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Middle Ages
The Middle Ages cover about 1,000 years—from about AD 500 to about AD 1500. The change from ancient ways to medieval customs came so gradually, however, that it is difficult to tell exactly when the Middle Ages began. Some historians say that the Middle Ages began in AD 476, when the barbarian Odoacer overthrew the emperor Romulus Augustulus, ending the Western Roman Empire. Other historians give the year 410, when Alaric, king of the Visigoths, sacked Rome. Still others say about AD 500 or even later. It is equally hard to determine exactly when the Middle Ages ended, for decisive events leading to the modern age took place at different times. Historians say variously that the Middle Ages ended with the fall of Constantinople, in 1453; with the discovery of America, in 1492; or with the beginning of the Reformation, in 1517.
Even before the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476, life in Europe began to change. The German barbarians on the fringes of the empire had long hungered for Roman land. These barbarians were vigorous, restless people led by warrior chiefs. As they pushed down upon the empire in the 4th century, they threw back Roman garrisons. Meanwhile the strength and discipline of the Roman Empire were being sapped by political decay, economic troubles, and decadent living (see Roman Empire). Surges of Goths, Vandals, Lombards, Franks, Angles, Saxons, and other tribes sacked and pillaged the crumbling empire. Their customs gradually submerged Roman civilization. The highly developed systems of Roman law and government gave way to the rude forms of the barbarians. The invaders lacked the knowledge and skill to carry on Roman achievements in art, literature, and engineering. “The whole world,” St. Jerome wrote, “is sinking into ruin.” This early medieval period is sometimes called the Dark Ages.
It was, however, a time of preparation, like working a field before planting seeds. Even as the barbarians pushed Roman civilization aside, they brought fresh, robust ideas of their own. Those ideas that most influenced the development of Europe arose from the barbarian belief in the rights of the individual. To the Romans the state had been more important than the individual. From the barbarians' ideal of personal rights grew their respect for women, their government by the people, and their crude but representative law courts. Kings and chiefs were elected by tribal councils, which also served as courts of law.
The essential quality in a leader was bravery. If he cowered in battle, the tribe at once hoisted another warrior on their shields as leader. When a tribe faltered, the women's pleas often stemmed retreat. Although the barbarians enveloped Europe and drove into North Africa, only one barbarian group, the Franks, created a lasting state. Their first great leader was Clovis, who in 481–511 established in Gaul the kingdom that was to become France (see Clovis).
During the reign of Clovis, Christianity began to lift Europe from the Dark Ages. The first step was the conversion of Clovis in 496. Many barbarians had become Christians earlier, but most of them held the Arian doctrine, condemned as heresy by the Roman Catholic church.
When Clovis became a Roman Catholic, his Franks began to receive the support of the bishop of Rome—that is, the pope. This opened to the Franks the residue of Roman culture sustained by the church. Its monks, living in retreats called monasteries, had preserved a knowledge of Roman arts, crafts, and industries. They now began to spread this learning. (See also Monks and Monasticism.)
Christianity's influence widened when the great Charlemagne became king of the Franks in 768 and brought the Lombards and heathen Saxons under his sway. In 800 the pope proclaimed him ruler of the Holy Roman Empire. Charlemagne vigorously sought to provide his people with education. He founded schools in monasteries and churches for the poor as well as for the nobility. (See also Charlemagne.)
As Charlemagne's empire passed to weak descendants, Europe was terrorized by new invasions. Sea-going Vikings swept down on England and the west coast of Europe and darted up rivers to raid inland. Hungarians drove from the east into Germany, France, and Italy. Moors from Africa and Spain slashed into southern Europe. (See also Muhammad; Vikings.)
The inept kings of the broken Holy Roman Empire could not provide defense. They turned to the powerful lords of the realm, sometimes granting land for aid. Many lords built fortified dwellings, or castles. Peasants built their villages of huts near the castles and served the lords in return for protection. They farmed the lords' lands, worked in their households, and fought in their forces.
A lord became a suzerain when he accepted the service of a lesser lord, or vassal. The suzerain gave the vassal a fief, or tract of land. In return the vassal “did homage” to the suzerain—that is, he pledged loyalty to the suzerain and promised to supply him with warriors.
