Experience life in the Middle Ages and discover the events that occurred in this interesting period of history. Meet the religious leaders, feudal lords, and ordinary people who lived through this time.
\IThis section includes text from The Middle Ages, a Cambridge University Press publication by Trevor Cairns.\i
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"Contents of The Middle Ages",2,0,0,0
\BChapter 1\b - \JChurch, The\j
\BChapter 2\b - \JFeudal lords\j
\BChapter 3\b - \JReligion and the warriors\j
\BChapter 4\b - \JOrdinary people\j
\BChapter 5\b - \JKings and countries\j
\BChapter 6\b - \JEnd of the Middle Ages\j
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"Church, The",3,0,0,0
\BChapter 1 of The Middle Ages\b
Click on the \INext Page\i button to begin reading this chapter.
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"Medieval Architecture",4,0,0,0
\BThe Church Buildings\b
If you live in England, you are sure to be fairly near an old parish church. Sometimes it may be \JAnglo-Saxon\j, but usually it will date from some time between about 1000 and 1500. You ought to be able to tell how old it is by looking at it, because builders changed their styles during the Middle Ages, beginning with massive, solid work and making buildings lighter and more delicate-looking as the centuries went on and the builders became more skilful.
Sometimes you may find a church in the style of building is called Romanesque. If you think of how the Romans had built, especially their rounded arches, you will understand why. In England this style is often called 'Norman', because so much was done in the century or so after 1066 by Norman kings, bishops and lords. In these buildings you may often find rows of patterns carved round the tops of doors and windows, especially a zigzag or 'chevron' pattern.
Frequently, though, your church will have doors and windows arched very differently, pointed. The pointed arch was one of the great inventions of medieval builders. As time went on they made their buildings altogether more pointed, and often added tall spires to the towers.
This style of \Jarchitecture\j is called 'Gothic' - a stupid name, because it was certainly not the work of the \JGoths\j, whom you may remember long before, in the barbarian invasions. The name Gothic was invented by sixteenth-century people who thought that because this style was not like the \Jarchitecture\j of the Greeks and Romans it was uncivilized, barbarous; so they called it Gothic, just as we call barbarous, destructive people 'Vandals'. Though nowadays it has lost its original meaning, the name 'Gothic' has remained because, just as with the name 'Middle Ages', everybody has got used to it.'
As time went on, Gothic \Jarchitecture\j became more delicate and ornamented. Towards the end of the Middle Ages it grew into its lightest and most daring form in England, with lofty flattened arches and enormously wide windows. You can see why this style has been named 'Perpendicular'. Many churches in the Perpendicular style were built by rich wool merchants both in East Anglia and in the west of England during the fifteenth century.
Often you will find churches which kept on being enlarged and altered during the Middle Ages, so that they are part Romanesque, part Gothic, part Decorated Gothic, and in England may be part Perpendicular as well.
Whatever the style of building, every village had at least one small church, normally with a priest. A town often had a big church, with several priests, and as a town grew more churches would have to be built, each with its priest to look after the people in the parish. More people, though, lived in villages.
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"Medieval Church and Religion",5,0,0,0
\BInside The Church.\b
Everybody went to church on Sunday and on other holy-days, such as the feasts of important saints. The Church ordered that these days should be kept for the worship of God, free from ordinary everyday work. These were the only days off that people had, and we still use the same word, holiday. People came to church to attend Mass as the main morning service was called, and sometimes the priest would preach, telling them of God and the saints, and urging them to lead good lives.
Few, if any, of the people in a parish church would be able to read, and in any case there would be no prayer books for them. All books were very expensive. The priest's sermon would be in ordinary language, but the Mass would be in Latin, the language which the Church used in every country.
Probably most people were so used to it that they could tell what was going on, even if they could not understand the words; but in case their eyes and minds began to wander from what the priest was doing, the inside of the church would contain pictures and statues for them to look at, to make them think about religious matters.
Most of these pictures and statues have been destroyed, and the few which have survived were mostly made in the late part of the Middle Ages. Still there remain enough for us to be able to imagine what the inside of a church was like then. Looking forward, a worshipper would see a screen in front of the altar, often beautifully carved and with the panels painted.
On top of this screen there would be a rood, or big crucifix so that nobody could forget how and why Christ had died. On the walls, and sometimes over the arch above the rood were paintings. One popular subject was the Last Judgment showing the dead rising from their graves and being judged, the good being taken up to live with God in Heaven, and the bad being sent to suffer torture for ever in Hell.
Sometimes the whole inside of the church would be covered by paintings. In England there is nothing as good as this, but some churches now have wall-paintings which have been discovered quite recently after being whitewashed over for hundreds of years.
\BChurch And People\b
The parish church was usually the finest building in the village, often the only stone one. Even today the church often dominates a village or small town. Nobody could forget it. Every Sunday and holy-day the people went there.
The parish priest christened them, married them, visited them when they were ill, and buried them. He tried to make them friends of God; without the Church they would have no chance of going to Heaven. Even in the business of this world, the priest would often be needed to give his help and advice, for there would usually be no other man in the village with any sort of education.
The people of the parish did not get all this for nothing. The priest had to eat and to have a house. The church, like any big building, needed constant looking after. Perhaps any expensive work on the church, or the presentation of precious vessels to be used on the altar, would be paid for by some very rich man - a lord or, towards the end of the Middle Ages, a merchant.
All the same, the ordinary peasants would pay \Jtithes\j (a tenth of their income) and make special offerings at times like Easter. Also, all believed that it was good to give to the poor or to the Church or the Crusade; generous people would be rewarded by God in Heaven.
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"Bishops in the Middle Ages",6,0,0,0
The priest was a very important man in his own parish, but this did not mean that he had the right to do exactly as he pleased. He had to obey the bishop. The bishop's task was to look after parish priests, to see that they behaved well and to appoint new ones.
Inside each bishopric, or diocese, the bishop ruled over all the priests and most of the monks and nuns who lived there. A bishop held great power.
At Norwich the Norman bishop's throne stands in what had been the traditional place for a 'cathedra' since the time of Roman basilicas: at the far end, behind even the high altar.
If a priest was accused of committing a crime, he was not tried in an ordinary court, by the lord of the manor or by the king's judges. Only a churchman could judge a churchman, so the bishop held a court for such cases.
This court also tried men who were not priests if they were accused of offences against the Church, or if they were involved in a dispute over marriage or over wills - for, as you know, the Church married and buried everyone. There was so much work for the bishop's court that he handed it over to the \Jarchdeacon\j, and there were many lawyers who made a special study of Church Law, or Canon Law as it was called, and worked only in Church courts.
Such important churchmen as bishops were expected to keep up a dignified state. In his main church each bishop had a throne, where he sat during some services. The Latin word for a throne is 'cathedra', and so the chief church of a bishopric is known as a cathedral.
At Durham the Decorated Gothic throne, said to be the highest in Christendom, stands in what has become the normal place: before and to one side of the high altar. The bishop who built it lies proudly below.
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"Medieval Cathedrals",7,0,0,0
The cathedral, the mother church of the whole diocese, naturally had to be as splendid as possible. There must be space for multitudes to worship, for large choirs, for elaborate processions. There must be a high altar for the main services, and smaller altars in side chapels, where people could have private services if they wished.
There would be a specially holy place where the relics of a saint were kept, or perhaps some venerated statue, and it had to be so arranged that pilgrims could come to visit this shrine. Outside, it was fitting that the cathedral should be of equal magnificence, with soaring towers and rich carving to remind people both far and near of the majesty of God and His Church.
Often there were other buildings beside the cathedral. Sometimes a wall, with gates, was built to form a 'close' round the cathedral. The bishop would need a house near the cathedral. Such a great church required many priests, or canons', to conduct services, and they also needed somewhere convenient to live.
There are so many great medieval cathedrals, in so many different styles of building, each with its own particular splendors.
Think also of the amount of labor, skill, time and treasures which must have gone into the cathedral. Notice how we have been able to take examples from all over western Europe - Medieval Western Christendom.
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"Popes in the Middle Ages",8,0,0,0
The bishops were the officers who held the Church together, but there were others above them. Over each group of bishops there was an \Jarchbishop\j, and in every kingdom there would be one \Jarchbishop\j who was senior to the rest. In England there were two archbishops. Canterbury was senior to York.
People who were not satisfied by a judgment in a bishop's court could appeal to the \Jarchbishop\j. People who were still dissatisfied could go still further, to \JRome\j, to the court of the Pope himself. Nobody could go further than that - at least, not in this world.
The Pope or, as he was sometimes called, the Vicar of St Peter (or of Christ), was head of the entire Western Church. He ruled it on behalf of God. No man could be above him.
Think of what this means. Everyone believed that when Christ had finally ascended to Heaven He had left St Peter to act as His representative, or vicar. He gave him even the keys of Heaven and Hell. St Peter was the first Pope, and every Pope afterwards inherited his powers.
Remember how important this had seemed to King Oswy at the Synod of Whitby. The Pope spoke with the voice of God. From him, through the archbishops and bishops and priests, God's commands came to ordinary laymen.
Any man who was not a churchman was a layman. Even a great layman, count or earl, duke or king, was supposed to treat the Church with respect and obedience. Enemies of the Church, it was thought, were enemies of God.
This was something that even the toughest warriors and the proudest kings feared. If they were to die while still enemies of God, they would surely go straight to Hell. And this was certain if they had been cut off from the Church as a punishment, or excommunicated.
Once a man had been excommunicated the Church would have nothing to do with him. He could attend no service. He could not be married. If he were to die, there would be no last sacraments or decent burial for him. What was more, he would be spurned by his friends, for anyone trying to help him would incur the same dreadful punishment. On earth and in Heaven there was no hope for anyone who was under the curse of the Church.
With a power like this in his hand, a Pope would sometimes try to make himself the complete master of western Europe. Some Popes even thought that they had the right to remove a king if he behaved badly, and give the kingdom to someone else. Though in fact no Pope ever succeeded in doing quite that, many Popes were well able to put the fear of God, quite literally, into kings and nobles.
One king had a grander title than any of the others. He was the Holy Roman Emperor. You know how the Frankish king, Charles the Great, had become the first Holy Roman Emperor in AD 800 and how, long after his death, his empire had split.
During the Middle Ages the Holy Roman Empire consisted of \JGermany\j and some of the near-by lands, and the emperor was elected by the most important German nobles. Sometimes there were fierce quarrels between Pope and emperor, for some emperors argued that the chief king in Christendom was just as important a servant of God as the Pope, though God had given him different duties to perform; against this the Pope would argue that unless he crowned him, the emperor did not have God's blessing. On the whole, it was the Pope who won these quarrels.
From all over Europe people flocked to the papal court. Pilgrims came to visit the churches and relics of the Holy City; lawyers and their clients to plead their cases; archbishops to receive the pallium, the strip of cloth which was their badge of office; messengers with offerings of money from churches all over Christendom; great men seeking the Pope's aid, or perhaps permission to break one of the rules of the Church, in some such matter as marrying a near relative.
The Pope and his courtiers were tremendously busy. There had to be hundreds of officials to deal with all this work, to write letters and seal documents and record judgments and count money and make sure that all the laws and rules and regulations were kept up to date. In short, the Pope was the only ruler in Europe who had a real civil services something like a modern government - or like the ancient government of imperial \JRome\j a thousand years before.
Rome was no longer the Imperial City, and her ruler no longer enforced his authority with the sword. But \JRome\j was still the heart of western Europe.
