Bellwork

• How do you think the Crusades will affect Europe’s contact with the rest of the world?

World History

Section 4, Unit 7Middle Ages pt. 2

Financial Revolution

Objectives

• Describe the changes in Europe after the Crusades

• Explain how the amount of food increased in Europe following the Crusades.

• Explain the role of universities in Western Europe and how their establishment was caused by the Crusades

Changes in Europe

• While the Church was changing throughout Europe, there were other important changes occurring in medieval society.

• Between 1000-1300, agriculture, trade, and finance made remarkable progress. – This was due to the growing population

and territorial expansion in western Europe.

Growing Food Supply• Europe’s great revival

would have been impossible without better ways of farming.

• Expanding civilizations needed increased food supply--- which was supported by a warming climate in Europe during this time.

Growing Food Supply

• For hundreds of years, peasants used oxen to pull plows.– Oxen could live on poor foods and were

very easy to keep. However, they moved very slowly.

• Horses needed better food, but a team of horses could do the job better and faster than oxen.

Growing Food Supply

• However, sometime around 900, farmers in Europe began to create new technology that made using horses more efficient than oxen– harnesses that fitted across a horse’s chest rather than neck.

• As a result, horses gradually replaced oxen for plowing and pulling wagons.

Growing Food Supply

• While villages were moving to using horses, villagers began to organize their land differently.

• The system peasants originally used was the two-field system– a system where villagers would divide the villages land into two great fields. – One would be used for farming and the

other would not be used for a year, to avoid exhausting the soil.

Growing Food Supply

• Around 800, some villagers began to organize their fields into three fields.

• Under the three-field system, farmers would grow winter crops in 1/3 of the field, spring crops in 1/3 of the field, and let one part of the field not be used for a whole year.

• As a result, the food supply increased. Question: What happens to a society when the food

supply increases?

Growing Food Supply

• With more food caused a great increase in their population. People could afford to raise larger families.

• Aside from that, good food allowed people to better resist disease and live longer.

Trade and Finance• As agriculture grew,

trade and finance followed.

• In response to the population growth, artisans and craftsmen were manufacturing goods for local and long-distance trade.

• Trade routes spread across Europe to Flanders to Italy.

Trade and Finance

• Italian merchant ships traveled along the Mediterranean, trading with port towns in Byzantium and along North Africa.

• Thanks to the Crusades, trade routes were opened to Asia.

Trade and Finance

• Most trade took place in towns.• Peasants from nearby manors traveled

to town on fair days, hauling items to trade– cloth being the most common. – Bacon, salt, honey, cheese, wine and

other items were also common.• Such fairs met all the needs of daily

life and manors no longer needed to be self-sufficient.

Trade and Finance• The fairs were made

possible by guilds– an association of people who worked the same occupation.

• Each guild usually met in the town hall and were formed by merchants who controlled trade in their town.

Trade and Finance

• As towns grew, skilled artisans began craft guilds.

• Guilds enforced a standard of quality– for example, bakers set standards for the size and weight of bread– and set fair prices based on the products.

Trade and Finance• Only masters of the trade

could join a guild. • Becoming a master was not

easy, however. First, a child had to be an apprentice for five to nine years, then became a journeyman who worked for wages.

• Finally, a journeyman would make a item– whatever item fits their trade– that qualified as a “master piece”. If they produced to standard, then they were welcomed to the guild as masters.

Financial Revolution• The medieval world of fairs and

guilds created a need for large amounts of money.

• Before a merchant could make a profit selling goods at a fair, he first had to purchase goods from distant places. This usually required him to borrow money, but the Church forbade Christians from lending money at interest. Question: If Christians can’t lend out money,

then who can?

Financial Revolution• Many of Europe’s Jews

lived in growing towns and were moneylenders.

• Because Christians blocked Jews from doing most things– including joining Guilds– and were forced to live in segregated towns called ghettos, Jews became moneylenders to make a living.

Financial Revolution

• Overtime, the Church relaxed its rule on lending money.

• Banking soon became an important business, especially in Italy.

Urbanization

• All over Europe, trade blossomed and better farming supported populations.

• Between 1000 and 1150, the population of western Europe went from 30 million to 42 million.

• Towns grew and flourished, but still could not compare to great cities like Constantinople. – Typical towns had around 1,500 to 2,500

people.

Urbanization

• However, while the towns were small, they were a powerful force of change in Europe.

• By the later Middle Ages, trade was the very lifeblood of new towns.

• All over Europe, trade grew and towns swelled.

• These new towns had an adverse affect on the manor system, however.

