services but also fees for the use of their flour mills, bake houses, and breweries. In some regions – parts of France and in Catalonia, for example – lords often built castles and exercised the power of the “ban”: the right to collect taxes, hear court cases, levy fines, and muster men for defense. These lords were “castellans.”

Warriors and Bishops Although the developments described here did not occur everywhere simultaneously (and in some places hardly at all), in the end the social, political, and cultural life of the West came to be dominated by landowners who styled themselves both military men (and on occasion women) and regional leaders. The men and their armed retainers shared a common lifestyle, living together, eating in the lord’s great hall, listening to bards sing of military exploits, hunting for recreation, competing with one another in military games. They fought in groups as well – as cavalry. In the month of May, when the grasses were high enough for their horses to forage, the war season began. To be sure, there were powerful vassals who lived on their own fiefs and hardly ever saw their lord – except for perhaps forty days out of the year, when they owed him military service. But they themselves were lords of knightly vassals who were not married and who lived and ate and hunted with them. The marriage bed, so important to the medieval aristocracy from the start, now took on new meaning. In the seventh and eighth centuries, aristocratic families had thought of themselves as large and loosely organized kin groups. They were not tied to any particular estate, for they had numerous properties, scattered all about. With wealth enough to go around, the rich practiced partible inheritance, giving land (though not in equal amounts) to all of their sons and daughters. The Carolingians “politicized” these family relations. As some men were elevated to positions of dazzling power, they took the opportunity to pick

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and choose their “family members,” narrowing the family circle. They also became more conscious of their male line, favoring sons over daughters. In the eleventh century, family definitions tightened even further. The claims of one son, often the eldest, overrode all else; to him went the family inheritance. (This is called “primogeniture”; but there were regions in which the youngest son was privileged, and there were also areas in which more equitable inheritance practices continued in place.) The heir in the new system traced his lineage only through the male line, backward through his father and forward through his own eldest son. What happened to the other sons? Some of them became knights, others monks. Nor should we forget that many became bishops. In many ways, the interests of bishops and lay nobles were similar: bishops were men of property, lords of vassals, and faithful to patrons, such as kings, who often were the ones to appoint them to their posts. In some places, bishops wielded the powers of a count or duke. Some bishops ruled cities. Nevertheless, bishops were also “pastors,” spiritual leaders charged with shepherding their flock, which included the laity, priests, and monks in their diocese (a district that gained clear definition in the eleventh century). As episcopal power expanded and was clarified in the course of the tenth and eleventh centuries, some bishops in southern France, joined by the upper crust of the aristocracy, sought to control the behavior of the lesser knights through a movement called the “Peace of God.” They were not satisfied with the current practices of peace-making, in which enemies, pressured by their peers, negotiated an end to – or at least a cessation of – hostilities. (Behind the negotiation was the threat of an ordeal – for instance a trial by battle whose outcome was in the hands of God – if the two sides did not come to terms.) The Peace movement began in 989 and grew apace, its forum the regional Church council, where bishops galvanized popular opinion, attracting both grand aristocrats and peasants to their gatherings. There, drawing upon bits and pieces of defunct Carolingian legislation, the bishops declared the Peace, and knights took oaths to observe it. At Bourges a particularly enthusiastic archbishop took the oath of the Peace of God himself: “I Aimon ... will wholeheartedly attack those who steal ecclesiastical property, those who provoke pillage, those who oppress monks, nuns, and clerics.”10 In the Truce of God, which by the 1040s was declared alongside the Peace, warfare between armed men was prohibited from Lent to Easter, while at other times of the year it was forbidden on Sunday (because that was the Lord’s Day), on Saturday (because that was a reminder of Holy Saturday), on Friday (because it symbolized Good Friday), and on Thursday (because it stood for Holy Thursday). To the bishops who promulgated the Peace and Truce of God, warriors fell conceptually into two groups: the sinful ones who broke the Peace, and the righteous ones who upheld Church law. Although the Peace and Truce were taken up by powerful lay rulers, eager to sanctify their own warfare and control that of others, the major initiative for the movement came from churchmen eager to draw clear boundaries between the realms of the sacred and the profane. 10 See Andrew of Fleury, Miracles of Saint Benedict, in A Short Medieval Reader, pp. 111–13 and in Reading the Middle Ages, pp. 196–98.

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Map 4.6 (facing page) Europe, c.1050

Cities and Merchants Such clerics were, in part, reacting to new developments in the secular realm: the growing importance of urban institutions and professions. Though much of Europe was rural, there were important exceptions. Italy was one place where urban life, though dramatically reduced in size and population, persisted. Italian power structures still reflected, if feebly, the political organization of ancient Rome. Whereas in northern France great lords built their castles in the countryside, in Italy they often constructed their family seats within the walls of cities still standing since Roman days. From these perches the nobles, both lay and religious, dominated the contado, the rural area around the city. In Italy, most peasants were renters or lease holders, paying cash to urban landowners. Peasants depended on city markets to sell their surplus goods; their customers included bishops, nobles, and middle-class shopkeepers, artisans, and merchants. At Milan, some merchants were prosperous enough to own houses in both the city center and the contado. Rome, although exceptional in size, was in some ways a typical Italian city. Powerful families built their castles within its walls and controlled the churches and monasteries in the vicinity. The population depended on local producers for their food, and merchants brought their wares to sell within its walls. Yet Rome was special apart from its size: it was the “see” – the seat – of the pope, the most important bishop in the West. In the tenth and early eleventh centuries, the papacy did not control the Church, but it had great prestige, and powerful families at Rome fought to place their sons at its head. Outside Italy cities were less prevalent. Yet even so we can see the rise of a new mercantile class. This was true less in the heartland of the old Carolingian Empire than on its fringes. In the north, England, north Germany, Denmark, and the Low Countries bathed in a sea of silver coins; commercial centers such as Haithabu reached their grandest extent in the mid-tenth century. Here merchants bought and sold slaves, honey, furs, wax, and pirates’ plunder. Haithabu was a city of wood, but a very rich one indeed. In the south of Europe, beyond the Pyrenees, Catalonia was equally commercialized, but in a different way. It imitated the Islamic world of al-Andalus (which was, in effect, in its backyard). The counts of Barcelona minted gold coins just like those at Córdoba. The villagers around Barcelona soon got used to selling their wares for money, and some of them became prosperous. They married into the aristocracy, moved to Barcelona to become city leaders, and lent money to ransom prisoners of the many wars waged to their south.

Western Kingship in an Age of Fragmentation In such a world, what did kings do? At the least, they stood for tradition, serving as symbols of legitimacy. At the most, they united kingdoms and maintained a measure of law and order. (See Map 4.6.)

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LITHUANIANS

Durham

Haithabu Vist

ula

PRUSSIANS

OBODRITES

Elb

Gniezno

e

Saxony

Magdeburg Hildesheim Merseburg Lower Lotharingia Cologne G er many Liège Trier Upper Worms

London

Lotharingia

Paris

er

B o h emi a

The Empire Swabia

Auxerre Autun

Od

Bavaria

Bourges

Cluny Verona

Auvergne

I t al y Santiago de Compostela

Catalonia

B y za n ti n e

Pisa

Marseille (Pisan 1077)

Spoleto Papal States Rome

E m p i re

Barcelona Amalfi (Pisan 1091)

Córdoba

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Alfred king (871 –899 ) = Ealhswith (of Mercia) Edward the Elder king (899 –924 )

Æthelflæd = Æthelred II of Mercia Æthelstan king (924 –939)

Ælfweard king (924 )

Edmund king (939–946 )

Eadwig king (955 – 959 )

Eadred Eadgifu king (946 –955 ) = Charles the Simple

Edith = Otto I of Germany

Eadhild = Hugh the Great

Edgar king ( 959 – 975)

Edward king (975–978 )

Æthelred II king (978 –1016 ) = Ælfgifu = Emma (daughter of Richard I, duke of Normandy) Edmund king (1016 )

Genealogy 4.1 Alfred and His Progeny

England King Alfred of England was a king of the second sort. In the face of the Viking invasions, he developed new mechanisms of royal government, creating institutions that became the foundation of English royal power. We have already seen his military reforms: a system of burhs and the creation of a navy. Alfred was interested in religious and intellectual reforms as well, for defense and education were closely linked in his mind. The causes of England’s troubles (in his view) were the sins of its people, brought on by their ignorance. Alfred intended to educate “all free-born men.” He brought scholars to his court and embarked on an ambitious program to translate key religious works from Latin into Old English, the vernacular. This was the spoken language of the people, but it also served some literary and administrative needs, and Alfred determined to increase its use. While England was not alone in its esteem of the vernacular – in Ireland, too, the vernacular language was more than oral – the British Isles were unusual by the standards of Continental Europe, where people spoke in the vernacular but wrote almost everything in Latin. As Alfred harried the Danes who were pushing south and westward, he gained recognition as king of all the English not under Viking rule. His law code, issued in the late 880s or early 890s, was the first by an English king in about two centuries. Unlike earlier codes, which had been drawn up for each separate kingdom, Alfred’s contained laws from and for all the English kingdoms in common. The king’s inspiration was the Mosaic law of the Bible. He believed that God had made a new covenant with the victors over the

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Vikings; as leader of his people, Alfred, like the Old Testament patriarch Moses, handed down a law for all. His successors, beneficiaries of that covenant, rolled back the Viking rule in England. (See Genealogy 4.1.) Many Vikings fled back to Scandinavia, but others remained. Converted to Christianity, their great men joined the English to attend the king at court. The whole kingdom was divided into districts called “shires” and “hundreds,” and in each shire, the king’s reeve – the sheriff – oversaw royal administration. Alfred’s grandson Æthelstan (r.924–939) took advantage of all the institutions that early medieval kingship offered. The first king to unite all the English kingdoms, he was crowned in a new ritual created by the archbishop of Canterbury to emphasize harmony and unity. When Æthelstan toured his realm (as he did constantly), he was accompanied by a varied and impressive retinue: bishops, nobles, thegns (the English equivalent of high-status vassals), scholars, foreign dignitaries, and servants. Well known as an effective military leader who extended his realm northwards, he received oaths of loyalty from the rulers of other parts of Britain. Churchmen attended him at court, and he in turn chose bishops and other churchmen. Like Alfred, he issued laws and expected local authorities – the ealdormen and sheriffs – to carry them out.11 From the point of view of control, however, Æthelstan had nowhere near the power over England that, say, Basil II had over Byzantium at about the same time. The dynatoi might sometimes chafe at the emperor’s directives and rebel, but the emperor had his Varangian Guard to put them down and an experienced, professional civil service to do his bidding. The king of England depended less on force and bureaucracy than on consensus. The great landowners supported the king because they found it to be in their interest. When they ceased to do so, the kingdom easily fragmented, becoming prey to civil war. Disunity was exacerbated by new attacks from the Vikings. One Danish king, Cnut (or Canute), even became king of England for a time (r.1016–1035). Yet under Cnut, English kingship did not change much. He kept intact much of the administrative, ecclesiastical, and military apparatus already established. By Cnut’s time, much of Scandinavia had been Christianized, and its traditions had largely merged with those of the rest of Europe.

Scandinavia Two European-style kingdoms – Denmark and Norway – developed in Scandinavia around the year 1000, and Sweden followed a bit later. In effect, the Vikings took home with them not only Europe’s plundered wealth but also its prestigious religion, with all its 11 Both ealdormen and sheriffs (shire reeves) were powerful men, and sometimes their functions were the same. Originally the ealdorman was the equivalent of a count or duke who ruled a large region independently of any king. That changed with Alfred and his successors, and by the tenth century the term referred to a local ruler, generally of a shire, who, while certainly a nobleman, acted (or was expected to act) as an agent of the king. Reeves were of more variable status: they were administrators, whether for kings, bishops, towns, or estates. Royal sheriffs were responsible for (among other things) ensuring the peace and meetings of the local court.

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implications for royal power and state-building. The impetus for conversion in Scandinavia came from two directions. From the south, missionaries such as the Frankish monk Ansgar (d.865) came to preach Christianity, seconded by German bishops, who imposed what claims they could make. Within Scandinavia itself, kings found it worth their while to ally with these Christian representatives to enhance their own position. When Danish King Harald Bluetooth (r.c.958–c.986), converted, he announced it with a meaningful ritual. Before converting to Christianity, he had buried his father in a mound – prestigious precisely for its non-Christian, pagan connotations. When he became Christian, he added a giant runestone to the mound and moved the body of his father into a new church he built for the occasion. The runestone included an image of Christ and announced in runes (letters that had magical connotations) that Harald had “won for himself all of Denmark and Norway and made the Danes Christian.”12 Thus Harald graphically turned a pagan site into a Christian one and, at the same time, announced that he was the ruler of a state that extended into what is today southern Sweden and parts of Norway. (His successors turned their sights further outward, culminating in the conquest of England and Norway, but that grand empire ended with the death of Cnut in 1035.) The processes of conversion and kingly rule in Norway are less easily traceable than in Denmark because there are fewer sources from the time. It is clear, however, that after King Olav Haraldsson (r.1015–1030) was baptized, he helped organize the Norwegian Church, was active in legislating Christian holidays and banning pagan cults, sent churchmen to evangelize Sweden, and managed through war and alliance to rule most of Norway. After his death he was recognized as a saint, another unifying rallying point. Building on those successes, Olav’s son Magnus the Good and then his half-brother, Harald Hardrada (r.1046– 1066), established a stable dynasty that lasted for four generations. The story of Sweden suffers even more fully from lack of written sources, but the archaeological remains are rich – Birka (see above, p. 125) is one good example. As was true at Birka, local settlements were often under the control of kings. Conversion to Christianity, initiated by missionaries from England and Germany in the ninth century, did not have much impact until the eleventh. While to some degree connected to the conversion of kings, Swedish Christianization was a slow and often voluntary process on the ground – quite literally “on the ground” because it is best traced through runestones erected by free commoners over burials and other important sites. Gradually these came to express adherence to the new faith. Even the eventual unification of Sweden in the mid-thirteenth century, Philip Line suggests, may have taken place less because a strong ruler at the top imposed his will than because the free elites agreed that it was in their best interests to form a confederation.

12 For an image and further discussion of this runestone, see The Jelling Monument, “Reading through Looking,” in Reading the Middle Ages, p. IV.

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Otto duke of Saxony (d.912 ) Henry I duke of Saxony king (919 –936) = Matilda Otto I king (936–973 ) king of Italy (951 –973 ) emperor (962 –973 ) Liudolf duke of Swabia (d.957 )

Henry duke of Bavaria (d.955 )

Otto II king (961 –983) emperor (967 –983) = Theophanu

Bruno archbishop of Cologne (d.965)

Matilda abbess of Quedlinburg

Otto Otto III Henry II duke of Swabia king (983–1002 ) duke of Bavaria (995 –1002 ) & Bavaria emperor (996–1002 ) king (1002 –1024 ) (d.982 ) emperor (1014 –1024 )

Gerberga = Louis IV, king of West Franks

Hadwig = Hugh the Great

Henry duke of Bavaria (d.995 )

Bruno bishop of Augsburg (d.1029 )

Gisela = Stephen of Hungary

Germany

Genealogy 4.2 The Ottonians

Unlike the kings of Sweden, the kings of “Germany” – the former East Frankish Kingdom – were powerful. It is true that as Carolingian power declined, Germany seemed ready to disintegrate into five duchies, each held by a military leader who exercised quasi-royal power. But, in the face of their own quarrels and the threats of outside invaders, the dukes needed and wanted a strong king. With the death in 911 of East Frankish King Louis the Child, they crowned one of themselves. Then, as attacks by the Hungarians increased, the dukes gave the royal title to their most powerful member, the duke of Saxony, Henry I (r.919–936), who proceeded to set up fortifications and reorganize his army, crowning his efforts with a major defeat of the Hungarians in 933. Soon after coming to the throne, Henry’s son Otto I (r.936–973) defeated all rivals as well as invading Slavic and Hungarian armies. Through astute marriage alliances and political appointments, he was able to get his family members to head up each of the duchies. In 951, he marched into Italy and took the Lombard crown. That gave Otto control, at least theoretically, of much of northern Italy. His victory at Lechfeld in 955 ended the Hungarian threat, and in the same year, he defeated a Slavic group, the Obodrites, who inhabited the territory between the Elbe and the Oder Rivers. (See Map 4.6.) Conquests such as these brought tribute, plum positions to disburse, and lands to give away, ensuring Otto a following among the great men of the realm. Little wonder that in 962 he received

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the imperial crown from the pope at Rome, an act that recognized his far-flung power and burnished his image as a new Charlemagne. Otto I’s successors, Otto II (r.961–983), Otto III (r.983–1002) – hence the dynastic name “Ottonians” – and Henry II (r.1002–1024), built on his achievements. (See Genealogy 4.2 on p. 151.) Granted power by the magnates, they gave back in turn, distributing land and appointing their own supporters to duchies, counties, and bishoprics. But the power of these princes was tempered by hereditary claims and plenty of lobbying by influential men at court and at the great assemblies that met with the king to hammer out policies. The role of kings in filling bishoprics and archbishoprics was particularly important to them because, unlike counties and duchies, those positions could not be inherited. Otto I created a ribbon of new bishoprics along his eastern border, endowed them with extensive lands, and subjected the local peasantry to episcopal overlordship. Throughout Germany bishops had the right to collect revenues and call men to arms. In fact, bishops and archbishops constituted the backbone of Ottonian rule. Once he had chosen the bishop (usually with the consent of the clergy of the cathedral over which the bishop was to preside), the king received a gift – a token of episcopal support – in return. Then the king “invested” the new prelate in his post by participating in the ceremony that installed him into office. (See Plate 5.6 on p. 183.) Archbishop Bruno of Cologne is a good – if extreme – example of the symbiotic relations between Church and State in the German realm. An ally of the king (as were almost all the bishops), he was also Otto I’s brother. Right after he was invested as archbishop in 953, he was appointed by Otto to be duke of Lotharingia and to put down a local rebellion. Later Bruno’s biographer, Ruotger, strove mightily to justify Bruno’s role as a warrior-bishop: Some people ignorant of divine will may object: why did a bishop assume public office and the dangers of war when he had undertaken only the care of souls? If they understand any sane matter, the result itself will easily satisfy them, when they see a great and very unaccustomed (especially in their homelands) gift of peace spread far and wide through this guardian and teacher of a faithful people.... Nor was governing this world new or unusual for rectors of the holy Church, previous examples of which, if someone needs them, are at hand.13 Ruotger was right: there were other examples near at hand, for the German kings found their most loyal warriors and administrators among their bishops. Consider, as another example, the bishop of Liège; he held the rights and exercised the duties of several counts, had his own mints, and hunted and fished in a grand private forest granted to him in 1006. Bruno was not only duke of Lotharingia, pastor of his flock at Cologne, and head (as archbishop of Cologne) of the bishops of his duchy. He was also a serious scholar. “There was nearly no type of liberal study in Greek or Latin,” wrote the admiring Ruotger, “that escaped the vitality of his genius.” Bruno’s interest in learning was part of a larger 13 Ruotger, Life of Bruno, Archbishop of Cologne, in Reading the Middle Ages, pp. 224–28.

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Plate 4.8 The Raising of Lazarus, Egbert Codex (985– 990). This miniature is one of fifty-one illustrations in a Pericopes, a book of readings arranged for the liturgical year. The story of the Raising of Lazarus, which is recounted in John 11:1–45, is read in church during the week before Easter. Of the many elements of this story, the artist chose one important moment, arranging it into a unified scene that made room for abstract design (look at the sky, composed of broad stripes of rosy hues) alongside classically inspired figures suggesting volume and weight, reacting and interacting with no care for the viewer. Only the labels are jarringly didactic, teaching a moral lesson.

movement. With wealth coming in from their eastern tributaries, Italy, and the silver mines of Saxony (discovered in the time of Otto I), the Ottonians presided over a brilliant intellectual and artistic efflorescence. As in the Islamic world, much of this was dispersed; in Germany, the centers of culture included the royal court, the great cathedral schools, and women’s convents. The most talented young men crowded the schools at the cathedrals of Trier, Cologne, Magdeburg, Worms, and Hildesheim. Honing their Latin, they studied classical authors such as Cicero and Horace as well as Scripture, while their episcopal teachers wrote histories, saints’ lives, and works on canon law. One such was the Decretum (1008/1012) by Burchard, bishop of Worms. This widely influential collection – much like the compilations of hadith produced about a century before in the Islamic world – winnowed out the least authoritative canons and systematized the contradictory ones. It also focused on sins, prescribing penances for immoral acts and putting particular emphasis on newly precise sexual sins, which were becoming preoccupations of the clergy as they dealt with new calls for their own chastity. Thus, Burchard wanted confessors to ask laymen: Have you committed fornication, as sodomites do, that is in a man’s behind and inserted the [male] member into the rear, and in such way mate in the manner of a

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sodomite? If you have a wife and have done it once or twice, you should do penance for ten years, one of them on bread and water. Yet if you have [done it] habitually, you should do penance for twelve years. If, however, you have committed the same carnal crime with your brother, you should do penance for fifteen years.14 Even seemingly innocuous practices, such as married couples having sex on a Sunday had to be atoned for by days of penance. The men at the cathedral schools were largely in training to become courtiers, administrators, and bishops themselves. Churchmen such as Egbert, archbishop of Trier (r.977–993), appreciated art as well as scholarship. Plate 4.8 on p. 153, an illustration of the Raising of Lazarus from the Egbert Codex (named for its patron), is a good example of what is called the “Ottonian style.” Utterly unafraid of open space, which was rendered in otherworldly pastel colors, painters focused on the figures, who gestured like actors on a stage. In Plate 4.8 the apostles are on the left-hand side, their arms raised and hands wide open with wonder at Christ. He has just raised the dead Lazarus from the tomb, and one of the Jews, on the right, holds his nose. Two women – Mary and Martha, the sisters of Lazarus – fall at Christ’s feet, completing the dramatic tableau. Other patrons of the arts were Ottonian noblewomen, who lived in convents that provided them with comfortable private apartments. They wrote books and supported other scholars and artists. Equally active patrons of the arts were the Ottonian kings themselves, who were well aware of the propaganda value of pictures.

France By contrast with the English and German kings, those in France had a hard time coping with invasions. Unlike Alfred’s dynasty, which started small and built slowly, the French kings had half an empire to defend. Unlike the Ottonians, who asserted their military prowess in decisive battles such as the one at Lechfeld, the French kings generally had to let local men both take the brunt of the attacks and reap the prestige and authority that came with military leadership. Nor did the French kings have the advantage of Germany’s silver mines, Italian connections, or money that came in from tribute. Much like the Abbasid caliphs at Baghdad, the kings of France saw their power wane. During most of the tenth century, Carolingian kings alternated on the throne with kings from a family that would later be called the “Capetians.” At the end of that century the most powerful men of the realm, seeking to stave off civil war, elected Hugh Capet (r.987–996) as their king. The Carolingians were displaced, and the Capetians continued on the throne until the fourteenth century. (See Genealogy 5.5 on p. 196.) The Capetians’s scattered but substantial estates lay in the north of France, in the region around Paris. Here the kings had their vassals and their castles. This “Ile-de-France” (which was all there was to “France” in the period; see Map 4.6 on p. 147) was indeed an 14 Burchard of Worms, Decretum, in A Short Medieval Reader, pp. 104–6.

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“island” – an île – surrounded by independent castellans. In the sense that he, too, had little more military power than other castellans, Hugh Capet and his eleventh-century successors were similar to local strongmen. But the Capetian kings had the prestige of their office. Anointed with holy oil, they represented the idea of unity and God-given rule inherited from Charlemagne. Most of the counts and dukes – at least those in the north of France – swore homage and fealty to the king, a gesture, however weak, of personal support. Unlike the German kings, the French could rely on vassalage to bind the great men of the realm to them.

New States in East Central Europe Around the same time as Moravia and Bulgaria lost their independence to the Magyars and the Byzantines (respectively), three new polities – Bohemia, Poland, and Hungary – emerged in East Central Europe. In many ways, they formed an interconnected bloc as their ruling houses intermarried with one another and with the great families of Germany, the power that loomed to their west. Bohemia and Poland both were largely Slavic-speaking; linguistically, Hungary was the odd man out, but in almost every other way it was typical of the fledgling states in the region.

Bohemia and Poland While the five German duchies were subsumed by the Ottonian state, Bohemia in effect became a separate duchy of the Ottonian Empire. (See Map 4.6.) Already Christianized, largely under the aegis of German bishops, Bohemia was unified in the course of the tenth century. (One of its early rulers was Wenceslas – the Christmas carol’s “Good King Wenceslas” – who was to become a national saint after his assassination.) Its princes were supposed to be vassals of the emperor in Germany. Thus, when Bohemian Duke Bretislav I (d.1055) tried in 1038 to expand into what was by then Poland, laying waste the land all the way to Gniezno and kidnapping the body of the revered Saint Adalbert, Emperor Henry III (d.1056) declared war, forcing Bretislav to give up the captured territory and hostages. Although left to its own affairs internally, Bohemia was thereafter semi-dependent on the Empire. What was this “Poland” of such interest to Bretislav and Henry? Like the Dane Harald Bluetooth, and around the same time, Mieszko I (r.c.960–992), the ruler of the region that would become Poland, became Christian. In 990/991, he put his realm under the protection of the pope, tying it closely to the power of Saint Peter. Mieszko built a network of fortifications, subjected the surrounding countryside to his rule, and expanded his realm in all directions. Mieszko’s son Boleslaw the Brave (or, in Polish, Chrobry; r.992–1025) continued that policy, for a short time even becoming duke of Bohemia. Above all, Boleslaw made the Christian religion a centerpiece of his rule. At his initiative Gniezno was declared an archbishopric in 1000 and Boleslaw declared his alliance with Christ by

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issuing a coin: on one side he portrayed himself as a sort of Roman emperor, while on the other he displayed a cross.15 Soon the Polish rulers could count on a string of bishoprics – and the bishops who presided in them. A dynastic crisis in the 1030s gave the Bohemian Bretislav his opening, but, as we have seen, that was quickly ended by the German emperor. Poland persisted, although somewhat reduced in size.

Hungary Polytheists at the time of their entry into the West, most Magyars were peasants, initially specializing in herding (as we have seen, above pp. 140–41) but soon busy cultivating vineyards, orchards, and grains. Above them was a warrior class, and above the warriors were the elites, whose richly furnished graves reveal the importance of belts, weapons, and horses to this society. Originally led by chieftains, by the mid-tenth century the Hungarians recognized one ruling house – that of Prince Géza (r.972–997). Like the ambitious kings of Scandinavia, Géza was determined to give his power new ballast via baptism. His son, Stephen I (r.997–1038), consolidated the change to Christianity: he built churches and monasteries, and required everyone to attend church on Sundays. Establishing his authority as sole ruler, Stephen had himself crowned king in the year 1000 (or possibly 1001). Around the same time, he issued a code of law that brought his kingdom into step with other European powers.16 *

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Political fragmentation did not mean chaos. It simply betokened a new order. At Byzantium, in any event, even the most centrifugal forces were focused on the center; the real trouble for Basil II, for example, came from dynatoi who wanted to be emperors, not from people who wanted to be independent regional rulers. In the Islamic world, fragmentation largely meant replication, as courts patterned on or competitive with the Abbasid model were set up by Fatimid caliphs and other rulers. In Western Europe, the rise of local rulers was accompanied by the widespread adoption of forms of personal dependency – vassalage, serfdom – that could be (and were) manipulated even by kings, such as the Capetians, who seemed to have lost the most from the dispersal of power. Another institution that kings could count on was the Church. No wonder that in Rus’, Scandinavia, and East Central Europe, state formation and Christianization went hand in hand. The real fragmentation of the period c.900–c.1050 was among the former heirs of the Roman Empire. They did not speak the same languages, they were increasingly estranged by their religions, and they knew almost nothing about one another. In the next centuries, the gaps would only widen.

15 For an image of this coin, see A Short Medieval Reader, p. 123 and Plate 2, “Reading through Looking,” in Reading the Middle Ages, p. III. 16 King Stephen, Laws, in Reading the Middle Ages, p. 214.

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MATERIAL CULTURE: CLOTH AND CLOTHING In the Middle Ages, as today, cloth was used for more than clothing. Tapestries and other elaborate fabrics covered the walls of churches and palaces; cloth coats adorned horses and flew as military banners; bits of fine brocade wrapped relics before they were inserted into reliquaries. Less luxurious uses, but no less necessary, included the leather thongs that held together the metal in suits of armor and the shrouds in which the dead were wrapped. Even as clothing, textiles served more than the practical goals of protecting people from cold and rain. They vividly, sometimes ostentatiously, displayed (as they do today) gender, rank, and lines of work – or lives of pure leisure. What was, however, utterly unlike the textiles of today’s industrialized world was the extraordinary time and labor that was required to grow and gather raw materials, spin them into thread, weave them

into cloth, and finally cut and sew the fabric into even the humblest cap, let alone the most fabulous garb of the wealthy. Apart from the labor of growing and reaping, which was done mainly by men, most of the work involved in textile production was the preserve of women, many of them serfs. Only toward the end of the Middle Ages, when large horizontal looms were set up in workshops – the medieval version of mass production – did men become laborers in the textile industry. Plants and animals formed the raw materials for clothing: linen (from flax) and cotton from plants, wool and fur from animals, and silk from the cocoons of silk worms. Short, rough wool as well as fur and flax were plentiful in the north; cotton, fine long-haired wool, and silk were available in Mediterranean regions. Long-distance

Plate 4.9 Woman’s Woolen Cap (468–651). This cap, seemingly so plain, was once an attractive headdress worn by a relatively well-off woman living along the northern coast of the Netherlands. To produce it, raw wool had first to be turned into thread using a distaff (a stick on which the cleaned wool was tied) and a hand spindle (a thin rod fixed with a whorl onto which the fibers were twirled and twisted together). The resulting yarn was then woven on a loom, probably (at this early period) an upright one. In the case of this cap, the weave features a repeated diamond pattern. Once woven, the fabric was dyed brown-black and cut into three pieces, one large main panel and two side panels that, when attached, were designed to flip out to form a “Dutch cap.” Using embroidery and other threads of a natural color – to contrast with the dark brown of the cap – the maker employed a variety of decorative stitches to hem the edges and join the side lengths to each other and to the main panel.

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Plate 4.10 Guillaume de Machaut, Le Remède de Fortune (c.1350–1355). At the far left is the lover, accompanied by a bearded companion. He wears a cape decorated at the edges, a patterned tunic padded at the shoulders to emphasize his slender waist, tight-fitting set-in sleeves, skin-tight breeches, and long-pointed shoes. His lady, attended by her maids, is equally fashionably dressed in a gown with close-fitting sleeves and bodice, which is decorated with buttons. She points at her lover with her finger to acknowledge his gaze.

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trade in these bulky goods dated back to Roman times and became denser and more robust from the tenth century on. The finest cotton came from Egypt. Silk, originally from China, had long been mastered in the Byzantine Empire, and Islamic craftspeople adopted it early on. Rulers in Spain and Sicily set up special silk workshops to clothe the royal household in textiles of breathtaking beauty. In the thirteenth century, fine silk cloth production became a specialty in some north Italian cities, and by the end of that century, Paris, too, had become a center of luxury silks. There, unlike most other centers of silk manufacture, women were not only employed as laborers but also controlled the craft as entrepreneurs. The popularity of silk and fine woolens had little to do with its practical advantages and everything to do with fashion. In fourteenthcentury Italy, there was no better way to show off wealth and status than to wear it on the streets – in form-fitting, costly, luxurious garb. Sumptuary laws – tied to anxieties about avarice, gender, and social order – tried to stamp out sartorial splendor, especially on the part of women: “no woman or female, of whatever state or condition, may dare or presume to wear on her head or on her person any pearl ... [nor] any belt, of any type or name, that exceeds the value of four gold florins ... [nor wear] any ornament of gold, silver, or any other metal.”17 So read the statutes of the city of Lucca issued in 1337. But such laws were hard to enforce. In a thirteenth-century romance, Flamenca, written in Old Occitan, the language of southern France, a lover is described as dressing with care before he goes to gaze at his lady, who is

imprisoned in a tower. First he puts on his fine undergarments, then a pair of exceptionally tight-fitting breaches, next come his elegant overgarments, and finally his pointy shoes. He was a fashionable fellow, and his type was illustrated often, as in Plate 4.10 in a manuscript about a different love-smitten young man. Colors, like materials, weaves, and stitches, were signs of status. Purple was a privileged color reserved for rulers. Scarlet, extracted from the kermes, an insect that flourished in Mediterranean regions, was highly precious; blue produced from woad, a common plant, cost less. Undyed fabric was the humblest of all. Benedictine monks of the traditional sort wore black habits, a deeply saturated and therefore expensive color. Cistercian monks demonstrated their poverty and simplicity by wearing undyed cloth made from the wool sheered from the sheep that they raised – though they were in fact very wealthy from the thriving wool market that they supplied. Churchmen were to shun the things of this world, and indeed at first, they prided themselves on their plain dress. But as the Church began to claim greater dignity for the clerical order, and as it competed with the secular nobility for honor, churchmen (as they dressed for Mass) donned garments of stunning materials – generally embroidered by the industrious fingers of pious women. In Plate 4.11, showing the back of a chasuble, someone has embroidered the coat of arms of the Kerkhof family at the very top of the cross on the sumptuously worked orphrey (the middle strip), thereby associating the family of the donor with the holy garment, its priestly wearers, and the Church, saints, and God they served.

17 Translated from the Latin by Catherine Kovesi Killerby in Medieval Italy: Texts in Translation, ed. Katherine L. Jansen, Joanna Drell, and Frances Andrews (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), pp. 191–92.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Coatsworth, Elizabeth, and Gale R. Owen-Crocker. Clothing the Past: Surviving Garments from Early Medieval to Early Modern Western Europe. Leiden: Brill, 2018. Miller, Maureen C. Clothing the Clergy: Virtue and Power in Medieval Europe, c.800–1200. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014. Piponnier, Françoise, and Perrine Mane. Dress in the Middle Ages. Translated by Caroline Beamish. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997. Scott, Margaret. Fashion in the Middle Ages. Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2011.

Plate 4.11 Brunswick Chasuble (early 15th cent.). This chasuble, donated to an important parish church in Brunswick, Germany, is made of silk woven in Egypt. The original textile consists in a variety of patterned stripes, the broadest of which contains Kufic script praising the sultan. For the creators of the vestment, the foreign words signaled only the fabric’s high value as an import. They cut and sewed it to make the chasuble, then added an embroidered orphrey employing silk and silver threads in a variety of colors and using specialized stitches. Here and there they added freshwater pearls and sequins. Only very accomplished artists, both in Egypt and in Germany, could have produced work of such fineness.

For practice questions about the text, maps, plates, and other features – plus suggested answers – please go to www.utphistorymatters.com There you will also find all the maps, genealogies, and figures used in the book.

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FURTHER READING Bayhom-Daou, Tamima. Shaykh Mufid. London: Oneworld Academic, 2005. Berend, Nora, Przemysław Urban´czyk, and Przemysław Wiszewski. Central Europe in the High Middle Ages: Bohemia, Hungary and Poland c.900–c.1300. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Berend, Nora, ed. Christianization and the Rise of Christian Monarchy: Scandinavia, Central Europe, and Rus’ c.900–1200. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Bolton, Timothy. Cnut the Great. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017. Bonfil, Robert, Oded Irshai, Guy G. Stroumsa, et al., eds. Jews in Byzantium: Dialectics of Minority and Majority Cultures. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Brett, Michael. The Fatimid Empire. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017. Cameron, Averil. Byzantine Matters. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014. Duczko, Wladyslaw. Viking Rus: Studies on the Presence of Scandinavians in Eastern Europe. Leiden: Brill, 2004. Friðriksdóttir, Jóhanna Katrín. Valkyrie: Women of the Viking World. London: Bloomsbury, 2020. Frenkel, Miriam, ed. The Jews of Medieval Egypt. Brookline, MA: Academic Studies Press, 2021. Graham-Campbell, James. Viking Art. London: Thames & Hudson, 2021. Hansen, Valerie. The Year 1000: When Explorers Connected the World – and Globalization Began. New York: Scribner, 2020. Holmes, Catherine. Basil II and the Governance of Empire (976–1025). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Jaritz, Gerhard. Medieval East Central Europe in a Comparative Perspective: From Frontier Zones to Lands in Focus. London: Routledge, 2016. Jesch, Judith. The Viking Diaspora. London: Routledge, 2015. Kaldellis, Anthony. The Byzantine Republic: People and Power in New Rome. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015. Kraemer, Joel L. Humanism in the Renaissance of Islam: The Cultural Revival during the Buyid Age. 2nd rev. ed. Leiden: Brill, 1993. La Rocca, Cristina, ed. Italy in the Early Middle Ages, 476–1000. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Line, Philip. Kingship and State Formation in Sweden, 1130–1290. Leiden: Brill, 2007. Mägi, Marika. The Viking Eastern Baltic. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2019. Mossman, Stephen, ed. Debating Medieval Europe: The Early Middle Ages, c.450–c.1050. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020. Nordeide, Sæbjørg Walaker, and Kevin J. Edwards. The Vikings. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2019. Outhwaite, B., M. Schmierer-Lee, and C. Burgess. Discarded History: The Genizah of Medieval Cairo. Cambridge: Cambridge University Library, 2017. Exhibition Guide and Translations. https://doi. org/10.17863/CAM.13917. Raffensperger, Christian. Reimagining Europe: Kievan Rus’ in the Medieval World, 988–1146. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012. Romane, Julian. Byzantium Triumphant: The Military History of the Byzantines, 959–1025. Barnsley, UK: Pen & Sword Military, 2015. Rustow, Marina. The Lost Archive: Traces of a Caliphate in a Cairo Synagogue. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020. Stafford, Pauline. After Alfred: Anglo-Saxon Chronicles and Chroniclers, 900–1150. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Tinti, Francesca. Europe and the Anglo-Saxons. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021.

Further Reading

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CHAPTER FIVE

H I G H L I G H TS Abbacy of Hugh of Cluny 1049–1109 The monastery of Cluny, a model for many monasteries and magnet for pious donations, is at the height of its influence and prestige.

The Almoravids found the city of Marrakesh c.1070 Sunni Muslims, they take over the Maghreb, extend across the western Sahara, and (after entering Spain 1085) straddle the strait of Gibraltar.

Pope Gregory VII 1073–1085 Promulgator of Gregorian Reform, opponent of lay investiture, clerical marriage, and simony.

Norman conquest of England 1066 The Normans had already established themselves in southern Italy; in 1066, they take England; and by 1093, they conquer Sicily. Yet this does not create one Norman empire but rather two largely separate Norman regions, one in the south (Sicily and Italy), the other in the north (England and Normandy).

Battle of Manzikert 1071 This battle marks the Seljuk Turks’ defeat of the Byzantines in Anatolia. Soon they occupy Jerusalem (c.1075). Eventually they form two states: the Great Seljuk sultanate and the Seljuk sultanate of Rum.

Investiture Conflict 1075–1122

Reign of Emperor Alexius I Comnenus 1081–1118 Alexius reforms Byzantine government, and his request to Pope Urban II for mercenaries leads to the First Crusade.

Creation of Portugal 1095 Initially granted as a county by Alfonso VI.

Pits King Henry IV against Gregory VII; begins to create a real, as well as theoretical, divide between Church and State.

King Alfonso VI of León and Castile captures Toledo 1085 The capture of Toledo is a major victory of the reconquista, but further expansion is temporarily prevented by the Almoravids.

Pope Urban II preaches the First Crusade 1095

The First Crusade 1096–1099 Begins with the massacre of Rhineland Jews; ends with the conquest of Jerusalem and the establishment of the Crusader States.

Cistercian Order established 1098 Benedictines, like the Cluniac monks, but with a different lifestyle. The Cistercians insist on simplicity; separate lay brothers from those of the choir.

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At a Church Peace Council at Clermont (in southern France), Urban preaches the religious and military undertaking known as the First Crusade to a large and enthusiastic audience.

Milan commune established 1097 Evidence of the new power of urban dwellers and the importance of Church reform to the laity.

Concordat of Worms 1122 Divides the investiture ritual into two, one part granting the spiritual office, the other the material things that go with it.

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FIVE

NEW CONFIGURATIONS (c.1050–c.1150) In the second half of the eleventh century, three powerful groups – Seljuk Turks from the east, Almoravids from West Africa, and crusaders from Europe – entered the Byzantine and Islamic Empires, changing political, cultural, and religious configurations everywhere. Byzantium, though still a force to be reckoned with, was weakened. The Islamic world, tending toward Shi‘ism with the Fatimids, now saw a revival of Sunnism. It elaborated new cultural forms to express its pride in its regained orthodoxy and to proclaim its cosmopolitanism. Europe, now connected more than ever with the rest of the world through commerce, created newly dynamic forms of monasticism, expanded its artistic horizons, and established a fragile foothold in the Middle East through conquest.

THE SELJUKS AND THE ALMORAVIDS In the eleventh century, the Seljuks, a Turkic group from outside the Islamic world, entered and took over its eastern half. Eventually penetrating deep into Anatolia, they took a great bite out of Byzantium. Soon, however, the Seljuks themselves split apart, and eventually the Islamic world fragmented anew under dozens of rulers. Meanwhile, many Berbers united under the Almoravid dynasty to form a new empire in the Islamic far west.

From Mercenaries to Imperialists: The Seljuk Turks The Seljuk Turks were herders and mercenaries from the Kazakh steppe – the extensive Eurasian grasslands of Kazakhstan. Some of them entered the region around the Caspian and Aral Seas at the end of the tenth century, hired by rival Muslim rulers. During the first half of the eleventh century, they began conquests of their own. The Ghaznavids, themselves Turks who had previously displaced the Buyids and Samanids, could perhaps

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have contained them, but Ghaznavid Sultan Mas‘ud I (r.1030–1041) led an ill-prepared and demoralized army against the Seljuks and lost disastrously at the battle of Dandanqan (1040).1 (See Map 5.1.) From about the year 1000 to 1900, the Middle East was dominated by peoples of steppe origin. The Seljuks, among the first to arrive, soon formed two separate states. The Great Seljuk sultanate (c.1040–1194) dominated the east, from the Aral Sea to the Persian Gulf, encompassing a region now occupied by Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Iraq, and Iran. The Seljuk sultanate of Rum (c.1081–1308) was formed to the west, looking a bit like a thumb stuck into what had been Byzantine Anatolia. It took its name from those whom it vanquished: Rum means Rome. Westerners were shocked by the Seljuk army’s humiliating defeat of the Byzantine emperor at Manzikert (today Malazgirt, in Turkey) in 1071, which seemed to mark the conquest of Anatolia. And they were outraged by the Seljuk occupation of Jerusalem (c.1075), which inspired the First Crusade. But the more enduring victory of the Seljuks over formerly Byzantine regions was accomplished by quieter methods, as Seljuk families moved in, seeking pastureland for their livestock. Like the Vikings, the Seljuks generally traveled as families. The Seljuk sultanates were staunchly Sunni. They rolled back the Shi‘ite wave that had engulfed the Islamic world since the decline of the Abbasids. Nizam al-Mulk (d.1092), vizier for Alp Arslan and Malikshah I (see Genealogy 5.1) and in many ways de facto ruler himself for the last twenty years of his life, described Shi‘ism as a fraud concocted out of pseudo-philosophy and mumbo-jumbo: “obscure words from the language of the imams, mixed up with sayings of the naturalists and utterances of the philosophers, and consisting largely of mention of The Prophet and the angels, the tablet and pen, and heaven and the throne.”2 It was a heresy, and its followers were dangerous to the state. To counter its influence, he sponsored the foundation of numerous madrasas – a whole “chain” of them named (after him) Nizamiya. He hoped that they would fan new life into political, religious, and cultural Sunnism. The Islamic world had always supported elementary schools; now the madrasas, normally attached to mosques, served as centers of advanced scholarship. There young men attended lessons in religion, law, and literature. Sometimes visiting scholars arrived to debate in lively public displays of intellectual brilliance. More regularly, teachers and students carried on a quiet regimen of classes on the Qur’an and other texts. While allowing the Abbasid caliphs in Baghdad to maintain their religious role in a city still splendid in material and intellectual resources, the Seljuks shifted the cultural and political centers of the Islamic world to Iran and Anatolia. Asserting their adherence to Sunni Islam in concrete form, the Great Seljuk sultanate built grand mosques and fitted

1 For an eyewitness account of the battle, see Abu’l-Fazl Beyhaqi, The Battle of Dandanqan, in Reading the Middle Ages: Sources from Europe, Byzantium, and the Islamic World, 3rd ed., ed. Barbara H. Rosenwein (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018), pp. 241–43. 2 Nizam al-Mulk, The Book of Policy, in Reading the Middle Ages, pp. 244–46.

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Bari

Ge

Brindisi

Norman Kingdom of Sicily

org

ia Merv

Iznik (Nicaea)

Dandanqan Amid (Diyarbakir)

Sarakhs

Siirt

S e l j u k

E m p i r e Isfahan

Direction of entry into Byzantine territory

them out with towering minarets – a feature that Shi‘ite dynasties such as the Fatimids downplayed or omitted altogether. Consider the Friday Mosque at Isfahan in Iran. First built in the tenth century, it received a major face-lift under Nizam al-Mulk, who focused his patronage on its courtyard, the heart of the complex. Nizam added four iwans – vaulted halls opening on the courtyard – one at each wall. (See Plate 5.1.) The most important was the south iwan, for that was in the qibla wall – the wall facing Mecca. That iwan led in turn to a large square room housing the mihrab (the niche of the qibla), which was topped by a lofty dome built by Nizam al-Mulk. Competing with Nizam’s al-Mulk, his rival Taj al-Mulk showed off his own importance by building another square-domed room on the very same axis as the qibla dome, but in his case directly to the north of the courtyard. Less imposing, but more elegant than the southern dome, the northern dome included an inscription dating it to 1088– 1089 and naming Taj al-Mulk as its donor. (See Plate 5.2, p. 168.) It was ironic that a people used to being on the move would indulge in such lavish expenditures on buildings. The ruling elite, in particular, was settling down. Malikshah made Isfahan his capital, far to the west of the original centers of the Seljuk Empire such as Merv. For his part, Nizam al-Mulk cemented his position as virtual ruler by distributing not only money but also iqta – land (see Chapter 4, p. 132). Under the Seljuks the

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Map 5.1 The Byzantine and Seljuk Empires, c.1090

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Seljuk

Arslan Isra’il

Mika’il

Qutlumush

Chaghri

Qavurt

Mahmud (r.1092 –1094 )

Berkyaruq (r.1092–1104)

Tughril (r.1037–1063)

Alp Arslan (r.1063–1072)

Malikshah I (r.1072–1092)

Tutush

Muhammad Tapar (r.1105–1118 )

Sanjar

Malikshah II (r.1105)

Mahmud II (r.1118–1131)

Da’ud (r.1131–1132)

Malikshah III (r.1152–1153)

Tughril II (r.1132–1134)

Mas‘ud (r.1134–1152)

Sulaymanshah (r.1160–1161)

Muhammad II (r.1153–1159 ) Arslan (r.1161–1176) Tughril III (r.1176–1194)

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iqta was widely used; it recompensed not only army leaders (emirs), but also bureaucrats, and favored members of the dynasty. Like fiefs, iqtas were theoretically revocable by the ruler, but, again like fiefs, many iqta holders were able to make them hereditary. Fortified by their revenues and land grants, the emirs of Iran and Iraq, originally appointed to represent the sultan’s power at the local level, broke away from the centralized state. In the course of the twelfth century, in a process of fragmentation similar to those we have seen in the previous chapter, the Great Seljuk Empire fell apart. Yet this did not mean the end of Seljuk culture and institutions but rather their replication in numerous smaller centers. The decline of the power of the Great Seljuk dynasty did not end the Great Seljuk era. Meanwhile, the Anatolian branch of the dynasty prospered. It benefited from the region’s silver, copper, iron, and lapis lazuli mines and from the pastureland that supported animal products such as cashmere, highly prized as an export as far away as France. The Anatolian sultans did not need to give out iqtas; they could pay their soldiers. Even so, their Seljuk Sultanate of Rum was a sort of “wild west”: most houses were made of mud, and the elites did not support the madrasas or the arts and literature as generously as did the rulers of most of the other centers of the Islamic world.

THE SELJUKS AND THE ALMORAVIDS

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Plate 5.1 Isfahan Mosque Courtyard (c.1086). In this view facing south, two of the mosque’s four iwans are visible in full, with a third (to the east) visible in part. The courtyard is bordered by double-decker walls punctuated by openings, each leading to an aisle topped by domes. Note the two minarets towering above the central iwan and telegraphing adherence to Sunni Islam.

Genealogy 5.1 (facing page) The Great Seljuk Sultans

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Plate 5.2 Isfahan Mosque North Dome (1088–1089). Built according to a precise geometric design, the circular dome sits on a sixteen-sided polygon that rests in turn on an octagon perched on a square base. The design within the dome is equally mathematical, with an oculus forming the mid-point of converging triangles.

Further setting it apart from other Islamic regions, the Sultanate of Rum had a significant Christian population as well as a mix of other ethnicities and a large and increasingly influential minority of Sufis – Islam’s main mystical group. In Jerusalem (which the Seljuks took until forced back out by the Fatimids in 1098, after which it was taken by crusaders from Europe), they confronted Jews, Christian pilgrims, and of course the “native” Christians who had lived there for generations. To this eclectic mix, the Seljuks adapted. Rather than tearing down churches, they simply converted them into mosques. Many adopted the farming methods of the peasants. The elites, at least, included Byzantine women as wives or concubines in their harems. The children of those unions spoke Greek as well as the local language (Persian, and perhaps Turkic and Arabic as well). Muslim children in Rum were baptized as a matter of course by Orthodox priests because the rite was thought to ward off demons.

From Pastoralists to State-Builders: The Almoravids In the western half of the Islamic world, tribes from the Sahara Desert forged a state equaling the size of that of the Seljuks (see Map 5.2). Originally Berber pastoralists who

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P

Map 5.2 The Almoravid Empire and the Empire of Ghana, c.1050

ó

moved from one water source to another with their flocks and tents, they learned Islam from Muslim traders who needed guides and protectors to cross the Sahara and facilitate trade to and from West Africa. In the 1030s they were inspired by a leader named Yahya ibn Ibrahim and his companions to follow a strict form of Sunni orthodoxy. In addition to adhering rigorously to Qur’anic injunctions, the men joined the women in wearing a veil over the lower part of their faces. The earliest sources for this practice did not connect it with Islam per se, but later sources reported that the Berbers had originally lived in Yemen. In order to practice their fledgling monotheism, they were forced to flee to the Sahara with their men disguised as women. Their veils thus demonstrated their devotion to Islam.

