The document provides an overview of major events and developments in Europe during the Middle Ages. It discusses the decline of the Roman Empire and rise of feudalism, the growth and influence of the Catholic Church, the Crusades, and key figures like Charlemagne and Joan of Arc. It also covers advances in areas like architecture, trade, and banking as well as setbacks like the Black Plague pandemic in the 14th century.

1. The Middle Ages in
Europe
World History
Hals

2. The “Middle” Ages
 What terms have you heard that refer to
the Middle Ages?
 The Dark Ages
 Middle Ages
 Medieval Era
 Early versus High Middle Ages
 Timespan? c.500-1300 CE; “High” Middle
Ages start from 1000 CE
 What event prompts the “middle ages”

3. The Early Middle Ages
 Sparsely populated, dense
forests, rich soil,
 Think of an untamed
Europe
 From 400-700 Germanic tribes
carved Western Europe into
small kingdoms
 Franks – strongest kingdom
 Clovis, king of the Franks
 Converted to
Christianity (religion of
people in Gaul)
 Earns support AND
gains the Christian
Church of Rome as
an ally

5. Painting of Clovis being baptized

6. Battle of Tours - 732
 Islam appears in 622
 Muslim armies overrun
Christian lands from
Palestine – N. Africa –
Spain
 When Muslim enter
France, Charles Martel
rallies Frankish warriors
 Christians triumph – sign that
“God is on their side”
 Muslims are stopped and
only overrun Spain
 Christians view Muslim world
with hostility

8. Charlemagne
 Grandson of Charles
Martel
 Built an empire across
France, Germany, and
part of Italy
 Loved battle
 Muslims in Spain, Saxons
in the North, Avars and
Slavs in the east,
Lombards in Italy
 Conquests reunite much
of the old Roman Empire

9.  Pope Leo III asks Charlemagne
to help against rebellious nobles
in Rome
 Frankish armies crush the
rebellion
 Pope crowns Charlemagne on
Christmas day, 800, to show his
gratitude
 Declares Charlemagne –
Emperor of the Romans (why is
this so significant?)
 **Christian Pope crowns a
German king successor to the
Roman emperors
 Also sets up conflicts between
Roman Catholic popes and
German emperors

10. •Eastern Empire is Furious
•Ruler of the Eastern Roman
Empire saw himself as the Roman
ruler
**Furthers division between the
eastern and western regions of
the old Roman empire

11. Other Dominant Groups
 Muslim forces threaten
through 900s
 Vikings – stretch out from
Scandinavia and attack
England, Ireland, N.
France, Russia, N.
America, etc.

13. Feudalism
Powerful local lords divide
landholdings among
lesser lords
Vassals – pledge service
and loyalty to greater lord

15. Feudalism Activity Part 1
 Meet with your  Create a “day in
fellow kings, lords, the life” cartoon or
knights, or serfs a written schedule
and use the that shows a day in
information the life of your
packets to write out character while
your job demonstrating the
description. different jobs your
character must
fulfill.

16. Your Kingdoms…
 Once in regrouped into a kingdom…
 Name your kingdom
 You will meet with your group and arrange
yourselves within your social hierarchy
 Draw a diagram of how each person in your
group fits into the hierarchy of feudalism
 Explain each of your jobs to each other and
bring one sheet that shows the social structure
and the main roles of each member of your
kingdom

17.  Once you have created your diagram you will be
given a scenario
 Discuss the scenario with your group and create
a skit explaining how your feudalist society
would handle your crisis (be realistic, but also
creative)

18. The Medieval Church
 Village church and tithing
 Daily life – the Christian calendar and the
holy days to honor saints

19. Views of Women
 Daughters of Eve
 Weak and easily
susceptible to sin
 Need guidance of men
Ideal Women:
pure and modest Mary
prayed to Mary as an
intercessor

20. Monks and Nuns
 Benedictine Rule – set of rules to regulate
monastic life
 Created by Benedict (a monk) ~530 In S. Italy
 Three vows
 Obedience to abbot or abbess
 Poverty
 Chastity
 Believed in spiritual value of manual labor
 Worked fields, cleared and drained land,
experimented with crops
 Life of Service –
 Poor and sick
 School for children
 Rest for pilgrimages
 Missionaries (St. Patrick – set up Irish Church)

21. Learning!
 Preserved writings
of the ancient world
 Copying texts
serves as labor for
monks and nuns
 Educated monks
and nuns keep
learning alive!!

