In 1348, when he was a young teenager, Francesco Datini (1335-1410) lost his father, his mother, a brother, and a sister to the Black Death epidemic that swept through Europe (see pages 280-285). Leaving his hometown of Prato in northern Italy, he apprenticed himself to merchants in nearby Florence for several years to learn accounting and other business skills. At fifteen, he moved to the city of Avignon (ah-vee-NYON) in southern France. The popes were living in Avignon instead of Rome, and the city offered many opportunities for an energetic and enterprising young man. Datini first became involved in the weapons trade, which offered steady profits, and then handled spices, wool and silk cloth, and jewels. He was very successful, and when he was thirty-one he married the young daughter of another merchant in an elaborate wedding that was the talk of Avignon.
In 1378 the papacy returned to Italy, and Datini soon followed, setting up trading companies in Prato, Pisa, Florence, and eventually other cities as well. He focused on cloth and leather and sought to control the trade in products used for preparation as well, especially the rare dyes that created the brilliant colors favored by wealthy noblemen and townspeople. He eventually had offices all over Europe and became one of the richest men of his day, opening a mercantile bank and a company that produced cloth, as well as his many branch offices.
Datini was more successful than most, but what makes him particularly stand out was his record-keeping. He kept careful account books and ledgers, all of them headed by the phrase “in the name of God and profit.” He wrote to the managers of each of his offices every week, providing them with careful advice and blunt criticism: “You cannot see a crow in a bowl of milk.” Taking on the son of a friend as an employee, he wrote to the young man: “Do your duty well, and you will acquire honor and profit, and you can count on me as if I were your own father. But if you do not, then do not count on me; it will be as if I had never known you.” When Datini was away from home, which was often, he wrote to his wife every day, and she sometimes responded in ways that were less deferential than we might expect of a woman who was many years younger. “I think it is not necessary,” she wrote at one point, “to send me a message every Wednesday to say that you will be here on Sunday, for it seems to me that on every Friday you change your mind.”
Datini’s obsessive record-keeping lasted beyond his death, for someone put all of his records — hundreds of ledgers and contracts, eleven thousand business letters, and over a hundred thousand personal letters — in sacks in his opulent house in Prato, where they were found in the nineteenth century. They provide a detailed picture of medieval business practices and also reveal much about Datini as a person. Ambitious, calculating, luxury-loving, and a workaholic, Datini seems similar to a modern CEO. Like many of today’s self-made super-rich people, at the end of his life Datini began to think a bit more about God and less about profit. In his will, he set up a foundation for the poor in Prato and a home for orphans in Florence, both of which are still in operation. In 1967 scholars established an institute for economic history in Prato, naming it in Datini’s honor; the institute now manages the collection of Datini documents and gathers other relevant materials in its archives.
Questions for Analysis
1. How would you evaluate Datini’s motto: as an honest statement of his aims, a hypocritical justification of greed, a blend of both, or something else?
2. Changes in business procedures in the Middle Ages have been described as a “commercial revolution.” Do Datini’s activities support this assessment? Why?
Source: Iris Origo, The Merchant of Prato: Francesco di Marco Datini, 1335-1410 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf Inc., 1957).
The ventures of the German Hanseatic League also illustrate these new business procedures. The Hanseatic (han-see-AT-ik) League was a mercantile association of towns. Initially the towns of Lubeck and Hamburg wanted mutual security, exclusive trading rights, and, where possible, a monopoly. During the next century, perhaps two hundred cities from Holland to Poland joined the league, but Lubeck always remained the dominant member. From the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries, the Hanseatic League controlled the trade of northern Europe (see Map 11.1). In the fourteenth century the Hanseatics branched out into southern Germany and Italy by land and into French, Spanish, and Portuguese ports by sea.
Hanseatic League A mercantile
Association of towns that allowed for mutual protection and security.
At cities such as Bruges and London, Hanseatic merchants secured special trading concessions exempting them from all tolls and allowing them to trade at local fairs. Hanseatic merchants established foreign trading centers, called "factories,” the most famous of which was the London Steelyard, a walled community with warehouses, offices, a church, and residential quarters for company representatives. By the late thirteenth century Hanseatic merchants had developed an important business technique, the business register. Merchants publicly recorded their debts and contracts and received a league guarantee for them.
