High Middle Ages Discussion

Due November 17 at 9 PM Pacific Time

One of the finest collections of Medieval art in the United States is housed in The Cloisters, a special division of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The main building of the Met touches on Central Park in centralManhattan, but the Cloisters is a completely separate structure located at the extreme northern tip ofManhattan From the Cloisters itself comes this description:

Located on four acres overlooking the Hudson River in northern Manhattan's Fort Tryon Park, the building incorporates elements from five medieval French cloisters—quadrangles enclosed by a roofed or vaulted passageway, or arcade—and from other monastic sites in southern France. Three of the cloisters reconstructed at the branch museum feature gardens planted according to horticultural information found in medieval treatises and poetry, garden documents and herbals, and medieval works of art, such as tapestries, stained-glass windows, and column capitals. Approximately five thousand works of art from medieval Europe, dating from about A.D. 800 with particular emphasis on the twelfth through fifteenth century, are exhibited in this unique and sympathetic context.

If you have the good fortune to visit New York and want to go to the Cloisters, be aware that it is virtually a day trip in itself, but it is well worth the visit. You will feel that you have left the modern United States completely behind and journeyed back to the High Middle Ages. In the meantime, we can visit the Cloisters virtually.

For this week's Discussion, I have a short video (about 6:30; music and titles only, no narration) that shows you around the place. Click here to watch the video. When you're done, use your browser's Back button to return here. (I apologize for the dopey synthesized music; I had nothing to do with that.)

Next, I want you to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Cloister pages for visitors:

Click around on the various links for a minute or two to get a sense of the place. it should already look somewhat familiar because you watched the video.

When you feel you have a sense of the place, then I want you to go back to the Met's main site and the section that features highlights of the Cloisters collection. Last time I looked, there were at least two hundred different works and views, so have fun exploring.

Here is the link:

When you're ready, I want you to choose an image of a work of art that interests you and that does not already appear in any of the module pages for this unit. Check the date of the object's creation because you are looking for something created between 1000 and 1300 AD.

Capture the image as you have done before: Hover your mouse pointer over the picture, right-click to copy the URL, then go to Canvas. In the toolbar at the top of the reply window below, click on the little icon that looks like a tree. A dialog box should open where you can paste the URL of the object you have chosen. Click on the "Embed Image" button, and the image should appear in the reply window.

Move the cursor down a couple of lines and start writing. Start by identifying the object. I need (1) the name of the object, (2) the date of its creation [must be between 1000 and 1300 AD, not earlier or later], (3) the name of the artist if known, and (4) a few words that say what it is (a reliquary, a crucifix, an illustration from a manuscript, etc.). Then, explain how this object relates to or expresses themes from the material covered in this study unit.I would prefer that you not pick an object that someone else has already posted. If you do, your explanation of how this object expresses the spirit of the times must be completely different from what the other person wrote about the same object.

As always, your post must contain more than 200 words and at least five of the redvocabulary terms from this unit's study guide. And by the way, no picture, no points.

Boudicca
William of Normandy
Bayeux Tapestry
Battle of Hastings
Domesday Book
Henry II
King John
Magna Carta
habeas corpus
Hadrian’s Wall
the Norman invasion of England
Lay Investiture
simony
Peter Abelard
Realists
Nominalists
Averroes
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Becket
Al-Hakim
Kingdom of Jerusalem
Abbot Suger
Beauvais Cathedral
flying buttress
rib vault
St. Denis
Cathedral of Chartres
Tympanum
lay
chanson de geste
Chrétien de Troyes
Thomas Malory
Dante Aligheri
The Divine Comedy

*************This is the reading material for this assignment.****************

Introduction

Beginning with a history of England from the time of the Romans, we follow the growth of European civilization between the years 1000 and 1300 AD. We look briefly at the workings of the feudal system and manorialism. We chronicle the struggles of the Church during this period, with an emphasis on the struggle over Lay Investiture, and we identify the main characteristics of the Gothic style of church building. We also survey developments in Medieval literature and music, and we conclude with a history of the Crusades and their effect on the development of the Church and the evolving European monarchies that eventually replaced the feudal system.

The Narration: Part One

Humanities 250: Ideas and Values in the Humanities. Hi, this is Richard Felnagle speaking, and this program is the overview to the unit titled “The High Middle Ages.”