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Fired with zeal on behalf of their religious beliefs (much like the Seljuks) and also seeking economic opportunity, disparate groups of Berbers formed a federation known as the Murabitun (Almoravids) and began conquering the (largely Shi‘ite) regions to their north. Making common cause with local Sunni jurists and various tribal notables there, they took over cities bordering on the Sahara in the 1050s and soon had their eyes on the Maghreb. The foundation of their city of Marrakesh c.1070 was a milestone in their transition from a pastoral to a settled existence. Under their leader, Yusuf ibn Tashfin (d.1106), and members of his clan, they subdued much of the Maghreb, taking Tangier in c.1078 and Ceuta in the 1080s. Because their main goal was to control the African salt and gold trade, the Almoravids were at first not particularly interested in al-Andalus. But the Andalusian taifa rulers kept calling on them to help fight the Christian armies encroaching from the north of Spain. Their chief nemesis was Christian King Alfonso VI of León and Castile. (He was ruler of León 1065–1109 with a one-year interruption in 1071–72, when his older brother usurped the throne, and was king of Castile 1072–1109.) When Alfonso captured Toledo from its Muslim ruler in 1085, Yusuf ibn Tashfin at last took up the challenge, meeting him near Badajoz in 1086 and dealing him a stunning defeat. Dismayed by the taifa leaders’ feuding and (in their eyes) “lax” form of Islam, the Almoravids soon began to conquer the peninsula on their own behalf. By c.1115 all of al-Andalus not yet taken by Christian rulers was under Almoravid control. The gold coin that forms the icon for accessing the website of this book was one of many gold dinars minted under their rule. Almoravid hegemony over the western Islamic world began to end only in 1145 as the Almohads, a rival Berber group, came to replace them. The Almoravids controlled an empire stretching over 2,000 miles, from the northern end of the kingdom of Ghana to half of Spain. Their wealth and power were based on prosperous urban centers and a flourishing rural economy. Farmers produced grains, irrigated their gardens with sophisticated water-management systems, and raised animals. Flax, cotton, and silk – “home-grown” by worms living on the mulberry trees of southern Spain – supplied town textile industries with plentiful supplies. The silks woven in Almería were famous. When King Alfonso VII of Castile and León took that city (temporarily) in 1147, he looted its silks to cut up and use to wrap precious relics for the cathedral of Sigüenza. Other fragments found their way into other church treasuries. (See Plate 5.3 and Material Culture: Cloth and Clothing, pp. 157–60.) Poised to take advantage of long-distance commercial relations, the Almoravids mined marble, silver, copper, and iron for use and export. With one foot in sub-Saharan West Africa and the other in Spain, they profited from both cultures and the resources of both regions, a point nicely illustrated by the marble tombstone in Plate 5.4. This was quarried in Iberia; cut, polished, and inscribed with a Qur’anic-inflected poem at Almería; and ferried across the Sahara for wealthy clients in far-off Gao, today in Mali.

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Plate 5.3 Almería Silk (first half of 12th cent.). Two unicorns shelter beneath two large peacocks that face a stylized palm tree in this fine silk weaving made by a workshop in Almoravid Almería. At the top and bottom are cartouches with Arabic inscriptions; the bottom one reads “perfect blessing.” Although it originated in an Islamic atelier, Christians valued its beauty and used it to cover precious relics. Just as living bodies were clothed, and corpses were wrapped in shrouds, so relics were enfolded in textiles, preferably beautifully woven and made of costly silk such as this one.

West African Connections That elites in Saney wanted to be buried as Muslims should not be surprising, for the Almoravids were zealous on behalf of both their religion and hegemony. Thus, the route between Sijilmasa and Awdaghust was not only a trade corridor but also a conduit for Islamization. Andalusian writer al-Bakri (d. 1094), basing his accounts on various written reports and live informants, noted that “in Awdaghust there is one cathedral mosque and many smaller ones, all well attended. In all the mosques there are teachers of the Qur’an.” These madrasas were instruments in the missionary toolkit (along with forceable conversions). Yet the sort of Islam practiced in Gao and elsewhere in the Sahara was not simply derivative of Almoravid forms but rather drew on indigenous customs and sensibilities. The stele in Plate 5.4, for example, would not have been erected over a grave in Almería

The Seljuks and the Almoravids

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Plate 5.4 Marble Tombstone from Almería (12th cent.). This is one of five extant steles produced at Almería and erected at a cemetery near what is today the archaeological site of Gao Saney, Mali. (See Map 5.2.) Other tombstones like it were produced by local craftspeople at Saney and elsewhere, including (a bit north of Saney) EssoukTadmekka, a thriving market crossroads for the trans-Saharan trade in slaves, gold, and ivory. Essouk-Tadmekka was itself a manufacturing center, producing iron, copper, unstamped gold coins (which probably circulated as money), and high-carbon steel, no doubt used to make weapons of exceptional quality.

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itself because it included the name of the deceased; in Iberia, that practice was thought to undermine the glory of God. At Awdaghust, al-Bakri continued, “transactions are in gold, and they have no silver. There are handsome buildings and fine houses.” It was, he said, a town of expatriate merchants, most of the inhabitants having come there from Ifriqiya – the North African coast. But living there were also “Sudan women, good cooks, one being sold for 100 mithqals or more. They excel at cooking delicious confections such as sugared nuts, honey doughnuts, various other kinds of sweetmeats, and other delicacies. There are also pretty slave girls with white complexions.” For al-Bakri, traffic in human beings was an unremarkable fact of life. But was he inadvertently revealing eleventh-century color-based racism? Are we to think that people were typed by their epidermis even then? It is possible, for Arabic writers dubbed the region south of the Sahara the Bilad al-Sudan, “land of the Blacks.” Historian Michael A. Gomez suggests, however, that al-Bakri’s words were sexualizing, not racializing, distinguishing between the black, Sudanese servant who works and the “white” one who offers men comfort. It is certainly true that al-Bakri mentions the white complexions of these slave girls alongside a long list of their other alluring attributes, including “fat buttocks” and “slim waists.”3 But medievalist Geraldine Heng argues that racial thinking – which singles out one arbitrary identifier (skin color, religious belief, the food people eat), demonizes it, and applies it to people of diverse origins, languages, traditions, and self-conceptions – did indeed bear its poisonous fruit at this time, as we shall certainly see in connection with the crusades later in this chapter.

BYZANTIUM: BLOODIED BUT UNBOWED The once triumphant empire of Basil II was unable to sustain the territorial successes of the early eleventh century. We have already seen the triumph of the Seljuk Turks in Anatolia; meanwhile, in the Balkans, Turkic Pechenegs raided with ease. The Normans, some of whom (as we saw on p. 140) had established themselves in southern Italy, began attacks on Byzantine territory there and conquered its last stronghold, Bari, in 1071, precisely when the Seljuks defeated the Byzantines at Manzikert. Entering Muslim Sicily in 1060, the Normans conquered it by 1093. Meanwhile, their knights attacked Byzantine territory in the Balkans. (See Map 5.1.) When Norman King Roger II (r.1130–1154) came to the throne, he ruled a realm that ran from southern Italy to Palermo – the Kingdom of Sicily. It was a persistent thorn in Byzantium’s side. Clearly the Byzantine army was no longer very effective. Few themes were still manned with citizen-soldiers, and the emperor’s army was also largely composed of mercenaries – Turks 3 Nehemia Levtzion and J.F.P. Hopkins, eds., Corpus of Early Arabic Sources of West African History (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2000), p. 68.

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Genealogy 5.2 The Comnenian Dynasty

and Rus, as had long been the case, and increasingly Normans and Franks as well. But the Byzantines were not entirely dependent on armed force; in many instances they turned to diplomacy to confront their invaders. When Emperor Constantine IX (r.1042–1055) was unable to prevent the Pechenegs from entering the Balkans, he shifted policy, welcoming them, administering baptism, conferring titles, and settling them in depopulated regions. Much the same process took place in Anatolia, where the emperors at times welcomed the Turks to help them fight rival dynatoi. Here the invaders were occasionally also welcomed by Christians who did not adhere to Byzantine orthodoxy; the Monophysites of Armenia were glad to have new Turkic overlords. The Byzantine grip on its territories loosened and its frontiers became nebulous, but Byzantium still stood. There were changes at the imperial court as well. The model of the “public” emperor ruling alone with the aid of a civil service gave way to a less costly, more “familial” model of government. To be sure, for a time competing dynatoi families swapped the imperial throne. But Alexius I Comnenus (r.1081–1118), a Dalassenus on his mother’s side, managed to bring most of the major families together through a series of marriage alliances. (The Comneni remained on the throne for about a century; see Genealogy 5.2.) Until her death in c.1102, Anna Dalassena, Alexius’s mother, held the reins of government while Alexius occupied himself with military matters. At his revamped court, which he moved to the Blachernai palace, at the northwestern tip of the city (see Map 4.1 on p. 120), his relatives held the highest positions. Many of them received pronoiai (sing. pronoia), temporary grants of imperial lands that they administered and profited from. Just as the Seljuks turned to the iqta and the Europeans to the fief, so the Byzantines resorted to land grants to replace salaries. Despite its territorial contraction, in some ways the Byzantine Empire had never been more prosperous. Its economy was buoyed by agricultural production and population growth. Its manufactured goods – silks, oil, dyes, pottery, bronzes, ivories, and glass – were in high demand in markets ranging from Rus’ to Spain. Italian traders acted as intermediaries.

Manuel Eroticus Comnenus

Isaac Comnenus (1057 –1059 )

John = Anna Dalassena

Alexius I Comnenus (1081–1118 ) = Eirene Doukaina Anna Comnena

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John II Comnenus (1118 –1143 ) = Eirene of Hungary

Isaac the Sebastokrator

Theodora = Constantine Angelos

Isaac

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ECONOMIC NETWORKS IN EUROPE AND BEYOND The enhanced role of Italian merchants in the Byzantine world was just one of the ways in which the European economy was now coming to mesh more tightly with that of the wider world. Its economic expansion began in the countryside. Draining marshes, felling trees, building dikes: this was the backbreaking work that brought new land into cultivation. Peasants using heavy moldboard plows, now often more efficiently drawn by horses, reaped better harvests. Profiting from the three-field system, they raised a greater variety of crops. Aristocratic landowners, the same “oppressors” against whom the Peace of God fulminated (see p. 145), became savvy entrepreneurs. They set up mills to grind grain, forced their tenants to use them, and then charged a fee for the service. Some landlords gave peasants special privileges to settle on especially inhospitable land: the bishop of Hamburg, for example, was generous to those who came from Holland to work soil that was, as he admitted “uncultivated, marshy, and useless.”4 Demographic growth fueled the development of real villages throughout Europe – communities with their own sense of identity, their own representatives, their own “common” structures centered on churches, cemeteries, squares, fields, woods, wasteland, and the blacksmith’s shop where their tools were forged. Taking advantage of their surpluses, villages connected with one another through trade. Better roads allowed wagons laden with goods to pass to and fro, while settlements near rivers were served by flat-bottomed barges. At weekly markets villagers bought and sold eggs, poultry, blankets, bales of wool, and animal hides. Barter increasingly gave way to cash. The use of money offered villages access to wider commercial networks as well – those of towns and cities. Urban centers were dispersed all over the map of Europe but were especially dense in a ribbon of cities that began on the two sides of the English Channel (with trade between England and Flanders), curved around the southern coast of the North Sea, and then plunged southward along the Rhine (taking in the cities of Cologne, Mainz, Worms, and Speyer). (See Map 5.3.) The ribbon continued into Italy, including the Po River valley, the seafaring cities of Venice, Genoa, and Pisa, and, in the south, Naples and Amalfi – cities that were increasingly doing business in the Maghreb and at Constantinople and thus were linchpins in an increasingly hemisphere-wide circulation of goods. Urban centers were intensely conscious of their interests and goals, elaborating new instruments of commerce, self-regulating organizations, and forms of self-government. Despite this intense focus on their internal concerns, some of their more enterprising denizens played a part in connecting Europe’s economy more and more fully with markets in North Africa and the Middle East, both of which were fed by even more distant trading networks.

4 Frederick of Hamburg’s Agreement with Colonists from Holland, in Reading the Middle Ages, pp. 246–47.

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The Formation of Towns and Cities

Map 5.3 (facing page) Western Europe, c.1100

Around castles and monasteries in the countryside or outside the walls of crumbling ancient towns, merchants came with their wares and artisans set up their stalls. In some places, they were attracted by seasonal fairs; those in Lombardy began already in the tenth century. In other places, they stayed on as permanent residents. Recall Tours as it had looked in the early seventh century (see the left side of Map 5.4), with its semi-permanent settlements around the church of Saint-Martin out in the cemetery, and its lonely cathedral within the ancient walls. By the twelfth century (see the right side of Map 5.4), Saint-Martin was a monastery, the hub of a small town dense enough to boast eleven parish churches, merchant and artisan shops, private houses, and two markets. To the east, the episcopal complex was no longer alone: a market had sprung up outside the old western wall, and private houses lined the street leading to a bridge. Smaller than the town around SaintMartin, the one at the foot of the old city had only two parish churches, but it was big and rich enough to warrant the construction of a new set of walls to protect it. As at Tours, walls were a general feature of medieval cities. So, too were marketplaces, one or more fortifications, and many churches. City streets, made of packed clay or gravel, were narrow, dirty, dark, smelly, and winding. Most cities were situated near waterways, over which bridges were constructed to facilitate land routes; the bridge at Tours was built in the 1030s. Many cities had to adapt to increasingly crowded conditions. Towns ranged in size from (perhaps) less than 40 acres to over 500, and they had populations (equally uncertain) of less than 5,000 to 20,000 or more. Both size and population grew over time. This happened at Tours (which is why a new wall was constructed), but it happened even

Map 5.4 Tours c.600 vs. Tours c.1100

Loire River

Loire River

Episcopal palace Walls of c.400

c.

Tours c.1100

Tours c.600 Church or monastery Cemetery

0

500

0

1,500 ft

Vineyard Church Market Buildings

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more spectacularly elsewhere, as at London, where the population ballooned from around 20,000 in 1100 to 40,000 a century later. At first town housing was made of cheap materials – wood or unfired clay held together by woven twigs. Houses rose no more than two or three stories, with the ground floor serving as a shop or warehouse. Swelling populations inflated property values, and many families ascended to wealth and prominence through the rental and real estate markets. From the late eleventh century on, houses were increasingly constructed in stone and brick, evidence of active quarries and transport facilities. Those in turn were stimulated by a spate of major building projects – from parish churches to cathedrals, from castles and fortified towers to palaces. Yet, behind many houses, even the most splendid, were enclosures for livestock and a garden. City dwellers clung to rural pursuits, raising much of their food themselves.

Urban Arrangements The revival of urban life and the expansion of trade are together dubbed the “commercial revolution” by historians. In the first half of the twelfth century merchants succeeded in getting rights to trade in cities other than their own; tolls were lifted for them and, in many port cities along the Baltic, North Sea, and Mediterranean coasts, they were given special sites to use for warehouses and temporary residences. A few of these may be seen on Map 4.1 on p. 120, where traders from Genoa, Pisa, Amalfi, and Venice had their own separate districts at Constantinople, strung like pearls along the Golden Horn. Especially active in cross-Mediterranean trading networks were the ports of Alexandria (to which spices from South Asia came via the Red Sea) and al-Andalus, the most important of which was Almería, from which were exported timber, oil, fruit, gold, and, of course, luxury silks – see Plate 5.3. The ships that plied such routes made good use of important intermediate commercial centers in Sicily and above all at Kairouan, the Tunisian port of call for trans-Saharan gold and slaves. (See Map 5.5 on p. 187.) In Chapter 4, we saw one painful consequence of this lively yet predatory activity, as Jewish merchants from Egypt were taken by Byzantine pirates, sold to Amalfitan middlemen, and then returned to Alexandria for ransom. Enterprising proto-capitalists invented new businesses and pooled their collective resources to finance large undertakings. They underwrote cloth industries powered by water mills and deep-mining technologies that provided Europeans with hitherto untapped sources of metals. Forging techniques improved, and iron was for the first time regularly used for agricultural tools, plows, and weapons. Beer, a major source of nutrition in the north of Europe, moved from the domestic hearth and monastic estates to urban centers, where brewers gained special privileges to ply their trade. Brewers, like other urban artisans, cultivated a sense of group solidarity. Plate 5.5 illustrates one way in which sculptors working at Modena celebrated themselves, their craft,

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Plate 5.5 A Sculptor at Work, Modena Cathedral (early 12th cent.). The artisans who built and decorated the cathedral at Modena were intensely aware of the dignity of manual labor in general and of their own craft in particular. In stone carvings on the so-called Princes’ Doorway (on the south side of the cathedral [see Figure 5.2 on p. 205]), sculptors working in the tradition of master Wiligelmo carved images of (among others) a blacksmith, a musician, a reaper, and the sculptor shown here, each with his most important tool (the sculptor is holding a chisel as he carves, upside-down, the decorative top – the capital – of a column). Each worker is delicately enclosed like a blossom within vine tendrils. For carvings by Wiligelmo himself, see Plate 5.12 on p. 204.

and all who worked with their hands. Whether driven by machines or human labor, the new economy was soon organized by guilds. In these social, religious, and economic associations, members prayed for and buried one another even as they regulated and protected professions ranging from trade and finance to shoemaking. Craft guilds determined standards of quality for their products and defined work hours, materials, and prices. Merchant guilds regulated business arrangements, weights and measures, and (like the craft guilds) prices. Guilds guaranteed their members – mostly male, except in a few professions – a place in the market. They represented the social and economic counterpart to urban walls, giving their members protection, shared identity, and recognized status. The political counterpart of the walls was the “commune” – town self-government. City dwellers were keenly aware of their special identity in a world dominated by knights and peasants. They recognized their mutual interest in reliable coinage, laws facilitating commerce, freedom from servile dues and services, and independence to buy and sell as the market dictated. They petitioned or rebelled against the political powers that ruled over them – bishops, kings, counts, castellans, dukes – for the right to govern themselves. Collective movements for urban self-government were especially prevalent in Italy, France, and Germany. Italy’s political life had long been city-centered, and communes there began already in the second half of the eleventh century. At Milan, for example, popular discontent with the archbishop, who effectively ruled the city, led to numerous

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armed clashes that ended, in 1097, with the transfer of power from the archbishop to a government of leading men of the city. Outside Italy, movements for urban independence – sometimes violent, as at Milan, at other times peaceful – often took place within a larger political framework. For example, around 1130, in return for a hefty sum, King Henry I of England freed the citizens of London from numerous customary taxes while granting them the right to “appoint as sheriff from themselves whomsoever they may choose, and [they] shall appoint from among themselves as justice whomsoever they choose to look after the pleas of my crown.”5 The king’s law still stood, but it was to be carried out by the Londoners’ officials.

CHURCH REFORM AND ITS AFTERMATH Disillusioned citizens at Milan denounced their archbishop not only for his tyranny but also for his impurity; they wanted their pastors to be untainted by sex and money. In this they were supported by a newly zealous papacy, keen on reform in the Church and society. The “Gregorian Reform,” as modern historians call this movement, broke up clerical marriages, unleashed civil war in Germany, changed the procedure for episcopal elections, and transformed the papacy into a monarchy. It began as a way to free the Church from the world, but in the end the Church was deeply involved in the new world it had helped to create.

The Coming of Reform Free the Church from the world: what could that mean? In 910 the duke and duchess of Aquitaine founded the monastery of Cluny with some unusual stipulations. (For all the places involved, see Map 5.3 on p. 176.) They endowed the monastery with property (normal and essential if it were to survive), but then they did something unusual: they gave Cluny and its worldly possessions to Saints Peter and Paul. In this way, they put control of the monastery into the hands of the two most powerful heavenly saints. They designated the pope, as the successor of Saint Peter, to be the monastery’s worldly protector if anyone should bother or threaten it. But even the pope had no right to infringe on Cluny’s freedom: “From this day,” the duke wrote, those same monks there congregated shall be subject neither to our yoke, nor to that of our relatives, nor to the sway of any earthly power. And, through God and all his saints, and by the awful day of judgment, I warn and abjure that no one of the secular princes, no count, no bishop whatever, not the pontiff of the aforesaid Roman see [i.e., the pope], shall invade the property of these servants of God, 5 Henry I, Privileges for the Citizens of London, in Reading the Middle Ages, pp. 250–51.

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Conrad II king (1024 –1039 ) emperor (1027 –1039 ) Henry III king (1039 –1056 ) emperor (1046 –1056 ) = Agnes Matilda = Rudolf duke of Swabia, antiking (1077 –1080 )

Judith

Henry IV king (1056 –1106 ) emperor (1084 –1106 ) = (1) Bertha of Savoy = (2) Praxedis of Kiev

Conrad (d.1101 )

Agnes = Frederick I of Hohenstaufen duke of Swabia

Henry V king (1106–1125) emperor (1111–1125) = Matilda daughter of Henry I of England

Frederick II duke of Swabia

Conrad III king and emperor (1138–1152)

or alienate it, or diminish it, or exchange it, or give it as a benefice to any one, or constitute any prelate over them against their will.6

Genealogy 5.3 The Salian Kings and Emperors

Cluny’s prestige was great because of the influence of its founders, the status of Saint Peter, and the fame of the monastery’s elaborate round of prayers. The Cluniac monks fulfilled the role of “those who pray” in dazzling manner. Through their prayers, they seemed to guarantee the salvation of all Christians. Rulers, bishops, rich landowners, and even serfs (if they could) gave Cluny donations of land, joining their contributions to the land of Saint Peter. Powerful men and women called on the Cluniac abbots to reform new monasteries along the Cluniac model. The abbots of Cluny came to see themselves as reformers of the world as well as the cloister: priests should not have wives; powerful laymen should cease their oppression of the poor. In the eleventh century, the Cluniacs began to link their program to the papacy.

6 Cluny’s Foundation Charter, in A Short Medieval Reader, ed. Barbara H. Rosenwein (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2023), pp. 98–104 and in Reading the Middle Ages, pp. 184–87.

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When they disputed with bishops or laypeople about lands and rights, they called on the popes to help them out. The popes were ready to do so. A parallel movement for reform had entered papal circles via a small group of influential monks and clerics. Mining canon (Church) law for their ammunition, these churchmen emphasized two abuses: nicolaitism (clerical marriage) and simony (buying Church offices). There were good reasons to single out these two issues. Married clerics were considered less “pure” than those who were celibate; furthermore, their heirs might claim Church property. As for simony: the new profit economy sensitized reformers to the crass commercial meanings of gifts. It was wrong, even heretical (they asserted), for a priest to accept payment for administering a sacrament such as baptism; it was evil and damnable for a man to offer money to gain a bishopric. These were attempts to purchase the Holy Spirit. Initially, the reformers got imperial backing. German king and emperor Henry III (r.1039–1056) thought that, as the anointed of God, he was responsible for the well-being of the Church in the Empire. (For Henry and his dynasty, see Genealogy 5.3 on p. 181.) Henry denounced simony and personally refused to accept money or gifts when he appointed bishops to their posts. He presided over the Synod of Sutri (1046), which deposed three papal rivals and elected another. When that pope and his successor died, Henry appointed Bruno of Toul, a member of the royal family, seasoned courtier, and reforming bishop. Taking the name Leo IX (1049–1054), the new pope surprised his patron: he set out to reform the Church under papal, not imperial, control. Leo revolutionized the papacy. He had himself elected by the “clergy and people” to satisfy the demands of canon law. Unlike earlier popes, he often left Rome to preside over Church councils and make the pope’s influence felt outside Italy, especially in France and Germany. Leo brought to the papal curia the most zealous Church reformers of his day: Peter Damian, Hildebrand of Soana (later Pope Gregory VII), and Humbert of Silva Candida. They put new stress on the passage in Matthew’s Gospel (Matt. 16:19) in which Christ tells Peter that he is the “rock” of the Church, with the keys to heaven and the power to bind (impose penance) and loose (absolve from sins). As the successor to the special privileges of Saint Peter, the Roman Church, headed by the pope, was declared the “head and mother of all churches.” What historians call the doctrine of “papal primacy” was thus announced. Its impact was soon felt at Byzantium. On a mission at Constantinople in 1054 to forge an alliance with the emperor against the Normans and, at the same time, to “remind” the patriarch of his place in the Church hierarchy, Humbert ended by excommunicating the patriarch and his followers. In retaliation, the patriarch excommunicated Humbert and his fellow legates. Clashes between the Roman and Byzantine Churches had occurred before and had been patched up, but this one, though not recognized as such at the time, marked a permanent schism. After 1054, the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox Churches largely went their separate ways. More generally, the papacy began to wield new forms of power. It waged unsuccessful war against the Normans in southern Italy and then made the best of the situation by

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granting them parts of the region and Sicily as well as a fief, turning former enemies into vassals. It supported the Christian push into the taifas of al-Andalus, and Pope Alexander II (1061–1073) transformed the “reconquista” (the conquest of Islamic Spain) into a holy war when he forgave the sins of the Christians on their way to the battle of Barbastro.

The Investiture Conflict and Its Effects The papal reform movement is associated particularly with Pope Gregory VII (1073–1085), hence the term “Gregorian Reform.” A passionate advocate of papal primacy, Gregory was not afraid to clash directly with the king of Germany, Henry IV (r.1056–1106), over Church leadership. In Gregory’s view – an astonishing one at the time, given the religious and spiritual roles associated with rulers – kings and emperors were simple laymen who had no right to meddle in Church affairs. Henry, on the other hand, brought up in the traditions of his father, Henry III, considered it part of his duty to appoint bishops and even popes to ensure the well-being of Church and Empire together. The pope and the king first collided over the appointment of the archbishop of Milan. Gregory disputed Henry’s right to “invest” the archbishop (i.e., put him into his office). In the investiture ritual, the emperor or his representative symbolically gave the church and the land that went with it to the bishop or archbishop chosen for the job. (See Plate 5.6.) In the case of Milan, two rival candidates for archiepiscopal office (one supported by the pope, the other by the emperor) had been at loggerheads for several years when, in 1075, Henry invested a new man. Gregory immediately called on Henry to “give more respectful attention to the master of the Church,” namely Saint Peter and his living representative – Gregory himself!7 In reply, Henry and the German bishops called on Gregory, that “false monk,” to resign.8 This was the beginning of what historians delicately call 7 Gregory VII, Admonition to Henry IV, in A Short Medieval Reader, pp. 131–33 and in Reading the Middle Ages, pp. 251–53. 8 Henry IV, Letter to Gregory VII, in A Short Medieval Reader, pp. 134–35 and in Reading the Middle Ages, pp. 253–54.

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Plate 5.6 A King Invests a Bishop (c.1100). In this manuscript made at SaintOmer, a monastery named after Merovingian Saint Audomar in the region between Belgium and France today, King Dagobert is shown giving the saint a pastoral staff, the emblem of his ecclesiastical duty as the “shepherd” of his “flock.” Though the monk-artist was painting this right in the middle of the Investiture Conflict and its reform ideas, he drew tranquilly on older practices. The fact that the king is slightly higher than the saint even suggests that he has greater dignity.

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the “Investiture Conflict” or “Investiture Controversy.” In fact, it was war. In February 1076, Gregory convened a synod that both excommunicated Henry and suspended him from office: I deprive King Henry [IV], son of the emperor Henry [III], who has rebelled against [God’s] Church with unheard-of audacity, of the government over the whole kingdom of Germany and Italy, and I release all Christian men from the allegiance which they have sworn or may swear to him, and I forbid anyone to serve him as king.9 The last part of this decree gave it real punch: anyone in Henry’s kingdom could rebel against him. The German “princes” – the aristocrats – seized the moment and threatened to elect another king. In part, they were motivated by religious sentiments, for many had established links with the papacy through their support of reformed monasteries. But they were also in part opportunists, glad to free themselves from the restraints of strong German kings who had tried to keep their power in check. Some bishops, too, joined with Gregory’s supporters, a major blow to Henry, who needed the prestige and the troops that they supplied. Attacked on all sides, Henry traveled in the winter of 1077 to intercept Gregory, barricaded in a fortress at Canossa, high in the Apennine Mountains. It was a refuge provided by the staunchest of papal supporters, Countess Matilda of Tuscany. (See Plate 5.7.) In an astute and dramatic gesture, the king dressed as a penitent, stripping himself of all the trappings of kingship. Standing barefoot outside the fortress walls, he suffered in the cold and snow for three days. Gregory was forced, as a pastor, to lift his excommunication and to receive Henry back into the Church, precisely as Henry intended. For his part, the pope had the satisfaction of seeing the king humiliate himself before the papal majesty. Although it made a great impression on contemporaries, the whole episode solved nothing. The princes elected an antiking, the emperor an antipope, and bloody civil war continued intermittently until 1122. The Investiture Conflict ended with a compromise: the Concordat of Worms (1122). It relied on a conceptual distinction between two parts of investiture – the spiritual (in which the bishop-to-be received the symbols of his office) and the secular (in which he received the symbols of the material goods that would allow him to function in the world). Under the terms of the Concordat, the ring and staff, symbols of Church office, were to be given by a churchman in the first part of the ceremony. Then the emperor or his representative would touch the bishop with a scepter, signifying the land and other possessions that went with his office. Elections of bishops in Germany would take place “in the presence” of the emperor – that is, under his influence. In Italy, the pope would have a comparable role. In the end, then, secular rulers continued to have a role in the appointment of churchmen. But just as the new investiture ceremony broke the ritual into spiritual and secular halves, 9 Roman Lenten Synod, in The Correspondence of Pope Gregory VII: Selected Letters from the Registrum, ed. and trans. Ephraim Emerton (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969), p. 91.

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so too it implied a new notion of kingship separate from the priesthood. The Investiture Conflict did not produce the modern distinction between Church and State – that would develop only very slowly – but it set the wheels in motion. At the time, its most important consequence was to shatter the delicate balance between political and ecclesiastical powers in Germany and Italy. In Germany, the princes consolidated their lands and powers at the expense of the king. In Italy, the communes came closer to their goals: it was no accident that Milan gained its independence in 1097, as the conflict raged. In every domain the papacy gained new authority. In Church law, papal primacy was enhanced by the publication c.1140 of the Decretum, written by a teacher of canon law named Gratian. Collecting nearly two thousand passages from the decrees of popes and councils as well as the writings of the Church Fathers, Gratian set out to demonstrate their essential agreement. In fact, the book’s original title was Harmony of Discordant Canons. If he found any “discord” in his sources, Gratian usually imposed the harmony himself by arguing that the conflicting passages dealt with different situations. A bit later another legal scholar revised and expanded the Decretum, adding Roman law to the mix. At a more intimate level, papal denunciations of married clergy made inroads on family life. While in the old heartland of the Carolingian Empire few eleventh-century priests were wed, the practice was fairly common in England, Normandy, and Italy. The Gregorian reformers were determined to end this, and they were eventually quite successful. For example, at Saint Paul’s in England c.1100, even after a half-century push for reform, many of the canons (the priests who served the cathedral church) were married, and Church offices and their associated properties (prebends) passed from father to son. But thereafter the practice seems to have fallen off. Similarly, at Verona, “sons of priests” disappeared from the historical record in the twelfth century. Nevertheless, in some places, clerics resisted the call to repudiate their wives and children into the thirteenth century. While reformers might rail against the “lustful” women who tempted their priestly husbands to evil sin, other churchmen were glad to recognize and praise the help, piety, and benefactions of priest’s wives. As the papacy consolidated its territory, promulgated its laws and discipline, established an administrative bureaucracy, and set up collection agencies and law courts, it came to resemble the monarchs of its day.

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Plate 5.7 Henry IV Kneels before Countess Matilda (1115). This depiction of the confrontation at Canossa is among the illustrations in a Life of Matilda written by Donizo, monk and later abbot of Sant’Apollonio of Canossa. Donizo’s account makes her the chief figure in the drama, since the king begs her pardon, not the pope’s. Matilda is seated high on a throne and sheltered by a ciborium, an ornamental canopy. Henry IV, following the directive given him by his godfather Abbot Hugh of Cluny (1049–1109) (on the left), kneels before the countess, supplicating her favor and pardon. Matilda was a major supporter of Gregory VII, supplying both troops and finances to back him. Compare this image of royal power with that in Plate 5.6.

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The First Crusade It resembled them, too, in calling for wars. Monarchs might consider their wars “just”; popes could claim that their wars were “holy.” In effect, Alexander II declared the reconquista in Spain to be holy when he forgave the sins of its soldiers. (See above, p. 183.) It was in the wake of this that the taifa rulers implored the Almoravids for help. When Byzantine Emperor Alexius asked Pope Urban II (1088–1099) for mercenaries to help retake Anatolia from the Seljuks, the pope responded by declaring a holy war to Jerusalem, the movement historians call the First Crusade. After attending a Peace Council in southern France, Urban called for a pious pilgrimage to the Holy Land to be undertaken by an armed militia. It would be commissioned like those of the Peace of God, but thousands of times larger. And it would fight under the leadership of the papacy. “Let your quarrels end,” admonished Urban. “Let wars cease, and let all dissensions and controversies slumber. Enter upon the road to the Holy Sepulcher; wrest that land from the wicked race, and subject it to yourselves.”10 What was that “wicked race”? Europeans adopted a catch-all word for it: Saracens. Originally referring to one group of Arabs living in the Sinai Peninsula, in Europe the term came to refer to all Muslims. By collapsing numerous factions, ethnicities, dynasties, and traditions into that simple word, Europeans created fertile soil at home for antiMuslim racism to flourish. In a somewhat parallel development, Muslims came to call all crusaders iFranj, Franks. The First Crusade (1096–1099) mobilized a force of some 100,000 people, including warriors, old men, bishops, priests, women, children, and hangers-on. Its armies were organized not as one military force but rather as separate militias, each authorized by Urban II and commanded by a different leader.

The Massacre of Rhineland Jews Several unofficial bands were not authorized by the pope. Though called collectively the “Peasants’ (or People’s) Crusade,” these irregular armies included nobles. They were inspired by popular preachers, especially the eloquent Peter the Hermit, who was described by chroniclers as small, ugly, barefoot, and – partly because of those very characteristics – utterly captivating. Starting out before the other armies, the Peasants’ Crusade took a route to the Holy Land through the Rhineland in Germany. This detour was no mistake. The crusaders were looking for “wicked races” closer to home: the Jews. Under Henry IV many Jewish settlers had gained a stable place within Germany, particularly in the prosperous cities that lined up along the Rhine River. The

10 Robert the Monk, Pope Urban II Preaches the First Crusade, in A Short Medieval Reader, pp. 136–38 and in Reading the Middle Ages, pp. 261–63.

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Jews there received protection from the local bishops (often imperial appointees) in return for paying a tax.11 While scattered communities of Jews had lived in this region during the tenth century, they became clearly important players only in the eleventh. Established in their own neighborhoods within the cities, the Jews built synagogues to serve as schools, community centers, and places of worship, and they consecrated cemeteries to act as sites of communal and ancestral memories. Each community followed its own rules, based in part on Jewish learned tradition and in part on the norms of the Christians around them, and they and the

Map 5.5 The Mediterranean Region and the First Crusade

11 The Jews of this region in Germany and in northern France called themselves Ashkenazi, after one of the descendants of Noah. Gradually the term came to refer to most European Jews with the exception of those from Spain (the Sefarad). However, in the medieval period, the Jews also had many other and more precise terms to refer to various regional groups – e.g., Sicilians, Yemenites – and since medieval borders constantly shifted, even the notions of Ashkenaz and Sefarad were fluid.

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bishops of each city negotiated the form of law that would be applied in their law court (kehal). Just as they adapted to their surrounding Christian community, so the Jews were much in demand by Christians for their skills as merchants and doctors – professions they and their ancestors had earlier plied in southern Italy, southern France, and Byzantium. On the whole, the Rhineland Jews coexisted peacefully with their Christian neighbors until the First Crusade. Then the Peasants’ Crusade, joined by some local nobles and militias from the region, threatened the “Jews,” lumping them all together with this one now racialized word, no matter their differences. Giving them two bitter choices – forced conversion or death – some persecutors relented when their victims paid them money. Others, however, attacked. Beleaguered Jews occasionally found refuge with bishops or in the houses of Christian friends, but in many cities – Metz, Speyer, Worms, Mainz, and Cologne – they were massacred even so. “Even the bishop [of Mainz] fled from his church for it was thought to kill him also because he had spoken good things of the Jews,” lamented chronicler Solomon bar Samson.12 Leaving the Rhineland, some of the irregular militias disbanded, while others sought to gain the Holy Land via Hungary, at least one stopping off at Prague to massacre more Jews there. Only a handful of these armies continued on to Anatolia, where most of them were quickly slaughtered. From the point of view of Emperor Alexius at Constantinople, even the “official” crusaders were problematic. One of the crusade’s leaders, the Norman warrior Bohemond, had, a few years before, tried to conquer Byzantium itself. Alexius got most of the leaders to swear that if they conquered any land previously held by the Byzantines, they would restore it; and if they conquered new regions, they would hold them from Alexius as their overlord. Then he shipped the armies across the Bosporus. (For the various armies and their routes, see Map 5.5 on p. 187.)

Taking Jerusalem The main objective of the First Crusade – to conquer the Holy Land – was accomplished largely because of the disunity of the Islamic world and its failure to consider the crusade a serious military threat. Spared by the Turks when they first arrived in Anatolia, the crusaders’ armies were initially uncoordinated and their food supplies uncertain, but soon they organized themselves. They set up a “council of princes” that included all the great crusade leaders, and the Byzantines supplied them with food at a nearby port. Surrounding Iznik (Nicaea) and besieging it with catapults and other war machines, the crusaders, along with a small Byzantine contingent, took the city on June 19, 1097. The city surrendered directly to Alexius, who rewarded the crusaders amply but also insisted that any leader who had not yet taken the oath to him do so.

12 Solomon bar Samson, Chronicle, in A Short Medieval Reader, pp. 138–40 and in Reading the Middle Ages, pp. 263–66.

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However, the crusaders soon forgot their promise to the Byzantines. While most went toward Antioch, which stood in the way of their conquest of Jerusalem, one leader went off to Edessa, where he took over the city and its outlying area, creating the first of the Crusader States: the County of Edessa. Meanwhile the other crusaders remained stymied before the thick and heavily fortified walls of Antioch for many months. Then, in a surprise turnabout, they entered the town but found themselves besieged by Muslim armies from the outside. Their mood grim, they rallied when a peasant named Peter Bartholomew reported that he had seen in many visions the Holy Lance that had pierced Christ’s body – it was, he said, buried right in the main church in Antioch. (Antioch had a flourishing Christian population even under Muslim rule.) After a night of feverish digging, the crusaders believed that they had discovered the Holy Lance, and, fortified by this miracle, they defeated the besiegers. From Antioch, it was only a short march to Jerusalem, though disputes among the crusade leaders delayed that next step for over a year. One leader claimed Antioch. Another eventually took charge – provisionally – of the expedition to Jerusalem. His way was eased by quarrels among Muslim rulers, and an alliance with one of them allowed free passage through what would have been enemy territory. In early June 1099, a large crusading force amassed before the walls of Jerusalem and set to work building siege engines.13 In mid-July they attacked, breaching the walls and entering the city. Jerusalem was now in the hands of the crusaders.

RULERS WITH CLOUT While the papacy was turning into a monarchy, other rulers – some of them women, such as Matilda of Canossa – were beginning to turn their territories into states. They discovered ideologies to justify their hegemony, hired officials to work for them, and found vassals and churchmen to support them.

The Crusader States In the Holy Land, the leaders of the crusade set up four tiny states, European colonies in the Levant. Two (Tripoli and Edessa) were counties, Antioch was a principality, Jerusalem a kingdom. (See Map 5.5 again.) These (except for Edessa) lasted – tenuously – until the late thirteenth century (the last holdout fell in 1291). Many new crusades had to be called in the interval to shore them up. The whole region was multi-ethnic, multi-religious, and habituated to rule by a military elite, and the Crusader States (apart from the religion of 13 For siege engines, see “Reading through Looking,” in Reading the Middle Ages, pp. XII–XIII, esp. Plate 8.

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Plate 5.8 Crac des Chevaliers (12th and 13th cent.). This enormous castle, which housed a garrison of perhaps 2,000 men, was built in stages. An enclosure with defensive square towers and two gates was built before 1170. Within were vaulted chambers and a chapel. Earthquakes in 1170 and 1202 destroyed much of this structure and ushered in the busiest period of building, during which the castle took its present form. A huge outer circuit of walls surrounds the entire castle, which included halls, residences, and a chapel. The view here shows the aqueduct on the eastern side; it supplied water for drinking and

its elite) were no exception. Yet, however much they engaged with their neighbors, the Europeans in the Levant saw themselves as a world apart, holding on to their Western identity through their political institutions and the old vocabulary of homage, fealty, and Christianity. The new rulers carved out estates to give as fiefs to their vassals, who, in turn, gave portions of their holdings in fief to their own men. Indigenous peasants continued to work the land as before, and commerce boomed as the new rulers encouraged lively trade at their coastal ports. Italian merchants, especially the Genoese, Pisans, and Venetians, were the most active, but others – Byzantines and Muslim traders – participated as well. Enlightened lordship dictated that the mixed population of the states – Muslims, to be sure, but also Jews, Greek Orthodox Christians, Monophysite Christians, and others – be tolerated for the sake of production and trade. Most Europeans had gone home after the First Crusade; those left behind were obliged to coexist with the inhabitants that remained. Eastern and Western Christians learned to share shrines, priests, and favorite monastic charities; when they came to blows, any violence tended to be local and sporadic.

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The main concerns of the Crusader States’ rulers were military. Knights had to be recruited from Europe from time to time, and two new and militant forms of monasticism developed in the Levant: the Knights Templar and the Hospitallers. Both were vowed to poverty and chastity, yet devoted themselves to war at the same time. They defended the town garrisons of the Crusader States and ferried money from Europe to the Holy Land. Some of the castles that bristled in the Crusader States’ countryside were constructed by these warrior-monks. One of the most impressive, and still standing, is Crac des Chevaliers, originally a simple fortification built by Muslims to fight the crusaders. It was taken, along with the fertile lands around it, by Count Raymond II of Tripoli in 1140, who granted both to the Hospitallers four years later. The stronghold was well situated to dominate the countryside, but it was also dangerously near Homs, which was under Islamic rule. Taking up the challenge, the Hospitallers proceeded to turn the originally modest structure into a model center of both defense and administration. (See Plate 5.8.) Yet none of this could prevent Zangi, a Seljuk emir, from taking Edessa in 1144. The slow but steady shrinking of the Crusader States began at that moment. The Second Crusade (1147–1149), called in the wake of Zangi’s victory, came to a disastrous end. After

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for the moat. Jutting out from the wall at intervals are round towers – a very new shape for such structures. The archery slits in the turrets allowed bowmen to shoot in almost complete safety.

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William I the Conqueror (1066 –1087) = Matilda of Flanders

Robert II (d. 1134) duke of Normandy

William II (1087 –1100)

Henry I (1100 –1135) = Edith Matilda of Scotland

Adela (d.1137) = Stephen, count of Blois

Matilda ( d.1167)

Stephen (1135 –1154)

See Genealogy 6.1 on p. 216

Genealogy 5.4 The Norman Kings of England

only four days of besieging the walls of Damascus, the crusaders, whose leaders could not keep the peace among themselves, gave up and went home.

England under Norman Rule A more enduring conquest took place in England. Linked to the Continent by the Vikings, who had settled in its eastern half, England was further tied to Scandinavia under the rule of Cnut in the early eleventh century (see above, p. 149). But only when it was conquered by Duke William of Normandy (d.1087) was it drawn inextricably into the Continental orbit. (See Map 5.6.) When William left his duchy with a large army in the autumn of 1066 to dispute the crown of the childless King Edward the Confessor (r.1042–1066), who had died earlier that year, he avowed that Edward had sworn on oath to leave the kingdom to him. Opposing his claim were Harald Hardrada, king of Norway, and Harold Godwineson, who had been crowned king of England the day after Edward’s death. At Stamford Bridge in the north of England, Harold defeated the Norwegian king and then wheeled his army around to confront William at Hastings. That one-day battle was decisive, and William was crowned the first Norman king of England. (See Genealogy 5.4.) Treating his conquest like booty (as rulers in the Crusade States would do a few decades later), William kept about 20 per cent of the land for himself and divided the rest, distributing it in large but scattered fiefs to a relatively small number of his barons – his elite followers – and to family members, lay and ecclesiastical, as well as to some lesser men, such as personal servants and soldiers. In turn, these men maintained their own vassals. They owed the king military service along with the service of a fixed number of their vassals; and they paid him certain dues, such as reliefs (money paid upon inheriting a fief ) and aids (payments made on important occasions). The king also collected land taxes, as English kings had done since the early eleventh century. To know what was owed him, in 1086 William ordered a survey of the land and

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1066 1068-69 1069-70 1100

landholders of England. His officials consulted ancient tax lists and took testimony from locals, who were sworn to answer a series of formal questions truthfully. Compilers standardized the materials, using a shorthand vocabulary. Consider, by way of example, the entry for the manor of Diddington: the bishop of Lincoln had 2½ hides to the geld. [There is] land for 2 ploughs. There are now 2 ploughs in demesne; and 5 villans having 2 ploughs. There is a church, and 18 acres of meadow, [and] woodland pasture half a league long and a half broad. TRE worth 60s; now 70s. William holds it of the bishop.14 This needs unpacking. The hides were units of tax assessment; the ploughs and acres were units of area; the leagues were units of length. The villans (sometimes spelled villeins) were one type of peasant (there were many kinds). Finally, the abbreviation TRE meant “in the time of King Edward.” Anyone consulting the survey would know that the manor of Diddington was now worth more than it had been TRE. As for the William mentioned here: he was not William the Conqueror but rather a vassal of the bishop of Lincoln. No wonder the survey was soon dubbed “Domesday Book”: like the records of people who will be judged at doomsday, it provided facts that could not be appealed. Domesday was the most extensive inventory of land, livestock, taxes, and people that had as yet been compiled anywhere in medieval Europe. England and the Continent nearly merged. The new English barons who arrived with William spoke a brand of French; they talked more easily with the peasants of Normandy (if they bothered) than with those tilling the land in England. They maintained their estates on the Continent and their ties with its politics, institutions, and culture. English wool was sent to Flanders to be turned into cloth. The most brilliant intellect of his day, Saint Anselm of Bec (and Canterbury; 1033–1109), was born in Italy, became abbot of Bec, a Norman monastery, and was then appointed archbishop of Canterbury in England. English adolescent boys were sent to Paris and Chartres for schooling. The kings of England often spent more time on the Continent than they did on the island. When, on the death of King Henry I (r.1100–1135) no male descendent survived to take the throne, two counts from the Continent – Geoffrey of Anjou and Stephen of Blois – disputed it as their right through two rival females of the royal line, Matilda and Adela. (See Genealogy 5.4 again.)

Map 5.6 The Norman Invasion of England, 1066–1100

Christian Spain and Portugal While England was conquered in a day, the reconquista took centuries. (Then, again, Iberia is four and a half times as large as England!) It was a very lucrative enterprise, initially made possible by the disintegration of al-Andalus into weak and competitive taifas. The 14 Domesday Book, in Reading the Middle Ages, pp. 275–78.

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fledgling Christian states in the north – León, Castile, Navarre, and Aragon – staged plundering raids, confiscated lands and cities, and (until the Almoravids put an end to it) collected tribute in gold from taifa rulers anxious to stave off attacks. Nor were the northern states the only beneficiaries of these wars. When Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, the Cid (from the Arabic sidi, lord), fell out of favor with his lord, Alfonso VI, king of Castile and León, he and a band of followers found employment with al-Mutamin, ruler of Zaragoza. There he defended the city against Christian and Muslim invaders alike. In 1090, he struck out on his own, conquering Valencia in 1094 and ruling there until his death in 1099. He was a Spaniard, but other opportunistic warriors sometimes came from elsewhere. In fact, Pope Alexander II’s call to besiege Barbastro in 1064 appealed to knights from France. Spain’s French connections were symptomatic of a wider process: the Europeanization of Christian Spain. Initially the northern kingdoms were isolated islands of Visigothic culture. But already in the tenth century, pilgrims from France, England, Germany, and Italy clogged the roads to the shrine of Saint James (Santiago de Compostela; see Map 5.7), while in the eleventh century, monks from the French monastery of Cluny arrived to colonize Spanish cloisters. At the same time, Alfonso VI actively reached out beyond the Pyrenees. He cultivated ties with Cluny, doubling the annual gift of 1,000 gold pieces that his father, Fernando I, had given to the monks there in exchange for prayers for his soul. He also sought recognition from Pope Gregory VII as “king of Spain,” and in return he imposed the Roman liturgy throughout his kingdom, stamping out traditional Visigothic music and texts. In 1085 Alfonso made good his claim to be more than the king of Castile and León by conquering Toledo. This was the original reason why the Almoravids came to Spain, as we saw on p. 170. After Alfonso’s death, his daughter, Queen Urraca (r.1109–1126), ruled in her own right a realm larger than England. Her strength came from the usual sources: control over land, which, though granted out to counts and others, was at least in theory revocable; Church appointments; a court of great men to offer advice and give their consent; and an army to which all men – even arms-bearing slaves – were liable to be called up once a year. In the wake of Almoravid victories, however, two new Christian states, AragonCatalonia and Portugal, began to challenge the supremacy of Castile and León. Aragon had always been a separate entity, but Portugal was the creation of Alfonso VI himself. As king of León, he ruled over the county of Portugal (the name came from Portucalia: land of ports), and in 1095 he granted his rights there to his illegitimate daughter Teresa and her husband, Henry of Burgundy. They became the first count and countess of Portugal as Alfonso’s vassals. But their son, Count Afonso Henriques, chafed under the lordship of León, took the title of prince of Portugal in 1129, and began to encroach on Islamic territory to his south. In 1139 he defeated the Almoravids at the battle of Ourique and took the title of king of Portugal as Afonso I.

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P

navarre Eb

aragon Barbastro catalonia Duero Zaragoza Lérida castile Tarragona ro

Tagus

Ourique

nci

a

portugal

Toledo

Badajoz Lisbon alm or av id

Praising the King of France

y r e n e e s

Córdoba

lquivir

a Guad

Seville

va l e

The continuing pressure of the reconquista, together with fierce opposition from a new group in the Maghrib – the Almohads (as we shall see in the next chapter) – ended in the defeat of the Almoravids c.1150–c.1175.

Santiago de Compostela león

em pir e Murcia Granada

Málaga

Not all rulers had opportunities for grand conquest. Yet they survived Atlantic O cean and even prospered. Such was the case of the kings of France. Reduced to battling a few castles in the vicinity of the Ile-de-France (see Map 5.3 on p. 176), the Capetian kings nevertheless wielded many of the same instruments of power as their conquering contemporaries: vassals, taxes, commercial revenues, military and religious reputations. Louis VI the Fat (r.1108–1137), so heavy that he had to be hoisted onto his horse by a crane, was nevertheless a tireless defender of royal power. (See Genealogy 5.5.) Louis’s virtues were amplified and broadcast by his biographer, Suger (1081–1151), the abbot of Saint-Denis, a monastery just outside Paris. A close associate of the king, Suger was his chronicler and propagandist. When Louis set himself the task of consolidating his rule in the Ile-de-France, Suger portrayed the king as a righteous hero. He was more than a lord with rights over the French nobles as his vassals; he was (asserted Suger) a peacekeeper with the God-given duty to fight unruly strongmen. Careful not to claim that Louis was head of the Church, which would have scandalized the papacy and its supporters, Suger nevertheless emphasized Louis’s role as a vigorous protector of the faith and insisted on the sacred importance of the royal dignity. When Louis died in 1137, Suger’s notion of the might and right of the king of France reflected reality in an extremely small area. Nevertheless, Louis and his propagandist laid the groundwork for the gradual extension of royal power. As the lord of vassals, the king could call upon his men to aid him in times of war (though the great ones might refuse). As king and landlord, he collected dues and taxes with the help of his officials. Revenues came from Paris as well, a thriving commercial and cultural center. With money and land, Louis employed civil servants while dispensing the favors and giving the gifts that added to his prestige and power.

Valencia

Mediterranean S ea

Almería

Map 5.7 The Iberian Peninsula, c.1140

NEW FORMS OF LEARNING AND RELIGIOUS EXPRESSION The commercial revolution and rise of urban centers, the newly reorganized Church, close contact with the Islamic world, and the revived polities of the early twelfth century paved

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Robert the Strong (d.866 ) Odo (888 –898 )

Robert I (922–923 )

Raoul = Emma duke of Burgundy king (923 –936)

Hugh the Great duke of Francia (d.956 ) = Eadhild (daughter of king of Wessex [England]) = Hadwig (sister of Emperor Otto I)

Hugh Capet (987 –996 ) = Adelaide of Poitou

Emma = Richard I, duke of Normandy

Otto, duke of Burgundy

Robert the Pious (996 –1031 )

Beatrice

Gisella

Henry I (1031 –1060 ) = Anna of Kiev

Adela

Robert duke of Burgundy

Philip I (1060 –1108 )

Hugh

Louis VI the Fat (1108 –1137) Philip

Cecile

Louis VII (1137 –1180 ) = (1) Eleanor of Aquitaine = (2) Constance of Castile = (3) Adela of Champagne

Agnes-Anna = (1) Alexius II Comnenus = (2) Andronicus I Comnenus

Louis IX (Saint Louis) (1226 –1270 ) = Margaret of Provence

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Florus

196

Marie = Henry count of Champagne

Philip count of Mantes Robert count of Dreux

Henry, duke of Burgundy

Hadvise

Constance = Bohemond Henry archbishop of Reims

Adelicia = Theobald count of Blois

Constance

Alice Philip II Augustus = William (1180 –1223 ) count of Ponthieu

Louis VIII (1223 –1226 ) = Blanche of Castile

Philip Hurepel count of Clermont

Robert of Artois

Alphonse of Poitou

Peter Karlotus bishop of Noyon

Charles of Anjou king of Sicily (d.1285)

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the way for the growth of urban schools and new forms of religious expression in Europe. Money, learning, and career opportunities attracted many to city schools. At the same time, some people rejected urbanism and the new-fangled scholarship it supported. They retreated from the world to seek poverty and solitude. Yet the new learning and the new money had a way of seeping into the cracks and crannies of even the most resolutely separate institutions.