As peasants exchanged their work—and vassals, their service—for protection, they gave up their independence. Even the most powerful suzerains were vassals of greater overlords, such as kings or bishops.
This way of life, typical of the Middle Ages, is called feudalism. The word comes from feudum, which in medieval Latin meant “possession” or “property.” (See also Feudalism.)
About nine tenths of the people were peasants—farmers or village laborers. Only a few of these were freemen—peasants who were not bound to a lord and who paid only a fixed rent for their land. The vast majority were serfs and villeins. Theoretically, the villeins had wider legal rights than the serfs and fewer duties to the lords. There was little real difference, however.
A peasant village housed perhaps ten to 60 families. Each family lived in a dark, dank hut made of wood or wicker daubed with mud and thatched with straw or rushes. Layers of straw or reeds covered the floor, fouled by the pigs, chickens, and other animals housed with the family. The one bed was a pile of dried leaves or straw. All slept in their rough garb, with skins of animals for cover. A cooking fire of peat or wood burned drearily day and night in a clearing on the dirt floor. The smoke seeped out through a hole in the roof or the open half of a two-piece door. The only furniture was a plank table on trestles, a few stools, perhaps a chest, and probably a loom for the women to make their own cloth. Every hut had a vegetable patch.
All the peasants worked to support their lord. They gave about half their time to work in his fields, cut timber, haul water, spin and weave, repair his buildings, and wait upon his household. In war, the men had to fight at his side. Besides labor, peasants had to pay taxes to their lord in money or produce. They had to give a tithe to the church—every tenth egg, sheaf of wheat, lamb, chicken, and all other animals.
Famines were frequent. Plagues depleted the livestock. Frosts, floods, and droughts destroyed the crops. Bursts of warfare ravaged the countryside as the lords burned each other's fields and harvests.
The peasants' lot was hard, but most historians consider it little worse than that of peasants today. Because of the many holidays, or holy days, in the Middle Ages, peasants actually labored only about 260 days a year. They spent their holidays in church festivals, watching wandering troups of jongleurs, journeying to mystery or miracle plays, or engaging in wrestling, bowling, cockfights, apple bobs, or dancing.
Supported by the brawn and taxes of the peasants, the feudal baron and his wife would seem to have had a comfortable life. In many ways they did, despite the lack of creature comforts and refinements.
Around the 12th century, palisaded, fortified manorial dwellings began to give way to stone castles. Some of these, with their great outer walls and courtyard buildings, covered perhaps 15 acres and were built for defensive warfare (see Castle).
Even in summer, dampness clung to the stone rooms, and the lord and his retinue spent as much time as possible outdoors. At dawn the watchman atop the donjon blew a blast on his bugle to awaken the castle. After a scanty breakfast of bread and wine or beer, the nobles attended mass in the castle chapel.
The lord then took up his business. He might first hear the report of an estate manager. If a discontented or ill-treated serf had fled, doubtless the lord would order retainers to bring him back—for serfs were bound to the lord unless they could evade him for a year and a day. The lord would also hear the petty offenses of peasants and fine the culprits or perhaps sentence them to a day in the pillory. Serious deeds, like poaching or murder, were legal matters for the local court or royal “circuit” court.
The lady of the castle had many duties as chatelaine. She inspected the work of her large staff of servants. She saw that her spinners, weavers, and embroiderers furnished clothes for the castle and rich vestments for the clergy. She and her ladies also helped to train the pages, well-born boys who came to live in the castle at the age of 7. For seven years pages were schooled in religion, music, dancing, riding, hunting, and some reading, writing, and arithmetic. At 14 they became squires.
The lord directed the training of squires. They spent seven years learning the practices of chivalry and, above all, of warfare. At the age of 21, if worthy, they received the accolade of knighthood. (For the ceremony of knighthood see Knighthood.)
