The Medieval Period 10661485 - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

1 / 13
About This Presentation
Title:

The Medieval Period 10661485

Description:

A prominent example is Thomas a Becket who went from Lord Chancellor to ... to the shrine of St. Thomas Becket who had been murdered there two centuries before ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

Number of Views:37
Avg rating:3.0/5.0
Slides: 14
Provided by: ephi
Category:

less

Transcript and Presenter's Notes

Title: The Medieval Period 10661485


1
The Medieval Period 1066-1485
  • The Norman Conquest
  • William the Conqueror the Duke of Normandy
    defeated the king of England and conquered the
    entire nation, bringing the Anglo-Saxon and
    Normans together. Gradually William fused the
    two into a national English character, a subtle
    blend.
  • Many found they could raise their station
    through the Church. A prominent example is Thomas
    a Becket who went from Lord Chancellor to
    Archbishop of Canterbury. He defended the claims
    of the Church against the interested of the King
    for which he was murdered. Thereafter he became
    a saint.

2
The Medieval Period 1066-1485
  • Land and the Feudal System
  • William had a great deal of land at his disposal
    after wiping out the Anglo Saxon landowners, so
    he retained much of it and granted the rest to
    those who fought faithfully for him.
  • 1066 brought the largest change in land ownership
    in the history of England. William felt that the
    land of England was his by right and that he was
    free to deed the land to his vassals by royal
    charter and expected obedience and service in
    return. This practice became the feudal system.

3
The Medieval Period 1066-1485
  • Feudalism
  • A complicated system of landholding
  • No one owned land independently, only as a vassal
    of an overlord
  • Overlord in turn owed allegiance either to some
    great noble or to the king.
  • Elaborate chain of loyalties with rent paid
    principally in military service to the overlord
  • To avoid disputes, William had a complete
    inventory of all property drawn up in Domesday
    Book, sometimes called Doomsday, the book of
    judgement.

4
The Medieval Period 1066-1485
  • The Medieval Church
  • From the 11th to the 15th century, the people
    belonged to one homogeneous society with a common
    culture and a common set of beliefs the Medieval
    Church
  • Latin, the language of the Church, became the
    language of all educated persons.
  • Despite fierce national loyalty, every person was
    also responsible to the Church all were sons and
    daughters of the Church
  • Abbeys and monasteries were the main centers of
    learning and the arts
  • The Church was the dominant force in preserving
    and transmitting culture in teaching, writing,
    and translating, and in copying, collecting, and
    distributing manuscripts

5
The Medieval Period 1066-1485
  • Medieval Life
  • Those who lived in the country were attached to a
    feudal manor. They worked their own fields and
    the lands of the lord of the manor, to whom they
    owed their allegiance.
  • Herding became more important than farming as the
    wool by English sheep was considered preferable
    to that of almost any other part Europe. A large
    percentage of the population became involved in
    the wool industry carding and combing, spinning
    and weaving, even dying the cloth.
  • Wide scale exportation of wool led to the growth
    of cities, and more moved to cities rather than
    living in manors, sparking a new merchant class.
    These merchants became popular often to the point
    of entering the gentry or even the nobility based
    on favors of the court.

6
The Medieval Period 1066-1485
  • The merchants formed guilds, societies to
    regulate prices and standards.
  • Later the cottage workers formed guilds to assure
    fair wages and prices and good standards of
    material and workmanship.
  • The guild system encouraged a kind of extended
    family life --- many in the same trade would live
    together.
  • This is also the time of great English
    cathedrals, the construction of which stretched
    over a period of several hundred years. Guilds
    were founded for many of these workers
    stonecutters and masons, carpenters and
    woodcarvers, glass blowers and stainers. Much of
    the communal life of the city centered upon these
    magnificent monuments where the first English
    dramas were performed.
  • Travel was difficult and dangerous Food offered
    little variety and as there was no way to
    preserve food, diet was limited in winter.
  • Celebrated with religious festivals, magnificent
    tournaments, brilliant pageantry. The dress of
    the time was bright and varied.

7
The Medieval Period 1066-1485
  • English Law
  • One of Williams innovations was to institute
    written public documents for most government
    actions.
  • Established common law a law that is common to
    the whole country and all its people, in contrast
    to kinds of law applying only to certain classes
    of persons. It was based on custom and usage,
    not on legal statutes.
  • Established primogeniture the firstborn son
    given exclusive rights to inherit his fathers
    titles, lands, and estates. It is still the rule
    in England today.
  • Matters of law settled by ordeals in which a
    persons innocence or guilt was decided upon by
    the performing of certain tasks. If you were
    successful in completing the tasks you were
    innocent. Disputes between two people were
    settled personal combat.

8
The Medieval Period 1066-1485
  • In 1215 Pope Innocent III declared that the
    ordeal system was irrational and without the
    sanction of the Church, secular governments
    turned to relying on the judgments of neighbors.
  • In 1215 a group of angry barons forced King John
    to sign an agreement called the Magna Carta, or
    Great Charter. The charter established that
    levies must be made with the consent of barons,
    thereby limiting the kings taxing powers.
  • The English law of the Medieval period
    foreshadows the right of trial by jury, habeas
    corpus (right not to be illegally detained), and
    the beginnings of representative government in
    Parliament.