Urbanization• With new growing

towns, people were no longer content with their old feudal existence.

• While serfs were legally bound to a manor, they left regardless.

• Because of the growing urbanization, people challenged the traditional ways of feudal society.

Urbanization

• Most medieval towns grew haphazardly.• Streets were filthy and narrow, covered

in both human and animal waste. • Few people bathed and almost no one

had access to clean water. • While the conditions were generally

bad, people chose to live close-by to pursue the economic and social opportunities towns offered.

Social Order

• So many serfs had left the manors that, by the 1100s, a serf could become free simply by living near a town for a year and a day.

• Aside from newly found freedom for serfs, merchants and craftsmen did not fit into the traditional order of medieval society– noble, clergy, and peasant.

Social Order• At first, towns fell

under the authority of the feudal lords, who used their authority to levy fees, taxes, and rents.

• As trade expanded, however, the burghers (ber-gurs) or town-dwellers, resented this interference and demanded privileges.

Social Order

• These rights included freedom from certain kinds of tolls or the right to govern the town.

• At times, they fought against their landlords and won these rights by force.

Learning Grows

• Growing trade and cities brought a new interest in learning.

• At the center of growth of learning stood a university, which was uniquely European.

• Athens, Alexandria, Rome, and Constantinople all had centers of learning, but never before had the world seen a university as it had grown in Europe.

Universities• The word university

was originally used to designate a group of scholars meeting wherever they could.

• People, not buildings, made up the medieval university.

• Universities arose in Paris and at Bologna (boe-lone-ya), Italy.

Universities

• Others appeared in English towns, like Oxford.

• Most students were the sons of burghers– well-to-do artisans.

• For most students, the goal was a job in government or the Church. Earning a bachelors degree in theology might take 5-7 years in school– a master could take at least 12 years.

Scholarship

• At that time, Latin was the most widely used language in scholarship.

• However, this made it so that the common person could not participate in scholarship.

Question: Why might the use of Latin only be a problem?

Scholarship• However, a few scholars

began to write in their own languages– the everyday language used at home.

• Some of these writers wrote masterpieces still used today, such as Dante Alighieri’s (al-leg-ree) The Divine Comedy in Italian or Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales in English.

New World

• The revival of learning sparked European interest in words of ancient scholars.

• At the same time, the growth of trade was accelerated by the Crusades.

• This brought Europeans into contact with Muslims and Byzantines who had preserved the libraries of Greek and Roman philosophers.

New World• By the 1100s, Christian

scholars from Europe began visiting Muslim libraries in Spain.

• Because few Western scholars knew Greek, Jewish scholars began to translate Arabic and Greek works into Latin.

• All at once, Europeans acquired a new huge body of knowledge lost to them after Rome fell.

New World

• This new body of knowledge included science, philosophy, law, mathematics, and other fields.

• In addition, the Crusaders learned about– and brought back with them– superior Muslim technology in ships, navigation, and weapons.

Scholastics

• With all the new information coming in, Europeans had to weigh their belief in God with the logical viewpoints of the Greeks.

• In the mid-1200’s the scholar known as Thomas Aquinas argued that the most basic religious truths could be proved by logic.

Scholastics• Inspired by Aristotle–

combined with other Greek and Christian thought— he created new works that influenced his world.

• Aquinas and his fellow scholars who met at the great universities became known as the scholastics.

Scholastics

• The scholastics used their knowledge of Aristotle to debate many issues of their time.

• Their teachings on law and government influenced the thinking of western Europeans, particularly the English and the French.

• Accordingly, they began to develop democratic institutions and traditions that were influenced by the Greeks.

Review Objectives

• Describe the changes in Europe after the Crusades

• Explain how the amount of food increased in Europe following the Crusades.

• Explain the role of universities in Western Europe and how their establishment was caused by the Crusades

Questions

• If you have any questions, please ask now.

Next Lesson

• In the next lesson, we are going to be examining the changes in England and France between the 800s to the 1100s.

Review1. How did the growth of towns affect the feudal system?2. Why might economic growth promote interest in

learning? 3. How did the Crusades affect learning in Europe in

terms of (1) the amount of information available and (2) the technology that became available to the Europeans?

4. How did the Crusades affect trade in Europe? 5. Who lent money to Europeans to fund their businesses?

Why did this group have to lend money?6. Name two ways the Europeans increased the amount

of food available to them? How did the increased amount of food affect their health and population?

7. What was a university and how was it different from previous centers of learning?

8. Why was the use of Latin in scholarship difficult for some Europeans during this time?