The Medieval Period 10661485

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The Medieval Period 1066-1485

• The Norman Conquest
• William the Conqueror the Duke of Normandy
  defeated the king of England and conquered the
  entire nation, bringing the Anglo-Saxon and
  Normans together. Gradually William fused the
  two into a national English character, a subtle
  blend.
• Many found they could raise their station
  through the Church. A prominent example is Thomas
  a Becket who went from Lord Chancellor to
  Archbishop of Canterbury. He defended the claims
  of the Church against the interested of the King
  for which he was murdered. Thereafter he became
  a saint.

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The Medieval Period 1066-1485

• Land and the Feudal System
• William had a great deal of land at his disposal
  after wiping out the Anglo Saxon landowners, so
  he retained much of it and granted the rest to
  those who fought faithfully for him.
• 1066 brought the largest change in land ownership
  in the history of England. William felt that the
  land of England was his by right and that he was
  free to deed the land to his vassals by royal
  charter and expected obedience and service in
  return. This practice became the feudal system.

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The Medieval Period 1066-1485

• Feudalism
• A complicated system of landholding
• No one owned land independently, only as a vassal
  of an overlord
• Overlord in turn owed allegiance either to some
  great noble or to the king.
• Elaborate chain of loyalties with rent paid
  principally in military service to the overlord
• To avoid disputes, William had a complete
  inventory of all property drawn up in Domesday
  Book, sometimes called Doomsday, the book of
  judgement.

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The Medieval Period 1066-1485

• The Medieval Church
• From the 11th to the 15th century, the people
  belonged to one homogeneous society with a common
  culture and a common set of beliefs the Medieval
  Church
• 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 all were sons and
  daughters of the Church
• Abbeys and monasteries were the main centers of
  learning and the arts
• The Church was the dominant force in preserving
  and transmitting culture in teaching, writing,
  and translating, and in copying, collecting, and
  distributing manuscripts

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The Medieval Period 1066-1485

• Medieval Life
• Those who lived in the country were attached to a
  feudal manor. They worked their own fields and
  the lands of the lord of the manor, to whom they
  owed their allegiance.
• Herding became more important than farming as the
  wool by English sheep was considered preferable
  to that of almost any other part Europe. A large
  percentage of the population became involved in
  the wool industry carding and combing, spinning
  and weaving, even dying the cloth.
• Wide scale exportation of wool led to the growth
  of cities, and more moved to cities rather than
  living in manors, sparking a new merchant class.
  These merchants became popular often to the point
  of entering the gentry or even the nobility based
  on favors of the court.

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The Medieval Period 1066-1485

• The merchants formed guilds, societies to
  regulate prices and standards.
• Later the cottage workers formed guilds to assure
  fair wages and prices and good standards of
  material and workmanship.
• The guild system encouraged a kind of extended
  family life --- many in the same trade would live
  together.
• This is also the time of great English
  cathedrals, the construction of which stretched
  over a period of several hundred years. 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 upon these
  magnificent monuments where the first English
  dramas were performed.
• Travel was difficult and dangerous Food offered
  little variety and as there was no way to
  preserve food, diet was limited in winter.
• Celebrated with religious festivals, magnificent
  tournaments, brilliant pageantry. The dress of
  the time was bright and varied.

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The Medieval Period 1066-1485

• English Law
• One of Williams innovations was to institute
  written public documents for most government
  actions.
• Established common law a 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 was based on custom and usage,
  not on legal statutes.
• Established primogeniture the firstborn son
  given exclusive rights to inherit his fathers
  titles, lands, and estates. It is still the rule
  in England today.
• Matters of law settled by ordeals in which a
  persons innocence or guilt was decided upon by
  the performing of certain tasks. If you were
  successful in completing the tasks you were
  innocent. Disputes between two people were
  settled personal combat.

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The Medieval Period 1066-1485

• In 1215 Pope Innocent III declared that the
  ordeal system was irrational and without the
  sanction of the Church, secular governments
  turned to relying on the judgments of neighbors.
• In 1215 a group of angry barons forced King John
  to sign an agreement called the Magna Carta, or
  Great Charter. The charter established that
  levies must be made with the consent of barons,
  thereby limiting the kings taxing powers.
• The English law of the Medieval period
  foreshadows the right of trial by jury, habeas
  corpus (right not to be illegally detained), and
  the beginnings of representative government in
  Parliament.