22. Convents
 Abbess Hildegard of Bingen
 Composed religious
music
 Wrote books

23.  Canon law – body of church laws, upheld
by church courts
 Religious teachings, clergy, marriages, morals
 Excommunication
 Punishment, banned from receiving
sacraments and Christian burial
 Interdict – official excommunication of an
entire town, region or kingdom (used to
weaken power of secular leaders)

24.  King Edward (Anglo-Sax) dies
 Harold (weak guy) put in charge
 William of Normandy (strong leader, of Viking
descent)
 Raises an army and gets pope’s support
 William triumphs and defeats Harold
 William the Conqueror!
 Norman (French) influence
 Battle of Hastings
 Bayeux Tapestry

25. King William
 Required feudal allegiance
 Domesday Book – listed every castle, field
and pigpen in England
 Helped with efficient tax collection
 Royal exchequer – royal treasury

26. Unified Legal System
 King Henry II – 1154 – common law – legal
system based on custom and court rulings
and applied to all of England
 Created a jury – group of men sworn to
speak the truth

27. King Henry and Thomas Becket
 King Henry – claimed the right to try clergy in
royal courts
 Thomas Becket – Archbishop of Canterbury,
fiercely disagreed with the king
 “what a pack of fools and cowards I have
nourished, that not one of them will avenge me
of this turbulent priest”
 4 knights kill Thomas Becket for King Henry
 Becket’s honored as a martyr and saint,
pilgrimage destination

28. King John the Soft
 King John – clever, greedy, cruel,
untrustworthy
 Not a people person
 War with Philip II – loses French lands
 Gives into Innocent III to avoid kingdom
wide excommunication, has to recognize
England as a fief to Rome.

29. Magna Carta
 1215 at Runnymeade, 63 demands
 Magna Carta – Great Charter
 Due Process of Law
 Free men are protected from arbitrary arrest
and imprisonment
 Taxation
 King can’t raise taxes without consulting the
Great Council
 No taxation without representation

30. MC’s significance
 1. nobles now
have certain rights
(later extended to
all citizens)
 2. monarch must
obey the law (and
the charter)

31. Great Council
 House of Commons (2 knights from each
county)
 House of Lords
 King summons this parliament for his own
purpose
 Serve as a checks and balance

32. And Onto France…
Philip IV
 Louis’s grandson
 Extends royal power (good), tries to tax
the clergy (not so good)–
 Pope Boniface VIII – not happy about
tax
 “God has set popes over kings and
kingdoms”
 Forbids Philip to tax the clergy without
papal consent
 Philip threatens arrest clergy who don’t
pay their taxes
 Philip sends troops and they seize the
pope
 Pope Boniface VIII – escapes, but was
beaten badly and dies
 French pope is appointed
 New pope moves the church court to
Avignon

34. Estates General
 Created in 1302
 3 parts – clergy, nobles, townspeople
 Body of people that have a say in the
government
 NOT AS POWERFUL as the English
Parliament (Great Council) because
Estates General has no control of taxation

35. Holy Roman Empire
 Otto I of Saxony – King of Germany
 Helps pope out
 962 – crowned as Holy Roman Emperor
 Holy – crowned by the pope
 Roman – heir to the emperors of ancient
Rome
 Pope Gregory VII – banned lay
investiture
 Only Pope can appoint bishops
 HRE Henry IV
 Disagreement with GregoryVII because
he thinks the HRE should appoint
bishops to their royal fiefs
 Concordat of Worms – 1122
 Church has sole pwr to elect and invest
bishops w/spiritual authority; emperor has
right to invest them with fiefs

36. The official crown!!

37. HRE ~1200

38. The Crusades
 Byzantine emperor
Alexius I asks Pope
Urban II for Christian
knights to help him fight
the Turks
 Muslim groups were
interfering with Christian
pilgrimages to the Holy
Land
 Urban II
 “an accursed race…has
violently invaded the lands
of those Christians and has
depopulated them by
pillage and fire”

39. God wills it!
 1096 – armies of knights, and
ordinary men and women all left
for the Holy Land
 Motivations
 Religious zeal
 Hopes of wealth and land
 Adventure
 Pope – hoped to heal the split
between Roman and Byzantine
churches
 Hoped Christian knights would
no longer waste time fighting
each other
 Many Crusades – Round 1, 2, 3,
etc.

42.  Over 200 years – roughly 1095-
1290s
 1st Crusade – massacre of Muslim
and Jewish residents of Jerusalem
 Saladin (Muslim) retook Jerusalem
 Results and effects of the
Crusades:
 Fail to conquer the Holy Land
 Increased trade
 Middle Eastern products
introduced to Europe
 Growth of a money economy
 Increased power for monarchs
and the Pope
 Global awareness
 1271 Marco Polo to China

43.  Venetian Merchants
 Reached their pinnacle after the 4th Crusade
 Sent a fleet of Venetian vessels to Constantinople during the
Crusades (does this sound weird to you?)
 Loot and pillage Constantinople
 Rule the city for the next 50 years
 End of Constantinople’s domination in Eurasian trade – they’ll never
be the dominant one again
 Become the center of trade in W. Europe (they will continue to
increase and succeed into the Renaissance)