The dramatic increase in trade ran into two serious difficulties in medieval Europe. One was the problem of money. Despite investment in mining operations to increase the production of metals, the amount of gold, silver, and copper available for coins was simply not adequate for the increased flow of commerce. Merchants developed paper letters of exchange, in which coins or goods in one location were exchanged for a sealed letter (much like a modern deposit statement), which could be used in place of metal coinage elsewhere. This made the long, slow, and very dangerous shipment of coins unnecessary. Begun in the late twelfth century, the bill of exchange was the normal method of making commercial payments by the early fourteenth century among the cities of western Europe, and it proved to be a decisive factor in the later development of credit and commerce in northern Europe.
I usury Lending money at interest.
The second problem was a moral and theological one. Church doctrine frowned on lending money at interest, termed usury (YOO-zhuh-ree). This restriction on Chris tians is one reason why Jews were frequently the moneylenders in early medieval society; it was one of the few occupations not forbidden them by Christian authorities. As money lending became more important to commercial ventures, the church relaxed its position. It declared that some interest was legitimate as a payment for the risk the investor was taking, and that only interest above a certain level would be considered usury. (This definition of usury has continued; modern governments generally set limits on the rate legitimate businesses may charge for loaning money.) The church itself then got into the moneylending business, opening pawnshops in cities and declaring that the shops were benefiting the poor by charging a lower rate of interest than that available from secular moneylenders. In rural areas, Cistercian monasteries loaned money at interest.
The stigma attached to lending money was in many ways attached to all the activities of a medieval merchant. Medieval people were uneasy about a person making a profit merely from the investment of money rather than labor, skill, and time. Merchants themselves shared these ideas to some degree, so they gave generous donations to the church and to charities. They also took pains not to flaunt their wealth through flashy dress and homes. By the end of the Middle Ages, society had begun to accept the role of the merchant.
Commercial revolution The transformation of the European economy as a result of changes in business procedures and growth in trade.
The Commercial Revolution
Mercantile capitalism Capitalism primarily involving trade rather than production.
Changes in business procedures, combined with the growth in trade, led to a transformation of the European economy, often called the commercial revolution by historians, who see it as the beginning of the modern capitalist economy. Though you may be most familiar with using revolution to describe a violent political rebellion such as the American Revolution or the French Revolution, the word is also used more broadly to describe economic and intellectual changes such as the Industrial Revolution and the scientific revolution. These do not necessarily involve violence and may last much longer than political revolutions. What makes them revolutions is the extent of their effects on society. In calling this transformation the "commercial revolution,” historians point not only to an increase in the sheer volume of trade and in the complexity and sophistication of business procedures, but also to the new attitude toward business and making money. Some even detect a "capitalist spirit” in which making a profit is regarded as a good thing in itself, regardless of the uses to which that profit is put.
Part of this capitalist spirit was a new attitude toward time. Country people needed only approximate times —dawn, noon, sunset—for their work. Monasteries needed much more precise times to call monks together for the recitation of the Divine Office. In the early Middle Ages monks used a combination of hourglasses, sundials, and water-clocks to determine the time, and then rang bells by hand. About 1280 new types of mechanical mechanisms seem to have been devised in which weights replaced falling water and bells were rung automatically. Records begin to use the word clock (from the Latin word for bell) for these machines, which sometimes figured the movement of astronomical bodies as well as the hours. The merchants who ran city councils quickly saw clocks as both useful and a symbol of their prosperity. Beautiful and elaborate mechanical clocks, usually installed on the cathedral or town church, were in general use in Italy by the 1320s, in Germany by the 1330s, in Engl and by the 1370s, and in France by the 1380s. Buying and selling goods had initiated city people into the practice of quantification, and clocks contributed to the development of a mentality that conceived of the universe in quantitative terms.
