Exam 1 Material Flashcards
(80 cards)
The Middle Ages
- A diverse period that stretched nearly 1000 years, from the end of the 5th century to the beginning/middle of the 15th
- The “High Middle Ages”: 1000 C.E.-1300 C.E.
- The “Late Middle Ages”: 1300 C.E.-1450 C.E
- Watershed moment: Arrival of the bubonic plague (reached its height in 1348)
Traditional Social Structure of the Middle Ages
Those who fought
Those who prayed
Those who worked
Those who fought
- Landed Nobility/Knights
- divided between Higher Nobility and Lower Nobility
Those who prayed
- Clergy
- divided between the “Regular Clergy” and the “Secular Clergy”
- in the late 1300s in England, clergy equaled 1.5% of the population so that there was one cleric to every 70 people
Those who worked
- Peasantry and Artisans
- often worked on manors according to a reciprocal relationship between landlord and peasant
- peasants worked the land of a lord, but then owed him part of their crops and services in return
- restrictive but also stable life
- church as a religious and social experience
Higher Nobility
long been part of the hereditary nobility
Lower Nobility
- minor landlords, minor knights, some merchants, and wealthy farmers who had climbed the social ladder in order to be able to purchase land
- did not engage in labor; others worked for them
- were expected to fight
Regular Clergy
- members of monastic orders
- preached and taught in monastic schools
Secular Clergy
- high church officials, urban priests, cathedral canons, court clerks, and poor parish priests
- higher clergy led a privileged life (tithes, land, prestige)
- many would have a second job
- yet, took vows of poverty
Three-field system
One field planted with wheat
Second with barley
Third left fallow to rest
- Leads to population growth, growth of cities and towns, and an emerging (increasingly wealthy) merchant class.
- Creates animosity between the old landed elite and the new merchant class.
- Development of guilds: working union for merchants
12th Century Renaissance
- intellectual flourishing
- Translations of the Ancient Greeks brought over from the Byzantine and Islamic Worlds
- as these ideas spread, it leads to the development of the University System
- First University: Bologna (1158)
- became a prime university for law
- served as a model for other universities in southern Europe
-The universities developed a liberal arts system
The Black Death
- starts around 1346 and does not die out until 1356
- starts in Asia and moves west and up Europe
- carried by rats by ship into port cities
- entered Italy in Genoa
- killed about half of Europe’s population
- several waves of the plague
- affected the economy
- stopped society in its tracks
Three ways people could be affected by the plague
bubonic- huge welts on the body
pneumonic- primarily attacked the lungs
septicemic- attacked the blood (less likely)
Contributions to the Emergence of the Renaissance
- Questioning of the Black Death - rethinking one’s relationship to God and to the world in this life, not just in the next
- growth of towns, cities, merchant communities -> educated urban populations
Renaissance
= Period of Rebirth
Why did the Renaissance begin in Italy?
- urbanized culture
- educated elite; the development of the university system
- trading crossroads between ottoman empire and European cities
- center of the Old Roman Empire; the ruins inspired people to think
Renaissance Humanism
- renewed interest in the classics of Ancient Greeks and Ancient Rome
- optimistic view of human nature and the capabilities of the human person
- The Renaissance was NOT a secular period
- religion continued to play a role
- thinkers aimed to figure out how the ideas of the past and their christian faith fit together
- the beauty of the human person
- wanted to improve life in a variety of ways
Francesco Petrarch
- the father of humanism
- born in Italy
- Study of the Latin Language
- “Conversing” with Cicero
- realizes that the past of Cicero can be applied to the modern world today to help people become more civil citizens
- Changed the way we look at historical time and the historical past.
- Three Ages of History: classical age, dark ages, his current age
Lorenzo Valla
- Textual Criticism
- Latin expert
- 1440, Elegances of the Latin Language
-Declamation on the Forged
Donation on Constantine.
-Language as a product of its time.
Art in the Middle Ages
- used to teach
- had religious aspects
- elaborate and beautiful
- exquisite materials
- artist as a manual laborer
Art in the Renaissance Period
- inspired by classical Greece and Rome
- Realistic
- Emphasized the capabilities of man and beauty of the human form
- Artist as a divine genius
- new methods
- chiaroscuro- the use of light and darkness
- contrappasto- the shifting of the weight
- Showcased the glory of Jesus and other religious figures
- types of materials and colors used to show meaning
- emphasis on this life
- depicting life and life forms more realistically
Invention of the printing press
- circa 1450
- Guttenberg, Fust, and Scheffer invented the printing press with moveable type in Mainz Germany
- over the next 20 years, the printing press spread throughout the German states and Italy
- By 1500, 6 million books and 40,000 editions circulating
Elementary/primary schools
- basic literacy skills, religion, basic life skills like sowing and knitting (esp for girls)
- catechism and rote learning
- rote learning = memorizing
Post-elementrary/Grammar school
- girls are largely excluded
- really start to learn latin
- reading Cicero, Virgil, …