I basics of historical knowledge Why and how to study history. What are the Middle Ages? What is the Late Middle Ages Middle Ages 18
§ 18. Medieval city
Medieval city phenomenon.
In the Middle Ages, the vast majority of the population lived in the countryside. There were few townspeople, their role in society far exceeded their numbers. During the Great Migration of Nations, many cities were destroyed. In the few remaining fortress cities lived kings, dukes, bishops with close associates and servants. The townspeople were engaged in agriculture in the vicinity of the city, and sometimes """ inside it.
Around the 10th century big changes are taking place. In cities, crafts and trade become the main occupation of the inhabitants. Cities preserved from Roman times are growing rapidly. Appear
new cities.
By the XIV century. there were so many cities that from almost anywhere in Europe it was possible to drive to the nearest city within one day. The townspeople by that time differed from the peasants not only in their occupations. They had special rights and duties, wore special clothes, and so on. The class of workers was divided into two parts - peasants and townspeople.
emergencecitiesHowtrade and craft centers.
The formation of cities as centers of crafts and trade was caused by the progressive development of society. As the population grew, so did its needs. So, the feudal lords were increasingly in need of things that merchants brought from Byzantium and eastern countries.
The first cities of the new type developed as settlements of merchants. who traded With these distant countries. In Italy, in the south of France in Spain since the end of the 9th century. some Roman cities were revived, new ones were built. The cities of Amalfi became especially large. Pisa, Genoa, Marseille, Barcelona, Venice. Some merchants from these cities sailed on ships in the Mediterranean, others transported the goods they delivered to all corners of Western Europe. There were places of exchange of goods - trade fairs(annual markets). I especially had them in the county of Champagne in France.
Later, in the 12th-13th centuries, trading cities such as Hamburg, Bremen, Lübeck, Danzig and others also appeared in the north of Europe. Here, merchants transported goods across the North and Baltic Seas. Their ships often fell prey to the elements, and even more often to pirates. On land, in addition to bad roads, merchants had to deal with robbers, often played by knights. Therefore, trading cities united to protect sea and land caravans. The union of cities in Northern Europe was called the Hansa. Not only individual feudal lords, but also the rulers of entire states were forced to reckon with the Hansa.
There were merchants, but in all cities, but in most of them the main occupation of the population of the herd was not trade, but craft. Initially, artisans lived in the villages and castles of the feudal lords. However, it is difficult to live by handicraft in rural areas. Here, few people bought handicrafts, because subsistence farming dominated. Therefore, artisans sought to move to places where they could sell their products. These were areas of fairs, crossroads of trade routes, river crossings, etc. In such places there was usually a castle of a feudal lord or a monastery. Craftsmen built dwellings around the castle and the monastery, later such graying turned into cities.
The feudal lords were also interested in these settlements. After all, they could get a big quitrent. Seniors sometimes brought artisans from their feud to one place, and even lured them from their neighbors. However, most of the inhabitants, coming to the city on their own. Often serf artisans and peasants fled from their lords to the cities.
The earliest cities - centers of crafts - arose in the county of Flanders (modern Belgium). In such of them as Bruges, Ghent, Ypres, woolen fabrics were made. In these places, breeds of sheep with thick wool were bred and convenient looms were created.
From the 11th century cities grew especially rapidly. A large city in the Middle Ages was considered a city with a population of 5-10 thousand inhabitants. The largest cities in Europe were Paris, London, Florence, Milan, Venice, Seville, Cordoba.
Cities and seniors.
The weight of the city arose on the land of the feudal lords. Many townspeople were in personal dependence on the lord. The feudal lords, with the help of servants, ruled the cities. Settlers from the villages brought to the cities the habit of living in the community. Very soon, the townspeople began to gather together to discuss issues of city government, they elected the head of the city (mayor or burgomaster), and gathered militia to protect themselves from enemies.
People of the same profession usually settled together, attended the same church, and communicated closely with each other. They created their unions - craft workshops And trade guilds. The guilds monitored the quality of handicrafts, established the order of work in the workshops, guarded the property of their members, fought with competitors among non-price artisans, peasants, etc. Guilds and guilds, in order to protect their interests, sought to participate in the management of the city. They exhibited their detachments in the city militia.
As the wealth of the townspeople grew, the feudal lords increased the exactions from them. Urban communities - communes over time, they began to resist such actions of the feudal lords. Some seniors behind a solid ransom expanded the rights of cities. However, in the overwhelming majority of cases, a stubborn struggle unfolded between the feudal lords and the communes. It sometimes lasted for many decades and was accompanied by hostilities.
The outcome of the struggle depended on the balance of forces of the parties. The rich cities of Italy not only freed themselves from the power of the feudal lords, but also took away all their lands from them. Their castles were destroyed, and the lords were forcibly relocated to the cities, where they began to serve the communes. The surrounding peasants became dependent on the cities. Many cities (Florence, Genoa, Venice, Milan) became the centers of small state-republics.
In other countries, the success of cities was not so impressive. However, almost everywhere the townspeople freed themselves from the power of the feudal lords and became free. Moreover, any serf who fled to the city was made free if the lord could not find him there and return him within one year and one day. “City air makes a person free,” said a medieval saying. A number of cities have achieved full self-government.
Some small towns remained under the rule of seniors. A number of large cities, in which kings and other strong rulers lived, failed to become independent. The inhabitants of Paris and London received freedom and many rights, but along with city councils, these cities were also ruled by royal
officials.
Shop organizations.
The main body of the workshop management was the general meeting of all members of the workshop, which was attended only by independent members of the workshop - masters. The craftsmen were the owners of the tools of labor, the handicraft workshop.
As demand increased, it became difficult for the craftsman to work alone. So there were students, Then apprentices. The student took an oath not to leave the master until the end of the training: the master was obliged to teach him honestly his craft and fully support him. But the position of the students was, as a rule, not easy: they were overwhelmed with overwork, kept starving, beaten for the slightest offense.
Gradually, the student became an assistant to the master - an apprentice. His position improved, but he remained a part-time worker. To become a master, an apprentice had to fulfill two conditions: after learning to wander to improve the craft, and then pass the exam, which consisted in making an exemplary work (masterpiece).
At the end of the Middle Ages, workshops become in many ways a brake on the development of crafts. Masters made it difficult for apprentices to join the guild. There were benefits for the sons of masters.
Contradictions within urban communities.
In the struggle against the lords, all the townspeople were united. However, the leading position in the cities was occupied by large merchants, owners of urban land and houses (patriciate). All of them were often relatives and firmly held the city administration in their hands. In many cities, only such people could participate in the elections of the mayor and members of the city council. In other cities, one vote of a rich man was equal to several votes of ordinary citizens.
When distributing taxes, when recruiting into the militia, in the courts, the patriciate acted in his own interests. This situation aroused the resistance of the rest of the inhabitants. Particularly dissatisfied were the craft workshops, which brought the city the greatest income. In a number of cities the guilds rebelled against the patriciate. Sometimes the rebels overthrew the old rulers and established more just laws, chose rulers from their midst.
Significance of medieval cities.
The townspeople lived much better than most peasants. They were free people, fully owned their property, had the right to fight with weapons in their hands in the ranks of the militia, they could only be punished by a court decision. Such orders contributed to the successful development of cities and medieval society as a whole. Cities have become centers of technological progress and culture. In a number of countries, the townspeople became allies of the kings in their struggle for centralization. Thanks to the activities of the townspeople, the commodity-money relations, in which feudal lords and peasants are involved. The growth of commodity-money relations eventually led to the liberation of the peasants from personal dependence on the feudal lords.
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Middle Ages 1. How is the periodization of the history of the Middle Ages presented?
The Middle Ages, or the Middle Ages, is one of the most significant stages of human history. For the first time, the term "Middle Ages" was used by Italian humanists to refer to the period between classical antiquity and their time. In Russian historiography, the lower boundary of the Middle Ages is traditionally considered to be the 5th century. n. e. - the fall of the Western Roman Empire, and the upper one - in the 17th century, when a bourgeois revolution took place in England.
The period of the Middle Ages is extremely important for Western European civilization: the processes and events of that time still often determine the nature of the political, economic, cultural development of the countries of Western Europe. So, it was during this period that the religious community of Europe was formed, urban culture was taking shape, new political forms were emerging, the foundations of modern science and the education system were being laid, the ground was being prepared for the industrial revolution and the transition to an industrial society.
In the development of Western European medieval society, three stages are usually distinguished: the early Middle Ages, the classical Middle Ages, and the late Middle Ages.
The Early Middle Ages covers the period from 5th to 11th centuries In this period of time there were large-scale changes in the world. During this period, the slave-owning Western Roman Empire collapsed. New states are being formed on its territory by Germanic tribes. At the same time, there is a transition from paganism to Christianity under the auspices of the Roman Catholic Church. The new religious system became the basis of Western civilization and maintained its unity, despite the differences in the pace of development of individual countries and regions and their internal fragmentation.
In the early Middle Ages, the foundations of new production relations were laid - feudal relations, which were characterized by the dominance of large landed property, which was in the hands of the feudal lords and the presence of small individual farms of direct producers - peasants, whom the feudal lords endowed with the main means of production - land. The form of realization of the feudal property on land was feudal rent, which was levied from the peasants who rented the land in labor, in kind or in cash.
During the early Middle Ages, Western European peoples gradually mastered writing, laid the foundations of an original culture.
During the Classical Middle Ages (XI-XV centuries) the process of formation of feudal relations is completed, all the structures of feudal society reach their fullest development.
At this time, nation-states (England, France, Germany, etc.) begin to form and strengthen. The main estates were formed, estate-representative bodies appeared - parliaments.
The main branch of the economy continued to be agriculture, but during this period, cities were actively developing, which became the center of handicraft production and trade. The new relations undermined the foundations of feudalism, and capitalist relations gradually strengthened their possibilities in its depths.
In the era of the late Middle Ages (XVI-beginning of the XVII centuries) pace economic development European countries are increasing. This was largely due to the Great geographical discoveries, as a result of which colonial empires began to take shape, and from newly discovered lands to Europe - Old light- Treasures, gold and silver begin to flock. All this contributed to the growth of the monetary wealth of merchants and entrepreneurs and served as one of the sources of initial accumulation, which led to the formation of large private capital.
During the late Middle Ages, the unity of the Catholic Church was split by the Reformation. In Christianity, a new direction is emerging - Protestantism, which to the greatest extent contributed to the formation of bourgeois relations.
At the end of the Middle Ages, a pan-European culture began to take shape, based on the theory of humanism, a new culture called the Renaissance.
During the late Middle Ages, the most important idea of the West took shape: an active attitude to life, the desire to learn about the world around, the desire to transform it in the interests of man.
2. What did the political map of Europe look like in the early Middle Ages (end of the 5th-middle of the 11th century)?
A significant part of Europe in the 5th century. was part of a vast state - the Roman Empire, which by this period of time was in a state of deep decline. The Roman Empire found it increasingly difficult to maintain its strength and unity. The process of gradual economic, political and cultural isolation of the Roman provinces led in 395 to the division of the empire into Western and Eastern parts, which later received the name of Byzantium.
A particular danger to the existence of the vast Roman state was represented by the barbarian tribes that bordered it on the periphery. The Romans called barbarians tribes and peoples alien to Roman culture.
These tribes were at the stage of decomposition of the tribal system and the beginning of the formation of a class society.
The largest ethnic groups of the tribes in contact with Rome include the Celts, Germans, Slavs. The main areas of Celtic settlement were northern Italy, Gaul, Spain, Britain and Iceland. These tribes were conquered by Rome and constituted in its space the Gallo-Roman or, respectively, the Hispano-Roman people.
The Germanic tribes inhabited the territory bounded by the Rhine in the west and the Vistula in the south. At the end 1st century BC e. this territory was conquered by Rome, but not for long. After a series of clashes with the Germans, the Romans went on the defensive. The Rhine became the border between Rome and the territory of the Germanic tribes.
In 2nd–3rd centuries n. e. there were regroupings and movements of the Germanic tribes in Eastern and Central Europe, which led to an increase in the onslaught of the Germans on the borders of the Roman Empire. The Germans at that time were undergoing internal consolidation processes, large alliances were formed - Saxons, Franks, Visigoths and Ostrogoths, etc.
At the end IV in. began especially intensive movements of barbarian tribes and their invasion of the territory of the Roman Empire, usually called the Great Migration of Nations. The Roman Empire was not able to provide effective resistance to the conquerors. After being taken into 410 g. Rome, the Visigoths began the process of disintegration of the empire.
IN 418 g. on the territory of Roman Gaul, the first barbarian state arose - the Visigothic kingdom. In the second half of the 5th c. The Visigoths conquered all of Gaul, as well as most of the territory of Spain. The center of the Visigothic kingdom moved to Spain.
During the resettlement of barbarian tribes in the southern and southwestern direction, 13 kingdom-states were formed. On the territory of the former Roman Empire, the states formed the Franks, Burgundians, Ostrogoths, Labradors, etc. From the middle V in. began a massive invasion of barbarian tribes - the Angles, Saxons and Jutes into Britain, which was inhabited by the Celtic tribes of the Britons. The conquerors formed several barbarian Anglo-Saxon kingdoms on the territory of Britain.
The barbarian invasions were of the greatest importance for the history of Europe. Their result was the fall of the slave-owning Roman Empire in the West. On the territory of the newly formed states, the conditions necessary for the development of new social relations, for the transition to feudalism, were created.
The most durable was educated in V in. as a result of the conquest by the Germanic tribes - the Franks in Northern Gaul, the Frankish state. It was headed by the leader of the Franks Clovis from the Merovean family (hence the name of the Merovingian dynasty). From the end 7th century. The Frankish state was ruled by representatives of a new dynasty, which, after the name of the largest of its representatives - Charlemagne - was called the Carolingian dynasty.
During the reign of the Carolingians, the formation of the feudal system among the Franks was completed. TO 800 g. under the rule of King Charlemagne was a vast territory inhabited by many peoples. In size, it approached the collapsed Western Roman Empire. However, his descendants failed to keep the empire united. IN 843 g. in Verdun, an agreement was signed on the division of the empire into three parts. The Treaty of Verdun became the basis for the formation of three future European states - Germany, France and Italy.
3. How was the medieval Frankish state formed?
The tribal union of the Franks was formed in 3rd century. in the lower reaches of the Rhine. The third representative of the Merovingian dynasty Clovis extended his power to all the Franks. He captured Soissons and all of Northern Gaul up to the Loire River.
IN 496 g. Clovis with a retinue accepts Christianity, establishing friendly relations with the pope.
The state structure under the Merovingians was comparatively primitive. The court remained popular, the army consisted of a militia of all free Franks and the royal squad.
The position of the king was strong, the throne was inherited. The affairs of the administration were in charge of the royal court. In spring and autumn, meetings of the nobility were held, at which the issued legislative acts and new laws were announced. The barbarian truths, written down at different times at the behest of the kings, served as the basic laws and lawsuits. The administration of regions and districts was carried out with the help of counts and centurions, whose main duty was to collect taxes, fines and duties for the royal treasury.
In places of Frankish settlements, counties and hundreds were created on the basis of the German military and judicial organization, in Central and Southern Gaul? based on the Roman provincial system.
