Culture is Reality: Medieval Mind Film: Faith and Fear, Documents: Medieval World View Lecture: The Great Chain of Being and the Expansion of Europe Essay

Lesson #6: Medieval Weltanschauung HereticsSummaMiseryDanteMagna Carta Main Idea Historical Significance: What is the Medieval World View? Text reference that best supports your assertion Write a statement that asserts what exactly the medieval world view was.

The Medieval World View: the Great Chain of Being All Europeans were what we call catholic and medieval thinkers used metaphor to describe society. The most comprehensive metaphor was the “Great Chain of Being” Started with a Ptolemaic universe with a series of concentric spheres with earth in the center and hell in absolute middle 5 Points to keep in mind: 1.Hierarchical with god at the top and hell at the bottom 2.As you ascend the chain you become closer to God &Man is half-way 3.Each rank can be further divided and subdivided – 9 kinds of angels 4.Each rank resembles the whole – Lion was “King of the Beasts”, King is God on Earth, Who’s King of the class? 5.Chain not a ladder: every thing and being has a specific place assigned by God All about order: disobey, rebel, try to rise – Heresy one and all Why did people buy it –Science and sermon of every person –Paternalism & Deference Aspirational and its inability to accommodating changing social realities will be a recurrent theme of our class

Shakespeare: Troilus and Cressida The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre, Observe degree, priority, and place, Insisture, course, proportion, season, form, Office, and custom, in all line of order.

Social Organization: The Ancient Regime Ancient Regime: Those who fight, those who pray, those who work Nobles are the governing class who power is based on land ownership and who title would become inherited –Feudalism: King and the Political/Military Class –Classes of Nobles –Powers of Nobles: Seigniorial Privilege –Limits of feudalism –Chivalry Clergy are of the same class as the former and/investiture conflict not withstanding, mutually dependent The Rest: Agricultural workers –Yeoman, cottagers, laborers –Manors manoralism Very poor

Growth of Towns and Cities Towns formed around Bishop’s sees or seats of government Paris biggest at 200k, Venice and Naples 100k - London Amsterdam, Moscow, Lisbon, Madrid, Rome, and Florence 50k – York, Milan Berlin 000’s – Cathedral cities and market towns like Antwerp Bruges Lyon would be several hundred Town air made people free Towns had different corperate governmental organizations and ethos than the other 90% of society Think of the ways the nascent capitalist does not conform to the feudal and chivalric code: How town life doesn’t comport with the Chain!

Commercialization Agricultural specialization and comercialization are of course linked and a catalyst to trade Fairs, leagues of cities, banking houses, contract law, new accounting practices all advance trade Emerging power of central monarchies encourage and protect trade which becomes a source of wealth, power and a lever against the nobility Church relax rhetoric surrounding wealth and usury Italian city states create trade networks that integrate N. Europe with Islam and E. Asia

The Gunpowder Revolution 14 th & 15 th Century Warfare and the Emergence of the Modern “Gunpowder State”

Medieval Warfare The Mounted Knight was the supreme offensive weapon –Agincourt &Longbow not withstanding (1415) –Social Hierarchy that went with it determined the political landscape Military was distinctly feudal (stop me here and define feudal with a few attributes) Castles lent defensive warfare overwhelming advantage –Siege Warfare –Political realities

Cannon

Gunpowder Revolution Introduction of Gunpowder cannon neatly reverses the previous equation –Offense now has advantage –Kings “decastle” their kingdoms in the 50 years it takes architecture to adopt Reality reflected in the changed political landscape Cannon immensely expensive and require considerable industrial plant Musket Armies are the first and most important modern state institutions –Taxation –Burocracy/rational origination of governance grow from the appetite of gunpowder armies for money, men and expertise

Floating Castles – Trade Empires & Conquest Floating sovereignty – cannon and 200 ton ships immensely expensive yet could project power around the world Mediterranean Empires – shift West, Genoa Venice to Catalonia. State trade to conquest, gold, and slavery Portuguese caravels w. lateen sails Portugal Azores by 1430, Cape Good Hope 1488, DaGama in India 1498, 1511 in Malacca with a string of forts to make real their domination of the spice trade. Cape Verde Ils. & Slavery Spain Treaty of Tortisillas, 1494

16 th Century “Castles”? How did the “Gunpowder Revolution” change the political landscape of Europe in the 15 th Century?

Putting these things Together = Decline of Aristocracy, Rise of Monarchy 1.As previously mentioned “Burghers, town residents whose entrepreneurial activity made possible the economic dynamism of medieval Europe, despite their increasing importance,” were no respecters of the Great Chain & its three orders in society. Monarchs encouraged, taxed, and chartered their mini- constitutions and drew on towns to pry power from nobles. 2.Increasing value of peasant labor lead to an end to serfdom. A liberation movement which monarchs strongly supported (why? Merriman p.13) 3.Aristocrats increasingly engaged in commercial agriculture collecting rent and even beginning the process of enclosure– how does this shift political power to the monarch? 4.Gunpowder de-castles and changes the scale of military operations before the aristocracy has an opportunity adopt. By the time they do the fortification technology has been moved to what are essentially the national boundries of European states to this day.