An animated WORLD HISTORY AT A GLANCE (worldat.gif--400x100)

by Akira Kato

May 24, 2002

The Middle Ages: Overview

Early Middle Ages: 600-1000

Carolingian Renaissance

Charlemagne 768 - 814

Who was Charlemagne?
grandson of Pippin (d. 714)
nobleman who headed Merovingian administration
Son of Pippin the Short, King of the Franks

Highpoint: Reign of Charlemagne 768-814 AD

Charlemagne expanded his kingdom (the Frankish Kingdom) considerably.
What territories did the Carolingian Empire include, aside from France?

The High Middle Ages

High Points: Catholic Church as the wealthiest and most powerful institution in medieval Europe

Gothic architecture

Chivalry as the culture of the medieval nobility

The Miniature to the right, taken from an illuminated manuscript painted around 1310, illustrates medieval concepts of chivalry.

The knight, who is also a troubador who writes love songs, kneels before his lady before going off to war. His tunic is adorned with numerous representations of the letter "A" , signifying the word Amor, the Latin word for love.

Both figures are slim and graceful,
thus depicting the ideals of beauty characteristic of the High Middle Ages.

Gothic Architecture

Flying buttresses

Ribbed Vaults

Pointed Arches

Stained glass windows

Stained glass windows were a characteristic part of Gothic churches and Cathedrals, and often, as in this case (Strasburg Cathedral) portrayed scenes from the life of Christ. Here, as Jesus dines in the house of a pharisee, Mary Magdalene washes his feet.

The Black Death, 1347-1380

Bubonic Plague

LIVES IN BROWN RATS

TRANSMITTED TO HUMAN POPULATION FROM DEAD RATS VIA FLEAS

SYMPTOMS: SWELLING IN ARMPITS & GROIN

IF SWELLINGS BURST, DEATH INEVITABLE

IT HAD RAVAGED MEDITERRANEAN BASIN OF ROMAN EMPIRE, 3RD C. AD & REMAINED IN CHINA AND CENTRAL ASIA

1348 -- The Fateful Year

BROUGHT TO SHORES OF BLACK SEA VIA THE CARAVAN ROUTE FROM CHINA

ITALIAN SAILORS CAUGHT IT THERE AND BROUGHT IT TO CONSTANTINOPLE, then FRANCE, ENGLAND, GERMANY and THE BALTIC LANDS

Who caught the plague?

THE YOUNG, THE OLD, THE SICK, THE INFIRM WERE MOST VULNERABLE

REPEATED BAD HARVESTS IN EARLY 14TH CENTURY HAD LEFT THE ENTIRE POP. VULNERABLE

WORSE IN RURAL AREAS THAN IN TOWNS

Results of the Plague

KILLED APPROX. 30-50% OF EUROPEAN POPULATION HUGE NUMBERS OF VILLAGES WERE COMPLETELY WIPED OUT

GRAIN PRICES FELL BETWEEN 1370-1500

FOR THOSE LEFT, MORE LAND, MORE MEAT, MORE JOBS, HIGHER WAGES

As you can see from the chart to the right, the European population was lower in 1450 than in 1350. Not until the 16th c. did European population reach the level at which it stood prior to 1348.

The Cultural Impact of the Black Death

For those who survived, the Black Death intensified the morbid fears and fascination associated with death and decay. Around 1400, the Dance of Death (Totentanz) became a dominant theme in art and literature. The elements in this theme were:

1. "in the midst of life, we are in death"

2. death as the great leveler of social and economic distinctions.
This theme reached its artistic high point with the Totentanz woodcuts (1527) of the Swiss artist Hans Holbein the Younger. In the woodcut here, entitled "The Bones of all Mankind" a grisly ensemble of rotting skeletons plays a triumphant fanfare celebrating Death, while the Charnel House in the background is stacked high with the bones of the anonymous dead, who are now devoid of social or economic distinction.