In the social system of the Franks, tribal ties also played an important role. The free franc was the canoe of the clan, enjoyed its patronage and was responsible for the members of the clan. The accused was responsible for the crimes not before the state, but before the victim and his relatives. For the murder of a member of a foreign clan, all relatives of the killer up to the third generation of kinship on the paternal and maternal lines were financially responsible. On the other hand, a member of the clan had the right to receive a share of the vira for the murder of a relative and to participate in the inheritance of the property of deceased relatives. Movable property was inherited by men and women, land? only by men.
Allod design? freely alienable ownership of land? accelerated property inheritance among the free Franks and the formation of large landownership.
Free Frankish peasants went bankrupt, lost their landed property and, falling into dependence on the possessors, began to be subjected to feudal exploitation.
Large landed property existed even before the conquest of Gaul. The king, having appropriated to himself the lands of the Roman fiscus and undivided communal possessions, distributed them as the property of his confidants and the church. But the growth of large landownership occurs mainly due to the appropriation of the lands of impoverished social activists.
Large landowners had full power over their slaves and dependent community members. The magnates themselves created the judicial and administrative apparatus and started their own military squads. The nobility did not want to obey the king and share with him the rent collected from the population, often raised against the king of restoration. The royal power could not cope with the magnates and made concessions to them. The royal lands were distributed or plundered by the nobility, unrest did not stop in the state.
The last kings of the Merovingian dynasty lost all real power, retaining only the title. They were disparagingly called lazy kings. In fact, power passed to the mayors, who were in charge of tax collection, royal property and commanded the army. Having real power, the mayordoms disposed of the royal throne, erected and deposed kings.
Being large landowners, they relied on the local nobility. But in the state, fragmented into appanages, there was no single major house. Each of the three regions was ruled by its own mayor, who had hereditary power.
In 687, the Austrian major Pitius Geristalsky defeated his rivals and began to rule the entire Frankish state. Pitius pursued an active policy of conquest and was able to suppress the resistance of the nobility. Later, the dynasty founded by him began to be called the Carolingians after Charlemagne, the most prominent Frankish king.
4. How were the conquests of Charlemagne? What are the reasons for the collapse of the empire of Charlemagne?
The Frankish state reached its greatest power under Charlemagne (768-814).
He pursued an aggressive policy in order to create a world empire. In 774 he made a campaign in Italy.
In 774 Charlemagne conquered the Lombards, in 882 Saxony was conquered. In 778 Charles abolished the Duchy of Bavaria and included it in the Kingdom.
The conquest of vast territories greatly expanded the boundaries of the Frankish state. Now they stretched from the Ebro and Barcelona to the Elbe and the Baltic coast, from the English Channel to the Middle Danube and the Adriatic, including almost all of Italy and part of the Balkan Peninsula. Charlemagne did not want to be content with the title of king of the Franks, but claimed the title of world monarch, "emperor of the Romans."
In 800, Pope Leo III crowned him in the Lateran Church with the crown of "Roman emperors". Charles hoped that he could use the imperial title to enhance his international prestige.
The population of the empire was subordinate to the royal servants and performed various kinds of duties. The entire territory of the state was divided into counties, headed by royal commissioners? graphs. The counties were divided into hundreds, the heads of which, the centecaries, were appointed by the royal court.
In the conquered border areas, Charlemagne created a brand - fortified military administrative districts that served as outposts for attacking neighboring countries and organizing defense. The margraves, who were at the head of the stamps, had broad judicial, administrative and military powers. At their disposal was a constant no less important influence on the evolution of the early feudal Frankish state, which had a military force of vassalage. By the end of the 8th century ? beginning of the ninth century vassal-personal relations spread in the military organization and political structure.
Royal vassals began to be appointed to government posts. At first, it even strengthened the state system. Vassals, connected with the king by conditional possessions and a personal oath, served more reliably than independent masters. But soon the vassals began to turn their benefices into hereditary possessions and refused to carry out permanent service for them.
The empire, created as a result of the conquest of weak tribes and nationalities by the Thracians, was an unstable state formation and fell apart shortly after the death of its founder.
The reasons for its collapse were the lack of economic and ethnic unity and the growth of the power of large feudal lords. The forcible unification of ethnically alien peoples could only be maintained under a strong central government.
Already during the life of Charlemagne, symptoms of its decline were outlined: the centralized control system began to degenerate into a personal seigneurial system, the counts were out of obedience. Separatism intensified in the outskirts.
The royal power was deprived of the former political support from the feudal nobility and did not have sufficient funds to continue the policy of conquest and even to retain the occupied territories. The free population was subjected to serfdom or fell into land dependence on the feudal lords and did not fulfill the former state, natural and military duties. Thus the king was deprived of material resources and military strength, while the feudal lords expanded their possessions and created their own troops from vassals. All this inevitably led to the collapse of the empire and feudal fragmentation.
In 817, at the request of the grandchildren of Charlemagne, the first section was made. But the ambitions remained unsatisfied, and a period of internecine wars began.
In 843, an agreement was concluded in Verdun on the division of the Empire of Charlemagne between his grandchildren? Lothair (France and Northern Italy), Louis the German (East Frankish state) and Charles the Bald (West Frankish state).
By the beginning of the tenth century the imperial title lost its meaning and disappeared.
5. How did the Byzantine Empire come about? What are the features of Byzantium in its heyday?
The thousand-year history of Byzantium had its ups and downs, its revival and extinction. Until the 7th century The Eastern Roman Empire remained one of the most powerful states in the world. Meanwhile, already in the 5th century. she had to face the barbarians. The first were the Goths and the Isaurians (a wild Asia Minor tribe). In the second half of the 5th c. the Isaurian Zeno even became the emperor of Byzantium. From the north, the empire was disturbed by the Bulgarians, Huns and Slavs, from the east - the strong Persian power of the Sassanids threatened. However, Byzantium had the strength not only to resist attacks, but also to expand in the middle of the VI century. borders due to the reconquest of the "Roman" territories from the Germans in North Africa, Italy and Spain. The empire retained the features of late antique society and state. The emperors considered themselves followers of the Roman Caesars, the Senate and State Council. As before, even the most unborn could “break out into people”. Emperors Justin and Justinian the Great were from the peasantry. Dissatisfaction with the government led to uprisings. The plebs enjoyed the distribution of free bread. As in Rome, in Constantinople there were traditional spectacles - gladiator fights and chariot races. But with the spread of Christianity, attitudes towards spectacles began to change. Gladiator fights under pressure from Christians were banned, and circuses were increasingly used as public stands. Roman law remained the most important element of Byzantine economic life. Under Justinian the Great, the codification of laws was undertaken, which led to the creation of a legal basis for regulating property relations. In a certain sense, Byzantium of that period can be considered the legal state of the Middle Ages.
In the 7th-9th centuries The Byzantine Empire was in deep crisis. The Arabs attacked Constantinople from the sea. For more than half a century, the brave warriors of Islam haunted Byzantium. The whole 8th century took place in the wars with the Bulgarians. The Eastern Roman Empire remained an empire in name only. But civilization withstood the onslaught of the barbarians. Constantinople officials tried to establish governance and divided the country into regions - themes - with strong civil and military power of the stratigs. But this only complicated the situation: the semi-barbarian themes did not want to submit to Constantinople and revolted. In addition, the empire was agitated by an iconoclastic movement within Christianity that lasted over 100 years. The turmoil led to the fact that all laws were violated, the monasteries were desolated, the university was burned. In the ninth century the Christian movement "Paulicians" was born - the followers of the elder Constantine, who preached New Testament with the epistles of the apostle Paul. In the middle of the ninth century Paulicians with weapons in their hands marched through Asia Minor, exterminating the infidels. Emperor Basil I overpowered the Paulicians, but accepted many of their demands. Since that time, the revival of civilization and Greek learning began.
End of the ninth century marked the restoration of the empire: the state again began to regulate relations between citizens; Basil I reissued the laws of Justinian; a strong army was created and the role of the military nobility was strengthened; the revival of the ancient sciences and arts began; cities and crafts were restored; The church rose to an unprecedented height. Changes in the social structure of Byzantium were also significant. A rigidly centralized state began to play a huge role. The special role of state principles received a theoretical justification, which contributed to the formation of a specific mentality of the Byzantines. It was believed that along with the one God, the one true faith and the one true church, there should also be a single Christian empire. Imperial power acquired sacral (sacred) functions, for by its very existence it ensured the salvation of the human race. It was a complex of a kind of messianic ideas, where the role of the messiah, the savior, was assigned to the empire.
In the hands of the emperor concentrated all the fullness of the legislative, executive, judicial power. In fact, the emperor also controlled the church, appointing and removing patriarchs. The emperor relied on bureaucracy and a strictly hierarchized state apparatus. Autocracy was born - the sole power of the emperor consecrated by the church.
The relationship between society and government was built on the principles of allegiance. The social system was corporate in nature. Corporations of artisans and merchants were completely dependent on the state. The peasant neighboring community was the supreme owner of the land and was responsible to the state for paying taxes. Thus, the Byzantine Empire acquired the features of a traditionally Eastern state.
In the middle of the XI century. The Great Steppe spewed out of its womb a new wave of warlike nomads. The horse-drawn avalanche of the Turks swept across the plains of Persia and poured over the Byzantine borders. In the first decisive clash in 1071 at Manzikert, the Roman army was defeated. After that, the Seljuk Turks occupied almost all of Asia Minor, as well as Syria and Palestine - the Holy Land. The military nobility of Byzantium revolted and placed their leader Alexei I Komnenos on the throne. Unable to withstand the onslaught of the victorious Turks, the emperor turned to the Christians of the West for help. Back in 1054, the church split into two parts - Catholicism and Orthodoxy, but under the onslaught of Muslims, Christians temporarily forgot their mutual grievances. Emperor Alexei I Komnenos managed to cope with the enemies pressing from all sides. Together with the crusader warriors, Byzantium set about reclaiming territories in Asia Minor. During the XII century. the empire wages numerous wars, trying to regain southern Italy, seizes the Balkan countries. However, by the end of the XII century. Byzantium is weakening and losing Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary, territories in Greece and Asia Minor. From 1096, the crusades began, and by the beginning of the 13th century. inner peace among Christians has come to an end. Rich Byzantium has always attracted Western European knights, who looked at her with a sense of envy, contempt and discontent. The destruction of Constantinople by the crusaders in 1204 reflected their true feelings. The Frankish knights divided the country among themselves, but could not get along peacefully and constantly fought. In 1261, the Greeks managed to take over what was left of Constantinople, and their leader Michael VIII Palaiologos became emperor, but his power extended little beyond the dilapidated walls of the "New Rome". Around the city during the XIII-XIV centuries. Bulgarians and Turks ruled.
By the beginning of the fourteenth century. the Turks created a powerful state. The rapidly emerging Muslim civilization captured Syria, Palestine, and Egypt. By the middle of the XIV century. Asia Minor was invaded. The Balkan states, weakened by internal strife, were captured one by one.
On May 29, 1453, the Ottoman Turks stormed Constantinople. Byzantium fell. This ended the centuries-old history of Byzantium. With the establishment of Turkish power in the Balkans, the peoples of the peninsula found themselves in an oppressed position, since the conquerors and subordinates shared ethnic roots and religious beliefs. The confrontation between the "Cross and Crescent" results in a series of endless wars between European Christian countries and the Muslim Ottoman Empire.
The Eastern Roman Empire perished at a time when Western Europe switched to a progressive path of development. The classical beginnings of the Byzantine civilization had a significant impact on Russian cultural and political traditions, and during the Renaissance, on European artistic creativity.
6. What is the uniqueness of France in IX-XI?
After the collapse of the Carolingian Empire in 843, the eastern border of France, separating it from Germany and Italy, passed mainly along large rivers: along the lower reaches of the Meuse, along the Moselle and Rhone. Neustria and the northwestern part of the former Burgundy, the Duchy of Burgundy, remained under the rule of the last Carolingians in France.
Fierce wars were fought between the German and French Carolingians. Many disasters were brought by the raids of the northern tribes - the Normans.
Within the country there was a struggle for political dominance between the influential Parisian counts (the Robertins) and the last Carolingians. In 987, the Robertins won, electing Hugo Capet as their king, from whom the Capetian dynasty began in France.
In the tenth century in the French kingdom, the socio-economic processes that led to the establishment of feudal relations were completed, and the long process of merging heterogeneous ethnic elements ended. On the basis of the Gallo-Roman people mixed with the Germans, new feudal peoples developed - the North French and Provençal. These nationalities were the core of the future French nation.
In the tenth century The country took on its present name. It began to be called not Gaul or the Frankish kingdom, but France (after the name of the region around Paris - Ile-de-France).
On the territory occupied by the northern French people, several large feudal estates were formed. Almost the entire coast of the English Channel was occupied by the Duchy of Normandy. The Normans who founded it quickly adopted the language of the northern French people and the French feudal order. The Normans managed to expand their possessions along the English Channel to Brittany in the west and almost to the Somme in the east, also subjugating the County of Maine.
The counties of Blois, Touraine and Anjou were located along the middle and lower reaches of the Laura, and somewhat to the south - Poitou. The Capetian lands (royal court) centered around Paris and Orleans. To the east of them lay the County of Champagne, to the southeast the Duchy of Burgundy.
In the extreme northwest was Brittany with a Celtic population, in the extreme northeast - the county of Flanders. On the territory of the Provencal people was the Duchy of Aquitaine, adjacent to the Duchy of Gascony.
The Kingdom of France also included the County of Barcelona and a number of other counties and lands.
The French kingdom was hierarchical, with a king at its head. But large feudal lords - dukes and counts, although they were considered vassals of the king, were almost independent. The first kings from the Capetian house were not much different from large feudal lords. They accumulated land holdings slowly, deriving income mainly from their own estates.
Feudal relations developed in the French kingdom. The land was in the hands of the owners - the lords, the peasants carried various duties in favor of the lords, were dependent on the owners of the land. Dependent peasants (serfs) were obliged to work for the lord: to work out the field corvée, to pay natural and monetary dues. Seniors were also paid other duties and taxes.
Part of the peasants retained personal freedom (villans), but at the same time was in land, and sometimes in judicial dependence on the feudal lord.
Duties in favor of the lord were constantly growing. The peasants paid an additional fee to the landowner for the use of forests, waters, and meadows. Seniors were paid market, bridge, ferry, road and other duties.
The requisitions of the feudal lords and the constant feudal wars that ruined the economy made the life of the peasants extremely difficult.
The peasants resisted feudal exploitation in every possible way. Revolts broke out in various regions of the kingdom. This forced the feudal lords to look for ways to overcome social differences. Seniors went to reduce feudal rent. They provided the peasants with more time and opportunities to work on their personal farms, and strengthened their rights to the inheritance plot. These measures contributed to the expansion and consolidation of the rights of the peasants and thereby created the conditions for the more rapid development of the productive forces in feudal society.
7. What is the specificity of Italy in the IX-XI centuries?
In the Middle Ages, Italy was not a single state, there were historically three main regions - Northern, Middle and Southern Italy, which in turn broke up into separate feudal states. Each of the regions retained its distinctive features arising from the peculiarities of the economic, political and geographical conditions of individual parts of the Apennine Peninsula.