9
The Medieval Period 1066-1485
  • The Crusades
  • Several military expeditions made by European
    Christians in the 11th to 13th centuries
    religiously motivated wars.
  • Started in 1095, and continued in 1191, 1202,
    1217 and 1270
  • Each began in high hope with a genuine desire to
    rescue, but most ended in raiding, looting, and a
    tangle of power politics.
  • Being exposed to Arabic culture led to an
    increased knowledge of mathematics and medicine.
  • Encouraged the ideal of true knightly behavior
    known as chivalry
  • Knightly warrior as devout and tenderhearted off
    the battle field, bold and fearless on the
    battlefield
  • A code of conduct
  • Joined to the companion idea of romance in
    literature

10
The Medieval Period 1066-1485
  • The Hundred Years War
  • English monarchy never voluntarily relinquished
    its hold on French possessions, causing a series
    of wars known as the Hundred Years War
    1337-1453
  • English were driven from France in the end,
    however they had many victories due to gunpowder
    and the long bows of the English infantry
  • Six foot bow, with yard-long arrows capable of
    piercing armor
  • The Wars of the Rose
  • 1348 England was struck by Black Death, the first
    of a series of plagues that killed more than a
    third of the population.
  • Lack of labor due to plague ended feudalism and
    led to economic and social unrest.
  • A civil war between the House of York, emblem a
    white rose, and House of Lancaster, emblem red
    rose, from 1455-1485 until Henry VII united the
    feuding families through marriage, ended the
    wars, and founded the Tudor line.

11
The Medieval Period 1066-1485
  • Medieval Literature
  • Romance tales of chivalry relating to the quests
    knights undertook for their ladies to which were
    added a love interest and all sorts of wonders
    and marvels fairy enchantments, giants,
    dragons, wizards, and sorceresses
  • Although there is almost no historical basis, one
    principal source of such romantic tales were from
    the stories of King Arthur and his Knights of the
    Round Table as told by Sir Thomas Mallory in his
    Morte dArthur
  • Illustrate the chivalric ideals of honor,
    courage, courtesy and service to women
  • Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is one of the
    finest examples of verse romance in English,
    about one of the knights in the court of King
    Arthur
  • Folk poetry, a collection of recited songs called
    ballads, was collected and published and later
    influenced the English Romantic poets
  • Origins of drama occurred during this time,
    although its rise in popularity reached a
    tremendous height in the Elizabethan Age.
  • Miracle plays rough dramatizations of Biblical
    stories. Evil characters (the Devil) were
    portrayed comically as a rule
  • Morality plays elaborate and sophisticated
    dramatic allegories in which characters
    representing various virtues and vices confronted
    one another.

12
Geoffrey Chaucer1340?-1400
  • Born to a family of rising middle class, obtained
    a position as page in a household closely
    associated with the court of King Edward III.
  • Mastered Latin, French and Italian. Able to
    translate literary work in all three languages,
    equipped him for diplomatic and civil service.
  • Before he was 20 he served as a soldier in
    France, was captured but ransomed by his king as
    he was a court favorite.
  • Served his country loyally as courtier,
    diplomat, civil administrator, and translator for
    diplomatic missions.
  • Died in 1400 and is buried at Westminster Abbey
    the first English poet to be buried in what is
    known as the Poets Corner.
  • Most important contribution to English literature
    is his development of the resources of the
    English language for literary purposes
  • The Canterbury Tales
  • Group of stories told during a springtime
    pilgrimage to Canterbury Cathedral to the shrine
    of St. Thomas à Becket who had been murdered
    there two centuries before
  • It was customary for members of all classes to
    travel to religious shrines to seek miraculous
    cures, to gain remission of their sins, or to
    simply satisfy their wanderlust.
  • Provides a cross-section of medieval society
    feudal, ecclesiastical, and urban
  • Each pilgrim in the poem was to tell two tales on
    the way there and two on the way back, however,
    Chaucer died before he could finished, so instead
    of 124 stories he wrote only 24.

13
Geoffrey ChaucerThe Canterbury Tales General
Prologue
  • Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
  • The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
  • And bathed every veyne in swich licour
  • Of which vertu engendred is the flour
  • Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
  • Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
  • The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
  • Hath in the Ram his half cours yronne,
  • And smale foweles maken melodye,
  • That slepen al the nyght with open ye
  • (So priketh hem Nature in hir corages),
  • Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
  • And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,
  • To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes
  • And specially from every shires ende
  • Of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende,
  • The hooly blisful martir for to seke,
  • That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.
  • Bifil that in that seson on a day,
  • In Southwerk at the Tabard as I lay
  • Redy to wenden on my pilgrymage
  • To Caunterbury with ful devout corage,
  • At nyght was come into that hostelrye
  • Wel nyne and twenty in a compaignye
  • Of sondry folk, by aventure yfalle
  • In felaweshipe, and pilgrimes were they alle,
  • That toward Caunterbury wolden ryde.
  • The chambres and the stables weren wyde,
  • And wel we weren esed atte beste.
  • And shortly, whan the sonne was to reste,
  • So hadde I spoken with hem everichon
  • That I was of hir felaweshipe anon,
  • And made forward erly for to ryse,
  • To take oure wey ther as I yow devyse.
Write a Comment
User Comments (0)
About PowerShow.com