Capitalism in the Middle Ages primarily involved trade rather than production, so it is termed mercantile capitalism. In a few places, such as Florence, cloth production was organized along capitalist lines, with a cloth merchant owning the raw materials, the finished product, and sometimes the tools, and with workers paid simply for their labor. Most production in the Middle Ages was carried out by craft guilds or by people working on their own, however.
Slowly falling weights provide the force that pushes the hand on the face of this large, twenty-four-hour clock. Accurate time was important to monks such as the one seated here, although this clock appears to be in a public place, not a monastery, a reflection of the increasing importance of time-keeping to many social groups. (Bibliotheque royale Albert ler, Brussels)
The commercial revolution created a great deal of new wealth, which did not escape the attention of kings and other rulers. Wealth could be taxed, and through taxation kings could create strong and centralized states. In the years to come, alliances with the middle classes enabled kings to defeat feudal powers and aristocratic interests and to build the states that came to be called "modern.” The commercial revolution also provided the opportunity for thousands of serfs to improve their social position. The slow but steady transformation of European society from almost completely rural and isolated to relatively more sophisticated constituted the greatest effect of the commercial revolution that began in the eleventh century.
Even so, merchants and business people did not run medieval communities other than in central and northern Italy and in the county of Flanders. Most towns remained small, and urban residents were never more than 10 percent of the population. The castle, the manorial village, and the monastery dominated the landscape. The feudal nobility and churchmen determined the preponderant social attitudes, values, and patterns of thought and behavior. The commercial changes of the eleventh through thirteenth centuries did, however, lay the economic foundations for the development of urban life and culture.
Merchant guilds were organized groups of merchants within a town, controlling the economic life and working to gain political independence for their town in order to have their own court, mayor, officials, and taxes.
Craft guilds developed in each trade, allowing members to set quality standards, open shops, offer apprenticeships, and provide care and protection to members and their families.
Towns built up with little planning, resulting in crowded, unsanitary conditions where all members of society intermingled, while laws regulated what clothes you could wear, depending on your social class, profession, or ethnic group.
Wealthy households hired servants, and poor people were paid by the day for their labor, but since wages were low, they sometimes also engaged in theft, begging, and prostitution.
Trade offered the possibility of great wealth, but it was risky, making merchants frequently vulnerable to robbers and pirates.
The largest trade centers were in Venice and the Flemish towns, where merchants specialized and formed more formalized partnerships called companies.
Increased trade spurred a commercial revolution and the beginnings of modern capitalism as merchants developed new business procedures, paper letters of exchange to substitute for metal coins, and a new attitude toward wealth and time.
I
How did universities evolve, and what needs of medieval society did they serve?
Just as the first strong secular states emerged in the thirteenth century, so did the first universities. This was no coincidence. The new bureaucratic states and the church needed educated administrators, and universities were a response to this need. The word university derives from the Latin universitas (oo-nee-VERS-ee-tas), meaning "corporation” or "guild.” Medieval universities were educational guilds that produced educated and trained individuals, and they continue to influence institutionalized learning in the Western world.
In the early Middle Ages, outside of the aristocratic Origins Court or the monastery, anyone who received an edu
Cation got it from a priest. Priests taught the rudiments of reading and writing as well as the Latin words of the Mass. Few boys acquired elementary literacy, however, and peasant girls did not obtain even that. The peasant father who wished to send his son to school had to secure the permission of his lord. Because the lord stood to lose the services of educated peasants, he limited the number of serfs sent to school.
Since the time of the Carolingian Empire, monasteries and cathedral schools had offered most of the available formal instruction, which focused on the Scriptures and the writings of the church fathers. Monasteries were unwilling to accept
MAP 11.2 Intellectual Centers of Medieval Europe
Universities provided more sophisticated instruction than did monastery and cathedral schools. What other factors distinguished the three kinds of intellectual centers?