Most of Northern Italy was occupied by Lombardy - the fertile valley of the Po River, which from the 6th-8th centuries. was under the rule of the Germanic tribes - the Lombards (hence its name - Lombardy), and from the VIII century. became part of the Carolingian Empire. A significant part of Central Italy was occupied by the Papal States, the secular state of the popes with its center in Rome. To the north of the dominions of the pope lay the Duchy of Tuscany. Northern and Central Italy after the Treaty of Verdun in 843 formally became an independent single kingdom headed by a king. But the power of individual feudal lords in this area was also significant.
Southern Italy and the island of Sicily until the end of the 11th century. were also fragmented into separate fiefs and often passed from one conqueror to another. For a long time, a significant part of the south of the country - Apulia, Calabria, Naples and Sicily - were Byzantine provinces. In the ninth century new conquerors invade here - the Arabs, who took possession of all of Sicily and formed an emirate there with a center in Palermo. At the beginning of the 20th century the Normans conquered these lands and founded the Sicilian kingdom here.
The diversity of the political map of Italy complicated the development of feudal relations. In Northern Italy, the processes of feudalization were slower than in other regions. The Frankish conquest accelerated these processes.
Church landownership played a very important role in Italy, especially in its middle part.
In the south of Italy and Sicily, slave-owning orders persisted for a long time, which led to a significant lag in the feudalization of these areas.
The formation of feudal relations led to an increase in productive forces in agriculture. Profitable geographical position Italian lands intensified trade here, the development of commodity-money relations and contributed to the accelerated separation of crafts from agriculture. The result of this was the growth of cities. They originated in Italy earlier than in other European countries. Particularly significant was the growth of cities conducting intermediary trade between Western and Eastern countries. The early development of cities in Italy led to their early liberation from the power of feudal lords. Starting from the tenth century. as a result of the struggle of cities with seniors in some cities, self-governing urban communities (communes) arise, many of which by the end of the 11th century. become independent city republics (Milan, Piacenza, Verona, Parma, Venice, Genoa, Pisa, Florence, Lucca, Siena, etc.).
In 962, the Italian lands became dependent on the German king Otto I, who undertook a campaign against Rome, captured it, was crowned the imperial crown and proclaimed the creation of a new Roman Empire, including Germany and a significant part of Italy. This artificial political formation, which had neither a common economic base nor ethnic unity, caused innumerable disasters for Italy throughout many centuries of its history.
In the ninth century the papacy was in a state of extreme decline. After the campaign of Otto I, the popes fell under the control of the German emperors, who began to put persons they liked on the papal throne. Such a papacy supported the idea of creating a strong Roman Empire headed by the German kings, which played a reactionary role in relation to the Italian people.
However, despite these difficult conditions, in the IX-XI centuries. in Italy began the process of formation of the Italian nationality. It was born in a hard and long struggle with foreign invaders, but was not destroyed by numerous conquests. On the contrary, the conquerors assimilated with the local population, assimilated the language of the Italian people, which was based on Latin, and its high culture, created over the centuries.
8. What was Germany like in the 9th-11th centuries?
After the collapse of the Carolingian Empire, secured by the Treaty of Verdun in 843, the formation of an early feudal state in Germany began. By the beginning of the tenth century on the territory of Germany there were duchies: Saxony and Thuringia (in Northern Germany), Franconia along the middle reaches of the Rhine, Swabia (along the upper reaches of the Danube and the Rhine) and Bavaria (along the middle reaches of the Danube). The dukes, turning into large feudal landowners, used their position as tribal leaders to strengthen their power. This led to the preservation of tribal disunity, which hampered the historical development of Germany.
In 911, after the Carolingian dynasty ended in Germany, one of the tribal dukes, Conrad I of Franconia, was elected king. After his death, a struggle for power unfolded between the tribal dukes, as a result of which two kings were elected at once - Henry of Saxony and Arnulf of Bavaria. But the objective prerequisites for strengthening the central royal power in Germany already existed. On the one hand, the process of feudalization in the country made progress, its further strengthening needed a strong royal power. On the other hand, the political unification of Germany was necessary in the face of external danger. From the end of the ninth century Germany became the object of attention of the Normans, and from the beginning of the tenth century. - Hungarians who settled in Pannonia.
The objective prerequisites for strengthening royal power in Germany were used by the kings of the Saxon dynasty, under the first representatives of which - Henry I and Otto I - the German early feudal state actually took shape. True, the tribal dukes strongly resisted the unification processes.
In order to curb the separatism of the tribal dukes and strengthen the authority of the central government, Otto I began to rely on large church feudal lords - bishops and abbots, who, unlike secular magnates, did not have hereditary rights to their possessions. Church property was under the supreme patronage of the king. Therefore, the king tried in every possible way to increase the rights of church institutions at the expense of secular magnates. The highest church dignitaries were attracted by the king to carry out administrative, diplomatic, military, and public service. This church organization, placed at the service of the royal power and being its main support, received in the literature the name of the imperial church (Reichs-kirche).
The church policy of Otto I found its logical conclusion in the desire of the royal power to establish control over the papacy, which was at the head of the Roman church. The subjugation of the papacy was closely connected with plans to conquer Italy and revive some kind of empire of Charlemagne. The ambitious plans of Otto I were realized. He managed to conquer the scattered Italian principalities. Early in 962, the pope crowned Otto I in Rome with the imperial crown. Prior to this, Otto I, under a special agreement, recognized the pope's claims to secular possessions in Italy, but the German emperor was proclaimed the supreme lord of these possessions. The obligatory oath of the pope to the emperor was introduced, which was an expression of the subordination of the papacy to the empire. Thus, in 962, the medieval German Empire arose (later it received the name of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation), headed by the German emperor, which included, in addition to Germany, Northern and a significant part of Central Italy, some Slavic lands, as well as part of South and South East France. In the first half of the XI century. the Burgundian kingdom was annexed to the empire.
The expansionist policy of the German kings led to a waste of strength, was an obstacle to the folding of the German national state. Large church feudal lords, who turned out to be masters of vast territories, like secular magnates, are increasingly becoming in opposition to the central government, actively developing separatist processes in the country.
In the HP century the central state power in Germany is weakening, a long period of feudal fragmentation begins.
9. What is the specificity of England in the IX-XI centuries?
On the territory of Britain, conquered by the Anglo-Saxons in the period from the second half of the 5th to the beginning of the 7th century, several barbarian Anglo-Saxon kingdoms were formed: Kent - in the extreme southeast, founded by the Jutes; Wessex, Sussex - in the southern and southeastern parts of the island, Northumbria - in the north and Mercia - in the center of the country, founded by the Angles.
The conquerors were stubbornly resisted by the main population of the island - the Britons. But the tribes of the Britons were driven back by the conquerors to the northern and western highlands (to Scotland, Wales and Cornwall). Many Britons died in battles with the Germanic tribes, others mixed with the newcomers. Many Britons moved to the mainland - to Northwestern Gaul (France). From the Britons came the name of the province of France - Brittany.
The entire conquered part of Britain was subsequently called England, and its inhabitants - Anglo-Saxons.
The formation of the feudal system in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms had some peculiarities. The most important of these are the relative stability of the communal system, the relatively slow pace of the process of the disappearance of the free peasantry and the formation of large feudal landownership. These features were due to the relatively weak Romanization of Britain, the destructive nature of the Anglo-Saxon conquest. The Angles and Saxons were at the stage of development of the destruction of tribal ties, so the development of feudal relations with them went through the internal evolution of the decaying primitive communal system.
The predominant occupation of the Anglo-Saxons in Britain was agriculture. The basis of the Anglo-Saxon society was made up of free communal peasants - curls, who owned significant plots of arable land. The preservation of a stable community strengthened the forces of free peasants and slowed down the entire process of feudalization.
The beginning of this process among the Anglo-Saxons dates back to the 7th century. By this time, wealth disparities among the Curls had become noticeable, and the community had begun to disintegrate. From the 7th century the practice of royal land grants, which are issued by special letters, is also spreading. The granted land was called bokland (from the Anglo-Sancon words boc - "letter" and land - "land"). With the advent of the bockland in England, the development of large feudal landownership began. The ruined community members fell into dependence on large landowners.
The stability of the community and the free peasantry in England determined the especially great role of the royal power in the process of feudalization. The Church also contributed to this process in every possible way. The Christian religion, the introduction to which the Anglo-Saxons began from the 6th century, met the interests of the ruling stratum of the Anglo-Saxon society, as it strengthened the royal power and the landowning nobility grouped around it. The kings actively supported the clergy, granted land to churches. The Church, in turn, encouraged the development of private ownership of land and in every possible way justified the growing dependence of the peasants.
In the 7th-8th centuries England was not politically united, each region was ruled by an independent king. There was a constant struggle between the individual Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. From the beginning of the ninth century political dominance passed to Wessex. Under King Egbert of Wessex in 829, all the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms united into one early feudal state.
This unification was due not only to internal, but also to foreign policy reasons. From the end of the 8th century the devastating raids of the Normans, mainly Danes, began on England.
An important stage in the development of the Anglo-Saxon feudal state was the reign of King Alfred, who managed to put up a worthy resistance to the Danes. Under Alfred, a collection of laws "The Truth of King Alfred" was compiled, which reflected the new feudal orders that had been established in the country.
Danish raids resumed at the end of the 10th century. In England, the power of the Danish kings was again established. The Danish king Knut especially tried to consolidate his power over England. The unpopularity of Danish dominance over England was especially evident under the sons of Cnut. Danish rule soon fell, the English throne again passed to the king from the Wessex dynasty.
10. What was education and culture in the early Middle Ages?
The transition from the slave system to the feudal system was accompanied by fundamental changes in the cultural life of Western European society. The ancient, mostly secular culture was replaced by the medieval culture, which was characterized by the dominance of religious views.
The deep crisis of late antique society contributed to the strengthening of the role of Christianity, which becomes in the 4th century. state religion and exerts an ever greater influence on the ideological and spiritual life of feudal society. Church doctrine was the starting point and basis of all thinking. Jurisprudence, natural science, philosophy - all the content of these sciences was brought into line with the teachings of the church. Religion became the center of the entire socio-cultural process, subordinating and regulating its main areas.
Spiritual hymns, liturgical plays, stories about the life and miraculous deeds of saints and martyrs, popular in the earlier Middle Ages, had a great emotional impact on medieval man. In the Lives, the saint was endowed with character traits that the church wanted to instill in believers (patience, firmness in faith, etc.). Medieval people were persistently inspired by the idea of the futility of human daring in the face of inevitable fate. According to the church worldview, the earthly "sinful" temporary life and the material nature of man were opposed to the eternal "other-worldly" existence. As an ideal of behavior, the church preached humility, asceticism, strict observance of church rites, and submission to the masters.
The growth of the influence of Christianity was impossible without the spread of writing, necessary for Christian worship, based on church books. Correspondence of such books was carried out at monasteries. There were also centers for the dissemination of knowledge - schools.
In the hierarchy of spheres of medieval culture, theology (theology) had undisputed leadership. Theology played an important role in protecting the official church doctrine from numerous heresies (from the Greek hairesis - “special dogma”), the emergence of which dates back to the early Middle Ages and without taking into account which it is impossible to imagine the socio-cultural situation of that time. Among the most common heretical ideas stood out: monophysitism (the denial of the doctrine of a dual god human nature Christ); Nestroianism (proving the position of the “independently existing” human nature of Christ); Adoptian heresy, which was based on the idea of the adoption by God of the human son of Christ.
A prominent place in the hierarchy of spheres of medieval culture was occupied by philosophy, designed to provide evidence of the truth of the Christian faith. The rest of the sciences (astronomy, geometry, history, etc.) were subordinated to philosophy.
Under the strong influence of the church was artistic creativity. The medieval artist was called upon to display only the perfection of the world order. Western Europe during the early Middle Ages was characterized by the Romanesque style. Thus, the buildings of the Romanesque style are distinguished by massive forms, narrow window openings, and a significant height of the towers. Temple buildings of the Romanesque style were also distinguished by their massiveness, they were decorated with frescoes from the inside, and reliefs from the outside.
The paintings and sculptures of the Romanesque type are characterized by a flat two-dimensional image, generalization of forms, violation of proportions in the image of figures, lack of portrait resemblance to the original.
By the end of the HP century. the Romanesque style is replaced by the Gothic, which is characterized by slender columns carried upwards, huge elongated windows decorated with stained-glass windows. The general plan of Gothic temples is based on the shape of the Latin cross. Such were the Gothic cathedrals in Paris, Chartres, Bourges (France). In England, these are Westminster Abbey in London, the cathedrals in Salisbury, York, etc. In Germany, the transition to Gothic was slower than in France and England. The first Gothic temple was the church in Lübeck.
An important element of the culture of this time was folk art: folk tales, epic works.
11. What is the specificity of Europe in the early Middle Ages (mid-11th - late 15th centuries)?
Europe in the early Middle Ages was the territory of barbarian states. The movements of barbarian tribes and their attacks on Roman possessions were commonplace. The Roman Empire at one time restrained this process, but at the end of the 4th century. the great migration of peoples began to be uncontrollable.
The main reason for these movements was the growth in the population of barbarian tribes, caused by an increase in living standards due to the intensification of agriculture and the transition to a stable settled way of life. Barbarian tribes sought to seize the fertile lands of the Roman Empire and establish permanent settlements on them.
The Visigoths were the first to move within the boundaries of the Roman Empire (at the beginning of the 3rd century BC). In the battle of Athianopolis (387), the Goths won, the emperor Valentine died.
In 405-407 Italy was invaded by Suebi, Vandals and Alans led by Radagaisus.
In 410, the Visigoth tribes under the command of Amearic broke into Rome. The eternal City was horribly looted.
The Visigoths captured the south western part Gaul and founded their kingdom there with its capital at Toulouse (419). In essence, it was the first independent state on Roman territory.
In the III century. Vandals moved from the depths of Germany to the Middle Danube. Under the onslaught of the Huns, they moved to the West, invaded Gaul, and then? to Spain. Soon the kingdom of the Vandals was formed with its capital in Carthage (439). The Vandal kingdom was conquered in 534 by the Eastern Roman Empire.
East German Burgundian tribe in the 4th century. moved to the Middle Rhine and founded his kingdom in the Vorlev region, which was defeated by the Huns. Later, the Burgundians occupied the entire Upper and Middle Rhone and in 457 founded a new kingdom with Lyon as its capital. Settlement among the Halo-Romans contributed to the decomposition of social and tribal relations among the Burgundians and the growth of social differentiation. In 534 the Burgundian kingdom was conquered by the Franks.
In 451 the Huns, led by Attila, invaded Gaul. The common danger forced the Western Roman Empire and the barbarian peoples to join forces. The decisive battle, nicknamed the battle of the peoples, took place on the Catalaunian fields. The allied army, consisting of the Romans, Visigoths, Franks and Burgundians, under the command of the Roman commander Aetius, defeated the Huns.
Despite the loss of almost all of its provinces, the Western Roman Empire still formally continued to exist. The imperial court had long been located not in Rome, but in Ravenia, and the affairs of the empire were actually controlled by barbarian military leaders. In 476, the military leader Odoacer usurped power and became the de facto ruler of Italy and Rome. The Western Roman Empire ceased to exist.
In 493, Odoacer concluded an agreement on the division of the territory of the empire with the leader of the Visigoths, Theodoric, after which he was killed.