44. Reconquista in Spain
 Christian campaign to drive
the Muslims out of Spain
 Isabella of Castile marries
Ferdinand of Aragon
 Unity of two pwrful kingdoms
opens the way for a unified
state
 End of religious toleration for
Christians, Jews, and Muslims
 Initiate the Spanish Inquisition
– Church court set up to try
people accused of heresy
 Brutal against Muslims and
Jews – many burned at the
stake when they refuse to
convert to Christianity

45. Painting of the Reconquista

46. The Inquisition

48. Christopher Columbus

49. Medieval Architecture
 The Romanesque Church
– fortresses with thick
walls and towers
 Barrel vault (long tunnel of
stone covering most of the
structure)
 So heavy it required thick
walls
 No windows to keep walls
strong
 Dark and gloomy

51. Gothic Architecture
 Flying buttresses – stone
supports outside the church
 Allow builders to construct
higher walls and leave space for
huge stained-glass windows
 Could be very tall
 Graceful spires, lofty ceilings,
enormous windows – carry the
eye upward to the heavens
 Monuments are built to the
“greater glory of God”
 Make you feel very small,
emphasize power and grandeur
of God

55. Notre Dame

56. Flying butresses - Chartres

58. Dante’s Divine Comedy
 Vernacular
 Dante’s Divine Comedy
 Abandon all hope, ye that enter here

59. Growth of Trade and Banking
 Agricultural advancements –
 Cause population increase and surplus
of food (allows for urbanization to occur)
 Windmills, iron plow, horse replaced
oxen, 3 field system
 Urban Growth – more specialized
manufacturing and commercial activities

60. Growth of Trade and Banking
 Increases trade
 Creation of Guilds
 Apprentice, journeyman, etc.
 Prevents monopoly
 Quality control
 Development of banking system
 Lending money
 Receipts and regional systems
 Joint business ventures
 Invest in supplies and pool resources, limits
risks since land and sea travel is
dangerous

61. Troubled 1300’s
 Famine and crop failure already rampant
 Makes everyone more susceptible to the
plague

62. PLAGUE!
 1347 – a Genoese trading ship brings the
plague to Messina, Sicily
 Italy to Spain to France and Germany –
one in three people died
 Originated in Asia and spread to the
Middle East to Europe
 India depopulated; Mesopotamia, Syria and
Armenia covered with dead bodies
 Cairo – 7,000 dead bodies a day

63.  Yersinia pestis
 Bacillus lives in bloodstream of an animal or
in the stomach of a flea
 Ideal host? The Black Rat – traveled on
ships
 Two forms – bubonic and pneumonic
 Bubonic – flea is the vector
 Pneumonic – direct human contact

64.  Streets were cesspools
 Mud, refuse, human excrement
 Personal hygiene – everyone had fleas
and body lice so flea bites were perfectly
normal
 Aristocratic families all slept in one room
together
 Middle-class or poor households often
slept in one bed

66. Symptoms
 1st Stage
 A growth the size of a nut or
an apple emerged in the
armpit, groin or neck (lymph
nodes)
 Boil “buba” – gave the
disease its name
 Caused agonizing pain
 If lanced and drained
victim has a chance
 2nd Stage
 black spots or blotches
appear from bleeding under
the skin
 3rd and Final Stage
 Victim begins to cough
violently and spit blood
 Death usually followed within
two to three days

68.  Victims symptoms were so revolting that
instead of earning compassion, care-
givers were disgusted

69. Social Effects
 People didn’t understand the science behind
how the disease spread…so,
 Terror and bewilderment spread
 Magic and witchcraft
 Profound pessimism
 Wild pleasures – we’ll die soon anyway
 Flagellants – scourged and whipped themselves
as penance for their and society’s sins
 People fled from city centers

70. The Decameron
 Giovannia Boccaccio

71. Hundred Years War
 1337-1453 (Actually 116 years)
 England v. France
 Edward III of England claimed the French
crown in 1337 and war erupted
 English victories at first, France suffered
greatly
 Thank you longbow (3 for 1)

72. Joan of Arc
 1429 – 17 year old peasant
woman appears in the court of
Charles VII the uncrowned king
of France
 Tells Charles God sent her to
save France
 Persuades him to allow Joan to
lead his armies against the
English
 Joan inspires the troops and
leads them to several victories
 English capture her, try her as a
witch, burn her at the stake
 Church later declares her as a
saint
 Joan’s execution rallies French
troops
 French have the cannon!

73. Effects?
 War created growing
sense of nationalism
 Longbow and cannon
 Warfare changing
 castles susceptible to
gunpowder’s reach
Why did this kind of
warfare threaten
feudalism?