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"Monks and Monasteries in the Middle Ages",9,0,0,0
So far, we have been thinking about all those churchmen whose main job was to keep the Church going and to look after the laymen. There were thousands of other churchmen and women, who wished to serve God without having anything to do with the ordinary everyday world of the laymen where people were too often wicked, dishonest, greedy and violent. Such men and women became monks and nuns.
You will already have heard about St Benedict, and know that there was nothing new in this idea. In the Middle Ages it became more important than ever. New orders were founded. Monasteries became bigger, new ones were built.
In England alone there were more than 2,000 in the fourteenth century, and it was the same story all over Christendom. Most monks were Benedictine, following the Rule of St Benedict, or lived according to some very similar rule. By looking at a typical monastery we can learn much about the sort of life they led.
If we study a monastery methodically, one part at a time, we shall find that each part is easy to understand, and that all the pieces fit together sensibly.
The most important place, obviously, is the place for worship; the church. Like any other church, it would be built east-west, with the high altar at the east end. Next to this would be the choir, where the monks would assemble for services, and further west the nave, where outsiders might sometimes be admitted.
On each side would be the aisles, often with extra altars. In the transepts, the 'cross' part of the church, there would be more chapels. All these chapels and altars were needed because many of the monks were priests as well, and every priest was bound to say Mass at least once a day.
Even a monk could not be in church all the time. For one thing, he needed sleep. Because some services were held in the middle of the night, however, the dormitory where the monks slept had to be near the church. Usually it was built upstairs, and there was a flight of stairs leading directly from the dormitory into the transept.
Monks had to eat, too, so a dining hall or refectory was built near the dormitory. It had to be big enough to take all the monks, and there was a pulpit on one side so that during meals the monks could listen to a reading from a religious book. Meals were simple and sparse, except on the great feast days.
A dining hall needs a kitchen near it, and a kitchen needs storage cellars. Water is needed, both for cooking and for washing. Often you can see near a refectory traces of a lavatorium, or washing place, for the monks to use before meals. The Latin for 'to wash' is 'lavare'.
As for the places which are usually called lavatories nowadays, monasteries were quite well supplied. They were often built out over a stream, so that the filth would be carried away.
Many other rooms were needed. Every day the monks used to meet to discuss monastery business. This meeting was known as a Chapter, for each meeting began with a reading of a chapter of the Rule of the Order, and a Chapter House was built for it. Sometimes this was an oblong room under the dormitory, sometimes a separate octagonal building with a pointed roof and a strong central pillar.
Among the other rooms there would be places for reading and writing - a scriptorium - and a library. There would also be one room with a fire, where the monks would be allowed to warm themselves for a short time each day. Most of the time they had to do without any heating.
The walk was called the cloister, and the lawn the cloister garth. Thus the church and cloister buildings - usually on the south side of the church, for protection against the coldest winds - formed the main part of the monastery, where the monks lived, prayed and worked.
The buildings beyond this group are easily explained. In the infirmary, sick monks could be given more comfort than was possible in their normal living quarters. The head of the monastery, who was called either the abbot or the prior, needed a separate house because he would often have business with outsiders, and the monks did not want strangers wandering about the \Jcloisters\j.
There were often barns, sheds, a forge, a mill, a house for servants, all outside the \Jcloisters\j but within the monastery wall. There were guest houses, too, for monks sheltered travelers; rich travelers were expected to pay, but poor men were given alms, fed and sheltered free.
You may be noticing that, though they were shutting them selves away, the monks still had an influence on the people outside. In the early Middle Ages, monasteries were the only
places where anyone studied or wrote books. They helped travelers and the poor.
Monasteries themselves became rich, often holding villages and towns, because kings and lords so
often tried to please God by giving lands to monasteries. Some monks were important farmers and landlords; in England the Cistercian monks became famous for their sheep farming and wool. Often, too, a monastery would have the famous shrine of a saint, like St Albans, and pilgrims would come from far and near; many of the pilgrims would leave gifts.
In England, though not in other countries, monasteries were frequently attached to cathedrals, because monks had such a good reputation that some bishops thought that they would perform the services better than other priests.
With all this interference from outside, it was often hard for the monks to live such strict lives as they had intended. So, from time to time, some monk would decide that his monastery was becoming rather soft and comfortable, and that he should begin a new order of monks, in which the rule would be harder, stricter.
One of the most famous of these new orders began in 1098. They were called \JCistercians\j, or White Monks, because they began at Citeaux, in \JFrance\j, and wore garments of plain, undyed wool. They went to live in wild, wooded valleys where they would not be disturbed. You may also notice that there are one or two new features in the plan of the monastery. This was largely because they allowed lay-brothers to join them.
These were men who either would not or could not be sufficiently educated to become full monks and take part in the services, but who wanted to live a religious life and would do much of the work in and around the monastery. So the lay-brothers had their own refectory and dormitory on one side of the \Jcloisters\j, while the monks had the rest.
The reason for the tower in such an odd place is quite different. At first the \JCistercians\j would not have anything elaborate or ornamental about their monasteries; so there were no fine towers. But as time went on, the monasteries became rich, and the old simplicity began to fade away. In this particular monastery the church had not been designed to take a big central tower, so, as the usual place was not strong enough, the tower was built at the end of the north transept.
This sort of thing did tend to happen. An order would begin very strictly, but would slowly relax.
One order never relaxed. These monks were the \JCarthusians\j who had been founded in 1084. This was because they lived like hermits, each monk in his own little house, with his workroom, bedrooms tiny chapel and garden. Except when they met for services in the chapel, the monks saw nobody else, and there were far fewer services in this order than in the others; you can see that the chapel is small and simple, compared with the other monastery church.
\BMount Grace as it is today\b
These monks did not even see the servant who brought the meals. There was a serving hatch built so that the monk could see no more than a hand put in in a plate. It may have been because they shut themselves away so very completely that the \JCarthusians\j were able to remain strict. The \JCarthusians\j were so strict that they were always deeply respected, and always remained a rather small order.
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"Friars in the Middle Ages",10,0,0,0
\BDominic and the Pope's envoys\b
If you had asked a monk what use he was to other people, his answer would have been simple. He was praying for them, so that God would have mercy on them. This, as most people would have agreed in the Middle Ages, was one of the best things that one man could do for another. As for ordinary day-to-day work in the parishes, this was the job of the parish priests.
Some churchmen, however, began to think that something more was needed.
Such a man was Dominic, a Spaniard born about 1170. When he was a young priest he had to go on a journey through the south of \JFrance\j, where many of the people had taken up a new sort of \JChristianity\j. In the opinion of the Church, anyone who broke away and thought differently from the Pope and bishops was an enemy of God. People like this were known as heretics, from a Greek word meaning 'people who choose'.
The Church tried to make them change their minds, by persuasion or, if that failed, by force. These particular heretics lived near the city of Albi, and were called 'Albigensians'. On this journey Dominic met some priests whom the Pope had sent to persuade the Albigensians. They were riding along, splendidly dressed, attended by servants, expecting everybody to bow down before them. And the Albigensians had taken no notice.
Dominic was not surprised, but he was angry. He spoke thus: 'How can you expect to succeed, with all this wealth and pride? You ought to practice what you preach. You will never win over the heretics unless you behave simply. The heretic preachers know that better than you do! Throw away your riches, be like the disciples of Jesus, go without money or food or shoes, and preach the truth.'
Dominic himself did exactly that. He began to wander from village to village, town to town, begging his bread and owning nothing but his white gown and black cloak. Wherever he went, he preached. He was himself a very well-educated man, and he could argue with the cleverest. Yet he also knew how important it was to be able to explain things simply to ordinary peasants and workmen, and to show them that churchmen were not really fond of wealth, comfort and splendor.
Other priests soon joined Dominic, to live and work as he did. Dominic was offered bishoprics, but he refused to become a bishop. His task was to go about preaching, not to rule from a cathedral. The Pope heard about him and at last, in 1216, allowed him to found a new order.
Dominic's order was called the Order of Preachers, and his men were not monks. They had houses, but these were not monasteries; instead, they were bases from which the preachers could go out on their journeys, and centers where they could study and learn to do their job better. The Dominicans, as they were called, devoted their lives to two things, studying and preaching. They called themselves simply Friars, which means Brothers.
During the very years when St Dominic was striving against the heretics and founding his preaching friars, in \JItaly\j another man was beginning another order of friars. St Francis began as a rich, gay young man of the town of Assisi, merry and generous, without a care in the world. He was always to remain happy and kind, but he became the poorest of the poor.
During an illness he began to think seriously about what he ought to do with his life, and at last decided that he should give up all his wealth. He became a beggar, giving all the money he begged to rebuild churches. Then he suddenly thought of some of the words of the Gospel: 'Go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and as you go, preach, saying "The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand" . . . Get you no gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses; no wallet for your journey, neither two coats, nor shoes, nor staff.'
Francis did so.
With those who soon began to follow him, he wandered about \JItaly\j, begging and working for food, sleeping where shelter was offered or in little huts of branches and mud, asking everyone to think more about God. Above all, Francis and his friends taught kindness among men, and even among all living things. They nursed the sick, even lepers, and there are stories about how birds and wild animals sensed that Francis would do them no harm, and came and listened while he preached.
The sheer goodness and happiness of these poor men made them very popular. Within ten years of his starting out, Francis had 5,000 people trying to imitate his way of life. When they became an order, rules had to be made and houses built, but still the spirit of St Francis inspired his followers. They called themselves the Friars Minor, or Lesser Brothers, and wore a plain gray garment.
The Blackfriars of St Dominic and the Greyfriars of St Francis spread all over Christendom, and even beyond, within a few years. They preached on village greens and on the steps of market crosses. They taught in colleges and universities. They were sent on missions to the lands of the non-Christians in Asia and to \JEgypt\j.
Nothing quite like this had been seen inside Western Christendom before. They had a great deal of success, and were greatly respected. Yet, as the years went on, what had happened to the orders of monks happened to the orders of friars. They lost their fire. They began to wear shoes and good clothes, and their friaries became comfortable places to live in.
Being a \Jfriar\j, like being a monk, was too often just a respectable way of making a safe living and keeping on the right side of God at the same time. Most of the friars at the end of the Middle Ages were probably decent enough men who did a certain amount of good, but they were not very much like Dominic and Francis.
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"Charity in the Middle Ages",11,0,0,0
The friars were most famous for working among the poor and the sick, but they were not the only ones. The Church had always taught that it was good to help the needy, and there were always many people in misery - victims of bad harvests, war or robbery; widows, orphans, old people; sufferers from illness or injury. There were always people starving, ill-clad and cold, homeless, in pain.
Kings, lords and rich men often gave food and clothes to the poor. Churchmen usually helped. Some rich men, however, decided to set up special houses where sick or aged people could be cared for. These were called hospitals.
Nowadays we think of hospitals as places connected with medical care and cure, but in the Middle Ages the \Jhospital\j was much more a shelter for those who could not look after themselves. Even today there are many illnesses which doctors cannot cure, and then there were far more. All too often the only thing that anyone could do for the ill was to try to make them fairly comfortable.
One of the most famous hospitals in London, St Bartholomew's, was founded in 1123 by a rich churchman who had just recovered from a serious illness. Most cities had such hospitals, and sometimes there was a special leper \Jhospital\j outside the town walls for those wretched untouchables. Most of the hospitals, either for the sick or the old, which were founded in the Middle Ages, have been destroyed or damaged or very much altered.