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The Medieval Period 1066-1485

• The Crusades
• Several military expeditions made by European
  Christians in the 11th to 13th centuries
  religiously motivated wars.
• Started in 1095, and continued in 1191, 1202,
  1217 and 1270
• Each began in high hope with a genuine desire to
  rescue, but most ended in raiding, looting, and a
  tangle of power politics.
• Being exposed to Arabic culture led to an
  increased knowledge of mathematics and medicine.
• Encouraged the ideal of true knightly behavior
  known as chivalry
• Knightly warrior as devout and tenderhearted off
  the battle field, bold and fearless on the
  battlefield
• A code of conduct
• Joined to the companion idea of romance in
  literature

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The Medieval Period 1066-1485

• The Hundred Years War
• English monarchy never voluntarily relinquished
  its hold on French possessions, causing a series
  of wars known as the Hundred Years War
  1337-1453
• English were driven from France in the end,
  however they had many victories due to gunpowder
  and the long bows of the English infantry
• Six foot bow, with yard-long arrows capable of
  piercing armor
• The Wars of the Rose
• 1348 England was struck by Black Death, the first
  of a series of plagues that killed more than a
  third of the population.
• Lack of labor due to plague ended feudalism and
  led to economic and social unrest.
• A civil war between the House of York, emblem a
  white rose, and House of Lancaster, emblem red
  rose, from 1455-1485 until Henry VII united the
  feuding families through marriage, ended the
  wars, and founded the Tudor line.

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The Medieval Period 1066-1485

• Medieval Literature
• Romance tales of chivalry relating to the quests
  knights undertook for their ladies to which were
  added a love interest and all sorts of wonders
  and marvels fairy enchantments, giants,
  dragons, wizards, and sorceresses
• Although there is almost no historical basis, one
  principal source of such romantic tales were from
  the stories of King Arthur and his Knights of the
  Round Table as told by Sir Thomas Mallory in his
  Morte dArthur
• Illustrate the chivalric ideals of honor,
  courage, courtesy and service to women
• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is one of the
  finest examples of verse romance in English,
  about one of the knights in the court of King
  Arthur
• Folk poetry, a collection of recited songs called
  ballads, was collected and published and later
  influenced the English Romantic poets
• Origins of drama occurred during this time,
  although its rise in popularity reached a
  tremendous height in the Elizabethan Age.
• Miracle plays rough dramatizations of Biblical
  stories. Evil characters (the Devil) were
  portrayed comically as a rule
• Morality plays elaborate and sophisticated
  dramatic allegories in which characters
  representing various virtues and vices confronted
  one another.

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Geoffrey Chaucer1340?-1400

• Born to a family of rising middle class, obtained
  a position as page in a household closely
  associated with the court of King Edward III.
• Mastered Latin, French and Italian. Able to
  translate literary work in all three languages,
  equipped him for diplomatic and civil service.
• Before he was 20 he served as a soldier in
  France, was captured but ransomed by his king as
  he was a court favorite.
• Served his country loyally as courtier,
  diplomat, civil administrator, and translator for
  diplomatic missions.
• Died in 1400 and is buried at Westminster Abbey
  the first English poet to be buried in what is
  known as the Poets Corner.
• Most important contribution to English literature
  is his development of the resources of the
  English language for literary purposes
• The Canterbury Tales
• Group of stories told during a springtime
  pilgrimage to Canterbury Cathedral to the shrine
  of St. Thomas à Becket who had been murdered
  there two centuries before
• It was customary for members of all classes to
  travel to religious shrines to seek miraculous
  cures, to gain remission of their sins, or to
  simply satisfy their wanderlust.
• Provides a cross-section of medieval society
  feudal, ecclesiastical, and urban
• Each pilgrim in the poem was to tell two tales on
  the way there and two on the way back, however,
  Chaucer died before he could finished, so instead
  of 124 stories he wrote only 24.

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Geoffrey ChaucerThe Canterbury Tales General
Prologue

• Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
• The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
• And bathed every veyne in swich licour
• Of which vertu engendred is the flour
• Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
• Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
• The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
• Hath in the Ram his half cours yronne,
• And smale foweles maken melodye,
• That slepen al the nyght with open ye
• (So priketh hem Nature in hir corages),
• Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
• And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,
• To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes
• And specially from every shires ende
• Of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende,
• The hooly blisful martir for to seke,
• That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.

• Bifil that in that seson on a day,
• In Southwerk at the Tabard as I lay
• Redy to wenden on my pilgrymage
• To Caunterbury with ful devout corage,
• At nyght was come into that hostelrye
• Wel nyne and twenty in a compaignye
• Of sondry folk, by aventure yfalle
• In felaweshipe, and pilgrimes were they alle,
• That toward Caunterbury wolden ryde.
• The chambres and the stables weren wyde,
• And wel we weren esed atte beste.
• And shortly, whan the sonne was to reste,
• So hadde I spoken with hem everichon
• That I was of hir felaweshipe anon,
• And made forward erly for to ryse,
• To take oure wey ther as I yow devyse.