Large numbers of noisy lay students. In contrast, schools attached to cathedrals and run by the bishop and his clergy were frequently situated in bustling cities, and in the eleventh century in Italian cities like Bologna (boe-LOAN-yuh), wealthy businessmen had established municipal schools. In the course of the twelfth century, cathedral schools in France and municipal schools in Italy developed into educational institutions that attracted students from a wide area (see Map 11.2). These schools were called studium generate ("general center of study”) or universitas magistrorum et scholarium ("universal society of teachers and students”), the origin of the English word university. The first European universities appeared in Italy in Bologna and Salerno.
The growth of the University of Bologna coincided with a revival of interest in Roman law during the investiture controversy. The study of Roman law as embodied in the Justinian Code had never completely died out in the West, but in the late eleventh century a complete manuscript of the Code was discovered in a library in Pisa. This discovery led scholars in nearby Bologna, beginning with Irnerius (ca. 1055-ca. 1130) (er-NEHR-ee-us), to study and teach Roman law intently again. His fame attracted students from all over Europe. Irnerius not only explained the Roman law of the Justinian Code, but he also applied it to difficult practical situations.
At Salerno in southern Italy interest in medicine had persisted for centuries. Medical practitioners — mostly men, but apparently also a few women — received training first through apprenticeship and then in an organized medical school. Individuals associated with Salerno, such as Constantine the African (fl. 1065-1085)—who was a convert from Islam and later a Benedictine monk—began to translate medical works out of Arabic. These translations included writings by the ancient Greek physicians and Muslim medical writers. Students of medicine poured into Salerno and soon attracted royal attention. In 1140, when King Roger II of Sicily took the practice of medicine under royal control, his ordinance stated:
Who, from now on, wishes to practice medicine, has to present himself before our officials and examiners, in order to pass their judgment. Should he be bold enough to disregard this, he will be punished by imprisonment and confiscation of his entire property. In this way we are taking care that our subjects are not endangered by the inexperience of the physicians.2
In the first decades of the twelfth century, students converged on Paris. They crowded into the cathedral school of Notre Dame (noh-truh DAHM) and spilled over into the area later called the "Latin Quarter”—whose name reflects either the Italian origin of many of the students attracted to Paris by the surge of interest in the classics, logic, and theology, or the Latin language spoken in the area. The cathedral school’s international reputation drew scholars from all over Europe to Paris.
One of the young men drawn to Paris was Peter Abe-Abelard and Heloise Lard (AB-uh-lahrd) (1079-1142), the son of a minor Breton knight. He was fascinated by logic, which he believed could be used to solve most problems. He had a brilliant mind and, though orthodox in his philosophical teaching, appeared to challenge ecclesiastical authorities. His book Sic et Non (seek et nohn) (Yes and No) was a list of apparently contradictory propositions drawn from the Bible and the writings of the church fathers. One such proposition, for example, stated that sin is pleasing to God and is not pleasing to God. Abelard used a method of systematic doubting in his writing and teaching. As he put it in the preface to Sic et Non, "By doubting we come to questioning, and by questioning we perceive the truth.” While other scholars merely asserted theological principles, Abelard discussed and analyzed them. Through reasoning he even tried to describe the attributes of the three persons of the Trinity, the central mystery of the Christian faith. Abelard was severely censured by a church council, but his cleverness, boldness, and imagination made him a highly popular figure among students.
In a supposedly autobiographical statement, A History of My Calamities, Abelard described his academic career and his private life. He was hired by one of the
This beautifully carved marble sculpture, with the fluid drapery characteristic of late Gothic style, suggests the students' intellectual intensity. Medieval students often varied widely in age; here some have moustaches and some look like adolescents. (Museo Civico, Boiogna/Scaia/Art Resource, NY)
Cathedral priests, Fulbert, to tutor his clever niece Heloise. The relationship between teacher and pupil passed beyond the intellectual. She became pregnant, and Fulbert pressured the couple to marry. Abelard insisted that the union be kept secret for the sake of his career, an arrangement Heloise much resented. Distrusting Abelard, Fulbert hired men to castrate him. Wounded in spirit as well as body, Abelard persuaded Heloise to enter a convent. He entered a monastery, and their baby, baptized Astrolabe (AS-truh-layb) for a recent Muslim navigational invention, was adopted by her family. The lovers were later buried together in a cemetery in Paris. Some scholars consider A History of My Calamities the most famous autobiography of the twelfth century, a fine example of the new self-awareness of the period’s rebirth of learning. Other scholars believe the entire History a forgery, the source of a romantic legend with no basis in historical fact.3
Instruction and Curriculum
The influx of students eager for learning, together with dedicated and imaginative teachers, created the atmos phere in which universities grew. In northern Europe—at Paris and later at Oxford and Cambridge in England—associations or guilds of professors organized universities. They established the curriculum, set the length of time for study, and determined the form and content of examina-
Tions. By the end of the fifteenth century there were at least eighty universities in Europe. Some universities also offered younger students training in the liberal arts that could serve as a foundation for more specialized study in all areas.