In 546, the Lombards invaded Italy. Gradually, the Lombards conquered most of Italy, they owned the north of the country.
The conquest of the Roman provinces and the resettlement of the barbarians among the Romanesque population, who lived in a more developed society, accelerated the decomposition of the primitive communal system and the formation of early feudal relations among the barbarian peoples. On the other hand, the barbarian conquests accelerated the disintegration of slaveholding relations and the formation of the feudal system in Roman society. At the same time, they created the prerequisites for a Romano-Germanic synthesis.
The conquests were accompanied by a process of redistribution of landed property. The senatorial nobility, the top of the curials and the clergy remained large owners. Kings, old tribal nobility and royal vigilantes appropriated a significant share of the conquered land. Allotment land turned into property, and this led to property inequality among the community members and to the establishment of land and personal dependence.
The barbarian kingdoms inherited to one degree or another the Roman territorial and administrative system, and they tried to extend it to the German population. In Western Europe, new Romanesque peoples began to take shape? Italian, Spanish, Franco-Roman, in which the Germans were absorbed by the Romano-Celtic population.
12. What was the essence of the Crusades (goals, participants, results)?
In 1095, at the Council of Clermont, Pope Urban III called for a crusade to rescue the holy places from the yoke of the Saracens (Arabs and Seljuk Turks). The first echelon of the crusaders was made up of peasants and poor citizens, led by the preacher Peter of Amiens. In 1096 they arrived in Constantinople and, without waiting for the approach of the knightly army, crossed over to Asia Minor. There, the poorly armed and even worse trained militia of Peter of Amiens was easily defeated by the Turks. In the spring of 1097, detachments of crusader knights concentrated in the capital of Byzantium. The main role in the First Crusade was played by the feudal lords of Southern France: Count Raymond of Toulouse, Count Robert of Flanders, son of the Norman Duke William (the future conqueror of England) Robert, Bishop Ademar.
The main problem of the crusaders was the lack of a unified command. The dukes and counts participating in the campaign did not have a common overlord and did not want to obey each other, considering themselves no less noble and powerful than their colleagues. Gottfried of Bouillon was the first to cross to the land of Asia Minor, followed by other knights. In June 1097, the crusaders took the fortress of Nicaea and moved to Cilicia.
In October 1097, after a seven-month siege, Gottfried's army captured Antioch. The city tried to recapture the Sultan of Mosul, but suffered a heavy defeat. Bohemond founded another crusader state - the Principality of Antioch. In the autumn of 1098, the crusader army moved towards Jerusalem. Along the way, she took possession of Accra and in June 1099 approached the holy city, which was defended by Egyptian troops. Almost the entire Genoese fleet, which carried siege weapons, was destroyed by the Egyptians. However, one ship managed to break through to Laodicea. The siege engines delivered by him allowed the crusaders to destroy the walls of Jerusalem.
On July 15, 1099, the crusaders took Jerusalem by storm. On August 12, a large Egyptian army landed near Jerusalem, in Ascalon, but the crusaders defeated it. At the head of the Kingdom of Jerusalem founded by them stood Gottfried of Bouillon. The success of the First Crusade was facilitated by the fact that the united army of the Western European knights was opposed by the scattered and warring Seljuk sultanates. The most powerful Muslim state in the Mediterranean - the Egyptian Sultanate - only with a great delay moved the main forces of its army and navy to Palestine, which the crusaders managed to break in parts. Here, the Muslim rulers clearly underestimated the danger threatening them. For the defense of the Christian states formed in Palestine, spiritual and knightly orders were created, whose members settled in the conquered lands after the bulk of the participants in the First Crusade returned to Europe. In 1119, the Order of the Templars (knights of the Temple) was founded, a little later the Order of the Hospitallers, or St. John, appeared, and at the end of the 12th century. The Teutonic (German) Order arose.
The second crusade, undertaken in 1147-1149, ended in vain. According to some estimates, up to 70 thousand people participated in it. The Crusaders were led by Louis VII of France and Conrad III of Germany. In October 1147, the German knights were defeated at Dorileus by the cavalry of the Sultan of Iconium. Then epidemics hit Conrad's army. The emperor was forced to join the army of the French king, with whom he had previously been at enmity. Most of the German soldiers chose to return to their homeland. The French, in January 1148, were defeated at Khonami.
In 1149, Conrad, and then Louis, returned to Europe, realizing the impossibility of expanding the boundaries of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. In the second half of the XII century. Saladin (Salah ad-Din), a talented commander, became the sultan of Egypt, which opposed the crusaders. He defeated the crusaders at Lake Tiberias and in 1187 captured Jerusalem.
In response, the Third Crusade was proclaimed, led by Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa, French King Philip II Augustus and King Richard I of England the Lionheart. When crossing one of the rivers in Asia Minor, Frederick drowned, and his army, having lost its leader, broke up and returned to Europe. The French and British, moving by sea, captured Sicily, and then landed in Palestine, but acted generally unsuccessfully. True, after a siege of many months, they took the fortress of Acre, and Richard the Lionheart captured the island of Cyprus, recently separated from Byzantium, where he took rich booty in the East. But the strife between the English and French feudal lords caused the departure of the French king from Palestine. Without the help of the French knights, Richard was never able to take Jerusalem. On September 2, 1192, the English king signed a peace with Salah ad-Din, according to which only the coastal strip from Tire to Jaffa remained under the control of the crusaders, and Jaffa and Ascalon were previously destroyed by Muslims to the ground.
The Fifth Crusade was organized in 1217-1221. to conquer Egypt. It was headed by King Andras II of Hungary and Duke Leopold of Austria. The crusaders of Syria met the newcomers from Europe without great enthusiasm. It was difficult for the Kingdom of Jerusalem, which survived the drought, to feed tens of thousands of new soldiers, and it wanted to trade with Egypt, not to fight. Andras and Leopold raided Damascus, Nablus and Beisan, besieged, but could not take the strongest Muslim fortress of Tavor. After this failure, Andras returned to his homeland in January 1218. To replace the Hungarians in Palestine in 1218, the Dutch knights and German infantry arrived. It was decided to conquer the Egyptian fortress of Damietta in the Nile Delta. It was located on an island, surrounded by three rows of walls and protected by a powerful tower, from which a bridge and thick iron chains stretched to the fortress, blocking access to Damietta from the river. The siege began on May 27, 1218. Using their ships as floating wall-beating guns and using long assault ladders, the crusaders captured the tower. In mid-July, the Nile began to flood, and the crusader camp was flooded, while the Muslims prepared in advance for the revelry of the elements and did not suffer, and then cut off the path of retreat for the army of Pelagius. The crusaders asked for peace. At this time, the Egyptian sultan was most afraid of the Mongols, who had already appeared in Iraq, and preferred not to tempt his luck in the fight against the knights. Under the terms of the truce, the crusaders left Damietta and sailed for Europe.
He led the Sixth Crusade in 1228-1229. German Emperor Frederick II Hohenstaufen. The emperor himself, before the start of the campaign, was excommunicated by Pope Gregory IX, who called him not a crusader, but a pirate who was going to "steal the kingdom in the Holy Land." In the summer of 1228 Frederick landed in Syria. Here he managed to persuade al-Kamil, who fought with his Syrian emirs, to return Jerusalem and other territories of the kingdom to him in exchange for help against his enemies - both Muslims and Christians. The corresponding agreement was concluded in Jaffa in February 1229. On March 18, the crusaders entered Jerusalem without a fight. Then the emperor returned to Italy, defeated the army of the pope sent against him and forced Gregory, under the terms of the Peace of Saint Germain in 1230, to lift the excommunication and recognize the agreement with the sultan. Jerusalem thus passed to the crusaders only due to the threat that their army posed to al-Kamil, and even thanks to the diplomatic skill of Frederick.
The Seventh Crusade took place in the autumn of 1239. Frederick II refused to provide the territory of the Kingdom of Jerusalem for the crusading army led by Duke Richard of Cornwall. The Crusaders landed in Syria and, at the insistence of the Templars, entered into an alliance with the Emir of Damascus to fight the Sultan of Egypt, but together with the Syrians were defeated in November 1239 at the Battle of Ascalon. Thus, the seventh campaign ended in vain.
The Eighth Crusade took place in 1248-1254. His goal was to recapture Jerusalem, captured in September 1244 by Sultan as-Salih Eyyub Najm ad-Din, who was assisted by 10,000 Khorezmian cavalry. Almost the entire Christian population of the city was slaughtered. This time the leading role in the crusade was played by the French king Louis IX, and total number Crusaders were defined as 15-25 thousand people, of which 3 thousand were knights.
The Egyptians sank the Crusader fleet. Louis's starving army left Mansoura, but few made it to Damietta. Most were destroyed or captured. Among the prisoners was the French king. Epidemics of malaria, dysentery and scurvy spread among the captives, and few of them survived. Louis was released from captivity in May 1250 for a huge ransom of 800,000 bezants, or 200,000 livres. Louis remained in Palestine for four more years, but, having not received reinforcements from Europe, in April 1254 he returned to France.
The ninth and last crusade took place in 1270. It was prompted by the success of the Mamluk sultan Baibars. The Egyptians in 1260 defeated the Mongol troops at the battle of Ain Jalut. In 1265 Baybars captured the crusader fortresses of Caesarea and Arsuf, and in 1268 Jaffa and Antioch. The crusade was again led by Saint Louis IX, and only French knights participated in it. This trip turned out to be fruitless.
13. What are the socio-economic prerequisites for the emergence of cities?
The early Middle Ages were marked by the dominance of subsistence farming and the independence of commodity-money relations.
Everything that the feudal lord needed was produced on his estate. If there was a need for other products, then, if possible, an equivalent exchange was made.
Each feudal lord had talented artisans who could produce a competitive product. The signor sought to quickly "enslave" such people. The only chance to maintain freedom was to leave in search of a better life.
They ran away with all the lies. The fugitives tried to settle closer to the royal family in order to find protection. The kings did not hand over the fugitives to their former masters, protecting their freedom. Monarchs were in dire need of money to fight infidel vassals. And the townspeople-artisans, in exchange for support, paid off from the royal person.
Another option for urban settlements was winning places with the appropriate landscape.
Progressive-minded feudal lords, not wanting to yield to the king as “first among equals”, began to help the townspeople. But the symbiosis of cities and royal power turned out to be more stable and more successful.
Gradually, self-government bodies began to form in the cities. In practice, this meant complete economic and, in part, political freedom. The richest citizens elected the head of the city. The meetings were held in a solemn atmosphere in the City Hall building.
14. What are the characteristic features of the medieval urban craft? What were the economic foundations and forms of organization?
The transition from the early feudal period to the period of developed feudalism was due to the emergence and growth of cities, which quickly became centers of crafts and exchange, as well as the widespread development of commodity production. These were qualitatively new phenomena in feudal society, which had a significant impact on its economy, political system and spiritual life.
The first centuries of the Middle Ages in Western Europe were characterized by the dominance of subsistence farming. The production of agricultural products and handicrafts, specially designed for sale, i.e., commodity production, was then almost not developed in most of Western Europe. The old Roman cities fell into decay, the agrarianization of the economy took place. During the early Middle Ages, urban-type settlements were preserved in place of dilapidated Roman cities. But for the most part they were either administrative centers, or fortified points (fortresses - "burgs"), or church centers (residences of bishops, etc.). But the cities had not yet become the center of craft and trade during this period.
In the X-XI century. important changes took place in the economic life of Western Europe. The growth of productive forces, which took place in connection with the establishment of the feudal mode of production, proceeded most rapidly in handicrafts and was expressed in the gradual change and development of the technique and skills of handicraft work, the expansion and differentiation of social production. The production of handicrafts increasingly turned into a special sphere of labor activity, different from agriculture, which required further specialization of the artisan, no longer compatible with the labor of the peasant.
The moment has come when the transformation of handicraft into an independent branch of production has become inevitable. In turn, progressive changes took place in agriculture. With the improvement of tools and methods of tillage in agriculture, the area of cultivated land increased. Not only agriculture, but also cattle breeding, horticulture, etc. developed and improved. As a result of all these changes, the volume of products produced in the rural sector increased. This made it possible to exchange it for handicrafts.
In the process of separation from agriculture, the handicraft went through a number of stages in its development. At first, the craft acted in the form of the production of products by order of the consumer. Commodity production was still in its infancy. In the future, with the development of handicraft production, it was focused not only on a specific customer, but on the market. The craftsman becomes a commodity producer. Commodity production and commodity relations begin to emerge, and exchange between town and country begins.
A characteristic feature of the medieval craft in Western Europe was its guild organization - the association of artisans of a certain profession within a given city into special unions - workshops, craft guilds. Workshops appeared simultaneously with the cities themselves in the 10th-12th centuries. The final formalization of the guilds (obtaining special charters from kings and other lords, compiling and recording guild charters) took place later.
The number of workshops increased with the growth of the division of labor. In most cities, belonging to a guild was a prerequisite for practicing a craft, that is, a guild monopoly was established for this type of craft. This eliminated the possibility of competition from artisans who were not part of the guild, which, in the conditions of a narrow market and insignificant demand, was dangerous for manufacturers.
The main function of the workshops was to establish control over the production and sale of handicrafts. The members of the workshop were interested in ensuring that their products were sold. Therefore, in the shop organization, the process of producing products of a certain type and quality was regulated. The guilds, despite the fact that they limited competition, played a progressive role, contributed to the improvement of handicraft tools and skills.
15. How was the formation of centralized states in Western Europe?
The political unification of the countries of Europe, in particular England and France, took place over a long period and was accompanied by wars, both internecine, within these countries, and between England and France. The most difficult and longest war between them was the Hundred Years War, which began in 1337 and ended in 1453. This war was fought in France, where England had its possessions in the southwestern part of France and in the north - the port city of Calais on the coast the English Channel.
During the bloody wars, France was unified under the rule of the king with the simultaneous liberation of the territories captured by the British. The final victory over feudal fragmentation in France is associated with the name of King Louis XI.
The most dangerous rival of Louis XI and the main obstacle to the creation of a strong centralized state was the Duchy of Burgundy - the last major seigneurial possession in France. Its rulers often acted independently of the king. The subjugation of this duchy led to the completion of the process of unification of France. By the end of the reign of Louis XI, only the port city of Calais and the duchy of Brittany remained outside the king's possessions. By the end of the XV century. in France, thanks to the firm royal power, the unification of many previously isolated regions into one country, a state, was completed. From that time on, the population begins to consider themselves French, common for the whole country French and French culture.
The situation in England after the defeat in the Hundred Years' War in many respects resembled the situation in France at the beginning of the 15th century. In the reign of King Henry VI, England was dominated by rival noble families. This rivalry culminated in the Thirty Years' Civil War (1455–1485). This war was called the War of the Scarlet and White Roses, according to the images on the coats of arms of the opponents. As a result of a long war, many representatives of English dynasties and noble families perished. She cleared the way for the restoration of strong power under the new King Henry VII Tudor, who came to power in 1485.
As for other state formations of Western Europe - Germany and Italy, they are in the X-XI centuries. were united into one state - the Holy Roman Empire. It was ruled by the German emperors, who were crowned in Rome by the head of the Catholic Church - the pope. During a long period of internecine wars, this Empire broke up into many independent principalities, kingdoms, city-republics and the Papal States.