In Norwich the \JHospital\j of St Giles was founded in 1246, and it served to shelter three different sorts of needy people: 'thirty poor and decrepit chaplains', thirty poor people, and seven poor scholars. This reminds us that schools, too, were founded for the benefit of the poor, but we shall think about these later.
In towns clubs of merchants and craftsmen, called \Jguilds\j, usually set up charities for their own members, and the miseries and dangers of poverty were rather less for people who belonged to \Jguilds\j. Apart from these, there would be in most towns a number of places to assist the unfortunate; hospitals, friaries, special chapels in the bigger churches. It was thanks to the Church that such things were done, for the Church urged Christians to perform the Seven Corporal Acts of Mercy.
Feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, harboring the stranger, visiting the sick, ministering to prisoners.
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"Education in the Middle Ages",12,0,0,0
In order to do its work the Church needed educated men, and therefore had to have schools and colleges. Great kings like Charles of the Franks and Alfred of the English had sometimes encouraged their noblemen to become educated, but mainly it was the Church which, for hundreds of years, kept education alive. A peasant or a warrior could do his job without knowing how to read or write. As for kings and great lords, they found it easier to employ churchmen to do their reading and writing for them.
There was so much of this work to be done that some churchmen spent all their working lives in the employment of a king or lord. In the Middle Ages, the word 'clerk' meant simply 'churchman', and the modern meaning has come because only churchmen were able to do what we would now call 'white-collar' (or 'clerical') jobs.
In many big churches, cathedrals and monasteries there were schools for boys who wanted to become churchmen. Many boys did want to; some wished only to serve God, but others may have been more interested in the fact that it was only by becoming a churchman that the son of a peasant or workman could become great and powerful.
At these schools the boys would learn to speak, read and write in Latin. All educated men used Latin for any serious business, no matter what their native language was. The boys would also be taught how to study and discuss religious books.
Gradually it became fairly common for great and rich men to found schools. Some of those founded in England in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries have become famous, like that which Bishop William of Wykeham began at Winchester and that which King Henry VI began at \JEton\j. Such schools were intended as works of charity, to give a good education to poor boys.
Those who wished to go on studying after they had learnt all they could at school used sometimes to seek particularly good teachers who worked in other towns and countries. Some towns became famous, and both teachers and pupils gathered there. These great schools were called universities.
Because all used Latin, there was little difficulty if scholars wished to move, say, from the University of Paris to that of Salamanca, or Oxford, or Mainz, or Salerno, or \JPrague\j, or \JCracow\j. Some places became specially famous for certain subjects, like \JBologna\j for law and Montpellier for medicine. In some universities groups of teachers and students would club together to find a place to live, instead of trying to use lodgings or inns. These places were called colleges, and many of them exist today.
With its chapel and dining hall and square court or quadrangle - occasionally with \Jcloisters\j - an old college could remind you a little of a monastery.
The Church helped in founding colleges, too. Some were founded by bishops, others by kings, queens and lords, so that poor scholars should have somewhere to live.
In time, people came to realize that a good education was well worth having, even if they were not going to be clerks. Knowledge might be useful, and to be taught how to think clearly was certainly very useful. Even noblemen began to go to universities. The Church went on controlling what was taught, but by the fifteenth century schools and colleges had grown so strong that they hardly needed the Church to support and protect them any longer.
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"Feudal lords",13,0,0,0
\BChapter 2 of The Middle Ages\b
Click on the \INext Page\i button to begin reading this chapter.
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"Classes in the Middle Ages",14,0,0,0
If the great number of medieval churches tells us of one side of life in those centuries, the castles tell us of another.
The Church may have preached kindness and peace, but everybody who could afford it lived behind a strong wall. The men who ruled Europe thought that it was better to fight than to work.
In the Middle Ages there were three classes, or 'estates', of people. There were the churchmen. Then there were the nobles - kings, lords, knights - who ruled and fought. Finally there were the great majority who worked for their living. You already know about the churchmen. Now it is time for us to look at the ruling class.
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"Lords in the Middle Ages",15,0,0,0
As far as his religious life was concerned, every peasant belonged to a parish, and had to attend the parish church and help to pay for it and for the priest. For ordinary, everyday things, for his life and work in this world, the peasant belonged to a manor, and had to obey the lord of the manor.
Sometimes there might be two small villages in one parish; sometimes there might be two parishes in one village. In just the same way, there could be one, or two, or even three manors in one village, and vice versa. Often, though, it was simply one manor covering one village, and it is simplest to explain how manors worked with this sort of example.
The lord of the manor was supposed to hold all the land in the manor, and the peasants had to pay him for whatever land they worked on. They did not pay in money, but by working for the lord during part of each week, and by giving him some of their crops and animals. Many of these villagers were serfs: that is they were not allowed to leave the manor without the lord's permission, and he could bring them back and punish them if they ran away. On the other hand, as long as the villagers paid their dues, the lord could not throw them off their pieces of land. Also, it was the lord's duty to protect his people, in war and in peace.
The lord would usually live in a large house or a castle, and here he would hold the manor court. If there were any disputes between villagers - for instance, about how many animals a man could put out to graze on the common field - he would settle them according to what seemed the usual custom of the manor. If a villager had done anything wrong, the lord could punish him; usually this would be by a fine, because the right to hang wrongdoers was mostly reserved for the courts of the king or the most important lords.
The size of the lord's house or castle would depend on how rich he was. A rich lord who held several manors might have a real castle in one, and leave bailiffs in smaller houses to run his other manors. Also, many manors belonged to kings or earls, bishops or monasteries, and these would employ bailiffs to look after the manors. Even the smallest lord, however, in the poorest manor, would feel happier if he had a house strong enough to be defended.
What was the lord of the manor afraid of?
To begin with, there were his own villagers. Many a lord made himself unpopular by his pride and greed. Besides, in a newly conquered country, like England after 1066, there were bitter feelings against the new masters, with their strange ways and foreign speech.
All over England the Normans threw up castles of earth and wood, which were quick to build and quite strong. When life was more settled, and the lords had time and wealth to spare, they often replaced their motte-and-balley castles by stone buildings. Even if the peasants were friendly and loyal, there was danger.
Other lords, especially strong ones, might be greedy. It was easy for a powerful lord to invent some claim to the lands of a weaker neighbor; and, unless he feared the king or the king's sheriff (the officer who represented the king in the shire or county) he might try to grab what he claimed by force.
Finally, there was the danger of real war. Rival princes might fight for the crown, and begin a civil war. When this happened in England in the 1130s and 1140s, between Stephen and Matilda, it was not safe to be without a stronghold, and many castles were built then.
The next king, Henry II, was strong, and realized that castles might easily be held against the king's men if there were a rebellion, so he had many of them pulled down. A lord had to ask the king's permission before he could crenellate, or put battlements on his house.
There was also danger from other kingdoms. An army or raiding party could cross the border long before the king or any of his great nobles could bring men to stop it. Looting and burning were common. So anyone within striking distance of an unfriendly kingdom would try to have a strong house.
On the Anglo-Scottish border, during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, pele towers were built; even churchmen felt that they needed such defense against the lawless men who infested the borderlands.
We have taken examples from England, but the same conditions could be found in many parts of western Europe. In many kingdoms there was much more fighting than in England.
From all this, you may be beginning to think that lords were constantly being attacked by one enemy or another. That would not be true. For much of the time everything would be quiet, and many of the most famous castles never saw any serious fighting at all. Nevertheless, just as people today think it safest to be insured, a lord had to be ready for trouble. He was also supposed to protect his peasants. He had his duties and his worries.
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"Barons and Knights in the Middle Ages",16,0,0,0
The lord of the manor held the village, but he did not own it, any more than the peasants owned the land which they held from him. The lord held it because he served another lord who had handed it over to him. When he received his land from this other lord, the lord of the manor came and swore to serve the lord who was giving him the land by fighting for him. This ceremony was called doing homage and swearing fealty.
In return, the greater lord promised to protect the lord of the manor. The greater one was called the 'lord' of the smaller one, and the smaller one was called the 'vassal' of the greater one. Land held on these conditions was known as a 'fief'.
In the same way, the greater lord himself might be the \Jvassal\j of a still more powerful lord, and so it could go on until somebody was the \Jvassal\j of the king. So everyone was the \Jvassal\j of somebody else; even some kings were vassals of others, as you will see.
Vassals paid for their fiefs, not only by fighting in person for their lords but by bringing properly equipped horsemen, or knights, with them. Bishops and abbots who held land, usually from the king, were not forced to fight themselves, because they were churchmen and must not shed blood; but they had to pay the fair number of knights just like anybody else, because no king could afford to do without all the soldiers which the lands could support.
The number of knights which each lord owed would depend on how much land he held and what he had agreed with his own lord. A very small lord might be expected to bring only one knight - himself. There was a time limit on the service vassals owed each year. In England this was forty days. If the king wanted to keep his vassals in the army for longer than this he was entitled to do so, but he had to pay them.
This system of holding land by military service is called Feudalism. What it meant in practice was that the king could call up his vassals, who would bring their vassals, who would bring their vassals, and so on, until there was a knight for every manor in the country. But usually the king would not want all of his knights in the army at the same time. When they were not with the army, these knights ruled their manors and kept order in the country.
It may seem to you that only one knight from each manor is not much. That is true, but you must bear in mind two things. First, we are not talking about foot-soldiers, and there would be many more of them.
Second, knights were very special and expensive soldiers. They wore full armor, and were mounted. The armor became more elaborate as the Middle Ages went on. Mail was gradually replaced by cunningly forged plates of steel. It became ever more expensive. Then the horses had to be specially strong and fierce. There had to be servants to look after the knight, his armor and weapons and horse, and they, too, needed horses. There had to be tents sometimes, and food. So you can see that a man had to be well off before he could afford to be a knight.
Only a very great lord, or the king himself, would be rich enough to keep knights in his household as a guard. Though there were far more soldiers of other sorts in medieval armies, the knights were always thought to be far more important than the other troops.
The outcome of a battle depended on these heavy steel warriors and their fearful charge. The men who ruled the battlefields in war and the villages in peace were, with the churchmen, the most important set of people in medieval Europe. They had different titles, according to their importance; working downwards from the king himself, there were dukes, marquises, earls and counts, barons and plain knights.
All those above the rank of plain knight are sometimes grouped together as 'lords' or 'barons', but, great or small, they all belonged to the feudal ruling class, and felt quite different from ordinary people.
In war, the important thing was the lord a man followed, not the nation to which he belonged. A French knight or baron thought of himself as being the same sort of man as a German or English or Spanish or Italian knight or baron. In battle, these men would capture one another, and the prisoners would be held to ransom, being treated all the time as honored guests.
Sometimes a captive knight would even be released in order to raise his ransom money, or if he were ill or wounded, after promising to return to captivity if he failed to find the money or when he had recovered; gentlemen could be trusted to keep their word. (Meanwhile, common soldiers were simply slaughtered.)
Knights and barons married one another's daughters, after careful discussions about how much dowry the bride would bring her husband. They never intermarried with peasants and townsmen; unless, perhaps, the townsman was very rich indeed. Even if one of them had to be executed, he would be beheaded with a sword or axe, though rope was good enough for ordinary criminals.
Barons and knights normally had two main interests; warfare and land. If they were good at war, they would get more land, either by conquering it or as a reward from their king. The more land they had, the more vassals they had and the stronger they were for war. The two things went together.