Genealogy 5.5 (facing page) The Capetian Kings of France

The New Schools and What They Taught Connected to monasteries and cathedrals since the Carolingian period, traditional schools had trained young men to become monks or priests. Some were better endowed than others with books and teachers; a few developed reputations for particular expertise. By the end of the eleventh century, the best schools were generally connected to cathedrals in the larger cities: Reims, Paris, Bologna, Montpellier. But some teachers (or “masters,” as they were called), such as the charismatic and brilliant Peter Abelard (1079–1142), simply set up shop by renting a room. Students flocked to his lectures. What the students sought, in the first place, was knowledge of the seven liberal arts. Grammar, rhetoric, and logic (or dialectic) belonged to the “beginning” arts, the so-called trivium. Grammar and rhetoric focused on literature and writing. Logic – involving the technical analysis of texts as well as the application and manipulation of arguments – was a transitional subject leading to the second, higher part of the liberal arts, the quadrivium. This covered four areas of study that would today be called theoretical math and science: arithmetic (number theory), geometry, music (theory rather than practice), and astronomy. Of these arts, logic had pride of place in the new schools, while masters and students who studied the quadrivium generally did so outside of the classroom. Scholars looked to logic to clarify what they knew and lead them to further knowledge. Nearly everyone believed that God existed. But a scholar like Anselm (whom we met above as archbishop of Canterbury, p. 193), was not satisfied by belief alone. His faith, as he put it, “sought understanding.” He emptied his mind of all concepts except that of God; then, using the tools of logic, he proved God’s very existence in his Monologion. In Paris a bit later, Peter Abelard declared that “nothing can be believed unless it is first understood.” He drew together conflicting authoritative texts on 158 key subjects in his Sic et Non (Yes and No). The issues that he dealt with included matters of belief, such as “That God is one and the contrary,” and of morality, such as, “That it is permitted to kill men and the contrary.” Leaving the propositions unresolved, Abelard prefaced his book with techniques for critical reading. The easiest way to reconcile different authorities, he advised, was “to admit that the same words are given different meanings by different authors.”15 He offered other, more complex techniques as well. Soon Peter Lombard (c.1100–1160) adopted Abelard’s method of juxtaposing discordant viewpoints, but he 15 Peter Abelard, Sic et Non, in A Short Medieval Reader, pp. 142–44.

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also supplied his own resolutions. In this way, he created the most widely read theology textbook of the Middle Ages: the Four Books of Sentences. Although logic was the tool that scholars such as Abelard and Peter Lombard considered crucial to solving the issues of their day, they had little access to the most systematic work on the topic, the treatises of Aristotle (d.323 bce ). Aristotle wrote in Greek, which Western Christians could not read. In the Islamic world, by contrast, Aristotle’s works had not only been translated into Arabic but also commented upon by scholars such as Ibn Sina (Avicenna; 980–1037) (see above, p. 133) and Ibn Rushd (Averroes; 1126–1198). So, towards the end of the twelfth century and extending into the thirteenth, Western scholars traveled to Islamic or formerly Islamic cities – Toledo in Spain, Palermo in Sicily – to learn from Arabic as well as Hebrew translators and to arrive at workable Latin versions of Aristotle. In the course of the thirteenth century, Aristotle’s works became the primary philosophical authority for the scholars of medieval European universities, known as the “scholastics.” The lofty subjects of the schools had down-to-earth, practical consequences in training preachers and advising rulers. They were written down in manuals for priests, textbooks for students, and guides for laypeople. Particularly important for “rulers with clout” were the scholars at Bologna, where Gratian worked on canon law. Other scholars achieved fame by teaching and writing about Roman law. By the mid-twelfth century, they had made real progress toward a systematic understanding of Justinian’s law codes. The lawyers who emerged from the school at Bologna went on to serve popes, bishops, kings, princes, or communes. In this way, the learning of the schools was used by the newly powerful twelfth-century states, preached in the churches, and consulted in the courts.

Monastic Splendor and Poverty Even as schools drew young men to them in droves, monasteries continued to exert their own magnetic pull. In the twelfth century they proliferated and took on new forms. There were “old-fashioned” Benedictine houses that continued to prosper – Cluny was a good example of that. Filled with many monks, model for numerous other monasteries both near and far, leader of an “order” of houses that were expected to coordinate their way of life with that of the “mother house,” Cluny itself was a miniature city enclosed in walls. Under Abbot Hugh (1049–1109) its church was the largest in Christendom. The monastery had a refectory where the monks ate, a dormitory where they slept, a “chapter room” where they read the Benedictine Rule, an infirmary for the sick, and many other structures built so as to form a square around an open “cloister,” lush and green, a taste of paradise. The whole purpose of this complex was to allow the monks to carry out a life of beautiful, arduous, and nearly continuous prayer. Every detail of their lives was ordered, every object splendid, every space adorned to render due honor to the Lord of heaven. But not all medieval people agreed that such extravagance pleased or praised God. At the end of the eleventh century, the new commercial economy and the profit motive that fueled it led many to reject wealth and to embrace poverty as a key element of the religious

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N

Infirmary kitchen Infirmary chapel

Figure 5.1 Plan of Fountains Abbey, a Cistercian Monastery Founded 1132

Infirmary

Skell River Monks’ latrine (above)

Chapter house

Monks’ common room (monks’ dormitory above)

Monks’ choir

Monks’ warming room Monks’ refectory

Cloister Rood screen Kitchen Choir of the lay brothers

Store room

Lay brothers’ dormitory (above)

Lay brothers’ refectory Latrines for lay brothers Lay brothers’ infirmary

0

15

30m

Guest lodgings

life. The Carthusian order, founded by Bruno of Cologne (d.1101), represented one such movement. La Grande Chartreuse, the chief house of the order, was built in an Alpine valley, lonely and inaccessible. Each monk took a vow of silence and lived as a hermit in his own small hut. Only occasionally would the monks join for prayer in a common oratory. When not engaged in prayer or meditation, the Carthusians copied manuscripts: in their view, scribal work was a way to preach God’s word with the hands rather than the mouth. Slowly the Carthusian order grew, but each monastery was limited to only twelve monks, the number of Christ’s Apostles. Another new monastic group proclaiming poverty as its watchword was the Cistercians. The first Cistercian house was Cîteaux (in Latin, Cistercium), founded in 1098 by Robert of Molesme (d.1111) and a few other monks seeking a more austere way of life. Austerity they found – and also success. With the arrival of Saint Bernard (c.1090–1153), who came to

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Plate 5.9 Sénanque Monastery Church, Interior (c.1160). Because of the geography of the valley where the monastery was constructed, the church is oriented so that the “north” end takes the usual place of the “east.”

Cîteaux in 1112 along with about thirty friends and relatives, the original center sprouted a small congregation of houses in Burgundy. (Bernard became abbot of one of them, Clairvaux.) The order grew, often by reforming and incorporating existing monasteries. By the mid-twelfth century there were more than 300 Cistercian monasteries. Many were in France, but some were in Italy, Germany, England, Austria, and Spain. By the end of the twelfth century, the Cistercians were an order: their member houses adhered to the decisions of a General Chapter; their liturgical practices and internal organization were standardized. Many nuns, as eager as monks to live the life of simplicity and poverty that the Apostles had endured and enjoyed, adopted Cîteaux’s customs, and some convents later became members of the order. Although the Cistercians claimed the Benedictine Rule as the foundation of their customs, they elaborated a style of life and an aesthetic all their own. Dividing the tasks of the monastery into two kinds, they had the manual labor done by illiterate “lay brothers,” while the “work of God” – prayer – was performed by the others. This made the Cistercian monastery a house divided (see Figure 5.1). While built around a cloister (like other Benedictine houses), the Cistercian plan relegated the western half to the lay brothers, while the eastern part was reserved for the “choir” monks. Each half had its

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own dining room, latrines, dormitories, and infirmaries. The two sorts of monks were strictly separated from each other, even in the church, where a rood screen kept them from seeing one another. In general, the lifestyle of the Cistercians was governed by the goal of simplicity. All their churches were dedicated to one saint, Mary, the mother of God and model of perfect love. All of their liturgy was simplified, eliminating the many additions that had been tacked on to the daily prayers of monks at Cluny, where the whole day was spent chanting and celebrating Masses. Only one daily Mass, only the prayers in the Rule: that was the Cistercian ideal. They rejected the conceit of dyeing their robes – hence their nickname, the “white monks.” Their insistence on simplicity translated into the appearance of their churches as well. Plate 5.9 shows the nave of Sénanque, a French monastery begun in 1139. Although very plain, the articulation of the pillars and arches and the stone molding that gently breaks the vertical thrust of the vault lend the church a sober charm. Yet their spiritual lives were not simple at all. Rather, they enlisted all their emotions and senses into understanding and exploring God’s love for them and theirs for God. Historians have dubbed this “affective piety.” Meditating on the life of Christ, they rejoiced and wept as the story unfolded. They longed to be welcomed as “brides” into the Lord’s bedchamber. They did not hesitate to use maternal imagery to describe the nurturing care provided to humans by Jesus himself.

Plasticity vs Simplicity in Art and Architecture “Romanesque” churches aimed at glorifying God. Most did so richly and grandly. But some, inspired by the new emphasis on simplicity, shunned all but the most basic motifs.

Magnificent Romanesque The size and splendor of the church at Cluny was meant to showcase both the solemn intoning of the chant and the honor due to God. Its architectural style, called Romanesque, represents the first wave of European monumental building. Constructed of stone or brick clad with stone, Romanesque edifices – whether cathedrals or monastic churches – were echo chambers for the sound of prayers. Massive, weighty, and dignified, they were often enlivened by sculpture, wall paintings, or patterned textures. The Italian cathedral at Modena (see Map 5.3 on p. 176), begun in 1099, may serve as a case study of Romanesque architecture and sculpture. We have already seen a bit of this church when viewing the sculptor depicted in Plate 5.5 (on p. 179). The building as a whole is an impressive work both in conception and execution. The decision to replace an earlier, more modest church was made by the leading citizens of the city, and they and the canons (priests) connected to the cathedral chose master architect Lanfranco to build it, while its initial sculptures were the work of Wiligelmo, who inscribed his name near the central door on the west end.

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Plate 5.10 Modena Cathedral, Interior (early 12th–14th cent.). The chief impression is of solidity and strength, made slightly less intimidating by the triforium and clerestory. Note the importance of the round arches that open onto the side aisles.

Plate 5.11 (facing page) Modena Cathedral, West Facade (early 12th cent. with 13th-cent. additions). The rose window and the jutting porch supported by lions were added to this otherwise early twelfth-century facade created by Lanfranco and Wiligelmo. The sculpted panels tell the sacred story, starting on the far left with creation (Plate 5.12). It continues (at the left of the central door) with the expulsion from the garden and (at the right of the central door) the murder of Cain. The sequence ends (above the far right door) with the landing of Noah’s ark.

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Plate 5.12 Adam and Eve, Modena Cathedral (early 12th cent.). God the Creator, holding a book that says “I am the light of the world, the true way, eternal life,” creates Adam and then (as Adam sleeps) pulls Eve out of the side of his swollen belly. At the right Adam bites into the apple; already he and Eve feel shame at their nakedness and cover their genitals.

Figure 5.2 shows the main features of Modena cathedral and, by extension, of other Romanesque churches. It boasts three stories: the first is delineated by an arcade of arches, the second by the triforium (here round arches delicately bisected in three by thin pillars), and the third level is the clerestory, which lets in the light of the sun. The whole sets up an undulating horizontal rhythm marked by the curves of the triforium, which continue all around the church. The curves are repeated by the round arcades, which extend the length of the nave and are held up by graceful pillars topped by carved “capitals” that look like fancy hats. Countering these horizontal thrusts are suggestions of upward movement, as heavy walls are progressively pierced by openings. Consider the Modena campanile, a feature of most Italian churches. Here the lower tiers are “blind arcades” behind which is pure masonry. But the viewer’s eye is inexorably drawn upward as the tower’s walls gradually sprout windows. The most characteristic aspect of Romanesque churches are their round “tunnel” vaults (see Plate 5.10), though by the time the vault at Modena was finished, the “pointed” arches of Gothic style had become fashionable. Even so, as in all Romanesque churches, here too the viewer’s eye is drawn toward the east, where the altar is located, rather than upward. Much of the interior of this Romanesque church is anticipated on the exterior, which alerts the visitor to the three-part division of nave and flanking side aisles and the triforium level. (See Plate 5.11.) The sculptures on four panels flanking both sides of the central portal and above each of the side doors were carved by Wiligelmo, who was clearly inspired by classical Roman models. (See Plate 5.12.)

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Figure 5.2 Modena Cathedral, Cut-Out View

Campanile (Bell tower)

Tunnel vault Clerestory Triforium

Apse

Arcade Side aisle

Oculus

220 feet

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Porta regia (Royal portal)

west end Triforium

Porta dei principi (Princes’ portal)

New Forms of Learning and Religious Expression

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Cistercian Plainness By contrast with Modena’s splendor, yet equally “Romanesque,” Cistercian churches were simple and devoid of ornament. Foursquare and regular, they were small and constructed of smooth-cut, undecorated stone. Any sculpture was modest at best. Yet the very simplicity of their buildings radiated a quiet sort of beauty. Illuminated by the pure white light that came through clear glass windows, Cistercian churches were luminous, cool, and serene. (See Plate 5.9 on p. 200.) *

*

*

*

*

In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the Seljuk Turks and Berber Almoravids reconfigured the geography of the Islamic world and put their stamp on religion by affirming Sunnism. Byzantium, badly maimed by the Seljuks on its eastern flank, hoped to recoup its losses by calling on the papacy to help man its army. The papacy, however, had its own agenda. Invigorated by the Investiture Conflict, it called for an armed pilgrimage to the east that would both ensure peace in Europe and Christian control over regions that suddenly did not seem so far away. Women partook in this seemingly all-male world in ways large and small. Countess Matilda, key to the success of Gregory VII, was also deeply involved in the building of the cathedral of Modena, which lay in her territory. Other women took advantage of the new learning of the schools; Abelard fell in love with one of the best-educated women of his day, Heloise, who shared in his philosophical breakthroughs. Other women partook in the new religious fervor of the era, and women’s reformed monasteries proliferated at the same time as those of men. Women were involved in the crusades – as wives, as prostitutes, as suppliers of retinues, and as members (though probably not as warriors) of the military orders. But in the next century (as we shall see in Chapter 6) they, like so many others, found themselves increasingly silenced by sometimes overwhelming forces of conformity and intolerance.

For practice questions about the text, maps, plates, and other features – plus suggested answers – please go to www.utphistorymatters.com There you will also find all the maps, genealogies, and figures used in the book.

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FURTHER READING Barrow, Julia. The Clergy in the Medieval World: Secular Clerics, Their Families and Careers in NorthWestern Europe, c.800–c.1200. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Bennison, Amira K. The Almoravid and Almohad Empire. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016. Berzock, Kathleen Bickford, ed. Caravans of God, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture, and Exchange across Medieval Saharan Africa. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019. Bom, Myra Miranda. Women in the Military Orders of the Crusades. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Catlos, Brian A. Muslims of Medieval Latin Christendom, c.1050–1614. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Christie, Niall. Muslims and Crusaders: Christianity’s Wars in the Middle East, 1095–1382, from the Islamic Sources. London: Routledge, 2014. Cobb, Paul M. The Race for Paradise: An Islamic History of the Crusades. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Freestone, Hazel. “Evidence of the Ordinary: Wives and Children of the Clergy in Normandy and England, 1050–1150.” In Anglo Normal Studies XLI: Proceedings of the Battle Conference 2018, edited by Elizabeth van Houts, pp. 39–58. Suffolk, UK: Boydell & Brewer, 2019. Gomez, Michael A. African Dominion: A New History of Empire in Early and Medieval West Africa. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018. Griffiths, Fiona. “Froibirg Gives a Gift: The Priest’s Wife in Eleventh-Century Bavaria.” Speculum 96, no. 4 (2021): 1009–38. Heng, Geraldine. The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Jamroziak, Emilia. The Cistercian Order in Medieval Europe, 1090–1500. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2013. Levtzion, Nehemia, and J.F.P. Hopkins, eds. Corpus of Early Arabic Sources of West African History. Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2000. Little, Lester K. Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy in Medieval Europe. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978. Miller, Maureen C., ed. Power and the Holy in the Age of the Investiture Conflict: A Brief History with Documents. Boston: Bedford, 2005. Newman, Barbara. Making Love in the Twelfth Century: “Letters of Two Lovers” in Context. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016. Nicholson, Helen J. Knights Templar. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021. Nixon, Sam, ed. Essouk-Tadmekka: An Early Islamic Trans-Saharan Market Town. Leiden: Brill, 2017. Peacock, A.C.S. The Great Seljuk Empire. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015. Peacock, A.C.S, and Sara Nur Yildiz, eds. The Seljuks of Anatolia: Court and Society in the Medieval Middle East. London: I.B. Taurus, 2015. Rubenstein, Jay. The First Crusade: A Brief History with Documents. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2015. Yavari, Neguin. The Future of Iran’s Past: Nizam al-Mulk Remembered. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Yildiz, Sara Nur. The Seljuk Empire of Anatolia. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016.

Further Reading

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CHAPTER SIX

H I G H L I G H TS Almohads begin to displace Almoravids 1145 Almohads begin to displace the Almoravids as rulers of al-Andalus and the Maghreb. In West Africa, Ghana reorganizes, casting its lot with the Abbasid caliph rather than with the Almohads.

Assize of Clarendon 1166 King Henry II creates a common system of criminal justice for all of England.

Diet of Roncaglia 1158 Emperor Frederick Barbarossa claims imperial rights over northern Italy. But his harsh rule creates a coalition of cities there, the Lombard League, which (joined by the papacy) defeats him in 1176.

Reign of Saladin 1171–1192

The Fourth Crusade

In 1187, at the battle of Hattin, the Muslim leader Saladin conquers Jerusalem.

1204 Crusaders conquer Constantinople and fracture the Byzantine Empire, creating a Latin Empire on Byzantine soil.

Temüjin is declared Chinggis Khan 1206 Mongols begin conquests east- and westward.

Battle of Bouvines 1214 King John of England loses Normandy to King Philip the Fair of France.

Magna Carta 1215

Fourth Lateran Council

King John agrees to this charter, which ratifies the customs of England and limits royal power.

1215 Its canons specify the key obligations of Christians, stigmatize Jews and Muslims, and try to stamp out heresies.

Death of Frederick II 1250 Grandson of Frederick Barbarossa, he tries mightily to unify Sicily with Germany, but his ambitions are thwarted by the papacy (which even declares a crusade against him), and he loses the adherence of the German princes. After his death, Italy and Germany are no longer linked as an empire.

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SIX

AMBITIONS REALIZED AND THWARTED (c.1150–c.1250) In the second half of the twelfth century, the Almohads defeated the Almoravids and created a new Islamic state in Spain and the Maghreb. To the east, the Ayyubids took over the Fatimid empire and all but extinguished the Crusader States. Much further eastward, the Mongols under Chinggis Khan began to fulfill his aspiration to rule the world. At the beginning of the thirteenth century, the Fourth Crusade, while failing to recover the Holy Land, took Byzantium instead. At Rome, the pope held a council to declare new Church laws and affirm old ones. In England, King John used every tool of royal power to gain money and claim his recently lost French territories. In Germany the emperor managed to end the civil war there. European lords and ladies turned manors into money-making units and supported coteries of singers and poets, while Gothic architecture expressed the confidence of the Church and city-dwellers. High ambitions seemed on the cusp of fulfillment. Yet within the next fifty years or so, the Almohad empire had disappeared; the Ayyubids had been supplanted by the Mamluks, and the Byzantines regained their empire (much weakened to be sure). John lost his bid to keep his lands in France, the German emperor was thwarted in his efforts to put imperial rule on a new footing, and the Church came up against the limits of control. Around the year 1250, only the Mongols’ ambitions were undimmed.

THE ISLAMIC WORLD RESHAPED While the Almohads and Ayyubids created what seemed to be relatively stable and reliably Sunni polities in the west, ferment on the easternmost boundary of the Islamic world brought to the fore a new group, the Mongols.

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M e d i t e r r a n e a n

S e a

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l a s A t

t a i n s M o u n M a g h r e b

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Map 6.1 The Almohad Empire, c.1175

D e s e r t

The Maghreb and West Africa The Almohads, Berber tribesmen who espoused a militant form of Sunni Islam, combined conquest with a program to “purify” the morals of their fellow Muslims. In al-Andalus their appearance in 1145 induced some Islamic rulers to seek alliances with the Christian rulers to the north. But other Andalusian rulers joined forces with the Almohads, who replaced the Almoravids as rulers of the Islamic far west. (See Map 6.1.) Like the Almoravids, the Almohads saw themselves as moral reformers, but unlike the Almoravids, they emphasized interpretation rather than literal readings of the sacred texts. At first biding their time in the mountainous regions of the Maghreb, where the Almoravids were weak, the Almohads stoked numerous tribal resentments. In 1146, they conquered Tlemcen and Fez and entered al-Andalus. Over time, they created a grand empire which, at its greatest extent, stretched from Cuenca (today in Spain) to Tunis. But their sway did not extend as far south as the Almoravids had managed to go. Compare Map 6.1 with Map 5.2 on p. 169.

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Seeing themselves as purifiers of religion, the Almohads imposed restrictions on Jews, persecuted Muslim literalists, and built monuments to mark their triumphs. At Marrakesh, they tore down the Almoravid palace and replaced it with one of their grandest mosques, the Kutubiyya. Then, dissatisfied with that mosque, perhaps because they considered the qibla wall (the one facing Mecca) to be imprecisely oriented, they rebuilt it entirely c.1158, adding, as a final touch at the end of century, a striking minaret. (See Plate 6.1.) The Almohad victory over the Maghreb had reverberations in West Africa, where the now fully Islamized kingdom of Ghana reorganized itself. Its ruler rejected Almohad overlordship and recognized (if only nominally) the distant caliph at Baghdad. Regrouping commercially, Ghana fostered new trading centers to ensure that the desires of the sub-Saharan populations for salt and of the northern elites for gold and slaves would continue to be met. But Ghana’s power, very much in evidence c.1200, soon began to decline as a new regional polity – Mali – was aborning, as we shall see in Chapter 7.

The Rise of Saladin To the east of the Maghreb, the crusades destabilized a Seljuk world already in the process of fragmentation. Kurdish, Arab, Turkmen of different stripes, Mamluks, and Berbers displaced the sultans in many locales. Yet that development did not prevent the Jazira – the upper half of the hourglass formed by the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers – to become a center of wealth. Caravans and armies passed through the region, enriching local elites, some of whom began to pick away at the Crusader States. That was how Zangi, a young protégé of the ruler of Mosul, got his military training, and when he himself became lord of Mosul (r.1127–1146), he continued his forays, conquering the city of Edessa in 1144. Zangi’s son Nur al-Din (r.1146–1174) continued in his father’s footsteps. He occupied the entire territory east of the Orontes River and absorbed the whole County of Edessa; in 1154 he seized Damascus and began to consolidate his rule over all of Syria. These conquests were aided by a Kurdish family of warriors known as the Ayyubids, after Ayyub, the name of its patriarch. Already in Zangi’s service in Mosul, Ayyub, his brother Shirkuh, and his son Saladin aided Nur al-Din’s progressive domination of the region. Called upon to resolve a dispute over the Fatimid vizierate in Egypt, Nur al-Din took advantage of the opportunity by sending Shirkuh and Saladin to lead expeditions there. In 1169, without formally deposing the Fatimid caliph, Shirkuh took over the powerful position of the Egyptian vizier in the name of Nur al-Din. Shortly thereafter, when Shirkuh died, Saladin succeeded him and began to return Egypt to the Sunni fold. The process

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Plate 6.1 Kutubiyya Mosque (2nd half of 12th cent.). The ruins of the original Almohad building are visible in this view to the south. While most of the structure was in brick, sandstone was used for the minaret, whose shape is unusual, being square rather than round. Great care was lavished on the minaret’s horseshoe-arch windows, finely carved lattice-work, and (toward the top) bands of green and white mosaic tiles, which form a design of interlocking hexagons.

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Georgia

ian Se

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Caesarea Konya Kingdom of Edessa Little Armenia Aleppo Jazira Antioch

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ph

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s

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Map 6.2 Saladin’s Empire, c.1200

s

rat e

was complete when, in 1171, the Shi‘ite caliph died and Saladin substituted the name of the Sunni Abbasid caliph at the Friday sermons. All this was done in the name of Nur al-Din, but already Saladin (r.1171–1193) was de facto ruler of Egypt. Taking up the jihad after Nur al-Din’s death in 1174, Saladin marched into Syria and in due course created a principality that stretched across Egypt and Syria and into Iraq. In 1187, at the battle of Hattin, he conquered Jerusalem and reduced the Crusader States to a few port cities (see Map 6.2). For about a half-century thereafter, the Ayyubids held on to the lands Saladin had conquered, dividing rule over the major cities among family members. But Saladin’s empire proved to be a fragile creation. Men from within the army, the Mamluks, competed with the Ayyubids for the sultanate, and in 1260, after defeating the seemingly unstoppable Mongols at Ain Jalut (a stone’s throw from Jerusalem), the Mamluks established themselves as rulers of Egypt and Syria.

The Ever-Expanding Empire of the Mongols What were Mongols doing so near to Jerusalem? In 1200 that would have been a wild fantasy. At that time, the Mongols were herding livestock in the steppe grasslands between (on the east) the sedentary Jin Chinese Empire and (on the west) the warrior-pastoralist Qara Khitai Empire, a multi-ethnic and multi-religious polity roughly defined by the Altai and Tian Shan Mountain ranges. To their south was the Tangut state of Xi Xia, just above the Qilian Mountains. (See Map 6.3.) Like the Qara Khitai, the Mongols were warrior-pastoralists, a mode of life that required all men and women to ride, shoot, herd, and hunt: military and economic activities were inseparable. Divided into many tribes, each sharing a vague sense of common ancestry, they included Turkic as well as Mongol peoples. Tribes were fluid entities, constantly breaking apart and coalescing in new configurations. At crisis moments such as the succession of

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0

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Chinggis Khan’s campaigns Campaigns of Chinggis Khan’s generals

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a chief, the winners were ratified by an assembly of notables. But the losers might well form new tribes. Chinggis Khan (c.1162–1227) tamed this fractured political order. Although of a relatively obscure lineage and given the modest name Temüjin (“blacksmith”) at birth, he built up a super-tribe by relying on loyal “companions” (nökers) no matter their origin. In 1206, by a combination of ferocity, generosity, savvy alliances, luck, and charisma, he managed to subsume all the region’s tribes under his sole rule and was granted a brand-new title – Chinggis Khan. Even before that moment, he had begun to centralize Mongolian institutions. In his super-tribe, every male from age 6 to 60 was deemed a soldier. The army was organized in groups of 10, 100, 1,000, and 10,000 men. They were led not by traditional tribal chiefs but by the Khan’s nökers. An elite corps of 10,000 personal bodyguards were magnificently equipped and armed. (See Plate 6.2.) Meanwhile, Chinggis set up a new judicial apparatus and instituted record-keeping by making use of the Uighur script. Over time he developed a veritable writing office to record his edicts in Chinese, Persian, Uighur, and Mongolian. Victory brought huge economic gains – in the short term from booty, and over the long term from tribute, taxes, and control over trade routes. Religious fervor justified these conquests: Chinggis claimed the powers of a shaman and proclaimed Heaven’s mandate that the Mongols should rule the world. Map 6.3 shows how quickly and thoroughly he carried out this mandate. By Chinggis Khan’s death, he had conquered the Xi Xia state to the south, the Jin to the east, the Qara Khitai to the west, and well beyond those, he had defeated the Khwarazmian Empire, successors of the Great Seljuks in the region of the Oxus River. Everywhere, new recruits

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Dongjing Zhongdu

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Aleppo Damascus Tabriz Cairo Acre Maragha

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Map 6.3 Chinggis Khan’s Campaigns

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Plate 6.2 Mongol Armor (bef. 1368?). Mongol heavy horsemen wore armor composed of small rectangular scales, whether made of leather (as here) or of iron. These were sewn together with leather thongs. Under the armor they generally wore a heavy sheepskin coat, while their feet were protected by leather boots.

joined his army. Chinggis’s heirs continued his project, and in 1258 his grandson Hulegu marched into Baghdad and killed the Abbasid caliph – a symbolic blow of major proportions. Two years later, as we have seen, the Mongols were threatening Syria. But let us momentarily return to the very first years of Mongol conquest. For therein lies a new theory of the source of the plague pandemic commonly dated 1346–1353 and popularly known as the Black Death (see Chapter 8). The new thinking locates its origins in the thirteenth century, when the Mongols were attacking and then occupying regions abutting the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. This hypothesis relies on the fruitful synergy of modern scientists and historians. Recent studies by modern geneticists of ancient DNA samples of the bacterium that causes plague, Yersinia pestis, strongly suggest that it suddenly evolved (in a sort of slow Big Bang) into four strains between 1142 and 1339. This multifurcation took place on or near the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and one of the strains that it produced caused the Black Death. Normally a disease of rodents, who catch it from the fleas that feed on them, Yersinia pestis must have jumped from its enzootic hosts to humans at some point during this time. Historians, putting this together with their knowledge of written sources and of Mongol conquests, diet, and habits, have pinpointed two slightly different moments and locations in which Mongol movements would have disturbed rodent habitats in the region to so great a degree that the fleas would turn (rather unwillingly) to biting people. This would happen when the affected rodents hitched rides in grain stores, were eaten for food, or were used for leather or fur, to name just a few scenarios. These sources would then seed new reservoirs. Robert Hymes, a specialist in medieval Chinese medicine, places that disruptive moment in the very earliest Mongol attacks on the Xi Xia state (starting in 1205, ending in 1227), for soon thereafter, when the Mongols began to move into China, epidemics followed. Based on written sources, Hymes identifies these as epidemics of plague. A somewhat different moment of habitat disturbance is proposed by medical historian Monica Green: when the Mongols took over and occupied the Tian Shan Mountains (today in Kyrgyzstan) between the years 1216 and 1218 in their drive to conquer the Qara Khitai Empire. In either case, it seems that the Mongols threw into disarray a major reservoir of Yersinia pestis in the marmot population of some upland regions on the north rim of the Tibetan Plateau. Thus, the Mongols, who cooked marmot meat and used its skin for fur as well as for a warm and rainproof leather – used also, just possibly, for their armor (see Plate 6.2) – were unwitting vectors for the transmission of this disease from animals to humans, from the mountains to men on the move, and from them to those whom they conquered. Taken together, the evidence strongly hints that the Black Death began in the aftermath of the Mongol sieges of Jin China between 1218 and 1232 and of Baghdad a quarter century later.

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EUROPEAN AMBITIONS AND THEIR LIMITS In 1200, Europeans had no knowledge of the Mongols. They flexed their muscles in the Mediterranean, captured Constantinople, fought territorial wars, sang songs of love and longing, created bureaucracies, and built soaring churches. When they did hear about the Mongols, in 1221, they hoped (they had reason to hope) that they had found allies against their Muslim opponents, new souls to missionize and save, and unheard-of commercial opportunities. They were not entirely wrong, though the Mongols devastated Poland and Hungary in the 1240s and remained a threat in the region. Nevertheless, with the exception of the reconquista, the English conquest of Ireland, and the so-called Baltic crusades, most European expansionist efforts failed. So did the political ambitions of the kings of England and Germany. Meanwhile, the Church tried to lay down the law for all, but ran up against those who could not – or would not – conform. More enduring were quieter European developments: the efficient organization of the countryside; the growth of administrative bureaucracies and legal systems; the elaboration of a courtly culture of romance and play; the development of urban institutions and of an architectural style – Gothic – suited to the pride of city-dwellers both lay and ecclesiastical.

England: Law, Order, and Rebellion In his day, English King Henry II (r.1154–1189) was the most powerful ruler in Europe. Arriving on the English throne after a long and anarchic civil war (1135–1154) between the forces of two female descendants of William the Conqueror, he began his rule by destroying or confiscating the private castles that English barons and high churchmen had built during the war to declare their political independence. He was the first “Angevin” – or, as he is sometimes called, the first “Plantagenet” – king of England. (See Genealogy 6.1.) Henry was called “Angevin” because he was count of Anjou. He was also duke of Normandy, and overlord of about half the other counties of northern France. Even more important were his claims as duke of Aquitaine, which he became when he married Eleanor, heiress of that vast southern French duchy. As for his power in the British Isles: the princes of Wales swore him homage and fealty, the rulers of Ireland were forced to submit to him, and the king of Scotland was his vassal. In short, Henry exercised sometimes more, sometimes less power over a realm stretching from Ireland to the Pyrenees. (See Map 6.4.) For his Continental possessions, he was vassal of the king of France. Henry increased his power in England by extending the reach of royal justice. Already the English kings of Alfred’s day (see Chapter 4) claimed rights in local courts, particularly in capital cases, even though powerful men largely dominated those courts. The Norman kings under William the Conqueror and his heirs added royal rights over landholding disputes. Nor did the Norman kings themselves need to be present to implement royal decisions, for government officials handled administrative matters and record keeping.

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See Genealogy 5.4 on p. 192 Matilda ( d.1167) = Geoffrey Plantagenet, count of Anjou (d.1151)

Henry II = Eleanor, duchess of Aquitaine (d.1204) (1154–1189)

Henry (d.1183)

Richard I the Lion-Heart (1189–1199)

Geoffrey (d.1186)

John Lackland (1199–1216)

Henry III (1216–1272)

Edward I (1272–1307)

Edward II = Isabella of France (1307–1327) See Genealogy 8.1 on p. 306

Genealogy 6.1 The Angevin Kings of England

Henry II built on these institutions, regularizing, expanding, and systematizing them. The Assize of Clarendon in 1166 recorded that the king decreed that inquiry shall be made throughout the several counties and throughout the several hundreds ... whether there be ... any man accused or notoriously suspect of being a robber or murderer or thief.... And let the justices inquire into this among themselves and the sheriffs among themselves.1 The phrase “throughout the several counties and throughout the several hundreds” referred to the districts into which England had long been divided. Henry aimed to apply a common law regarding chief crimes – a law applicable throughout England. Moreover, he meant his new system to be habitual and routine. There had always been royal justices

Map 6.4 (facing page) The Angevin and Capetian Realms in the Late 12th cent.

1 The Assize of Clarendon, in A Short Medieval Reader, ed. Barbara H. Rosenwein (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2023), pp. 171–73 and in Reading the Middle Ages: Sources from Europe, Byzantium, and the Islamic World, 3rd ed., ed. Barbara H. Rosenwein (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018), pp. 302–5.

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Ulster Connaught

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to enforce the law, but under Henry there were many more of them; they were trained in the law, and they were required to make regular visitations to each locality.2 At each stop, “inquiry [was] made” (to quote the Assize) about crimes and suspected crimes. The king required twelve representatives of the local knightly class – the middling aristocracy, later on known as the “gentry” – to meet during each eyre and either give the sheriff the names of those suspected of committing crimes in the vicinity or arrest the suspects themselves and hand them over to the royal justices for a hearing. While convicted members of the knightly class often got off with only a fine, ordinary criminals found guilty were hanged or mutilated. Even if acquitted, people “of ill repute” were exiled from England. Henry also introduced new mechanisms to resolve the sort of cases that are today termed “civil,” requiring all hearings about property ownership to be authorized by a royal writ. Unlike his reforms of criminal law, this requirement affected only free men and women – a minority. (At this point in time, most men and women were considered servile to one degree or another.) While often glad to have the king’s protection, free landholders grumbled about the expense and time required to obtain writs. Not only had they to buy the writs, but they had also to pay for “gifts” to numerous officials, line up witnesses, hire a staff (generally made up of clerics) and – because the royal court was itinerant – pay all travel expenses. The whole system was no doubt originally designed to put things right after the civil war. Although these law-and-order measures were initially expensive for the king, they ultimately served to increase royal income. Fines came from condemned criminals and also from knightly representatives who failed to show up at the local hearing when summoned; revenues poured in from the purchase of writs. The exchequer, as the financial bureau of England was called, recorded all the fines paid for judgments and the sums collected for writs. The amounts, entered on parchment leaves sewn together and stored as rolls, became the Receipt Rolls and Pipe Rolls, the first of many such records of the English monarchy and an indication that writing had become a tool of institutionalized royal rule in England. Perhaps the most important outcome of this expanded legal system was the enhancement of royal power and prestige. The king of England touched (not personally, of course, but through men acting in his name) nearly every man and woman in the realm. However, the extent of royal jurisdiction should not be exaggerated. Most petty crimes did not end up in royal courts but rather in more local ones under the jurisdiction of a manorial lord – whether a baron, knight, bishop, or monastery. These lords could punish tenants and charged fines, so it is no surprise that they held on tenaciously to their judicial prerogatives. While peasants came before a local court for a petty crime, clerics were always tried in Church courts, even if their crimes were major. Any layperson accused of murder was tried in a royal court; but homicidal clerics were brought before Church courts, which could be counted on to hand down a mild punishment. No churchman wanted to submit 2 The justices were therefore called “itinerant” – from iter, Latin for journey. The local hearing that they held was called an “eyre,” also from iter.

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to the jurisdiction of Henry II’s courts. But Henry insisted – and not only on that point, but also on the king’s right to have ultimate jurisdiction over Church appointments and property disputes. The ensuing contest between the king and the archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Becket (1118–1170) was the greatest battle between the Church and the State in the twelfth century. At a meeting held at Clarendon in 1164, Becket agreed that clerics might be tried in royal courts, but soon thereafter he clashed with Henry over the rights of the Church of Canterbury – Becket’s own church – to recover or alienate its own property. The conflict mushroomed to include control over the entire English Church, its property, and its clergy. Soon the papacy joined, with Becket its champion. King and archbishop remained at loggerheads for six years, until Henry’s henchmen murdered Thomas, unintentionally turning him into a martyr. Although Henry’s role in the murder remained ambiguous, public outcry forced him to do public penance for the deed. In the end, the struggle made both institutions stronger as both Church and royal courts expanded to address the concerns of an increasingly litigious society. Henry II and his sons Richard I the Lion-Heart (r.1189–1199) and John (r.1199–1216) were English kings, but they had an imperial reach. Richard was rarely in England, since half of France was his to subdue (see Map 6.4, paying attention to the areas in various shades of peach). Responding to Saladin’s conquest of Jerusalem, Richard went on the abortive Third Crusade (1189–1192), capturing Cyprus on the way (see Map 6.2 on p. 212) and arranging a three-year truce with Saladin before rushing home to reclaim territory from his brother John and the French king, Philip II (r.1180–1223). But his haste did him no good; he was captured by the duke of Austria and released only upon payment of a huge ransom, painfully squeezed out of the English people. When Richard died in battle in 1199, John ascended to the throne. It was a high point in English kingship, and the seal that John commissioned shortly after taking power (see Plate 6.3) expressed his proud identity as both all-powerful ruler and warrior. But the

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Plate 6.3 The Great Seal of King John (1203). King John sits on a throne, facing the viewer. He holds a sword and the orb of the world topped by a flowering scepter. The inscription around him declares him to be “by grace of God king of England and lord of Ireland.” On the reverse of the seal, John proclaims his military might: the king – equipped with a sword, helmet, and shield – rides off to battle on a fine horse. The use of seals to authenticate documents dated from third-century Rome, while the portrayal of the English king as enthroned in majesty borrowed from Roman imperial images and, more directly, from a seal first used by Edward the Confessor.

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next years brought home the fragility of his position. In 1204, the king of France, Philip II, claimed that John had defied his overlordship; as a consequence, Philip confiscated John’s northern French territories in a quick military victory. John was confident that he could win the land back. But he needed a better army, and for that he had to squeeze everyone for money. He forced his barons and many members of the gentry to pay him “scutage” – a tax – in lieu of army service. He extorted money in the form of “aids” – the fees that his barons and other vassals ordinarily paid on rare occasions, such as the knighting of the king’s eldest son. He compelled the widows of his barons and other vassals to marry men of his choosing or pay him a hefty fee to remain single. With wealth pouring in from these effective but unpopular measures, John was able to pay for a navy and hire mercenary troops. But all was to no avail. Although John masterminded a broad coalition of German and Flemish armies led by Emperor Otto IV of Brunswick, he was soundly defeated by the French king at the battle of Bouvines in 1214. It was a defining moment, not so much for English rule on the Continent (which would continue until the fifteenth century) as for England itself, where the barons – supported by many members of the gentry and the towns – organized, rebelled, and called the king to account. At Runnymede, just south of London, in June 1215, the barons forced John to affix his seal to the charter of baronial liberties called Magna Carta, or “Great Charter.” Magna Carta was intended to define the “customary” obligations and rights of the English elite and to forbid the king from changing them without consulting his barons. Beyond this, it maintained that all free men in England had certain rights that the king was obliged to uphold. “To no one will we [that is, the king] sell, to no one will we refuse or delay right or justice.”3 The charter protected women’s rights far more feebly, but it did ensure that noble widows were to have their inheritance “at once” and that they could not be forced to remarry. In short, Magna Carta was in substance a conservative document, but in its very existence, it was new and radical, for it made the king subordinate to written provisions. It was not quite a “constitution,” but it did imply that the king was subject to the law. Copies of the charter were sent to sheriffs and other officials, to be read aloud in public places. Everyone knew what it said, and later kings continued to issue it – and have it read out – in one form or another. Magna Carta thwarted the ambitions of royal government in England and helped create the foundations of a constitutional state.

Spain and France in the Making Spain and France, unlike England, started small and beleaguered but slowly grew to embrace the territory we associate with them today. In Spain, the reconquista was the engine driving expansion. The kings from northern Spain came south as subjugators. By 3 Magna Carta, in A Short Medieval Reader, pp. 175–80 and in Reading the Middle Ages, pp. 330–36.

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Navarre León

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Las Navas de Tolosa Murcia

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Atlantic Ocean

Algiers

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Bône

Bougie

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Monastir

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Tunis

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‘ A b d a l - Wa d d i d s (Ziyanids)

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Marinids Marrakesh

Ghadames Sijilmasa

the mid-thirteenth century, Spain had the threefold political configuration that would last for centuries (see Map 6.5): to the east was the kingdom of Aragon; in the middle was Castile; and along the western coast was Portugal. (Navarre, never a major player, shuttled between France, Aragon, and Castile.) It was one thing to conquer, another to remain, and still another to rule. To hold on to their new territories, the Spanish kings had military religious orders (similar to the Templars and Hospitallers) establish garrisons along their ever-moving frontiers. To rule their newly conquered regions, they issued laws and worked out systems of justice and taxation. A typical solution was the one King Alfonso VIII of Castile found for Cuenca. After taking it in 1177, he established a bishopric and gave the city a detailed set of laws ( fueros) that codified the rights of all groups: clergy, laity, townspeople, peasants, Christians, Jews, and the many Muslims who remained. Local officials to enforce the laws were elected by an elite group of property owners. Although the strong position of the Spanish kings in 1177 contrasted with the weakness of the king of France, within a quarter century, that was no longer the case. When King Philip II (r.1180–1223) came to the French throne at the age of fifteen, his kingdom

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Map 6.5 Spain, Portugal, and North Africa, c.1275

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consisted largely of the Ile-de-France, a dwarf surrounded by giants. He seemed an easy target for the ambitions of the English king and the counts of Flanders and Champagne. Philip, however, played them off against one another. Through inheritance he gained a fair portion of the county of Flanders in 1191. Soon his military skills became clear as he wrenched Normandy from John, the king of England, in 1204. In the wake of that conquest, he forced the lords of Maine, Anjou, and Poitou to submit to him. A contemporary chronicler dubbed him Philip Augustus, recalling the triumphant first Roman emperor. Philip integrated his conquests into his kingdom. John’s former vassals promised Philip homage and fealty, and in Normandy, his royal officers taxed and heard cases, careful not to tread on local customs, but equally vigilant to enhance the flow of income into the French king’s treasury. Gradually, the Normans were brought into a new “French” orbit just beginning to take shape, constructed partly out of the common language of French and partly out of a new notion of the king as ruler of all the people in his territory. He was no longer called the king of the “Franks” (a tribe) but rather the king of France (a state). Although French kings never established a “common law” to supersede local ones, they extended their power by developing royal administrative institutions – bureaus to write and keep records of their decrees, legal decisions, and tax collection. As in England, the kings of France relied on members of the lesser nobility – knights and clerics, most of them educated in the city schools – to do the work of government. Some served as officers of the court, others as officials who oversaw the king’s estates and collected his taxes. They made the king’s power felt locally as never before.

From Empire to “Holy Roman Empire” Small states were the norm. In that sense the Empire, ruled by the German king but spanning both Germany and Italy, was an oddity. The fact that it included the papacy made the Empire different as well. Every other medieval state was far from the pope, but the Empire had the pope in its throat. Tradition, prestige, and political self-respect demanded that the German king also be the emperor: Conrad III (r.1138–1152), though never actually crowned at Rome, nevertheless delighted in calling himself “August Emperor of the Romans” (while demeaning the Byzantine emperor as “King of the Greeks”). But being emperor meant controlling Italy and Rome. The difficulty was not only the papacy, defiantly opposed to another major power in Italy, but also the northern Italian communes, which were independent city-states in their own right. This is what confronted Frederick I Barbarossa (r.1152–1190) when he (like Henry II in England) became king after a long period of bitter civil war. In Frederick’s case, the war, spawned in the wake of the Investiture Conflict, was between two powerful German families, the Staufen and the Welfs. Staufen on his father’s side and Welf on his mother’s, Frederick reconciled the two. (See Genealogy 6.2.) But Frederick did not have the wealth of Henry II that would allow him to impose his might. He was forced to rely on personal loyalties, not salaried civil servants. He was not powerful enough to tear down princely

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Staufen Dynasty

Welf Dynasty

Henry IV king (1056 –1106) emperor (1084–1106) Henry V king (1106–1125) emperor (1111–1125)

Henry the Black duke of Bavaria Henry the Proud duke of Saxony and Bavaria Henry the Lion duke of Saxony and Bavaria Otto IV king (1198 –1215 ) emperor (1209–1215)

Agnes = Freder ick I of Hohenstaufen duke of Swabia

Judith = Frederick II duke of Swabia

Conrad III king and emperor (1138–1152)

Frederick I Barbarossa king (1152 –1190) emperor (1155 –1190) Henry VI = Constance of Sicily king (1190–1197) emperor (1191 –1197)

Philip of Swabia king (1198 –1208)

Frederick II king of Sicily (1197 –1250) king of Germany (1212 –1250) emperor (1220 –1250) Manfred king of Sicily (d.1266) Constance = Peter III queen of Sicily (d.1302) king of Aragon (d.1285)

castles as Henry had done. Instead, he conceded to the German princes the powers that they claimed, but he required them in turn to recognize him as the source of those powers. He also committed them to certain obligations, such as attending him at court and providing him with troops. In short, he tried to make them his vassals. Frederick also had to manage relations with the papacy. In 1157, at the diet (assembly) of Besançon, Pope Adrian IV sent Frederick a letter that coyly referred to the imperial crown as the pope’s beneficium – “benefit” or, more ominously, “fief.” “A great tumult and uproar arose from the princes of the realm at so insolent a message,” wrote Rahewin, a cleric who had access to many of the documents and people involved at the time. “It is said that one of the [papal] ambassadors, as though adding sword to flame, inquired: ‘From

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Genealogy 6.2 Rulers of Germany and Sicily

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Swabia

Vienna Austr ia

Da

nube

whom then does he have the Empire, if not from our lord the pope?’ Because of this remark, anger reached such a pitch that one of [the Legnano Milan Venice Pavia princes] ... threatened the ambassador with his sword.”4 Frederick Roncaglia calmed his supporters, but in the wake of this incident, he counBologna Genoa Zara (Zadar) tered the sancta ecclesia – the “holy Church” – by coining an equally Florence Split charged term for his Empire: sacrum imperium: the “sacred Empire.” Pisa Finally, Frederick had to deal with Italy. As emperor, he had Ragusa claims on the whole peninsula, but he had no hope – or even interest – (Dubrovnik) c.1020) Rome in controlling the south. By contrast, northern Italy beckoned: it Lucera Benevento was near his own estates in Swabia (in southwestern Germany), and Naples Salerno its rich cities promised to provide him with both a compact power c.1050) base and the revenues that he needed. (See Map 6.6.) But taking northern Italy was nothing like, say, conquering Normandy, which was used to ducal rule. The communes of Italy M e d i t e r r a n e a n S e a Palermo were themselves states, each consisting of an urban center and surrounding land (contado). They were jealous of their liberties, rivalrous, and fiercely patriotic. Frederick made no concessions to their sensibilities. Emboldened by theories of sovereignty that had been elaborated by the revival of Roman law, he marched Held by the papacy Claimed by the papacy into Italy and, at the diet of Roncaglia (1158), demanded imperial Venice and Venetian territory rights to taxes and tolls. He insisted that the Italian cities be ruled by podestà – short-term governing officials not from the cities over Map 6.6 Italy and Southern which they were to preside. The institution made sense: the cities could indeed have made Germany in the Age of Frederick use of neutral officials to keep the peace among violent urban factions and guarantee the Barbarossa public welfare. But Frederick chose men who spoke only German and cared little about communal traditions. The cities resented them bitterly. By 1167, most of the cities of northern Italy had joined with Pope Alexander III (1159– 1181) to form the Lombard League against Frederick. Defeated at the battle of Legnano in 1176, Frederick agreed to the Peace of Venice the next year and withdrew most of his forces from the region. His failure in the north led Frederick to try a southern strategy. By marrying his son Henry VI (r.1190–1197) to Constance, heiress of the Norman Kingdom of Sicily, he linked the fate of his dynasty to a well-organized monarchy that commanded dazzling wealth. Both multilingual and multi-religious, the Kingdom of Sicily embraced Jews, Muslims, Greeks, and Italians. Its government combined Byzantine, Islamic, and Norman institutions in a highly centralized system, with royal justices circuiting the kingdom and salaried civil servants drawn from the ranks of knights and townsmen. Frederick II (1194–1250), the son of Henry VI and Constance, tried to unite this realm with Germany into a single imperial unit. He failed spectacularly. The popes, eager to carve out their own well-ordered state in the center of Italy, could not allow a strong monarch 4 The Diet of Besançon, in Reading the Middle Ages, pp. 326–30.