Universities were all-male communities. The few women trained at Salerno during its early years of development were the last women in Europe to receive formal university training in any subject until the nineteenth century, although a handful of professor’s daughters in one or two places were reputed to have listened to lectures from behind a curtain. (Most European universities did not admit or grant degrees to women until after World War I.) Though university classes were not especially expensive, the many years that university required meant that the sons of peasants or artisans could rarely attend, unless they could find wealthy patrons who would pay their expenses while they studied. Most students were the sons of urban merchants or lower-level nobles, especially the younger sons who would not inherit family lands.
Scholastics University professors who developed a method of thinking, reasoning, and writing in which questions were raised and authorities cited on both sides of the question.
University faculties grouped themselves according to academic disciplines— law, medicine, arts, and theology. The professors (a term first used in the fourteenth century) were known as "schoolmen” or Scholastics. They developed a method of thinking, reasoning, and writing in which questions were raised and authorities cited on both sides of the question. The goal of the Scholastic method was to arrive at definitive answers and to provide a rational explanation for what was believed on faith. Schoolmen held that reason and faith constituted two harmonious realms whose truths complemented each other.
The Scholastic approach rested on the recovery of classical philosophical texts. Ancient Greek and Arabic texts had entered Europe in the early twelfth century. Knowledge of Aristotle and other Greek philosophers came to Paris and Oxford by way of Islamic intellectual centers at Baghdad, Cordoba, and Toledo. These texts, which formed the basis of Western philosophical and theological speculation, were not the only Islamic gifts. The major contribution of Arabic culture to the new currents of Western thought rested in the stimulus Arabic philosophers and commentators gave to Europeans’ reflection on the Greek texts. Aristotle had stressed the importance of the direct observation of nature, as well as the principles that theory must follow fact and that knowledge of a thing requires an explanation of its causes. The schoolmen reinterpreted Aristotelian texts in a Christian sense. But in their exploration of the natural world, they did not precisely follow Aristotle’s axioms. Medieval scientists argued from authority, such as the Bible, the Justinian Code, or an ancient scientific treatise, rather than from direct observation and experimentation as modern scientists do. Thus the conclusions of medieval scientists were often wrong. Nevertheless, natural science gradually emerged as a discipline distinct from philosophy, and Scholastics laid the foundations for later scientific work.
At all universities the standard method of teaching was the lecture—that is, a reading. The syllabus consisted of a core of ancient texts. The professor read a passage from the Bible, the Justinian Code, or one of Aristotle’s treatises. He then explained and interpreted the passage; his interpretation was called a gloss. Texts and glosses were sometimes collected and reproduced as textbooks. For example, the Italian Peter Lombard (d. 1160), a professor at Paris, wrote what became the standard textbook in theology, Sententiae (sen-TEN-shee-uh) (The Sentences), a compilation of basic theological principles.
Examinations were given after three, four, or five years of study, when the student applied for a degree. The professors determined the amount of material students had to know for each degree, and students frequently insisted that the professors specify precisely what that material was. Examinations were oral and very difficult. If the candidate passed, he was awarded a license to teach, which was
The earliest form of academic degree. Initially these licenses granted the title of master or doctor, still in use today and both derived from Latin words meaning "teach.” Bachelor’s degrees came later. Most students, however, did not become teachers. They staffed the expanding diocesan, royal, and papal administrations.