We saw earlier how everyone who could manage it had his own castle. Many were small, but a really great lord might build a spectacular fortress-palace like Warwick castle. In lands where there was not a strong king, enormous numbers of castles can still be seen. In the part of the Rhineland, there is a castle on almost every hill-top.
The other main way of getting land was through marriage. If a \Jvassal\j died before his children had grown up, his lord had to look after them and their land until they were old enough to do it themselves. If the dead man had left only daughters to inherit his lands, there was usually a rush to marry them.
It was the duty of the lord who was their guardian to look after them properly, and to see that they were suitably married. But it was tempting to a guardian to make a profit, and sometimes he would marry off an heiress to the highest bidder. There was little romance about marriage among the knights and barons; it was a serious matter of business. A family which made a few fortunate marriages could become very powerful indeed.
If a family died out completely, its fiefs went back to the lord, and he could either give them to someone else or keep them in his own hands.
In all this there was one very big disadvantage from the king's point of view. Who really controlled the knights? Some of the great lords had so many vassals that a few of them, if they could rely on the loyalty of their vassals, might be strong enough to quarrel with the king and win. In fact, this happened fairly often in most of the kingdoms of Europe and, as we shall see later, kings of England had trouble with their barons.
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"Kings in the Middle Ages",17,0,0,0
In most of the kingdoms of Europe there were some very great barons, and they were often warlike and greedy. Even if some of them would have preferred a quiet life, they had no choice. They must be warriors as long as there were others ready to rob them. Trouble-makers can always prevent their neighbors from living in peace.
It is the job of the government to make sure that troublemakers are not allowed to do this. You will remember that there had been governments which knew how to do it, especially the Roman Empire with its 'Pax Romana' and Roman Law. In the Middle Ages it was very different. Kings had to struggle to keep their barons under control.
The knights and barons still had many of the ideas of the old barbarian warriors - loyalty to their lords, keeping their promises, fighting rather than working, looking down on people who earned a peaceful living. Another of the ideas of the barbarian warriors had been that the king was the leader of a band of free fighting men; the king was not the all powerful master, as the Roman emperors had been.
In the Middle Ages the barons kept an independent spirit. They thought of the king as one of themselves who had been lucky. After all, how had William the Conqueror become a king? Or Robert Bruce? They had been no more than barons at first. Besides, many barons were related to the king; it is not always easy to feel tremendous respect for one's nephew or brother-in-law.
In some countries the position of the king was especially weak. In \JGermany\j, when a Holy Roman Emperor died, the next one was elected by the chief barons. In the Spanish kingdom of Aragon the nobles swore loyalty to the king thus: 'We, who are as good as you, swear to you, who are no better than we, to accept you as our king and sovereign lord, provided that you accept all our liberties and laws; but if not, not.'
Perhaps this was being rather more brutally frank than in most countries, but barons everywhere had a similar notion at the backs of their minds, like the English barons who drew up Magna Carta. They would put up with just so much interference from the king, but if he went beyond what the barons thought was right, then there might be fighting.
In England, lords are often referred to as 'peers'. 'Peer' means 'equal'. These people were supposed to be the equals, not only of one another, but of the king.
Being a king in the Middle Ages was not easy, yet the king had some things on his side. First, all the barons had, sworn loyalty, and that meant something to those men. A baron would not like to break his oath unless the king had given him an excuse.
Next, the king had been crowned and anointed by the Church, and in a way that made him sacred. Then, though a king could not raise taxes as easily as an ancient Roman emperor or a modern government, he was richer than any of his barons. He had more lands, castles, knights; sometimes very many more. As a result, he found it easier to borrow money when he needed to hire more soldiers. He was the most powerful man in the kingdom.
Most important of all, many people always preferred to have a strong king rather than a pack of quarrelsome barons. Most of the barons and knights themselves probably felt like this, especially if they were afraid of greedy neighbors. Common people in villages and towns almost certainly did. As merchants in towns became richer, they were able to give the king more help to keep the country safe for trade.
The kings did their best to rule their countries. In England, for example, the royal judges and courts gradually took over most of the serious cases from the feudal courts of the barons. Some kings were good men, and some were not, but their success or failure depended on whether or not the barons would obey them. Goodness had less to do with this than strength and determination.
In England the Norman kings used to hold three great feasts each year when they wore their crowns: Christmas at \JGloucester\j, Easter at Winchester, Whitsuntide at Westminster. There they met their chief barons. The king could watch the barons, and the barons could take a good look at the king. The peace of England depended on what they saw.
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"Religion and the warriors",18,0,0,0
\BChapter 3 of The Middle Ages\b
Click on the \INext Page\i button to begin reading this chapter.
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"Holy Wars",19,0,0,0
Proud as they were, and convinced of their own superiority over common people, the feudal lords and knights feared God and therefore respected the Church. They often gave or left lands or money to churches or monasteries, and the Church tried to improve their behavior in two ways especially. First, obviously, no good Christian should spend his time quarrelling, fighting, looting and ill-treating people who were weaker than himself. A Christian warrior should defend and show kindness to the weak.
Second, a Christian should fight only in a good cause. He could fight in self-defense, or to protect people who were being wrongly attacked; above all, he should fight for the Church against heathens. Anyone who wished to go to war could easily find some heathen to fight.
The Germans and Spaniards, had plenty on their own borders. German knights pushed eastwards against those Slav and Baltic tribes which were still pagan. In \JSpain\j the sons of those Christians who had fled to the northern mountains when the Muslims swept over the land were gathering strength and pushing southwards.
These two wars went on for centuries, until there were no more heathens on the shore of the Baltic, and no more Muslims in \JSpain\j. Knights and barons from other lands sometimes came to help the Spanish and German knights. These Holy Wars, however, were not so famous as the struggle to take and hold the Holy Land.
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"First Crusade",20,0,0,0
In the seventh century the \JArabs\j had carried their new faith of \JIslam\j, the religion of Allah and of the \JProphet\j Muhammad, over the whole of the Middle East. Among the lands they conquered was Palestine. You probably remember that these \JArabs\j were quite tolerant to the Jews and Christians, who both looked on \JJerusalem\j as the holiest of all cities, and allowed them to come on pilgrimages.
\BThe Coming Of The Turks\b
Matters remained like that until the middle of the eleventh century when there came upon the scene a new wave of nomad conquerors from the vast plains of central Asia. These were the Seljuk Turks, great fighters and looters, like other nomad horsemen you have heard of. There were two important, rich, civilized states in their way. One was the Muslim Caliphate of \JBaghdad\j, the other was the Christian Empire of Byzantium - the Eastern Roman Empire, as it still called itself.
The Seljuk Turks became Muslims themselves, and took over many lands from the civilized \JArabs\j including the Holy Land. At the same time the Turks defeated the Byzantine army so completely at Manzikert that they were able to overrun most of Asia Minor.
\BThe Appeals For Help\b
These two victories led in turn to two appeals for help. The emperor in Byzantium appealed to the Pope. He led the Eastern Christian Church, while the Pope led the Western Church, but there was no serious quarrel between them and he knew that the Western Christians would not like to see Muslims conquer any more Christians. He knew that some Westerners were good warriors; he had Vikings in his bodyguard, and bands of wandering Normans had sometimes fought in his wars.
So he hoped that the Pope would be able to persuade many warriors to come and enlist in his army and help him to win back his lost provinces from the Turks. As it turned out, the emperor was going to get rather more than he had bargained for.
The other appeal was from Christian pilgrims who had been to \JJerusalem\j. They had found the new rulers, the Turks, much worse than the \JArabs\j. Turks had mocked, insulted, robbed and beaten them. Pilgrims who came back told shocking tales of how the Turks were behaving in the Holy Places. One pilgrim especially, called Peter the Hermit, aroused his hearers to fury, so that they began to think that it was time Christians took up arms to rescue the Holy Land from `the infidels, the unbelievers'.
\BThe Meeting At Clermont\b
Pope Urban II called a great meeting at Clermont, in \JFrance\j, and here on 26 November 1095, he made one of the most important speeches in history. This speech began the \JCrusades\j. He called for warriors to go to the Holy War, and with cries of 'Deus lo volt!' (God wishes it!) thousands of men pinned upon their cloaks crosses which they made there and then from torn rags.
\BThe Poor Men's Crusade\b
The First Crusade, as it is known nowadays, was in two parts. The first to march were mobs of peasants and townsmen who, in the spring of 1096, were stirred by the furious words of Peter the Hermit.
Badly armed and untrained, they straggled across \JGermany\j, where they massacred a few thousand Jews; then through \JHungary\j and \JBulgaria\j to Byzantium. Since they were God's warriors, they thought that they were entitled to be given free food and shelter, and often took what they wanted by force; so many of them were set upon and killed by enraged Hungarians and Bulgarians.
They behaved almost as badly when they reached Byzantium, and they were certainly not the experienced soldiers whom the emperor had hoped for. He ferried them across to Asia Minor, where they met the Turks. They were all wiped out before the end of autumn.
\BThe Feudal Lords Crusade\b
The barons and knights took longer. Though no kings came, there were some very great lords, including Hugh of Vermandois, the brother of the king of \JFrance\j, and Robert of Normandy, the eldest son of William the Conqueror. Such lords were able to attract thousands of knights and other soldiers. Making their way by different routes, the various forces assembled at Byzantium.
The Crusaders usually called Byzantium by its other name, Constantinople, and the Byzantines Greeks; it will be simpler if we use those names from now on. This host of feudal warriors was a great problem to the Greek emperor. He had expected soldiers who would join his army and fight under his orders, but these lords from the West had other ideas.
They intended to take the lands from the Turks and to keep them. They would please God by fighting Muslims, and reward themselves by remaining as rulers of the places they had liberated. So, from the start, there was misunderstanding between the Greek emperor and the Crusaders. Feelings were not made any more friendly because of the differences in church services and ceremonies between the Eastern Church and the Western Church.
Because the leaders of the Crusade needed supplies and transport from the emperor, they promised to hand over to him the lands they took back from the Turks; but they promised very unwillingly.
Once they landed in Asia Minor, the Crusaders soon showed that they were excellent warriors. They took Nicaea with the help of Greek engineers, and handed it over to the Greeks, as they had promised. At Dorylaeum they were lucky.
The Crusading army was marching in two halves, several miles apart. One half was surrounded by the fast Turkish horsemen, who were shooting with their arrows the slow, heavy Crusaders, and were about to wipe them out. Then the other half of the Crusaders came up behind the Turks, who were now crushed between the two hosts of steel-clad knights. The siege of the mighty city of Antioch looked hopeless, for the walls were too long to be surrounded and too strong to be stormed; and during the winter there was a desperate shortage of food in the Crusaders' camp, until ships from \JGenoa\j came to the rescue.
At last, though, a Turkish officer turned traitor, and let the Crusaders into the tower he commanded. So the city fell. Even now the situation was grim, for the Crusaders were weak through casualties and desertions, while a very big Muslim army was marching to recapture Antioch. At this moment a miracle happened. A priest had a dream.
As a result, he dug behind the high altar of the cathedral, and found the Holy Lance which had pierced the side of Christ on the Cross. It was very timely, so timely that some of the Crusaders had their doubts. Most of them, though, had no doubts. They took it as a sign that God was with them, and marched out and won an astonishing victory over the new Turkish army, scattering it completely.
At last they came to \JJerusalem\j itself. The walls were strong, and the Muslims had seen to it that there was no food and water to be had outside the city; the wells were poisoned. The Crusaders tried to assault the walls, and were beaten back.