After the fall of the Hohenstaufen dynasty, there was no strong power in Germany. There was a constant struggle for the throne, power did not always pass from father to son. Germany did not have a single capital, a single government, a single monetary system.
In the middle of the fourteenth century Charles IV became the next king and head of Germany. From his father, he also inherited the Czech crown. But he failed to unite the country, moreover, he recognized the independence of the princes and their right to war among themselves.
In Italy, after the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire, many independent, independent small states also formed - city-republics, kingdoms and the Papal States with the center in Rome.
In the XIV-XV centuries. experienced a rapid flowering of Venice, Genoa, Florence, Milan, Bologna, Pisa, Siena. The main role in these city-states was played by merchants and artisans. The most numerous were communities of artisans and merchants - workshops and guilds. It was in these areas that there was an active accumulation of wealth and capital. Many Italian cities were centers of science and culture. Universities were founded in Padua, Pisa, Bologna, Florence, Siena, Rome and other cities.
The Italian city-states were ruled by councils of wealthy and noble citizens. Kings ruled only in the Kingdom of Sicily and the Kingdom of Naples in southern Italy. The city-states guarded their independence with the help of special military detachments. Many Italian city-states became centers of Renaissance culture.
16. What was France like in the 11th-15th centuries?
From the HP century France begins the process of state centralization. The royal power began to wage a more active struggle against feudal anarchy, which was undermining the productive forces of the country. The centralizing policy of the kings was supported by cities that fought against large feudal lords and were interested in weakening their influence. The kings skillfully used and fomented this struggle.
But the French kings had strong rivals. In 1154, one of the French feudal lords - Count of Anjou Henry Plantagenet - became the king of England. His possessions in France (Anjou, Maine, Touraine, Normandy, Poitou, etc.) were several times greater than those of the French king.
The rivalry between the Capetians and the Plantagenets flared up especially under Philip II Augustus. He achieved the greatest success in the fight against the English king John Landless, declaring his possessions in France confiscated and conquering Normandy.
The strengthening of royal power also took place in the reign of Louis IX, during which this process was consolidated by a number of important reforms. A single monetary system was introduced in the royal domain. This contributed to the economic cohesion of the country. Louis IX held judicial reform. Judicial chambers were formed in the country, which became known as parliaments. The main parliament was in Paris, which became the capital of France.
A lot of efforts to strengthen the unity of France were made by the last representative of the Capetian dynasty - King Philip IX the Handsome. Realizing that the greatly expanded French state required expenses to maintain controllability, Philip IX began to take care of increasing state revenues. He introduced a monetary tax levied on all classes, including the clergy. By this he violated the rights of the Pope, on whom the clergy depended. Having conceived decisive action against the pope, Philip IV convened in 1302 the States General, where the clergy, nobles and townspeople were represented. Philip IV informed the participants of the meeting of his intention to enter into a fight with the pope. The Estates General supported the king. At the insistence of Philip IV, a new pope was elected, a Frenchman by origin, who moved his residence to the city of Avignon, in the south of France. Here the popes lived for almost 70 years in submission to the French king. The time of the papal stay in Avignon was called the Avignon captivity of the popes.
Entry on french throne the Valois dynasty led to the beginning of the Hundred Years War between France and England, which for further fate France was paramount.
The Hundred Years' War was basically a fight over the southwestern French lands under the rule of the English kings. These lands were needed by France for its final unification.
For many decades, the British won military battles with the French. The most successful was the British offensive in France in the 15th century. They managed to occupy the north of France and Paris. They also captured the French king.
The situation changed somewhat after the siege by the British in 1428 of the city of Orleans on the Laure, which was an important strategic point in the south of France. The peasant girl Jeanne D'Arc took an active part in deciding the fate of the city of Orleans. She was imbued with the conviction that, according to God's will, she should help France in the fight against the British. She managed to persuade the French king Charles VII to take decisive action, as a result of which the siege of Orleans was lifted. The British retreated to Paris. In 1430 Joan of Arc was captured by the British, who burned her at the stake.
The fierce struggle and execution of Jeanne awakened the patriotic feelings of the French. All classes of the kingdom rallied around Charles VII. In 1436 the French king solemnly entered Paris. The war was ended by 1453 with the victory of France, but the port of Calais remained with the British.
Victory in the war cost the French people innumerable victims, at the cost of which the independence of the country was saved.
In the sixteenth century France entered as an already centralized state with developing economic ties, rich cities, and a growing cultural community.
17. What is the uniqueness of the English system in the 11th-15th centuries?
The unification of England took place gradually over more than four centuries in the conditions of constant long-term war with foreign invaders, as well as internal struggle - political and military - with opponents of the strengthening of the central royal power.
In the XII century. Henry II Plantagenet, a descendant of the French feudal lords, came to power and owned vast lands in France. In order to further strengthen the centralization of the state, he carried out a number of reforms - judicial, military. These reforms were primarily in the interests of the feudal lords, who were the backbone of royal power.
In the thirteenth century the political struggle for strengthening royal power was continued by the son of Henry II - John, nicknamed Landless. He increased the tax pressure on almost all segments of the population, which led to an aggravation of the social situation in the country. In the spring of 1215, large feudal lords, with the support of chivalry and townspeople, began a war against the king. The king failed to break the resistance of the opposition, and in June 1215 he signed the so-called Magna Carta, designed to protect the interests and rights of the majority of the country's population from royal arbitrariness.
Major political changes took place in England during the reign of Edward I (1272–1307). A body of class representation arose in the country - parliament, in which, along with the barons, deputies of chivalry and cities sat. Parliament gave the king the opportunity to rely more actively on the chivalry and the urban elite, to suppress the separatism of large owners. The king negotiated with parliament on the taxation of the population.
In the first half of the fourteenth century Parliament began to be divided into two chambers: the upper - the House of Lords, where the representatives of the clergy and the barons sat, and the lower - the House of Commons, where the knights and representatives of the cities sat. The strong alliance between the chivalry and the urban elite in parliament provided them with greater political influence in the country. The masses of the free peasantry and the urban poor were not represented in Parliament. Villans (dependent peasants) were generally forbidden to participate in elections.
Meanwhile, the situation of the masses, especially the peasants, was constantly deteriorating. Peasantry were especially indignant at the new taxes associated with the resumption of the Hundred Years' War under King Richard II (1377–1399). The increase in the tax burden gave rise to a peasant uprising that broke out in the spring of 1381 in the southeast of England, in the county of Essex. The leader of the uprising was the rural craftsman Wat Tyler. The main goals of the rebels were the abolition of personal dependence and the minimization of the tax burden. The king managed to suppress the uprising, but it did not pass without a trace - after 1381, the English feudal lords abandoned corvée, and during the 15th century. almost all the peasants of England ransomed to freedom.
The Hundred Years' War also served as a pretext for increasing tensions within the privileged sections of the population. The war had reduced the incomes of the aristocracy, and now their attention was now more focused than before on the struggle for power and income at court. A convenient occasion for feudal civil strife was the dynastic disputes between the large dynastic houses of Lancaster and York. In 1455, a military clash took place between them. It marked the beginning of a long internecine war, known in history as the War of the Scarlet and White Roses. Most of the major feudal lords stood behind the Lancasters, especially the feudal lords of the North, who were accustomed to political independence and possessed large armed forces. The Yorks were supported by large feudal lords of the economically developed Southeast. The Yorks were supported by most of the new nobility and townspeople, who aspired to establish a strong royal power. For many large feudal lords, this war was only a pretext for robbery and strengthening their political independence. They easily moved from one camp to another. The armed confrontation between the Lancastrians and the Yorkists ended in 1485. The representative of the new Tudor dynasty, Henry, who entered the history of the country under the name of Henry VII, was proclaimed King of England. The new king continued the policy of strengthening the centralization of the country.
18. What are the features of feudal fragmentation in Germany in the 11th-15th centuries?
characteristic feature political life Germany XI-XII centuries. was the strengthening of the system of territorial principalities. The country failed to overcome feudal fragmentation. Socio-economic shifts in the development of the country did not lead to the formation of a single economic center, to which all regions of the country would gravitate. For many German lands and cities closely connected with transit foreign trade, the unification of the country was not vital necessity. Regional centralization was the economic basis of the so-called territorial principalities, that is, compact territories within which the ruling elite had relatively complete power. Territorial princes encouraged the development of cities in their lands, founded new trade and craft centers. The links of such economically and politically wealthy lands with the central royal power were weakening. In medieval Germany, there was no union of royal power and cities, which was necessary condition overcoming the political fragmentation of the country.
Lacking a solid social base, the German emperors were forced to maneuver between the regional princes and thus contribute to their further strengthening. This policy was pursued by Frederick I Barbarossa and his successor Frederick II. Legislative consolidation of the independence of local princes led to even greater fragmentation of the country. The emperors, abandoning the great-power policy, themselves more and more turned into territorial princes.
Economic changes associated with the growth of crafts and trade, and in the fourteenth century. did not lead to the emergence of all-German market relations and a single economic center.
In the XIV-XV centuries. increased social tension between cities and princes, on whose lands these cities developed. Weak imperial power could not protect the interests of the townspeople, merchants from the arbitrariness of local princes. Under these conditions, the cities were forced to unite in unions.
The largest of these alliances was the North German Hansa. By the middle of the fourteenth century. The Hansa embraced with its influence almost all German cities located on the shores of the North and Baltic Seas. Stralsund, Rostock, Wismar, Lübeck, Hamburg and Bremen became the core of the union. They sought to concentrate in their hands all intermediary trade in the basin of the Baltic and North Seas.
In the conditions of political fragmentation that prevailed in Germany, the Hanseatic League acted as an independent political force. However, with all its might, the Hanseatic League did not become the economic and political core of Germany. The union had no general management, no common finance, no common fleet. Each city that was a member of the Hanse conducted its own affairs.
In the fourteenth century the political fragmentation of Germany was legally fixed in the "Golden Bull" issued by Emperor Charles IV in 1356.
According to the document, the princes were recognized for their full sovereignty in the principalities: the right to judge, collect duties, mint coins, and exploit natural resources. The Golden Bull proclaimed that the empire was political organization sovereign princes. Germany became more and more fragmented, its center - more and more weak. Nevertheless, the search for ways to the imperial form did not stop. At the end of the 80s. XV century in Southwestern Germany, a large political and military association arose - the Swabian League. Formally, it was an association of knights and imperial cities of Southwestern Germany, which was joined by individual large princes.
In the Reichstags of 1495 and 19500, which were at the head of the Swabian League, the princes carried out a project of "imperial reform". It was decided to proclaim in the empire "zemstvo peace", i.e., the prohibition of internal wars, and to create an all-imperial administration and an imperial court to settle disputes between the princes. However, for fear of undermining the sovereignty of their territories, the princes did not want the imperial institutions to have real military and financial power and their own executive bodies. The "imperial reform" did not achieve its goal: instead of eliminating petty holdings and political fragmentation, it only strengthened them even more.
19. What was Italy like in the 11th-15th centuries?
In Italy, as in Germany, the period of developed feudalism did not end with the unification of the country. It remained economically and politically fragmented. Different regions of the country were also not homogeneous. Significantly differed between Northern Italy and Tuscany, the Papal States and Southern Italy.
The main feature of Northern Italy and Tuscany was the earlier and much more rapid development of cities than in other countries of medieval Europe. In these cities, handicraft production and trade were actively developing, which outgrew the limits of local significance.
These cities, strengthening their economic opportunities, waged an active struggle with the lords on whose lands they were located. The struggle of cities for their independence led to the fact that cities expanded their possessions, subjugating nearby districts. These vast territories were called "distretto" and often represented a whole state. So, in Northern and Central Italy there were city-states - Florence, Siena, Milan, Ravenna, Padua, Venice, Genoa, etc.
The development of the Papal States, which occupied a significant part of Central Italy, proceeded differently. Since its sovereign was at the same time the head of the Catholic Church, and Rome was its organizational and ideological core, the history of this state was significantly influenced by European politics papacy, which was based on the desire for supremacy over the secular sovereigns of Europe.
The popes managed to increase their political influence in Europe, but this did not lead to the economic strengthening of the region. The Papal States lagged behind Northern Italy and Tuscany. Cities here developed more slowly, the popes did not support the policy of granting self-government rights to Rome and other cities of the region.
In southern Italy and Sicily, which were under the influence of foreign (Norman) domination, the development of cities did not stop. Moreover, they reached a significant flourishing here, but it was associated mainly with transit trade, and their own handicraft production and local trade were poorly developed here. Unlike the cities of northern Italy, the southern Italian cities failed to achieve independence and even autonomy, they remained subordinate to a strong central authority.
In the second half of the 20th century Italy was under the threat of German subjugation. The German feudal lords, led by Frederick I Barbarossa, considered the formal belonging of part of the Italian lands to the so-called Roman Empire as the basis for their aggression. The German invasion threatened primarily the prosperous northern Italian cities. Only the unification of the efforts of the Italian lands, with the support of the papacy, prevented a catastrophe.
After the collapse of the conquest plans of Frederick I, the authority of the papacy increased, as did the theocratic plans of the popes themselves. The popes again rushed to strengthen their political positions not only in Italy, but also in other feudal states of Europe. The theocratic policy of the popes was doomed to failure. The large centralized states that were taking shape in Europe were more and more out of control. political influence papa The defeat of the papacy in the struggle against the French monarchy led to the weakening of his power even in the Papal States. The transfer of the papal residence to Avignon in 1309 meant the actual subordination of the papal curia to French politics and the loss of control by the papacy over the feudal lords and cities of the church area.
This contributed to the strengthening of the strengthening of the independence of Rome. The fight between the townspeople and the feudal nobility was led by Cola di Rienzo. He, with the support of Roman citizens, managed to seize power in Rome. The city was declared a republic. Cola di Rienzo called on all Italian cities to unite around Rome as the capital of Italy. However, the Italian cities did not support his initiative. The power of the feudal lords in Rome was restored.
Italy failed to overcome feudal fragmentation. Discovery of America and routes to India at the end of the 15th century. destroyed the commercial predominance of Italy, strengthened its agrarianization. Italy was on the verge of her decline, which she came to at the end of the sixteenth century.
20. How was the educational and scientific processes in Medieval universities?
Medieval cities were not only economic, but also cultural centers.
From the twelfth century along with the elementary and vocational schools in the cities, a new education - secondary and higher - is becoming widespread. Scientific and intellectual initiative passes from the monasteries to this school, which is directly connected with the city.
Urban schools introduced a new, scholastic, rationalistic (i.e., logical) method of thinking into the world of medieval ideas, which opposed the mental equipment of a link to authority with the principle of its logical justification. The attitude towards books has changed - from a treasure in monastic culture, they turn in a city school into a source of knowledge obtained through critical analysis.
Gradually, teachers, separating from the church and monastic authorities, began to create their own corporations - universities. The very term "university" originally meant any association of people connected by common interests and having a legal status. From the end of the fourteenth century it began to be used in relation to the academic corporation.
The opening of universities had great importance for the cultural development of European countries. The popes were initially wary of the new educational institutions, but then considered it good to take them under their protection. Charters received from popes and kings gave the universities legal and administrative autonomy, making them independent of the secular and spiritual local authorities.