Jewish scholars as well as Christian ones produced elaborate commentaries on law and religious tradition. Medieval universities were closed to Jews, but in some cities in the eleventh century special rabbinic academies opened that concentrated particularly on the study of the Talmud, a compilation of legal arguments, proverbs, sayings, and folklore that had been produced in the fifth century in Babylon (present-day Iraq). The Talmud was written in Aramaic, so that simply learning to read it required years of study, and medieval scholars began to produce commentaries on the Talmud to help facilitate this. The most famous of these was that of Rabbi Solomon bar Isaac, known as Rashi (1040-1105), who lived in Troyes, a city in France. Men seeking to become rabbis—highly respected figures within the Jewish community with authority over economic and social as well as religious matters—spent long periods of time studying the Talmud, which served as the basis for their legal decisions in all areas of life.
Thomas Aquinas And the Teaching of Theology
SUmma Reference books created by Scholastics on the topics of law, philosophy, vegetation, animal life, and theology.
Section Review
Universities became the primary centers of advanced learning, providing educated administrators for church and state.
Peter Abelard was a brilliant scholar whose writings on logic fascinated students though they displeased the church; his autobiography describing his love affair with equally brilliant Heloise was widely read.
Universities were all-male and grouped by disciplines such as law, medicine, the arts, and theology, each having their own distinct curriculum; upon graduation, students earned a license to teach. The scholastic method of teaching posed questions and then discussed both sides of the issue to provide a rational answer, combining lectures with readings, many of which became
Textbooks.
Saint Thomas Aquinas was a professor whose works dealt with theological questions depicting the difference between faith and reason.
Thirteenth-century Scholastics devoted an enormous amount of time to collecting and organizing knowledge on all topics. These collections were published as summa (SOOM-uh), or reference books. There were summa on law, philosophy, vegetation, animal life, and theology. Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), a professor at Paris, produced the most famous collection, the Summa Theologica, which deals with a vast number of theological questions.
Aquinas drew an important distinction between faith and reason. He maintained that, although reason can demonstrate many basic Christ ian principles such as the existence of God, other fundamental teachings such as the Trinity and original sin cannot be proved by logic. That reason cannot establish them does not, however, mean they are contrary to reason. Rather, people understand such doctrines through revelation embodied in Scripture. Scripture cannot contradict reason, nor reason Scripture:
The light of faith that is freely infused into us does not destroy the light of natural knowledge [reason] implanted in us naturally. For although the natural light of the human mind is insufficient to show us these things made manifest by faith, it is nevertheless impossible that these things which the divine principle gives us by faith are contrary to these implanted in us by nature [reason]. Indeed, were that the case, one or the other would have to be false, and, since both are given to us by God, God would have to be the author of untruth, which is impossible. . . . [I]t is impossible that those things which are of philosophy can be contrary to those things which are of faith.4
Aquinas also investigated the branch of philosophy called epistemology (ee-pis-tuh-MOL-uh-jee), which is concerned with how a person knows something. Aquinas stated that one knows, first, through sensory perception of the physical world—seeing, hearing, touching, and so on. He maintained that there can be nothing in the mind that is not first in the senses. Second, knowledge comes through reason, the mind exercising its natural abilities. Aquinas stressed the power of human reason to know, even to know God. His five proofs for God’s existence exemplify the Scholastic method of knowing. His work later became the fundamental text of Roman Catholic doctrine.
How did the arts and architecture express the ideals, attitudes, and interests of medieval people?
The High Middle Ages saw the creation of new types of literature, architecture, and music. Technological advances in such areas as papermaking and stone masonry made innovations possible, but so did the growing wealth and sophistication of patrons. Artists and artisans flourished in the more secure environment of the High Middle Ages, producing works that celebrated the glories of love, war, and God.
Vernacular Literature and Entertainment
Dialect A regional variety of a language, with differences in vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation.
Vernacular literature Writings in the
Author's local dialect, that is, in the everyday language of the region.