Time was running out. A fresh Muslim army was on its way from \JEgypt\j, and the Crusade was doomed if the Christian army should be caught outside the walls of \JJerusalem\j. The Crusaders built two high wooden towers on wheels, those siege-towers which look so awkward on pictures that it is hard to believe that they can ever have worked. From the drawbridge on top of one of these towers the Crusaders were able to force their way on to the walls of \JJerusalem\j, and so they stormed the Holy City. Only men who had worked themselves into a state of fighting madness could have done it, and that is the only possible excuse for what happened next.
The Christian soldiers charged through the streets and houses of \JJerusalem\j, killing, killing, killing. They spared none, neither women nor children nor old people. After the massacre, covered with the blood of Muslims, the Crusaders wept with joy as they thanked God in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
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"Crusaders",21,0,0,0
The Crusaders - that is, those who remained alive and who did not wish to return to western Europe - arranged things in their Kingdom of \JJerusalem\j as they would have done in any feudal kingdom at home. Count Baldwin of Flanders took the title of king. Barons and knights held their lands on condition that they brought their men to fight for their lord.
They built castles. Castles were even more necessary here than in Europe, and the Crusaders built some very strong ones indeed. Partly because they learned much from the skilled engineers of the Byzantine Greeks and from the Muslims, they built castles which were far better than anything known then in Europe. All these ideas were to be copied in the castles of Europe. With so many enemies near them, the Crusaders needed every good idea that they could pick up.
The Krak of the Knights, that belonged to a special order of knights - the knights of the \JHospital\j of St John of \JJerusalem\j. They had taken the same sort of vow as monks, but served God by fighting the Muslims instead of by praying.
As you may guess by the name, they began as protectors of sick pilgrims, and to this day the Order of St John looks after ill and injured people. Even here, birth counted. The real knights had to be born members of the ruling class but the sergeants, who ranked as squires, and the ordinary brothers could be common people. There were also chaplains to conduct the services of the order.
There were other famous orders of religious knights, such as the \JTemplars\j, who took their name from the Temple of \JJerusalem\j. Such orders were given lands in European kingdoms to help to pay for their war expenses, and sometimes built circular churches, the shapes of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in \JJerusalem\j, on their estates.
On the shore of the Baltic there were the Teutonic knights. The best known Spanish order was that of Santiago, or St James, all the Portuguese had their Order of Christ. All these orders became rich and strong.
The men, knights and monks at the same time, were described by St Bernard, an important abbot and scholar who lived in the twelfth century: they 'never dress gaily and wash but seldom. Shaggy by reason of their uncombed hair, they are begrimed with dust, and swarthy from the weight of their armor and the heat of the sun.
They do their utmost to possess strong and swift horses, but their mounts are not garnished with ornaments or decked with trappings, for they think of battle and victory, not of pomp and show. Such hath God chosen for his own, who vigorously and faithfully guard the Holy Sepulchre, all armed with the sword, and most learned in the art of war.'
They were the foremost fighters among the Crusaders. In the two centuries of its existence, the Order of the Temple had twenty-two Grand Masters, and half of them died at the hands of the Muslims. When taken prisoners they were killed immediately, for they would never change their religion and they would never pay ransom.
The orders of monk-knights in their castles were a force of warriors always ready and anxious to fight the infidels. Many of the knights and barons who settled in the Holy Land, however, soon became very different. They began to learn the Arabic language, to dress in long robes and turbans, to take baths often, to employ skilled Arab doctors, to exchange visits and gifts with the Muslim lords who lived across the frontier, and even to intermarry with the local people.
New Crusaders, coming straight from Europe, where life was much rougher, were shocked by what they considered to be the softness and corruption of the lords settled in the Holy Land. Of course, to anybody used to the civilization of the \JArabs\j, the new arrivals seemed crude, brutal and rather stupid. It is hard to say which sort of knight did more to keep safe the Crusader Kingdom of \JJerusalem\j.
Was it the skill and tact of those who had learnt to get on well with the Arab lords or was it the warlike strength of the orders? The answer, most probably, lies not so much in the skill or strength of the Crusaders as in the constant quarrels among the Muslims, which prevented them from gathering all their power against the Kingdom of \JJerusalem\j. So, for nearly a hundred years, the Christian lords from the West held their own.
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"Crusaders Defeated",22,0,0,0
Disaster came in 1187. There had arisen among the Muslims a man who was able to unite them. His name, as the Christians pronounced it, was \JSaladin\j. When he was ready, he waited until a Crusader lord broke the truce which had been signed between \JSaladin\j and the king of \JJerusalem\j.
This gave him the excuse he had been hoping for. He attacked with a large army. The king of \JJerusalem\j gathered all his knights and lords. In the withering heat of a July day he led them into a rocky waste, where they were trapped, tired and without water. Almost all of them were killed or captured by \JSaladin\j.
Without enough men to defend them, and with no hope of a new army to relieve them, the castles and towns fell quickly. \JJerusalem\j itself surrendered on 2 October 1187. \JSaladin\j forbade looting and destruction. He allowed Christians to go free, and to take their belongings with them, if they paid ransom.
Many of the poorer Christians, however, could not afford the ransom, and were therefore taken as slaves; though rich Christians, including the bishop himself, were carrying away great quantities of money. \JSaladin\j and some of his men were so moved to pity that they freed, without ransom, thousands of their new slaves.
By acting like this, \JSaladin\j earned a reputation for being an honorable and generous man. He was trusted and respected by Christians as well as by his own men. So people were not afraid of what might happen if they surrendered to him, for he kept his promises.
\BThe Third Crusade\b
All of the Holy Land fell into \JSaladin\j's hands except for one seaport, the ancient city of Tyre. The news came as a fearful shock in Western Christendom. Knights, lords and kings were filled with a fierce determination that the Holy Land must be rescued, at any cost. Crusaders began to stream eastwards.
The Holy Roman Emperor himself, the ruler of the Germans and the senior among all the kings of the West came in person. He was a famous old warrior called Frederick Barbarossa, or Red-Beard. Unfortunately, he was accidentally drowned on the way; had he lived, he might have prevented the arguments between the other leaders of this Crusade.
Two other powerful kings came with big armies; King Philip Augustus of \JFrance\j and King Richard Lionheart of England. They set about the reconquest of the Holy Land by laying siege to the strong port of Acre.
The story of King Richard's Crusade is very well known, and you must have heard it already. You will know that he was a great fighter, that he took Acre in 1191 and many other towns. Yet the Crusade collapsed before it could take \JJerusalem\j. \JSaladin\j won. The Christians, with the sea and their ships behind them, were able to cling to their ports and coastal castles, but the rest of the Holy Land remained in the hands of the Muslims.
\BThe Later Crusades\b
We know now that, after the failure of the great effort of the 1190s, the Crusaders had lost. But then they could not tell that the struggle was hopeless. One more effort, it seemed, might bring them to \JJerusalem\j. There were many more \JCrusades\j, but something always went wrong.
There was a Crusade which, under the influence of the Venetians, ended in 1204 by taking Constantinople. The Crusaders held it until 1261, when the Greeks finally drove them out. So for more than half a century Western and Eastern Christians were fighting instead of helping each other. There was the pathetic Children's Crusade of 1212.
Thousands of children got the idea that God would give to them what he denied to proud and greedy lords; He would work a miracle for them. They marched from their homes in the middle of \JGermany\j and \JFrance\j to the Mediterranean Sea but the sea did not open in front of them. Worn out by the journey, most of them never reached home again.
Unhappiest of all were those taken aboard ship by merchants who promise to carry them to the Holy Land; instead, the merchants to them to Africa and sold them as slaves. There were times of truce. From 1229 to 1244 the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II was allowed by the Muslims to be king of \JJerusalem\j.
There were times of serious fighting as when St Louis, king of \JFrance\j, attacked \JEgypt\j in 1260. He chose \JEgypt\j because it was the strongest of the Muslim lands and, if he could win here the rest would be fairly easy. But \JEgypt\j was so strong that Louis was taken prisoner, and his ransom cost \JFrance\j 800,000 pieces of gold.
The end came in 1291, when the Christians lost Acre. It was just a hundred years after it had been taken by the Third Crusade.
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"Mongols and their Empire",23,0,0,0
Towards the end of the time of the \JCrusades\j there had been one real chance that the Muslims might be overwhelmed, though not by the power of the Crusaders alone.
About the time of \JSaladin\j, another great conqueror was work, far to the east in central Asia, among the wild nomad tribes who had so often swept out of their steppes upon the farms and cities of more civilized peoples. This man was called Temujin, but he is better known by the title he won Jenghiz Khan, or Mightiest King.
He was able to make himself the leader of all the Mongol tribes. You know what they could do, if you remember the \JHuns\j, or the Magyars, or the Seljuk Turks. Jenghiz Khan wanted to do more than earlier nomad leaders. He divided his followers into armies called `Urdus' this is our word 'horde'. As you see, he gave the hordes different duties.
Within the lands he had taken, he enforced order. Across the plains and deserts his messengers galloped, changing horses at regular post-stations, while the camel caravans shambled slowly along the tracks. Any tribesmen who interfered would have to face the vengeance of the Great Khan Temujin died in 1227, but for many years the empire was held together by his sons and grandsons, who followed one who was recognized as the Great Khan.
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"Crusades: The Effects",24,0,0,0
The \JCrusades\j were one of the most famous struggles in history. What had they done, in the end? The Spaniards and Portuguese and the Teutonic knights succeeded, but these were not the main \JCrusades\j. It may well be that the main \JCrusades\j did little else than make Christians and Muslims much more bitter enemies than they had been before.
Some Christian doctors may have learnt from the more skilled Arab doctors. Christian soldiers picked up new ideas about building and taking castles. Warriors, pilgrims, messengers to the Great Khan all learned more about the world and the people who lived in it, though it is difficult to see what use they made of this knowledge.
The people who probably gained most from the \JCrusades\j were the merchants, not the men of religion nor the men of war. Traders from Italian cities like \JGenoa\j, Venice and Pisa made money by carrying soldiers over the sea, and became richer still through trading in the silks and spices which came from the Far East to the cities of the Near East.
A good deal of this might just as easily have happened if there had never been any Holy Wars, and anyway these results seem little when we look at what they cost. The Byzantine Empire had been fatally hurt, as much by the Crusaders as by the Muslims. \JBaghdad\j, the old great home of Muslim culture, lay in ruins, though this was not the work of the Crusaders. Thousands of people had fought and died like heroes and martyrs, on both sides, in a struggle that has never been forgotten. But it seems to have been a struggle that settled nothing.
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"Chivalry",25,0,0,0
During the time of the \JCrusades\j the word 'knight' came to mean something more than 'armored horseman' or 'lord of the manor'. It came to mean a man who tried to use his strength and wealth in doing good for those who were weaker and poorer. The new idea was that a true knight was not only faithful to his lord, but should also protect churchmen, serve ladies, be kind to the unfortunate. He should always be brave and courteous. He should never be boastful or greedy or aggressive or drunken, but quiet and modest. This idea of how a knight ought to behave was called 'chivalry'.
A chivalrous knight was a very different sort of man from the proud, unruly, land-grabbing, brutal warriors who seem to have been only too common in the Middle Ages. Did such warriors turn into chivalrous knights? Or was chivalry only a game of make-believe, a fashionable game which the ruling classes played when they were not busy quarrelling and scheming for more land, or following their lords to war, or trying to squeeze more out of the peasants and merchants who lived on their land? Were these people 'bold bad barons' or were they `very perfect gentle knights'. Or were they very mixed? You need to read about some of the most important kings and lords of the Middle Ages before you make up your mind.