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to encircle them. Declaring war on Frederick, the papacy not only excommunicated him several times but also declared him deposed and accused him of heresy, a charge that led to declaring a crusade against him in the 1240s. These were fearsome actions. The king of France urged negotiation and reconciliation, but others saw in Frederick the devil himself. In the words of one chronicler, Frederick was “an evil and accursed man, a schismatic, a heretic, and an epicurean, who ‘defiled the whole earth’ ( Jer. 51:25).”5 That was one potent point of view. There were others, more admiring. Frederick II was a poet, a patron of the arts, and the founder of the first state-supported university, which he built at Naples. His administrative reforms in Sicily were comparable to those of Henry II in England. With the Constitutions of Melfi (1231), he made sure that his salaried officials worked according to uniform procedures, required nearly all litigation to be heard by royal courts, regularized commercial privileges, and set up a system of royal taxation. The struggle with the papacy obliged Frederick to grant enormous concessions to the German princes to give himself a free hand. In effect, he allowed the princes to turn their territories into independent states. Until the nineteenth century, Germany was a hodgepodge of principalities. During the years between Frederick’s death in 1250 and 1272 many kings were elected by various factions of the nobility, but none gained the adherence of all. Strangely enough, it was during this low point of the German monarchy that the term “Holy Roman Empire” was coined. In 1273, the princes at last united and elected Rudolf I (r.1273–1291), whose family, the Habsburgs, was new to imperial power. Rudolf used the imperial title to help him gain Austria for his family. But he intervened little in Germany’s principalities and did not try to assert his power in Italy at all. For the first time, the word “emperor” was freed from its association with Rome. The Kingdom of Sicily was similarly parceled out. The papacy tried to ensure that the Staufen dynasty would never rule there again by calling upon Charles of Anjou, brother of the king of France, to take it over in 1263. Undeterred, Frederick’s granddaughter, Constance, married the king of Aragon (Spain) and took the proud title “Queen of Sicily.” In 1282, the Sicilians revolted against the Angevins in the uprising known as the “Sicilian Vespers,” begging the Aragonese for aid. Bitter war ensued, ending only in 1302, when the Kingdom of Sicily was split: the island became a Spanish outpost, while its mainland portion (southern Italy) remained under Angevin control. Thus, a bid for Italian-German unity literally ended in pieces, as Germany turned into a mosaic of principalities nominally ruled by an emperor, northern Italy became a collection of independent city-states, central Italy was controlled by a papacy whose claims were growing even as they were being contested (as we shall see), and southern Italy and Sicily were ruled by mutually hostile kings.

5 The Chronicle of Salimbene de Adam, in Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies 40, ed. and trans. Joseph L. Baird, Giuseppe Baglivi, and John Robert Kane (Binghamton, NY: MRTS, 1986), p. 5.

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THE CHURCH IN THE WORLD The papacy’s crusade against Frederick and its offer of the Kingdom of Sicily to a French prince were consistent with its newly grand self-image. Innocent III (1198–1216) – the first pope to be trained at the city schools and to study both theology and law – claimed that the pope ruled in the place of Christ the King. In his view, secular kings and emperors existed to help the pope, who was the ultimate legislator – the maker of the laws that led to moral reformation. In the thirteenth century, the Church sought to redefine Christianity, embracing some doctrines, rejecting others, turning against Jews and Muslims with new vigor, and calling crusades even within Europe (as happened with Frederick II) while making the best of a crusade that went “astray” and took Christian Constantinople instead of Jerusalem.

The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) A council was the traditional place to declare Church law, and that is what Innocent intended to do when he convened the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. It marked the high point in papal power. Presided over by the pope himself, it produced a comprehensive set of canons to reform both clergy and laity and to protect them from the perceived threats of outsiders. In the wake of these changes, the clergy came to exert a greater control than ever over the lives of all Catholic Christians. For clerics, the impact was clear: they were henceforth to be under constant scrutiny by “prudent and upright persons” appointed by their diocesan bishop. Priests were to turn full-time to pastoral care – teaching the basics of the faith to all, hearing the confession of their parishioners at least once a year, acting as local models of Christian charity. Handbooks proliferated; presenting the basics of the faith, they offered handy checklists for orthodoxy. Priests who were accused of abuses, whether moral or pastoral, were to be brought before annual meetings (synods), where their bishop would impose appropriate punishments. The important role of the priest was further reinforced by the provision that, along with yearly confession, all Christians were to take Communion – that is, receive the Eucharist. Already decades before 1215, a newly rigorous formulation of this miracle declared that Christ’s body and blood were truly present in the bread and wine on the altar. The Fourth Lateran Council not only adopted this idea of “real presence” as Church doctrine but also explained it by using a technical term coined by twelfth-century scholars. The bread and wine were “transubstantiated”: although the Eucharist continued to look like bread and wine after its consecration during the Mass, the bread had become the actual body and the wine the true blood of Christ. Only the priest could celebrate this mystery (the transformation of ordinary bread and wine into the flesh of Christ) through which God’s grace was transmitted to the faithful.

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The council also pronounced on the sacrament of marriage, giving bishops jurisdiction over marital disputes and ordering priests to uncover any evidence that might impede an upcoming marriage. There were many such impediments: people were not allowed to marry their cousins, nor anyone related to them by god-parentage, nor anyone related to them through a former marriage. Furthermore, forbidding secret marriages, the council decreed that any children so conceived were henceforth to be considered illegitimate – unable to inherit property from their parents or to become priests. In this way, the Church entered the lives of ordinary Christians as never before. And yet rules may be flouted – and often are. For example, despite the canons of Fourth Lateran, well-to-do London fathers included their bastard children in their wills. On English manors, sons conceived out of wedlock regularly took over their parents’ land. And the prohibition against clandestine marriages was trumped by a still more potent principle: that the consent of both parties made a marriage (even a secret one) valid. Even as the Fourth Lateran Council provided rules for good Christians, it turned against all others. “We excommunicate every heresy that arises, condemning all heretics [to] be handed over to the secular rulers to be punished,” reads one law. Another, concerned with preventing Christians from having sex with Jews and Muslims, declares that Jews and Muslims “shall be marked off in the eyes of the public from other peoples through the character of their dress.”6 While it was impractical to legislate dress, it was easy to require, as did a mandate in the name of the boy-king Henry III of England in 1218, that Jews wear – on their chest for all to see – two white tablets made of linen or parchment. That requirement and others like it elsewhere were put into effect during the course of the thirteenth century. (See Plate 7.4 on p. 270.) Such laws were of a piece with wider movements within the Church. With the development of a papal monarchy that confidently declared a single doctrine and the laws pertaining to it, dissidence was perceived as heresy, non-Christians seen as treacherous.

The Embraced, the Rejected, and the Subdued The newly defined Church welcomed only a few of the religious movements of the time. Friars, who were male, were embraced and eventually allowed women a place within their order. Beguines, who were female, were tolerated – though warily. Other movements, such as the Waldensians and the Cathars, were persecuted.

Friars Saint Dominic (1170–1221), founder of the Dominican order, had been a priest and regular canon (much like a monk, but following the Rule of Saint Augustine rather than the 6 Decrees of Lateran IV, in A Short Medieval Reader, pp. 151–55 and in Reading the Middle Ages, pp. 366–71.

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Benedictine Rule). On an official trip from his cathedral church at Osma (Spain) to Denmark, while passing through Languedoc (southern France) in 1203, he and his companion, Diego, reportedly converted a heretic with whom they lodged. This was a rare success; most anti-heretic preachers were failing miserably around this time. Dominic, Diego, and their followers guessed that the reason for such failure was the arrogance of the preachers, who traveled on horseback, richly adorned, and followed by a retinue. After gaining a privilege from the pope to preach and teach, the Dominicans (named after Dominic) went about on foot in poor clothes and begged for their food. They took the name “friars,” after the Latin word for “brothers.” Because their job was to dispute, teach, and preach, the Dominicans quickly became university men. Even in their convents they established schools requiring their recruits to follow a formal course of studies. Already by 1206 they had established the first of many Dominican female houses. Most of those followed the same Rule, but their relationship to the Dominican order was never codified. Married men and women associated themselves with the Dominicans by forming a “Tertiary” Order. Unlike Dominic, Saint Francis (1181/1182–1226), founder of the Franciscans, was never a priest. Indeed, he was on his way to a promising career as a cloth merchant at Assisi (Italy) when he experienced a complete conversion. Rejecting wealth, he accepted no money, walked without shoes, wore only one coarse tunic, and refused to be confined even in a monastery. He and his followers (who, like the Dominicans, were called “friars”) spent their time preaching, ministering to lepers, and doing manual labor. As Francis recounted in his Testament, “And those who came to receive life gave whatever they had to the poor and were content with one tunic, patched inside and out, with a cord and short trousers. We desired nothing more.”7 Normally, only bishops had authority to preach and to allow others to preach. But Francis’s little group – with the help of the bishop of Assisi – found acceptance at the papal court, and around 1209 Pope Innocent authorized it to preach penance. Thereafter, the order grew and dispersed. Soon there were Franciscans throughout Italy, France, Spain, the Crusader States, and a bit later in Germany, England, Scotland, Poland, and elsewhere. Always they were drawn to the cities. Sleeping in “convents” on the outskirts of the towns, the Franciscans became a regular part of urban community life as they preached to crowds and begged their daily bread. Early converts included women: in 1211 or 1212 Francis converted the young noblewoman Clare. She joined a community of women at San Damiano, a church near Assisi. Clare wanted her group to follow the rule and lifestyle of the friars. But the pope disapproved of the women’s worldly activities. Soon the many sisters following Francis – by 1228 there were at least twenty-four female communities inspired by him in central and northern Italy – were confined to cloisters under the Rule of Saint Benedict. In the course of the thirteenth century, laypeople, many of them married, formed their own Franciscan order, the “Tertiaries.” They dedicated themselves 7 Saint Francis, The Testament, in A Short Medieval Reader, pp. 164–66 and in Reading the Middle Ages, pp. 375–78.

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to works of charity and to daily church attendance. Eventually the Franciscans, like the Dominicans, added learning and scholarship to their mission, becoming part of the city universities.

Beguines The Beguines, pious women who lived together, were even more integral to town life than the friars. In the cities of northern France, the Low Countries, and Germany, the Beguines worked as launderers, weavers, and spinners. (Their male counterparts, the “Beghards,” were far less numerous.) Choosing to live in informal communities, taking no vows, and free to marry if they liked, they dedicated themselves to simplicity and prayer. If outwardly ordinary, however, inwardly their religious lives were often emotional and ecstatic. Some were mystics, seeking union with God. Mary of Oignies (1177–1213), for example, imagined herself with the Christ Child, who “nestled between her breasts like a baby.... Sometimes she kissed him as though he were a little child, and sometimes she held him on her lap as if he were a gentle lamb.”8 The beguines were popular among the laity and were particularly supported by pious women. Churchmen tended to be less enthusiastic, for beguinages were not enclosed, implying sexual mischief to the suggestible. Furthermore, beguine mysticism sometimes overran the bounds of official theology and led to accusations of heresy. Eventually the movement was suppressed.

Waldensians The Waldensians were almost immediately vilified and persecuted. At Lyon (in southeastern France) in the 1170s, the rich merchant Waldo decided to take literally the Gospel message, “If you wish to be perfect, then go and sell everything you have, and give to the poor” (Matt. 19:21). The same message had inspired countless monks and would worry the Church far less several decades later, when Saint Francis established his new order. But when Waldo went into the street and gave away his belongings, announcing, “I am not out of my mind, as you think,”9 he scandalized not only the bystanders but the Church as well. Refusing to retire to a monastery, Waldo and his followers, men and women called Waldensians, lived in poverty and went about preaching, quoting the Gospel in the vernacular so that everyone would understand them. But the papacy rejected Waldo’s bid to preach freely; and the Waldensians – denounced, excommunicated, and expelled from Lyon – wandered to Languedoc, Italy, northern Spain, and the Mosel valley, just east of France, a persecuted minority.

8 Jacques de Vitry, Life of Mary of Oignies, in A Short Medieval Reader, pp. 160–62 and in Reading the Middle Ages, pp. 373–75. 9 Chronicle of Laon, in A Short Medieval Reader, pp. 159–60 and in Reading the Middle Ages, pp. 371–72.

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Cathars The groups that Dominic confronted in Languedoc were called “heretics” by the Church, which drew a line in the sand between the Christian communities that it accepted and those that it utterly vilified. It had other names for the heretics in southern France: Albigensians or Cathars. Words matter, and the Cathars referred to themselves as “Good Men” and “Good Women.” Particularly numerous in urban, highly commercialized regions such as southern France, northern Italy, and the Rhineland, they were dissatisfied with the reforms achieved by the Gregorians and resented the Church’s newly centralized organization. Precisely what these dissidents believed may be glimpsed only with difficulty, largely through the reports of those who questioned and persecuted them. At a meeting in Lombers (see Map 6.4 on p. 217) in 1165 to which some of them apparently voluntarily agreed to come, they answered questions put to them by the bishop of Lodève. Asked about the Eucharist, for example, “they answered that whoever consumed it worthily was saved, but the unworthy gained damnation for themselves; and they said that it could be consecrated [that is, transformed into Christ’s body and blood] by a good man, whether clerical or lay.” When questioned about whether “each person should confess his sins to priests and ministers of the church – or to any layman,” they responded that it “would suffice if they confessed to whom they wanted.” On this and other questions, then, the Good Men of Lombers had notions at variance with the doctrines that the post-Gregorian Church was proclaiming. Above all, their responses downgraded the authority and prerogatives of the clergy. When the bishop at Lombers declared the Good Men heretics, “the heretics answered that the bishop who gave the sentence was the heretic and not they, that he was their enemy and a rapacious wolf and a hypocrite....”10 By the time that Dominic confronted these dissidents, Church leaders were in crisis mode. They dubbed the Cathars “dualists,” accusing them of believing that the world was torn between two great forces, one good and the other evil. This was a term and an idea churchmen knew very well from their reading: Saint Augustine had briefly flirted with the dualists of his own day – the Manichees – before decisively breaking with them. Moreover, Western churchmen were well aware that one of the reasons why the Byzantines had clamped down on heretics (the Bogomils) in the twelfth century was to counter groups who questioned the sacraments and the institutional Church and who were also reputedly dualists. Classifying heretics as such created a powerful new tool of persecution and coercion that came to be used by both ecclesiastical and secular rulers.

10 Translation of the text in Pilar Jiménez Sánchez, “L’évolution doctrinale du catharisme, XIIe– XIIIe siècle,” 3 vols. (PhD diss., University of Toulouse II, 2001), Annex 1: Actes de Lombers.

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c. c.

Map 6.7 German Settlement in the Baltic Sea Region, 12th to 14th cent.

New Crusades, North and South Pope Innocent III demanded that northern princes take up the sword, invade Languedoc, wrest the land from the heretics, and populate it with orthodox Christians. This Albigensian Crusade (1209–1229) marked the first time in which the pope offered warriors who were fighting an enemy within Christian Europe all the spiritual and temporal benefits of a crusade to the Holy Land. Unsurprisingly, the political ramifications were more notable than the religious results. After twenty years of fighting, leadership of the crusade was taken over in 1229 by the Capetian kings. Southern resistance was broken and Languedoc (see Map 6.4 on p. 217) was brought under the control of the French crown. The Church also launched crusades to the northeast. By the twelfth century, the peoples living along the Baltic coast – partly pagan, mostly Slavic- or Baltic-speaking – had learned to make a living and even a profit from the inhospitable soil and climate. They supplied the rest of Europe and Rus’ with slaves, furs, amber, wax, and dried fish. Like the earlier Vikings, they combined commercial competition with outright raiding, so the Danes and the Saxons (i.e., the Germans in Saxony) both benefited and suffered from their presence. It was Saint Bernard (the most prestigious Cistercian of his day) who, while preaching the Second Crusade in Germany, urged the armed “conversion” of the people to the north as well. Thus began the Baltic Crusades, which continued intermittently until the early fifteenth century. (See Map 6.7.)

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Map 6.8 The Fourth Crusade, the Latin Empire, and Byzantine Successor States, 1204–c.1250

In key raids in the 1160s and 1170s, the king of Denmark and Henry the Lion (duke of Saxony), worked together to bring much of the region between the Elbe and Oder Rivers under their control. They took some of the land outright, leaving the rest in the hands of the Baltic princes, who surrendered, converted, and became their vassals. Churchmen arrived: the Cistercians built their monasteries right up to the banks of the Vistula River, while bishops took over newly declared dioceses. In 1202 the “bishop of Riga” – in fact he had to bring some Christians with him to his lonely outpost amidst the Livs – founded a military/monastic order called the Order of the Brothers of the Sword. The monks soon became a branch of the Teutonic Knights (or Teutonic order), a group originally founded in the Crusader States and vowed to a military and monastic rule like the Hospitallers and Templars. The Knights organized crusades, defended newly conquered regions, and launched their own holy wars against the “Northern Saracens.” By the end of the thirteenth century, they had brought the lands from Prussia to Estonia under their sway. Meanwhile German knights, peasants, and townspeople streamed in, colonists of the new frontier. Although less well known than the crusades to the Levant, the Baltic Crusades had more lasting effects, settling the region with a German-speaking population that brought its Western institutions – cities, laws, guilds, universities, castles, manors, vassalage – with it.

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Colonization was the unanticipated consequence of the Fourth Crusade as well. Called by Innocent III, who intended to re-establish the Christian presence in the Holy Land, the crusade was diverted when the organizers overestimated the numbers joining the expedition. The small army mustered was unable to pay for the large fleet of ships that had been fitted out for it by the Venetians. Making the best of adversity, the Venetians convinced the crusaders to “pay” for the ships by attacking Zara (today Zadar), one of the coastal cities that Venice disputed with Hungary. Then, with the excuse of taking up the cause of one claimant to the Byzantine throne, the crusaders turned their sights on Constantinople. They looted the city, hauling off, among other things, its precious relics to proudly display in European churches. More significantly, they implanted one of their own on the imperial throne – Baldwin I of Flanders – and created various Latin states on Byzantine territory. Vigorous resistance from the Byzantines, who were strong enough to found their own successor states, left the “Latin Empire” very small indeed after around 1235. (See Map 6.8.) The real winner was Venice, which had instigated the enterprise in the first place; it won part of Constantinople, crucial territories along the east coast of the Adriatic Sea, Negroponte, and various islands in the Aegean Sea. With its purchase and conquest of Crete, Venice aimed to dominate the region’s trade.

CULTURE AND INSTITUTIONS IN TOWN AND COUNTRYSIDE Whether living in towns (like the north Italian nobility) or in the countryside (like many aristocrats in the rest of Europe), all medieval elites adhered to the ideal of the “chivalrous knight.” This was true even though many Italian aristocrats were in fact more business tycoons than warriors. Rural lords, too, while enjoying the sports of jousts and the tales of brave knights and their beautiful ladies, were also savvy landowners. As these elites closed ranks as “knights,” the wealthy middle classes in the cities turned their guilds into enclaves of privilege, shutting out some laborers and most women while giving high status to masters. Universities were one such guild, with even greater privileges than most because their members were clerics. Gothic architecture came to symbolize the pride and power of medieval urban communities.

Taxes, Inventories, and Other Mechanisms of Control Northern Italian cities were republics in the sense that a high percentage of their adult male population participated in their governance, but they were also dictatorial. To feed themselves, they prohibited the export of grain while commanding the peasants in their contado to bring them a certain amount of grain by a certain date each year. City governments

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told the peasants which crops to grow and how many times per year they should plow the land. They controlled commerce as well. At Venice, exceptional in lacking a contado but boasting a vast maritime empire instead, merchant enterprises were state run, using state ships. When Venetians went off to buy cotton in the Levant, they all had to offer the same price, determined by their government back home. Italian city-state governments outdid England, Sicily, and France in their bureaucracy and efficiency. While kingdoms were still taxing by “hearths,” Italian communes devised taxes based on a census (catasto) of property. Already at Pisa in 1162 taxes were being raised in this way; by the middle of the thirteenth century, almost all the communes had such a system in place. But even efficient methods of taxation did not bring in enough money to support the two main needs of the commune: paying its officials and, above all, waging war. To meet their high military expenses, the communes created state loans, some voluntary, others forced. They were the first in Europe to do so. The Italians were not the only ones who organized their finances. Great lords everywhere hired literate agents to administer their estates, calculate their profits, draw up accounts, and make marketing decisions. Money financed luxuries, to be sure, but even more importantly it enhanced aristocratic honor, which depended on personal generosity, patronage, and displays of wealth. In the late twelfth century, when some townsmen could boast fortunes that rivaled the riches of the landed nobility, noble extravagance tended to exceed income. Most aristocrats went into debt. The nobles’ need for money coincided with the interests of the peasantry, whose numbers were expanding. The solution was the extension of farmland. By the middle of the century, isolated and sporadic attempts to bring new land into cultivation had become regular and coordinated. Great lords offered special privileges to peasants who would do the backbreaking work of plowing marginal land. In Flanders, which was regularly inundated by seawater, great monasteries sponsored drainage projects, and canals linking the cities to the agricultural hinterlands let boats ply the waters to virtually every nook and cranny of the region. In other regions, free peasants acted on their own to clear land and relieve the pressure of overpopulation. On old estates, the rise in population strained to its breaking point the manse organization that had developed in Carolingian Europe, where each household was settled on the land that supported it. Now, in the twelfth century, many peasant families might live on what had been, in the ninth century, the manse of one family. Labor services and dues had to be recalculated, and peasants and their lords often turned services and dues into money rents, payable once a year. With this change, peasant men gained more control over their plots – they could sell them, will them to their sons, or even designate a small portion for their daughters. However, for these privileges they had either to pay extra taxes or, like communes, join together to buy their collective liberty for a high price, paid out over many years to their lord. Peasants, like town citizens, gained a new sense of identity and solidarity as they bargained with a lord keen to increase his income at their expense.

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The Culture of the Courts Identity and solidarity were important to aristocrats as well. By the end of the twelfth century, nobles and knights had begun to merge into one class, threatened from below by newly rich merchants and from above by newly powerful kings. On the battlefield, knights – mounted on horses, lances at the ready – were less essential than they pretended. Close formations were hard to achieve; even nobles often fought on foot, seconded by archers and infantrymen equipped with pole-axes, spears, and gisarmes (long poles ending in a scythe-like blade). Nevertheless, as if denying the situation on the ground, knights and nobles claimed for themselves the high virtue of “chivalry.” The word, deriving from the French cheval (“horse”), emphasized the knight’s high perch atop a steed. With his sharp sword and heavy shield (see King John in Plate 6.3), he cut an imposing and menacing figure. Chivalry made him gentle, gave his battles a higher meaning, whether for love of a lady or of God. The chivalric hero was constrained by courtesy, fair play, piety, and devotion to an ideal. He deserved to be praised and celebrated. And that is what took place at the courts of the great, where a considerable number of men and women made their living as poets and musicians. They were called troubadours (or their female equivalent, trobairitz) in southern France, Spain, and Italy; they were known as Minnesänger in Germany. Some came from well-off families, some did not. Those of the Mediterranean regions sang in the vernacular of the southern France; those of Germany composed in German. Mainly they sang of love – its joys, sorrows, desires, sighs of hope, and tears of despair. This was the tender part of chivalry: the ideal knight was not only a marvel on the battlefield but a true, patient, and courteous lover. Consider one of the verses of troubadour Bernart de Ventadorn ( fl. c.1147–1170). Qan vei la lauzeta mover de joi sas alas contra·l rai, que s’oblid’e·is laissa cazer per la doussor c’al cor li vai, ai! Tant grans enveia m’en ve de cui que veia jauzion, meravillas ai car desse lo cors de desirier no·m fon.

When I see the lark beat his wings With joy in the rays of the sun and forget himself and fall In the warmth that fills his heart, Oh, I feel so great an envy Of one I see who’s merry I wonder that my heart Does not melt with desire.11

The rhyme scheme seems simple: mover goes with cazer, rai with vai. Then comes a new pattern: ve rhymes with desse and jauzion with fon. But consider that all seven verses that come after this one have that same -er, -ai, -e, -on pattern. Enormous ingenuity is required 11 Bernart de Ventadorn, “When I see the lark,” in A Short Medieval Reader, pp. 149–51 and in Reading the Middle Ages, pp. 350–52. You can hear it on YouTube sung by Elizabeth Aubrey at bit.ly/3xzqmNN. Its simple and moving melody was very popular in the Middle Ages.

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for such a feat. The poem is extremely complex and subtle, not only in rhyme and meter but also in word puns and allusions, essential skills for a composer whose goal was to dazzle his audience with brilliant originality. In both themes and melodies, troubadour songs resembled Latin liturgical chants of the same region and period. Monks, too, chanted of love. Although they focused on the love between human beings and God, while the troubadours sang about erotic passion, the two kinds of love were deliciously entangled. The verse in which Bernart envies the lark continues: Oh, I thought I knew so much About love, but how little I know! I cannot stop loving her Though I know she’ll never love me. . . . I get no help with my lady From God or mercy or right.12 By putting his lady in the same stanza as God, Bernart elevates her to the status of a religious icon. At the same time, he degrades God: should the Lord really help Bernart with his seduction? Finally, he plays with the association of “my lady” with the Virgin Mary, the quintessential “our Lady.” Historians and literary scholars used to refer to the sort of love sung about by medieval poets as “courtly.” They assumed that such love was never consummated in sexual relations or marriage because the poet was always of lower rank than his lady. Today scholars know that some of the poetry in fact expressed the feelings of spouses. The phrase “courtly love” is giving way to fin’amor (refined or true love), a term found in some medieval literature itself. But as Linda Paterson points out, the meaning of even that term varied from poet to poet. In fact, the troubadours sang about many sorts of love: some boasted of sexual conquests; others played with the notion of equality between lovers; still others sang of love and desire as the source of virtue. Some troubadours, like the poet Bertran de Born ( fl. second half of 12th cent.), wrote about war, not love: Trumpets, drums, standards and pennons And ensigns and horses black and white Soon we shall see, and the world will be good.13

12 Bernart de Ventadorn, “When I see the lark,” in A Short Medieval Reader, pp. 149–51 and in Reading the Middle Ages, p. 351. 13 Bertran de Born, “Half a sirvents,” in Reading the Middle Ages, p. 354.

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But warfare was more often the subject of another kind of poem, the long chanson de geste, “song of heroic deeds.” Originally recited orally, these vernacular poems appeared in written form at about the same time as troubadour poetry and, like them, played with aristocratic codes of behavior. Like Bertran de Born, the chansons de geste celebrated cavalry accompanied by “trumpets, drums, standards and pennons.” But they also examined the moral issues that confronted knights, taking up the often-contradictory values of their society: love of family vied with fealty to a lord; desire for victory clashed with pressures to compromise. While the chansons de geste, sometimes also called “epics,” focused on battles, other long poems, later called “romances,” explored relationships. Enormously popular in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, romances took up such themes as the tragic love between Tristan and Isolde and the virtuous knight’s search for the Holy Grail. Most were woven around the many fictional stories of King Arthur and his court. In one of the earliest of these, Chrétien de Troyes ( fl. c.1150–1190) wrote about the noble and valiant knight Lancelot, in love with Queen Guinevere, wife of Arthur. Finding a comb bearing some strands of her radiant hair, Lancelot is overcome: He gently removed the queen’s Hair, not breaking a single Strand. Once a man Has fallen in love with a woman No one in all the world Can lavish such wild adoration Even on the objects she owns.14 By making Guinevere’s hair an object of adoration, a sort of secular relic, Chrétien here not only conveys the depths of Lancelot’s feeling but also pokes a bit of fun at his hero, who seems to need nothing more than a tangle of hair to make him happy. But he is happier still when he and Guinevere also spend a glorious night in bed together: ... the queen reached out her arms and drew him down, Holding him tight against Her breast, making the knight As welcome in her bed, and as happy, As she possibly could. Alas, the dawn arrives and the delights must come to an end.

14 Chrétien de Troyes, Lancelot, in Reading the Middle Ages, pp. 356–66.

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Lancelot’s life is dedicated to this overwhelming love. Once while fighting and on the point of killing an evil opponent, he overhears Guinevere say that she wishes the “final blow be withheld.” Then Nothing in the world could have made him Fight, or even move, No matter if it cost his life. Such perfect obedience and self-restraint even in the middle of a bloody battle made Lancelot the paragon of chivalry. Did real knights live up to these ideals? They knew perfectly well that they could not and that it would be absurd if they tried to do so in every particular. But they loved playing with the idea. They were the audience for epics and romances, and no doubt they liked to think of themselves as fitting into the tales.

Urban Guilds Incorporated The codes of chivalry were poetic and playful. The codes drawn up by guilds were drier but similarly served to mark status and offer their members a sense of identity and belonging – or, to non-members, the hardships of marginalization. Some guilds were more prestigious than others. Among the cloth guilds, for example, the status of the merchant guild that imported the raw wool was higher than the standing of others in the industry – the shearers, weavers, fullers (the workers who beat the cloth to shrink it and make it heavier), and dyers. In Florence, professional guilds of notaries and judges ranked higher than craft guilds in prestige and power. Within each guild was another kind of hierarchy. Apprentices were at the bottom, journeymen and -women in the middle, and masters at the top. Young boys and occasionally girls were the apprentices; they worked for a master for room and board, learning a trade. An apprenticeship in the felt-hat trade in Paris, for example, lasted seven years. After their apprenticeship, men and women often worked many years as day laborers, hired by a master when he needed extra help. A very few men, and almost no women, worked their way up to master status. They were the ones who dominated the guild’s offices and set its policies. Indeed, the codification of guild practices and membership tended to work against females, who were slowly being ousted from the world of workers during the late twelfth century. In Flanders, for example, as the manufacture of woolen cloth shifted from rural areas to cities, and from light to heavy looms, women were less involved in cloth production than they had been on traditional manors. Similarly, water- and animal-powered mills took the place of female hand labor to grind grain into flour – and most millers were male. Nevertheless, there were exceptions: at Paris, guild regulations for the silk fabric makers assumed that the artisans would be women:

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No journeywoman maker of silk fabric may be a mistress [the female equivalent of “master”] of the craft until she has practiced it for a year and a day.... No mistress of the craft may weave thread with silk, or foil with silk.... No mistress or journeywoman of the craft may make a false hem or border.15 Universities, too, were guilds. Indeed, universitas was another word for guild. At the same time, because they grew out of cathedral schools, universities were considered clerical institutions and therefore admitted only males. Around the year 1200, students and masters (we would call them professors today) began to draw up codes to regulate student discipline, scholastic proficiency, and housing, and they determined the masters’ behavior in equal detail. At the University of Paris, for example, the masters were required to wear long black gowns, follow a particular order in their lectures, and set the standards by which students could become masters themselves. The University of Bologna was unique in having two guilds, one of students and one of masters; there the students participated in the appointment, payment, and discipline of the masters. The University of Bologna was unusual because it was principally a school of law, and the students were generally older men, well along in their careers (often in imperial service) and accustomed to wielding power. At the University of Paris, by contrast, young students predominated, drawn by its renown in the liberal arts (see p. 197) and theology. The universities of Salerno (near Naples) and Montpellier (in southern France) specialized in medicine. Oxford, once a sleepy town where students clustered around one or two masters, became a center of liberal arts, theology, science, and mathematics. The curriculum of each university depended on its specialty and its traditions. At Paris in the early thirteenth century, students spent at least six years studying the liberal arts before gaining the right to teach the subject. If they wanted to specialize in theology, they attended lectures on the subject for at least another five years. With books both expensive and hard to find, lectures were the chief method of communication. These were centered on important texts: the master read an excerpt aloud, delivered his commentary on it, and disputed any contrary commentaries that rival masters might have proposed. Students committed the lectures to memory. Within the larger association of the university, students found more intimate groups within which to live: “nations,” linked to the students’ place of origin. At Bologna, for example, students belonged to one of two nations, the Italians and the non-Italians. Each nation protected its members, wrote statutes, and elected officers. Since both masters and students were considered clerics, university men were subject to Church courts rather than the secular jurisdiction of towns or lords. Many universities could also boast generous privileges from popes and kings, who valued the services of scholars. The combination of clerical status and special privileges made universities virtually self-governing corporations within the towns. This sometimes led to friction. When the townsmen of Oxford tried to punish a student suspected of killing his mistress, the 15 Guild Regulations of the Parisian Silk Fabric Makers, in Reading the Middle Ages, pp. 317–18.

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Plate 6.4 Chartres Cathedral, Interior (1195–1230). The impression of enormous height is the result of both fact – as the building is over 120 feet high – and architectural artifice, since the pointed arches used throughout lead the viewer’s eye skyward. The ribbon of lancet windows along the nave are as large as the huge arched openings between the piers, and still more windows illuminate the side aisles. It was possible to open up so much wall space to windows because of external flying buttresses (see Figure 6.1), which bore the weight of the vault. The light coming through the windows was not pure daylight; rather it glowed through colored glass.

masters protested by refusing to teach and leaving the city. (They set up shop at Cambridge instead – the origin of that university.) Such disputes are called “town against gown” struggles because students and masters wore gowns (the distant ancestors of today’s graduation gowns). But since university towns depended on scholars to patronize local taverns, shops, and hostels, town and gown normally negotiated with each other to their mutual advantage.

Gothic Art and Architecture Certainly, town and gown agreed on building style: by c.1200, “Gothic” (the term itself comes from the sixteenth century) was their architecture of choice. Beginning as a variant of Romanesque in the Ile-de-France, Gothic quickly took on an identity of its own. It masked the heavy walls of Romanesque churches with sculpture, glass, and soaring vaults. Suger, abbot of Saint-Denis and the promoter of Capetian royal power (see p. 195), was the style’s first sponsor. When he rebuilt portions of his church around 1135, he tried to express royal and ecclesiastical ideals in material form. At the west end of his church, the point where the faithful entered, Suger decorated the portals with sculptures of Old

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Triforium Clerestory

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South portals Figure 6.1 Chartres Cathedral, Cut-Out View. The flying buttresses push against the walls, which (given that most of them are filled with glass) could not otherwise support the weight of the heavy vault. Since the glass looks opaque on the outside, and the cathedral is made of stone, the exterior of the church looks rather heavy, as if concealing the lightness within. However, lively sculpture on the portals, large rose windows, and delicate rows of columns relieve this ponderous impression, as Plate 6.5 makes plain.

West portals Buttress piers

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Plate 6.5 Chartres Cathedral, South Portals (early 13th cent.). The portals of a church are transition points – from the humdrum world to sacred space. Those at Chartres both welcome and intimidate. From afar, they seem ready to enfold the worshipper, but as she nears their capacious precincts, she is overwhelmed by information – religious, decorative, and emotional. Consider the central doorway, the so-called Last Judgment portal. Dominating the top half of the pillar between the doors (the trumeau) is the towering figure of Christ. Although he looks mild-mannered, he is standing triumphantly on two demons. Above him is a halfmoon shaped tympanum. There Christ, showing his wounds, sits enthroned between the Virgin and John the Baptist. Beneath, on the strip of the tympanum known as the “lintel,” are the souls of the damned and blessed. Those to Christ’s right (the viewer’s left) are being led to Heaven; those to his left are on their way to Hell, where devils greet them with gleeful grins. In these and other ways the portals of a Gothic church such as Chartres awe, teach, preach, welcome, and warn.

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Plate 6.6 Chartres Cathedral, Stained Glass: Death of the Virgin (1205–1215). “Stained” glass is not stained. To the potash, lime, and wood ash that were the chief ingredients of all medieval glass, artisans produced colors by adding various metals to the molten mix and controlling its oxidation. The glaziers who made this window at Chartres no doubt bought the colored glass they needed; it was made by glassmakers elsewhere and sold in the form of flat sheets. The glaziers would already have designed the window to the specifications of their patron – in this instance the guild of shoemakers, as is clear at the bottom of the window, where a shoemaker is shown plying his trade. The glaziers’ next step was to cut the glass into pieces to fit the design and then to paint on details using a flux made of copper filings and ground glass held together by a binder that was burnt away when the glass piece was fired at high temperature. The finished pieces were then soldered to lead strips, and the whole was fixed into the stone opening for the window. Reading from bottom to top: first comes the shoemaker, then the Virgin on her deathbed. In the lozenge above her, Christ carries her soul (represented as a tiny doll-like figure with a halo), and above that (not included here) are scenes of her funeral, burial, Assumption, and Coronation as Queen of Heaven.

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Testament kings, queens, and patriarchs, signaling the links between the present king and his illustrious predecessors. Reconstructing the interior of the east end of his church as well, Suger used pointed arches and stained glass to let in light, which Suger believed to be God’s own “illumination,” capable of transporting the worshipper from the “slime of earth” to the “purity of Heaven.” Gothic was an urban architecture, reflecting – in its grand size, jewel-like windows, and bright ornaments – the aspirations, pride, and confidence of rich and powerful merchants, artisans, and churchmen. The Gothic cathedral, which could take centuries to complete, was often the religious, social, and commercial focal point of a city. Funds for these buildings might come from the city’s bishop himself, from the canons (priests) who served his cathedral, or from townsmen. Although there never was a “model” Gothic church, Chartres Cathedral may serve as a useful example. In 1194, a fire burned down much of the older church there but spared its most sacred relic, the Virgin’s veil. That sign of divine favor inspired the bishop of Chartres and his canons (the priests who served him) to dedicate their enormous wealth in tithes and estates to rebuild. The guilds of the city turned over much of their income to the enterprise. Rich donations poured in from every corner of France. The cathedral rose anew in record time. (For the location of Chartres, see Map 6.4 on p. 217.) The architects of Chartres put a premium on soaring height, lancet windows, pointed arches, and light, as a comparison of its interior (Plate 6.4 on p. 240) to that of the Romanesque church at Modena (Plate 5.10 on p. 202) makes clear. On the exterior, Chartres is crammed with architectural features (window tracery, columns, buttresses, gargoyles) and theological teachings, as if the builders hoped to express the universe in stone. The three south portals alone (see Plate 6.5 on pp. 242–43) feature figures of heavenly beings, personifications of the virtues and vices, sober images of key saints, and writhing figures of the damned. Perhaps most astonishing are the 143 enormous stained-glass windows at Chartres: they tell stories along the side aisles, set the transepts aglow with rose windows, and form a parade of illuminated saints down the nave. Many images involve the Virgin, so important to this church, which was dedicated to her and had several of her relics. Along the south nave aisle, for example, one window illustrates the death of the Virgin and her assumption into heaven. (See Plate 6.6.) The affective piety that we saw in relation to the Cistercians (see p. 201) was by now widespread. It is made manifest here as the mourners around Mary wipe their tears with the edge of their mantles and implicitly invite viewers (who can see the image very well from the floor) to participate in their sorrow. By the mid-thirteenth century, Gothic architecture had spread to most of Europe, the style varying greatly by region. San Francesco in Assisi is an example of what Italian architects meant by a Gothic church. Like Chartres, it has lancet windows filled with stained glass and a pointed, ribbed vault (see Plate 6.7). But its focus is not on light and height but on walls, painted decoration, and well-proportioned space. *

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Plate 6.7 (following pages) San Francesco at Assisi (Upper Church; completed by 1253). Influenced by French Gothic, this church of the Franciscan order in Assisi nevertheless asserts a different aesthetic. Compare it with Chartres in Plate 6.4 on p. 240, where the piers and ribs mark off units of space (called “bays”). By contrast, San Francesco presents a unified space. Chartres celebrated its soaring height; San Francesco balanced its height by its generous width. Unlike French Gothic, Italian Gothic churches gloried in their walls; at San Francesco they were decorated in the 1280s and 1290s with frescoes by the famous artist Giotto or an imitator.

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In the years flanking 1200, the Islamic world saw the rise and fall of the Ayyubids and the Almohads. The Ayyubids, most famously led by Saladin, took Jerusalem and prevailed in the region of Egypt and Syria until c.1250, when they were replaced by a new group, the Mamluks. The Almohads, rulers of the Maghreb and al-Andalus, lost power around the same time as the Ayyubids, undone by the crusading Christian armies of the reconquista and rival Berber groups. But the Mongols, moving fast both east- and westward, went from one victory to another. Meanwhile, Christian crusaders poured into the Baltic region and breached the walls of Constantinople. Bruised, but not crushed, the Byzantines founded new states and eventually, in 1261, retook their capital city. But the peoples of the Baltic region largely succumbed to their conquerors, who imposed their religion and institutions. England, flush with its conquest of Ireland and strengthened by its new legal institutions, was weakened by the King of France on the Continent and a rebellion at home. The Church lay down the law for all Christians in 1215, but it found itself enmeshed in battles – against Frederick II, against the Albigensians, and against Constantinople – that diminished its stature and prestige. In some ways this era marked a heyday for the elites rather than for royal and other ruling dynasties. Aristocrats in Europe – whether Christian or Islamic – listened to and read poems and tales of love. Rich townsmen and bishops built soaring Gothic churches. Citizens in Italy ousted the emperor and maintained their communal independence. Enterprising business- and craftspeople created guilds. Lords colluded with peasants in changing labor services into monetary payments. An orderly society would require that these multiple institutions be able to respond flexibly to new challenges. But in the next century, while smooth harmony was the ideal and sometimes the reality, discord was an ever-present threat.

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MATERIAL CULTURE: THE MAKING OF AN ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT Before the use of paper became widespread in the West in the fourteenth century, European books were made of parchment, the product of animal skins. The most common parchment was made from goats and sheep, while calfskin was considered the finest sort (commonly known as vellum, from the Latin vitulinum, i.e., “of a calf ”). All parchments were produced through an elaborate process by a percamenarius, a parchmenter. To begin, the parchmenter cleaned the skin in fresh, running water – generally a river – for a day or two. Then he (almost never she) soaked it for many days in vats filled with a thick mixture of lime and water. Lime, composed mainly of calcium carbonate, helped to de-hair the skin, which the parchmenter then scraped off with a long, concave knife. Once meticulously and thoroughly de-haired, the skin was rinsed in fresh water. Still wet, it was stretched on a wooden frame for the second stage of the process. Now the parchmenter scraped both sides of the skin (known as the flesh and hair sides) with a lunellum, a special, half-moon-shaped knife that reduced the risk of scratches while smoothing and thinning the skin (Plate 6.8). Even while he was scraping, the parchmenter was constantly stretching the skin by expertly tightening the pegs of the wooden frame. The parchment stretched even more as it dried. After the parchmenter did a final scraping and smoothing of the dried skin, it was removed from the frame and rolled up. It was now ready to be used. Between the fifth and the twelfth centuries, the entire production of books was monopolized – almost exclusively – by monks. By the thirteenth

Plate 6.8 Hamburg Bible (1255). In this decorated initial letter (D for Daniel) of a Bible made at Hamburg’s Cathedral canonry, a monk – possibly Saint Jerome (note the halo) – buys parchments from a lay craftsman. The parchmenter’s wooden frame and scraping tool, the lunellum, are depicted in the lower half, between the two standing figures.

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century, some commercial manuscript makers opened shops in urban centers. In a model book-production schedule, monks first cut the parchment to the desired size of the book that was to be made, folding the rectangular sheet in half to obtain two pages (a bifolium), each page ( folium in Latin) with a recto and a verso (technical terms for the two sides of one page).

Plate 6.9 Miniature of Saint Dunstan (12th cent.). In this full-page miniature made between c.1170–c.1180 at the Benedictine cathedral priory of Holy Trinity or Christ Church, Canterbury, Saint Dunstan (d.988), former archbishop of Canterbury, is shown copying Smaragdus of Saint-Mihiel’s Commentary on the Rule of Saint Benedict. The lavish image, embellished with gold leaf, shows the saint in full episcopal attire. With a quill pen in his right hand, a knife in his left, and a handy inkwell below, he writes by following the pale-gray lines that were drawn with a plummet.

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They put together several folded sheets to form a quire (or gathering). The sheets in a quire were assembled so that two facing pages presented the same side of the parchment: two facing flesh sides followed by two facing hair sides. At this point, the scribes – monks charged with copying texts – further prepared each folium by rubbing it with a pumice stone, a procedure that made the surface receptive to inks and paints. The scribes then had to “rule” the pages – make the lines that would keep their writing even and straight – by joining up prick marks made through a closed quire along a measured grid. Then the scribes “drew” barely visible lines with a tool that had a hard metal point; by the twelfth century this was commonly made of lead and was called a plummet marker. Later, ruling was also done in ink or in pigment. With everything set, the scribe was ready to write. He or she (for there were many female monasteries, and women, too, were trained as scribes) wrote the text with a quill pen made from a wing feather – usually a goose or a swan feather (penna in Latin, a word that has been passed down for centuries!). In their free hand, scribes held a knife (see Plate 6.9), which they used for several operations: to cut the parchment, keep the pages firm while writing, erase errors (which occurred quite frequently), and sharpen the quill pen itself. Because the writing was done by hand, the resulting book is called a manuscript (from the Latin manus, hand and scriptus, written). If the manuscript was to be “illuminated” – illustrated – production continued with the participation of illuminators. Illustrations might be as simple as an ornamental letter or as elaborate as a full page, as in Plate 6.9. The illuminator first made a sketch, then began to apply gold leaf. But gold was very expensive and therefore used in only the most extravagant of books. Alternatives included tin leaf or even “poorer” natural substances such as saffron. The “gold” was applied to selected letters or figures, using gesso, in most cases, as a ground.

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Next, illuminators painted the rest of their sketch. Paints were made with coloring agents (pigments) obtained from vegetables, animals, and minerals and bound with glair (made from egg white), gum and/or glue, and water. Additives such as salt, stale urine, honey, and ear wax were also used to alter the shade and the consistency of the paints. Red and blue, followed by green, were the most common colors used in medieval manuscripts. The final production stage was carried out by bookbinders. In monastic scriptoria, binding could be performed by any monk who knew the techniques. Later, when books were produced by commercial workshops, lay professionals or stationers became widespread. The binder’s job was to put together a stack of loose quires in the correct order (according to the progressive folio numeration) and to sew them onto bands or thongs across the spine of the book. Two wooden boards served as front and back covers and were often covered with leather and reinforced with corner metal pieces. Luxury binding was typically reserved for whole Bibles or the four Gospels. Some bejeweled bindings remain today, attesting to the full artistry of medieval book-making (see Plate 6.10).

BIBLIOGRAPHY Clemens, Raymond, and Timothy Graham. Introduction to Manuscript Studies. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008. De Hamel, Christopher. Medieval Craftsmen: Scribes and Illuminators. London: British Museum Press, 1992.

Plate 6.10 Codex Aureus (870). This so-called Golden Book of Gospels received royal treatment with a bejeweled upper cover. It was most likely produced at the monastery of Saint-Denis, near Paris, by artists patronized by Emperor Charles the Bald, Charlemagne’s grandson. At the center, Christ in Majesty is surrounded by the four evangelists and scenes from the life of Christ.

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For practice questions about the text, maps, plates, and other features – plus suggested answers – please go to www.utphistorymatters.com There you will also find all the maps, genealogies, and figures used in the book.

FURTHER READING Bennison, Amira K. The Almoravid and Almohad Empires. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 2016. Biran, Michal. Chinggis Khan. Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2007. Bysted, Ane L., Carsten Selch Jensen, Kurt Villads Jensen, et al., eds. Jerusalem in the North: Denmark and the Baltic Crusades, 1100–1522. Turnhout: Brepols, 2012. Catlos, Brian A. Kingdoms of Faith: A New History of Islamic Spain. New York: Basic Books, 2018. Clanchy, Michael T. From Memory to Written Record, 1066–1307. 3rd ed. Oxford: John Wiley & Sons, 2012. Curta, Florin. Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages (500–1300). Leiden: Brill, 2019. Eddé, Anne-Marie. Saladin. Translated by Jane Marie Todd. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011. El-Azhari, Taef. Zengi and the Muslim Response to the Crusades: The Politics of Jihad. New York: Routledge, 2016. France, John. “A Changing Balance: Cavalry and Infantry, 1000–1300.” Revista de História das Ideias 30 (2009): 153–177. —. Hattin. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Franco, Bradley R., and Beth A. Mulvaney, eds. The World of St. Francis of Assisi: Essays in Honor of William R. Cook. Leiden: Brill, 2015. Green, Monica H. “The Four Black Deaths.” American Historical Review 125, no. 5 (2020): 1600–1631. Hymes, Robert. “Epilogue: A Hypothesis on the East Asian Beginnings of the Yersinia pestis Polytomy.” In Pandemic Disease in the Medieval World: Rethinking the Black Death, edited by Monica Green, pp. 285–308. Vol. 1 of The Medieval Globe. Amsterdam: Arc Humanities Press, 2015. Kaeuper, Richard W. Medieval Chivalry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Madden, Thomas F. The Concise History of the Crusades. Plymouth: Rowman & Littlefield, 2013. Mooney, Catherine M. Clare of Assisi and the Thirteenth-Century Church: Religious Women, Rules, and Resistance. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016. Moore, R.I. The War on Heresy. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2012. Mayr-Harting, Henry. Religion, Politics and Society in Britain 1066–1272. Harlow, UK: Pearson, 2011. Newman, Barbara. Making Love in the Twelfth Century: “Letters of Two Lovers” in Context. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016. Paterson, Linda. “Fin’amor and the Development of the Courtly Canso.” In The Troubadours: An Introduction, edited by Simon Gaunt and Sarah Kay, pp. 28–46. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Skoblar, Magdalena, ed. Byzantium, Venice and the Medieval Adriatic: Spheres of Maritime Power and Influence, c.700–1453. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. Smith, Thomas W., ed. Authority and Power in the Medieval Church, c.1000–c.1500. Turnhout: Brepols, 2020. Vincent, Nicholas. John: An Evil King? London: Allen Lane, 2020. Whalen, Brett Edward. The Two Powers: The Papacy, the Empire, and the Struggle for Sovereignty in the Thirteenth Century. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019.

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CHAPTER SEVEN

H I G H L I G H TS Spanish cortes includes townsmen 1188 Townsmen join the clergy and nobility at the cortes, a recognition of their wealth and importance in Spain.

Mamluks stop the western Mongol expansion 1260 Originally soldier slaves, the Mamluks dominate Egypt and Syria. Their sultanate lasts until 1517.

Thomas Aquinas c.1225–1274 Author of the Summa Theologiae, a monumental synthesis of human and divine knowledge, Thomas Aquinas is among the most important scholastics (that is, theologians, logicians, and philosophers who are trained and/or teach at medieval universities).

Byzantines take back Constantinople 1261

Dante Alighieri 1265–1321 His vernacular poetry expresses the order of the scholastic universe, the ecstatic union of the mystical quest, and the erotic and emotional life of the troubadour.

King Edward I expels the Jews from England 1290 The culmination of more than a century of persecution and harassment, the Jews are expelled from England, and soon thereafter (1306) they are banished from France by Philip IV the Fair.

Giotto’s Scrovegni Chapel

After their defeat in 1204, the Byzantines set up governments in exile; in 1261 they retake Constantinople, reestablishing the Byzantine Empire until its final defeat in 1453.

Alberto Scotti becomes signore of Piacenza 1290 One example among many of the men who transform North Italian communes into signorie around this time.

Ghazan Kahn converts to Islam 1295 Ghazan Kahn’s conversion to Islam is the model for the Mongol rulers of the Golden Horde (1313) and those of Central Asia (1330s).

1304–1306 Giotto’s dramatic visual presentation of the story of salvation and damnation is a sort of artistic equivalent of Thomas Aquinas’s synthesis of faith and reason.

The Great Famine 1315–1322 The result of poor harvests, warfare, and calculated hoarding by elites, the Great Famine is felt everywhere in Europe, and particularly regions north of the Mediterranean.

Casimir III the Great rules Poland

Avignon papacy 1309–1377 Although sober and efficient, the papacy in residence at Avignon is French-leaning and scandalous to many.

Mansa Musa, king of Mali, makes the hajj to Mecca 1324 The pilgrimage of Mansa Musa symbolizes West Africa’s full participation in the Islamic world.

1333–1370 Lays foundation for united Poland.

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SEVEN EMPIRES OF LAND AND MIND (c.1250–c.1350)

By 1300, the Mongols had created the largest empire known to history, and by 1350 most of it was Islamic. To the west of the Mongols were the Mamluks, equally Islamic, as were the Islamic successor states of the Almohads in the Maghreb. In the sub-Saharan south arose the sprawling new Islamic Empire of Mali. While “Islamic” is a relative term – there were always people of various beliefs living in these regions, and Islam itself was never monolithic – nevertheless it may be fairly said that c.1350 much of the globe’s eastern hemisphere was under Islamic rule in one way or another. But that did not mean that the Christian portion of that hemisphere (equally varied, if smaller) was cowed. To the contrary, it too was teeming with new ideas, new institutions, new modes of expression. And its political, intellectual, and artistic elites were perhaps even keener than the Mongols to exert control – over peoples, territories, thoughts, and sexualities. But the empires of land and mind that these elites created inevitably came up against opposition in the form of discord, dissent, and deviance.

