AGRICULTURE

1
AGRICULTURE

• Base of High Medieval civilization rested on
  improvements made in agriculture after 1050
• Heavy plow, tandem harness, and redesigned horse
  collar allowed animal power to increasingly
  replace human power
• New crops, such as peas and beans, were
  introduced and added protein to the European diet

2
POPULATION AND CITIES

• Population grew as a result of agricultural
  improvements
• Population had been stagnant since 400 AD
• 38-40 million people by 1000
• By 1300, population had doubled to 80 million
• Parallel trend towards urbanization
• By 1300, cities had once again become a crucial
  factor in Europes economy, culture, and social
  structure
• Milan, Venice, Florence, and Genoa were over
  100,000
• Northern European cities were smaller (except
  Paris) but were also growing
• Cities would contribute to growth of trade and
  commerce and be the financial base for the great
  cultural achievements of the period

3
LITERACY

• Europe evolved from preliterate into a literate
  society
• Most still could not read or write but most had
  come to depend on written records to define their
  rights, property, and status
• As opposed to memory and tradition
• Literacy skills become vital to the functioning
  of government, Church, urban business, and even
  agriculture
• People who possessed these skills moved into
  positions of power and changed character and
  attitudes of medieval society

4
INTELLECTUAL INNOVATION

• The possibilities for greater social mobility
  which opened up increased anxiety for many
• Resulted in increased awareness of self and
  growth of introspection
• Example was Pierre Abelard
• Attacked view that the world was a theater of
  miracles
• Argued that God created rules and laws that
  allowed universe to function on its own
• Without day-to-day divine interference
• Broke with old, static, medieval mindset and
  paved the way for future progress in human thought

5
MASSIVE IMPACT

• Shifts in attitudes towards self and vast
  economic and social changes that accompanied them
  marked Europes coming of age
• Represented essential preconditions for modern
  western civilization
• Behind 17th century Scientific Revolution lies
  Abelards idea of a universe functioning
  according to natural laws
• Behind the invention of printing in the 15th
  century lies the shift from a preliterate to a
  literate society
• Behind the Industrial Revolution of the 19th
  century lies the revival of trade and commerce
  between 1100 and 1300

6
URBAN REVIVAL

• Few towns that survived collapse of Roman Empire
  served as cathedral towns
• Where bishops had their headquarters
• As commerce revived after 1000, old declining
  towns were invigorated and new ones emerged
• Still remained centers of church administration
  but also were commercial centers and developed
  their own political institutions

Archbishops Palace in Narbonne
7
TAKE-OFF

• Commerce around the year 1000 depended on Jewish
  merchants, who traded with other Jewish merchants
  in the Middle East
• This activity increase between 1000-1100
• Jewish merchants increased their trade in cloth,
  grain, salt, slaves, and wine
• At the same time they adopted sophisticated
  accounting and commercial techniques
• contracts, letters of exchange, etc.
• Growing profits in this trade eventually
  attracted Christian merchants
• First from northern Italy, then from elsewhere

Jewish merchants
8
BURGHS

• Commercial settlements began to spring up
• Sometimes as suburbs of old cathedral towns
  sometimes outside walls of monasteries often
  around a large castle
• These towns became known as burghs (or
  borough in English)
• Inhabited by burghers
• Later would be a new class called the
  bourgeoisie

9
URBAN GROWTH

• Earliest commercial towns were in northern Italy
• Venice, Genoa, Pisa, Florence, Sienna, Amalfi,
  and Lucca
• Always more urbanized than northern Europe and
  well situated to trade with Middle East
• Later, commercial towns appeared in northern
  Europe
• Based mostly on trade within Europe itself
• Towns of Flanders (Boulogne, Liege, Ghent,
  Bruges, and Cologne)
• Centers of trade with northern France, England,
  Rhineland, and Baltic coast

10
WOOL, FLANDERS, AND ENGLAND

• Flanders was great sheep-raising district and its
  towns became centers of woolen textile production
• Shortage of wool eventually caused Flemish
  merchants to import wool from England (around
  1000)
• Drew isolated island into the growing network of
  international trade and established Flanders as
  premier industrial center in northern Europe

11
SPECIALIZATION

• Agricultural specialization increased
• Local areas began to concentrate on whatever
  crops they could produce most efficiently and
  used profits to buy other necessities they no
  longer produced
• Paris-grain
• Germany-salt and fish
• England-wool and beer
• Burgundy-wine

12
RISE OF MONEY ECONOMY

• Important results
• Meant rulers could collect taxes in cash
• Allowed them to reward officials with money
  instead of land and also to use hired mercenaries
• Nobles used money to buy luxuries
• Expanded market for Middle Eastern products
• Burghers could and did express pride in
  themselves, their towns, and their religious
  devotion by building vast cathedrals and
  elaborate city halls

13
GUILDS

• City people came from surplus of growing
  population
• Vagabonds, runaway serfs, third and fourth sons
  of minor nobility
• Merchants early on formed guilds
• To protect themselves from exactions of feudal
  nobility
• Merchants had to have degree of personal freedom,
  freedom of movement, freedom from exorbitant
  tolls, right to own property, right to enter
  contracts, and right to buy and sell freely
• Merchants organized into guilds had power to
  bargain for these rights
• Rights embodied in charters
• Obtained in a number of ways

14
CHARTERS

• Made towns semi-independent political and legal
  entities
• Own governments, courts, tax collection agencies,
  customs
• Guilds had to pay for a charter and still pay
  taxes to lord
• But it was town as a collective unit that paid
  taxes and dealt with lord
• Individuals did not have to deal with lord
  directly
• Townspeople won privilege of handling their own
  affairs

15
GENERAL TRENDS

• Guilds of wealthy merchants and master craftsmen
  profited most from charters and they controlled
  town government
• Population of towns grew in time as cities became
  manufacturing as well as commercial centers