Troubadours Poets who wrote and sang lyric verses celebrating love, desire, beauty, and gallantry.
Latin was the language used in university education, scholarly writing, and works of literature; in short, it was the language of high culture. In contrast to Roman times, however, by the High Middle Ages no one spoke Latin as his or her original mother tongue. The barbarian invasions, the mixture of peoples, and evolution over time had resulted in a variety of local dialects that blended words and linguistic forms in various ways. These dialects were specific to one region, and as kings increased the size of their holdings they often ruled people who spoke many different dialects. In the early Middle Ages almost all written works continued to be in Latin, but in the High Middle Ages some authors began to write in their local dialect, that is, in the everyday language of their region, which linguistic historians call the vernacular. This new vernacular literature gradually transformed some local dialects into literary languages, such as French, German, Italian, and English, while other dialects remained (and remain to this day) simply means of oral communication. Most people in the High Middle Ages could no more read vernacular literature than they could read Latin, however, so oral transmission continued to be the most important way information was conveyed and traditions passed down.
By the thirteenth century, however, techniques of making paper from old linen cloth and rags began to spread from Spain, where they had been developed by the Arabs, providing a much cheaper material on which to write. People started to write down things that were more mundane and less serious-personal letters, lists, poems, songs, recipes, rules, instructions-in various vernacular dialects, using spellings that were often personal and idiosyncratic. The writings included fables, legends, stories, and myths that had circulated orally for generations, and slowly a body of written vernacular literature developed. Stories and songs in the vernacular were performed and composed at the courts of nobles and rulers. In Germany and most of northern Europe, they favored stories and songs recounting the great deeds of warrior heroes, such as the knight Roland who fought against the Muslims and Hildebrand who fought the Huns. These epics, known as chansons degeste (SHAN-suhn duh jest) ("songs of great deeds”), celebrate violence, slaughter, revenge, and physical power. In southern Europe, especially in the area of southern France known as Provence, poets who called themselves troubadours (TROO-bah-door) wrote and sang lyric verses celebrating love, desire, beauty, and gallantry. (See the feature "Listening to the Past: Courtly Love” on pages 275276.) A troubadour was a poet who wrote lyric verse in Provengal (proh-vuhn-SAHL), the regional spoken language of southern France, and sang it at one of the noble courts. Troubadours included a few women, called trobairitz, most of whose exact identities are not known.
Eleanor of Aquitaine may have taken troubadour poetry from France to England when she married Henry II. Since the songs of the troubadours were widely imitated in Italy, England, and Germany, they spurred the development of vernacular literature there as well. The romantic motifs of the troubadours also influenced the northern French trouveres (troo-VAIR), who wrote adventure-romances in the form of epic poems in a language we call Old French, the ancestor of modern French. At the court of his patron, Marie of Champagne, Chretien de Troyes (krey-TYEN duh trwah) (ca. 1135-ca. 1190) used the legends of the fifth-century British king Arthur (see page 154) as the basis for innovative tales of battle and forbidden love. His most popular story is that of the noble Lancelot, whose love for Guinevere, the wife of King Arthur, his lord, became physical as well as spiritual. Most of the troubadours and trouveres came from and wrote for the aristocratic classes, and their poetry suggests the interests and values of noble culture. Their influence eventually extended to all social groups, however, for people who could not read heard the poems and stories from people who could, so that what had originally come from oral culture was recycled back into it every generation.
Drama, derived from the church’s liturgy, emerged as a distinct art form during the High Middle Ages. Plays based on biblical themes and on the lives of the saints were performed in the towns. Mystery plays were financed and performed by "misteries,” members of the craft guilds, and miracle plays were acted by amateurs or professional actors, not guild members.. By combining comical farce based on ordinary life with serious religious scenes, plays gave ordinary people an opportunity to identify with religious figures and think about the mysteries of their faith.
Games and sports were common forms of entertainment and relaxation. There were games akin to modern football, rugby, and soccer in which balls were kicked and thrown, wrestling matches, and dog fights. People played card and board games of all types, gambling on these and on games with dice. Dancing was part of religious and family celebrations.