The most ancient universities are Paris, which emphasized theology, and Bologna, famous for teaching law. Formed simultaneously, they at the same time differed significantly in their internal structure, embodying the two main types of universities of the Middle Ages. The University of Bologna (and Padua) was a student organization that arose to protect the interests of law students who came to the city. Associations of students - guilds - carried out the management of university life.
But this system was not a democratic organization, since power was in the hands of a few officials - rectors and chancellery.
The University of Paris, by contrast, developed as an organization of teachers. Students could neither vote nor participate in university meetings.
Northern universities were built according to the Parisian type. Oxford adopted in general the Parisian system of organization. The main difference was that Oxford, like Cambridge, did not originate in an episcopal city and, accordingly, its subordination to episcopal authorities was weaker than in French universities.
Not all students who entered the university were able to complete the full course of sciences. Among the students there were those who wandered around the universities for years different countries and cities to hear the lectures of famous professors. Such students were called vagants - "wandering" students.
All universities had "junior" and "senior" faculties, that is, special departments, each of which taught different sciences. Students listened to lectures or participated in debates. The lecture (translated from Latin - "reading") began with the lecturer reading out important passages from the writings of ancient or medieval scholars. Then the professor commented and explained them. Debate was the discussion of contentious issues.
By the fourteenth century 60 universities appeared in Europe. This gave a powerful impetus to the development of science. Scientists in the Middle Ages were called scholastics. Many of them were lecturers at universities. They taught to reason and build evidence.
History has preserved the names of prominent scientists of that time. These are the philosopher and master Peter Abelard, the “father” of medieval scholasticism and mysticism, Archbishop Anselm of Cantebury, Abelard’s student Arnold of Brescia, a propagandist of the idea of equality and the poor church of the early Middle Ages, John Wycliffe, professor at Oxford University, doctor of theology, forerunner of the reformation European movement. Of course, this is only a small part of those who embodied the intellectual image of the medieval era.
21. What is the specificity of Europe in the Late Middle Ages (XVI-XVII centuries)?
The time period from the end of the XV-XVIII centuries. in historiography they are called differently: Late Middle Ages; early modern times; the period of initial accumulation of capital, if we are talking about progressive changes in the economy; the era of proto-industrial civilization, if we are talking about the early stage of the genesis of industrial society; the time of the Renaissance and the Reformation, associated with the emergence of new worldview ideas, forms of economic activity, methods and goals of political struggle, reflecting the collapse of traditional society.
During this period, there was a process of disintegration of feudal relations and the formation of a new type of relations - capitalist.
Not all European countries were equally affected by this process. In some of them, capitalist forms did not have noticeable success, and the growth of commodity-money relations and foreign trade relations was used by the nobility to enrich themselves by returning to corvée and serfdom.
But in the most progressive states, such as England, France, the Netherlands, there were significant changes. In the economic sphere in these countries, the feudal forms of the economy were disintegrating, the process of initial accumulation of capital, the emergence of a new economic structure, was going on. In the social sphere, the class stratification of traditional society was eroded, new social groups arose - the bourgeoisie and hired workers. In the ideological sphere, new ideological orientations arise - humanism, reformation creeds (Lutheranism, Calvinism) and radical teachings with egalitarian ideas. Significant changes also took place in the political sphere. The estate-representative states were replaced by absolute monarchies.
The late Middle Ages are also famous for the first acts of bourgeois revolutions. This is the Reformation, and the Peasant War in Germany in 1525, and the Dutch bourgeois revolution, the result of which was the formation of the first bourgeois republic in Europe - the Republic of the United Provinces (Holland).
On the basis of growing economic ties, the gradual formation of the capitalist way of life, most of the countries of Western Europe are territorially united, a common language and culture for each country is being formed, which creates conditions for the emergence of nations.
The geographical discoveries of Europeans of previously unknown lands accelerated the process of decomposition of traditional society. Portuguese, Spanish, Italian navigators rushed to search and capture them. The expeditions of H. Columbus, Vasco da Gama, F. Magellan significantly expanded the economic opportunities of the Old World. European newcomers actively developed new territories, subjected them to their influence. But the influence of geographical discoveries did not affect the Old World in the same way everywhere. Discoveries contributed to the movement of trade routes and shopping centers within Western Europe. Thus, Europe's relations with India and the New World went along new paths, this reduced the importance for Europe of Mediterranean trade and Italian cities as European trade intermediaries with overseas countries. In the sixteenth century the role of intermediaries began to play Lisbon, Seville, Antwerp.
The expansion and increase in the volume of commodity production led to progressive changes in the economic life of European countries. One of distinctive features This period was that money, which was the key to a certain power, began to play an increasingly important role in the life of Europeans. The concentration of the main financial resources in the cities in the hands of large merchants, entrepreneurs and artisans and the strengthening of their economic position also determined the growth of their political influence.
The accumulation of funds made it possible to strengthen the technical equipment of production. Progressive changes took place in the leading industry of that time - metallurgy. Its active development made it possible to move on to the improvement of labor tools, which contributed to an increase in labor productivity, an increase in the volume of output both in the field of handicraft and agricultural production.
22. How did capitalist relations arise in Western Europe?
The prerequisites for the transition from the feudal mode of production to the capitalist one were created in the era of the Late Middle Ages, during the period of the initial accumulation of capital.
The term "capitalism" comes from the late Latin word for "head". The word itself appeared quite a long time ago, back in the 12th-13th centuries. to denote "values": stocks of goods, masses of money bearing interest. The word "capitalist" is later, appears by the middle of the 17th century. to mean "owner of money". The term "capitalism" appears even later. This concept has its own clear content. In relation to property, it signifies the dominance of private ownership of the instruments and means of production, of land, of labour. In relation to the freedom of the individual, capitalism knows no non-economic forms of dependence. In cultural and ideological terms, capitalism is based on liberal secular values. It was the presence of these features that made capitalism different from traditional feudalism.
The late Middle Ages are characterized by two stages in the development of capitalism: commercial capitalism and manufacturing capitalism. The main forms of organization of production were simple capitalist cooperation and complex capitalist cooperation (manufactory). Simple capitalist cooperation was a form of cooperation of homogeneous (identical) concrete labor. This form of cooperation appeared a long time ago, but only capitalist freedom - personal and material freedom - made this cooperation a ubiquitous phenomenon.
From the middle of the sixteenth century manufacturing is gaining ground. Manufactory is a relatively large capitalist enterprise based on the division of wage labor and handicraft technology. Manufactories could not arise within the framework of the guild organization of production with their prohibitive statutes regulating the production process. Therefore, the first manufactories appeared in the countryside on the basis of crafts. Manufactory emerged from simple cooperation. Later, the forms of organization of production became more complicated. In the XVI-XVII centuries. there were not many manufactories. Existing in a feudal environment, manufactories were persecuted both by the workshops and by the state.
In parallel with the emergence of manufactory production, the process of capitalization of agricultural relations was going on. Large owners began to lease land to peasants or wealthy townspeople. The initial form of such a lease was sharecropping (renting land for temporary use). The sharecropper paid rent in the form of a certain share of the harvest. The sharecropping rent was of a semi-feudal character. In England, sharecropping gave way to the capitalist form of entrepreneurship - farming. The farmer also rented land, but gave a fixed amount of money as payment for this. In the future, he could buy the land and become its owner. Such an organization of labor was not typical in medieval Europe. In France, not to mention Germany, Italy, Spain, the development of capitalism in agriculture proceeded much more slowly.
In the countries of the irreversible development of capitalism, technical and economic progress changed the social and political image of states.
Here the traditional stratification of society was actively changing. The third estate, the bourgeoisie, strengthened its capabilities.
The term "bourgeoisie" comes from the French word "burg" - "city". Linguistically, the bourgeoisie are the inhabitants of cities. However, it would be wrong to associate the emergence of the bourgeoisie only with the evolution of medieval townspeople. The bourgeoisie consisted of various strata: nobles, merchants, usurers, urban intelligentsia, wealthy peasants.
With the development of the bourgeoisie, a class of hired workers took shape.
Changes in the economy, social and political spheres led to the strengthening of the dictate of the state, to the strengthening of absolutism. Absolutist regimes were of various types (conservative, enlightened, etc.)
According to F. Braudel, the violence of the state was a guarantee of inner peace, the safety of roads, the reliability of markets and cities.
23. How did the Great geographical discoveries and colonial conquests of the late XV - early XVI centuries take place?
The great geographical discoveries played an important role in the transition to the bourgeois mode of production. This historical process was caused by the development of the productive forces of society, the growth of commodity-money relations for the further circulation of funds, since money gradually became a means of circulation.
There were no sufficient sources of gold and silver within the European world. At the same time, according to the Europeans, inexhaustible riches were hidden in the East: spices, precious metals, silk fabrics, etc. Control over the East became a cherished goal. Gold was sought by representatives of all classes. Knowing about the existence of India and China, travelers looked for accessible ways to them, equipped expeditions.
Equipping expensive and complex expeditions could be afforded by strong centralized monarchies. The implementation of these measures could not be possible without innovations in shipbuilding and navigation. By the middle of the XV century. in Western Europe, large sea vessels were built that could make long voyages. A compass, geographical maps and other devices began to be used.
The impetus for the search for sea routes to the East was the barriers set up by the Ottoman Empire and the trade relations of Europe with the Near East. In this regard, they looked for workarounds to India by sea around the coast of Africa.
The pioneers in this direction were Portugal and Spain. Portuguese navigators in 1486 managed to go around the southern part of Africa, and in 1498 Vasco da Gama reached the shores of India. And the first trip around the world was committed in 1519-1522. expedition of F. Magellan and marked the beginning of the development Pacific Ocean. Many geographical discoveries were made in the 16th century. English and French sailors in North America, as well as Russian sailors in Northeast Asia, by the middle of the 17th century. out on the shores of the Pacific Ocean.
The results of the Great geographical discoveries were the expansion of the world market, the emergence of new specific products, the rivalry between European monarchies in an effort to seize Asian treasures, and the formation of a colonial system. At the same time, the center of the intersection of world trade routes moved from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic Ocean, which had its consequences - the strengthening of the economic positions of England, Spain, Portugal, Holland and France.
The quality of manufactured goods has increased dramatically. Trade turnover included new products: tobacco, coffee, tea, cocoa, cotton, corn. The colonies became a market for manufactured goods for Europe, especially tools. As a result of this, there was a crisis of the shop system, which could not satisfy the growing demand. The medieval organization of labor was forced to give way to capitalist manufacture, which increased the scale of production due to the division of labor. The result is the concentration of commercial and industrial capital, the formation of a bourgeois class.
24. What did the Reformation lead to in Germany?
The Reformation was the first act of action of the new bourgeois class, which had arisen in the depths of feudal society, against the feudal system.
The Reformation began in the spiritual sphere, with the bourgeoisie speaking out against Catholicism, the ideology of feudalism. The name of this phenomenon comes from the Latin word reformatio - transformation.
This movement flared up like a bright flame in Germany.
The Reformation movement here began with the speech of the Wittenberg University professor Martin Luther against indulgences in 1517 and ended with the Peace of Augsburg in 1555. The Peasants' War of 1524-1525 became the culminating point of the movement.
By the sixteenth century The Catholic Church in Germany had a decisive influence on all sides public life and was also the largest landowner. Church fees hurt material interests various social strata of German society. Catholicism was especially unacceptable to the emerging bourgeoisie.
The teaching of Catholicism about the "fair price" (the requirement to be content with a moderate surcharge on the cost of goods) significantly cut merchant profits; the prohibition to charge interest was also in the economic interests of creditors. But most of all, the German burghers resented the high cost of the cult. Various offerings and duties in favor of the church, from the point of view of the burghers, diverted a significant part of the national wealth from productive use. Therefore, it is no coincidence that it was the German burghers that were the main bearer of reform ideas.
However, other classes of German society did not stand aside from the reform movement. It was attended by representatives of the nobility, as well as the lower ranks of the city and village. The nobility and royal power were impressed by the performance of the burghers against the secular power of the church. The care of the Catholic Church was a burden for kings and emperors, they also actively sought an independent existence.
Martin Luther was the herald of the German Reformation. He, having chosen the career of a theologian, began to move more and more away from Catholic orthodoxy. In his opinion, faith is a purely individual act. The Word of God is found in Holy Scripture. Luther formulated the "95 Theses" on theology, in which he defended the idea of the need not for the remission of sins, but for their prevention. In 1520, M. Luther published pamphlets important for the fate of the Reformation. In them, he called not only to destroy the power of the pope, but also to secularize church lands, stop persecution on charges of heresy, etc.
In 1521, the social movement for the reform of the church in Germany took on a large scale. Luther's teaching found many adherents among the German population. Luther was supported by Elector (ruler of the region) Friedrich of Saxony. When M. Luther was outlawed, it was Friedrich of Saxony who offered refuge to Luther.
M. Luther linked the fate of the Reformation with princely power, he did not call for a radical change in the feudal system.
But M. Luther's calls for reforms radicalized the rank and file of the people. The climax of the social movement of the Reformation era in Germany was the Peasants' War, which began in 1954 with the performance of peasants against their masters in the Landgraviate of Stühlingen on the Upper Rhine. B. Hubmayer and T. Müntzer became the spokesmen for the people's understanding of the Reformation. They combined the complaints of the peasants into a common program called "Article Letter". This program was not limited to concessions to the peasants, but proclaimed the idea of a radical revolution and building a society on the basis of social justice.
The peasant uprising was put down. In Germany, the princely reformation won, which strengthened the power of the princes and carried out the secularization of church lands in favor of the princes. This consolidated the German fragmentation. This was the main result of the social movement.
Nevertheless, the Reformation movement was reflected in the cultural life of Germany. The public upsurge was an important stimulus for the development national identity, German, a new religious system - Protestantism.
25. What was the result of the Reformation in England?
The English Reformation, due to the same reasons as in other countries, at the same time had its own important features. If everywhere the political and social orientation towards a break with Rome manifested itself at the final stage of the Reformation, then in England it became obvious from the very beginning - here the Reformation began with a state political action.
The English Reformation was at first royal with a hostile attitude towards it by the masses, then it turned into a bourgeois-noble movement, expressing the dissatisfaction of these classes with the nature of the changes that had taken place, and, finally, gave rise to a broad popular movement with a pronounced socio-political orientation.
Henry VIII Tudor initiated the Reformation. The conflict with Rome began with the speech of the English king against the annates (collection in favor of the Catholic Church from persons who received a vacant church position). Initially, this fee was equal to the annual income from this position.
The struggle against the annates united all sections of English society. In 1532 a law was passed refusing to pay the annates to the papal treasury.
Some historians believe that the reason for the king's break with Rome was a purely personal matter. The king was determined to divorce his wife Catherine of Aragon. But the divorce became a favorable occasion for breaking with Rome. The Pope refused to divorce the king and did not legalize the second marriage of Henry VIII with Anne Boleyn. When Henry divorced, threats of excommunication rained down from Rome. And then in 1534 the king issues an act of supremacy (supremacy). This was the beginning of the English Reformation. By this act, the king became the head of the national church. Recognition of the legality of the act of supremacy was mandatory for all subjects of the kingdom. Refusal of it was regarded as high treason and punishable by death.
The decisive actions of the king led to the fact that Rome excommunicated him from the church. The secularization of church lands further alienated the king from Rome.