THE EXPANSION OF THE ISLAMIC WORLD The Mongol Empire was and remains the largest ever known (it extended about 4,000 miles from east to west), and by the 1330s much of it was Islamic. Meanwhile the Mamluks – warriors originally of slave status – quietly and decisively ousted Saladin’s dynasty, the Ayyubids, and became rulers of the long-lived Mamluk sultanate, centered on Egypt. In the Maghreb, various Islamic dynasties reigned in the wake of Almoravid collapse. Further south, Islam reached across the Sahara to new states perched on the Sahel (the transition zone between desert and savannah). One of them, the Empire of Mali, stretched 1,200 miles – from the Atlantic Ocean to Timbuktu and beyond. All of these regions were interconnected via seas and trade routes and crisscrossed by intrepid travelers.

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The Mongols Conquer ... and Settle Down

Plate 7.1 Traveling in the Mongol Empire (early 14th cent.). This watercolor illustration is one of many made for the Compendium of Chronicles, a history written by Rashid al-Din (1247–1318) to celebrate the genealogy, virtues, and achievements of the Mongol rulers from before the time of Chinggis Khan to just prior to the death of the author. It was commissioned by Ghazan (r.1295–1304), the Chinggisid khan who ruled the Ilkhanate (see Map 7.1) and with whom Rashid al-Din was close as both friend and advisor. His history glorified Ghazan, the first Mongol ruler to convert to Islam, as the culmination of God’s plan for rulership over the lands that had once been held by the Persians and the Abbasids. The book was recopied every year in both Arabic and Persian, and Rashid al-Din himself determined its illustrative program. The artist of this picture depicts an elegant lord traveling with several retainers. He rides on a path strewn with flowers, while behind him one of his men wears around his neck a large passport – the authorization needed to go from one relay station to the next in the exceptionally efficient Mongol postal system. Finding fresh horses at each post, messengers, traders, nobles (as here), and officials could cover over 100 miles a day.

Under Chinggis Khan the Mongols evolved from pastoralists and raiders to conquerors and settlers. In the course of the thirteenth century, they picked off the states to their south, east, and west, one right after the other. Sometimes killing everyone in a city, they gained a reputation for murder and mayhem. Often, too, they left a belt of destruction around their conquests, not incidentally creating a path for their armies and their storied “postal service” (see Plate 7.1) as well as pastureland for their animals. Frequently they evacuated whole cities, despoiling them utterly before allowing the inhabitants back in. The young men of conquered territories were forced into their armies as “arrow fodder,” while seasoned warriors who defected to the Mongols were welcomed. Artisans – especially weapons-makers and weavers – were relocated to serve the Mongols’ needs, as were physicians, astronomers, astrologers, bureaucrats, engineers, and many other talented professionals. Manpower and taxes were the twin pillars on which Chinggis and his successors built their mighty empire. And after the initial mayhem, they established relative stability and peace. By the middle of the thirteenth century, the Mongol Empire had taken on the contours of a settled state. (See Map 7.1.) It was divided into four khanates, each under the rule of various progeny of Chinggis. (See Genealogy 7.1.) The westernmost quadrant was dominated by the so-called Golden Horde (“horde” derived from the Turkic word for “khan’s residence”). Settled along the lower Volga River valley, the Mongols of the Golden

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Horde combined traditional pastoralism with more sedentary concerns, founding cities and fostering trade. While they demanded regular and carefully calculated tribute, troops, and recognition of their overlordship from the indigenous Rus rulers, they nevertheless allowed the Rus elites considerable autonomy. Their policy of religious toleration allowed the Orthodox Church to flourish, and the Mongols further privileged it by exempting it from taxes and freeing its clergy from army conscription, a fact that led to a rush of young men to the Orthodox priesthood! In return, the Church was glad to support Mongol rule. It was only in the fifteenth century, as Mongol power waned, that the Rus princes to the north took charge, creating a new Moscow-centered state that came to be called Russia. Despite their favorable treatment of the Orthodox Church, the Mongols of the Golden Horde did not become Christian. Rather, they chose to identify with their Ilkhanid brethren and to adopt Islam. The Ilkhanids had created a flourishing state in which Mongol shamanism coexisted in peace with various forms of Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Judaism. But right at the start of his reign, Ghazan Khan (r.1295–1304) broke with the Mongols of China (who had adopted Tibetan Buddhism) and converted to Islam, adhering to the religion of much of the population living in his area of control.

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Map 7.1 The Mongol Empire, c.1290

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Genealogy 7.1 (facing page) The Mongol Khans

The Golden Horde followed suit in 1313 and the Chaghataids, who ruled Central Asia, adopted Islam in the 1330s. At the height of its power, from the mid-thirteenth to the mid-fourteenth century, the Mongol Empire fostered what historian Marie Favereau has called the “Mongol exchange.” She considers it analogous to the “Columbian exchange” that tied together the earth’s eastern and western hemispheres in the wake of Christopher Columbus’s voyages. At the core of the Mongol exchange was the desire, even the need, for goods to circulate. Constant trade, gift-giving, and an empire-wide monetary system based on silver all served to emphasize the generosity of the khans, create status symbols for the elites, and foster ties of loyalty and dependency from everyone else. To be sure, contemporary Europeans, too, valued these things. What was different in the Mongol realm was the sheer expanse of their networks. The Mongols patronized and attracted artists, poets, and scientists. They wanted – and could pay for – fine silks, fashionable clothing, musicians, porcelain tableware, and costly weapons. They facilitated the Eurasian pathways that inspired merchants such as the Italian Polo brothers to trade with China and that enabled Franciscan missionaries there to set up a Church, complete with bishops and archbishops. In a sense, the Mongols initiated the taste for exploration, exotic goods, and missionary opportunities that culminated in the European “discovery” of what they called the Americas.

African Connections As we saw in Chapter 6, the Mamluks, already masters of Egypt, halted the Mongols in their tracks as they attempted to capture the Syrian city of Ain Jalut in 1260. Mamluks were trained warriors, fully armed and expert horsemen, but of unfree origins. Under the Ayyubids, they had been employed to help govern and serve in the army. After they defeated the Mongols, they created a staunchly Sunni empire – the Mamluk Sultanate – that lasted until 1517. (See Map 7.2.) To the west of the Mamluks, rulers in the Maghreb and the last Umayyads in Spain profited from the newly interconnected global economy, fueled in part by gold from the sub-Saharan Empire of Mali.

Egypt, the Maghreb, and Granada The Mamluks presented themselves as the Middle East’s bulwark against the Mongols. Superficially, they were like many of the other rulers that the Islamic world had known since the time of the Seljuks: they were (for the most part) Turks, like the Seljuks and Ayyubids; they upheld Sunni Islam; and they protected the last (symbolically important though utterly powerless) Abbasid caliphs, who, after having been ousted by the Mongols, now lived at Cairo. Nevertheless, the Mamluks of the sultanate were also something new. They rarely formed a hereditary dynasty: rather, they created a military state ruled by army units fiercely loyal to their leaders. Since sons of Mamluks could not inherit their father’s property or titles (at least theoretically), the army had constantly to be replenished

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Chinggis Khan (d.1227) Jochi (d.1127)

Ogedei = Toregene Khatun (r.1229–1241)

Chaghatai (d.1242)

Mo’etuken

Yesu-Mongke (r.1246–1251)

Tolui = Sorqoqtani Beki (d.1233)

Kochu Shiremun

Guyuk = Oghul-Qaimis (r.1246–1248)

Qara-Oghul (1251 –1260) Orda

Batu (r.1237–1256) Chaghatai Khans (r. until 1338)

Mongke (r.1251–1259)

Khans of the Golden Horde (r. until 1357)

Qubilai (r.1260–1294)

Hulegu (d.1265)

Yuan Emperors (r. until 1368) Names of the Great Khans are in blue

Abaqa (r.1265–1282)

Arghun (r.1284–1291)

Teguder (r.1282–1284)

Geikhatu (r.1291 –1295)

Ghazan (r.1295–1304)

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Islamic regions Spread of Islam Alluvial gold

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by new Mamluks from the steppes. Living in garrisons, they followed a military code, their lives dominated by constant drilling and military exercises. Largely isolated from the general population, they nevertheless fostered art, architecture, and scholarship just as the caliphs and emirs of old had done, and they tolerated the many religions practiced in their sultanate. To the west of the Mamluks, all along the North African coast, tribal dynasties such as the Marinids and Hafsids reigned, serving as guarantors of a spider’s web of trade routes. Slightly to the north – in Europe, in fact – was the last remnant of Muslim Spain: Granada. It was dominated by the Nasrids. Undeterred – or perhaps prodded – by the infinitesimal size of their state, the Nasrids presided over an exceptionally rich cultural outpouring. Their viziers were poets, and they encouraged medical and theological studies. But above all, they invested in architecture. Even their defensive structures were majestic as well as strong. When they added to the Alhambra, initially a ninth-century citadel, they turned it into a palace complex. It astonished – and was meant to astonish – with its splendor, size, bright colors, and extraordinary craftsmanship. The imposing Comares Palace – begun under Sultan Yusuf I (r.1333–1354) and completed by his successor Muhammad V (d.1391)

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to serve as the ruler’s reception hall – not only dazzled but also educated. Its inscriptions urged its distinguished visitors to pause and reflect on the nature of divine and worldly power. Its decorative elements – deliberately abstract and repetitive – alluded to infinity. (See Plate 7.2.) In effect, the Alhambra constituted an empire in miniature – an attempt to sum up and contain heaven and earth within one overwhelming architectural construction.

Plate 7.2 Hall of the Ambassadors, Comares Palace, Alhambra (mid-14th cent.). Once gleaming with color, this reception hall conveyed the splendor and refinement of the Nasrid sultans as well as their association with divinity. Start at the top, with the epigraphs around the ceiling. They quote Qur’an 57:3: “[He] who created the seven heavens one upon another.” The ceiling itself, composed of thousands of pieces of wood of different colors that form exploding star-burst patterns, represents the heavens. Daylight arrives through the windows, originally made with stained glass. Their geometric designs are repeated as shadows on the once-tiled floor and mimicked in part by the brightly colored tiles at the bottom and sides of the heavy piers. Between the windows and the tiles are bands of stucco. Some offer inscriptions – poetic epigrams or Qur’anic quotations. Others depict abstract motifs based on stars, arches, and flowers, exemplifying the sinuous repeated designs known as “arabesque.” The sultans and their viziers were closely involved in determining every element of the building.

The Empire of Mali South of the Nasrids of Granada and the Marinids of Morocco was the Empire of Mali, which lasted from the mid-thirteenth until the early fifteenth century. Its origins are recounted in the oral epic Sunjata, sung for centuries by Mande bards. Sunjata was first written down in the seventeenth century and is still recited today, taking its details from the particular traditions of each Mande poet who tells it. This is a very different sort of primary source from those – written or material – hitherto used in this book. Yet many historians rely on it to understand what Mali meant (and means) to the Mande people. From Sunjata emerges the story of two powerful antagonists, the tyrannical Sumaworo

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Plate 7.3 Rao Pectoral (c.1300). This large and heavy gold pendant was found in the 1940s in Rao/Nguiguela, Senegal, in the tomb of a young man. It was just one of many other precious objects made of gold, silver, and copper in the tomb. Featuring concentric circles of finely worked filigree punctuated by dome cabochons, it was inspired by the same arabesque decoration that was employed at the Alhambra (above, Plate 7.2), at the Kutubiyya Mosque (see Plate 6.1 on p. 211), and elsewhere in the Islamic world. Nevertheless, it was most certainly made in West Africa. Carbon dating places it c.1300, when the young man, clearly of high status, would have been subject to Malian rule, possibly under Mansa Musa, whose control of the alluvial gold along the Senegal River contributed to his wealth, reputation, and power.

Kanté of Soso and, to his south, the hero Sunjata Keita of Konfara (near Buré and its alluvial gold – see Map 7.2). Written sources back up the core of its narrative, which tells how Mali emerged from the recentering of culture from the Sahel (Soso) to the Sudanese savanna (Buré). What the epic reveals beyond that includes the progressive gendering of political power as male; the creation of a complex society of clans, castes, and status groups; and the new prestige of hunters – men who knew how to use weapons, provided their communities with meat, and were in close touch with forest spirits. Spirits, magical powers, and other indigenous beliefs melded easily with West African forms of Islam. And Islamic it was. Many pilgrims from Mali passed through Cairo in order to perform the hajj to Mecca, paying their way with slaves, whom they sold, and with gold dust, with which they made outright purchases. The most famous such pilgrim was Mansa (King) Musa, who arrived in 1324 with camels loaded with perhaps 15 tons of gold. (See Plate 7.3.) His lavish purchases, gifts, and alms depressed the price of gold in Egypt for years to come. But his diplomacy was oriented towards the Maghreb as well, to which Malians continued to ply the lucrative trans-Saharan trade routes that we have seen in earlier chapters, and where Malian scholars flocked in search of theological instruction. They returned afterward to centers in Mali such as Timbuktu, which also attracted scholars from the Maghreb and Egypt.

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THE ELASTICITY AND RIGIDITY OF EUROPE Europeans rapidly took advantage of the new opportunities for trade and missionizing. Yet even as they adjusted to the new situation, tolerating and sometimes even admiring the Mongols next door, they turned against the strangers in their own backyard – persecuting Jews, lepers, heretics, and sexual non-conformists. The Church became more militant, yet the papacy became less powerful as it was forced to pull up stakes and move from Rome to Avignon. Scholastics created Summae (compendia), attempting to sum up all knowledge, human and divine. Theirs were “empires” of the mind, claiming to embrace everything on earth and in heaven. But, much as empires of land were vulnerable to attack, so each scholastic synthesis was soon challenged by another. Royal governments increased their power and prestige; yet they were elastic enough to allow for – and manipulate – newly minted representative institutions. Musicians and artists elaborated flexible new forms of expression. But ecological disaster in the form of famine threatened to disrupt these harmonies.

Expanding Horizons The Mongol exchange opened new opportunities for trade, and Europeans took advantage of the possibilities. Meanwhile, Baltic Sea routes connected northern European cities through the Hanseatic League. Roads and bridges within Europe made land trade faster and more profitable. This burgeoning economy called for large-scale payments, necessitating the introduction of gold coinage. Europeans now had access to material goods of every sort, but wealth also heightened social tensions, especially in the cities.

Winners and Losers in the Profit Economy Even after the Byzantines reconquered Constantinople in 1261, they benefited little from the new economic opportunities. Instead, Venice and Genoa retained their special privileges in Byzantine cities and monopolized most of the trade that passed through their ports. On the western coast of Europe, a hemispheric shift was beginning, as the waters of the Atlantic became familiar to navigators. The first ships to ply the ocean were the galleys of Genoese entrepreneurs, which left the Mediterranean via the Strait of Gibraltar, stopped to trade at various ports along the Spanish coast, and then made their way north to England and northern France. Majorca, recently conquered by the king of Aragon, sent its own ships to join the Atlantic trade at about the same time. Soon the Venetians began state-sponsored Atlantic expeditions using new-style “great galleys” that held more cargo yet required fewer oarsmen. Eventually, as sailing ships – far more efficient than any sort of galley – were developed by the Genoese and others, the Atlantic passage replaced older overland and river routes between the Mediterranean and Europe’s north. (See Map 7.3a on the next page.)

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Map 7.3a and (on facing page) Map 7.3b Trade Routes, c.1300

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Equally important to Europe was its commerce with the various states of North Africa. Genoa had outposts in all the major Mediterranean ports of the Maghreb and established new ones down the Atlantic coast, as far south as Safi (today in Morocco). Pisa, Genoa’s traditional trade rival, was entrenched at Tunis. Catalonia and Majorca found their commercial stars rising fast in the region. Catalonia established its own settlements in the port cities of the Maghreb; Majorcans went off to the Canary Islands. Profits were enormous. Besides acting as middlemen that traded goods or commodities from northern Europe, the Italian cities had their own products to sell (Venice had salt and glass, Pisa had iron) in exchange for African cotton, linen, spices, slaves, and, above all, gold. At the same time as Genoa, Pisa, Venice, Majorca, and Catalonia were plying trade networks in the south, some cities in the north of Europe were creating their own marketplace in the Baltic Sea region. Built on the back of the Northern Crusades, the Hanseatic League was formed by German merchants, who, following in the wake of Christian knights, hoped to prosper in cities such as Danzig (today Gdansk, in Poland), Riga, and Reval (today Tallinn, in Estonia). The city of Lübeck, founded by the duke of Saxony, formed the Hansa’s center. Formalized through legislation, the League agreed that

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Major trade route See Map 7.3a

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Each city shall ... keep the sea clear of pirates.... Whoever is expelled from one city because of a crime shall not be received in another.... If a lord besieges a city, no one shall aid him in any way to the detriment of the besieged city.1 There were no mercantile rivalries here, unlike the competition between Genoa and Pisa in the south. But there was also little glamor. Pitch, tar, lumber, furs, herring: these were the stuff of northern commerce. The opening of the Atlantic and the commercial unification of the Baltic were dramatic developments. Elsewhere the pace of commercial life quickened more subtly. By 1200 almost all the cities of pre-industrial Europe were in existence. By 1300 they were connected by a web of roads that brought even small towns of a few thousand inhabitants into wider networks of trade. To be sure, some old trading centers declined: the towns of Champagne, for example, had been centers of major fairs characterized by periodic 1 Decrees of the League, in A Short Medieval Reader, ed. Barbara H. Rosenwein (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2023), p. 188 and in Reading the Middle Ages: Sources from Europe, Byzantium, and the Islamic World, 3rd ed., ed. Barbara H. Rosenwein (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018), pp. 414–15.

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but intense commercial activity. By the mid-thirteenth century the fairs’ chief functions were as financial markets and clearing houses. On the whole, however, urban centers grew and prospered. As the burgeoning population of the countryside fed the cities with immigrants, the populations of many cities reached their medieval maximum: in 1300, Venice and London each had perhaps 100,000 inhabitants, Paris an extraordinary 200,000. Many of these people became part of the urban labor force, working as apprentices or servants; but others could not find jobs or became disabled and could not keep them. The indigent and sick posed new challenges for urban communities. Rich townspeople and princes alike supported the building of new charitable institutions: hospices for the poor, hospitals for the sick, orphanages, refuges for penitent prostitutes. But in big cities the numbers that these could serve were woefully inadequate. Beggars (there were perhaps 20,000 in Paris alone) became a familiar sight, and not all prostitutes could afford to be penitent.

New Money Workers were paid in silver pennies. There were silver mines to meet that need, and many new ones were discovered at this time. Mints proliferated. Small workshop mints, typical before the thirteenth century, gave way to mint factories run by profit-minded entrepreneurs. Rulers added to their power by making sure that the coins of the mints that they controlled prevailed throughout their dominions. Large-scale transactions required coins worth more than pennies. Between the early thirteenth and mid-fourteenth centuries, new, heavy silver coins were struck. Under Doge Enrico Dandolo (r.1192–1205), Venice began to mint great silver coins, grossi (“big ones” in Italian; sing. grosso), in order to make convenient payments for the Fourth Crusade, even as it continued to use its little silver coins, the piccoli. Soon Venice’s commercial rival, Genoa, produced similarly large coins, and the practice quickly spread to other cities in northern Italy, Tuscany, and southern France. In 1253, Rome doubled the size of its grosso, a coinage model that was followed in Naples and Sicily. The practice of minting these heavy silver coins spread northward. Heavy silver was one way to pay for large transactions. Gold coins were another. They were already common in the Islamic world but in Europe had been limited to the regions that bordered on that world, such as Sicily and Spain. Now, in the mid-thirteenth century, Genoa and Florence minted gold coins for the first time. Other states followed suit. Most of the gold came from West Africa; the rest came from new mines discovered in Hungary.

Intra-City Conflicts The most commercialized regions tended to be the most restive. That certainly was true of Flanders, where the urban population had grown enormously since the twelfth century. Flemish cities depended on a large working class to manufacture woolen textiles. But their governments were run by wealthy merchants, the “patricians,” whose families had held their positions for generations. When, in the early 1270s, England, the chief supplier of

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.

raw wool, slapped a trade embargo on Flanders, discontented laborers, now out of work, went on strike to demand a role in town government. While most of these rebellions resulted in few changes, workers had better luck early in the next century, when the king of France and the count of Flanders went to war. The workers (who supported the count) defeated the French forces at the battle of Courtrai in 1302. Thereafter the patricians, who had sided with France, were at least partly replaced by artisans. In the early fourteenth century, Flemish municipalities had perhaps the most inclusive governments of Europe. Similar population growth and urban rebellion beset the northern Italian cities, which were torn by factions that fought under the party banners of the Guelfs (papal supporters) or the Ghibellines (imperial supporters). This was the dolorous inheritance of the era of Frederick Barbarossa and his heirs, even though for the most part the high-sounding labels of the parties were cover for very local battles. As in the Flemish cities, the late thirteenth century saw a movement by the Italian urban lower classes to participate in city government. The popolo (“people”) who demanded the changes were in fact made up of many different groups, including crafts and merchant guildsmen, fellow parishioners, and even members of the elite. The popolo acted as a sort of alternative commune within the city, a sworn association dedicated to upholding the interests of its members. Armed and militant, the popolo demanded a say in government, particularly in matters of taxation. While no city is “typical,” the case of Piacenza may serve as an example. The commune there was originally dominated by nobles, but in 1222 it granted the popolo – led, in fact, by a charismatic nobleman from the Landi family – a measure of power, allowing the popolo to take over half the governmental offices. A year later the popolo and the nobles worked out a plan to share the election of their city’s podestà, or short-term governing official, an office that remained even after Frederick Barbarossa’s retreat. Even so, conflict flared up periodically. In 1250, when a grain shortage provoked protest, the common people of Piacenza saw that they were being badly treated regarding foodstuffs: first, because all the corn [grain] that had been sent from Milan, as well as other corn in Piacenza, was being taken to Parma ... [and] second because the Parmesans were touring Piacentine territory buying corn from the threshing floors and fields.... The Parmesans could do this in safety because Matteo da Correggio, a citizen of Parma, was podestà of Piacenza.2 This podestà evidently favored his home town at the expense of the city he was supposed to govern. As in 1222, some members of noble families took the lead in the 1250 uprising, but this time the popolo of Piacenza split into factions, each supporting a different competing leader. Eventually one came to the fore – Alberto Scotti, from a family deeply immersed in both commerce and landholding. In 1290, he took over the city, gaining the grand title of “defender and rector of the commune and the society of merchants and craft guilds and of all the popolo.” He was, in short, a lord, a signore (pl. signori). Map 7.4 shows some 2 Ghibelline Annals of Piacenza, in Reading the Middle Ages, pp. 412–14.

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Po River n

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Late Antique wall (hypothetical) Wall of 872 Wall of 1169 Wall of 1265

of the features of the Piacenza of his day. It boasted various neighborhoods devoted to trades and crafts, an impressive number of churches and monasteries, and a generous sprinkling of private towers put up by proud and often warring members of the nobility. Its swelling population had to be accommodated by new walls: that of 872 was replaced in 1169 by another that embraced former suburbs. A century later, that one had to be torn down to build a wall enclosing a still larger area. A similar evolution – from commune to the rule of the popolo and then to the hegemony of a signore – took place in cities throughout northern Italy and in much of Tuscany as well. It was as if the end of imperial rule in Italy, marked by the fall of Frederick II, ironically brought in its train the creation of local monarchs – the signori – who maintained order at the price of repression. By 1300 the commune had almost everywhere given way to the signoria (a state ruled by a signore), with one family dominating the government.

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Xenophobia Urban discord was defused in Flanders, silenced in Italy. In neither instance was pluralism valued. Europeans resisted hearing multiple voices; rather, they were eager to purge and purify themselves of the “pollutants” – among them Jews, lepers, heretics, and sexual non-conformists – in their midst. Refusing the subtle distinctions many historians try to make – such as between medieval anti-Judaism and modern antisemitism – Geraldine Heng (see Chapter 5) bluntly calls the persecutions of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries racist.

Jews As we have seen (above, p. 227), Canon 68 of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) forbade sex between Jews and Christians and, to that end, demanded that all Jews wear visible markers of their identity. That provision was necessary because Jews and Christians lived in the same neighborhoods, dressed similarly, spoke the same vernacular languages, and often worked together cooperatively. Nevertheless, by 1215, many Christians, guided by literate elites, considered Jews to be threats to the very health and integrity of their community. Indeed, Jews came increasingly to be viewed as creatures of the devil. One of their most heinous practices, it was alleged, was the ritual crucifixion of Christian children. Most terrible of all was the myth (later termed the “blood libel”) that Jews used the blood of their victims in their Passover rites. As Magda Teter has shown, these charges became most virulent after the spread of printing. But they (and others like them) infected medieval populations as well, leading to the trials, executions, and massacres of Jews in various locales in England, France, Spain, and Germany. Given license by these pernicious ideas, English King Henry III (r.1216–1272; see Genealogy 7.2) imposed unusually harsh taxes on the Jews in the 1240s and 1250s. Around the same time, some local municipal governments in England expelled the Jews from their cities. By the end of Henry’s reign, the Jews in his realm were impoverished and their numbers depleted. There were perhaps 3,000 of them left when King Edward I (r.1272– 1307) drew up the Statute of the Jewry in 1275, stipulating that “from henceforth no Jew shall lend anything at usury, either on land or rent, or anything else.”3 The Church considered usury (lending money at interest) to be a sin and prohibited Christians from engaging in it (although many Christians found savvy ways to practice it anyway.) In general, historians have accepted the idea that the English Jews were indeed mainly moneylenders, explaining that the profession was not due to any unusual venality but because usury was the only occupation left open to them. Recently, however, Julie L. Mell has argued that Jews were called usurers in order to vilify them, not to describe their economic role. Her study suggests that, at least in England, where the documentation is quite good, very few Jews were ever wealthy enough to be professional moneylenders. Certainly by 1290,

See Genealogy 6.1 on p. 216

Henry III (1216–1272) Edward I (1272–1307) Edward II = Isabella of France (1307–1327) See Genealogy 8.1 on p. 306 Genealogy 7.2 Henry III and His Progeny

3 Statute of the Jewry, in A Short Medieval Reader, pp. 190–91 and in Reading the Middle Ages, pp. 424–26.

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Plate 7.4 Expelling the Jews (14th cent.). The expulsion of the Jews from England as well as from Aquitaine, England’s possession in southern France, is described on a page of a fourteenth-century manuscript known as the Rochester Chronicle. The detail here is on the bottom margin, where a man holding a club is beating three others with impunity. Two of the victims throw up their hands to defend themselves from the blows. They are Jews, an identity made clear by the white badge they wear; it is in the form of the tablets of the Law of Moses. The man who is hitting them wears no such marker: he must be Christian. The Chronicle was written by Edmund of Haddenham, a monk at Rochester, who based it on an earlier chronicle and who was perhaps also its scribe and illustrator.

when Edward expelled the Jews from England, almost none had any money to speak of. (See Plate 7.4.) The fate of the Jews in France was similar. (See Genealogy 7.3.) At Blois in 1171 they were accused of killing a young boy and, although no body was found, thirty-two of the forty adult Jews living in the city were executed. Blois was close to the royal domain, and in 1182 King Philip II Augustus took the next logical step. He expelled the Jews from the Ile-de-France. (They were allowed to return, minus their property, in 1198.) Philip’s grandson King Louis IX (r.1226–1270) reportedly could not bear to look at Jews and worried that their “poison” might infect his kingdom. In 1242, he presided over the burning of two dozen cartloads of the ancient rabbinic Bible commentaries known as the Talmud. Actively promoting the conversion and baptism of Jews, Louis offered converts pensions, new names, and an end to special restrictions. He was later canonized as Saint Louis. His grandson, Philip IV the Fair (r.1285–1314), gave up on conversion and expelled the Jews from France (not just the Ile-de-France) altogether in 1306. By contrast with England, the French Jewish population was large. As a result of the 1306 decree, perhaps 125,000 French Jews – men, women, and children – became refugees in the Holy Roman Empire, Spain, and Italy. Most of the few who were later allowed to return to France were wiped out in popular uprisings in the early 1320s.

Lepers and Beggars One such massacre started in 1321 with an attack on lepers in the south of France. They were said to be plotting to poison the kingdom’s wells, fountains, and rivers. Seized by local vigilantes or hauled in by local officials, the lepers were tortured, made to confess,

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Agnes-Anna = (1) Alexius II Comnenus = (2) Andronicus I Comnenus

Marie = Henry count of Champagne

Adelicia = Theobald count of Blois

Louis VIII (1223 –1226 ) = Blanche of Castile

Alice = William count of Ponthieu

Philip Hurepel count of Clermont

Philip II Augustus (1180 –1223 )

Peter Karlotus bishop of Noyon

Louis IX (Saint Louis) (1226 –1270 ) = Margaret of Provence Philip III king of France (1270–1285)

Charles of Valois (d.1325)

Philip IV the Fair (1285–1314)

Louis X (1314–1316)

John I (1316)

Philip V (1316–1322)

Charles IV (1322–1328)

(daughters)

(daughters)

Isabella = Edward II king of England (1307–1327)

Edward III king of England (1327–1377)

Philip VI king of France (1328–1350)

John II king of France (1350–1364)

and burned. Soon Jews and Muslims were associated with their nefarious plans. Historians used to consider this incident typical, emphasizing the leper’s status as an outcast. They highlighted the medieval association of sin with leprosy – a skin disease caused by a bacterium and often leading to disfigurement. Other scholars spoke of the fear of contagion that lepers inspired. Thus, they explained, lepers carried clappers to warn others to flee, and leprosaries (hospitals for lepers) were located outside of town walls to quarantine their disease. But Elma Brenner and other historians have reconsidered the place of the leper in medieval society. While the persecution of 1321 was a fact, so was the reign of King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem (r.1174–1185), who developed leprosy as a child and yet remained on the throne until his death at the age of twenty-three. Fears of contagion grew in the early thirteenth century, but (these historians argue) the lepers’ clapper, far from scaring people away, called charitable donors to approach and offer alms. Leprosaries were located near

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town gates in order to attract the charity of pilgrims and other travelers. Saint Francis ministered to lepers and kissed them on their hands and mouths. Both reviled and beloved, lepers held a particularly ambivalent place in medieval society. On that point, they were similar to beggars. Certainly, the mendicants like the Franciscans and Dominicans, who went about begging, were understood to be exercising the highest vocation. And even involuntary beggars were thought (and expected) to pray for the souls of those who gave them alms. Nevertheless, the sheer and unprecedented number of idle beggars in the towns led to calls for their expulsion.

Heretics No group suffered social purging more than heretics. Beginning in the thirteenth century, Church inquisitors, aided by secular authorities, were zealous in finding and eradicating heretics. The Inquisition was a continuation (and expansion) of the Albigensian Crusade by other means. Working in the south of France, the mid-Rhineland, and Italy, inquisitors began their scrutiny in each district by giving a sermon and calling upon heretics to confess. Then they granted a grace period for heretics to come forward. Finally, they called suspected heretics and witnesses to inquests, where they were interrogated: Asked if she had seen Guillaume [Austatz, accused of being a heretic] take communion [at Mass] or doing the other things which good and faithful Christians are accustomed to do, [one of Guillaume’s neighbors] responded that for the past twelve years she had lived in the village of Ornolac and she had never seen Guillaume take communion.4 This was pretty damning testimony, and others said worse. Guillaume was arrested, questioned, and confessed to his “crimes.” We do not know whether he was punished or allowed to return home. As in the case of Guillaume, imprisonment, along with both physical and mental torture, was used to extract a confession. Then penalties were assigned. Bernard Gui, an inquisitor in Languedoc from 1308 to 1323, gave out 633 punishments. Nearly half involved further imprisonment, a few required penitential pilgrimages, and forty-one people (6.5 per cent of those punished by Bernard) were burned alive. Many former heretics were forced to wear crosses sewn to their clothing, rather like Jews, but shamed by a different marker.

Sexualities Only since the 1970s have historians begun to consider variant sexualities as a persecuted category in the Middle Ages. Sexual intercourse except that between a husband and wife was considered sinful, and, even in marriage, it was hedged about with many prohibitions. 4 Jacques Fournier, Episcopal Register, in A Short Medieval Reader, pp. 204–10 and in Reading the Middle Ages, pp. 418–24.

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Deviance was condemned already in the early Church and Roman imperial legislation. Various laws of Justinian railed against what he delicately called “the crime against nature,” warning that it stirred up God’s wrath not just against the perpetrators but also the community at large – in the form of floods, plagues, and famines. Churchmen such as Burchard of Worms (see Chapter 4) prescribed penances for “sexual sins.” He had in mind not only “fornication as sodomites do,” as might be expected, but also marital sex on a Sunday. During the Gregorian reform (see Chapter 5), priests were strictly barred from marrying, and their chastity was touted as the foundation of their power and virtue. Priestly “sexuality” was unthinkable; lay sexuality other than for the narrow purpose of procreation within the confines of marriage was condemned. That was the Church’s official view, and many municipal and royal governments parroted it. But it was not the only view. Plenty of medieval people celebrated and enjoyed a variety of sexual practices. Medieval troubadours sang of the kisses they stole from their ladies; Lancelot was frankly in love with the wife of King Arthur, and his and Guinevere’s joyful love-making was the delight of the courtly audiences that heard about it in oral performances or read about it in books. The troubadour Tribolet played with pronouns, making the “one he loves” masculine rather than feminine. Saint Marina reportedly entered a monastery and lived his entire life as a monk. Only when he died and was prepared for burial was he discovered to have the “body of a woman.” Working miracles from the grave, he was declared a saint – a female saint. There was no escaping one’s birth sex.5 Perhaps many people who crossed sexual boundaries escaped punishment. Although the Church solemnly condemned clerical sexual activity of any sort, Dyan Elliott has recently called attention to many instances when priests, bishops, and other churchmen sexually abused the boys in their care yet were protected by a clerical cloak of secrecy. But we glimpse mainly those who paid grievously for their acts. From the same inquisitorial proceedings at which Guillaume Austatz was accused of heresy comes the record of Arnaud of Verniolle, accused of both heresy and sodomy. Several penitent witnesses reported their sexual encounters with him, some forced, others apparently voluntary. Arnoud claimed (they reported) that he “could not stay with either a man or a woman without semen flowing out” and that he believed “it was less sinful to commit sodomy than to know a woman carnally.” The witnesses were young men, generally students. Their testimony suggests the existence of a gay university subculture in which Arnaud took part. The inquisitors’ punishment was fierce: before, during, and after the testimony against Arnoud he was tortured and held in a tower. Then, pronouncing his sentence, the inquisitors had him “placed in iron chains in the strictest prison, to be fed a diet of bread and water for life.”6 5 Jacobus de Voragine, “The Life of Saint Marina, Virgin,” in The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, trans. William Granger Ryan, 2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 1: 324–25. 6 “Against Arnoud of Verniolle, Son of William of Verniolle of Le Mercadal Parish of Pamiers, Concerning the Crime of Heresy and Sodomy,” trans. Michael Goodich, in Michael Goodich, Other Middle Ages: Witnesses at the Margins of Medieval Society (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998), pp. 122–23, 143.

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Bergen

Norway Scotland

Sweden

No r th Se a Denmark

Ireland

Gdansk

England Wales A t l an t i c O cean

Vis

tula

Oxford

Holy

Elb

e

Poland

Bohemia Roman France

Empire

Still more painful was the punishment of Rolandina Roncaglia by the magistrates of Venice. Born with male genitals, she nevertheless passed for years as a woman and practiced prostitution with men. The judges refused to accept her gender change and sentenced her to be burned to death as a man, Rolandino, for “sodomitic sin.”7

Strengthened Monarchs and Their Adaptations

Austria

To be sure, secular governments, whether at Venice or in England or France, worried about morals. But they were even more keen Bosnia to tap wealth, control people, and exercise Zaragoza Portugal power. Expelling the Jews meant confiscating their property and calling in their loans while Kingdom of Naples polishing an image of zealous religiosity. (Anjou) Burning lepers was one way to gain access to M e d ite r ran e an Granada the assets of leprosaria and claim new forms of Se a Ceuta (Nasrids) hegemony. Imprisonment and burning hereBougie tics and sodomites put their property into the hands of secular authorities. Marinids ‘Abd al-Waddids Hafsids But even as kings and other great lords manipulated the institutions and rhetoric of piety and purity for political ends, they also 0 400 800 km learned how to adapt to, mollify, and use – 0 500 mi rather than stamp out – new and up-and-coming groups. As their power increased, they came to Map 7.5 Western Europe, c.1300 welcome the broad-based support that representative institutions afforded them. All across Europe, from Spain to Poland, from England to Hungary, rulers summoned parliaments. (See Map 7.5.) Growing out of ad hoc advisory sessions that kings and other rulers held with the most powerful people in their realms, parliaments were institutionalized as solemn formal assemblies in the thirteenth century. They afforded key moments in which rulers celebrated their power and the “orders” – clergy, nobles, and commons – exercised their right to assent (rarely to dissent). Eventually parliaments became organs through which groups not ordinarily at court could articulate their interests. Hungary

tia

oa Cr

7 Court Record of Rolandina Roncaglia, in A Short Medieval Reader, pp. 211–12.

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The orders (or “estates”) were based on the traditional division of society into those who pray, those who fight, and those who work. Unlike modern classes, defined largely by social and economic status, medieval orders cut across such boundaries. The clerics, for example, included humble parish priests as well as archbishops; the commons included wealthy merchants as well as impoverished peasants. That, at least, was the theory. In practice, rulers did not so much command representatives of the orders to come to court as they summoned the most powerful members of their realm, whether clerics, nobles, or important townsmen. Above all they wanted support for their policies and tax demands.

The Spanish Cortes The cortes of the Spanish kingdoms were among the earliest representative assemblies. As the reconquista pushed southward across the Iberian Peninsula, victorious kings encouraged Christians from the north to settle in freshly conquered regions, and sometimes, when the opportunity was alluring (as it was in the case of conquered Córdoba), they happily flooded in. Fledgling villages soon burgeoned into major commercial centers. Like the cities of Italy, Spanish towns dominated the countryside. Their leaders – called caballeros villanos, or “city horsemen,” because they were rich enough to fight on horseback – monopolized municipal offices. Thus in 1258, when Alfonso X (r.1252–1284), king of Castile and León, called for a meeting of the cortes at Valladolid, he convened the counsel with “the archbishops and with the bishops and the magnates of Castile and León and with the good men of the towns.”8 In fact, the representatives of the towns were in the majority. Alfonso found it useful to call meetings of the cortes regularly to consent to new laws and taxes.

Local Solutions in the Holy Roman Empire In 1356 the so-called Golden Bull freed imperial rule from the papacy but at the same time made it dependent on the German princes. The princes had always participated in ratifying new kings and emperors; now seven of them were given the role and title of electors. When a new emperor was to be chosen, each prince knew in which order his vote would be called, and a majority of votes was needed for election. (See Plate 7.5.) After the promulgation of the Golden Bull, the royal and imperial level of administration of the Holy Roman Empire was less important than the local. Yet every local ruler had to deal with the same two classes on the rise: the townsmen (as in Castile and elsewhere) and a group particularly important in Germany, the ministerials. The ministerials were legally serfs whose services – collecting taxes, administering justice, and fighting wars – were so honorable as to accord them both high status and wealth. By 1300 they had become “nobles” in every way but one: they needed their lord’s permission to marry. Apart from this indignity (which itself was not always imposed), the ministerials, like other 8 Alfonso X, Cortes of Valladolid, in A Short Medieval Reader, pp. 184–88 and in Reading the Middle Ages, pp. 427–31.

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Plate 7.5 The Golden Bull (1356). Called a “bull” because of its golden seal (bulla), this document was in effect the eighty-six-page constitution of the Holy Roman Empire. The product of exhaustive negotiations between Emperor Charles IV and the Empire’s small but powerful elites, it established elaborate rules – including the schedule, ceremonies, and officers – for the elections of the emperor. This plate shows the last page of the bull’s first chapter and (on your right) the beginning of chapter two (“Concerning the election of a king of the Romans”).

nobles, profited from German colonization in the Baltic region to become enormously wealthy landowners. Some held castles, and many controlled towns. They became counterweights to the territorial princes who, in the wake of the downfall of the Staufen, had expected to rule unopposed. In Lower Bavaria in 1311, for example, when the local duke was strapped for money, the nobles (by now merged with the ministerials), in tandem with the clergy and the townsmen, granted him his tax but demanded in return recognition of their collective rights. The privilege granted by the duke was a sort of Bavarian Magna Carta. By the middle of the fourteenth century, princes throughout the Holy Roman Empire found themselves negotiating periodically with various noble and urban leagues.

the englISh parlIament In England, the consultative role of the barons at court had been formalized by the guarantees of Magna Carta. When Henry III (r.1216–1272) was crowned at the age of nine, a council consisting of a few barons, professional administrators, and a papal legate governed in his name. Although not quite “rule by Parliament,” this council set a precedent for baronial participation in government. Once grown up and firmly in the royal saddle, Henry not only burdened the Jews with exceptionally heavy taxes (see above, p. 269) but also so alienated barons and commoners alike by his wars, debts, favoritism, and lax attitude toward reform that the barons threatened rebellion. At Oxford in 1258, they forced Henry to dismiss his foreign advisors (he had favored Frenchmen, the Lusignans). Henceforth,

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he was to rule with the advice of a Council of Fifteen, chosen jointly by the barons and the king, and to limit the terms of his chief officers. Yet even this government was riven by strife, and civil war erupted in 1264. At the battle of Lewes in the same year, the leader of the baronial opposition, Simon de Montfort (c.1208–1265), routed the king’s forces, captured the king, and became England’s de facto ruler. By Simon’s time the distribution of wealth and power in England had changed from the days of Magna Carta. Well-to-do merchants in the cities could potentially buy out most knights and even some barons many times over. Meanwhile, in the rural areas, the “knights of the shire,” as well as some landholders below them, were rising in wealth and standing. These ancestors of the English gentry were politically active: the knights of the shire attended local courts and served as coroners, sheriffs, and “justices of the peace,” a new office that gradually replaced the sheriff. The importance of the knights of the shire was clear to Simon de Montfort, who called a parliament in 1264 that included them; when he summoned another parliament in 1265, he added, for the first time ever, representatives of the towns – the “commons.” Even though Simon’s brief rule ended that very year and Henry’s son Edward I (r.1272–1307) became a rallying point for royalists, the idea of representative government in England had emerged, born of the interplay between royal initiatives and baronial revolts. Under Edward, parliaments met fairly regularly, a by-product of the king’s urgent need to finance his wars against France, Wales, and Scotland.

French Monarchs and the “Estates” French King Louis IX was a born reformer. He approached his kingdom as he did himself: with zealous discipline. As an individual, he was (by all accounts) pious, dignified, and courageous. He attended church each day, diluted his wine with water, and cared for the poor and sick. Twice Louis went on crusade, dying on the second expedition. Generalized and applied to the kingdom as a whole, Louis’s discipline meant offering due justice to all, and – given the notions of justice at the time – that included persecuting Jews and heretics. As the upholder of right in his realm, Louis pronounced judgment on some disputes himself, most famously under an oak tree in the Vincennes Forest, near his palace. This personal touch polished Louis’s image, but his wide-ranging administrative reforms were more important for his rule. Most cases that came before the king were not, in fact, heard by him personally but rather by professional judges in the Parlement, a newly specialized branch of the royal court (and therefore nothing like the English “Parliament,” which was a representative institution). There were discordant political voices in France, but they were largely muted and unrecognized. At the royal court, no regular institution spoke for the different orders. This began to change only under Louis’s grandson, Philip IV the Fair (r.1285–1314). When Philip challenged the reigning pope, Boniface VIII (1294–1303), over rights and jurisdictions (see below for the issues), he felt the need to explain, justify, and propagandize his position. Summoning representatives of the French estates – clergy, nobles, and townspeople – to Paris in 1302, Philip presented his case in a successful bid for support. In 1308

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he called another representative assembly, this time at Tours, to ratify his actions against the Knights Templar, who had become very wealthy. He had accused the Templars of heresy, arrested their members, and confiscated their wealth. Now he wanted the estates to applaud him, and he was not disappointed. Such assemblies, ancestors of the French Estates General, were convened sporadically until the Revolution of 1789 overturned the monarchy. Yet representative institutions were never fully or regularly integrated into the pre-revolutionary French body politic.

Map 7.6 (facing page) East Central Europe, c.1300

New Formations in East Central Europe Like a kaleidoscope – the shards shuffling before falling into place – East Central Europe was shaken by the Mongol invasions and then stabilized in a new pattern. (See Map 7.6.) In Hungary, King Béla IV (r.1235–1270) complained that the invaders had destroyed his kingdom: “most of the kingdom of Hungary has been reduced to a desert by the scourge of the Tatars [i.e. the Mongols],” he wrote, begging the pope for help.9 But the greatest danger to his power came not from the outside but rather from the Hungarian nobles, who began to build castles for themselves – in a move reminiscent of tenth-century French castellans. Eventually they elected an Angevin – Charles Robert, better known as Carobert (r.1308–1342) – to be their king. Under Carobert, Hungary was very large, but the region controlled by the king was quite small. Bulgaria and Poland experienced similar fragmentation in the wake of the Mongols. At the end of the twelfth century, Bulgaria had revolted against Byzantine rule and established the Second Bulgarian Empire. Its ruler, no longer looking back to the khans, took the title tsar, Slavic for “emperor.” He wanted his state to rival the Byzantines. But the Mongol invasions hit Bulgaria hard, and soon its neighbors (Byzantium included) were gnawing away at its borders. Meanwhile, its nobles – the boyars – began to carve out independent regional enclaves for themselves. While the tsar took back much territory in the course of the early fourteenth century, feuding within the ruling family made a unified state impossible. Bulgaria was ripe for Ottoman conquest in the second half of the fourteenth century. (See Map 8.2 on p. 301.) In Poland, as one commentator put it, “as soon as the pagans [the Mongols] entered, ... this land was dominated by knights, each of whom seized whatever pleased him from the duke’s inheritances.”10 The author was abbot of a monastery in Silesia, which in his day – the mid-thirteenth century – was ruled by one branch of the Piast ducal dynasty, while different Piast heirs held sway in other Polish territories. The abbot looked back with nostalgia to the days of Duke Henry II, when one man ruled over all. In fact, a centralized Poland was gradually reconstructed. The Church favored kingship, and at the end of the thirteenth century an archbishop crowned Duke Przemysł II king. The title stuck, 9 Béla IV, Letter to Pope Innocent IV, in A Short Medieval Reader, pp. 181–83 and in Reading the Middle Ages, pp. 387–90. 10 The Henryków Book, in Reading the Middle Ages, pp. 402–4.

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and Casimir III the Great (r.1333–1370) was able to declare his program to be “one prince, one law, one coinage.” He worked tirelessly to turn the ideal into reality and succeeded fairly well except on the last point, for Poland’s coinage continued to depend on the gold and silver powerhouse of well-endowed Hungary. But Hungary, in turn, came to depend on Polish salt. Avoiding the threats on his western flank from Bohemia, Casimir joined expeditions to conquer and convert the Lithuanians. Lithuania was by now nearly alone in resisting the pressure of Christian missionaries and warriors. Duke Gediminas (r.c.1315/1316–1341) flirted with Christian missionaries to build churches representing both the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian forms of worship, and he encouraged merchants from both regions to trade in his duchy. Declaring war against the Teutonic Knights, he took Riga and pressed yet farther eastward and southward. By the time of his death, Lithuania was the major player in Eastern Europe. Under the heirs of Gediminas (known as the Jagiellon dynasty), Lithuania continued its relentless expansion into Russia. After Jogaila (r.1377–1434) married the heiress of Poland, he converted to the Roman Catholic form of Christianity. Taking the Polish regal name Władysław II, he united Poland and Lithuania under one ruler, creating a large and longlasting state in East Central Europe. On the other, western edge of East Central Europe, Bohemia, too, became a powerhouse. Taking advantage of the weak position of the German emperors, Bohemia’s rulers now styled themselves “king.” Ottokar II (r.1253–1278) and his son Vaclav II (r.1283–1305) welcomed settlers from Germany and Flanders and took advantage of newly discovered silver mines to consolidate their rule. Bohemia’s Charles IV (r.1347–1378) even became Holy Roman Emperor. At the same time, however, Czech nobles, who had initially worked as retainers for the dukes and depended on their largesse, now became independent lords who could bequeath both castles and estates to their children. Despite their many differences, the polities of East Central Europe c.1300 were all starting to resemble Western European states in a variety of ways. They were beginning to rely on written laws and administrative documents, and their nobles were becoming landlords and castellans. Their economies were increasingly urban and market-oriented, their constitutions were defined by charters reminiscent of Magna Carta, and their kings generally ruled with the help of representative institutions of one sort or another. All – except for Lithuania until after Gediminas’s death – were officially Christian, and even Lithuania under Gediminas supported Christian institutions such as monasteries, churches, and friaries. Universities, the symbolic centers of Western European culture, were transplanted eastward in quick succession: one was founded at Prague in 1348, another at Krakow in 1364, and a third at Vienna in 1365.

The Western Church: Militant, Humiliated, and Revamped During the years around 1300, French King Philip the Fair and Pope Boniface VIII clashed. On the surface, their dispute seemed yet one more episode in the ongoing struggle between

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medieval popes and rulers for power and authority. But by 1300, the tables had turned: the kings had more power than the popes, and the confrontation between Boniface and Philip was one sign of the dawning new principle of national sovereignty.

the road to avIgnon The issue that first set Philip and Boniface at loggerheads involved the English king Edward I as well: taxation of the clergy. Eager to finance new wars, chiefly against each other, both monarchs needed money. When the kings paid for their wars by taxing the clergy as if they were going on crusade, Boniface reacted, threatening to excommunicate both clergymen who paid taxes to the king and kings who demanded such taxes. Reacting swiftly, the kings soon forced Boniface to back down. But in 1301, Philip precipitated another crisis when he tested his jurisdiction in southern France by arresting a bishop there on a charge of treason. Boniface responded to the arrest by issuing the bull Unam sanctam (1302), which declared that “it is altogether necessary to salvation for every human being to be subject to the Roman Pontiff.”11 As we have seen (above, pp. 277–79), Philip adroitly rallied public opinion in his favor by calling the estates of his kingdom together. He also sent his agents to invade Boniface’s palace at Anagni (southeast of Rome). He meant for them to capture the pope and bring him to France so that he could try him for heresy and other trumped-up charges. Although the citizens of Anagni drove the agents out of town, Philip’s power could not be denied. A month later, Boniface died, and the next two popes quickly pardoned Philip and his men. The papacy was never quite the same thereafter. In 1309, forced from Rome by civil strife, the popes settled at Avignon, a Provençal city administered by the Angevins of Naples but very much under the influence of the French crown. They remained there until 1377. In some ways, papal authority grew during this time: the Avignon papacy established a sober and efficient organization that took in regular revenues and gave the papacy more say than ever before in the appointment of churchmen and the distribution of Church benefices and revenues. It became the unchallenged judge of sainthood, and the Dominicans and Franciscans became its foot soldiers in the evangelization of the world and the purification of Christendom. At the same time, however, the Avignon papacy was mocked and vilified by contemporaries. Francis Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca, 1304–1374), one of the great literary figures of the day, called the Avignon papacy the “Babylonian Captivity,” referring to 2 Kings 25:11, when the ancient Hebrews were exiled and held captive in Babylonia. Pliant and accommodating to the rulers of Europe, especially the kings of France, the popes were slowly abandoning the idea of leading all of Christendom and were coming to recognize the right of secular states to regulate their internal affairs.

Plate 7.6 Chalice (c.1300). This gilded silver chalice, one of a pair made in the Rhineland, graphically shows the connection between the wine of the Eucharist and Christ’s blood. On a large knob just below the cup, the goldsmith has placed medallions stamped with Christ’s head alternating with rosettes that represent the five wounds of Christ. Each rosette sprouts a vine tendril that spreads its leaves on the base of the chalice, reminding communicants of the grapes that were pressed into the wine.