Sometime between 9 AM and noon, a trumpet summoned the lord's household to the great hall for dinner. They gustily ate quantities of soup, game, birds, mutton, pork, some beef, and often venison or boar slain in the hunt. In winter the ill-preserved meat smacked fierily of East Indian spices, bought at enormous cost to hide the rank taste. Great, flat pieces of bread called trenchers served as plates and, after the meal, were flung to the dogs around the table or given to the poor. Huge pies, or pasties, filled with several kinds of fowl or fish, were relished. Metal or wood cups or leather “jacks” held cider, beer, or wine. Coffee and tea were not used in Europe until after the Middle Ages. Minstrels or jongleurs entertained at dinner.
Hunting, games, and tournaments delighted nobles. Even the ladies and their pages rode afield to loose falcons at game birds (see Falconry). Indoors, in front of the great open fire, there were chess, checkers, and backgammon. A troubadour would often chant and sing storied deeds of Charlemagne, Count Roland, or Arthur and his Table Round (see Arthurian Legend; Roland; Music, Classical).
Dearest to the warrior heart of the feudal lord was the tournament, an extravagant contest of arms. Visiting knights and nobles set up their pavilions near the lists, or field of contest. Over each tent a banner fluttered to show the rank of a contestant—here a count, there a marquis or a baron (see Titles of Nobility). The shield of each armor-clad warrior was emblazoned to identify the bearer (see Armor; Heraldry). The first day of the tourney was usually devoted to single combats, in which pairs of knights rode full tilt at each other with 10-foot (3-meter) lances. The tourney's climax was the mêlée, when companies of knights battled in perilous mimic warfare. A tournament cost a lord a fortune for hospitality and rich prizes given to the victors by the “queen of the tourney.”
Tournaments had a grim value as practice for feudal warfare. Some battle or raid erupted almost daily, since medieval nobles settled their quarrels simply by attacking. If a lord coveted land, his couriers called his vassals to make a foray. The peasants, in quilted battle coats, trudged along to fight on foot with their pikes and poleaxes. Despite the innumerable outbreaks, casualties were surprisingly few, as long, exhausting battles were rare. Warring lords usually just burned the fields and villages of their enemies. After a skirmish, the defending lord and his vassals usually fled to the safety of the castle. The castle could withstand many a stubborn siege.
Amid the turmoil of the Middle Ages one institution stood for the common good. It was the Roman Catholic church. Many historians say that its spirit and its work were the great civilizing influence of the Middle Ages.
By the 13th century the church was the strongest single influence in Europe. Everyone—except Arabs, Jews, and people in the Byzantine Empire—belonged to the church and felt its authority. The pope had more power and wealth than all the kings and nobles combined. His subordinate officials—the archbishops, bishops, and abbots—were usually great feudal lords, with rich possessions and military strength. The church courts controlled all cases involving the clergy and church property and many other cases, such as those of marriage, wills, and orphans.
The power of the church was rooted in the spiritual force of excommunication. A person guilty of offense against the church was expelled from it, and all Christians, even members of his family, were forbidden to associate with him. Emperor Henry IV was excommunicated by Pope Gregory VII in 1076. Popular uprisings soon forced Henry to beg absolution.
If an excommunicated noble remained defiant, the church imposed an interdict. This closed the churches throughout the noble's realm. Marriages could not be performed, nor could the dead be buried in sacred ground. Few nobles dared risk the rebellious fury that such a decree would arouse in their subjects.
Because the church believed in the worth and the rights of the individual, it extended sanctuary to anyone accused of civil offense. Often in those violent times an accused was hunted by a mob. But if he could escape into a church, the mob could not touch him. If guilty, he could confess his sin and then, for a time, remain in safety until he had made retribution or had left the country. In an effort to protect life and property, the church in the 11th century proclaimed the Truce of God. The decree was only loosely enforced. The truce aimed to restrict private wars, or feudal forays, to a few days in the week and to ban them entirely in certain holy seasons.
The church kept alive the spark of public education. True, in the castles of the feudal barons pages went to their lessons, but pages were extremely few compared with the number of peasant boys. For them, the church looked to each village parish to supply a school and religious training. Each diocese was expected to maintain a cathedral school to educate the clergy. The universal language of the church's schools was Latin, maintained as the common language of learning.
