Medieval Towns

Questions:

1.     How did medieval towns make their living?

2.     Which groups of people controlled all of trade (buying & selling) in medieval town?

3.     What was the name given to a boy who was learning a trade in a medieval town?

4.     What did a journeyman have to make before he could become a member of a guild?

5.     What did a journeyman become when he joined a guild?

6.     Why did serfs run away from their villages to live in medieval towns?

Answers: the guilds, a master craftsman, an apprentice, a masterpiece trade, to become free, a masterpiece

Why was fire such a problem for medieval towns? (Explain why there were a lot of fires and why they caused so much damage).

Monks, nuns, and Mendicants

• Monks and nuns took vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.  They spent their lives in work, study, and prayer, living in separate communities called monasteries and convents.
• Friars did not shut themselves off from the rest of the world.  They traveled among ordinary people to preach.  

Holidays

• Medieval holidays honored important events in the life of Jesus, such as his birth and Resurrection.  Holidays also honored Christian saints and important religious concepts.
• People celebrated holidays by attending church and with feasts, music, dancing, games, and other forms of entertainment.  

Battle of Carnival and Lent by painter Pieter Brueghel

Art and Architecture

• Since most people could not read, art helped them understand Biblical stories.
• Cathedrals were large churches and the seat of a bishop.  Some key features included the nave, transepts, flying buttresses, gargoyles, pillars, and stained glass windows.

flying buttresses

nave

Cathedral ground plan. The shaded area is the transept; darker shading represents the crossing.

transept

gargoyles 

pillars 

stained glass window

Rhetoric

The study of persuasive writing and speaking 

Education in Medieval Europe

• Most schooling took place in monasteries, convents, and cathedrals.  Much time was spent memorizing prayers and passages form the Bible in Latin.
• Aquinas was an Italian scholar of philosophy and theology.  He tried to bring together ancient philosophical ideas about reason and medieval theological beliefs about faith.

      During the Middles Ages, most schooling took place in monasteries, convents, and cathedrals.  The clergy were the people most likely to be educated.  Most of the students in church schools were sons of nobles who were studying for careers in the clergy.  Starting in the 1200s, cathedral schools gave rise to universities.  Students studied latin grammar and rhetoric, logic, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and music.  Books were hand copied and rare, so teachers often read to students.

Crusades

     The crusades were a military expeditions to the land where Jesus had lived, which Christians called the Holy Land.  During the seventh century, this part of the Near East had come under the control of Muslims.

The battle between the Hussite warriors and the Crusaders, Jena Codex, 15th century

Pilgrimages and Relics

A journey, especially a long one, made to some sacred place as an act of religious devotion

People went on pilgrimages to show devotion to God, as an act of penance, or to find a cure for an illness.  Popular destinations included Jerusalem, Rome, and Canterbury.

The hill of apparitions in Medjugorie, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Some European pilgrims on the ancient pilgrimage road to Santiago de Compostela in 2005.

Saint Catherine's Monastery, Mount Sinai

A relic is a body part of a saint, or else another type of holy object, carefully perserved

Relic skull and reliquary of Saint Ivo of Kermartin(also St. Yves or St. Ives), (1253–1303) in Treguier, Brittany, France

The 7 Sacraments

 Baptism ... Birth

Confirmation ... Young Adult

Eucharist ... The Body if Christ

Matrimony

Holy Orders ... Becoming a Priest or Nun

Penance ... Confession of Sins

Last Rights ... Death 

• The church taught that Christians had to receive sacraments in order to achieve salvation.
• The seven sacraments were baptism, confirmation, Eucharist, matrimony holy orders, penace, and extreme unction. 

Excommunication

To formally deprive a person of membership in a church

The Excommunication of Martin Luther, 1521

A depiction of Pope Gregory IX excommunicating.

The Hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church

The Role of the Church in Medieval Europe

The Mass of Saint Giles, painted around 1500

The Christian religion is one of the most important legacies of ancient Rome.  Christians are followers of Jesus Christ, who was put to death on a Roman cross in the first century C.E.  Christians believe he was the son of God, that God sent him to Earth to save people from their sins, and that he rose form the dead after his crucifixion.

• Initially, the Romans persecuted Christians for their beliefs.
• By the start of the Middle Ages, all Christians in western Europe belonged to a single church, which became known as the Roman catholic Church.
• The church provided leadership and over time developed an organization that was modeled on the structure of the Roman government.
• Monasteries, or communities of monks, copied and preserved old texts, and in this way helped keep learning alive. 
• During the Middle Ages, the church acquired great economic and political power that at times rivaled that of the monarchs.