CHAPTER 16

The Latin West

1200 - 1500

I. Rural Growth and Crisis

A. Peasants, population, and Plague• Most people of the Latin West were peasants bound

by serfdom that used inefficient agricultural practices.

• Women labored in fields and were subordinate to men.

• Europe’s population doubled between 1000 and 1445.

• Population growth was spurred by new agricultural technologies in northern Europe, including the three-field system and the cultivation of oats for horses.

• As new land was opened up for cultivation much of it had poor soil and poor growing conditions.

FEUDALISM

Peasant cultivators labored long hours and more than half of the fruits of their labor went to the landowners, which led to a lack of motivation to improve farming techniques.

B. Social Rebellion• The Black Death was brought from Kaffa to Italy and

southern France in 1346.• Ravaged Europe for two years and returned

periodically in the late 1300s and 1400s.• As a result of plague, labor became more expensive

in Western Europe and led to peasant uprisings and the end of serfdom.

• After the plague, rural living standards improved, the period of apprenticeship for artisans was reduced, and per capita income rose.

The Black Death resolved the problem of

overpopulation

by killing off a third of western Europeans

Black Death victims developed boils the size of eggs in their groins and armpits, black blotches on their skin, foul body odors, and severe pain.

C. Mills and Mines• Between 1200 - 1500 Europeans invented and used a variety of

mechanical devices including water wheels and windmills.

• Industrial enterprises, including mining, ironworking, stone quarrying, and tanning, grew during this time.

• The results included both greater productivity and environmental damage including water pollution and

deforestation.

Wind mills were powered by water or wind and were used to grind grain into flour, saw logs into lumber, crush olives, tan leather, make paper, mold iron into tools, horseshoes, etc.

II. Urban Revival

A. Trading Cities• Cities grew due to the increase in trade and

manufacturing.

• The rise of Venice was the result of the capture of Constantinople, the opening of the Central Asian caravan trade under the Mongol Empire, and the post Mongol development of the Mediterranean galley trade with Constantinople, Beirut, and Alexandria.

• This increase in sea trade also brought profits to Genoa and to the cities of the Hanseatic League in the Baltic and the North Sea.

• Flanders prospered from its woolen textile industries, while the towns of Champagne benefited from their position on the major land route through France.

• Trade industries also began to develop in England and Florence and the use of windmills and water wheels helped develop the textile, paper, and other industries

Routes and systems of trade in medieval

Europe.

Illustrates the major overland and port

trading cities.

VENICE

Venice was the major trading power in the

Mediterranean.

It was the first European city to open up trading

relationships with the Islamic world.

FLANDERS

Flanders specialized in the European cloth and

wool trade which was smoother than the

coarse

homemade textiles from village looms.

B. Civic Life• European cities that were city-states were better able to

respond to the changing market conditions than Chinese or Islamic cities and European cities offered their citizens more freedom and social mobility.

• Europe's Jews lived in the cities and they were the subject of persecution and they were blamed for disasters like the Black Death and were expelled from Spain due to the Inquisition.

• Guilds regulated the practice of and access to trades, but women were rarely allowed to join.

• The growth of commerce gave rise to bankers like the Medicis of Florence and the Fuggers of Augsburg who handled financial transactions for merchants, the church, and the kings and princes of Europe.

• Many bankers were Jews because the Church prohibited usury.

Cosimo the Elder was the head of the Medici

family

in Florence. They were largest banking family in

Italy

and were important patrons of the arts.

Jacob “the Rich” Fugger started out as a cloth merchant but turned his family’s wealth into the largest banking family in Europe.

C. Gothic Cathedrals• Gothic Cathedrals are the masterpieces of late

medieval architecture and craftsmanship.

• Features include the pointed Gothic arch, flying buttresses, high towers and spires, and large interiors lit by huge windows.

• The men who designed and built the Gothic cathedrals had no formal training in design and engineering; they learned through their mistakes.

The hallmark of Gothic architecture is the Gothic arch which replaced the older round Roman arch.