11 Boniface VIII, Unam sanctam, in A Short Medieval Reader, pp. 195–96 and in Reading the Middle Ages, pp. 438–39.

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Lay Religiosity Secular states, yes; but their populations took religion very seriously. With the doctrine of transubstantiation (see p. 318), Christianity became more securely than ever a religion of the body: the body of the wafer of the Mass, the body of the communicant who ate it, and equally the body of the believers who celebrated together in the feast of Corpus Christi (the Body of Christ). Eucharistic piety was already widespread in the most urbanized regions of Europe when Juliana of Mont Cornillon (1193–1258), prioress of a convent in the Low Countries, announced that Christ himself wanted a special day set aside to celebrate his Body and Blood. Taken up by the papacy and promulgated as a universal feast, the feast of Corpus Christi was adopted throughout Western Europe. Cities created new processions for the day. Fraternities dedicated themselves to the Body of Christ, holding their meetings on the feast day and focusing their regular charity on bringing the viaticum (or final Eucharist) to the dying. Dramas were elaborated on the theme. Artists decorated the chalices used in the Mass with symbols that made the connection between the wine and the very blood that Christ had shed on the cross. (See Plate 7.6 on p. 281.) Along with new devotion to the flesh of Christ came more fervent devotion to his mother. Books of Hours – small prayer books aimed especially at laywomen – almost always included all the prayers for the Hours of the Virgin. These were eight short devotional texts to be repeated by laymen and -women in their own homes at the eight canonical times of the day. Often illustrated, as the one in Plate 7.7, they attest to the important place of Mary in the lives of the devout. The fact that worship could be a private matter, practiced at home as well as in a church, signaled wider changes in pious beliefs and practices. The doctrine of Purgatory, declared dogma in 1274, held that Masses and prayers said by the living could shorten the purgative torments that had to be suffered by the souls of the dead. Soon families were endowing special chapels for themselves, hallowed spaces for offering private Masses on behalf of their own members. High churchmen and wealthy laymen and -women insisted that they and members of their family be buried within the walls of the church rather than outside of it, reminding the living – via their effigies – to pray for them.

Plate 7.7 (facing page) Book of Hours (c.1260–1270). The opening page of this Book of Hours, made for a laywoman by an English workshop, features an illuminated initial D (the first letter of the word Domine, Lord). Within the letter, the Virgin sits on a throne flanked by two angels who wave smoking censers. The Child on her lap gestures his blessing. Beneath, in a space barely penetrated by Mary’s shoe, is the image of a kneeling woman, the Book of Hours in her hands. She serves as a kind of mirror for the devout user of the book, who – as evidenced by the wellthumbed decoration at the bottom of the page – contemplated the image often. Although the overall theme is humble piety before the divine majesty, diverting creatures disport across the top of the frame, offering comic relief.

Scholasticism Widespread lay religiosity went hand in hand with increasing literacy. In some rural areas, schools for children were attached to monasteries or established in villages. In the south of France, where the Church still feared heresy, children were taught to read in order to inculcate the tenets of the faith. In the cities, most merchants and artisans had some functional literacy: they had to read and write to keep accounts, and, increasingly, they owned religious books for their private devotions. For that, Books of Hours were most fashionable in France, while Psalters were favored in England. Friars populated the institutions of higher learning. Franciscans and Dominicans now established convents and churches within cities; their members attended the universities as students, and many went on to become masters. Friars like the Dominican Thomas Aquinas (c.1225–1274) and

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the Franciscan Bonaventure (c.1217–1274) were among the most outstanding of the scholastics, mastering the use of logic to summarize and reconcile all knowledge, both divine and human. Thomas Aquinas’s summae (sing. summa) were empires of the mind, written to harmonize all that was known through faith and reason. Using the technique of juxtaposing contrary positions, as Abelard had done in his Sic et Non and Peter Lombard in his Sentences (see Chapter 5), Thomas carefully explained away or reconciled contradictions, using Aristotelian logic as his tool for analysis and exposition. Thomas intended to demonstrate the harmony of religious belief and human understanding even though (in his view) faith ultimately surpassed reason in knowing higher truths. In his massive Summa Theologiae, written as a sort of textbook for budding theologians, he summed up the natures of man and God and the relations between them. His theme was salvation: how human beings had been offered a way back to God even though they were sinful heirs of Adam and Eve. The way entailed belief, virtue, and – crucially – the human capacity to love. People loved many things, all of which they considered good. That was right, according to Thomas, because “the proper object of love is the good.”12 But often people chose as the good the wrong things – impermanent things or even bad things. Nevertheless, they could also learn to love the right good, the highest good, God. And as they did so, they returned to God. In the summae of Saint Bonaventure, for whom Augustine was more important than Aristotle, the human mind became the recipient of God’s beneficent illumination. For Bonaventure, minister general of the Franciscan order, spirituality was the font of theology. Yet it was the spiritual Franciscan Peter Olivi (1248–1298) who first defined the very practical word “capital”: wealth with the potential to generate more wealth. With this concept, he hoped to reassure merchants when they consulted churchmen in the confessional. Olivi’s desire to have an impact on laypeople was shared by all the scholastics, whose teachings were not just for other scholars. They were meant to be used by parish priests in their sermons and by friars as they preached to townspeople. These popularizers turned the Latin of the universities into the vernacular of the streets. The Dominican Meister Eckhart (d.1327/1328) is one example. A mystic who saw union with God as the goal of human life, he enriched the German language with new words for the abstract ideas of the schools. But the mental empires created by the scholastics were fragile, and soon their weaknesses became clear. The Franciscan John Duns Scotus (1265/1266–1308) cast doubt on the possibilities of human reason. Like Bonaventure, he argued that even the most erudite could know truth only by divine illumination. But unlike Bonaventure, he argued that this illumination came not as a matter of course but only when God chose to intervene. Duns Scotus’s God was willful, not reasonable, and He alone determined whether human reason could soar to divine knowledge. Further unraveling the knot tying reason and faith together was William of Ockham (d.1347/1350), another Franciscan who played down the reach of reason altogether. It was apt only for things human and worldly. His theories were of a piece with a new movement 12 Thomas Aquinas, On Love, in A Short Medieval Reader, pp. 197–98 and in Reading the Middle Ages, pp. 439–41.

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among fourteenth-century scholars to direct their attention to human institutions such as coinage and government and to abstractions such as space, time, and motion.

Harmony and Dissonance in Writing, Music, and Art On the whole, writers, musicians, architects, and artists, like scholastics, presented complicated ideas and feelings in harmony. Writers explored the relations between this world and the next; musicians found ways to bridge sacred and secular genres of music; artists used fleshy, natural forms to evoke the divine.

Vernacular Literature In the hands of Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), vernacular poetry expressed the order of the scholastic universe, the ecstatic union of the mystical quest, and the erotic and emotional life of the troubadour. His Commedia – later known as the Divine Comedy – presents Dante (writing in the first person) as a traveler who passes through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. Even so, the poem is anchored in the world: when Dante sees souls in Hell, they are identifiable people with their own personal stories of woe. Thus, poor Francesca da Rimini explains why she must suffer eternal torment: she and Paolo (her husband’s brother) fell in love while reading the story of Lancelot: When we read how the desired smile was kissed by such a lover, this one, who never shall be parted from me, kissed my mouth all trembling.13 It was not love but illicit love that put the two lovers in Hell. The right sort of love would have put them in Heaven. Indeed, Dante’s poem was a parable about the soul seeking and finding God in love’s blinding light. The harmony of heaven and earth was equally sought, if differently expressed, in other writings of the period. In the anonymous prose Quest of the Holy Grail (c.1225), the adventures of the knights of King Arthur’s Round Table were turned into a fable to teach the doctrine of transubstantiation and the wonder of the vision of God. In The Romance of the Rose, begun by one author (Guillaume de Lorris, a poet in the romantic tradition) and finished by another ( Jean de Meun, a poet in the scholastic tradition), a lover seeks the rose, his true love, but is continually thwarted by personifications of shame, reason, abstinence, and so on. They present him with arguments for and against love. In the end, erotic love is embraced in the divine scheme – and the lover plucks the rose. 13 Dante, Inferno, in A Short Medieval Reader, pp. 199–204 and in Reading the Middle Ages, pp. 441–43.

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the motet

Plate 7.8 The Motet Le premier jor de mai (c.1280). The motet begins in the middle of the page (the decorated initial is the L of Le), and two voices are shown here. While the voice on the left sings “On the first day of May...” the one on the right, which begins on exactly the same note, sings something quite different: “One morning I got up ... I found a girl sitting in an orchard.” As it turns out, the girl rejects her would-be lover. The third voice (whose music and words begin on the next page), also sings at the same time as the other two. That voice starts on a lower note with the words, “I can no longer endure without you ...” Accompanying all three voices is the lowest one, which intones simply the word Justus (meaning “the just man”), the first word of an antiphon from Church liturgy that continues “the just man will sprout like the lily and flower in eternity.” Figure 7.1 Single Notes and Values of Franconian Notation

Already by the tenth century, the traditional plain chant of the monasteries had been joined by a chant of many voices: polyphony. Initially voice met voice in improvised harmony, but in the twelfth century polyphony was increasingly composed as well. In the thirteenth century, polyphony’s most characteristic form was the motet. Created at Paris, probably in the milieus of the university and the royal court, the motet harmonized the sacred with the worldly, the Latin language with the vernacular. Two to four voices joined together in a motet. The lowest voice, singing a chant taken from church liturgy, generally consisted of one or two words. Sometimes it was played on an instrument (such as a vielle or lute) rather than sung. The other voices had different texts and melodies, sung simultaneously. The form allowed for the mingling of religious and secular motives. Very likely motets were performed by the clerics who formed the entourages of bishops or abbots – or by university students – for their entertainment and pleasure. In the motet Le premier jor de mai, whose opening music is pictured in Plate 7.8, the top voice begins (in French): “On the first day of May I composed this cheerful quadruplum [a four-part song].” But it goes on to lament, “But I find myself disconsolate on account of love.” Complementing the motet’s complexity was the development of new schemes to indicate rhythm. The most important was created by Franco of Cologne in his Art of Measurable Song (c.1260). It used different shapes to mark the number of beats for which each note should be held. (See Figure 7.1; the music in Plate 7.8 uses a similar rhythmic system.) Allowing for great flexibility and inventiveness in composition, Franco’s invention became the basis of modern musical notation.

neW CurrentS In art Flexibility and inventiveness describe the art of Franco’s time as well. Artists had new patrons to serve: the urban elite. In the Paris of Saint Louis’s day, for example, wealthy merchants coveted illuminated law books and romances; rich students prized illustrated Bibles as essential fashion accessories; churchmen wanted beautiful service books; the royal Name and shape of note Duplex long Perfect long Imperfect long Breve Semibreve Minor + major Three minor

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Value (in beats) 6 3 2 1

Modern equivalent

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Previous pages: Plate 7.9 Giotto, Scrovegni Chapel, Padua (1304–1306). Giotto organized the Scrovegni Chapel paintings like scenes in a modern comic book, to be read from left to right, with the Last Judgment over the entryway. Like the summa theologiae of Thomas Aquinas, but in visual form, the Scrovegni Chapel joins the faith necessary for salvation with the work of human reason and emotion. Plate 7.10 Giotto, Lamentation of Christ, Scrovegni Chapel (1304– 1306). Compare this depiction of collective weeping over the body of Christ with the delicate depiction of grief over the death of the Virgin in Plate 6.6 on p. 244. In Giotto’s telling, even the angels in heaven bewail the event.

family craved lavishly illustrated Bibles, Psalters, and Books of Hours; and the nobility aspired to owning the same books as their sovereigns. The old-fashioned monastic scriptoria that had previously produced books, with scribes and artists working in the same place, gave way to specialized workshops, often staffed by laypeople. Some workshops produced the raw materials: the ink, gold leaf, or parchment; others employed scribes to copy the texts; a third kind was set up for the illuminators; and a fourth did nothing but bind the finished books. (See Material Culture: The Making of an Illuminated Manuscript on pp. 249–51.) At the same time, painters began to adopt – even on flat surfaces – the weighty, natural forms already evident in the Romanesque sculpture on Modena’s Cathedral (Plate 5.12 on p. 204). This was especially true of Italian painters, who lived in a world still permeated by ancient Roman art and models from Byzantium. When Giotto (1266/1267–1337) decorated the private chapel of the richest man in Padua, he filled the walls with frescoes narrating humanity’s redemption through Christ, culminating in the Final Judgment. (See Plate 7.9 on p. 287.) Throughout, Giotto experimented with the illusion of depth, weight, and volume, his figures expressing unparalleled emotional intensity as they reacted to events in the world-space created by painted frames. In the Lamentation of Christ (see Plate 7.10 on pp. 288–89), Mary cradles her son’s head, while Mary Magdalene holds his feet. Others stand or kneel with gestures of grief, while the angels above mirror their anguish.

An Age of Scarcity? Giotto’s Lamentation was created not long before the horrific event that historians call the Great Famine (1315–1322), one of many waves of food shortages that shook the medieval world on either side of the year 1300. The chief causes of this calamity have traditionally been sought in demographics and declining food production. But newer research, summed up in a book edited by John Drendel, points out that the Mediterranean region did not suffer the Great Famine and that everywhere human action and inaction were as much to blame for food scarcity as natural factors.

Overpopulation, Undersupply There is certainly much to be said for the demographic argument, particularly for the north of Europe. While around the year 1300 farms were producing more food than ever before, population growth meant that families had more hungry mouths to feed. In general, such growth seems to have leveled off by the mid-thirteenth century, but climate change wrought its own havoc. A mini ice age took hold in the north of Europe (though not in the south), leading to wheat shortages. In 1309, the cold weather was joined by an extremely wet growing season that ruined the harvests in southern and western Germany; the towns, into which food had to be imported, were hit especially hard, not least because they were themselves overpopulated, swollen by immigrants from the overcrowded countryside.

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Human Manipulation of Supply and Demand Yet nature and demography were not the only causes of the Great Famine. Human actions, too, were responsible for aggravating food shortages across Europe. Warfare, for example, took a major toll on economic life. As states grew in power, rulers hired soldiers – mercenaries – and depended less on knights. But these troops were paid such poor wages that they plundered the countryside even when they were not fighting. Warring armies had always disrupted farms, ruining fields as they trampled over them, but in the thirteenth century burning crops became a battle tactic, used both to devastate enemy territory and to teach the inhabitants a lesson. Towns were vulnerable in a different way. They could defend their walls against roving troops, but they could not easily stop the flow of refugees who sought safety inside. Lille’s population, for example, nearly doubled as a result of the wars between Flanders and France during the first two decades of the thirteenth century, and yet, as elsewhere, the city was obliged to impose new taxes on everyone to pay for its huge war debts. Reacting to the depredation of their lands and motivated as well by the desire for gain, landlords (like municipal officials) strove to collect more money. Everywhere, customary and other dues were deemed inadequate. In 1315 the king of France offered liberty to all his serfs, mainly to assess a new war tax on all free men. In other parts of France, lords imposed an annual money payment, and many peasants had to go into debt to pay it. Some lost their land entirely. To enforce their new taxes, great lords, both lay and ecclesiastical, installed local agents. Living near villages in fortified houses, these officials kept account books and carefully computed their profits and their costs. But great lords, rulers, and merchants did not simply keep records of agricultural production; they planned ahead and manipulated the markets. The global economy meant that Italian cities no longer fed themselves from nearby farms: they relied on imports. Florentines got their grain from Sicily, the Genoese from as far away as the Black Sea. Controlling these imports were the cities themselves, which functioned like mini-states. Great merchants worked in collusion with the political powers in place. In England, major landowners were now as much agro-businessmen as they were feudal lords. Anticipating food shortages, middlemen hoarded food stocks until prices rose steeply. Rulers were torn by their desire to make money and their duty to the common good. The kings of Aragon (in Spain) prohibited the export of wheat in times of scarcity, but they also sold special licenses to individuals, allowing them to ignore the law. City governments found themselves in a balancing act: they could sell their food reserves at below-market cost to the needy, but they could also please their merchants by doing nothing to help the poor. Peasants were not passive in the face of the new conditions. They too were involved in markets – not, of course, in the grand “Mongol exchange,” but in small-scale exchanges among local hamlets and villages. The countryside had its own sort of commerce, petty but active. The little Provençal village of Reillane, for example, with a population of 2,400, supported thirteen cloth makers. Such shopkeepers might also extend credit, on the side, to local peasants. The Mediterranean region – Italy, Spain, southern France, and Provence – boasted more diversified crops than the north: this meant that, when wheat

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harvests were poor, peasants could survive on chestnuts and millet. Or they could relocate to regions better suited to their needs. When peasants in Navarre found that they could not afford to pay their lord his dues, they moved to the Ebro valley, where they found a place in the flourishing commercial economy there. All was not bleak in the age of the Great Famine; much depended on who and where you were – and the fairness of the markets. *

*

*

*

*

The Mongol invasions brought fear, war, and dislocation to both the Christian and Islamic worlds. Eventually, however, a new global order emerged. The Ilkhanids and Khans of the Golden Horde converted to Islam; the Buddhist Mongols of China welcomed traders and European missionaries. In many ways, this was a prosperous era across all of Europe, Eurasia, and North and West Africa. In the thirteenth century, medieval Europe reached the zenith of its prosperity. Its population grew and its cities became centers of culture and wealth. Universities took wing, fostering “scholasticism,” a breakthrough in logic and systematic thought. The friars, among the most prominent of the scholastics, ministered to an attentive, prosperous, and increasingly literate laity. Empires of land could be welcoming: the Mongol khanates boasted open trade routes and embraced various religions. The Mamluk empire did so as well. The pagan ruler Gedimas of Lithuania was glad to have both Catholic and Orthodox Christian churches and churchmen. European kings gave new, representative roles to all the orders – clergy, nobility, commons – in their lands. Empires of the mind could be welcoming as well. European scholastic summae brought together vast bodies of knowledge never before reconciled. The great artistic innovations of the day demonstrated the harmonies of heaven and earth – think of the Alhambra’s mingling of Qur’anic inscriptions with the worldly purposes of a caliphal receiving hall; or of Giotto’s angelic and human mourners. Motets combined liturgical chants with songs of disappointed love. Yet empires often paper over cracks, weaknesses, and sources of internal discord. European states that were willing to deal with their many orders and estates were equally eager to suppress the voices of Jews, heretics, and many others who deviated from ever-narrowing definitions of normalcy and acceptability. Scholars soon doubted the harmony of earthly and heavenly knowledge. In the next century wars and plague would reveal vulnerabilities as yet undreamt. For practice questions about the text, maps, plates, and other features – plus suggested answers – please go to www.utphistorymatters.com There you will also find all the maps, genealogies, and figures used in the book.

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FURTHER READING Ames, Christine Caldwell. Righteous Persecution: Inquisition, Dominicans, and Christianity in the Middle Ages. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009. Brenner, Elma. “Recent Perspectives on Leprosy in Medieval Western Europe.” History Compass 8, no. 5 (2010): 388–406. Bush, Olga. Reframing the Alhambra: Architecture, Poetry, Textiles and Court Ceremonial. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 2018. Drendel, John, ed. Crisis in the Later Middle Ages: Beyond the Postan-Duby Paradigm. Turnhout: Brepols, 2015. Elliott, Dyan. The Corruptor of Boys: Sodomy, Scandal, and the Medieval Clergy. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020. Favereau, Marie. The Horde: How the Mongols Changed the World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2021. Gertsman, Elina. The Absent Image: Lacunae in Medieval Books. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2021. Heng, Geraldine. The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Jones, P.J. The Italian City-State: From Commune to Signoria. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Kamola, Stefan. Making Mongol History: Rashid al-Din and the Jami’ al-Tawarikh. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019. LaFleur, Greta, Masha Raskolnikov, and Anna Klosowska, eds. Trans Historical: Gender Plurality before the Modern. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2021. McCausland, Shane. The Mongol Century: Visual Cultures of Yuan China, 1271–1368. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2014. Mell, Julie L. The Myth of the Medieval Jewish Moneylender. 2 vols. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017–18. Moore, R.I. The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Authority and Deviance in Western Europe 950–1250. 2nd ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2007. O’Callaghan, Joseph F. The Cortes of Castile-León, 1188–1350. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989. Rubin, Miri. Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Soyer, François. Medieval Antisemitism? Leeds: Arc Humanities Press, 2019. Strayer, Joseph R. The Reign of Philip the Fair. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980. Teter, Magda. Blood Libel: On the Trail of an Antisemitic Myth. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2020. Watts, John. The Making of Polities: Europe, 1300–1500. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Zorzi, Andrea. “The Popolo.” In Italy in the Age of Renaissance, 1300–1550, edited by John M. Najemy, pp. 145–64. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Further Reading

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CHAPTER EIGHT

H I G H L I G H TS The Hundred Years’ War 1337–1453 Pits England against France. Lasting for more than one hundred years, the war transforms both realms. New military tactics and hardware – including guns and canons – are introduced.

Black Death 1346–1353 One deadly phase of the plague’s outbreak in Europe, the Black Death is part of a long-term pandemic that began in the 13th cent. and lasted until the 18th, affecting many parts of Afro-Eurasia.

Jacquerie

Mongol Empire disintegrates c.1340 In the mid-14th cent., the Ming Dynasty begins in China; Tamerlane dominates (until 1405) the regions of Iran and Iraq; the Ottomans in Anatolia begin expanding.

The ciompi (woolworkers) revolt at Siena 1355 A workers’ revolt typical of many north Italian cities; only temporarily successful.

1358 Uprising of the French peasantry against the aristocracy, who are judged to have failed their job as warriors and protectors during the Hundred Years’ War.

Wat Tyler’s Rebellion 1381 A revolt by English peasants, small shopkeepers, and clerics against new war taxes and against serfdom.

Portuguese inaugurate exploratory voyages 1450s The Portuguese explore the coast of Africa, penetrate deeply inland, and find new routes to India.

Great Western Schism 1378–1417 First (1378–1409) two rival popes, one in Avignon, the other in Rome, claim the papacy. Then (1409–1417) yet a third pope claims primacy. The Schism is healed by the Council of Constance (1414–1418).

Invention of the printing press c.1450 The invention of a press that could use moveable type goes hand in hand with the use of paper, the discovery of inks that would adhere to both paper and metal, and increased literacy.

Ottomans conquer Constantinople 1453

Wars of the Roses 1455–1487 Yorkists and the Lancastrians fight to take the English throne; Henry VII wins as the first Tudor king.

The end of the Byzantine Empire.

Ferdinand and Isabella expel the Jews from Spain 1492 In just this one year they expel the Jews, conquer Granada (the last Muslim polity in the peninsula), and dispatch Christopher Columbus to find an Atlantic passage to China.

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EIGHT

CATASTROPHE AND CREATIVITY (c.1350–c.1500)

In the fourteenth century, much of Afro-Eurasia was battered by a new plague pandemic. The “Black Death,” which took place from 1346 to 1353, is the most famous outbreak, but it should not overshadow the many lethal waves of the plague that had afflicted many regions earlier and continued long thereafter. Yet rulers and elites continued to pursue their interests as if the mortality of perhaps half of the population in affected areas hardly mattered. Despite the plague, the Ottoman Turks emerged in Anatolia in the thirteenth century, took much of the Balkans in the first half of the fifteenth century, and conquered Byzantium in 1453. The kings of France and England pursued the Hundred Years’ War, which swept much of the rest of Western Europe into its vortex. Wars not only kill soldiers but also dislocate populations and destroy economic stability, opening up new avenues for the spread of the plague. The period c.1350–c.1500 was catastrophic for many people. In spite of that – or perhaps because of it – it was also creative in many ways. The plague contributed to the end of peasant servitude in England, the Ottomans ultimately established a stable Islamic political order that hung on until 1924, fifteenth-century rulers found new bases on which to exercise greater power than ever before, and intellectuals and artists looked to antiquity to help them confront and solve the problems of their day. Seaworthy ships, manned by hopeful European adventurers and financed by rich patrons, plied the oceans east- and westwards.

CRISES AND CONSOLIDATIONS In 1281, the first Ottoman dynasty established itself on the western fringes of Anatolia, most of which was then controlled by the Mongols. Although beset by the Black Death in the mid-fourteenth century, the Ottomans pursued their dream of conquest, toppling

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13th century dispersion 14th century dispersion 15th century dispersion

North Sea England London France

Aral Sea

Tana

Constantinople

Black Sea

pian

Rome

Cas

Caffa

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M

edi

ter ra

nean Sea

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a

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0 0

Map 8.1 Dispersion of the Plague, 13th to 15th cent.

1,000 750

2,000 km 1,500 mi

Constantinople and moving into Europe, itself much weakened by the plague. Meanwhile, King Edward III, who was determined to win back English fiefs in France, began the long and debilitating Hundred Years’ War. In many parts of Europe, popular revolts and insurrections – the bitter harvest of plague, war, and economic contraction – rocked both town and countryside. In general, these upheavals resulted in the ascendency not of the lower classes but rather of new and powerful princes. Almost everywhere in the medieval world, the multiple lordships and political fragmentation of the past came to an end.

The Second Plague Pandemic (13th–18th centuries) The Mongol Empire increased the interconnectedness of the Afro-Eurasian world. As a result, the second pandemic of Yersinia pestis had a broad geographical reach. Map 8.1 suggests the general outlines of its spread. As noted in Chapter 6, the plague’s earliest victims were initially the Mongols themselves and then the inhabitants of China. Thereafter the disease followed the paths of the Mongol conquests. In the mid-1340s, it crossed the Black Sea (probably in contaminated grain shipments) and arrived in Constantinople, Alexandria, Sicily, and Genoa. Shortly thereafter, it spread throughout much of Europe. Its march was uneven: some places, such as Milan, were spared its first wave but suffered grievously about ten years later. The divergences depended on numerous factors: local climatic conditions, the health of the population, housing and sanitary conditions, and (of course) luck.

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After its largely seaborne passage, the Black Death arrived in Florence in early 1348; two months later it hit Dorset in England. Dormant during the winter, it revived the next spring to infect French ports and countryside, moving on swiftly to Germany. By 1351 it reached Moscow, where it stopped for a time, only to recur in ten- to twelve-year cycles throughout the fourteenth century. The disease continued to strike, though at longer intervals and with somewhat less deadly effects, until the eighteenth century. There are still outbreaks of plague today. The symptoms, then and now, usually include chills, fever, headaches, and painfully swollen lymph nodes known as buboes. In Plate 8.1, a medieval doctor treats the bubo of a well-dressed woman with a lancet. It is doubtful that the treatment cured her, for once an unsterilized lancet has come into contact with Yersinia pestis, it will transmit the plague, not heal it.1 Other remedies were less lethal. At Damascus, one traveler witnessed Muslims, Jews, and Christians fasting, praying, and coming together in processions to implore “the favor of God through His Books and His Prophets.”2 Rather similarly, the archbishop of York ordered special processions, masses, and prayers in his diocese. Some physicians counseled flight – to another house, to the countryside – to escape the poisonous air that they assumed gave rise to the plague. Many urban governments instituted new sanitation measures. At Pistoia, for example, legislation passed in 1348 prohibited travel in or out of the city, regulated funerals and mourning rituals to avoid crowds, and mandated various

Plate 8.1 Lancing a Bubo (2nd half of 15th cent.). Saint Sebastian Chapel, Lanslevillard, France. This fresco, which decorates an Alpine village chapel, is part of a cycle depicting the life of Saint Sebastian, an early Christian martyr who miraculously survived the arrows inflicted by his imperial executioners (though he soon succumbed to a different torment). The scene here illustrates a key moment in the story of Sebastian: a terrible plague hit Rome and Pavia in the seventh century, long after the saint’s death. “At this time there appeared to some a good angel followed by a bad angel carrying a spear. When the good angel gave the command, the bad one struck and killed, and when he struck a house, all the people in it were carried out dead.” The plague ended only when “an altar was raised in Pavia in honor of Saint Sebastian.”1 He was the victor over spears and arrows. To bring the scene to life, the painter of the fresco has depicted an entire family – even a little baby in a crib – suffering from the plague. The bad angel here is the Devil himself.

1 Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend, trans. William Granger Ryan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 1:101. 2 Ibn Battuta, Travels, in A Short Medieval Reader, ed. Barbara H. Rosenwein (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2023), p. 220 and in Reading the Middle Ages: Sources from Europe, Byzantium, and the Islamic World, 3rd ed., ed. Barbara H. Rosenwein (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018), pp. 451–52.

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laws to circumvent contaminated meat and clothing. In the next century, as the theory of “bad air” gave way to a theory of human transmission, quarantines were sometimes ordered. We know a good bit about the plague’s deadly demographics in Europe, where writers dwelled on it and cities kept useful records. On average, it wiped out 50 per cent of the population. In eastern Normandy, perhaps 70 to 80 per cent succumbed. At Bologna, 35 per cent of even the most robust men – those able to bear arms – were felled in the course of 1348. So many deaths led to acute labor shortages in both town and country. In 1351, King Edward III of England (r.1327–1377) issued the Statute of Laborers, forbidding workers to take pay higher than pre-plague wages and fining employers who offered more. Similar laws were promulgated – and flouted – elsewhere. In the countryside, landlords needed to keep their profits up even as their workforce was decimated. They were obliged to strike bargains with enterprising peasants, furnishing them, for example, with oxen and seed; or they turned their land to new uses, such as pasturage. In the cities, the guilds and other professions recruited new men, survivors of the plague. Able to marry and set up households at younger ages, these nouveaux riches helped replenish the population. Although many widows were now potentially the heads of households, deep-rooted customs tended to push them either into new marriages (in northern Europe) or (in southern Europe) into the homes of male relatives, whether brother, son, or son-in-law. The plague affected both desires and sentiments. Upward mobility in town and country meant changes in consumption patterns, as formerly impoverished groups found new wealth. They chose silk clothing over wool, beer over water. In Italy, where communal governments liked to maintain a veneer of equality among all citizens, cities passed newly toughened laws to restrict finery and restrain envy. In Florence in 1349, for example, a year after the plague first struck there, the town crier roamed the city shouting out new or renewed prohibitions: clothes could not be adorned with gold or silver; capes could not be lined with fur; the wicks of funeral candles had to be made of cotton; women could wear no more than two rings, only one of which could be set with a precious stone; and so on. As always, such sumptuary legislation affected women more than men. Death became an obsession, and newly intense interest in the macabre led to original artistic themes. Plate 8.2 shows a pen-and-ink-wash illustration of a poem of a dream vision: the poet, who is on a pilgrimage in a time of “huge mortality,” enters a church and falls asleep by the tomb effigy of a fine lady. In the picture, her body, unspoiled as if alive, lies on the top tier of a double tomb. On the lower level is her corpse, covered with lizards, worms, and maggots. The text of the poem beneath the skeleton begins, Take heed unto my figure here above and see how at one time I was fresh and gay. Now I am turned to worms’ meat and corruption, Both foul earth and stinking slime and clay.3 3 As translated by John Aberth, The Black Death: A New History of the Great Mortality in Europe, 1347–1500 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021), p. 140.

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Plate 8.2 Illustration in A Dispute between the Body and Worms (1435–1440). Double tombs such as the one drawn here were well known in the later Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period, especially in northern Europe. Known as cadaver or transi tombs (from the verb transire, to go across), they feature nearly life-sized, fully clothed effigies of the deceased in blissful repose while beneath them lie their rotting corpses. Such tombs contrast the beauty of living flesh with its decay at death, and, even when the two images are not explicitly talking to each other (as here, in the poem), their juxtaposition inevitably suggested a dispute. And who has the last word? The skeleton, it would seem, embodying the moral of Ecclesiastes 3:20, “of earth they were made, and into earth they return together.” On the other hand, the fact that the body, glowing with color, lies triumphantly atop the ravaged corpse declares the ultimate victory to be the restored body of the Resurrection.

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In the artistic and literary genre known as the Dance of Death, men and women from every class were escorted to the grave by ghastly skeletons. Blaming their own sins for the plague, penitent pilgrims, occasionally bearing whips to flagellate themselves, crowded the roads. Rumors flew, some accusing the Jews of causing the plague by poisoning the wells. The idea spread from southern France and northern Spain (where, as we have seen [p. 270], similar charges had already been leveled in the 1320s) to Switzerland, Strasbourg, and throughout Germany. At Strasbourg, more than 900 Jews were burned in 1349, right in their own cemetery.

The Rise of the Ottomans and the Fall of Byzantium The Mongol Empire fell apart around 1340. Soon the Ming dynasty took control in China. To China’s west, Tamerlane (Timur the Lame, 1336–1405), a central Asian warlord, conquered much of the rest of the Mongol Empire. His state was his personal confection and disintegrated soon after his death. By contrast, the Ottomans, initially a small tribe located on the western fringe of Mongol power, ultimately created a large, powerful, and long-lived polity. This should be surprising, not least because Anatolia, where the Ottomans first consolidated, was beset by the plague. Historian Nükhet Varlik has suggested that nomadism may have been one source of the disease. Shifting seasonally from the highlands of their summer pastures, dense with rodents, to their lowland encampments, the Ottomans traded hides, dyes, and furs to city dwellers; joined military enterprises; and hired themselves out as harvesters. During the early phases of the plague, when the Ottomans controlled Anatolia and the Balkans, the plague recurred in their Empire as it did in Europe – on average, every ten to twelve years. But after the Ottomans conquered Constantinople in 1453, it reappeared more frequently. The explanation seems to be that, as the Ottomans expanded, they requisitioned and forcibly moved food, people, and livestock, unwittingly bringing Yersinia pestis along for the ride. All that was in the future, however, when, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, Othman (d.1324/1326), after whom the Ottomans were named, began to carve out a small principality for himself in the interstices between Mongol-ruled Rum and the Byzantine Empire. As his later biographer, Ashikpashazade, wrote, Othman “feigned friendship” with some of the nearby leaders, while starting feuds with others.4 Soon he controlled a small state right in Byzantium’s backyard. Then rival factions within the Byzantine Empire tried to make use of the Ottomans. Their troops arrived in Gallipoli in 1354 at the request of one claimant to the Byzantine throne. Then they moved into the Balkans, their way eased by indigenous religious and political rifts there. In the course of the fourteenth

4 Ashikpashazade, Othman Comes to Power, in A Short Medieval Reader, pp. 213–15 and in Reading the Middle Ages, pp. 455–57.

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century, the western half of the Ottoman Empire came to embrace Thrace, Macedonia, and Bulgaria. (See Map 8.2.) For a moment, the Ottoman advance eastward was set back by a major defeat at the hands of Timur in 1402 at Ankara. But Timur’s death soon thereafter allowed them to regroup and conquer. Meanwhile, they re-centered their power in Europe and established a capital at Edirne (the former Adrianople). Ottoman hegemony depended not only on the disunity of their enemies but also the superiority of their military power. They adopted the new hardware of the west: cannons and harquebuses (heavy matchlock guns). And they deployed elite troops, the Janissaries. These were Christian boys from the conquered regions who were enslaved, converted to Islam, and trained not only for military service but also for the highest positions in government. Under Sultan Mehmed II the Conqueror (r.1444–1446 and 1451–1481), Ottoman cannons accomplished what former sieges had never done, breaching the thick walls of Constantinople in 1453 and bringing the Byzantine Empire to an end. The city was looted for

Map 8.2 The Ottoman Empire, c.1500

Sarai Vienna Holy Roman Empire

Poland/Lithuania Buda Pest

Tana

Hungary Szeged Tirgoviste

Belgrade

Nish Dubrovnik Montenegro

0 0

250 250

Vidin

Nicopolis

Sofia Skopje

Durazzo

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Bilhorod Kiliya

Brasso

Temesvar

Plovdiv

t Thessalonica

t

Enez o

m

S e a Tiblisi

Istanbul (after 1453)

Edirne

O

B l a c k

Varna

Tarnovo

Bursa n

a

E

Ankara m p

i

r

Izmir Athens

Safavid Empire (after 1500)

500 km

Ottoman lands, 1359 Ottoman lands, 1451 Ottoman Empire under Mehmed II, 1451-81

Aleppo

Crete M e d i t e r r a n e a n

S e a

Cyprus

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days, whole neighborhoods were turned to rubble, numerous people were killed, and those who were not were enslaved. True, the crusade of 1204 had also destroyed Constantinople, but the Byzantine polity had lived on in its provinces and eventually recovered the capital city. That did not happen after the Ottoman conquest, and gradually it became clear to contemporaries (as well as historians today) that the fall of Constantinople was a historical turning point. And yet, if officially “fallen,” Byzantium nevertheless had an afterlife. The sultan recognized the need for a Christian religious leader, and he re-established the patriarch, who still headed up a Church organization and served a flock of Orthodox believers, some of which were refugees invited back to the capital by Mehmed. Russia took up the mantle of the Third Rome, claiming itself to be the heir of the “Second Rome,” that is, of Byzantium. In the West, the Greeks who fled the Ottomans kept their customs, language, and religion. This was especially true in Venice, where a large group of Greek immigrants – perhaps 4,000 in a city of around 100,000 people – made a home for themselves. There they served as sailors, soldiers, shipyard workers, tailors, barbers: a whole miscellany of occupations. While Venice attracted the largest number of Greeks, some settled in other Italian cities. A few became university professors, teaching Greek and translating important Greek texts into Latin. The fall of Byzantium made clear to many Italians the irrefutable end of the Roman Empire, an event of epochal proportions. Intensely saddened by this realization, some joined a movement already underway to resuscitate the ancient world by reading and absorbing the lessons of Greek and Roman writers – the movement that historians call the Renaissance. The idea of Byzantium continued, at least for a while, within the new Ottoman regime as well. Although in popular speech Constantinople became Istanbul (meaning “the city”), its official name remained “Qustantiniyya” – the City of Constantine. The Ottoman sultans saw themselves as the successors of the Roman emperors – but better, true-believing successors. Mehmed commissioned an edition of Homer’s Iliad, negotiated with Genoese and Venetian traders, and asked the Venetian artist Gentile Bellini (c.1429–1507) to work for him. On the walls of the sultan’s splendid Topkapi palace were tapestries from Burgundy portraying the deeds of Alexander the Great. They suggested parity between the ancient hero and the new conqueror. But if there were “Western” influences at the Ottoman court, Islamic traditions reigned there as well. Mehmed and his successors staffed their cities with men schooled in Islamic administration and culture and set up madrasas to teach the young. At workshops built by the sultan in Istanbul, artists and craftsmen produced books, ceramics, and textiles decorated in styles drawn from Mamluk and Timurid models. New buildings – both religious and secular – needed furnishings: tiles, lamps, candelabra, wall hangings, ceramics, and carpets. The designs were controlled and to some extent standardized by court workshops under the sultan’s patronage. In the fifteenth century, carpets woven in Anatolia found buyers even on the European market. The “Star Ushak” carpet in Plate 8.3 is much like those that showed up in numerous fifteenth- and sixteenth-century paintings from Italy and northern Europe.

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Plate 8.3 “Star Ushak” Carpet, Anatolia (late 15th cent.). The painstaking techniques involved in producing this carpet are all the more impressive given its large size – more than 14 feet long and 7 feet wide. Made on a loom (as is fabric), the warp is in the natural color of the wool and the weft is of yarn died bright red. What makes a carpet different from fabric – giving it exceptional density and thickness – are knots, densely packed together, each twisting around two adjacent warp cords. Here the knots are in many different colors and form an overall design derived from Persian manuscript painting. So complex a composition would have been impossible to produce without the help of a prior pattern (a “cartoon”), probably prepared by artists at the sultan’s court. Little wonder that this kind of carpet was highly regarded both in the Ottoman world and by elites throughout Europe.

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Plate 8.4 Building Complex, Edirne (1484–1488). Edirne, in Thrace, was the Ottoman gateway to Europe. There Bayezid II (r.1481–1512) built an enormous architectural complex centered on a mosque. It included an insane asylum, a medical school, four madrasas, a kitchen, toilets, dining halls, baths, two mausolea, a hospital, and a hospice for Sufi dervishes (Islamic holy men). All, even the courtyard arcades, were covered with domes.

The new Ottoman state had come to stay. Its rise was due to its military power and the weakness of its neighbors. But its longevity – it did not begin to decline until the late seventeenth century – was due to more complicated factors. Building on a theory of absolutism that echoed similar ideas beginning to take shape in the Christian West, the Ottoman rulers acted as the sole guarantors of law and order. Taking the title of caliphs in 1517, they considered even the leaders of the mosques to be their functionaries, soldiers without arms. The Ottoman rulers dominated everything, even architecture, where the domed square (a masonry dome resting directly on the walls) became their signature feature. (See Plate 8.4.) Prospering from taxes pouring in from their conquered lands and their relatively wellto-do peasantry, the new rulers spent their money on roads to ease troop transport and a navy powerful enough to oust the Italians from their eastern Mediterranean outposts. Eliminating all signs of rebellion (which meant, for example, brutally putting down Serb and Albanian revolts), the Ottomans created a new world power. The Ottoman state eventually changed Europe’s orientation. Europeans could – and did – continue to trade in the Mediterranean. But, on the whole, they preferred to treat the Ottomans as a barrier to the Orient. Not long after the fall of Constantinople, as we shall see, the first transatlantic voyages began as a new route to the East.

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The Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453) The Hundred Years’ War began in 1337, ten years before the Black Death arrived in Europe. It started as a dynastic conflict between two descendants of French King Philip III – Edward III and Philip VI. (See Genealogy 8.1.) It also recalled England’s long-standing claims to Continental lands which, as we have seen, the English king held as “vassal” of the French king. (But by 1300, most of those fiefs had been confiscated by the French, so that only Gascony remained. See Map 7.5 on p. 274.) Fundamental to the conflict were Flemish–English economic relations, to which English prosperity and taxes were tied. Ultimately, the war marked the transformation of France and England into nation-states. Jeanne d’Arc ( Joan of Arc) articulated the new view of France: to her, it was indivisible, a hallowed entity uniting all within its borders as Frenchmen and -women and ruled by one consecrated king. At the start, however, it was imagined as a gentleman’s war. Looking back on it, the chronicler Froissart tried to depict its knightly fighters as gallant protagonists: As soon as Lord Walter de Manny discovered ... that a formal declaration of war had been made ... he gathered together 40 lances [each lance being a knight, a servant, and two horses], good companions from Hainaut and England, ... [because he] had vowed in England in the hearing of ladies and lords that, “If war breaks out between my lord the king of England and Philip of Valois who calls himself king of France, I will be the first to arm himself and capture a castle or town in the kingdom of France.”5 But it soon became an almost endless conflict fueled by new weapons, first the longbow employed by the English and eventually gunpower-fired projectiles dominated by the French. Because of their longbowmen, the English won a major victory at Crécy in 1346 (see Map 8.3) even though the French employed Genoese mercenary crossbowmen. The longbow had a long range and rapid rate of fire, while the crossbows used bolts that penetrated deeply but had a short range. And crossbows took a long time to reload.6 It is possible that in the wake of Crécy, the movements of demobilized soldiers helped spread the plague. If so, that was of little concern to the kings who fought the war; the battles continued. By 1360, the size of English possessions in southern France had more than doubled. But English successes did not last. Harrying the border of Aquitaine, French forces chipped away at it in the course of the 1380s. Meanwhile, sentiments for peace were gaining strength in both England and France; a treaty to put an end to the fighting for a 5 Froissart, Chronicles, in A Short Medieval Reader, pp. 225–30 and in Reading the Middle Ages, pp. 468–72. 6 For longbows and crossbows, see “Reading through Looking,” in Reading the Middle Ages, pp. XVIII–XIX.

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Louis IX (Saint Louis) king of France (1226 –1270 ) Philip III king of France (1270 –1285) Philip IV the Fair (1285–1314 )

Charles of Valois (d.1325)

Louis X (1314 –1316 )

Philip V (1316 –1322)

Charles IV (1322 –1328)

Isabella = Edward II king of England (1307 –1327)

Philip VI king of France (1328–1350)

John I (1316 )

(daughters)

(daughters)

Edward III king of England (1327 –1377 )

John II king of France (1350 –1364 )

Edward the Black Prince

Richard II king of England (1377 –1399 ) = Isabel of Valois, dau. of Charles VI

Lionel duke of Clarence

Edmund duke of York

Charles V king of France (1364 –1380)

Philip the Bold duke of Burgundy (1364–1404 )

Henry IV king of England (1399 –1413)

Charles VI king of France (1380 –1422)

John the Fearless duke of Burgundy (1404 –1419 )

Henry V = (1) Catherine (2) = Owain Tudor king of England (1413–1422)

Charles VII king of France (1422–1461 )

Philip the Good duke of Burgundy (1419 –1467 )

Henry VI king of England (1422–1461 )

Louis XI king of France (1461 –1483)

Charles the Bold duke of Burgundy (1467 –1477 )

Charles VIII king of France (1483–1498 )

Mary of Burgundy (1477 –1482 ) = Maximillian of Habsburg

See Genealogy 8.2 on p. 309

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John of Gaunt duke of Lancaster

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Brabant generation was drawn up in 1396. Yet the “generation” had hardly reached Duchy of Burgundy adulthood when Henry V (r.1413– Limbourg (Flanders) 1422) came to the throne and revived England’s claims on the continent. Demanding nearly all of the land Rethel Harfleur that the Angevins had held in the twelfth century, he struck France in 1415. Soon Normandy was his, and in order to keep it, he forced all who refused him loyalty into exile, confiscated their lands, and handed their property over to his followers. Chinon Nevers (See Map 8.3.) Henry’s plans were aided by a new regional power: Burgundy. A Limousine marvel of shrewd marriage alliances, canny purchases, and outright military Under English rule France (loyal to Charles VII) conquests, the Duchy of Burgundy Auvergne Duchy of Burgundy became a European super-power, albeit for a short time. Forged by Aquitaine Gascony Philip the Bold (r.1364–1404), it had two centers, one at Dijon (the traditional Burgundy) and another at Lille, in the north (the traditional Flanders). The only unity in these disparate regions was provided by the dukes themselves, who traveled tirelessly from one end of their duchy to the other, participating in elaborate ceremonies – lavish entry processions into cities, wedding Map 8.3 English and and birth festivities, funerals – and commissioning art and music that both celebrated and Burgundian Hegemony in France, c.1430 justified their power. (See Map 8.4 on the following page and Plate 8.8 on p. 325.) Like the kings of France, Duke Philip the Bold was a Valois. Even so, his grandson, Philip Genealogy 8.1 (facing page) the Good (r.1419–1467), decided to link his destiny with England, long the major trading Kings of France and England and the Dukes of Burgundy during partner of Flanders. Because of his support, the English easily marched into Paris, and the Hundred Years’ War the Treaty of Troyes (1420) made English King Henry V the heir to the throne of France. Had Henry lived, he might have made good his claim. But he died in 1422, leaving behind an infant son to take the crown of France under the regency of the duke of Bedford. Meanwhile, Charles VII, the French “dauphin,” or crown prince, was disheartened by the defeats. Only in 1429 did his mood change: Jeanne d’Arc ( Joan of Arc), a sixteen-year-old peasant girl from Domrémy (part of a small enclave in northern France still loyal to the dauphin), arrived at Chinon, where Charles was holed up, to convince

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Territory gained up to 1384 Territory gained 1384-1443 Territory gained 1465-76 Approximate border of the Holy Roman Empire

Charo

lais

e Auxerr

him and his theologians that she had been divinely sent to defeat the English. As she wrote in an audaUtr Guelders cious letter to the English commanders, “The Maid ech t Holland [as she called herself ] has come on behalf of God to Zeeland reclaim the blood royal. She is ready to make peace, Brabant if you [the English] are willing to settle with her by Antwerp Bruges Ghent evacuating France.”7 Flanders Calais In effect, Jeanne inherited the moral capital that Aachen Brussels Limbourg Lille had been earned by the Beguines and other women Tournai Namur Artois mystics (see p. 229). When the English forces laid Hainault Somme siege to Orléans (the prelude to their moving into Towns Cambrai southern France – see Map 8.3), Jeanne not only Luxembourg wrote the letter to the English quoted above but was Rethel Lorraine allowed to join the French army. Its “miraculous” Verdun defeat of the English at Orléans (1429) turned the Paris Metz tide. Soon thereafter Jeanne led Charles to Reims, Bar deep in English territory, where he was anointed Nancy king. Captured by Burgundians in league with the Lorraine Champagne English in 1430, Jeanne was ransomed by the English and tried by them as a heretic the following year. Found guilty, she was burned, eventually becoming County of Dijon Burgundy Montbéliard a symbol of martyrdom as well as of triumphant (Franche-Comté) Duchy of Burgundy French resistance. Nevers Besançon It took many more years, indeed until 1453, for the French kings to win the war. One reason for the Mâcon French victory was their systematic use of gunpow0 100 der-fired artillery: in one fifteen-month period around km 1450, the French relied heavily on siege guns such as cannons to capture more than seventy English strong8 Map 8.4 The Duchy of holds. Diplomatic finesse helped the French as well: after 1435, the duke of Burgundy Burgundy, 1363–1477 abandoned the English and supported the French, at least in lukewarm fashion.

Kings and Princes, Knights and Citizens It might be imagined that the events of the period 1350–1500 devastated Europe and emboldened only the Ottomans. But the Ottoman rulers were, it seems, bellwethers of 7 Jeanne d’Arc, Letter to the English, in A Short Medieval Reader, pp. 231–33 and in Reading the Middle Ages, pp. 472–74. 8 For cannons and other siege guns, see “Reading through Looking,” in Reading the Middle Ages, pp. XX–XXIII.

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Yorkist Dynasty

Edward the Black Prince (d.1376 )

Edward III (1327–1377 )

Lionel duke of Clarence (d.1368 )

Richard II (1377–1399 )

Lancastrian (Tudor) Dynasty

John of Gaunt duke of Lancaster (d.1399 )

direct descendant = married to indirect descendant

Henry IV (1399 –1413) Henry V = (1) Catherine (2) = Owain king of England Tudor (1413–1422)

Richard III (1483 –1485)

Edward IV (1461 –1483)

Henry VI (1422–1461 )

Henry VII (1485–1509 )

Edward V (1483)

the political climate of their day. For, in the aftermath of the various outbreaks of plague and warfare, kings and princes everywhere either consolidated their power or lost out entirely. As for knights, who had in effect handed over their military jobs to foot soldiers, archers, and artillery experts, they became useful functionaries and prestigious adornments to royal and princely courts. Exceptions to the new, concentrated model of power existed but were rare – in the very few “republics” of the age.

Genealogy 8.2 Yorkist and Lancastrian (Tudor) Kings

Concentrated Power in the Hands of Monarchs and Princes The Hundred Years’ War devastated France in the short run. Armies destroyed cities and harried the countryside, breaking the morale of the population. Even when not officially “at war,” bands of soldiers – “Free Companies” of mercenaries that hired themselves out to the highest bidder, whether in France, Spain, or Italy – roved the countryside, living off the gains of pillage. Nevertheless, soon after 1453, France began a long and steady recovery. Merchants invested in commerce, peasants tilled the soil, and the king exercised more power than ever before. As one arm of his new authority, he created a professional standing army, trained, billeted, and supplied with weapons, including “fiery” (gunpowder) artillery. His army was supplemented by mercenaries, equally “professional,” but loyal only to the ruler who paid them. Employing these forces, the king of France led an expedition into Italy in 1494 to claim the crown of Naples. Meanwhile the duchy of Burgundy disintegrated; its southern territories were absorbed into France, while half of its northern portion was incorporated into the Holy Roman Empire and the other half into France.