Certainly, boys of the ruling class were supposed to be brought up to be good knights. Their parents sent them to the castles of other lords. Here they would begin as pages to the ladies, who would teach them good manners and gentle behavior. Then they would become squires, acting as servants to knights and thus learning about armor, weapons and horses.
The chaplain of the castle would see that they were religious, while the lord of the castle would watch over their progress generally. When a squire was old enough and had shown that he was good enough, the lord would make him a knight. Sometimes a man would be knighted for great valor on the battlefield.
It was an honor to be made a knight, to be called 'Sir' and to wear a knightly sword and spurs. Soon after the end of the \JCrusades\j, some kings thought of making some knights more highly honored still. They set up orders of knighthood, and the members were supposed to be specially brave and good. These orders were not like those of the \JTemplars\j and \JHospitallers\j, but more like clubs which a knight could join only if the king invited him.
Many of these orders exist to this day; for example, the Knights of the Garter in Britain. The order was founded by Edward III about 1349. The knights wear the badge of St George, and carry on an old-fashioned garter their motto, which means, 'Evil be to him who evil thinks.' Another very famous order was that of the Golden Fleece, founded by the duke of Burgundy in 1429 'for the reverence of God and the sustenance of our Christian faith, and to honor and enhance the noble order of chivalry'.
Each year the knights were to meet in a Chapter and, with feasts and religious services, discuss one another's conduct during the past twelve months, praising those who had done well and blaming those who had not acted as good knights ought. Sometimes it went like that, even the duke of Burgundy himself being rebuked for his faults.
Yet, though there was a rule that only tried and tested knights could be members, the duke's son in 1433 was made a knight of the order when he was twenty days old. That boy grew up to be Duke Charles the Bold, and he thought little of massacring the people of towns he captured; though he usually spared the churches.
The Church also tried to reduce the feuding, robbing and killing by 'the Truce of God'. This meant that no man should fight his enemy on certain days of the week. The Church tried to enforce the Truce of God, but had to give up in the end, for it never was properly respected. The Church also said that it was wicked to fight simply for pay, because a Christian should fight only when he believed that it was right to do so.
Therefore, all mercenaries were to be excommunicated; but men still went on selling their swords to the highest bidder. The Church tried to make war less horrible by forbidding crossbows to be used, except against heathens; since they were good weapons soldiers went on using them.
From all this, you could argue that the Church had failed in its efforts to improve the feudal ruling class; but that would not be the whole truth.
You must remember that, whatever they sometimes did, there had been thousands of barons and knights who had gone to the \JCrusades\j without any intention of becoming lords in the Holy Land and who, if they survived, had been content to return home poorer than when they had left. And, even if they did not always live up to it, knights believed in the ideal of chivalry as something which they should try to follow. Men who believed and sometimes acted thus were different from their ancestors who had led the barbarian invasions or the Viking raids.
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"Ordinary people",26,0,0,0
\BChapter 4 of The Middle Ages\b
Click on the \INext Page\i button to begin reading this chapter.
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"Third Estate in the Middle Ages",27,0,0,0
So far in this book we have been considering the two important classes, or estates, of people in the Middle Ages; the churchmen who ruled men's minds and consciences; the kings and barons and knights who were masters of everything else.
Though they were so powerful, the Church and the ruling class were very small. If you had been born in the Middle Ages, the chances are strongly against your having been anything but a poor villager. We do not know the chances exactly, because there was no \Jcensus\j and so there are no figures of population, but we are quite sure that most people lived in the country. Some lived on scattered hill farms, but most were in villages. Towns grew bigger as time went on, but even at the end of the Middle Ages something like 80 per cent or 90 per cent of the people were villagers.
Townsmen and countrymen alike, ordinary people were all part of this third estate. Life in village and town was very different, though. As most people were villagers, we shall begin with them.
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"Village Life in the Middle Ages",28,0,0,0
You have already read something about how a village was ruled. Here, to remind you, are two English villages. One is small and the other has grown into a small country town, but each shows very clearly the two important buildings; the church and the castle. The ordinary villagers used the cottages.
A cottage would be big enough to hold a peasant and his family, and sometimes his animals. There are not many English cottages which go right back to the Middle Ages. They were built from whatever materials could most easily be found in that part of the countryside.
In England wood and clay and straw were often the easiest to get, and English cottages would be built using these materials. There would be a strong frame of wood, which was the skeleton of the house. The roof would frequently be made of straw or reed thatch, though sometimes strips of thin wood were used.
The spaces left in the walls between the main timbers were filled with basket-work covered by clay or plaster; this was called 'wattle and daub'. Houses like this were fairly simple to build and mend. Even if the cottager himself could not do everything, there was nothing that would be too difficult for some village workman.
Inside the cottage there would be space to eat and sleep, and probably no more. Furniture - a table and a few stools would be strong and simple, the sort that a village carpenter could make. Beds were the same; up to the fifteenth century it seems that some peasants were using blocks of wood as pillows. Sometimes there may have been only one room in the cottage, but sometimes there may have been an attic in the roof for sleeping, and even an extra room on the ground.
Cooking would be done over the fire, which usually lacked a chimney, in pots of earthenware or, if the peasant was lucky, metal. Such cooking utensils might be too much for a village craftsman to make, and would be bought at the nearest market. Plates would be merely flat pieces of wood, and cutlery would be the peasant's ordinary working knife, with a wooden or horn spoon.
Clothes would be just as simple, often made from wood which had been spun into thread by the women and children and sometimes woven locally. Some cloth and leather though, would probably have to be bought at the market in the nearest town.
On every day except holy-days and Sundays, the peasant would be at work in the fields, unless he had to go to market or attend the manor court, or unless he had some special village job, such as finding stray animals and putting them in the village pound until the owner paid a fine for them.
For most people, this was the whole of their life. The fields were the same sort of huge open areas, divided into strips like long allotments, as the open fields of the time of the \JAnglo-Saxons\j and Franks. Most peasants were not allowed to leave their work, though their lord could not take their share of the fields away from them; and they paid the lord for his protection by working on his strips of field as well as their own.
Were the villagers happy or contented? We have no way of telling, for nobody in those days bothered to write down much about them and they themselves could not write. The work was hard, no doubt, but it was in the open air, they were used to it and, except at times like harvest, they did not have to hurry.
Their 'rest' days probably came to a good total every year, when all the various festivals and holydays were reckoned up. They had their rights: in the manor court they advised the lord about what needed doing, and what the customs of the manor were. Even if they were not happy, there was little that they could do about it.
When life became too miserable to be endured, or when something happened to whip up annoyance and frustration into anger, there might be a peasant revolt. Such revolts, though, like the French Jacquerie in 1358 and the English Peasants' Revolt of 1381, were almost certain to end in disaster.
If you were born a peasant, you usually remained a peasant. Perhaps, if you were a clever boy, your lord might let you go to be a churchman. Or you might be allowed to be a soldier, or a servant of the lord. A very clever and lucky peasant might even rise to the rank of knight. That did not often happen.
Most villagers were serfs, that is, unfree. Other people looked down on villagers. The word for a man who lived in a 'vill' or village was 'villein', and you know what it means, spelt 'villain', nowadays. In spite of this, the villeins themselves seem gradually to have been able to make themselves free, often by buying their liberty. This happened as money became more common, and goods were bought and sold for coins, instead of being bartered.
That led to two things; first, peasants could save up money in a way that was impossible with, say, corn and vegetables and eggs, and hide it away until they had a reasonable amount; second, the lords often found it more convenient to be paid rents in money rather than in work or in farm produce.
So, on some manors, peasants would agree with the lord to pay him so much money a year, instead of working for him. Villagers without land became laborers, working for money. This sort of thing seems to have happened more often as centuries went on.
Whether they remained serfs or not, most people remained peasants or laborers until the end of the Middle Ages, and for long afterwards.
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"Medieval Craftsmen",29,0,0,0
The simple idea about society in the Middle Ages is this: the priests prayed, the knights fought, the peasants worked, and everyone knew his place. Though that is roughly a true picture of medieval life, it is too rough. There is no room in it for people who lived by making things and selling them, the men of the towns.
In villages there were carpenters and smiths, in castles there were skilled workers in leather and metal, and in monasteries there were writers and illustrators of books. Up to a point, villages and castles and monasteries had their own craftsmen. But this was not enough.
Of course, the Black Prince was the second greatest man in England, and nothing but the very best would do for him. But we use him as an example because so much happens to be left on his tomb. You may find splendid tombs and brasses in many churches and cathedrals in Europe and all these men wanted really good armor and clothes, and tapestries on their walls and cups on their tables and jewels round their necks, as well as expensive tombs.
Their wives, too, probably expected to be equally well clothed and housed. Churches, too, demanded beautiful and precious \Jvestments\j and vessels. Although such articles may be luxuries, think of the number of great lords and rich churches there were to buy them.
Besides, there were goods of high quality which would be bought by anyone who could afford them. Shoes and boots of properly tanned, supple leather, which would really fit; knives of good iron, which would really cut; well-made pots and pans, buckles and bowstrings were all well worth having.
So, even when most people lived a simple, poor life, there was a need for skilled craftsmen: and the more people came to have a little money to spare, the more they would spend on properly made articles like these.
Even in the more backward north and west of Europe it was natural for craftsmen to settle where there were good - markets, and for towns to grow. In many places, especially the south of Europe, cities had survived since Roman times, but in other places they had died during the barbarian invasions, and had to begin all over again.
In medieval towns it was quite usual for men of the same craft to live in the same street. You may know of places where streets still have such names as Silver Street or Butcher Bank.
Sometimes a town or a country would be especially famous for one product. Perhaps this would be caused by some goodness in the earth or water there, or perhaps it would be that the men of a certain craft were very skilful. Cordova leather-work was so famous that in England leather-workers were called 'cordwainers'.
If he could afford it, a medieval knight might want a sword from Toledo or Passau, and armor from Milan or Augsburg; he might prefer to drink wine from \JGascony\j or Cyprus, and dress in cloth made by Flemish weavers from English wool. He might keep jewels in a box enameled at Limoges, and decorate the chapel of his castle with \Jalabaster\j carved in \JNottingham\j and stained glass from York.
Sometimes there were very expensive luxuries from far-away, like the silk from China or the furs from \JRussia\j, or Eastern spices to make food more tasty and to help in preserving it. Spices were for the rich, but everyone needed salt, and that sometimes had to be brought from a distance. Since there was no refrigeration, salt was the main means of preserving meat and fish, and during times like Lent, when the Church ordered people to do without meat, there was a big demand for salt fish.
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"Medieval Merchants",30,0,0,0
All these things meant trade, and trade meant merchants. Some merchants traveled only a few square miles around their homes, but others went hundreds. Some even ventured through the lands of the Great Khan, to China. Merchants carried goods by water when they could, which was cheaper and often faster than the trains of pack-animals and the camel caravans which had usually to be used on land, for lack of good roads.
Merchants did their trading at markets and at fairs. Markets were usually small-scale affairs, held regularly. They would happen once, or perhaps more often, per week for the people of the district. Most towns in Europe still have their weekly market-days. Fairs were much bigger than markets, and happened only two or three times a year. More merchants came, and from far away. Some fairs were famous for trading in certain goods, like those of Ypres and other Flemish towns for cloth. Most big fairs, however, brought together merchants who wished to sell and to buy all sorts of goods.