The decisive actions of the royal administration led to a split in the English aristocracy. Part of it (North, West and Ireland) organized the Catholic Party - the League of the North. Catholics in England strengthened their position during the reign of Mary Tudor, a supporter of Catholicism. In order to strengthen her position, she decided to rely on Spain and become engaged to the Spanish king Philip II. Having married the English queen, he began to strive to seize all power in England. But this was opposed by the English lords. Then Mary Tudor begins terror against the reformers. The Pope forgives rebellious England. But, fighting the Reformation, the British government did not cancel the secularization of church lands. The queen was afraid to take this measure, as she could face active resistance from the new nobility - the gentry. And these fears were not unfounded. In the middle of the XVI century. a wave of anti-Catholic unrest swept through England, in which the townspeople and gentry participated.
In 1558, after the death of Mary Tudor, Elizabeth I, daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, became Queen of England. The new queen enjoyed the support of the bourgeois strata. Elizabeth I canceled all counter-reformation acts of Mary Tudor and continued the work of her father Henry VIII. In 1571, "39 articles of the creed" were adopted, they completed the Reformation in the country and approved the new Anglican Church. It retained Catholic features and affirmed Protestant ones.
The church was personally subordinate to the royal authority, which helped Elizabeth in her fight against Catholicism in the country. The decisive measures of the queen led to the intensification of the actions of the League of the North. The Catholics relied on the Scottish Queen Mary Stuart, whom they sought to put on the English throne.
Elizabeth I had to fight not only with the Catholic opposition, but also with the English Calvinists, whose social base was the commercial bourgeoisie. The appearance of opposition in the person of the Calvinists testified to the beginning of the crisis of English absolutism. Cracks appeared in the former alliance between the royal power and the early bourgeoisie, which, as they grow, will cause a confrontation in 1640.
26. What is the specificity of the Reformation in France?
The reform movement in France had its own characteristics. The royal power long before the Reformation managed to subjugate the Catholic Church. In 1438, the “Pragmatic Sanction” was signed, according to which a national Gallican church was established in France, which, without breaking with Rome, managed to protect itself from the excessive claims of the pope.
But the reform movement affected France. Here it was represented by two streams: Lutheran and Calvinist. The first stream soon dried up, while the second plunged the country into the abyss of long civil wars.
At the end of the 40s. XVI century a reformation movement was born in the country, which subsequently received worldwide distribution - Calvinism. The rapid growth of Calvinism and its militant nature frightened the government, and it began repressive actions against its supporters. The teachings of J. Calvin did not become widespread among the bourgeoisie, it was more actively used by the feudal nobility to carry out reactionary separatist plans.
The further development of the Reformation is associated with civil wars that lasted from 1559 to 1598. The civil wars in France actually resulted in the struggle of the old feudal nobility against the political centralization of the country. But they were religious in color and formally represented the struggle of the Calvinists (Huguenots) with the Catholics.
At the head of the Calvinists was the feudal aristocracy of the south of France - the Bourbons, Conde and others, the southern petty and middle feudal nobility; southern and southwestern cities. Separatist sentiments were strong in this environment.
The advanced bourgeoisie of the North, on the contrary, was interested in the strong power of the king, that is, they supported the process of centralization of the country. In the course of civil wars within this predominantly Catholic camp, a reactionary group of court aristocracy took shape, headed by the Duke of Guise. Its reactionary nature manifested itself in the struggle for power with the ruling Valois dynasty.
The first stage of the war ended in 1570 with the conclusion of peace in Saint-Germain, which brought success to the Huguenots. They were allowed to hold public office, Protestant worship was allowed throughout the kingdom.
Catherine de Medici, who ruled France at that time, found it beneficial to rapprochement with the Huguenots, this allowed her to have a counterbalance to the Guise party. She called the Huguenots to court. But Catherine was afraid of the strengthening of the Huguenots, and she decided to get ahead of events and destroy the Huguenot leaders. In such an atmosphere, the wedding of Henry, King of Navarre, with the king's sister Margaret of Valois was celebrated. This marriage was to seal the peace between the Huguenots and the king. But Catherine de Medici took advantage of this event differently. The Huguenot aristocracy and representatives of the nobility from the southern provinces gathered in Paris for the wedding. It was an opportunity to do away with the Huguenots. Catherine and Charles IX decided to use the hatred of the Guises for the Huguenots and put an end to them at once. On August 24, 1572, on the day of St. Bartholomew, between 2 and 4 am, the alarm sounded. The massacre of the taken by surprise Huguenots began. The massacre continued for several days and spread to the province.
This event did not weaken the Huguenot movement. The Huguenots in the south of the country created their own organization - the Huguenot confederation with its own army, tax system and self-government. But in the second stage of the civil wars, the goal of the Huguenots was to fight not so much against the Guises, but rather against the Valois. State unity country was called into question.
After the death of Charles IX in 1574, the Guise party became more active, which openly switched to the path of anti-dynastic struggle. Fearing the strengthening of the Huguenots, Giza created their own organization - the Catholic League.
The struggle of the Guises with the dynastic Valois dynasty ended in their defeat.
In 1594 Henry of Navarre came to power in France. He converted to Catholicism, and in 1598 the Edict of Nantes was issued in the country, which regulated the religious issue. The Catholic religion was recognized as dominant in France, but the edict allowed the confession of Protestantism. The royal court managed to maintain the integrity of the country.
27. What was the humanistic ideology of the Renaissance, its main features and social origins?
From the second half of the fourteenth century. in the cultural life of medieval Europe there is an important turning point associated with the emergence of a new early bourgeois ideology and culture.
Since early capitalist relations originated and began to develop primarily in Italy, an early bourgeois culture began to take shape in this country, which was called the "Renaissance". It reached its full bloom by the end of the 15th - beginning of the 16th centuries.
The term "Renaissance" (often used in the French form - "Renaissance") was first used by the Italian artist G. Vasari.
The ideological content of the Renaissance culture is usually denoted by the term "humanism", which comes from the word "humanitas" - human. The term "humanists" originated in the sixteenth century. But already in the fifteenth century. Renaissance figures used the word humanitas to refer to their culture, denoting education, moreover, secular. Secular sciences (studia humana) were opposed to ecclesiastical sciences (studia divina).
The ideology of humanism carried a new attitude towards the world and man himself. Contrary to the dominant teaching of the Church in previous centuries about earthly life as sinful and joyless, humanists discovered the multicolored world of reality in all its living and concrete diversity. They created the ideal of a man greedily striving for the blessings of life.
An important feature of the ideology of humanism was individualism. Humanists put the human being at the center of attention. They show a passionate interest in the inner world of a person, in the individual originality of his feelings and experiences, in their subtlest shades. Humanism proclaimed the greatness of man, the power of his mind, his ability to improve.
The individualism of the humanists had a progressive anti-feudal sound. At the same time, this worldview concealed in itself a propensity for such a statement of personality, for which the desire to satisfy needs became an end in itself. The absolutization of individualism opened the way to the pursuit of pleasure without any restrictions. In addition, the ideal of the development of the individual personality put forward by the humanists had in mind only a select few and did not extend to the broad masses.
Humanists showed great interest in the culture of Ancient Greece and Rome. In this culture, they were attracted by its secular nature, life-affirming orientation. She opened the world of beauty to humanists and had a huge impact on all areas of Renaissance art.
The admiration for ancient culture manifested itself most strongly in Italy. The humanists perceived the history of Rome as their national past. Here, in Italy, in Florence in the middle of the fifteenth century. The Platonic Academy was founded, headed by Marcio Ficino, which satisfied the interest of lovers of ancient philosophy.
Humanists returned to Europe the ancient heritage lost in the Middle Ages. They searched for ancient manuscripts and published them.
The humanists were also interested in the problems of ethics. They were concerned about the issues of human behavior in society, the goal that a person should set for himself in his activities, since the new ideology meant a reassessment of all human actions.
The creators of the humanistic ideology were scientists, doctors, lawyers, teachers, artists, sculptors, architects, writers, etc. They made up a new social stratum - the intelligentsia. This category of people engaged in mental work played a big role in the social life of that time. Invention in the middle of the fifteenth century. book printing made the works of the humanists accessible to a wider circle of educated people and contributed to the strengthening of the influence of the ideas of the Renaissance. New ideas, embodied in the images of literature and art, had a special power of influence.
The cornerstone of a new worldview is laid by Dante Alighieri. His "Divine Comedy" became the first hymn to the dignity of man. This position was developed by F. Petrarch, a philosopher and brilliant poet, who is considered the founder of the humanist movement in Italy. The names of such humanists as D. Manetti, L. Valla, Pico della Mirandola, L. Bruni, C. Salutati, P. Bracciolini and others are also widely known.
28. What is the culture of the Renaissance in Italy, (its most important achievements in the field of culture and art)?
The culture of the Renaissance was not the property of Italy alone, but it originated in Italy, and the path of its development was exceptionally consistent. Italian Renaissance art went through several stages. Chronologically, the Italian Renaissance is divided into: Proto-Renaissance (Pre-Renaissance) - the second half of the 13th - 14th centuries; early Renaissance - XV century; High Renaissance - the end of the 15th - the first third of the 16th centuries; late Renaissance - the end of the sixteenth century.
The main type of spiritual activity of the Renaissance was art. It became for the people of the Renaissance what religion was in the Middle Ages, in modern times science and technology. Not without reason, in the Renaissance, the idea was defended that the ideal person should be an artist. A work of art most fully expressed both the ideal of a harmoniously organized world and the place of man in it. All forms of art were subordinated to this task to varying degrees.
The aesthetic and artistic ideal was most fully expressed by sculpture and painting. And it is no coincidence. The art of the Renaissance sought to cognize and display the real world, its beauty, wealth, diversity. And painting in this regard had more opportunities than other arts.
The thirst for knowledge, which so distinguished the personality of the Renaissance, first of all resulted in the form of artistic knowledge. The art of that time solved many problems. A new system of artistic vision of the world was developed. Renaissance artists developed the principles, discovered the laws of direct linear perspective. The creators of the theory of perspective were Brunelleschi, Masaccio, Alberti, Leonardo da Vinci. The discovery of perspective was of great importance: it helped to expand the range of depicted phenomena, to include space, landscape, and architecture in painting.
Florence, the most advanced city-state of Italy of the Late Middle Ages, is considered the birthplace of Renaissance art.
The first to take a decisive step towards a new type of art was the Florentine painter Giotto di Bondone, who outlined the path along which its development went: the growth of realistic moments, the filling of religious forms with secular content, the gradual transition from flat images to three-dimensional ones.
The largest masters of the early Renaissance were F. Brunellesco, Donatelo, Verrocchio, Masaccio, S. Botticelli and others. These masters strove for monumentality, the creation of heroic images. However, they were limited mainly to linear perspective and hardly noticed the air environment.
In the High Renaissance, geometrism does not end, but deepens. But something new is added to it: spirituality, psychologism, the desire to convey the inner world of a person. An aerial perspective is being developed, the materiality of forms is achieved not only by volume and plasticity, but also by chiaroscuro. The art of the High Renaissance was most fully expressed by Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo. They personified the main values of the Renaissance: intelligence, harmony and power. It is no coincidence that they are called the titans of the Renaissance, meaning their versatility.
Leonardo da Vinci was not only an artist, but also a talented sculptor, architect, musician, engineer, inventor, mathematician, and anatomist.
Another great master Michelangelo Buonarroti combined the gift of a brilliant sculptor, painter and architect. In addition, he was one of the great Italian poets of his time. Rafael Santi was also extremely versatile. He was one of the best portrait painters of the Renaissance.
The term "Late Renaissance" is applied to the Venetian Renaissance. Venice has long maintained close trade ties with Byzantium, the Arab East, traded with India. Having reworked Gothic and oriental traditions, Venice has developed its own special style, which is characterized by colorful, romantic painting. For the Venetians, color problems come to the fore, the materiality of the image is achieved by color gradations. The largest Venetian masters are Giorgione, Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto.
29. How did literature and art develop in the era of the developed Middle Ages?
The culture of the Middle Ages created new artistic styles, a new urban way of life, new economy, prepared the minds of people for the use of mechanical devices and technology. The medieval era left many achievements of spiritual culture.
The activation of cultural life in the Middle Ages is associated with the emergence and growth of cities. The circle of spiritual inquiries and interests constantly increased among the townspeople.
In the cities, the sphere of secular education began to actively develop - schools and universities. In this intellectual atmosphere, Latin-language literature flourishes with pronounced secular tendencies: adventure literature, epistolary writings, urban chronicles.
A special place in this literature is occupied by the work of vagants (wandering students). The vagantes were associated with the traditions of Latin poetry, borrowed images and poetic rhythms from it. But the Vagants also turned to folklore, translating Latin into folk songs, preaching a life-affirming attitude to being.
From the twelfth century in the countries of Western Europe, national literary languages begin to take shape. During this period, a heroic epic is written in the folk languages, which previously existed only in oral presentation.
The most significant work of the heroic epic in France is the Song of Roland. It has a powerful patriotic theme. The largest monument of the German heroic epic is the Nibelungenlied.
With the completion of the formation of the estates of feudal society, the ideology of chivalry was formed, which was reflected, in particular, in chivalric literature. This literature was distinguished by a secular character and was alien to ascetic morality. Most clearly, this literature declared itself in poetry, called courtly (court). It was developed by troubadours in southern France, trouvers in northern France, minnesiergers in Germany, and minstrels in England. Courtly poetry was an example of love lyrics.
Urban literature played an important role in the development of secular and realistic motifs in medieval culture. In the cities, a genre of realistic poetic short story, urban satirical epic emerges. His largest monument was the Romance of the Fox, which took shape in France for many decades and was translated into many European languages. Another outstanding work of urban literature is the allegorical poem "The Romance of the Rose", written in France in the 13th century.
The greatest poet in the fourteenth century. was an Englishman D. Chaucer. His best work, The Canterbury Tales, a collection of short stories in verse, paints a vivid picture of England at that time. In France in the fifteenth century the poetry of F. Villon stands out. A deep interest in a person and his experiences allows F. Villon to be attributed to the forerunners of the Renaissance in France.
Originating in Italy, the ideas of the Renaissance became widespread in the culture of Western Europe. But here the Renaissance was lagging behind the Italian by a whole century.
The literature of the early Renaissance is characterized by a short story, especially a comic one, with an anti-feudal orientation, glorifying an enterprising and free from prejudice personality. The High Renaissance is marked by the flourishing of the heroic poem. The original epic of this time was the work of F. Rabelais "Gargantua and Pantagruel". In the late Renaissance, characterized by a crisis in the concept of humanism and an awareness of the prosaic nature of the emerging bourgeois society, the pastoral genres of the novel and drama developed. The dramas of W. Shakespeare and the novels of M. Cervantes, based on tragic or tragicomic conflicts between a heroic personality and a system of social life unworthy of a person, became the highest rise of this era.
In pictorial art, the German artist A. Dürer becomes the founder of revivalist ideas. He worked in different genres. But he distinguished himself most in the portrait genre. One of the deepest paintings of the portrait genre, in which A. Dürer summed up his views on a person, is the diptych "Four Apostles".
Representatives of the fine arts of the Renaissance in France were the painters J. Fouquet, F. Clouet, in Spain D. Velazquez, in Holland - the brilliant Rembrandt.