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In England, the Hundred Years’ War brought about a similar political transformation. Initially France’s victory affected mainly the topmost rank of the royal house itself. The progeny of Edward III formed two rival camps, the families of York and Lancaster (named after some of their lands in northern England). (See Genealogy 8.2 on p. 309.) A series of dynastic wars – later dubbed the “Wars of the Roses” after the white rose badge of the Yorkists and the red of the Lancastrians – was fought from 1455 to 1487. In 1485, Lancastrian Henry VII was crowned king; two years later he defeated the last rival claimant to the throne, ushering in the Tudor dynasty, the most powerful England had yet known. Newly powerful, too, were the monarchs of Spain, Ferdinand (r.1479–1516) and Isabella (r.1474–1504). They united Aragon and Castile with their marriage and made militant Catholicism an instrument of royal sovereignty. In 1478, they established an inquisition to look into the faith of the conversos – descendants of Jews who had converted when, in 1391, a wave of anti-Jewish rioting left them little choice but between death and apostasy. In 1492, the monarchs gave the small number of remaining Jews the choice of conversion or expulsion. But the work of the Spanish Inquisition continued against the newly converted as well as the heirs of the old, executing those deemed insufficiently “Christian” and confiscating their lands for the crown. In the same year, 1492, the king and queen conquered the last bit of Muslim-ruled Granada and, in an equally crusading spirit, sent Christopher Columbus off to discover a western route to China. The explorer took with him a converted Jew who spoke Arabic, presumed to be the language of the peoples he would meet on the way, in order to forward the religious ambitions of the Spanish king and queen. Meanwhile the crown displaced the pope to control much of the Church in Grenada and soon in its New World conquests as well. Moreover, beyond harnessing religious institutions, Ferdinand and Isabella increased their power by collecting taxes more efficiently, recovering royal estates, and reducing their dependence on the cortes. In the Holy Roman Empire, the Electors and other major princes did not have royal titles, but they ruled there as if monarchs in the new style. So too, in Italy, did the signori of the northern cities. Machiavelli’s The Prince, written in the early teens of the sixteenth century, offered them theoretical justification. While earlier Mirrors of Princes had given rulers moral counsel based on Christian virtues, Machiavelli looked to history, not religion, for his lessons. The Prince was written for Giuliano and Lorenzo Medici, who ruled Florence but were hoping to carve out a better principality for themselves elsewhere in Italy. It explains how power may be gained, kept, enhanced, and used by a ruler who knows how to manipulate all the instruments of statecraft. The prince cultivates his image to suit the moment, understands when to use diplomacy or resort to force, and (most important of all for Machiavelli) controls a stable army, one made up not of fickle mercenaries but rather of citizens who have an interest in the outcome of the battles they fight. Machiavelli did not so much reject virtue as redefine it as virtù, the ethics of a virtuoso – one who combines confidence, spirit, restraint, flexibility, and expertise.

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Knightly Adjustments In this world of super-princes, knights found profitable niches for themselves. In England the “knights of the shire” continued to play an important role in the system of royal justice that had been initiated under Henry II (see pp. 215–20). Constituting a class below the very great landowning barons, the knights (or, as we may now term them, gentry; there were perhaps 3,000 of them) had high social status and considerable property. Some of them served the king or important barons. Throughout Europe, nobles and knights served rulers as administrators and courtiers. As administrators, they went on diplomatic missions, sat on judicial courts both royal and local, and acted as royal councilors. As courtiers, they participated in chivalric military feats that had little to do with military reality but very much to do with reenacting the imaginary world of King Arthur and his knights – heroes of immensely popular literary fictions. They fought as entertainers in jousts and tournaments, rode finely caparisoned horses, played games, and feasted at lavish dinner parties. Heraldry, a system of symbols that distinguished each knight by the sign on his shield, came into full flower around the same time. Originally meant to advertise the fighter and his heroic deeds on the battlefield, it soon came to symbolize his family, decorating both homes and tombs. Kings and other great lords founded and promoted chivalric orders with fantastic names – the Order of the Garter, the Order of the Golden Buckle, the Order of the Golden Fleece. All had mainly social and honorific functions. They clothed naked power with a gossamer veil of pageantry and illusion.

Republics While super-princes were the norm, there were some exceptions. In the mountainous terrain of the alpine passes, a coalition of urban and rural communes along with some members of the lesser nobility promised to aid one another against the Habsburg emperors. Taking advantage of rivalries within the Holy Roman Empire, the Swiss Confederation created c.1500 a state of its own. Structured as a league, the Confederation put power into the hands of urban citizenry and members of peasant communes. The nobility gradually disappeared, and new elites from town and countryside took over. Switzerland may have been a republic, but it nevertheless served its princely neighbors as a reservoir of mercenary troops. Venice, too, continued as a republic, but one dominated by an elite. Many of the officers of the state were elected from its Great Council, including the “doge,” a life-long position. Between 1297 and 1324 the size of the Council grew dramatically: in 1296 it had 210 members, but by 1340 its membership was over one thousand. At the same time, however, the Council was gradually closed off to all but certain families, which were in this way turned into a hereditary aristocracy. The lower classes accepted this fact because, in turn, the ruling families largely suppressed their private interests in favor of the general welfare of the city.

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Map 8.5 (facing page) Western Europe, c.1450

Venice’s well-being depended mainly on the sea for both necessities and wealth. Only at the end of the fourteenth century did the Venetians begin to expand within Italy itself, becoming a major land power in the region. But as it gobbled up Bergamo and Verona, Venice collided with the interests of Milan. Wars between the two city-states ended only with the Peace of Lodi in 1454. Soon the other major Italian powers – Florence, the papacy, and Naples – joined Venice and Milan in the Italic League. (See Map 8.5.) The situation in Naples eventually brought this status quo to an end. Already in 1442 Alfonso V of Aragon had entered Naples as Alfonso I, ending Angevin rule there. A half century later, the Valois king of France’s desire to reinstate French rule over Naples helped fuel his invasion of Italy in 1494. The super princes of Europe were turning Italy into their bloody playground, as Machiavelli bitterly lamented at the end of The Prince.

Discontents in Town and Countryside In the face of the crises of the period, almost every region suffered economic dislocation. While power at the top consolidated, popular uprisings gave vent to discontent. The “popular” component of these revolts should not be exaggerated, as many were led by petty knights or wealthy burghers. But they also involved large masses of people, some of whom were very poor indeed. Although at times articulating universal principles, these revolts were nevertheless deeply rooted in local grievances. Most of them grew out of the woes of the Hundred Years’ War or the unprecedented needs of workers in proto-industrialized cities. Such revolts were only partially successful.

Economic Decline In much of Europe economic decline was the norm. After 1340, with the disintegration of the Mongol Empire, easy trade relations between Europe and the Far East ended. Within Europe, rulers’ war machines were fueled by new taxes and loans – some of them forced. Rulers seldom paid back the loans. The great import-export houses, which loaned money as part of their banking activities, found themselves advancing too much to rulers all too willing to default. In the 1340s the four largest firms went bankrupt, producing, in domino effect, the bankruptcies of hundreds more. War did more than gobble up capital. Where armies raged, production stopped. Even in intervals of peace, roving bands of out-of-work mercenaries attacked not only the countryside but also merchants on the roads. That was why, to ensure its grain supply from Bologna, Florence was obliged to provide guards all along the route. Merchants began investing in insurance policies, not only against losses due to weather but also against robbers and pirates. Meanwhile, the plague dislocated normal economic patterns. Urban rents fell as houses went begging for tenants, while wages rose as employers sought to attract scarce labor. In rural areas, whole swathes of land lay uncultivated. As the population declined and the

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Rep. of Venice R Lodi

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demand for grain decreased, the Baltic region – chief supplier of rye to the rest of Europe – suffered badly; by the fifteenth century, some villages had disappeared. Yet, as always, the bad luck of some meant the prosperity of others. While Tuscany lost its economic edge, cities in northern Italy and southern Germany gained new muscle, manufacturing armor and fustian (a popular textile made of cotton and flax) and distributing their products across Europe. The center of economic growth was in fact shifting northwards, from the Mediterranean to the European heartlands. There was one unfortunate exception: the fourteenth and fifteenth-century slave trade. As we have seen, traffic in slaves was nothing new. But its importance in the Black Sea region was indeed novel. Dominated by Genoa, Venice, and the Mamluk sultanate, it profited from people captured in wars or raids or (in the case of children) sold by parents. They were transported across the Black Sea for purchase by wealthy elites. The Mamluks groomed boys for army duty and service at court. The Venetians and Genoese exploited women as convenient sexual partners. Everywhere enslaved women and men did household labor and acted as servants.

Revolts Many slaves resisted. Some revolted on board the ships transporting them, others committed suicide after they arrived on land, and still others killed their masters (and suffered grievously for doing so). But the major revolts of the medieval period were carried out not by slaves but rather urban workers and rural peasants. The citizens of Flanders were badly affected by the Hundred Years’ War because they depended on raw English wool for their looms. When England prepared for the opening of the Hundred Years’ War by cutting off wool exports to Flanders, the weavers lost their jobs. At Ghent, one of Flanders’s richest and most powerful cities, the textile workers rallied to the English cause. Led by Jacob van Artevelde, himself a landowner but now spokesman for the rebels, the weavers overturned the city government. By 1339, Artevelde’s supporters dominated not only Ghent but also much of northern Flanders. A year later, he welcomed the English king Edward III to Flanders as king of France. Although Artevelde was assassinated in 1345 by rebels who thought he had betrayed their cause, the tensions that brought him to the fore continued. Like a world war, the Hundred Years’ War engulfed its bystanders. In France, uprisings in the mid-fourteenth century revealed further strains of the war. In the wake of the terrible defeat of French forces and the capture of King John II of France at Poitiers in 1356, the Estates General, which prior to the battle had agreed to heavy taxes to counter the English, met to allot blame and reform the government. When the dauphin (the king’s heir, who now ruled in John’s absence) stalled in instituting the reforms, Étienne Marcel, head of the merchants of Paris, led a plot to murder some royal councilors and take control of Paris. Ousted from the city by royal forces, his revolt was soon mirrored elsewhere by villagers and peasants who, for their part, were outraged by the cowardice of the nobility at Poitiers and more generally by the ravaging of their lands by roving military bands. Their uprising in 1378 was soon called the Jacquerie, a term derived from the

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Plate 8.5 The Massacre of the Rebels at Meaux (15th cent.). In Froissart’s account of the Jacquerie, the count of Foix and the captal (lord) de Buch came to pay their respects to the hundreds of noble ladies who had fled to Meaux’s fortified marketplace in fear of rebellious peasants. Once the peasants and Parisian rebels heard that an assembly of nobles had gathered together at Meaux, they arrived “with the most evil intentions.” Then the count and the captal, accompanied by their troops, “faced the villeins, small and dark and very poorly armed ... striking them with their lances and swords and beating them down.... They went on killing until they were stiff and weary, and they flung many into the River Marne.”9 In this illustration from a manuscript of Froissart’s chronicle, the city buildings look like fairy-tale castles from one of which some noble ladies, smartly dressed as if for a tournament, venture out to take a peek.

nickname for a peasant, “Jacques Bonhomme” ( Jack Goodman). In alliance with some Paris rebels, the peasants attacked the castles and manor houses of the nobility. But both groups – Parisians and Jacques – were brutally put down at Meaux. (See Plate 8.5.) Soon thereafter, Étienne Marcel was killed in a riot, Paris fell to royal troops, and the dauphin began the lengthy process of reconciliation.9 Equally thoroughly suppressed were the protests of the “commons” in England – peasants, craftspeople, petty shopkeepers, some radical clerics – known as Wat Tyler’s Rebellion (1381). Outraged by repeated poll taxes imposed to finance England’s wars, numerous sworn groups of rebels from southeastern England burned the homes of local authorities, stormed castles, and broke into monasteries. They killed many officials and nobles, and burned documents recording rents and customs. Some marched on London to meet with the king. They were not demanding an end to monarchy but rather its elevation over all other authorities: their only lord should be the king, the only law royal law. His “traitorous” ministers must be executed, and serfdom must end. Richard II (r.1377–1399) 9 Froissart, Chronicles, ed. and trans. Geoffrey Brereton (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1968), pp. 154–55.

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feared for his life but agreed to talk with the rebels at Mile End, a large park. There he apparently agreed to the protestors’ demands, gave out royal banners, and told them to go home. That gave encouragement to many rebels (local leader Richard de Leycester was one) to think they were acting on behalf of the king. But the king reneged on his promises, and people like Richard were either summarily killed outright or brought to trial and executed for “felonies, seditions and other misdeeds.”10 Although Wat Tyler’s Rebellion did not end serfdom in England, the plague had already loosened those bonds, and the rebellion, having destroyed many manorial documents, allowed some peasants to negotiate new terms with their landlords. In northern Italy, revolts were not the bitter fruits of war but rather grew out of the political discontents of cloth workers, who chafed under communal regimes that gave them no say in government. The revolt by the woolworkers (the ciompi) at Siena was typical. In 1355, they rose up against their employers, the Wool Guild, overturned the existing government of the city – until then the most stable city-state regime in Italy – and briefly established their own rule. In 1371, “demanding to be paid according to the ordinance of the Sienese commune” rather than according to the less generous wages of their guild, they again took up arms.11 Joined by the popolo minuto – literally the “little people,” but in reality a mix of salaried workers, artisans, merchants, and even some nobles – they clashed with the elites of the city and again set up a short-lived government. A similar set of events took place in Florence in 1378 when the ciompi there briefly took over the city. In both instances, the old elites were soon back in power. But, while they largely retained their position in Siena, in fifteenth-century Florence, even the old elites were forced to give way to the rule of one powerful banking family, the Medici.

The Catholic Church Divided The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries also saw deep divisions within the Church. A schism, a split between vehemently opposed factions, set first two, then three popes against one another. All illusions of harmony within Christendom were shattered as popes fought over who had the right to the papacy. Ordinary Catholics disputed about that as well as the very nature of the Church itself, setting some of the groundwork for the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century.

The Great Western Schism (1378–1417) Between 1378 and 1409, rival popes – those based in Avignon and those of Rome – claimed to rule as vicar of Christ. From 1409 to 1417, those based in Bologna added their own claim. The popes at each place excommunicated one another, surrounded themselves with 10 The Case of Richard de Leycester, in A Short Medieval Reader, pp. 230–31. 11 Chronicle of Siena, in A Short Medieval Reader, pp. 221–25 and in Reading the Middle Ages, pp. 474–78.

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their own colleges of cardinals and loyal followers, and forced European states to choose among them. The Great Western Schism (1378–1417) – as this period of popes and antipopes is called – was both a spiritual and a political crisis. Nor was it separate from the other issues of the day. It fed the Hundred Years’ War because France supported the pope at Avignon, while England rallied behind the pope at Rome. In some regions, the schism polarized a single community: for example, around 1400 at Tournai, on the border of France and Flanders, two rival bishops, each representing a different pope, fought over the diocese. Portugal, more adaptable and farther from the fray, changed its allegiance four times. The crisis began with the best of intentions. Stung by criticism of the Avignon papacy, Pope Gregory XI (1370–1378) left Avignon to return to Rome in 1377. When he died a year later, the cardinals elected an Italian as Urban VI (1378–1389). Finding Urban highhanded, however, the French cardinals quickly thought better of what they had done. They declared Urban’s election invalid, called on him to resign, and elected Clement VII, who installed himself at Avignon. The papal monarchy was now split. The group that went to Avignon depended largely on French resources; the popes at Rome survived by establishing a signoria, complete with mercenary troops to collect its taxes and fight its wars. Urban’s successor, Boniface IX (1389–1404), reconquered the papal states and set up governors (many of them his family members) to rule over them. Desperate for more revenues, the popes at Rome turned all their prerogatives into sources of income. Boniface, for example, put Church benefices on the open market. He also commercialized penance, a move that was made possible by the development of the doctrine of Purgatory, the place where the souls of the dead were “purged” of their sins. In the thirteenth century, the Church taught that certain pious acts here and now (such as viewing a relic or attending a special Church feast) could reduce time in Purgatory. Such reductions were called “indulgences.” Now, in the time of the schism, money payments were declared equivalent to performing the acts. Many people willingly purchased indulgences; others were outraged that Heaven was for sale. Solutions to end the schism eventually coalesced around the idea of a Church council. The “conciliarists” – those who advocated convening a council that would have authority over even the pope – included both university men and princes anxious to flex their muscles over the Church. At the Council of Pisa (1409), which neither of the popes attended, the delegates deposed both popes and elected a new man. But the two deposed popes refused to budge: there were now three popes, one at Avignon, one at Rome, and a third at Bologna. The successor of the newest one, John XXIII, turned to the emperor to arrange for another council. This one, the Council of Constance (1414–1418), met to resolve the papal crisis as well as to institute reforms. It succeeded in the first task, deposing the three rivals and electing Martin V as pope, but it was less successful in reforming the Church, which remained fragmented. National, even nationalist, churches had begun to form, as we saw in the case of the control that Spanish rulers claimed over Church offices and benefices in its conquered territories.

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Popular Religious Movements in England and Bohemia While the conciliarists worried about the structure of the Church, others began to rethink its very role. In England, the radical theologian John Wyclif (c.1330–1384) argued for a very small sphere of action for the Church. In his view, secular rulers should concern themselves with temporal things, the pope’s decrees should be limited to what was already in the Gospels, the laity should be allowed to read and interpret the Bible for itself, and the Church should stop promulgating the absurd notion of transubstantiation. Wyclif argued that the substance of the Eucharistic bread did not become the flesh of Christ nor the wine his blood. Rather, the believer should understand that those are the things that the bread and wine stand for. At first the darling of the king and other powerful men in England (who were glad to hear arguments on behalf of an expanded place for secular rule), Wyclif appealed as well (and more enduringly) to the gentry and literate urban classes. Derisively called “lollards” (idlers) by the Church and persecuted as heretics, the followers of Wyclif were largely, though not completely, suppressed in the course of the fifteenth century. Considerably more successful were the Bohemian disciples of Wyclif. In Bohemia, which was part of the Holy Roman Empire but long used to its own monarchy, the disparities between rich and poor helped create conditions for a new vision of society in which religious and national feeling played equal parts. In the hands of Jan Hus (1369/71–1415), the writings of Wyclif were transformed into a call for a reformed Church and laity. All were to live in accordance with the laws of God, and the laity could disobey corrupt clerics. Hus translated parts of the Bible into Czech while encouraging German translations as well. Furthering their vision of equality within the Church, Hus’s followers demanded that all the faithful be offered not just the bread but also the consecrated wine at Mass. (This was later called Utraquism, from the Latin sub utraque specie – communion “in both kinds.”) In these ways, the Hussites gave shape to their vision of the Church as the community of believers – women and the poor included. Hus’s friend Jerome of Prague identified the whole reform movement with the good of the Bohemian nation itself, appropriating the traditional claim of the nobility. Hus was burned as a heretic at the Council of Constance, but he inspired a movement that transformed the Bohemian Church. The Hussites soon disagreed about demands and methods (the most radical, the Taborites, set up a sort of government in exile in southern Bohemia, pooling their resources while awaiting the Second Coming of Christ), but most found willing protectors among the Bohemian nobility. For two decades, wars between the Hussite armies and imperial forces raged. Even though the pope called five crusades against the Hussites during that time, the “heretics” (as the pope called them) prevailed each time. At last, in the course of the 1430s, a peace was patched up, and from the ashes of war emerged a peculiarly Bohemian Church. Loyal to Rome, it reserved Church benefices for Bohemians; faithful to most of the traditional rites, it gave both men and women the special privilege of partaking of the Eucharist in both bread and wine.

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NEW MOVEMENTS TO MATCH THE TIMES Everywhere, then, the old sources of power were either consolidating or losing their hold. The Church was challenged by the Czechs and by rulers throughout Europe, who demanded to intervene in Church affairs. Newly powerful rulers wrested local prerogatives from the nobility and imposed lucrative taxes to be gathered by their zealous and efficient salaried agents. The Ottomans and the Mamluks monopolized the Islamic world, and Constantinople was no longer the heir of Rome. The plague was killing off neighbors, friends, and families. To some living at the time, the old teachings seemed out of date, the art and architecture of Gothic style no longer seemed beautiful, and the lure of alternative forms beckoned. In Italy, the ancient world of Greece and Rome, still evident everywhere (though mostly in ruins) offered alluring possibilities. It did so north of the Alps as well, but with a hefty admixture of mystical religious yearning. Everywhere, brilliant courts used the new idioms created by contemporaries to burnish the image of the prince. This was no less true when it came to exploratory enterprises.

Renaissance Italy Near the end of his life, Francis Petrarch (1304–1374) was in despair. He remembered how the cities of Italy had flourished in his youth; now they were “shattered” by the effects of the plague, by internal dissension, by corruption and poverty. Petrarch had studied law at Bologna, when it was alive with “the great gathering of students, the order, the alertness, the majesty of the teachers.” Now it was desolate.12 This was not the rant of an old man: it was a call to action. Petrarch had a remedy for the woeful present: eloquence. Not the eloquence of pretty words but rather of speech and writing that would persuade and arouse creative spirits. Not the eloquence of the Middle Ages but that of the literature, philosophy, and language of the ancients. Eloquence would lead all who practiced it and all who heard it to virtue – or rather, as Machiavelli would later put it, to virtù. Petrarch was one of the many men of his day who learned classical Latin for a profession but stayed with it for its wisdom. This was the case above all in Italy, where legal practices demanded not only judges but notaries – hundreds of them in each city – who drew up contracts, wills, and official letters in Latin. Petrarch was not a notary, but he had trained to be one. Supported by a small benefice provided to him as a man in minor orders, he was able to travel around Europe and collect the manuscripts of ancient writings that monks had copied out for their own pious ruminations. (He was among the many scholars of his day who mistook Caroline minuscule for ancient Roman letter forms.) 12 Francesco Petrarch, Res seniles 10.2, in Letters of Old Age, trans. Aldo S. Bernardo, Saul Levin, and Reta A. Bernardo, 2 vols. (New York: Italica Press, 2005), 2:359–74.

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Plate 8.6 Giovanni Toscanini or Fra Angelico, The Nymph of Fiesole (1430–1440?). In Boccaccio’s story, Africo, a young man from a region near what would (much later) become Florence, falls in love with a nymph. Venus, goddess of love, encourages him in a dream. Together with the nymph, both naked in a pool of water, he “restrains” her, resulting in a son whom the Medici family claimed as an ancestor. That is why this wedding chest was no doubt paraded through the streets of Florence, demonstrating Medici wealth, power, and their humanistic bona fides. Although it was painted

For Petrarch these books, though found in monasteries, had nothing to do with religion: rather, they were windows onto a different – a better – world and an entirely new view of human nature. He found in the writings of Cicero, an eminent Roman of the first century bce , an appreciation of humanitas – the cultivation of the qualities that makes a man a moral being, active, aware of himself, refined, his nature perfected to the highest degree. In admiring imitation, men like Petrarch called themselves “humanists.” For their morality, they wanted to depend not on God but rather on themselves, their observations of the world, and their own self-fashioning. About a century after Petrarch’s time, Pico della Mirandola – a polymath who studied the Hebrew cabala, Arabic writings, the philosophy of Plato, and many more ancient texts – gave the idea of self-fashioning a myth of its own when he “rewrote” the book of Genesis in his Oration on the Dignity of Man (1486). After the creation of the heavens and the earth (so went the traditional story in the Bible), God created Adam and Eve. But they defied their Maker, committed original sin, and suffered the Fall from Paradise. Not so in Pico’s telling. Rather, after creating the cosmos, God wanted “someone to ponder the

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plan of so great a work.” Since he had already distributed all the forms and virtues that existed to the angels, plants, animals and so on, he created man “a creature of indeterminate nature.”13 The kind of creature a man became was up to his own free choice. The possibilities were endless: he might make himself into a brute or a god. Pico’s “man” was self-fashioned, and so was Machiavelli’s Prince. This was an ideal. But it was not – it could not be – the reality. Pico’s work was as much conditioned by the scholastics as by the cabala, and he never got to give his Oration because of papal opposition. Machiavelli’s Prince was a “job application.” He wrote it so that he could work for the Medicis, the very rulers whose rise in Florence had brought about his unemployment. Humanists knew (though they rebelled against it) that they were subject to outside

more than a millennium after the classical period, the key elements of that style were revived here: the figures have substance and volume, they move in a recognizably natural world, and they hint at private goings-on into which the viewer is intruding.

13 Pico della Mirandola, Oration on the Dignity of Man, trans. Paul Oskar Kristeller, in The Renaissance Philosophy of Man, ed. Ernst Cassirer, Paul Oskar Kristeller, and John Herman Randall Jr. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948), p. 224.

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forces – nature (diseases, base impulses, mortality) and fortune (the art of being the right place at the right time). The humanists were in the vanguard of the Italian “Renaissance.” The term itself – which means rebirth – came later and is borrowed from the French. But even in their own day, the humanists saw themselves as signaling something new. Between them and the classical past was a great abyss they thought they could bridge through their studies of ancient texts. They called the abyss the “Middle Age.” As readers of this book know, the Middle Ages (in English we now make it plural) also boasted people –men and women – who drew on the eloquence and values of the ancients to deal with the realities of their own day. But the new humanists were more numerous than earlier ones, and they were more aware of a calling to revivify a long-lost past and put it to work in their own day. Disillusioned with the institutions handed down to them, they were willing to critique all, subjecting them to scrutiny. Thus, through careful study of the evolution of the Latin language, Lorenzo Valla (d.1457) proved that the Donation of Constantine, a major prop of papal claims to power, was a fake. Yet, if their passion was antiquity, the humanists’ services were demanded with equal ardor by contemporary ecclesiastical as well as secular princes. Some worked for prelates, others for princes and kings, and many served both groups. As Italian artists and architects associated themselves with humanists and worked in tandem with them, they too became part of the movement. The Renaissance offered to city communes and wealthy princes alike new words, symbols, arguments, and styles that were drawn from a resonant and heroic past. In the service of its own era, Renaissance writers, poets, artists and statesmen twisted, turned, and adjusted “classical” models to their own tastes and needs. Thus, when the Medici family in the mid-fifteenth century (not yet quite the signori they would be in Machiavelli’s day) commissioned an elaborate wedding chest, they wanted it to be “classical” yet relevant. With that in mind, they commissioned an artist to illustrate a story written in the form of a Greek myth. The tale, originally told by the humanist Boccaccio (d.1375), suited the Medicis because it gave them an illustrious ancestry in a supposedly ancient Greek world. Further, the artist portrayed it in a “classical” style. (See Plate 8.6 on pp. 320–21.) Note the ambivalence of the nymph on the chest; she tries to escape yet does not turn away. Again, consider that a half century later, Machiavelli wrote Il Principe, not La Principessa. Finally, observe that Pico talked about the creation of Adam, not Eve. What agency did women have in these schemes? Or, as Joan Kelly asked in the 1970s, “Did women have a Renaissance?” Her answer was largely negative. Italian women were under the rule of their fathers, then of their husbands or brothers. Boccaccio’s Decameron was filled with stories of women’s clever schemes to make end runs around such constraints, although in the main such stratagems had to remain fantasies. But it is a fact that many Italian urban women were well-educated, they wrote letters, and they took care of family businesses. Many may have yearned to be humanists, and a few of them managed to be heard and accepted as such. In the early fifteenth-century, Amedea degli Aleardi, inspired above all by Petrarch’s love poetry, momentarily took on the persona of Medea in her poem “Ah,

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Do Not Be Jason.” In the original story, well-known to the ancient Greeks, Medea is abandoned by her husband, Jason; she kills their children in revenge. In the Greek story, she is a witch and a monster. But, in Amedea’s Renaissance reworking, Medea becomes every abandoned woman. Bereft of her lover, she calls on Love itself (her “cara speranza” – her dear hope) to return to her, or she will not hesitate to kill herself. She does not follow the Greek model; she forges her own path. Thus, even as Renaissance writers and thinkers admired and borrowed from the classics, they also strove to “improve” on ancient traditions. The artists and architects of the time did so as well. Consider the huge and ingeniously constructed new dome for the cathedral at Florence, planned and executed by Filippo Brunelleschi (1377–1446). It was a first. Even the Roman Pantheon, which rivalled it in size, had a relatively shallow dome that sat atop a round building, nothing like the enormous half eggshell that Brunelleschi built on the octagonal base of the Florentine Cathedral. (See Plate 8.7 and Figure 8.1.) The new interest in mechanical and architectural feats evident in Brunelleschi’s work went hand in hand with precise calculations of spatial perspective, sophisticated military engineering, mathematical studies, and keen observations of the natural world. Italy was not alone in cultivating these skills.

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Plate 8.7 Filippo Brunelleschi, Florence Cathedral Dome and Lantern (1420–1446). The dome and lantern built to crown the Florentine Cathedral was a major engineering feat. Brunelleschi accomplished it by designing a light inner shell on top of which the workers could then construct the heavier outer dome. But the design would never have worked had he not also invented an unusual hoist as well as new-style cranes and hooks to lift the stones, marble blocks, mortar, and wooden beams as needed. (See Figure 8.1.) The lantern was not finished when Brunelleschi died, but his successors doubtless took advantage of his machines to carry out the rest of his design.

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Figure 8.1 Building the Florence Cathedral Dome (1429–1470)

The Northern Renaissance Although north and south supported the literature, the arts, and the expertise associated with the Renaissance rather differently, the two sides of the Alps were constantly in touch. As Map 7.3a on p. 264 demonstrates, trade across Europe was constant. So too did writers and artists crisscross the continent. Christine de Pisan, one of the few female humanists of the time, came from Italy to write for patrons at the French court. Albrecht Dürer

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(1471–1528), who lived most of his life in Germany, went to Italy to study with Italian artists. The Medici family in Florence avidly collected art from Flanders. The Duchy of Burgundy – that ephemeral creation of the Hundred Years’ War – embraced nearly all the possibilities of Renaissance culture in music, art, literature, and pageantry. Its dukes traveled from one end of their dominions to the other with gorgeous tapestries in tow. At their palace in Brussels, they built a garden filled with bronze statues and fountains; their great hall was large enough to host indoor tournaments. In addition to their court artists and artisans, hundreds of craftspeople from nearby cities were recruited for special occasions, producing embroideries, stained glass, manuscripts, jewelry, and gold and silver objects. (See Plate 8.8.) Although perhaps more ostentatious than most, nevertheless the dukes’ extravagant tastes were similar to those of other northern European patrons. But many also favored employing the rich possibilities of art in the service of devotion, sentiment, and immediacy. The artists working in Burgundy’s northern half – so-called Netherlandish Burgundy – cultivated true-to-life expressivity, made possible in part by oil-based pigments that were capable of showing the finest details and 9 is a the subtlest shading. The enormous altarpiece in Plate 8. 8.9 good example. The meaning of its composition and the significance of its many elements are still disputed today. But it is undeniable that the artists depicted every jewel, every ray of light, every hair – even the thick, curly wool of a lamb – with translucent clarity. The hyper-realism of the altarpiece was equally present in secular paintings of the time. In Albrecht Dürer’s Portrait of Oswolt Krel (see Plate 8.10 on p. 328), we see Krel, a merchant in a huge German trading company, showing off his wealth with a fur-trimmed coat, elegant rings, and a coat of arms. Yet Dürer does not idealize him one whit: not only does his bulbous nose and pained expression signal a man of bad temper, but he is flanked on both sides by “wild men,” symbols of passions gone amok. As befitting a Renaissance man, Krel’s portrait shows him as the conqueror of his baser instincts, supremely resolute and disdainful of the crazy wild men at his side. Both the Italian and Northern Renaissances cultivated music and musicians, above all for the aura that they gave rulers, princes, and great churchmen. In Italy, Isabella d’Este (1474–1539), marchioness of Mantua, hired her own musicians – singers, woodwind

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Plate 8.8 Rock-Crystal Cup of Philip the Good (1453–1467). The extraordinarily high level of goldwork and hardstone carving achieved in Burgundy was readily exploited by the dukes, who commissioned countless objects such as this cup – itself just one small part of a fortyeight-piece crystal dinner service that included jugs and platters. It is made of four pieces of faceted crystal decorated with hollowed-out spheres fastened together with gold mounts lavished with pearls, enamel, diamonds, and rubies.

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Plate 8.9 Hubert and Jan van Eyck, Ghent Altarpiece, Interior (1432). Two enormous painted oak panels open to reveal a scene of exceptional complexity and stunning beauty. Beneath the vision of heaven centering on a crowned and enthroned Christ is an earthly panorama. In its center is the Lamb of God on a high altar – symbol of the sacrificed Christ. His blood pours into a Eucharistic chalice. Surrounding the Lamb are adoring angels who pray and swing censers, while directly beneath the Lamb is the Fountain of Life, its healing waters echoing the Lamb’s streaming blood. To the left of the Fountain are groups of men wearing hats and cloaks of many different shapes and colors. They represent the Jews, who will convert at the end of time. At their head, kneeling and holding forth books are men representing the Prophets or perhaps the transmitters of the Laws of Moses. To the right of the Fountain are kneeling apostles, while behind them are three men in papal tiaras, likely representing the unity of the Church after the Great Schism. On the left side wings are crusading knights followed by Just Judges; on the right are hermits followed by pilgrims. The altarpiece proclaims the unity of all peoples in the divine light of Christ.

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Plate 8.10 Albrecht Dürer, Portrait of Oswolt Krel (c.1499). In this portrait, Dürer does not idealize, allegorize, or elevate his subject, as portraits from the Roman period onward were wont to do. Krel is simply an individual, with his own powerful – if severe – personality.

and string players, percussionists, and keyboard players – while her husband employed a different band. In Burgundy, the duke had a fine private chapel and musicians, singers, and composers to staff it. In England, wealthy patrons founded colleges – Eton (founded by King Henry VI in 1440–1441) was one – where choirs offered up prayers in honor of the Virgin. Motets continued to be composed and sung, but now polyphonic music for larger groups became common as well. In the hands of a composer such as John Dunstable (d.1453), who probably worked for the duke of Bedford, regent for Henry VI in France during the Hundred Years’ War, dissonance was smoothed out. In the compositions of Dunstable and his followers, harmonious chords that moved together even as they changed replaced the old juxtapositions of independent lines. Working within the old modal categories, composers made their mark with music newly sonorous and flowing.

New Horizons Experiment and play within old traditions were the watchwords of the period. They may be seen in explorations of interiority, in creative inventions, even in the attempt to conquer the globe. Their consequences may fairly be said to herald a new era.

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Interiority Dürer’s Oswolt Krel has an interior life far more complex than that of pious angels contemplating the Lamb, an amorous lover pursuing his nymph, a heroic martyr caring nothing for his wounds. Dürer’s portrait is the artist’s statement about the interior worth of a human being – any and every human being. That new emphasis on interiority was typical of its age and was expressed in religious contexts as well. In the Low Countries, northern Germany, and the Rhineland, the devotio moderna (the “new devotion”) movement carried out by the Brethren of the Common Life found solace in individual reading and contemplation. Founded c.1380 by Gerhard Groote (1340–1384), the Brethren lived in male or female communities that focused on education, copying manuscripts, material simplicity, and individual faith. The Brethren were not quite humanists and not quite mystics, but they drew from both for their religious program, which depended very little on the hierarchy or ceremonies of the church. Their style of piety would later be associated with Protestant groups.

Inventions The enormous demand for books – whether by ordinary laypeople, adherents of the devotio moderna, or humanists eager for the classics – made printed books a welcome invention, though manuscripts were neither quickly nor easily displaced. The printing press, however obvious in thought, marked a great practical breakthrough: it depended on a new technique to mold metal type. This was first achieved by Johann Gutenberg at Mainz (in Germany) around 1450. The next step was getting the raw materials that were needed to ensure ongoing book production. Paper required water mills and a steady supply of rag (pulp made of cloth); the metal for the type had to be mined and shaped; ink had to be found that would adhere to metal letters as well as make consistent marks on paper. By 1500 many European cities had publishing houses, with access to the materials that they needed and sufficient clientele to earn a profit. Highly competitive, the presses advertised their wares. They turned out not only religious and classical books but fliers, manifestoes, and whatever else the public demanded. Martin Luther (1483–1546) did not in fact nail his Ninety-five Theses to the door of the church at Wittenberg in 1517 (as the myth goes), but he certainly allowed them to be printed and distributed in both Latin and German. Challenging prevailing Church teachings and practices, above all the sale of indulgences (see p. 317), the Theses ushered in the Protestant Reformation. The printing press was a powerful instrument of mass communication. More specialized, yet no less decisive for the future, were new developments in navigation. Portolan maps charted the shapes of coastlines. Compasses, long known in China but newly adopted in the West, provided readings that were noted down in nautical charts; sailors used them alongside maps and written information about such matters as harbors, political turmoil, and anchorage. But navigating the Atlantic also depended on methods for astronomical navigation and for exploiting the powerful ocean currents and wind systems. New ship designs featured the masts and sails needed to harness the breezes. (See Plate 8.11.)

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Plate 8.11 (following pages) Lopo Homem, Pedro Reinel, Jorge Reinel, and Antonio de Holanda, The Miller Atlas (1519). Commissioned by the king of Portugal, this portolan map is one of a collection of enormous charts designed to show the mighty reach of the Portuguese empire. Key to that state’s power, as the map makes clear, are the ships that ply the Atlantic Ocean. There are numerous sorts, two of which are shown here. To the west of the coasts of France and Portugal are several three-masted carraks, which featured deep holds for carrying large cargo. Further south, off the coast of Africa, is a small caravel, the chief ship used for coastal exploration. The Treaty of Tordesillas (1491) neatly divided the New World (the MVNDVS NOVVS on the map) between Portugal and Spain, and a slight modification in 1506 allowed Portugal to claim the east coast of what is today Brazil. The cartographers emphasized this by festooning the coast with a riot of flags.

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bus lum Co San Salvador Cuba

Honduras

Hispaniola

Azores 1493

Portugal Lisbon

Naples

Spain Seville Ceuta

Madeira

Cairo

Columbus 1492

Canary Is.

Africa

India

Jiddah

Atlantic Ocean Cape Verde

Goa

Aden

Calicut

Trinidad

Spa nis hM ai

8 149

n

(Equator)

Mombassa

az

Br

1 4 8 7-

il

97 14

Indian Ocean Sofala

8 Cape of Good Hope

Spanish voyages Portuguese voyages

Map 8.6 Long-Distance Sea Voyages of the 15th cent.

0 0

750 500

1,500 km 1,000 mi

voyageS As we have seen, thirteenth-century merchants from Genoa and Majorca made the initial forays into the Atlantic. In the fifteenth century, the initiative to go further came from the Portuguese royal house. The enticements were gold and slaves as well as honor and glory. Under King João I (r.1385–1433) and his successors, Portugal extended its rule to the Muslim port of Ceuta and a few other nearby cities. (See Map 8.6.) A bit later came expeditions to explore the African coast. In the mid-1450s, Portuguese sailors reached the Cape Verde Islands and penetrated inland via the Senegal and Gambia Rivers. A generation later, they were working their way far past the equator. In 1487, Bartolomeu Dias rounded the southern tip of Africa (soon thereafter named the Cape of Good Hope), opening a new route that Vasco da Gama sailed about ten years later all the way to Calicut (today Kozhikode) in India. At the end of the century, Portuguese navigators began to explore the Spanish Main and Brazil. Such voyages had goals beyond trade and adventure. They were the prelude to colonization. Already in the 1440s, João’s son Henrique (known as Henry “the Navigator”) was portioning out the uninhabited islands of Madeira and the Azores to those of his followers who promised to find peasants to settle them. The Azores produced grain, but, with financing by the Genoese, Madeira began to grow cane sugar. The product took Europe

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by storm. Demand was so high that some decades later, when few European settlers could be found to work sugar plantations on the Cape Verde Islands, the Genoese Antonio da Noli, discoverer and governor of the islands, brought in Black Africans as slaves instead. Cape Verde was a microcosm of later European colonialism, which depended on just such forced labor. Portugal’s successes and pretensions roused the hostility and rivalry of Castile. Ferdinand and Isabella’s determination to conquer the Canary Islands was in part their “answer” to Portugal’s Cape Verde. When, in 1492, they half-heartedly sponsored the Genoese Christopher Columbus (1451–1506) on a westward voyage across the Atlantic, they were trying to best Portugal at its own game. Although the conquistadores confronted a New World, they did so with the expectations and categories of the Old. When the Spaniard Hernán Cortés (1485–1547) began his conquest of Mexico, he boasted in a letter home that he had reprimanded one of the native chiefs for thinking that Mutezuma, the Aztec ruler who controlled much of Mexico at the time, was worthy of allegiance: I replied by telling him of the great power of Your Majesty [Emperor Charles V, who was king of Spain] and of the many other princes, greater than Mutezuma, who were Your Highness’s vassals and considered it no small favor to be so; Mutezuma also would become one, as would all the natives of these lands. I therefore asked him to become one, for if he did it would be greatly to his honor and advantage, but if, on the other hand, he refused to obey, he would be punished.14 Kings, emperors, vassals: the old expectations lived on. *

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Between the years 1350 and 1500, much of the Islamic world came under the control of the Ottomans, who also gobbled up the Byzantine empire and made inroads even further west. The plague hit the Afro-Eurasian continent, and perhaps half the population of Western Europe and many others elsewhere perished. The Hundred Years’ War wreaked havoc in Europe when archers shot and cannons roared, and it let loose armies of freebooters in both town and country even during its interstices of peace. The Roman Church splintered as the Great Schism and then national churches tore at the loyalties of churchmen and laity alike. These events were transformative, and not always for the worse. Much of the Islamic world found stability under the Ottomans, and although the Byzantines suffered much, some found homes elsewhere – or lived on under Ottoman rule. The Black Death helped the peasants in England to loosen the bonds of serfdom. It galvanized new interest in the body – in death but also in pleasure, in mystical experiences, and in the arts. Inventions 14 Hernán Cortés, The Second Letter, in Reading the Middle Ages, pp. 497–500.

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allowed sea-faring adventurers to take gold and land via the high seas; and everywhere bibliophiles and artists found wisdom and beauty in the classical past. Princes east and west flexed the muscles of sovereignty. History books normally divide this period into two parts, the “crises” going into a chapter on the Middle Ages, the creativity saved for a chapter on the Renaissance. But the two happened together, and, as they demonstrate, a crisis for one group was a creative moment for another.

EPILOGUE All periods are “named” arbitrarily. No one woke up in 1500 thinking that the Middle Ages was over. But the humanists did have a name for the period between classical antiquity and their own day, and that term has prevailed. And so, by general common agreement, the “Middle Ages” is said to end in about 1500, when Europeans became aware of the Americas, when Nicolaus Copernicus (d.1543) discovered that the earth circles the sun and not the other way around, and when the Protestant Reformation shattered whatever was left of a united Christendom. Nevertheless, we may wish to challenge the date – and even the idea of an “end.” Certainly, many aspects of the Middle Ages remain today in recognizable bits and pieces. This is easy to see when we consider the persistence of universities, parliaments, ideas about God and human nature, the papacy, and Romanesque and Gothic churches. The monks and nuns living today still follow the sixth-century Benedictine Rule. It is less easy to see, but certainly arguable, in the instance of less palpable things: our loves and hates, our pleasures and pains. Much of the past lives on, much falls by the wayside, and much is periodically revived. Nothing is exactly as it once had been. The fascination of history is to understand how everything around and within us partakes of both old and new.

For practice questions about the text, maps, plates, and other features – plus suggested answers – please go to www.utphistorymatters.com There you will also find all the maps, genealogies, and figures used in the book.

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FURTHER READING Aberth, John. The Black Death: A New History of the Great Mortality in Europe, 1347–1500. New York: Oxford University Press, 2021. Archambeau, Nicole. Souls under Siege: Stories of War, Plague, and Confession in Fourteenth-Century Provence. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2021. Barker, Hannah. The Most Precious Merchandise: The Mediterranean Trade in Black Sea Slaves, 1260–1500. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019. Barker, Juliet. 1381: The Year of the Peasants’ Revolt. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014. Compton, Rebekah. Venus and the Arts of Love in Renaissance Florence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. Fernández-Armesto, Felipe. Pathfinders: A Global History of Exploration. New York: Norton, 2006. Firnhaber-Baker, Justine. The Jacquerie of 1358: A French Peasants’ Revolt. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Fudge, Thomas A. Jerome of Prague and the Foundations of the Hussite Movement. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Imber, Colin. The Ottoman Empire, 1300–1650: The Structure of Power. 2nd ed. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Jones, Robert W., and Peter Coss, eds. A Companion to Chivalry. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell & Brewer, 2019. Kamen, Henry. The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision. 4th ed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014. Kelly, Joan. “Did Women Have a Renaissance?” In Women, History, and Theory: The Essays of Joan Kelly, pp. 19–50. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984. Sumption, Jonathan. The Hundred Years War. 4 vols. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991–2015. Taylor, Larissa Juliet. The Virgin Warrior: The Life and Death of Joan of Arc. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010. Tzafrir, Barzilay. Poisoned Wells: Accusations, Persecutions, and Minorities in Medieval Europe, 1321–1422. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022. Varlik, Nükhet. Plague and Empire in the Early Modern Mediterranean World: The Ottoman Experience, 1347–1600. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Watts, John. The Making of Polities: Europe, 1300–1500. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Wheeler, Bonnie, and Charles Wood, eds. Fresh Verdicts on Joan of Arc. New York: Routledge, 1996.

Further Reading

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SOURCES PLATES 4.1 Vitr/26/2, fol. 208v. Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid. 4.2 © Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo, Norway. CC BY-SA 4.0. 4.3 T-S 12.338 (1r). Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library. 4.4 Ivan Vdovin/Alamy Stock Photo. 4.5 akg-images/De Agostini Picture Library. 4.6 Detail from MS Vat. lat. 5729, fol. 342r. © 2022 Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. 4.7 Cotton MS Tiberius B V/1, fol. 3r. British Library, London, UK/Bridgeman Images. 4.8 MS 24, fol. 52v. Reproduced by permission of Bibliothek der Stadt Trier/Stadtarchiv Trier. 4.9 National Museum of Antiquities, Leiden (a 1913/11.223d). 4.10 MS Fr. 1586, fol. 23r. Bibliothèque nationale de France. 4.11 bpk Bildagentur/Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum/B.-P. Keiser/Art Resource, NY. 5.1 B. O’Kane/Alamy Stock Photo. 5.2 Uploaded by Sbuarchi. CC BY-SA 4.0. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Inner_view_ of_north_dome_of_Isfahan_Jame_mosque.jpg. 5.3 CPA Media Pte Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo. 5.4 © Marie-Lan Nguyen. CC BY 4.0. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stele_Almeria_ Gao-Saney_MNM_R88-19-279.jpg. 5.5 Archivio fotografico del Museo Civico di Modena. Photo by Ghigo Roli. 5.6 Saint-Omer, BA, MS 698, fol. 7v. Reproduced by permission of Bibliothèque d’Agglomération du Pays de Saint-Omer. 5.7 MS Vat. lat. 4922, fol. 49r. © 2022 Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. 5.8 Sklifas Steven/Alamy Stock Photo. 5.9 Reproduced by permission of Stan Parry. 5.10 © Alinari Archives/Ghigo Roli/Art Resource, NY. 5.11 © Marage Photos/Bridgeman Images. 5.12 akg-images/De Agostini Picture Library/A. De Gregorio. 6.1 shoults/Alamy Stock Photo. 6.2 Uploaded by BabelStone. CC BY-SA 3.0. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Inner_ Mongolia_Museum_suit_of_armour_A.jpg. 6.3 Reproduced by permission of the Provost and Fellows of Eton College. 6.4 Thomas Dutour/Alamy Stock Photo. 6.5 iStock.com/ValeryEgorov. 6.6 Danita Delimont/Alamy Stock Photo. 6.7 Ivoha/Alamy Stock Photo. 6.8 Courtesy of the Royal Danish Library. 6.9 British Library, London, UK. © British Library Board. All Rights Reserved/Bridgeman Images. 6.10 Evangeliar (Codex Aureus). BSB Clm 14000. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. 7.1 Courtesy of Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin-PK. CC BY-NC-SA 3.0. http://resolver.staatsbibliothekberlin.de/SBB00002C0D00000114. 7.2 Courtesy of the Archive and Library of the Board of Trustees of the Alhambra and Generalife. 7.3 akg-images/André Held.

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7.4 British Library, London, UK. © British Library Board. All Rights Reserved/Bridgeman Images. 7.5 Institut für Stadtgeschichte Frankfurt am Main (abbreviated: ISG FFM), H.01.01 (Privilegien) no. 107, Golden Bull of Emperor Charles IV from 1356, Frankfurt copy from 1366. Photograph by Uwe Dettmar. 7.6 Copyright © Rheinisches Bildarchiv Cologne, rba_c007428. 7.7 British Library, London, UK. © British Library Board. All Rights Reserved/Bridgeman Images. 7.8 Chansons anciennes (en latin et en français) avec la musique. MS H196, fol. 49v. Copyright BIU Montpellier/DIAMM, University of Oxford. Reproduced by permission of the Bibliothèque interuniversitaire de Montpellier, Bibliothèque universitaire historique de médecine. 7.9 Reprinted by permission of the Comune di Padova–Assessorato alla Cultura. 7.10 Lamentation over Christ. Giotto di Bondone (1266–1336). Cameraphoto Arte, Venice/Art Resource, NY. 8.1 Godong/Alamy Stock Photo. 8.2 British Library, London, UK. © British Library Board. All Rights Reserved/Bridgeman Images. 8.3 “Star Ushak” carpet. Late 15th century. Wool. Gift of Joseph V. McMullan, 1958. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. 8.4 Gokhan Balci/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images. 8.5 Heritage Image Partnership Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo. 8.6 Fra Angelico, Scenes from Boccaccio’s “Il ninfale fiesolano,” ca. 1415–20. Tempera on panel, 11 3/8 in. x 49 13/16 in. (28.9 cm. x 126.5 cm.). Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, 1961.100.1. 8.7 © Susanne Kremer. 8.8 Inv. KK 27. KHM-Museumsverband. 8.9 Saint-Bavo’s Cathedral, www.artinflanders.be, photo by Dominique Provost, Hugo Maertens. 8.10 akg-images. 8.11 Miller Atlas, fol. 6r. Bibliothèque nationale de France.

FIGURES 5.1 Adapted from Wolfgang Braunfels, Monasteries of Western Europe: The Architecture of the Orders (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972), p. 84. © Dumont Buchverlag GmbH. 8.1 © George Retseck. Reproduced by permission.

MAPS 4.1 Adapted from Linda Safran, Heaven on Earth: Art and the Church in Byzantium (University Park, PA: Penn State UP, 1998), Images 1.7 and 1.9 (pp. 21 and 23). 5.1 “Byzantium and the Islamic World, c. 1090,” from Christophe Picard, Le monde musulman du XIe du XVe au siecle. © Armand Colin, 2000. ARMAND COLIN is a trademark of DUNOD Editeur. Reproduced with permission of Dunod Editeur, 11, rue Paul Bert, 92247 Malakoff. 6.7 From Atlas of Medieval Europe (Routledge, 2007). Reproduced by permission of Robert Bartlett. 8.4 From Atlas of Medieval Europe (Routledge, 2007). Reproduced by permission of Michael C.E. Jones.