Guild hall in Bruges
16
CRAFT GUILDS

• Manufacturers worked in their own shops,
  producing their own products and selling them
  directly to merchants or general public
• Many organized craft guilds to limit competition
  and ensure standardized quality of products
• Had strict admission requirements and strict
  rules on prices, wages, quality standards, and
  operating procedures

17
CRAFT MOBILITY

• Guild rules required young would-be craftsmen
  serve as apprentices for 7 years
• Might become master craftsmen and guild members
  after 7 years, if young man was lucky and had
  rich parents
• Most became journeymen
• Worked for wages in order to save up enough to
  someday become masters and guild members
• Process became more difficult as time went on and
  many stayed journeymen their whole lives
• Made up majority of urban population but never
  had a voice in local affairs

18
FAIRS AND MONEY

• Series of annual fairs established during 12th
  and 13th centuries
• Along overland trade routes
• Provided merchants with new opportunities to sell
  goods
• Credit and banking facilities also grew
• Generally controlled by a small number of very
  wealthy Italian families

19
RELIGION

• Money from trade combined with ardent faith to
  build the great cathedrals, support the Crusades,
  finance royal charities, and give life to
  religious culture of the time
• Urban dwellers exhibited a faith that was more
  vibrant and intense than that of the peasantry or
  aristocracy
• In the electric atmosphere of the cities,
  religion acquired an emotional content unknown to
  the villages and manor houses of the period

Peter Waldo
St. Francis of Assisi
20
RISE OF UNIVERSITIES

• Schools sprang up everywhere during this period
• Due to increase importance of literacy
• Greatest of these schools were the universities,
  the product of the growth of cities
• Growth of cities brought about decline of
  monastic schools
• Superceded north of the Alps by schools centered
  on urban churches
• Superceded in Italy by semi-secular municipal
  schools
• Both rose to prominence in 11th and 12th
  centuries
• Some of them grew until they evolved into real
  universities by the 12th century

21
STUDIUM GENERALE

• Term university meant nothing more than a group
  of people associated for any purpose
• An association of students and teachers engaged
  in the pursuit of higher learning was called
  studium generale
• Differed from lesser schools in that students
  from different lands received instruction from
  specialized scholars in a variety of disciplines
• Offered basic program in the Seven Liberal Arts
• Astronomy, geometry, arithmetic, music, grammar,
  rhetoric, and logic
• Also in either law, medicine, or theology

22
MOBILE INSTITUTION

• Medieval university was neither a campus nor a
  complex of buildings
• It was a privileged corporation of teachers, or
  sometimes students
• A guild
• Classes were held in rented rooms
• Highly mobile institution
• Would often threaten to leave a town when it
  became dissatisfied with local conditions

23
STUDENT POWER

• In 13th century, universities flourished in
  Paris, Bologna, Naples, Montpellier, Oxford,
  Cambridge, and elsewhere
• Paris, Oxford, and others were dominated by
  teachers guilds
• Bologna was governed by a guild of students
• Threatened to leave down because of high prices
  for food and lodging
• Established strict rules of conduct for teachers
• Had to begin and end classes on time and cover
  prescribed curriculum

24
LEGACY

• Modern universities are a direct outgrowth of
  medieval ones
• Such things as the formal teaching license, the
  practice of group instruction in a classroom, the
  awarding of academic degrees, the idea of liberal
  arts curriculum, and the stupid custom of
  academic regalia all come from medieval
  universities

25
UNIVERSITY OF PARIS I

• Intellectual atmosphere alive with philosophical
  disputes and passionate intellectual rivalries
• Also frequent tavern brawls between students and
  townspeople or between rival student gangs
• New students were hazed and unpopular teachers
  were hissed, shouted down, and sometimes pelted
  with stones

26
UNIVERSITY OF PARIS II

• Students began studies when they were 17
• Came from all over Europe
• Mostly from middle strata of town dwellers and
  lesser landowners
• Poor boys sometimes attended but sons of the
  aristocracy did not go to universities until the
  1500s
• No female students
• In the 13th century, wealthy benefactors founded
  residential colleges where poor students received
  room and board
• But most students lived in rented rooms

27
UNIVERSITY OF PARIS III

• Began school day at 5 or 6 in the morning
• Headed to lecture halls scattered around the
  Latin Quarter
• Bare, cold rooms
• Some had benches, students sat on floor in others
• Took notes on wax tablets
• Lectures could last all morning

28
UNIVERSITY OF PARIS IV

• Afternoons spent in nearby meadows, playing
  various sports, races, long-jump contests, lawn
  bowling, swimming, ball games, and free-for-all
  fighting
• Serious students would study in the evenings
• Fun-lovers would gather in taverns and brothels

29
DECLINE OF VASSALS

• Rise of commerce and urbanization had critical
  impact on feudal nobility
• Increased circulation of money eroded service
  relationship between lord and vassal
• Rulers came to rely less on military service of
  vassals and more on mercenary troops and salaried
  officials
• First in England, and then in France, fiefholders
  were required to pay a tax in lieu of personal
  military service

30
NEW ATTITUDES

• Nobles still fought and were still military men
  at heart
• But now it was more often as mercenaries
• Also developed taste for luxuries and became more
  and more interested in personal pleasures than
  anything else

31
AN ARISTOCRACY

• Many nobles began to pride themselves on their
  refinement
• Developing good manners, a fondness for
  troubadour songs, and a superficial respect for
  women
• Made possible by increased circulation of money
  which freed them from personal service, paid for
  their luxuries, and gave them the leisure time to
  cultivate a sophisticated lifestyle
• Real aristocracy began to emerge in Europe
• Saw itself as superior to the rest of society