The work of the church was rooted in the services given by the men and women who retired from worldly distractions to live in monasteries and convents. These were the monks and the nuns. They gave up earthly pleasures to prepare for salvation. For that, they accepted a life of prayer and labor and upheld the Christian precept of “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” (See also Monks and Monasticism.)
Most of the monks followed the strict yet wholesome and practical Rule of Benedict of Nursia (480?–544?). The Benedictine Rule put upon the monks the double duty of prayer and work. The rule's demand for work was salutary, for neither the Romans nor the barbarians respected work. They felt it beneath the dignity of a freeman and fit only for slaves. But the monks had to do some manual labor, such as farming, clearing forests, draining swamps, copying books, nursing the sick, sheltering travelers, and serving the needy. By their example they helped to break the traditional belief that the immense majority of people were born to support a small group of aristocratic idlers. Their example was bulwarked by the work of the friars, men of religious orders who went into the world to serve the oppressed. The labor and the democracy of the monks and friars helped to dignify the individual and to credit his task.
The monks made two special contributions. One directly helped people of the Middle Ages; it was farming skill. Even under the wasteful “three-field system,” the monks improved ways of cultivating crops. The Cistercians have been called the best farmers of medieval days.
The monks' second special service contributed to the future—to the making of our modern age. This service was their work in producing manuscripts of classical learning. Even before the downfall of Rome the church had begun to preserve the scrolls, or books, of Roman and Greek knowledge. Neither the siege nor the sack of Rome found the church surrendering its full treasury of classical learning. Later, when the church came to power, monks spent hours in the scriptorium, or writing room. There they meticulously copied the scrolls, letter by letter. One monk wrote at the end of a manuscript: “He who does not know how to write imagines that it is no labor; but, though only three fingers hold the pen, the whole body grows weary.” Their labors preserved classical knowledge (see Book and Bookmaking).
As religion touched nearly every facet of medieval life, people of all classes journeyed to shrines, or places of religious interest, on pilgrimages. The hallowed place might be the grave of a martyr, or a church that sheltered the relics of a saint. Travel was hard, but discomfort was even welcomed as a kind of penance. The pilgrim who could not afford a horse plodded on foot, aided by a staff. The typical pilgrim garb was a cloak, girdled by a cord, and a brimmed felt hat.
Every country had its favorite shrines, but the great shrine for all Christians was the Holy City, Jerusalem. Even though the Holy Land had been held by the Arabs for centuries, Christian pilgrims had been unmolested. When the Holy Land fell to the Seljuk Turks in the 11th century, they persecuted pilgrims.
Christian Europe then vowed to win the Holy Land from the Turk “infidels.” Pope Urban II declared in 1095, “God wills it. Christ Himself will be your leader when you fight for Jerusalem.” On that command he sent forth Europe to fight a series of religious wars called the Crusades. There were seven major and many smaller expeditions, and, in all, the Crusades spread over 200 years. The Crusades finally failed in their purpose, but they were one of the chief factors in leading Europe out of the Middle Ages. The marches into other lands and the contact with other peoples showed the crusaders a much higher level of civilization. They brought to Europe new ideas, new customs, and new products. These innovations helped to stimulate business and to revive wide commerce (see Crusades; Crusading Orders).
A second great factor in the passing of the Middle Ages was the rise of new towns. The Roman Empire had encouraged the building of towns, but the German barbarians refused to live in confinement. When they swept through the empire they settled on the land and, later, built manors, castles, and villages. As each baronial stronghold was self-sufficient, there was little need for trade except for the few articles carried by traveling merchants. Without trade, most old Roman towns dwindled or even died. They lost their right to self-government and became the property of the barons. The town dwellers did almost no manufacturing. They lived by tilling the land. In the 11th century, however, the Crusades began to stimulate the revival of commerce. Traveling merchants established headquarters in places of safety, such as by the walls of a castle or monastery. Places accessible to main roads or rivers grew rapidly.
Wherever merchants settled, laborers and artisans came. Carpenters and blacksmiths made chests and casks for the merchants' goods, and carts to transport them. Shipbuilders turned out trading vessels. Butchers, bakers, and brewers came to supply food for the workers, and tailors and shoemakers came to supply clothes. Others came to make the wares of trade.
