High Middle Ages and Renaissance

1
High Middle Ages and Renaissance

• Europe to 1500

2
High Middle Ages

• Period (1300-1500) marked by
• Revolution in agriculture
• Expansion of towns
• Crusades
• Growth of national monarchies
• Black Death
• The Renaissance
• Massive social upheaval and change throughout
  Western Europe

3
The Crusades

• Outlet for high religiosity of the 11th and 12th
  centuries
• Byzantine Emperor calls for aid to fight Seljuk
  Turks, 1095
• Too many noblemen in West, Pope Urban II used as
  an opportunity to remove them
• Expression of religious piety as well
• 100,000 marched in Crusade
• Established Crusader Kingdoms in Judaea and Turkey

4
(No Transcript)
5
Other Crusades

• Second Crusade (1144-1187) attempt to recapture
  Kingdom of Edessa
• Saladin recaptures Jerusalem, 1187
• Third Crusade (1189-1192) led by Frederick
  Barabossa, Richard the Lion-hearted, and Philip
  Augusts
• Debacle, internal divisions ends crusades
• Fourth Crusade (1202-1261) funded by Venice
  merchants

6
National Monarchies

• England and France emerged as separate
  nationalities during the High Middle Ages
• 1066, William the Conqueror becomes the first
  Norman king of Anglo-Saxon England
• Created a balance of monarchical and
  parliamentary powers
• Henry II (r. 1154-1189) created an English-French
  empire through marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine
  autocratic rule at home
• Magna Carta (1215)

7
(No Transcript)
8
France and England

• Philip II Augustus (1180-1223) concentrated power
  around Paris
• Louis IX (r. 1226-1270) abolished serfdom,
  offered legal appeals, checks on nobility
• France is put on a collision course with England
  as the dominant force on the continent

9
Hundred Years War

• May 1337, Edward III King of England claimed the
  French Throne
• War for national identity and territory erupts
• Internal disputes and fragmented feudal society
  prevent French victory first half of the war
• Reversal in French fortune when Joan of Arc
  assumes leadership in early 1400s
• French throne protected as Charles VII is
  crowned king (Joan is executed in 1431)
• War ends in 1453, leaving France and England
  devastated

10
(No Transcript)
11
Black Death

• Agricultural improvements led to rise in
  population (doubled between 1000 and 1300)
• More people than food or jobs overcrowded and
  unsanitary cities
• Black Death (bubonic plague) entered Europe in
  1348 from Asia, following trade routes
• Italy, Spain and Southern France, Northern Europe
  and England
• 2/5 of the population dead by 1400s.

12
(No Transcript)
13
(No Transcript)
14
Impact on Europe

• Culture obsessed with death and dying
• Absurd remedies
• Aromatic amulets, sexual promiscuity,
  flagellants, fleeing from cities
• Jews were made scapegoats
• Whole villages disappeared
• Peasant revolts in England and France

15
(No Transcript)
16
(No Transcript)
17
Renaissance. What is it?

• French word for rebirth. Rebirth of what?
• People believed they were the heirs to ancient
  Greece and Rome.
• Emerging out of Dark Ages/Middle Ages/medieval
  Europe, a time of death, plague, and political
  disorder.
• Began roughly around 1400.

18
Humanism

• Movement started by man named Francesco Petrarch
• People began to read the classics works by
  ancient Greeks and RomansPlato, Aristotle,
  Virgil, Cicero, etc.
• People began to learn Latin again and some Greek
  to read these old forgotten manuscripts
• Humanists sought life of solitude, studied.
• Rejected family and community

19
Printing Press

• Books handwritten by monks
• Later printed by wood-carved blocks.
• Revolution in printing came in 1455
• Johannes Gutenberg printed the first book with
  movable metal type a Bible.
• So what?

20
Movable Metal Type

• So what? It was a very big deal.
• Handwritten books slow to produce and very
  expensive.
• Books printed with the new type could be mass
  produced, thus making them cheap and easier to
  distribute.
• Common people just learning how to read now had
  books in their home, mostly Bibles

21
(No Transcript)
22
Renaissance Art

• Sought to imitate nature
• Humanism played a role
• Mixed nature and humans in paintings
• Famous Renaissance painters and sculptors
  Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael
• Artwork was patronized by wealthy Italian
  families, e.g., the Medicis

23
Renaissance Art
Medieval Art