Churches and Cathedrals
Cathedral The church of a bishop and the administrative headquarters
Of a diocese.
Romanesque An architectural style, with rounded arches and small windows.
Gothic An architectural style typified by pointed arches and large, stained glass windows.
The visual arts, especially architecture, flourished as expressions of religious ideas as well. Tens of thousands of churches, chapels, abbeys, and, most spectacularly, cathedrals were built in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. (A cathedral is the church of a bishop and the administrative headquarters of a diocese, a church district headed by a bishop. The word comes from the Greek word kathedra, meaning seat, because the bishop’s throne, a symbol of the office, is located in the cathedral.)
Most of the churches in the early Middle Ages had been built primarily of wood, which meant they were very susceptible to fire. They were often small, with a flat roof, in a rectangular or slightly cross-shaped form called a basilica (buh-SIL-eh-kuh), based on earlier Roman public buildings. With the end of the Viking and Magyar invasions and the increasing political stability of the eleventh century, bishops and abbots supported the construction of larger and more fire-re sis tant churches made almost completely out of stone. These were based on the basilican style, but features were added that made the cross shape more pronounced. As the size of the church grew horizontally, it also grew vertically. Builders adapted Roman-style rounded barrel vaults made of stone for the ceiling; this use of Roman forms led this style to be labeled Romanesque.
The next architectural style was Gothic, so named by a later scholar who incorrectly attributed the style to Gothic tribes. In Gothic churches the solid stone barrel-vaulted roof was replaced by a roof made of stone ribs with plaster in be-
Tween. This made the ceiling much lighter, so that the side pillars and walls did not need to carry so much weight. Solid walls could be replaced by windows, which let in great amounts of light. (See the feature "Images in Society: From Romanesque to Gothic.”)
Master mason Man in charge of the design and construction of cathedrals and other major buildings.
Begun in the Ile-de-France, Gothic architecture spread throughout France with the expansion of royal power. From France the new style spread to England, Germany, Italy, Spain, and eastern Europe. In those countries, the Gothic style competed with strong indigenous architectural traditions and thus underwent transformations that changed it to fit local usage. French master masons (MAY-sens) were soon invited to design and supervise the construction of churches in other parts of Europe.
Extraordinary amounts of money were needed to build these houses of worship. Consider, for example, the expense and labor involved in quarrying and transporting the stone alone. More stone was quarried for churches in medieval France than had been mined in ancient Egypt, where the Great Pyramid alone consumed 40.5 million cubic feet of stone.
Money was not the only need. A great number of artisans had to be assembled: quarrymen, sculptors, stonecutters, masons, mortar makers, carpenters, blacksmiths, glassmakers, roofers. Each master craftsman had apprentices, and unskilled laborers had to be recruited for the heavy work. The construction of a large cathedral was rarely completed in a lifetime; many were never finished at all. Because generation after generation added to the building, many Gothic churches show the architectural influences of two or even three centuries. (These variations in style were one of the aspects of Gothic buildings hated by later Renaissance architects, who regarded unity of style as essential in an attractive building.)
Bishops and abbots sketched out what they wanted and set general guidelines, but they left practical needs and aesthetic considerations to the master mason. He held overall responsibility for supervision of the project. (Medieval chroniclers applied the term architect to the abbots and bishops who commissioned the projects or the lay patrons who financed them, not to the draftsmen who designed them.) Master masons were paid higher wages than other masons; their contracts usually ran for several years, and great care was taken in their selection. Being neither gentlemen, clerics, nor laborers, master masons fit uneasily into the social hierarchy.
Since cathedrals were symbols of civic pride, towns competed to build the largest and most splendid church. In northern France in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, cathedrals grew progressively taller. In 1163 the citizens of Paris began Notre Dame Cathedral, planning it to reach the height of 114 feet. When reconstruction on Chartres Cathedral was begun in 1194, it was to be 119 feet. Many cathedrals well over 100 feet tall were built as each bishop and town sought to outdo the neighbors. Medieval people built cathedrals to glorify God—and if mortals were impressed, all the better.
World History