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"Medieval Emergence of Towns",31,0,0,0
Soon we shall have to look more carefully at how some of the trading was carried on, but for the moment all we need to understand is that there was plenty of work for craftsmen and merchants, and it was only common sense for them to come together in those places which were most suitable for their work. So, as trade increased, towns grew.
Usually, if we look at any town which grew up during the Middle Ages, we see that there were good reasons. Water transport plus land transport. If a bridge were built, it would prevent ships from sailing further upstream, so they would have to unload at the town.
Furthermore, there were not very many bridges over big rivers, so traffic converged there. Then there was the question of safety. If the king or a strong lord had a castle there, and seemed ready to protect the lives and goods of people who settled near by, that was a great advantage for craftsmen and merchants who had to keep valuables. This was to the advantage of the lord, too, for the townsmen would be willing to pay for his protection. The richer the town became, the more he should be able to get out of them.
At last the town would become rich enough to afford a good wall of its own. The lord of the town would have to give permission for a market or fair to be held, and he would be able to collect fees from it. Often, even in a great modern city, it is easy to see how the place took shape in the Middle Ages. Newcastle upon Tyne is a good example; even the name gives two of the reasons why there is a town there.
There was difficulty caused by the narrow but deep gorge of the Lork Burn, which had been an excellent defense for one side of the castle, but which was a serious obstacle to traders as well as enemies. This explains why the town grew more on one side than on the other, and why, when the walls were built, they had to enclose such an oddly shaped town.
There are one or two other things which you may notice about this medieval town. The friars were strong here, for this was just the sort of center they wanted. There were hospitals. The churches were beautified by rich townsmen; the famous tower was paid for by one Robert Rhodes in the middle of the fifteenth century. It was not only beautiful and unusual, but that it is also a fine piece of \Jengineering\j. It was useful, too, for a lantern at the top showed the way to benighted travelers by road and river.
The town plan also shows a Guildhall. To the merchants of any flourishing town, their Guildhall was of the utmost importance.
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"Merchant Guilds",32,0,0,0
Merchants and craftsmen, especially merchants, were men whose jobs were very much concerned with money. Since they often had a lot, other people sometimes felt like taking some of it from them. The lord of the town might be short of money, and he might expect the merchants to help him; and he had ways of making it awkward for them if they did not feel generous.
Robbers often infested the more lonely roads; when Edward I of England ordered that trees and bushes should be cleared for a bowshot on each side of main roads, he had a sound reason. Even when a merchant reached another town he was not safe; some merchant of this town might allege that he owed him money, and even if the accusation was false the accused man would be at a disadvantage if it was only his word against that of his accuser.
To defend themselves, the merchants first had to agree to forming a union or guild which would come to the help of any member in trouble. Such a union, to which all the merchants of the town belonged, whatever goods they bought and sold, was called a Merchant Guild.
The Merchant Guild made sure that nobody in the town let it down. Any merchant who would not join and loyally do what the guild ordered was forced to leave the town. After this, the guild was in a position to bargain with the lord of the town. Sometimes the lord would be none other than the king himself, and this would be lucky, for the king would be just as much in need of extra money as any other lord - often more so - and he was able to give more privileges in return.
The guildsmen would ask their lord for permission to look after various things for themselves, instead of leaving the entire running of the town to the lord's \Jbailiff\j. Take the market as an example. At first, the \Jbailiff\j would collect all the fees from the merchants who came, and judge all disputes, and take the fines of people who had misbehaved.
The Merchant Guild would ask if it could do this. If the guild had chosen a good time, when the lord was in a pleasant mood and yet wanted some extra money, and if they offered enough, the lord would have a parchment document written for them, and put his seal on it, allowing what they asked. Such a document was called a charter. The guild would take this charter and lock it up carefully, perhaps in a strong chest in their Guildhall, for this was their guarantee.
As years went on, the guild would try to get more charters out of the lord, until at last they had permission to run almost everything in the town. So they would ask if they could appoint their own men to govern the town instead of the lord's \Jbailiff\j. They would call their officials the mayor and aldermen. Thus, by getting a final big charter and usually by paying the lord a fixed rent every year, the Merchant Guild of many a town came to be able to rule the town as it pleased.
Some English towns were even able to get from the king permission to appoint their own sheriffs, and to be classed as counties, though only a few of the richest - London, York, \JBristol\j and Newcastle - managed this.
In the Guildhall, besides their precious charters, the mayor and the other great men of the town sat in council and held their courts, jealously guarding the privileges they had won.
Towns which were as strong and rich as this were able and willing to help the king to keep law and order in his kingdom. At first, it is true, many towns preferred to rely on their own strength, especially if they were able to join up with other towns to form a league.
In England some of the main seaports of the south-east, the Cinque (Five) Ports, did this, and were able to persuade the king to allow them special privileges in return for supplying him with ships. These men had no hesitation in taking stern action if they thought that some other sailors were interfering with their trade, and there were fierce fights between ships of the Cinque Ports and of their main rival, Yarmouth, during the thirteenth century. Such disorder was always worse at sea than on land; at sea it was easy to dispose of any unwanted ships and sailors.
Piracy was easy, and even in 'correct' warfare prisoners were not taken in sea-fights. Despite their readiness to take care of themselves, however, merchants fought only when they had to, to protect their trade. Therefore, if a king showed that he was strong enough to have a chance of keeping the peace, he could usually rely on the backing of the towns in his kingdom. This happened, as you will see, in England, \JFrance\j and \JSpain\j where strong kingdoms were made, but not in \JItaly\j, \JGermany\j and the Netherlands.
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"Merchant Cities of Europe in the Middle Ages",33,0,0,0
The three countries which we mentioned last were all supposed to be parts of the Holy Roman Emperor's lands, though \JGermany\j was the center of the empire. The emperor had too hard a task, trying to enforce law and order over such a wide area. His authority was challenged by the great lords and barons on one side, and the Pope on the other, because both the barons and the Pope feared that a powerful emperor would take away many of the rights and privileges which they enjoyed.
In the end, the Holy Roman Emperor lost all his power in \JItaly\j and the Netherlands, and most of his power even in \JGermany\j. Because there was no alternative, the towns in those three countries had to look after themselves, unless they were willing to submit to a local count or duke.
In \JItaly\j some towns remained about the same size for most of the Middle Ages, like Assisi. Others grew so rich and strong that they were not only able to defend themselves against all attackers, but began to conquer other places themselves.
Venice, safe on her islands behind a powerful navy, had helped the Crusaders to take Constantinople. Her share of the loot, eventually, was a chain of ports and forts and islands, which made voyages easier and safer for Venetian ships trading to the eastern Mediterranean.
Florence, on the other hand, did not spread her power over the sea, for her wealth depended more on wool than on trade with the East. Florence spread in \JItaly\j itself, taking near-by towns and cities, and was at last strong enough to take even the famous city of Pisa. In cities like Venice and Florence, the merchants held control firmly. The Bridge of Sighs in Venice deserved its name.
The Guildhall of the Florentines has battlements, and they were not merely ornaments. The citizens of these merchant republics were ready to use force. Some great Italian cities, like Milan and Naples and \JRome\j, remained under the rule of duke or king or Pope, though even here the citizens sometimes showed their rulers that it was safer to treat townsmen with respect.
It was very much the same with the cities of the Netherlands and \JGermany\j. Though the merchants sometimes were willing to accept their lord and to pay him great sums of money, they were also ready to fight for their rights. In Flanders, especially, there was always serious trouble if count or duke or bishop demanded too much of the men of his cities.
The most famous of all the leagues of merchant cities was the Hansa. The Hanseatic merchants were masters of the Baltic Sea and its trade from about the middle of the thirteenth century until about the middle of the fifteenth century. During those two hundred years they fought and beat anyone, from pirate to king, who resisted them.
In many towns which did not belong to their league, the Hansards (as the merchants of the Hansa were called) had warehouses with special privileges. Their warehouse still stands in King's Lynn. In London they had charters from the kings of England which made their warehouses, the Steelyard. almost a little city on its own, and the merchants of the Steelyard had the right to elect one of the aldermen of the City of London.
In England these merchants were called Easterlings, since they came from lands on the eastern side of the North Sea, and some people think that our modern word 'sterling' for a certain type of money comes from that name.
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"Trade Routes in Medieval Europe",34,0,0,0
One reason, is that something valuable was grown or mined or made near those cities. The other main reason is: communications. These cities are placed where it is convenient for merchants to carry goods. A good example is the position of Venice and \JGenoa\j. They are so placed that goods from Asia can travel a great distance by water and are close to the passes over the Alps, which lead to the river routes through the center of Europe.
The trade and the cities had taken many centuries to grow, but now the merchants and their money had become very important indeed. Both the Church and the feudal ruling class, whether they liked it or not, were having to rely more and more on the help of the men with the money.
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"Craft Guilds",35,0,0,0
So far we have been talking as if in every city there was only one Merchant Guild, which ran everything and to which all the merchants and craftsmen belonged. This is not the full truth. Besides the Merchant Guild, there often grew up special \Jguilds\j for the different trades. These were called Craft \JGuilds\j.
Each guild was for the protection of its own people, naturally. They had their charities, for helping widows and orphans, and often had a special chapel in one of the town churches, where a priest was paid to pray for members of the guild, both living and dead, but especially for the dead. The guildsmen did not forget that they had a duty to their customers, too. They believed that they were in business to make a living, but not to get as much as they could by hook or by crook.
The \Jguilds\j tried to make sure that none of their members sold poor-quality goods. They only allowed men to set up in business as master craftsmen if they had been properly trained and tested. Any boy who wanted to learn a trade had to serve a long apprenticeship with a master, something like seven years, and during this time he would live in the master's house and shop.
At the end of his time the apprentice would have to pass an examination set by the guild. Sometimes this involved making an article as well as he possibly could; such an article would be called the young man's 'master-piece', because if it was good enough he would be qualified to set up in business as a master craftsman.
Usually the young man would not have enough money to begin a business of his own immediately, so he would take a job as a 'journeyman' . This word has nothing to do with travelling; it comes from the French 'journee', for a day's work. Journeymen and masters were all fully trained.
If a master sold poor-quality goods he would be punished, often by fines. If he went on doing it, the guild would expel him. This was a very serious punishment, because it would take away his livelihood. A guildsman could be punished also for charging too much, which was unfair to the customer; or for charging too little, which was an unfair way of taking trade away from other craftsmen.
What was a fair price? Enough to repay a man for his materials, time and skill, so that he earned enough to support his family.
The idea behind all this was that every man should make a reasonable living by working for it, and no more. The Church said so. Greed was wicked. It was particularly wrong to make money without working at all, such as by lending money at interest. This was called 'usury', and it was sin. Some Jews did it, but Christians believed that they were doomed to Hell anyway, because they were the people who denied and rejected Christ. If a Christian lent money, he ought to do it as an act of charity, and not expect to be repaid more than he had lent.
The \Jguilds\j had a great respect for the Church. Besides the things you have already heard about, they used to have solemn processions on certain holy-days, and sometimes acted religious plays in the streets of the town.
The famous York plays date from those days. Often a guild might be able to act some appropriate \JBible\j story, such as Noah's Ark, for the guild of ship-carpenters. Because the old word for a craft or trade was 'mistery' - like the French word 'metier' - these plays were called 'mystery plays'. This might confuse anybody nowadays who did not know. A mystery play is simply a craft play.
