Lecture 2 the medieval period 1066-1485 plan:

1. The Norman Conquest

2. Land and the feudal System

3. Medieval Church

4. Medieval life

5. English law

6. The Crusades

THE NORMAN CONQUEST

The official history of the medieval period begins in 1066 with the Battle of Hastings in which Harold, the king of England, was defeated by William "the Conqueror," Duke of Normandy. William invaded England to support his claim that he had been promised the succession to the English throne. The coming of the Normans to England was not another hit-and-run raid, but a full-fledged invasion and occupation. The occupation was imposed systematically and can be described in modern terms. There was an inventory and seizure of property. Martial law was put into effect. A strong central government was set up with lines of authority clearly defined. William was an efficient and ruthless soldier and an able adminis­trator. With his followers, many of whom were adventurers and soldiers of fortune, he was soon able to conquer the whole country. He reigned for twenty-one years, and the succession was assured at his death.

The Normans —a name derived from "Northman" — were in large part descended from the Vikings who had seized and then remained in northwestern France, which became known as Normandy. After more than a hundred years in France, the Normans had adopted many French customs and had their own variation of the French lan­guage, Norman-French They were a curious people: superb soldiers, excellent administrators and lawyers, great borrowers and adapters, but lacking inventiveness and original ideas; Even the architecture and the ambitious building in stone that they introduced into England originated in northern Italy. It used to be assumed that the Norman conquerors "civilized" the defeated Anglo-Saxons, but in some respects, notably in their more democratic system of govern­ment and in their crafts and designs, the Anglo-Saxons were more advanced than the Normans. William was able to subdue the whole land partly because he could adopt and use the institutions of the highly centralized and stable Anglo-Saxon government.

The dual kingdoms of England and Normandy established by Wil­liam became the most powerful force in Europe. William's descend­ants greatly increased their land holdings in Europe', either through marriage or by conquest. The Norman kings of England spent much of their time across the English Channel, fighting for their French territories, and later administering their Continental kingdoms. The court, of course, accompanied the king. It is a tribute to the stability of the kingdom and its management that one of its kings, Richard "the Lion-Hearted," could spend all but five months of his ten years' reign outside of his English kingdom.

The Norman and Anglo-Saxon elements were gradually fused into a national English character, neither predominately Norman nor Anglo-Saxon but a subtle blend of both. After losing their own rulers, the Anglo-Saxons adapted to Norman ways. Many found that they could raise their station through the Church or through the court, and began to mingle with their Norman overlords. One prom­inent example is that of Thomas'a Becket, who became Henry II's Lord Chancellor arid later Archbishop of Canterbury.

LAND AND THE FEUDAL SYSTEM

Since most of the great Anglo-Saxon landowners were wiped out by the invasion, William had a great deal of land at his disposal. Retain­ing much himself, the rest he granted to those who had fought faith­fully with him. The year 1066 brought the largest change of land ownership in the history of England. William felt that the land of England was his by right of conquest and that he was free to deed land to his vassals by royal charter, expecting obedience and service in return. Thus, William introduced into England the feudal system as it was practiced on the Continent. Feudalism was a complicated system of landholding. Nobody owned land independently but only as a vassal of an overlord, who in turn owed allegiance either to some great noble or to the king. The sys­tem was really an elaborate chain of loyalties, with rent, so to speak, paid principally in military service to the overlord. The grants William gave were mainly the estates of certain Anglo-Saxons who had died at the Conquest. The boundaries of these es­tates were frequently vague, and the first twenty years of Norman rule saw many disputes about property. Therefore, in 1086, William had a complete inventory of all property drawn up in the very impor­tant Domesday Book (sometimes called Doomsday), the book of judgments. It listed all the landowners and showed the extent of their claims. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a history written by monks hostile to William, says of this great inventory, "It is a shame to tell though he thought no shame to do it. So very narrowly he caused it to be traced out that there was not one single hide or yard of land, not even an ox, nor a cow, nor a swine that was not set down in writing." This was an administrative feat without equal anyplace else in Europe. Taxes in England could now be based on real property —previously, there had been a uniform tax for all.

THE MEDIEVAL CHURCH

Roughly from the eleventh to the fifteenth century, the people of Western Europe belonged to one homogeneous society with a com­mon culture and a common set of beliefs. The single institution that did most to promote this unity was the Medieval Church. This in­stitution crossed physical boundaries and differences in language. Latin, the language of the Church, became the language of all educated persons. Despite fierce national loyalty, every person was also responsible to the Church. No matter what kingdoms, duke­doms, principalities, or free cities people belonged to, they were all also sons and daughters of the Church, the Christian com­monwealth of Europe.

The Church grew and prospered during the period and continued to be the dominant force in preserving and transmitting culture —in teaching, writing, and translating, and in copying, collecting, and distributing manuscripts. It was Europe's chief publisher, librarian, and teacher. Its scholars and philosophers moved freely from univer­sity to university and from one country to another. In England, its abbeys and monasteries were not only the main centers of learning and the arts in the period before the founding of Oxford and Cam­bridge universities in the thirteenth century, but, as economically self-sufficient units, they were also often immense farms, places where all manner of handicrafts were taught and practiced.