III. Learning, Literature, and the Renaissance

A. Universities and Scholarship• After 1100, Western Europeans got access to Greek and Arabic

works on science, philosophy, and medicine.• These manuscripts were translated and explicated by Jewish

scholars and studied at Christian monasteries, which remained the primary centers of learning.

• After 1200 colleges and universities emerged as new centers of learning.

• Universities generally specialized in a particular branch of learning.

• Theology was the most prominent discipline at the time because theologians sought to synthesize the rational philosophy of the time with the Christian faith of the Latin West in an intellectual movement known as scholasticism

University of Bologna (1088) is the oldest continually

operating university in the world. The word “universitas”

was first used by this institution. It is historically

notable

for its teaching of canon and civil law.

A medieval Italian classroom.

B. Humanists and Printers• Humanists refers to their interests in grammar, rhetoric,

poetry, history, and moral philosophy (ethics). These subjects are collectively known as the humanities.

• Humanists wrote in the vernacular and Latin and worked to restore the original texts and Bible through exhaustive comparative analysis of the many various versions that had been produced over the centuries.

Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy was the first to combine Christian and Greco-Roman themes together, which foreshadowed the literary fashions of the later Italian Renaissance.

Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales is a

rich portrayal of the actions and

attitudes of everyday people

in late medieval England.

Johannes Gutenberg invented mechanical movable type printing

and started the printing revolution that played a key role

in the development of the Renaissance. It laid the material basis for the modern knowledge-

based

economy and the spread of learning to the masses.

C. Renaissance Artists• Style of art built on the more natural paintings

which concentrated on the depiction of Greek and Roman gods and of scenes from daily life.

• Jan van Eyck developed oil paints.• Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo were two of the

famous artists.• Wealthy merchant and clerical patrons liked the

Medici's of Florence and the church contributed to the development of Renaissance art.

Jan van Eyck was the first painter to use oil to

create very life-like scenes.

The Mona Lisa.

Michalangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling is considered his crowing achievement completed in 1512

IV. Political and Military Transformations

A. Monarchs, Nobles, and the Church• 13th century European states were ruled by weak

monarchs whose power was limited.• The armor piercing crossbow and firearms led to the

demise of knights.• Philip the Fair of France reduced the power of the

church when he arrested the pope and had a new French one installed in Avignon.

• The Magna Carta limited the power of the English King.

• Monarchs and nobles often entered into marriage alliances and these led to wars and the establishment of territorial boundaries

CROSSBOW

With an iron tipped arrow, the crossbow could pierce armor.

In 1139 it was outlawed because it was

considered too deadly to be used against

Christians.

MAGNA CARTA

Magna Carta (Great Charter) affirmed that monarchs were subject to established law. It is one of the foundations of modern-day democracy.

Depiction of King John signing the Magna Carta under duress.

B. The Hundred Years War• Pitted England against France when Edward III

claimed the French throne in 1337.• War was fought with new military technology. (pikes,

cannon, crossbows, longbows, and firearms)• The French superior cannon destroyed the castles of

the English and their allies and left the French monarchy in a stronger position than before.

King Henry V at the battle of Agincourt. The longbow allowed the outnumbered English to crush the French knights.

Joan of Arc, the heroine of France, rallied the French to defeat the English to end the Hundred Years War in 1429. Burned at the stake in 1431 for being a “witch”.

C. Iberian Unification• The reconquest of Spain by Christians over Muslims

took several centuries.• Portugal was established in 1249, but by 1415 they

had captured the Moroccan port of Ceuta, which gave them access to the trans-Saharan trade.

• Castile and Aragon were united in 1469 and by 1492 they drove the Muslims out of their last Iberian stronghold (Granada).

• Spain and Portugal then expelled all Jews and Muslims from their territory.

Reconquest of the Iberian peninsula from the Moors.

King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella completed the conquest of Spain in 1492. They also sponsored the voyages of Columbus.

Muslim palace in Granada which was the last Muslim stronghold to fall into Spanish hands during the reconquest.