Most early civilizations evolved according to a fairly predictable pattern. They began near rivers, which facilitated agriculture, which lead to population growth. Settlements evolved into villages, which evolved into towns, and they, in turn, evolved into cities. And that’s the point at which every society becomes complex—with a division of labor, a diversity of beliefs, and—inevitably—a class system, usually involving slavery in one form or another. There’s accumulation of wealth, which requires a system of laws administered by a strong central government. And with stability and a little luck, the aesthetic imperative kicks in, and a rich culture develops with distinctive architecture, sculpture, painting, literature, and even music.

In this unit, we are exactly at that point in the history of Western Europe. Between the years 1000 and 1300, a European civilization evolved.

The Early Middle Ages were dominated by two groups: On the one hand, the tribes and invaders—often as not, one and the same—and on the other, the Church, which expanded its authority in the vacuum left by the disappearance of the Romans.

But the High Middle Ages are dominated by feudal kingdoms with a relatively stable succession of leadership. Now, early Medieval Europe had plenty of kings—Clovis, Charlemagne, Pepin, all those guys—but their kingdoms did not survive them, and to qualify as a civilization, society can’t fall apart every time there’s a new king. During this period, we have that continuity.

As a result, the High Middle Ages are the point at which we stop talking about tribes—the Goths and Saxons, the Franks and beans—and we start talking about nations: the French, the Germans, the Italians, and the British.

And I need to point out here, too, that up to this point, there haven’t been any real European cities either.

Between the years 500 and 1000, the great cities belonged to other civilizations: Constantinople, Baghdad, Córdoba, and in China, the city of Chang’an, known as Xi’an today. But in this period emerge the cities of Paris, London, Vienna, and in Italy, Florence and Venice.

Now. Nowhere is this pattern of emerging civilization more apparent than in England, so that’s where we’re going to focus a lot of attention in this unit. And I want to point out a little irony here. Beginning around the end of the 16th century and continuing through to the early twentieth century, Great Britain became the dominant political and military power in Europe. But if you’d told anybody in the year 1000 that was going to happen, they’d have laughed in your face.

Since the time of the Romans, England had been the equivalent of the American Wild West. Julius Caesar had been there in 55 BC, but he took one look and turned around and went back to Gaul. The Celts were too primitive and too savage, and Britain had nothing he wanted.

A hundred years later, the Roman Emperor Claudius came back and did establish a Roman presence in England, but the Romans very nearly got their butts kicked during a revolt led by the warrior queen Boudicca. Tacitus says that she and her forces managed to kill over 70,000 Roman soldiers and colonists before the Roman legions finally managed to take her down.

Having settled into southern England, the Romans then pushed on to the north, but ultimately, the Scots and the other northern tribes were just too much of a challenge, so the mighty Romans were reduced to building a wall—just as the Chinese had done several centuries earlier to try to keep out the Mongols. And even with Hadrian’s Wall, fully a tenth of the Roman army was required to hold on to this rather small part of the empire.

In early fifth century, the western Roman empire was crumbling, and the Romans pulled up stakes and left, abandoning their villas and their towns and their public baths, such as the one that still stands today in the city known as Bath.

Soon after, England was invaded by the Angles and the Saxons, and between the years 500 and 1000, Britain was ruled chaotically by warlords—some of them Christian—and in the late eighth century, the Vikings and the Danes added themselves to the mix.

So by the year 1000, where this unit begins, Britain was not a very promising place. The Anglo-Saxons and the Danes were battling each other, and by 1016, the Danes had won. England then had a Danish king by the name of Canute, and England was a sort of province of Denmark and Norway. And things might have stayed that way, but!

In the year 1066, a real charmer named William, known to history as William the Conqueror, and known to his friends as William the Bastard, led an invasion of England that established him as England’s first king in the modern sense.

William was from Normandy, so this event is known as the Norman Conquest, and the details were duly recorded in a most extraordinary sort of comic strip history book on cloth known as the Bayeux Tapestry, and that’s something else we cover in this unit.

William began the hereditary monarchy in England. He ruled with a very firm hand, and when he died, he was succeeded by his son, Henry, and when Henry’s time came to depart this earth, he wanted to be succeeded by his daughter Matilda. Well, as you might imagine, that didn’t work out, and there was a brief period of civil war, but eventually, Matilda’s son gained the throne, ruling as Henry II, the first of the so-called Plantagenet rulers. Thus, the succession was interrupted but not broken.

