WarmUp #6

• Explain feudalism.

• What is a fief?

• Who is a vassal?

• Explain the cause of the Hundred Years’ War.

• Who is the hero, who turned the tide of the Hundred Years’ War?

Art & Scholarship in the Middle Ages

Birth of Universities• grew out of guilds

– producing trained/educated individuals

• 1st European University: Italy– Liberal Arts: rhetoric, grammar, logic,

arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy

• teachers lectured:– no exams until graduated: 4-6 years

• after liberal arts:– could specialize…in theology, law,

medicine, etc.

Scholasticism

• Scholasticism: faith & reason joined– with the rediscovery of Greek/Arab/Indian thinkers

from the ancient world, scholars tried to reconcile secular knowledge with the Church’s teachings

• Thomas Aquinas: monk who reconciled the teachings of Aristotle with the Church– 2 kinds of knowledge: reason & faith

Thomas Aquinas

Vernacular Literature• Latin: main language…of the Church, school, government,

trade, etc.• vernacular: language of everyday speech in a particular area

– passed on by troubadours & minstrels

– Geoffrey Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales• written in English• story of characters taking a pilgrimage to Canterbury

– Dante Alighieri: The Divine Comedy• written in Italian• describes the soul’s journey into the afterlife

– Heaven = Paradiso, Purgatory = Purgatorio, Hell = Inferno

• songs/poetry about stories of knights, ladies etc.• heroic epics

Architectureat first built in Romanesque style: flat roof, small windows, thick walls & rounded arches

Gothic Cathedral

12th Century: Gothic style: pointed arches, ribbed vaults to make building higher & upward movement

Gothic architecture used flying buttresses to support the weight of roof & wall

thin walls = huge stained glass windows

Arches