Though all that they did shows us that the \Jguilds\j must have been powerful, loyally supported by their members, they did not prevent some men from becoming very rich indeed. You do not need to be told more than the name of Richard Whittington, who died in 1423. Remember, too, those rich men who helped to build churches.
A merchant and an earl both helped to build Lavenham tower, and both wanted everybody to know of their generosity. Round the bottom of the tower are their marks; the star badge which the earl of Oxford's men had made famous on many a battlefield and, beside it, the trade mark which Thomas Spring put on his goods. That man had money, and he had pride.
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"Money: Medieval Emergence",36,0,0,0
The rulers always thought that they needed more money than they had. Even in the early part of the Middle Ages, when lords and kings were paid in work, or food, or fighting men, money had often been needed. As time went on, many lords and kings preferred to take money instead of these things, because they found that with the money they could buy exactly what they wanted, instead of having to take what they were given.
Some lords were willing to accept money rents from their villeins, and this may often have been because they expected that they would get better work done by paying laborers to do it than by relying on somewhat unwilling serfs, who would take every opportunity of slacking and dodging. In very much the same way, kings sometimes preferred to take money from their vassals instead of knights.
With this money, which was known as 'scutage' or 'shield-money' in England, a king could hire professional soldiers who would be probably more skilful than knights who spent most of their time looking after their manors. One of the reasons why so many barons hated King John of England was that he took scutage from them too often, and employed tough mercenaries who were quite willing to help the king against any barons who tried to revolt.
When great men, especially kings, could not get enough ready money any other way, they had to borrow it. The people who dealt in money, and who could lend it, were Jews. Hated by most Christians, the Jews needed the protection of kings and lords, though this did not always save them from being robbed and murdered, and lords and kings did not always repay what they had been lent.
But if there were risks in money-lending, there were also great profits to be made out of interest, and, in spite of the Church's disapproval of usury, Christians went into the business. Merchants from the cities of \JItaly\j became especially well known as money-lenders.
These men found an argument to meet the objections of the Church. They argued that they were taking great risks of losing their money when they lent it, and that they had to charge interest to repay themselves for bad debts; in the same way, a merchant was entitled to charge enough on his goods to guard against such disasters as shipwreck or robbery.
Whether it was because they were convinced by this argument, or whether they had to borrow money themselves and could not afford to be too strict, the leaders of the Church did not seem able to stand up for their old ideas. In the later Middle Ages Italian bankers were very important men.
Most business of this sort was done in coins of gold and silver. The value of the coin depended on the purity of the gold or silver of which it was made, and the weight. These were guaranteed by the people who issued the coin. As you saw, coins could be issued by cities or kings, and merchants soon got to know the best sorts.
If a merchant could spot a \Jforgery\j, and could tell if some of the precious metal had been scraped from the edges, and knew how much coins of one place were worth in the coinage of another, he could manage well enough. The great danger was robbery. Also, these coins were heavy and awkward to carry about, if a merchant had to deal with many.
Bankers, as the dealers in money were called, found a way of making it safer and easier. If a banker had one office, say, in Florence and another in Bruges, a man could pay money into the Bruges office and be given a piece of paper which allowed him to take the same amount out of the Florence office.
After about the year 1300 many Italian banks had branches in the main cities of Europe; the main banking street of the city of London is still called Lombard Street. The Medici of Florence, from whose arms the three brass balls of the pawnbroker's sign may have originated, could, for instance, in the fifteenth century send letters to their branches or to their friends all over Europe, asking them to supply money to travelers or merchants, or lords or kings. By signing a piece of paper, a banker could be a valued friend or a dangerous opponent of any of the great rulers of Europe.
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"Kings and countries",37,0,0,0
\BChapter 5 of The Middle Ages\b
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"Medieval Kings",38,0,0,0
We have been thinking of western Europe as a whole, because the most important things for us to understand about the Middle Ages were true all over western Europe. But it is also important to us that western Europe was divided into many parts.
Different nations spoke different languages, and there were many kingdoms. This does not mean that each nation had a king of its own. Sometimes people of the same language, like the Spaniards, were divided into several kingdoms, and sometimes one king, like the king of \JFrance\j or England, ruled people who spoke several languages.
During the Middle Ages it happened in many countries that the people came to think of themselves more and more as members of a nation, and that the king made himself stronger while the Church and feudal lords lost power.
The feudal lords often caused trouble. Sometimes this helped other people as well as the barons themselves, as when Magna Carta was given, or when the king decided that country knights and townsmen were needed, as well as bishops and barons, to help and advise him in the great council which was called Parliament.
Another very important thing to notice is how the lords came to rely less on their vassals when they went to war, and instead hired professional soldiers; and how they kept on such hired fighters in peacetime, calling them 'retainers and dressing them in uniform called 'livery'.
These were men who killed each other in large numbers during the Wars of the Roses, and so made it easier for a strong king, at the end, to make sure that the barons would never have another chance to keep gangs of armed men in their castles. In a way, the barons themselves were the people who destroyed the power of feudal lords.
The rise of the ordinary people can easily be seen. The peasants ceased to be serfs, and gained the respect of many a proud lord by their deadly skill with the longbow. The merchants were the people on whose money the king had to rely in order to make himself master of his kingdom.
A tremendous amount depended on what sort of a man the king was, and you can see that weak kings could lose their crowns and their lives. Strong kings often attacked their neighbors. You can see how the lands ruled by the king of England changed. One result of all the fighting seems to have been to make the people of England think of themselves more as being a special sort of people, the English nation, different from such people as Scots and French. English became the language of everybody in England, not only the common people, though it now contained French words which had been brought in by the nobles.
By the end of the Middle Ages the king of England was in a very strong position. The Church was past its best, and was more likely to need his help than to oppose him. The lords had been taught a severe lesson, and the feudal system did not work any longer.
There was a Parliament, which allowed all the well-off people to help, and the king's courts kept law and order - feudal lords' courts and Church courts did not often try important cases. Most people in the country, as far as we can tell, were proud of being English, and liked having a strong king who made everybody obey him. England was becoming what is called a 'nation-state'.
England was not the only land where this sort of thing happened. In some lands the king was even stronger than the king of England, having a big army, which the king of England did not have, and to be able to give orders to his parliament much more than the king of England thought it safe to do. Even in the lands that had not turned into nation-states, like \JItaly\j and \JGermany\j, there were often strong rulers who had built up small states in parts of the countries.
As you know, much of this had happened because the king was able to get money, and this was because the merchants had done well. This had happened in most lands, though there were many lands where the peasants had not done so well as in England, and still remained unfree. Almost everywhere, however, the other two estates had become too weak to resist the power of the king. Because the outstanding thing about the Middle Ages was the way the Church and the lords held power, we can see that the period called Middle Ages was ending.
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"End of the Middle Ages",39,0,0,0
\BChapter 6 of The Middle Ages\b
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"Feudalism Declines",40,0,0,0
From what happened in England you can guess what happened in other lands of western Europe. Money upset the feudal idea. It bought mercenary soldiers, and it bought the expensive new guns. Guns seem to have been used for the first time in Europe about 1320, and were improved until they could knock the knights off their horses and pound holes in castle walls. This was bad enough, but even worse, from the feudal point of view, was the way that common people in many lands were showing that they could beat armored knights without needing the help of \Jgunpowder\j.
You know about the longbow of the Welsh and the English. Other people were able to defeat knights, often with enormous slaughter, by using a variety of weapons. The Scots used long spears, the townsmen of Flanders long clubs, the Swiss halberds and pikes, the Bohemians war-flails and carts.
The lords and knights sensed what was happening, but did not want to admit it. Perhaps this is why so many orders of knighthood, like the Garter and the Golden Fleece, were founded in the later part of the Middle Ages, and why long tales about such heroes as the Knights of the Round Table were so very popular then. It all helped to make everyone feel that the lords and knights were still strong and important.
They went on enjoying their wealth, and being regarded as the upper class, the nobility and gentry, better than the ordinary people; but no amount of make-believe could give them back the real power that they were losing.
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"Medieval Church Declines",41,0,0,0
The Church was also losing power. There was a little outright disbelief in some of the things that the Church taught. In England there were the \JLollards\j who wanted to cut down the power and wealth of the Church and change some services. They had to be put down by the king.
In \JBohemia\j there were the followers of John Hus, whose ideas were rather like those of the \JLollards\j, and the Hussites used their war-flails and battle-carts so well that at last the Church had to let them worship as they wished. This was the first time that a revolt against the Church had won. It was a dangerous sign.
More serious, though, was the way that people who still believed in all that the Church taught were losing their respect for the leaders of the Church. During most of the fourteenth century the Popes lived in Avignon, because the people of \JRome\j had been too lawless and riotous for it to be safe there.
Nowadays Avignon is inside \JFrance\j. Then it was just outside the French border, but many people thought that the Pope was under the thumb of the king of \JFrance\j. This was not very good for the Pope's reputation.
Worse was to follow. The Pope returned to \JRome\j in 1378, and almost immediately there was an election for a new Pope, when the old one died. This election was disputed. Two men claimed to be Pope. Who was right? Churchmen could not agree.
One Pope lived in \JRome\j, the other in Avignon, and they hurled curses at each other. Kings had to make up their minds which Pope their kingdoms would follow. It was an absurd situation for the 'one true undivided Church'. No doubt only one of the two was the real Head of the Church, but who could tell which?
At last a large number of the bishops and other leading churchmen from all parts of Europe began to hold councils. They failed at first, but in 1415 a council met at Constance, in southern \JGermany\j, and managed to get one man recognized by nearly everybody as the true Pope.
Even now things did not get back to normal. Many churchmen now thought that it would be safer if councils like that were to meet regularly, and that these councils would be entitled to tell the Pope what to do. It took the Popes another twenty years to defeat this threat to their authority.
While things were going wrong at the top, many churchmen lower down were losing the respect of the laymen. When the English poet Chaucer described all the different pilgrims in his Canterbury Tales, at the end of the fourteenth century, he showed very little respect for most churchmen.
He thought that there were some good churchmen - and Chaucer himself believed firmly in the truth of what the Church taught - but that too many churchmen were just getting a comfortable life out of the Church, and that some of them were no better than liars and swindlers.
The Church was not earning the reverence and obedience that it had once been able to command.
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"Last Crusade",42,0,0,0
In the year 1453 the city of Constantinople was attacked once more by the Muslims. This time the attackers were a new Turkish people, the Ottoman Turks. The great Christian stronghold in the East was now in dire peril.
The Pope called on the kings and princes, lords and knights of Christendom to march to the rescue, to take up their swords against the infidels once again, and go on the Crusade.
Not one of them stirred. Only the merchants of \JGenoa\j who were afraid that they would lose their trading rights in Constantinople if the Turks took the city, sent help to the last Byzantine emperor.
For he was the last. \JGenoa\j alone could not do the work of all Western Christendom. Turkish guns smashed breaches in the mighty walls, the emperor died fighting, and the victorious Turks proudly placed upon their flags the crescent badge of Byzantium. The city was given a new name, \JIstanbul\j, and became the capital of the Turkish Empire.
In the Balkans and on the Mediterranean Sea, the power of the Turks increased. The Pope called for help, and none came. In 1464 Pope Pius II, worn out and heart-broken, died as he was about to sail himself, with no more than his own few ships, against the Turks.
The rulers of Europe had other business to attend to.