By the 13th century Europe was dotted with towns. Few had as many as 10,000 people. The towns were introducing a new kind of life into medieval Europe, however, for the townspeople now lived by the exchange of goods and services. They were no longer self-sufficient like the small groups of peasants on the manors were; they had to develop a lifestyle based on the idea of exchange. This organization laid the foundations for modern economic and social living.
As the cities grew rich they sought the right to govern themselves. The first to free themselves from the power of feudal lords were in Italy—Venice, Pisa, Genoa, Florence, and others. Towns in France were next to gain power, then towns along the Rhine Valley and on the Baltic coast, where cities of the Hanseatic League grew to enormous wealth and strength (see Hanseatic League). Some of the towns bought their freedom from the nobles and the church; others fought bitter battles to win it. A few were given it.
In the towns the houses were packed together because every town had to be a fortress, with stout, high walls and a moat or river to protect it from hostile nobles, pirates, and robber bands. The smaller the walled enclosure, the easier it was to defend. The only open places were the market square in the town center, the cathedral, and the few gardens of the rich. Main streets led like spokes of a wheel from the market to the few gates in the walls. Building room was so cramped that the houses were built in several narrow stories, the upper floors jutting over the alleylike streets.
Few streets were paved. In wet weather people floundered almost knee-deep in mud. The street was the only sewer. It sloped to the center, and refuse and chamber waste were flung into it. Pigs rooted in the odorous filth.
Wells, springs, and rivers were the only water supply. They were unprotected and untreated, so that plagues were frequent.
Houses were uncomfortable. Most of them had a mere framework of heavy timbers. The wall spaces were filled with woven reeds daubed with clay or plaster. Rushes or straw usually lined the floors. Fireplaces had chimneys, and the peril of sparks on the thatched roofs was one of the worst hazards of town living. The house of the average citizen served multiple functions as his dwelling, factory, and shop. Goods were made and sold on the ground floor. The owner and his family lived on the floor above. The upper stories of the house were storage rooms and sleeping lofts for the workmen.
At night the medieval city was dark and dangerous. There were no street lights. People who ventured out at night took along one or two workmen with lanterns and weapons as a protection against robbers. In some cities cables were strung across streets to hinder fleeing criminals.
Few working citizens, however, went out at night. The workday began at sunrise and ended at sunset. At 8 or 9 PM the cathedral bell tolled the curfew. This was the signal to cover all fires with ashes to lessen the peril of houses catching fire in the night.
The chief glories of the medieval towns were their churches and guildhalls. The Gothic cathedrals were especially splendid and represented the labor of every art and craft. They were the artistic monuments of the Middle Ages. Many still stand. The construction of Gothic churches began during the 12th century with such architectural masterpieces as the cathedrals at Chartres and Paris. Gothic construction, which originated at the abbey of St. Denis north of Paris, made possible greater use of wall space for stained glass windows, thus enhancing the beauty of the churches. (See also Architecture, “Gothic”; Cathedral.)
The ornate guildhalls were built by medieval organizations called guilds. All professional men belonged to one of the many guilds. The guilds were often called fraternities. They kept the trade of the city in their own hands and made rules for each branch of the trade. Each guild helped its own needy members and cared for widows and orphans. At first there were only merchant guilds. Then master workmen set up separate craft guilds for each trade and branch. Leatherworkers, for example, were split into many guilds, such as leather dressers, glovers, pocket makers, and slipper makers. Paris had some 350 craft guilds at the end of the 13th century. All guilds regulated the number of apprentices and workmen, hours of labor, and wages. (See also Guild; City.)
Many European cities have preserved their old guildhalls. The Grand Place in Brussels, Belgium, is surrounded on three sides by guild houses, most of which date from the 17th century. They were used by such guilds as the haberdashers, tallow merchants, joiners and coopers, bakers, brewers, and butchers. Zürich, Switzerland, which was ruled by guilds until 1789, has several beautifully decorated guild houses.
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Source: Encyclopedia Britannica