MEDIEVAL LIFE

Most people lived in the country and were attached to a feudal manor. There they worked their own fields and the lands of the lord of the manor, to whom they owed their allegiance. As the period progressed, however, farming became less important than herding. The wool produced by English sheep was considered preferable to that of almost any other part of Europe. It became profitable, therefore, to turn cornfields into pasture land for sheep. By the end of the thirteenth century, there were probably as many as fifteen or eighteen million sheep in England —four or five for every person. This economic development greatly altered the daily life of the com­mon people. Instead of farmers, many people became herders, but also a large percentage of the population became involved in the wool industry. Cottages became small mills involved in carding and combing, spinning and weaving —some even in dyeing the finished cloth. The common people now paid what they owed their overlords from their wages rather than in farm labor.

Earlier, some large towns and cities had grown up, mainly in the south and related to the court. London is an example. But the wide­spread production of wool and woolen fabric, and its wide-scale ex­portation, encouraged the growth of cities in the north. More and more people began to live in towns and cities rather than on manors. A whole new class of merchants grew up. Many became immensely rich, and through favors to the court many of them entered the gen­try; some, even the nobility. These populous centers, far from the influence of the French court, developed native forms of literature, songs and ballads, and a native drama with a good deal of color and pageantry.

The first people to form guilds (societies to regulate prices and stan­dards) were the merchants. Later the cottage workers also formed guilds to assure fair wages and prices and good standards of material guild workmanship. The guild system encouraged a kind of extended family life. A master dyer would often have living with him several apprentices and also journeymen, men who had passed their appren­ticeship and were in training to be masters themselves.

With prosperity and a simultaneous growth in population, the Eng­lish turned to other kinds of work. This is the period of the great English cathedrals, Winchester and Lincoln, Salisbury and Durham. It is hard to believe the labor that went into the construction of these cathedrals — often over a period of several hundred years. (Yorkminster was begun as a Norman church in 1070 and was not completed until 1472.) Guilds were founded for many of these workers: stonecutters and masons, carpenters and woodcarvers, glass blowers and stainers. Much of the communal life of the city centered around these magnificent monuments, where, among other things, the first English dramas were performed. Life in the Middle Ages was austere in many ways. There were few of the comforts and conveniences we take for granted. Travel was difficult and often dangerous. Food (lacking sugar and potatoes and many other things), even for the rich, probably offered little variety. Since there was no way to preserve or refrigerate food, sometimes a lot had to be eaten quickly while it was in season. Winters brought a very limited and unwholesome diet for most people. The coun­tryside, however, and to some extent the towns were probably fresh, colorful, and beautiful without the smoke of modern industrial fac­tories. Also, the dress of the period seems to have been bright and varied, as evidenced by the paintings of the time: great lords in sumptuous attire and their retinues in colorful livery; even the guild members, in clothing characteristic of their trades.

ENGLISH LAW

In the twelfth century, Richard Fitzneal, an English cleric, wrote, "When William the Conqueror had subdued the whole island, and by terrible examples had tamed the minds of the rebels, he decided to place the government of the people on a written basis and subject them to the rules of law." There had been written documents under Anglo-Saxon kings, but not all of them were easily available or cen­trally based. One of William's innovations was to institute written public documents for most government actions.

Even more important in the development of England's present-day system of laws was the notion of common law that took root during this period. The term common law refers to law that is common to the whole country and all its people, in contrast to kinds of law ap­plying only to certain classes of persons. It developed as society it­self developed, based not on legal statutes but on custom and usage.

One significant law that came into effect during this period was the law of primogeniture, which gave the firstborn son exclusive right to inherit his father's titles, lands, and estates. It is still the rule in England today.

During the early part of this period, matters of law were still settled by what were called ordeals. People's innocence or guilt was settled by setting them tasks, and if they were successful at them, they were judged innocent. Disputes between two people were also settled by ordeals, such as the personal combat central to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. In 1215 Pope Innocent III declared that the ordeal system was "irrational." Without the sanction of the Church, secular governments had to find a suitable replacement for ordeals. Gradually, in England, people who were indicted were asked to abide by the judgment of their neighbors. In this way, the very important jury system came into being.

In 1215, a group of angry barons forced King John (1199-1216) to sign an agreement called the Magna Carta, or Great Charter. Al­though the charter originally had mainly to do with taxes levied by the king, it firmly established that levies must be made with the consent of the barons. In retrospect, the charter has come to seem much more important than merely limiting the king's taxing powers. In it we can see foreshadowed the right of trial by jury, habeas corpus, or the right not to be illegally detained, and the beginnings of representative government in Parliament.

THE CRUSADES

In spite of the treasured memory of great heroes like King Richard "the Lion-Hearted," the history of the Crusades makes dismal read­ing. The first Crusade was proclaimed in 1095 by Pope Urban II. Other Crusades followed in 1191, 1202, 1217, and 1270. Each Crusade began in high hope, in a genuine desire to rescue Jerusalem from the Turks, but most ended squalidly in raiding, looting, and a tangle of power politics. Still, in the end, Western Europe gained much from these expeditions to the Near East. Christian Europe was exposed to Arabic culture —especially mathematics and medi­cine. Commercial and intellectual horizons were greatly broadened, and both knowledge and all manners of refinements in living were brought back from the East. It was the Crusades too, even though they ended so badly, that encouraged the ideal of true knightly be­havior known as chivalry.

Today we use the term chivalrous to describe the conduct of well-mannered and sensitive men toward women, but the medieval idea of chivalry, though it included the relations between the sexes, went far beyond this. It sought, with the aid of the Church, to make the knightly warrior as devout and tenderhearted off the battlefield as he was bold and fearless on it. The bloodstained, ferocious history of the Crusades suggests that chivalry was an ideal rather than an ac­tual code of conduct. It was, however, of considerable importance in literature, where it was joined to the companion idea of romance.