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INDEX Note: Page numbers in italics indicate plates and figures. Abbasids economy, 127–28 intellectual life, 133 Abd al-Rahman III (caliph, r.912–961), 132 Abelard. See Peter Abelard Adalbert (saint), 155 Adela (sister of Henry I of England), 193 administration. See bureaucracy Adrian IV (pope), 222, 223 Adrianople, 301 See also Edirne Adriatic Sea, 124, 233 Aegean Sea, 233 Æthelstan (king of England, r.924–939), 149 “affective piety,” 201 Afonso Henriques or Afonso I (king of Portugal), 194 Africa, 134, 329, 332 East, 127 sub-Saharan, 127, 170, 211, 255, 258 West, 163, 169, 171, 210–11, 266, 292 See also Ghana; Maghreb; Mali; North Africa agriculture city control over, in Italy, 233–34 in England in 11th cent., 143 in Europe in 11th–12th cent., 175 expansion of, 234 lords and peasants in 10th–12th cent., 143–44 manse system, 234 and population growth in 13th–14th cent., 290 three-field system, 143, 175 Alba. See Scotland Albigensian Crusade (1209–1229), 231, 272 Albigensians (Cathars), 230 Alexander II (pope, 1061–1073), 183, 186, 194 Alexander III (pope, 1159–1181), 224 Alexius (emperor), 186, 188 Alexius I Comnenus (emperor, r.1081–1118), 174 Alfonso VI (king of Castile and León, r.1065–1109), 170, 194 Alfonso VII (king of Castile and León), 169 Alfonso VIII (king of Castile, r.1158–1214), 221 Alfonso X (king of Castile and León, r.1252–1284), 275

Alfred the Great (king of Wessex, r.871–899), 135, 140, 148–49 genealogy, 148 Alhambra citadel, 260–61, 261 Alighieri, Dante (1265–1321), 285 Almería (Almoravid) marble tombstone, 172 silk, 170, 171 Almohads, 170, 210–11 map of empire (c.1175), 210 Almoravids (Murabitun) in 11th–12th cent., 168–70, 171–73, 194, 195, 210 map of empire (c.1050), 169 Alp Arslan (sultan, r.1063–1072), 164 Amalfi, 129, 175, 178 Amazigh. See Berbers Amedea degli Aleardi (poet), 322–23 Americas, 258, 334. See also New World Anagni, 281 Anatolia, 123–24, 174, 186, 188 Ottomans in, 295, 300, 302 Seljuk conquest of, 163–64, 173 al-Andalus (Islamic Spain) Almohads in, 210 Almoravids in, 170, 194, 195, 210 intellectual and artistic life in 10th–11th cent., 132–33 reconquista, 183, 186, 193–95, 220, 275 Umayyads in, 132–33 See also Iberian Peninsula; Spain “Angevin,” as term, 215 Angevins, 225, 307 genealogy of kings in England, 216 of Naples, 281 realms in 12th cent. (map), 217 Anjou, 222 Ankara, 301 Anna Dalassena (d.c.1102), 174 Anselm of Bec (and Canterbury; 1033–1109), 193, 197 Ansgar (d.865), 150 Antioch, 122, 124, 189 Antiochus IV Epiphanes (ruler of Syria), 142 Antonio da Noli, 333

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apprenticeships, 238 Aquinas. See Thomas Aquinas Aquitaine, 270, 305 duke and duchess of, 180, 215 arabesque designs, 261, 262 Arabia, 128, 129 Arabian Peninsula. See Arabia Arabic language, 133–34 Arabic script. See Kufic script Arabs, 124 See also al-Andalus (Islamic Spain); Muslims; Saracens Aragon, Kingdom of, 194, 221, 225, 263, 291, 310 Aral Sea, 163, 164 archaeology Africa, 172 Northern Europe, 125 architecture dome squares of Ottomans, 304, 304 Mamluk, 260 in Renaissance, 323, 323, 324 See also churches and architecture aristocrats as knights, 235 Aristotle (d.323 BCE ), treatises, 198 Armenia, 124, 174 army after Hundred Years’ War, 309, 310 battle depiction in 11th cent., 142 Byzantine Empire, 173–74 and economy in 14th–15th cent., 312 Islamic world, 132 See also warfare Arnaud of Verniolle, 273 Artevelde, Jacob van, 314 arts currents in 13th–14th cent., 286, 290 in Germany in 10th cent., 154 of Ottomans, 302 plague and death in, 298–300, 299 Vikings, 139 Ashikpashazade, 304 Asia, 133, 134, 178, 258 steppes of, 126, 163 Assisi, 228, 245, 245 Assize of Clarendon (1166), 216 Aswan, 129, 131, 132 Atlantic exploration, 332–33

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trade, 263–64 Augustine (saint, bishop of Hippo, 354–430), 230, 284 Rule of, 227 Austria, 125, 200, 225 duke of, 219 Averroes. See Ibn Rushd Avicenna. See Ibn Sina Avignon papacy, 281, 317 Awdaghust (town), 172, 173 Ayyubids, 211, 212 Azores, 332 Badajoz, 170 Baghdad as capital of caliphate, 127–28, 134 al-Bakri (d. 1094), 171, 173 Baldwin I of Flanders (emperor), 233 Baldwin IV of Jerusalem (king, r.1174–1185), 271 Baltic, 232, 264 Baltic Crusades, 231–32 Barbastro, battle of (1064), 183, 194 Barcelona, 146 Bari, 173 Bartholomew, Peter, 189 Bartolomeu Dias, 332 Basil II (Byzantine emperor, r.976–1025), 122–25, 149 Bavaria, 141 Lower, 276 Bayezid II (sultan, r.1481–1512), 304 Bec, Norman monastery, 193 Becket, Thomas (1118–1170), 219 Bedford, duke of, 307, 328 beggars, 272 Beghards, 229 Beguines, 227, 229, 308 Béla IV (king of Hungary, r.1235–1270), 279 Bellini, Gentile (c.1429–1507), 302 Benedict (saint, d.c.550/560), and monastic rules, 228 Benedictine Rule (530–560), 228 Berbers and Islam, 168–70, 210 Bernard (saint, abbot of Clairvaux, c.1090–1153), 199–200, 231 Bernard Gui, 272 Bernart de Ventadorn ( fl. c.1147–1170), 235–36 Bertran de Born ( fl. second half of 12th cent.), 236 Bible, 148, 320 rabbinic commentaries, 270

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for taking oaths, 142 translated, 318 binding of books, 251 Birka (settlement), 125, 150 bishops in 10th–11th cent., 145, 152 power and importance, 145, 152, 228 Black Death (1346–1353), 214, 295 See also plague Black Sea, 291, 296, 314 Boccaccio (d.1375), 322 Bohemia, 155, 280, 318 Bohemond (warrior), 188 Boleslaw I the Brave (or Chrobry; duke and king, r.992–1025), 155–56 Bologna, 197, 198, 298, 312 popes based in, 316, 317 University of, 239, 319 Bonaventure (saint, c.1217–1274), 284 Boniface VIII (pope, 1294–1303), 277, 280–81 Boniface IX (pope, 1389–1404), 317 Book of Hours (c.1260–1270), 282, 283. See also liturgy books Islamic, 198 printed and printing press, 329 production of, in 12th–15th cent., 249–51, 290, 329 See also illuminated manuscripts Bosporus, 188 Bourges, 145 Bouvines, battle of (1214), 220 Brenner, Elma, 271 Brethren of the Common Life, 329 Bretislav I (prince of Bohemia, d.1055), 155 Britain languages, 148 See also England British Isles Vikings in, 135, 140 Brunelleschi, Filippo (1377–1446), 323, 323 Bruno of Cologne (archbishop), 152–53 Bruno of Cologne (Carthusian abbot, d.1101), 199 Bruno of Toul. See Leo IX Brunswick chasuble, 160 Buddhism, 257 Bukhara, 133 Bulgaria, 124, 155, 279, 301 Bulgars, 127

bull, definition, 276 Burchard (bishop of Worms), 153–54, 273 bureaucracy and administration in 12th–13th cent., 222, 225, 234 Burgundy (Duchy) disintegration of, 309 dukes of, during the Hundred Years’ War, 306, 307, 308 map (1363–1477), 308 map (c.1430), 307 and Northern Renaissance, 325, 325, 328 Buyids, 127, 134 Byzantine Empire (Byzantium) army, 173–74 centralization strengths and limits, 119–27, 156 and crusade of 13th cent., 233 description in 11th–12th cent., 173–74 dynatoi, 122–23, 124, 156, 174 fall and “continuation,” 300–2 imperial court in 10th–11th cent., 119, 121–22, 124, 174 losses of territory in 11th–12th cent., 164, 173–74 map (976–1025), 123 map (c.1090), 165 map of successor states (1204–c.1250), 232 caballeros villanos (city horsemen), 275 Caesarea, 124 Cairo, 258, 262 capital city of the Fatimids, 129 Calicut, 332 caliphs, 304 Canary Islands, 264, 333 cane sugar, 332–33 canon law (or Church law), 145, 182, 185, 226 See also Burchard; Gratian Canossa, 184, 185 Canterbury, Church of, 219 Canute. See Cnut cap, woolen, 157 Cape of Good Hope, 332 Capetians, 154–55, 195, 231 genealogy of kings in France, 196 realms in 12th cent. (map), 217 Cape Verde Islands, 333 capital, and wealth, 284 Carmathians. See Qaramita Carobert (king of Hungary, r.1308–1342), 279

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Carolingians as empire in 8th–10th cent., 154 Carpathian basin, 140–41 carpets, 302, 303 Carthusian order, 199 Casimir III the Great (king of Poland, r.1333–1370), 280 Caspian Sea, 126, 128, 163 castellans, 144, 155, 179, 279, 280 Castile, Kingdom of, 194, 221, 275, 310, 333 Cathars (Albigensians), 230 cemeteries. See graves and cemeteries Ceuta, 170, 332 chalice (c.1300), 281 chanson de geste (“song of heroic deeds”), 237 charitable institutions, 266 Charles IV (emperor, r.1347–1378), 276, 280 Charles Robert. See Carobert Charles VII (1422–1461), 307, 308 Chartres Cathedral (1195–1230) cut-out view, 241 description, 245 interior, 240 south portals, 242–43 stained glass, 244, 245 charts and maps, as inventions, 329 chasuble, 160 children, education of, 133 China, 129, 134, 258, 296, 329 Jin, 214 Ming, 300 Mongols of, 257, 292 paper invented in, 133 silk from, 159 western route to, 310 Chinggis Khan (ruler of Mongols, c.1162–1227), 213–14, 256 map of campaigns, 213 chivalry, 235, 238, 311 Chrétien de Troyes ( fl. c.1150–1190), 237 Christianity body in, 283, 318 (See also Church sacraments, Eucharist) conversion to (See conversion to Christianity) and Jews in 14th cent., 269 lay religiosity, 283 Mass, 283 sexual sins, 153–54, 273 simplicity and austerity in, 198–200, 205

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transubstantiation, 218, 283 See also Roman Catholic brand of Christianity Church (as institution) councils, 226–27, 317–18 courts in England, 218–19 indulgences, 317 movements of 13th cent., 227–30 popular religious movements in 15th cent., 318 power and rule, 318–19 reform movements in, 183, 181–83 rules in 13th cent., 226–27 schisms in 14th–15th cent., 316–18 and scholasticism, 283–85 and sexualities, 273 See also Church sacraments churches and architecture Cistercian style, 200, 206 dome and lantern in Florence, 323, 323, 324 Gothic, 240, 241–44, 245, 246–47 Romanesque, 201, 202–4, 204, 205 See also individual churches Church Fathers, 185 Church law. See canon law Church sacraments, 182, 230 baptism, 182 confession, 226 Eucharist, 226, 283, 318 marriage, 227, 273 Cicero, 153, 320 Cid (Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar), 194 Cináed mac Ailpín (Kenneth I MacAlpin; d.858), 135 ciompi, 316 Cistercian churches, 200, 206 Cistercians, 199, 199–201, 206 Cîteaux monastery, 199–200 cities conflict in, 266–68 formation and arrangements in Europe, 177–80 governments, 266–67, 275 and the plague, 298 population in 14th cent., 266, 267 and trade, 265–66 in Western Europe in 10th–11th cent., 146 See also towns Clare (noblewoman), 228 Clement VII (pope), 317 clergy, 221, 230, 257, 276 in bishops’ election, 152, 182

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and chastity, 153 English, 219 married, 185 as “order,” 274, 277, 292 reformed, 226, and taxation, 281 climate change, 290 cloth and clothing in 14th cent., 158, 159 and Church, 159–60, 160 description, production, and use, 157, 159–60 guilds, 238 woolen cap, 157 Cluny monastery, 180–82, 198, 201 Cnut (or Canute) (king of England, r.1016–1035), 149, 192 Codex Aureus (870), 251 coins, 125, 266 Cologne, 152, 153, 175, 188 colonization, 233, 332–33 colors and dyes, 159 Columbus, Christopher, 310, 333 Comares Palace, Alhambra (mid-14th cent.), 260–61, 261 Commedia (Dante), 285 “commercial revolution,” 178 communes, in Italy, 179–80, 224, 234, 267 Communion. See Church sacraments, Eucharist Comnenian dynasty, genealogy, 174 compass, 329 Compendium of Chronicles, 256 Concordat of Worms (1122), 184 Conrad III (king and emperor, r.1138–1152), 222 Constance (heiress of the Norman Kingdom of Sicily), 224 Constantine Dalassenos, 121, 122, 124 Constantine IX (emperor of Byzantium, r.1042– 1055), 174 Constantinople, 119–21, 233, 302 map (c.1100), 120 Constitutions of Melfi (1231), 225 contado, 146, 224, 233–34 conversion to Christianity in Baltic, 232 of Jews, 310 in Poland, 155–56 of Rus’, 126–27 in Scandinavia, 150 in Spain, 310

by Vikings, 140 conversion to Islam, 256, 257–58 conversos, 310 Córdoba, 132–33 Cortés, Hernán (1485–1547), 333 cortes. See Spain cotton, 157, 159 Council of Constance (1414–1418), 317–18 Council of Pisa (1409), 317 countryside crops as market in 13th–14th cent., 291–92 and formation of towns, 177 and the plague, 298 roving soldiers in 15th cent., 309 courtiers, in 14th–15th cent., 311 Courtrai, battle of (1302), 267 courts in Byzantine Empire in 10th–11th cent., 119, 121–22, 124, 174 culture in 11th–12th cent., 235–38 in England in 11th–12th cent., 218–19 Ottoman, 302 See also Spain, cortes Crac des Chevaliers, 190–91, 191 Crécy, battle of (1346), 305 Crete, 122, 233 Crusader States, 189–92, 211 crusades in 13th cent., 231–33 Albigensian, 231, 272 and colonization, 232–33 First Crusade, 186–89 Second Crusade, 191–92 Third Crusade, 219 Fourth Crusade, 232, 233 Cuenca, 210, 221 Cyprus, 122, 219 Dagobert (king), 183 Dalassenos family, 124, 174 Damian, Peter. See Peter Damian Dance of Death (genre), 300 Dandanqan, battle of (1040), 164 Dandolo, Enrico (Venetian doge, r.1192–1205), 266 Danelaw, 135 Danes, 148, 150, 231 Dante Alighieri. See Alighieri, Dante Danube River and region, 119, 122, 140 Danzig, 264

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Death of the Virgin (1205–1215) stained glass, 244 Decretum (by Burchard, 1008/1012), 153–54 Decretum (by Gratian, c.1140), 185 Denmark, kings and conversion, 150 devotio moderna (the “new devotion”) movement, 329 Dias, Bartolomeu, 332 Diddington manor, 193 Diego (friar), 228 Dijon, 307 A Dispute between the Body and Worms (1435–1440), 299 Divine Comedy. See Commedia dome and lantern of cathedral, 323, 323, 324 Domesday Book, 193 Dominic (saint, 1170–1221), 227–28, 230 Dominicans, 228 Donation of Constantine, 322 Donizo (monk/abbot), 185 Drendel, John, 290 Duns Scotus, John (1265/1266–1308), 284 Dunstable, John, 328 Dunstan (saint, d.988), 250 Dürer, Albrecht, 325, 328, 329 dynatoi. See Byzantine Empire; elite East Central Europe map (c.1300), 278 new states, 155–56, 279–80 Eckhart (d.1327/1328), 284 economy Abbasid, 127–28 Byzantine, 174 decline in 14th–15th cent., 312, 314 expansion in Europe, 175, 178–79 Fatimid, 129 food and crops in 13th–14th cent., 291 Iraqi, 128 and the plague, 298 profit, 182, 263–66 rural, 170 See also guilds; trade Edessa, County of, 189, 191, 211 Edirne, 301 building complex, 304 Edmund of Haddenham, 270 education. See learning Edward I (king of England, r.1272–1307), 269, 277, 281 Edward III (king of England, r.1327–1377), 296, 298, 305, 314

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Edward the Confessor (king of England, r.1042– 1066), 192 Egbert Codex, Raising of Lazarus (985–990), 153, 154 Egbert of Trier (archbishop, r.977– 993), 154 Egypt Fatimids in, 129–32 flax, 129 Jews in, 129, 129, 178 Saladin in, 211–12 Elbe River, 151, 232 Eleanor (duchess of Aquitaine), 215 elite in 14th–15th cent., 311 as art patrons, 286, 290 dynatoi as, 122–23, 124 in England in 13th cent., 220 knights as, 233, 235 Elliott, Dyan, 273 emotions, 201, 229, 243, 285, 290 England in 11th–12th cent., 215–20 agriculture in 11th cent., 143 connection with Continent, 193, 220 conquest of, 150 hegemony in France (map, c.1430), 307 Hundred Years’ War, 305–8, 310, 314 and Jews in 14th cent., 269–70, 270 kings and army in 15th cent., 310 kingships 9th–11th cent., 148–49 kings in Hundred Years’ War, 306 kings of Yorkist and Lancastrian (Tudor) dynasties, 309 knights in 14th–15th cent., 311 land inventory in 11th cent., 192–93 local authorities in 10th cent., 149n11 Magna Carta (1215), 220 music in Renaissance, 328 Norman rule (1066–1100), 192–93 Parliament, 276–77 and the plague, 298 popular religious movements in 15th cent., 318 power and rule in 14th cent., 276–77 reforms of Alfred, 140, 148 revolts, 315–16 royal justice in 12th cent., 215–19, 311 union and disunity in 10th cent., 149 Vikings in, 135, 140 See also Britain

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English Channel, 175 enslavement in 14th–15th cent., 314 in Egypt, 129, 178 in Islamic world, 127–28 Essouk-Tadmekka (Ghana), 172 “estates” (or orders), 275, 277–79 Estates General (French), 279, 314 Estonia, 232 eunuchs, 121 Euphrates River, 119, 122, 211 Europe ambitions and changes in 11th–12th cent., 215 in Crusader States, 189–92 economic expansion, 175, 178–79 expanding horizons in 13th–14th cent., 263–68 map (c.1050), 147 power and rule in 14th cent., 274–79 towns and cities in 11th–12th cent., 175, 177–80 trade in 11th–12th cent., 175, 178 trade in 13th–14th cent., 263–66 See also East Central Europe; Western Europe exploration. See travels and voyages Eyck, Hubert and Jan van, 326–27 families and heirs, in 11th cent., 145 farming, 168 Magyar, 140–41 farms, 290–91 fashion, in 14th cent., 159 fasting Christian, 297 Fatimids cemetery, 129, 130–31, 132 as rulers, 129, 132, 140 Favereau, Marie, 258 fealty (to a lord). See homage feast of Corpus Christi (the Body of Christ), 283 Ferdinand (king of Spain, r.1479–1516), 310, 333 feudalism, as term and in Europe, 141 fief (feodum), description of, 141 finances, organization of, 234 First Crusade (1096–1099), 186–89 map, 187 Flamenca (text), 159 Flanders, 266–67, 314 flax, 129 Florence, 312, 320 Black Death in, 297, 298

cathedral, dome and lantern (1420–1446), 323, 323, 324 mint, 266 professional guilds in, 238 revolt by the ciompi at, 316 rulers of, 310, 321, 325 food shortages in 13th–14th cent., 290–92 Fountains Abbey, 199, 200–1 Fourth Crusade, 233 map (1204–c.1250), 232 Fourth Lateran Council (1215), 226–27, 269 Fra Angelico, 320–21 France in 11th–13th cent., 195, 221–22 heretics in, 230 Hundred Years’ War, 305–8, 309, 314 as Ile-de-France, 154–55, 195, 222, 270 Jews in 14th cent., 270 king and army in 15th cent., 309 kingships 10th–11th cent., 154–55 kings in Hundred Years’ War, 306 monarchs and estates in 13th–14th cent., 277, 279 “Peace of God” movement, 145 power and rule in 14th cent., 278–79 revolts, 314–15 taxation in 13th–14th cent., 291 Franciscans, 228 Francis of Assisi (saint, 1181/1182–1226), 228 Franconian notation, 286 Franco of Cologne, 286 Frederick I Barbarossa (king and emperor, r.1152– 1190), 222–25 Frederick II (king and emperor, 1194–1250), 224–25 Free Companies. See mercenaries friars, 227–29, 283–84 Friday Mosque. See Isfahan mosque Froissart, Jean (chronicler), 305, 315 fueros. See laws Fustat (Egypt), 129 Gallipoli, 300 Gambia River, 332 Gao (or Saney) site (Ghana), 171, 172 garments. See cloth and clothing Gediminas (duke of Lithuania, r.c.1315/1316–1341), 280 Genghis Khan. See Chinggis Khan Genoa, 263, 264, 266

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Germany and devotio moderna, 329 and Empire in 12th cent., 222–25 free peasants in, 144 genealogy of rulers in 12th cent., 223 in Investiture Conflict, 183–84, 185 Jews in, 186–88 kingships 10th–11th cent., 151–54 learning in 10th–11th cent., 152–53, 154 map in 12th cent., 224 map of settlement in the Baltic Sea region (12th–14th cent.), 231 ministerials in 14th cent., 275–76 Géza (prince of Hungary, r.972–997), 156 Ghana empire/kingdom, 171, 172, 211 map (c.1050), 169 Ghazan (khan, r.1295–1304), 256, 257 Ghent Altarpiece, 325, 326–27 Gibellines (imperial supporters), 267 Gibraltar, Strait of, 263 Giotto (1266/1267–1337), 287–89, 290 gold coins, 266 Golden book of Gospels, 251 Golden Bull (1356), 275, 276 Golden Horde khanate, 256–57, 258 goldwork, 325 Gomez, Michael A., 173 Gothic architecture in churches, 240, 241–44, 246–47 description, 240, 245 governance, of towns, 233–34 governments in cities and towns, 179–80, 266–68, 275 representative government, 277 secular in 14th cent., 274 Granada, in 14th cent., 260 Grand Chartreuse monastery, 199 Gratian (Italian scholar), 185, 198 See also canon law graves and cemeteries in Almería (Almoravid), 172 double tombs, 298, 299 of Fatimids, 129, 130–31, 132 and goods from Senegal in 14th cent., 262 of Vikings and Rus, 125, 139 Great Famine (1315–1322), 290–92 Great Palace of Constantinople, 119–21 Great Seal of King John (1203), 219 Great Seljuk sultanate (c.1040–1194), 164–67 genealogy, 166

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Great Western Schism of papacy (1378–1417), 316–17 Greece and fall of Byzantium, 302 Greek Orthodox Church, 182 Green, Monica, 214 “Gregorian Reform” movement, 181–83 Gregory VII (pope, 1073–1085), 182, 183–84, 194 Gregory XI (pope, 1370–1378), 317 Groote, Gerhard (1340–1384), 329 Guelfs (papal supporters), 267 Gui, Bernard (inquisitor), 272 guilds, 179, 216, 233, 238–40 Guillaume de Lorris, 285 Guillaume de Machaut, 157 Guinevere and Lancelot, 237–38 Gutenberg, Johann, 329 Habsburgs (dynasty), 225 hairesis. See heresy Haithabu (settlement), 146 Hamburg Bible (1255), 249 Hanseatic League, 264–65 Harald Bluetooth (king of Denmark, r.c.958–c.986), 150 Harald Hardrada (king of Norway), 192 Harmony of Discordant Canons. See Decretum (by Gratian) Harold Godwineson (king of England), 192 Hastings, battle of (1066), 192 Hattin, battle of (1187), 212 Heng, Geraldine, 173, 269 Henrique (Henry “the Navigator”; 1394–1460), 332 Henry I (king of England, r.1100–1135), 180, 193 Henry I (king of Germany, r.919–936), 151 Henry II (king and emperor, r.1002–1024), 152 Henry II (king of England, r.1154–1189), 215, 216, 218, 219 Henry III (d.1056), 155 Henry III (king and emperor, r.1039–1056), 182 Henry III (king of England, r.1216–1272), 269, 276–77 genealogy of progeny, 269 Henry III of England (boy-king), 227 Henry IV (king and emperor, r.1056–1106), 183–84, 185 Henry V (king of England, r.1413–1422), 307 Henry of Burgundy (count of Portugal), 194 Henry the Lion (duke of Saxony), 232 Henry “the Navigator.” See Henrique (Henry “the Navigator”)

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heraldry, 311 heresy, 273, 283 Beguines accused of, 229 Jewish religion as, 124 Templars accused of, 279 heretics, 230, 231, 272 Hildebrand of Soana (later Pope Gregory VII), 182 Hildesheim, 153 hoards discovered, 125 Holland, 175 Holmes, Catherine, 124 Holy Land, 188, 189, 191, 209, 231, 233 pilgrimage to the, 186 See also Crusader States Holy Roman Empire, 225, 275, 276, 310 homage, act of, 142–43, 155, 190, 215, 222, 237 See also vassals and vassalage Homer, 302 homosexuality, 273–74 Horace, 153 Hospitallers, 191 houses, in Europe in 11th–12th cent., 178 Hugh (abbot, 1049–1109), 198 Hugh Capet (king of France, r.987–996), 154, 155 Hulegu (d.1265), 214 humanitas and humanists, 319–21, 322 human trafficking, 173 Humbert of Silva Candida, 182 Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453), 305–8, 314 consequences, 309–10 genealogy of kings and dukes, 306 Hungarians, map of travels (9th and 11th cent.), 136–37 See also Magyars Hungary, 156, 279 Hus, Jan (1369/71–1415), 318 Hussites, 318 Hymes, Robert, 214 Iberian Peninsula in 11th cent., 193–95 map (c.1140), 195 Ibn Rushd (1126–1198), 198 Ibn Sina (980–1037), 133 Iceland, 135 Ifriqiya, 140, 173 Ile-de-France, 154–55, 195, 222, 270 Iliad (Homer), 302 Ilkhanid khanate, 257–58

illuminated manuscripts, 249, 250, 251 making of, 249–51 imam. See Islam Imazighen. See Berbers India, 129, 332 indulgences of Church, 317 Innocent III (pope, 1198–1216), 226, 228, 231, 233 Inquisition, 272 interiority (in humans), 329 inventions, 329 Investiture Conflict (or Controversy), 183, 183–85 See also “Gregorian Reform” movement iqta, 132, 165, 167 Iran, 128, 133, 164 emirs of, 167 Iraq, 126–27, 164 emirs of, 167 Ireland, 135 English conquest of, 215, 248 vernacular language in, 148 Isabella (queen of Spain, r.1474–1504), 310, 333 Isabella d’Este (marchioness, 1474–1539), 325 Isfahan mosque, 165, 167, 168 Islam Arabic language, 133–34 caliphs in, 304 cemetery, 129, 130–31, 132 conversion to, 256, 257–58 imam, 129, 134 iwans, 165, 167 Mahdi, 129, 134 in Mali in 14th cent., 262 quietism, 134 Shi‘ism, 129, 134, 163, 164 Sufis, 168 Sunnism, 163, 164, 206 See also Muslims Islamic Spain. See al-Andalus Islamic world arabesque designs, 261, 262 army, 132 artistic and intellectual life in 10th–11th cent., 132–34 decentralization in 10th–12th cent., 127–32, 156, 211 expansion in 13th–14th cent., 255–62 and First Crusade, 188 influences on Ottomans, 302–4 knowledge and books, 198

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map (c.1000), 128 map of West (c.1300), 260 minaret, 211 reshaping in 11th–12th cent., 209–14 silver coins, 125 taxes, 127 trade, 134, 211 Isma‘ilism, 129 Istanbul, 302 See also Constantinople Italic League, 312 Italy city governments, 267–68 city-states, 222, 225, 312 coins, 266 communes, 179–80, 224, 234, 267 and Empire in 12th cent., 224–25 food as market in 13th–14th cent., 291 map in 12th cent., 224 Normans in, 173 Renaissance in, 319–23 revolts, 316 rulers in 15th cent., 310 taxation, 234 towns and governance, 233–34 trade, 263–64 urban life and merchants, 146, 179–80 women in 15th cent., 322–23 Iznik (Nicaea), 188 Jacquerie uprising (1378), 314–15 Jacques Bonhomme, 315 Jagiellon (dynasty), 280 Janissaries, 301 Jazira, 211 Jean de Meun (poet), 285 Jeanne d’Arc ( Joan of Arc), 305, 307–8 Jerusalem and First Crusade, 186, 188–89 Seljuks in, 168 Jesch, Judith, 135 Jews badge with white tablets, 227, 269, 270 in Byzantine Empire, 124 in Egypt, 129, 178 in England in 14th cent., 269–70, 270 and First Crusade, 186, 188 geniza, 129, 129 in Germany, 186–88

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identification in 13th cent., 227 and the plague, 300 in Spain in 15th cent., 310 terms for, 187n11 and xenophobia in 13th–14th cent., 269–70, 274 João I (king of Portugal, r.1385–1433), 332 Jogaila (r.1377–1434) (also Władysław II), 280 John (king of England, r.1199–1216), 219, 219–20, 222 John II (king of France), 314 John XXIII (pope), 317 John Skylitzes (d.1101), 122 John the Orphanotrophos, 121, 122 Juliana of Mont Cornillon (1193–1258), 283 Justinian (emperor of Byzantium, r.527–565) and sexualities, 273 Kabul, 127 Kazakhstan, 163 Kelly, Joan, 322 Kenneth I MacAlpin (Cináed mac Ailpín; d.858), 135 Khazars, 125–26 Kievan Rus’, 125–26 map (c.1050), 126 See also Rus’ (state) knights in 12th–13th cent., 233, 235 in 14th–15th cent., 311 See also names of individual knightly orders Knights Templar, 191, 279 Kraemer, Joel L., 132 Kufic script, 160 Kutubiyya Mosque, 211, 211 La Garde-Freinet, 140 laity and the Bible, 318 reform of, 226 Lamentation of Christ (1304–1306), 288–89, 290 Lancastrian (Tudor) kings, 310 genealogy, 309 Lancelot and Guinevere, 237–38 land grants in Byzantium, 174 inventory in England in 11th cent., 192–93 iqta, 132, 165, 167 Landi (family), 267 landlords, and food issues in 13th–14th cent., 291

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landownership, 144, 218 Lanfranco (architect), 201, 202 Languedoc, crusade of 13th cent., 231 Latin Empire, map (1204–c.1250), 232 Latin language, 319, 322 law civil law, 218 common law, 216 expansion in England in 12th cent., 215–19, 311 law codes, 148–49, 198 law courts, 185, 275 laws against the Jews, 227 Eastern polities, 280 English, 135, 148, 149 Italian city-states, 179 Spanish fueros, 221 sumptuary, 159 See also canon law lay religiosity, 283 learning and education in 12th cent., 197–98 in al-Andalus, 132–33 in Germany in 10–11th cent., 152–53, 154 madrasas, 164, 171 and scholasticism, 283–85 schools, 133, 153, 197–98 See also universities Lechfeld, battle of (955), 141 Legnano, battle of (1176), 224 Leo IX (pope, 1049–1054), 182 León, Kingdom of, 170, 194, 275 lepers, 270–72 leprosaries (hospitals for lepers), 271, 274 letters (correspondence), 129, 129 Lewes, battle of (1264), 277 liberal arts, 197, 239 libraries, in al-Andalus, 132–33 Life of Matilda (Donizo), 185 Line, Philip, 150 literature courtly, 235–38 in Islamic world, 167 vernacular literature in 13th–14th cent., 285 Lithuania, 280 liturgy, 194, 201, 286 Lodi, peace of (1454), 312 logic, as knowledge, 197, 198 Lombard. See Peter Lombard

Lombards included in the Byzantine Empire, 124 London, and urban independence, 180 lords, in 10th–11th cent., 141–44 Louis VI the Fat (king of France, r.1108–1137), 195 Louis IX (king of France, r.1226–1270), 270, 277 genealogy of progeny, 271 love, 236, 237–38, 285 lovers, and clothing, 158, 159 Low Countries, 146, 229, 283, 329 Luther, Martin (1483–1546), 329 Lyon, 229 Maccabean Revolt (11th cent.), 142 Machiavelli, 310, 321 Madeira, 332 madrasas, 164, 171 Maghreb, 170, 210–11, 260, 261, 264 Magna Carta, or “Great Charter” (1215), 220, 276 Magyars (Hungarians), 137, 140–41, 156 map, 137 See also Hungary Majolus (abbot of Cluny), 140 Mali, as empire in 14th cent., 261–62 Malikshah I (sultan, r.1072–1092), 164, 165 Mamluks, 212, 255, 258, 260 manuscripts, production in 12th–13th cent., 249–51 See also illuminated manuscripts Manzikert, battle of (1071), 164 maps and charts, as inventions, 329 Marcel, Étienne, 314, 315 marginalized groups in 13th–14th cent., 269–74 Marina (saint), 273 marriage in 10th–11th cent., 145 and Church in 13th cent., 227 of clerics, 182, 185, 273 description in 7th–8th cent., 144–45 Martin V (pope), 317 Mary (mother of God) and Book of Hours, 282, 283 Mary of Oignies (1177–1213), 229 Mass, 283 See also liturgy masters, in universities, 239, 240 Mas‘ud I (sultan, r.1030–1041), 164 Matilda (countess), 184, 185 Maximianus, clothing of, 159 Meaux, massacre of the rebels, 315

INDEX

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349

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Medici, Giuliano and Lorenzo, 310 Medici family, 320, 322, 325 medicine, schools of, 239 Mediterranean region, 157, 159, 235, 290, 291 map, 187 Mehmed II the Conqueror (sultan, r.1444–1446 and 1451–1481), 301–2 Meister Eckhart. See Eckhart Mell, Julie L., 269 mercenaries, 141, 173, 312, 317 and the First Crusade, 186 Free Companies, 309 Genoese, 305 Norman, 124 Seljuk Turks, 163 Turkish, 128 Varangian Guard, 123, 124 merchants, 146, 177, 178, 291, 312 See also trade Metz, 188 Mexico, 333 Michael IV (r.1034–1041), 121 Middle Ages, end as period, 334 Mieszko I (duke of Poland, r.c.960–992), 155 mihrab, 165 Milan, 179–80, 183, 312 Miller Atlas (1519), 330–31 Ming (dynasty), 300 miniature of Saint Dunstan (12th cent.), 250 ministerials, 275–76 mints, 266 Modena Cathedral cut-out view, 205 description, 201, 204 interior, 202, 204 sculpted panels, 179, 202, 204, 204 west facade, 203 money, 266 See also coins money lending (usury), 269 Mongol Empire armor, 214 description and expansion, 212–15, 255, 256, 256–58, 279, 296, 300 genealogy of khans, 259 khanates, 256–57, 257 map (c.1290), 257 and the plague, 214, 296 “Mongol exchange,” 258

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monks and monasteries book production, 249–50 changes and learning in 12th cent., 198–201 in Crusader States, 191 lay vs. choir monks, 200–1 pope as protector, 180–81, 182 songs, 236 and vassals, 142 Montpellier, 197 University of, 239 Morocco, 261, 264 mosques, building by Great Seljuk sultanate, 164–67 See also individual mosques motet, 286, 286, 328 al-Mufid (caliph, d.1022), 134 Murabitun. See Almoravids Musa (Mansa [king of Mali]), 262 music motet, 286, 286, 328 notation, 286, 286 polyphony, 286 in Renaissance (14th cent.), 325, 328 rhythm, 286 Muslims in Europe in 9th–10th cent., 137, 140 and First Crusade, 186 map of travels (9th and 11th cent.), 136–37 Shi‘ites vs. Sunni, 134, 164 See also Islam al-Mustansir (caliph, 1036–1094), 132 al-Mutamin (ruler), 194 Mutezuma (Aztec ruler), 333 mystics and mystical yearning, 229, 308, 319, 333 Islamic Sufis, 168 Nahray ben Nissim, 129, 129 Naples, in 14th–15th cent., 312 Nasrids, 260 national sovereignty, 281 Navarre, Kingdom of, 194, 221 peasants in, 292 navy Anglo-Saxon, 140, 148 English, 220 Islamic, 140 Ottoman, 304 New World, 310, 329, 333 Nizam al-Mulk (d.1092), 164, 165 nobles, in 14th–15th cent., 311

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Normandy, Vikings in, 140 Normans in Byzantium, 173 in France, 222 in genealogy of kings in England, 192 map, 193 rule of England (1066–1100), 192–93 in Sicily, 173, 182–83 North Africa Berbers in, 129 commerce in, 175, 264 Fatimids in, 132 map (c.1275), 221 map (c.1300), 260 northern Europe archaeology, 125 Renaissance (14th cent.), 324–25 trade, 125–26, 264–65 North Sea, 134, 175, 178 Norway, kings and conversion, 150 Novel (New Law) (934), 122–23 Novgorod, 125, 126, 135 Nur al-Din (emir, r.1146–1174), 211, 212 Nymph of Fiesole (1430–1440?), 320–21, 322 Oder River, 151, 232 officials Byzantine, 121 English sheriffs, 149, 180, 216, 218, 220, 277 French, 195, 222, 270, 291 Italian podestà, 224, 267 Mongol, 256 salaried, 141, 225, 234 Spanish, 221 Olav Haraldsson (king of Norway, r.1015–1030), 150 Olivi, Peter (1248–1298), 284 Order of the Brothers of the Sword, 232 Order of the Garter, 311 Order of the Golden Buckle, 311 Order of the Golden Fleece, 311 orders (or “estates”), 275, 277 Orléans, siege of (1429), 308 Orontes River, 211 Orthodox Church, and Mongols, 257 Oseberg ship, 138–39 Osma, 228 Othman (sultan, d.1324/1326), 300 Otto I (king and emperor, r.936–973), 141, 151–52 Otto II (king and emperor, r.961–983), 152

Otto III (king and emperor, r.983–1002), 152 Otto IV of Brunswick (emperor), 220 Ottokar II (king of Bohemia, r.1253–1278), 280 Ottoman Empire dome squares, 304, 304 map (c.1500), 301 rise and expansion, 295–96, 300–4 Ottonians genealogy, 151 rule of, 151–54, 155 Ourique, battle of (1139), 194 Oxford, 276 University of, 239 Padua, 290 paint, 251 paintings, in 13th–14th cent., 290 Palermo, 173, 198 See also Sicily and Kingdom of Sicily papacy. See Pope and papacy “papal primacy” doctrine, 182–83, 185 paper, in Islamic world, 133 parchment and parchmenters, 249, 250 Paris University of, 239 Parlement in France, 277 parliaments, in 13th–14th cent., 274, 276–77 See also courts; Estates General; law courts Paterson, Linda, 236 Paul (saint), 180 “Peace of God” movement, 145 peasants in 10th–11th cent., 143–44 manse system, 234 “Peasants’ (or People’s) Crusade,” 186, 188 Pechenegs, 124, 173, 174 pens, 250 Pericopes, 153 Persian Gulf, 134, 164 Peter (saint, bishop of Rome), 155, 180, 183 Peter Abelard (1079–1142), 197–98, 284 Peter Damian, 182 Peter Lombard (c.1100–1160), 197–98, 284 Peter the Hermit, 186 Petrarch, Francis (1304–1374), 281, 319–20 Philip II (king of France, r.1180–1223), 219, 220, 221–22 Philip II Augustus (king), 270 Philip IV the Fair (king of France, r.1285–1314), 270, 277, 279, 280–81

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351

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Philip VI (king of France, 1328–1350), 305 Philip the Bold (duke of Burgundy, r.1364–1404), 307 Philip the Good (r.1419–1467), 307, 325 Piacenza, 267–68 map (late 13th cent.), 268 Piast (ducal dynasty), 279 Pico della Mirandola, 319–20 pilgrimage, 186, 206, 272, 298, 300 Muslim hajj, 262 pilgrims, 168, 194, 272 at Mecca, 262 Pisa, 175, 178, 234, 264, 265 plague in 7th cent., 297 Black Death (1347–1353), 214, 295 and death, 298–300, 299 deaths in, 298 impact on 14th–15th cent., 295–96, 298, 312, 314 map of dispersion (13th–15th cent.), 296 remedies and rules, 297–98 second pandemic, 296–300 plows, 143, 143, 175 podestà. See officials poetry, 237–38, 285 Poland as new state, 155–56 power in 14th cent., 279–80 Polo brothers (Italian traders), 258 Pope and papacy at Avignon, 281, 317 and crusades of 13th cent., 231 in Empire in 12th cent., 222, 223–25 “holy” wars, 186 as institution, 185 in Investiture Conflict, 183–84, 185 “papal primacy” doctrine, 182–83, 185 power and role, 185, 226, 280–81 protection of monasteries, 180–81, 182 and reforms, 182–83 rivalries in 14th–15th cent., 316–17 in Rome, 146 war on Frederick I, 222–25 See also Church (as institution); individual popes popolo (“the people”), 267–68, 316 Po River, 175 portals of Chartres Cathedral, 242–43 portolan maps, 329, 330–31 Portrait of Oswolt Krel (c.1499), 325, 328, 329

352

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ports, and trade in 11th–12th cent., 178 Portugal map (c.1275), 221 portolan map of empire in 16th cent., 330–31 sea voyages, 332–33 as state, 194 poverty (religious), 159, 191, 197, 198–200, 229 Prague, 188 University of, 280 Le premier jor de mai (motet, c.1280), 286, 286 priests garments of, 159–60, 160 See also clergy primogeniture, 145 The Prince (Machiavelli), 310, 321 printing press (c.1450), 329 property law, 218, 219 taxation, 234 Protestant Reformation, 329 Provence, 140, 291 Prussia, 232 Psellus, Michael, 121 publishing houses, in 15th cent., 329 Purgatory, doctrine of, 283, 317 Pyrenees, 146, 194, 215 al-Qabisi (d.1012), 133 Qaramita, 128 quadrivium, 197 Quest of the Holy Grail, 285 “Qustantiniyya,” 302 racism, 173 Rahewin (cleric), 223–24 Raising of Lazarus, Egbert Codex (985–990), 153, 154 Rao pectoral (c.1300), 262 Rashid al-Din (co-vizier, 1247–1318), 256 Raymond II of Tripoli (count), 191 real estate and rental markets, 178 reconquista (conquest of Islamic Spain), 183, 186, 193–95, 220, 275 Le Remède de Fortune (c.1350–1355), 157 Renaissance (14th cent.) architecture in, 323, 323, 324 goldwork with gems, 325 influence, 328–29 and the “Middle Age,” 322 as movement, 322–23

INDEX

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and music, 325, 328 in northern Europe, 324–25 origins, 302, 319–22 representative government, 277 republics, in 14th–15th cent., 311–12 Reval, 264 revolts and uprisings in 14th–15th cent., 312, 314–16 massacre at Meaux, 315 Rhineland Jews, 186–88 Rhine River, 125, 186 Richard I the Lion-Heart (king of England, r.1189– 1199), 219 Richard II (king of England, r.1377–1399), 315–16 Riga, 264 Robert of Molesme (d.1111), 199 Rochester Chronicle, 270 Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, the Cid, 194 Roger II (king of Sicily, r.1130–1154), 173 Rollo (Viking leader), 140 Roman Catholic brand of Christianity divisions in 14th–15th cent., 316–18 split with Orthodox Church, 182 romances (poems), 237–38 Roman Empire end of, 302 Romanesque architecture in churches, 201, 202–4, 204, 205 Romanus I Lecapenus (Byzantine emperor, r.920– 944), 122 Rome (city) pope and papacy, 146 Roncaglia, diet of (1158), 224 Roncaglia, Rolandina, 274 Rudolf I (emperor, r.1273–1291), 225 Rum. See Seljuk sultanate of Rum Ruotger (biographer), 152 rural areas. See countryside Rus (people), 125–27, 257 Rus’ (state), 125, 126–27 sacraments. See Church sacraments Safi, 264 Sahara Desert, 168 Saint-Denis monastery, 195, 240, 251 Saint-Martin (Tours), 177 Saladin (sultan, r.1171–1193), 211–12 map of empire (c.1200), 212 Salerno, University of, 239

Salian kings and emperors, genealogy of, 181 Samarra, 127 Saney (or Gao) site (Ghana), 171, 172 San Francesco church at Assisi, 245, 246–47 Santiago de Compostela, 194 Saracens, 186, 232 Saxons, 231 Saxony, 134, 144, 231 silver mines of, 153 Scandinavia, kingships and conversion, 149–50 scholasticism, 283–85 “scholastics,” 198 schools, 133, 153, 197–98 See also learning and education Scotland, 134, 135, 228, 277 Scotti, Alberto, 267 scribes, 250, 290 Scrovegni Chapel, Padua (1304–1306), 287–89 sculpted panels, 179, 202, 204, 204 sculptors, 179 Sebastian (saint), 297 Second Crusade, 191–92 secular governments, in 14th cent., 274 self-government, of towns, 179–80 Seljuk Empire, map (c.1090), 165 Seljuk sultanate of Rum (c.1081–1308), 164, 167–68 Seljuk Turks, 163–68 See also Great Seljuk sultanate Sénanque monastery church, 200, 201 Senegal River, 262, 332 serfs, 143 sexualities in 13th–14th cent., 272–74 sexual sins, 153–54, 273 Shi‘ites and Shi‘ism Fatimids, 129, 132 vs. Sunni, 134, 164 ships in 16th cent., 329 and exploration, 332–33 Oseberg ship of Vikings, 138–39 portolan map of 16th cent., 330–31 and trade, 178, 263 Shirkuh (vizier), 211 “Sicilian Vespers,” 225 Sicily and Kingdom of Sicily Frederick I and II in, 224–25 genealogy of rulers in 12th cent., 223 Muslims in, 140 Normans in, 173, 182–83

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353

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Siena, and woolworkers, 316 signori, 267, 268 silk, 157, 159, 160, 170, 171, 238–39 silver coins, 125, 266 Simon de Montfort (c.1208–1265), 277 simony, 182 slave trade, in 14th–15th cent., 314 See also enslavement sodomy, 273–74 “song of heroic deeds” (chanson de geste), 237 songs, 235–37, 273, 286, 286 Spain in 11th cent., 193–95 in 12th–13th cent., 220–21 city governments, 275 conversion to Christianity, 310 cortes, 275, 310 Europeans in 11th–12th cent., 194 map (c.1275), 221 monarchs in 15th cent., 310 trade, 264 See also al-Andalus (Islamic Spain) Spanish Inquisition, 310 stained glass, 244, 245 Stamford Bridge, battle of (1066), 192 “Star Ushak” carpet, 302, 303 State, battle with Church, 185, 219 Statute of the Jewry (1275), 269 Staufen (dynasty), 222, 225, 276 genealogy, 223 Stephen I (prince and king of Hungary, r.997– 1038), 156 Stephen of Blois, 193 Strasbourg, 300 students, in universities, 239–40 Suger (abbot, 1081–1151), 195, 240, 245 summae, 284 Summa Theologiae, 284 Sunjata, 261–62 Sunni and Sunnism Seljuk Turks, 164–65 vs. Shi‘ites, 134, 164 Swabia, 224 Sweden, kings and conversion, 150 Swiss Confederation, 311 Synod of Sutri (1046), 182 Synopsis of Histories, 122 taifas, 132, 183, 193

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UTP SHMA 6e Vol 2 Interior-F.indd 354

Taj al-Mulk, 165 Tamerlane (Timur the Lame, 1336–1405), 300, 301 Tangier, 170 taxes and taxation Byzantine, 123 of the clergy, 281 English, 180, 192–93, 305, 315 English Danegeld, 140 English scutage, 220 French, 195, 222, 291, 314 German imperial, 225, 275 Islamic, 127, 304 Italian communes, 233–34, 267 of the Jews, 187, 269, 276 Mongol, 213, 256, 257 rights, 144, 224 Roman papal, 317 Spanish, 221, 310 Teresa (daughter of Alfonso VI), 194 “Tertiaries,” 228–29 Teter, Magda, 269 Teutonic Knights (or Teutonic order), 232 textiles. See cloth and clothing Theophylact (of Dalassenos family), 124 Third Crusade (1189–1192), 219 Thomas Aquinas (c.1225–1274), 283–84 Tigris River, 211 Timbuktu, 134, 255, 262 Timur the Lame. See Tamerlane tombs. See graves and cemeteries Toledo, 170, 198 Toscanini, Giovanni, 320–21 Tours, 177 maps (c.600 and c.1100), 177 towns culture and institutions in 13th cent., 233–35, 238–40 formation and arrangements in Europe, 177–80 governance, 233–34 self-government, 179–80 See also cities trade, maps of routes (c.1300), 264–65 See also economy; merchants; specific region or country transi tombs, 299 transubstantiation, 218, 283 travels and voyages in 14th–15th cent., 332–33 in 16th cent., 330–31

INDEX

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of Columbus, 310 map, 332 Treaty of Tordesillas (1491), 329 Treaty of Troyes (1420), 307 Tripoli, County of, 189, 191 trivium, 197 troubadours and songs, 235–37, 273 Tudor kings. See Lancastrian kings Tunis, 129, 210, 264 Tyler, Wat, 315–16 Umayyads, 127, 132–33 Unam sanctam bull (1302), 281 universities, 239–40, 280 See also individual universities (by city); learning and education upward mobility, 298 Urban II (pope, 1088–1099), 186 Urban VI (pope, 1378–1389), 317 Urraca (queen, r.1109–1126), 194 usury, 269 Utraquism, 318 See also Church sacraments, Eucharist Vaclav II (king of Bohemia, r.1283–1305), 280 Valencia, 194 Valla, Lorenzo (d.1457), 322 Valois (dynasty), 307, 312 Varangian Guard, 123, 124 Varlik, Nükhet, 300 Vasco da Gama, 332 vassals and vassalage, in 10th–11th cent., 141–43, 144, 155, 156, 232 vellum, 249 Venice, 233, 234, 263, 266, 311–12 Peace of, 224 vernacular literature in 13th–14th cent., 285 Verona, 185, 312 viaticum (final Eucharist). See Church sacraments, Eucharist Vienna, University of, 280 Vikings burials, 125, 139 Oseberg ship, 138–39 travels and map of, 135, 136–37 in Western Europe, 135, 139–40, 148–50 villages, development of, 144, 175 Vistula River, 232 Vladimir (ruler of Rus’, r.980–1015), 126–27

Volga River, 256 voyages. See travels and voyages Waldensians, 229 Waldo, 229 Wales, 215, 277 warfare archers, 235, 309, 333 artillery, 308, 309 battle tactics, 291 cavalry, 144, 237 English burhs, 140, 148 and food, 291 “holy” wars of papacy, 186 infantry, 235, 309 season and days for, 144, 145 siege engines, 189 in songs, 236–37 See also individual battles; mercenaries; navy; weapons warriors, in 10th–11th cent., 141, 144–45 “Wars of the Roses,” 310 Wat Tyler’s Rebellion (1381), 315–16 wealth, and capital, 284 weapons longbows and crossbows, 305 Welf (dynasty), 222 genealogy, 223 Wenceslas (prince of Bohemia), 155 Wessex, Kingdom of, 135 Western Europe fragmentation and consolidation in 9th–11th cent., 134, 141, 156 kingships 10th–11th cent., 146–55 map of kingdoms (c.1050), 147 map (c.1100), 176 map (c.1300), 274 map (c.1450), 313 power relationships 9th–11th cent., 141–46 power relationships 14th–15th cent., 309–12 Wiligelmo (sculptor), 201, 202, 204, 204 William of Normandy (d.1087), 192–93 William of Ockham (d.1347/1350), 284–85 Wittenberg, 329 Władysław II (also Jogaila, r.1377–1434), 280 women in al-Andalus, 133 burials in Vikings, 125, 139 in Byzantine Empire, 121

INDEX

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355

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in Church movements of 13th cent., 228, 229, 230 enslavement, 314 fashion in 14th cent., 159 in guilds, 238–39 in Renaissance, 322–23 as scribes, 250 as vassals or “lords,” 142 woolen cap, 157 wool and yarn, 157, 157, 159 woolworkers’ revolts, 314, 316 Wool Guild of Siena, 316 Worms, 153, 175, 188 writing, as institutional tool, 218 Wyclif, John (c.1330–1384), 318

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Yahya ibn Ibrahim (leader), 169 yarn. See wool and yarn Yersinia pestis, 214, 296, 297, 300 See also plague Yorkist kings, 310 genealogy, 309 Yshu‘a ha-Kohen, 129 Yusuf ibn Tashfin (Almoravid ruler, d.1106), 170 Zangi (emir, r.1127–1146), 191, 211 Zanj slaves, 127–28 Zaragoza, 194 Zirids, 127, 129 Zoe (empress of Byzantines, d.1050), 121

INDEX

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