In 800 CE, for example, Pope Leo III named the Frankish king Charlemagne the “Emperor of the Romans”–the first since that empire’s fall more than 300 years before. Kings, queens and other leaders derived much of their power from their alliances with and protection of the Church. Instead, the Catholic Church became the most powerful institution of the medieval period. The Catholic Church in the Middle AgesĪfter the fall of Rome, no single state or government united the people who lived on the European continent. However, today’s scholars note that the era was as complex and vibrant as any other. This way of thinking about the era in the “middle” of the fall of Rome and the rise of the Renaissance prevailed until relatively recently. It was especially deadly in cities, where it was impossible to prevent the transmission of the disease from one person to another. The people of the Middle Ages had squandered the advancements of their predecessors, this argument went, and mired themselves instead in what 18th-century English historian Edward Gibbon called “barbarism and religion.”ĭid you know? Between 13, a mysterious disease known as the "Black Death" (the bubonic plague) killed some 20 million people in Europe-30 percent of the continent’s population. Accordingly, they dismissed the period after the fall of Rome as a “Middle” or even “Dark” age in which no scientific accomplishments had been made, no great art produced, no great leaders born. Starting around the 14th century, European thinkers, writers and artists began to look back and celebrate the art and culture of ancient Greece and Rome. And some people became monks or nuns, in the service of the Church, instead of being peasants.The phrase “Middle Ages” tells us more about the Renaissance that followed it than it does about the era itself. Then over the bishop was the archbishop, and then the cardinal, and over all of those the Pope in Rome. Their landlord would be a bishop instead of a count. The Church owned about a third of the land in Europe during the Middle Ages. Some peasants also rented land from the Catholic Church. But a lot depended on the king being strong enough to make them! Sometimes if the duke was strong enough, he just refused to come. Even the dukes and earls were supposed to fight for the king or queen and send him or her presents. In exchange, again, the duke was supposed to protect the count. And the count had to send valuable presents to the duke as well, every year. If there was a war, the count had to go to the war with his peasants, to fight for the duke. Each count or countess, for instance, owed obligations to a duke (or duchess) or an earl. Medieval people: a monk, a knight, and a peasant Feudal governmentĮach of these powerful people, in turn, owed obligations to a more powerful person. Rich people were supposed to give people food when there was a drought, and enforce the law (which was mainly whatever he or she said it was). In exchange, the powerful person was supposed to protect the peasants from invasions and from the king. What is spinning?Įven peasants who owned their own land often had some of these obligations to the nearest powerful person, as taxes. Often peasants had to give their landlord or landlady a certain number of chickens or a certain amount of honey or spun wool or firewood every year. And they had to work a certain number of days every year for their landlady. The peasants had to go to war with their landlord if there was a war. They owed their landlord or landlady rent, and also a lot of other obligations. Most peasants rented land from a richer man or woman who owned a big estate. A lot of enslaved people had to go work in West Asia or North Africa. Medieval European traders made a lot of money enslaving prisoners and selling them into slavery. Many teenagers lived with the people they worked for. Some people were still slaves, as in the Roman period. Or their parents apprenticed them to learn a skill like weaving or blacksmithing. Sometimes they worked for richer families, as servants, as Chaucer did, for instance. Sometimes they worked for their neighbors, helping to plow the fields or take care of babies or animals. Teenagers, around the age of twelve or thirteen, often went out to work for somebody else. A Roman shepherd, probably a slave (Istanbul, 500s AD)
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