Holbein's complete Totentanz (complete with period music) is at the following website:

http://www.delago.de/ttanz/index.htm

Late Middle Ages 1350-1500

The "New Monarchies"

France, Spain, England

New monarchies were larger, more centralized, and this gave their rulers more power than in the older medieval kingdoms.

Europe in 1450

France around c.1430

Spain in the Middle Ages

Society in the Late Middle Ages

Nobility: 1% of population

Church: 1% of population

Townspeople: 5-10% of population

Peasants & agricultural laborers: approx. 90%

Nobility

Higher Nobility: Princes Dukes Counts

Lower Nobility: Barons Knights

The nobility ruled medieval society through its monopoly on:

1.Land & Lordship
2.Monopoly on Command Positions in three areas: Military, Church, and State

Engraving of an ideal Christian knight by Albrecht Duerer (1471-1528)

Portrait of Count Loewenstein by the German artist Hans Grien.

The Church hierarchy

Townspeople

Cities and towns in the Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance accounted for roughly 10% of the European population. The typical town or city had three major social groups:

1. A wealthy elite of bankers and wholesale merchants dealing in long distance trade and finance

2. Middle class artisans and traders with small and middle sized workshops or stores.

3. Laborers, apprentices, etc.

Portrait of a rich merchant by Hans Holbein the Younger

Rich and Poor Peasants

The peasantry of late medieval and early modern Europe made up the vast majority (90%)of the population, but there were great social and economic variations within the peasantry as a group.

All peasants, both rich and poor, were involved in the market economy, since all needed money to pay their rents and taxes.

Work & Leisure in the Late Middle Ages

The "Cycle of the Months" frescoes in Trent, Italy, painted around 1400.

January

With the harvest already in and the ground frozen, the peasants had very little to do in January.

Lords and Ladies take pleasure in a snowball fight, the first in recorded history.

February:

Another month of relative inactivity for the peasants but a busy month for the nobility.

April: The agricultural season begins.

July: Mowing Hay

August: Harvesting grain

September: Harvesting grapes

The Manor

Basic economic unit in medieval and early modern Europe

The Renaissance

The political, intellectual, & cultural flowering, especially in the cities of Italy and the Low Countries in the 15th and 16th centuries, but also in France, Germany, and England in the same period.

Portraits first emerged as a major art form in the Renaissance. This is a portrait of Federigo da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, and his son painted by Pedro Berruguete around 1480.

Centers of the Renaissance

Aspects of the Renaissance

Politics:
The Renaissance State
The Court as center of cultural patronage

Philosophy and Ideas:
Humanism

Culture:
Renaissance art & architecture

The Italian Renaissance

Monarchies:
Milan
Mantua
Papal States

Republics:
Florence
Venice

Florence

Most important center of Renaissance culture

Dominated since the 1430s by the Medici, a wealthy banking family in Florence. The Medici ruled as virtual despots, but kept the facade of republican rule.

In the 15th century, The Medici rulers, Cosimo, Piero, and, finally, Lorenzo the Magnificent, were great patrons of the arts. Like all the great Renaissance patrons, they used art to express their power, grandeur, and pretensions to political legitimacy.

Venice

Oligarchic Republic

Most powerful city state in Renaissance Italy

Its greatest sea-power

Dominated trade with the Near East

Unlike Florence, where patronage of the arts was dominated by powerful families like the Medici, art patronage in Venice was dominated by the wealthy Scuole (religious fraternities). The Scuole played a major role in the social and political life of Venice, and they commissioned prominent artists to decorate their chapter houses with frescos like the one below:

Venetian government:

Doge (chief executive) elected for life

Grand Council (hereditary families)

Council of Ten

the Doge Leonardo Loredan

Venetian Society in the Renaissance

Hereditary nobility -- 4%

Middle class citizens -- 11%

Workers & Artisans -- 85%

Although Venetian laws clearly distinguished the nobility from the middle class citizens, the two social groups were indistinguishable in their dress. Note that the modest and somber apparel worn by the young nobleman pictured below in the portrait by Giovanni Bellini.