Henry’s greatest achievement was the implementation of the English common law, enforced by a system of royal courts. They had the force of royal power behind them, but under Henry, they were not subject to the king’s whimsy, and a tradition of rule by law began to be established in England.

For nurturing the English legal system, Henry II would probably be remembered today as a pretty good king, but instead, he is remembered as a villain, and I’ll explain why in a moment, but I want to keep going with the succession.

Henry was succeeded by his son Richard—nice name, don’t you think? As a king, Richard wasn’t around very much—he was off to the Crusades—and in his absence, his younger brother John pretty much ran the country, and he nearly ran it into the ground.

After Richard’s death, John got the throne for real, but apparently, John had become too used to doing things in an underhanded and highhanded way, and in 1215, the feudal lords turned on him and forced him to sign a little contract we know as the Magna Carta, or Great Charter, a set of laws that limited the English king’s power from then onward and set England sailing on a course toward parliamentary rule.

Why is the Magna Carta such a big deal? Because it established two very important principles.

First, equal justice for all under the common law. In other words, no one—not even in the king—is above the law. The law applies to everyone. Second, everyone is entitled to due process and trial by jury. The king could not just toss someone into prison and throw away the key, and apparently, John liked to do that to his political enemies.

But before we get all dewy-eyed here, the fact is that as soon as John was able, he got the Pope to annul the Magna Carta. Nice to know whose side the Pope was on. The English feudal lords then revolted, and while the revolt was in progress, John died in 1216.

The lords then recognized John’s nine-year-old son as the next king, Henry III—thus maintaining the succession. The Magna Carta was then reaffirmed, and a version created in 1225 became the final draft.

In time, other rights evolved from the Magna Carta. One is the principle of no taxation without representation, and the other is the principle of habeas corpus, a Latin phrase meaning roughly “show us the body.”

Why is that a big deal? Well, let’s say you’ve been arrested and you’re being held as a prisoner. Your friends or your family or your representatives may then apply to a court to issue a writ of habeas corpus, which is an order to produce you in court to determine if you are being legally detained. Habeas corpus thus grew out of the Magna Carta principle that everyone is entitled to due process, and it is your fundamental protection against arbitrary imprisonment. Back to Medieval England.

Not surprisingly, the feudal lords dominated Henry III, but his son, Edward I, brought things back into balance and did a lot to establish the authority of the English Parliament. Another important principle affirmed during his reign was the idea that taxes had to be collected by consent of the realm, which for all practical purposes meant the Parliament.

However, Edward was primarily concerned with conquering Scotland, and he devoted a good part of his life to that project, but he never succeeded, and neither did his son, Edward II. And that brings us to end of the period we are studying in this unit.

But the point is that starting from diddly in the year 1000, England established a set of laws that applied to king and commoner and maintained a stable line of succession for almost three hundred years. And I think this power-sharing arrangement involving Parliament and the common law has a lot to do with England’s evolution into a world power. This same arrangement was not duplicated elsewhere in Europe at this time.

In France, the dynasty begun by Hugh Capet lasted from 987 to 1328, but the Capetian kings were never as strong as their counterparts in England or Germany—largely because the feudal system was so strongly established in France.

In Germany, the big story was the continuing struggle with the Church over who had the authority to appoint bishops. After all, the Church had anointed the king as the Holy Roman Emperor, so he figured he ought to have some say in how the holy part of his empire was run. But the Church disagreed, and that struggle kept the Holy Roman Empire fragmented so it never achieved the national unity that the French and the English achieved.

It was this same struggle over appointing Church officials that got Henry II into trouble. The full story is in the study guide, but the short version is that in 1154, Henry picked a promising young man named Thomas Becket for his chancellor—kinda like his Prime Minister, the guy who actually ran the government.

Henry and Thom worked well together, but in 1161, the archbishop of Canterbury died, and Henry appointed Becket to take that job, too. But Beckett then resigned as chancellor and devoted himself to defending the interests of the church.

Pretty soon, Henry and Thom were locking horns, and one day Henry said something he shouldn’t have. Within the hearing of some of his henchmen, he reportedly cried out in frustration, “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” Well, a couple of his men with very small brains took that as an order, and they marched off to Canterbury and murdered Becket right in his own cathedral.

The Narration: Part Two

Becket then became a major martyr, and Canterbury became one of the most popular pilgrim shrines in all of Europe. Henry had to do penance and even endure a public flogging at the hands of the priests. And after that, nobody particularly cared about his legal reforms.