30. What role did the Christian church play in the Middle Ages? What is the essence of the ideological foundations of medieval Christianity?
X the Christian church in the Middle Ages played the role of a connecting factor for European states. At the same time, the church also performed an identification function. After 1054 (the break with the Byzantine patriarchy), the church becomes the center of the political life of Europe (Vatican City, Rome, Italy).
According to the doctrine of Augustine the Blessed, the church asserted and defended its priority over secular power. Not a single king could challenge the privileges of the pope, interfere in the political life of his own state. Of course, secular rulers were looking for ways to neutralize the strong and unnecessary influence of the Catholic Church. But these victories were the exception rather than the rule.
The main instruments of struggle against recalcitrant monarchs were the financial press and the institute of anathema. During the period of feudal irritability, the kings were most dependent on the will of the pope. The struggle for the integrity of the state required a lot of money, because the rebellious feudal lords were often richer than the overlord. Monetary assistance was provided in exchange for expanding the pope's influence in the region.
If the king turned out to obey the head of the Vatican, then the mechanism of anathema was activated. Anathema? church curse, eternal excommunication of an objectionable person. Anathema entailed terrible, irreparable consequences.
The French king Henry VII fell into this trap, notorious for his campaign in Canossa, where, after incredible humiliation, he was nevertheless forgiven by the pope.
Unlike secular power, the Catholic Church had a firm financial income? church tithes from peasants, generous gifts from powerful feudal lords, and benefits provided by the monarch.
During the early and middle Middle Ages, the Catholic Church controlled all spheres of human life: from politics to the spiritual world of the individual. Every step a person took with the permission of the clergy. This position has led the church to a double morality. The Church demanded from parishioners strict observance of all moral norms, but allowed itself the impossible.
Education was controlled by "black and white cassocks", everything that was contrary to official morality was removed from the programs of schools and universities. The natural development of science was hampered by dogmatism: thus, among the victims of the geocentric model of the world was D. Bruno, who was declared a heretic. Another talented scientist, G. Galileo, who was more diplomatic, had to beg forgiveness for a long time.
But these circumstances do not negate all the positive things that were done by the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages. The monasteries were the center of culture; many of them contained evidence of the great deeds of the Roman Empire. Competent monks painstakingly rewrote ancient scrolls.
The Church encouraged the development of such genres as all kinds of lives of the saints and chronicles "from the Nativity of Christ." Note that the Orthodox Church led the chronology from the Creation of the world.
In order to dominate the minds, hearts, and souls of its contemporaries, the church practiced various methods of tracking changes in society. Of course, the methods chosen were not the cleanest, although they were effective. In the arsenal? surveillance, denunciations and the good work of the Inquisition. There was an ongoing "witch hunt". As a result, hundreds of thousands of "sorceresses" were burned at the stake. Mass executions were practiced, up to 500 women were burned at the stake per day. The inquisitors, they are also the gloomy tools of the Dominicans (the Order of St. Dominic), in search of heretics, were guided by the prescriptions of the treatise "Hammer of the Witches". The accusations were absurd, the punishments? inhuman, cruel. Torture was used to force the victim to sign his own sentence. Most Popular? iron maiden hug, Spanish boot, hanging by the hair, water torture. As a sign of protest, no less terrible “black masses” swept across Europe, which caused a new surge in the “witch hunt”.
The influence of the Catholic Church began to decline sharply in the late Middle Ages, with the end of the process of centralization. Secular power noticeably ousted the clergy from making state decisions, which resulted in some liberalization of all aspects of life.
The stable position of the church turned out to be in those states of Europe where the pace economic growth noticeably lagged behind the leaders (Italy, Spain).
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The Middle Ages ... When we think about them, the walls of knightly castles and the bulk of Gothic cathedrals grow before our mental gaze, we recall the crusades and strife, the fires of the Inquisition and feudal tournaments - the whole textbook set of signs of the era. But these are external signs, a kind of scenery against which people act. What are they? What was their way of seeing the world, what guided their behavior? If you try to restore the spiritual image of the people of the Middle Ages, as they lived, it will turn out that this time is almost completely absorbed by the thick shadow cast on it by classical antiquity, on the one hand, and the Renaissance, on the other. Speaking of backwardness, lack of culture, lack of rights, they resort to the expression "medieval". “Middle Ages” is almost a synonym for everything gloomy and reactionary. But it was during this period that all European peoples (French, Spaniards, Italians, English, etc.) were formed, the main European languages \u200b\u200bwere formed, national states were formed, the borders of which generally coincide with modern ones. Many values that are perceived in our time as universal, ideas that we take for granted, originate in the Middle Ages (the idea of the value of human life, the idea that an ugly body is not an obstacle to spiritual perfection, attention to the inner world of man, belief in the impossibility of appearing naked in public places, the idea of love as a complex and multifaceted feeling, and much more). Modern civilization arose as a result of the internal restructuring of medieval civilization and in this sense is its direct successor.
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The role of religion and the Catholic Church in medieval culture is great. For a long time, the church had a monopoly on education. In the monasteries, ancient manuscripts were preserved and copied, commented on in relation to the needs of theology. ancient philosophers, first of all, the idol of the Middle Ages Aristotle. Schools were originally only attached to monasteries; medieval universities were, as a rule, associated with the church. Almost all medieval culture was religious in nature, and all sciences were subordinated to theology and saturated with it. The Church acted as a preacher of Christian morality, striving to inculcate Christian norms of behavior throughout society. She opposed the endless strife, urged the warring parties not to offend civilians and follow some rules in relation to each other. The clergy cared for the elderly, sick and orphans. All this supported the authority of the church in the eyes of the population. Feudal property and subsistence farming shaped a chivalric culture. At the same time, an urban culture was being formed. In the era of feudalism, the three main world religions finally take shape: Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam. In the Middle Ages, Christianity broke up into: Orthodoxy, Catholicism, Protestantism. Forms of artistic and cultural activities (icon painting, mosaics, architecture, music, book miniatures, etc.) are associated with the establishment of monotheism (belief in one God).
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The ruling class of secular feudal lords - chivalry in the broad sense of the word - developed by the 13th century a complex ritual of customs, manners, secular, court and military knightly entertainment. Of the latter, in the Middle Ages, the so-called knightly tournaments were especially widespread - public competitions of a knight in the ability to wield weapons, reflecting the military profession of a feudal lord.
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In the chivalrous environment, military songs were created that glorified the exploits of the knights. Later cycles of military songs turned into whole poems. The most famous of these was the "Song of Roland", which arose in northern France in the 11th century. Its plot was the campaigns of Charlemagne in Spain, presented in an idealized form. The same heroic poem with features of the glorification of the national hero was the “Poem of Side”, which appeared in the 12th century in Spain, which reflected the centuries-old struggle of the Spanish peoples against the Arabs. The third largest poem created in Germany in early XIII century, there was the Nibelungenlied, in which fairy-tale elements were intertwined with historical legends (Brunegilda, Attila, etc.) and knightly life of a later time (XII-XIII centuries).
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In the 12th century, chivalric novels appeared, setting out various chivalric adventures in prose, as the knights of different countries of Europe got to know each other more and were enriched with impressions from distant countries during the crusades to the East. The most famous were the cycles of novels about the ancient British King Arthur, which were read in the castles of England and France, and the novels of Amadis of Gaulle, read in Spain, France and Italy. A large place in chivalric literature was occupied by love lyrics. Minnesingers in Germany, troubadours in southern France and trouvers in northern France, who sang the love of knights for their ladies, were an indispensable accessory to the royal courts and castles of the largest feudal lords.
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England, 1190. The darkest period of the British Middle Ages. King Richard the Lionheart is fighting in a crusade to liberate the Holy Land from the infidels. The nobility, led by Prince John Landless, left to look after order in the country, keeps ordinary peasants in a tight grip, squeezing every drop out of them and keeping them in obedience by force of arms. Only one person dared to challenge arbitrariness, leading a small detachment of outcasts. People know him by the name of Robin Hood. After a long absence, Robin Loxley returned to England from crusade. Joyless was his return to a country he did not recognize. Once the birthplace of freedom, it became the patrimony of the Norman oppressors, where anyone who dared to raise his head immediately lost it on the chopping block or found a noose on it. Even the Saxon nobles were not free from harassment: Robin's father, Lord Loxley, died, and the Sheriff of Nottingham appropriated all his possessions, declaring that Robin had fallen in battle. Robin went to Lincoln to ask for help from his relative, but Sir Godwin mysteriously disappeared. Deprived of ancestral possessions, outlawed, Robin wandered until he met a group of peasants who fled to the forest from extortions and lived by robbery. He saved them and the grateful peasants declared Robin their leader. At first, Robin limited himself to small raids on Prince John's tax collectors, taking all their gold from them and distributing it to impoverished peasants. But when he learned that King Richard was being held captive and Prince John did not intend to pay a ransom for him, our hero decided to start a rebellion. Thus began the legend of Sherwood. The legend of Robin of Loxley, nicknamed Hood, a criminal loyal to the king who robbed the rich and helped the poor. Through the depths of time, numerous legends have come down to us about a romantic robber, whose name, oddly enough, is now more widely known than during his lifetime.
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Coats of arms of the cities of medieval EuropeCities were built along the banks of rivers, along large tracts or around castles. Almost every city is surrounded by walls. Around the city walls are gardens and orchards of the townspeople. The city gates were locked at sunset and unlocked at dawn. In the center is the main square, on which the most important buildings were located: the central cathedral, the town hall or meeting room, the ruler's house or castle. Streets radiated from the square. They were not straight, they twisted, intersected, forming small squares, they were connected by lanes and passages. Rich houses were located closer to the city center, further - houses and workshops of artisans, completely on the outskirts - slums. Not far from the city gates are merchants' farmsteads. Near the port - a port (river, sea, fishing) quarter.
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"Carolingian Renaissance" The heyday of culture, relating to the era of the first emperor Charlemagne and the Carolingian dynasty (8th - 9th centuries), which was marked by reforms in the administrative, judicial and ecclesiastical spheres, as well as the revival of ancient culture. The capital of the empire, Aachen, became the center of this renaissance. The most significant surviving building is the chapel of the imperial residence in Aachen, an example of the monumental solidity of Carolingian architecture, following early Christian models. An innovation can be considered the western aisle - the porch on this side of the church, surrounded by towers. After a significant expansion under Charlemagne (742 - 814), Aachen became the center of the Frankish empire, and after Charles was canonized in 1165, one of the most significant centers of pilgrimage in Europe. The interior of the palace chapel in Aachen, built under Charlemagne
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Ottonian art - the art of the "Holy Roman Empire" of the 10th - 11th centuries. The name comes from the dynasty founded by Otto the Great. This period is known mainly from the fine and applied arts. The church architecture of this period was greatly influenced by the Carolingian style: basilicas were built with eastern and western choirs and transepts or with a carefully designed western apse, decorated with mosaics and frescoes. Towers and massive walls with small windows made these basilicas look like fortresses. Ottonian art had a great influence on all European art and was the basis for the Romanesque style. Gernrod Church of St. Cyriacus
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Romanesque style - the artistic style of Europe in the 11th - 12th centuries. The term was initially applied only to architecture, and later to other art forms. This is a style that was formed simultaneously in France, Italy, Germany, Spain and England in the 11th century. Despite certain national differences, it became the first pan-European style, which distinguishes it from the styles of the post-Roman period. A distinctive feature of the Romanesque style in architecture is massiveness, heaviness, wall thickness, which was emphasized by narrow window openings, which gave majesty to the appearance of buildings.
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The spirit of militancy permeates the Romanesque temples, dating back to the early Christian basilica. In accordance with the ideology of Christianity, the Romanesque temple was divided into three parts: a vestibule (“narthex”), ships or naves and an altar. At the same time, symbolically, these parts were likened to the human, angelic and divine worlds; or body, soul and spirit. The eastern (altar) part of the temple symbolized paradise and was dedicated to Christ; the western one is hell and was dedicated to the scenes of the Last Judgment; northern - personified death, darkness, evil; and the south was dedicated to the New Testament. The passage of the believer from the western portal (the entrance to the temple) to the altar symbolized the path of his soul from darkness and hell to light and paradise. Sometimes in Romanesque cathedrals the entrance was arranged not from the west, but to the north. Then the path of the believer ran from death and evil to good and eternal life. The composition in the Middle Ages was understood literally as folding, drawing up a new one from ready-made forms. The Romanesque cathedral seems to be composed of several independent volumes. one of key features Romanesque architecture is the use of vaults for ceiling coverings. No wonder many modern architectural historians call the Romanesque style "the style of a semicircular arch."
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Massive towers with tent tops; thick walls with narrow windows, almost devoid of decorations; the simplicity and severity of the lines, emphasizing the aspiration upwards, inspired the idea of human impotence and helped the believer to focus on the ongoing worship. The clarity of the silhouette, the predominance of horizontal lines, the calm, stern strength of Romanesque architecture were a vivid embodiment of the religious ideal of this time, which spoke of the formidable omnipotence of the deity. St. Michael's Church in Hildesheim Germany XI-XII centuries Notre Dame la Grande Cathedral XII century, Poitiers France Cathedral in Worms 1181 -1234 gg.
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The knight's castle, the monastery ensemble, the church are the main types of Romanesque buildings that have come down to our time. From the 12th century, urban culture was born. In a medieval knight's castle, a new type of culture is being formed - secular. Life in the saddle, constant raids and battles left their mark on the architecture of the knightly medieval castle-fortress, which was built in well-defended places, most often on a hill. The main building in the castle - the lord's dwelling - was a donjon (a tower in the middle of the courtyard). The lower floor of the donjon was occupied by pantries, the second - by the owner's housing, on the third floor there was a room for servants and guards, the dungeon was occupied by a prison, and the roof remained free for sentinels. Since the donjon was often the last refuge of the inhabitants of the castle, the entrance to it was arranged immediately on the second floor (up to 15 meters from the ground), where a light staircase led up during the siege. However, it was inconvenient to live all the time in the tower, and in the XII century, more and more often, a separate house of the feudal lord was built next to the donjon. The castle complex also included a separate prayer chapel and a mass outbuildings in the courtyard. The houses of the feudal lords turned out to be especially magnificent among the lords of royal blood. These were entire palaces. Heated living rooms were then called caminata (after the fireplaces that were installed there).
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Leaning Tower of Pisa What is the Leaning Tower of Pisa? Usually this world-famous building is usually considered as a kind of independent structure, standing somewhere on the outskirts and living its own independent life ... Nothing like that. The Leaning Tower of Pisa is part of the ensemble of the city's Cathedral of Santa Maria Maggiore in Pisa and is its bell tower.
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The famous cathedral ensemble in Pisa is a masterpiece of medieval Italian architecture. Its creation began in 1063. On a green meadow, the buildings of a white marble five-nave cathedral, a bell tower and a baptistery-baptistery were laid. Thus, one of the outstanding works middle ages. The composition of the cathedral goes back to the ideas of Byzantine architecture of the 5th century. This is an outstanding Romanesque cathedral, which makes an amazing impression due to the jewelry finish of its columns and arches, creating a toylike feeling. It is famous for its size. The cathedral complex in Pisa is unparalleled in the world. The three buildings of the complex - the Cathedral, the Baptistery and the Leaning Tower - are made of sparkling white marble.
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The interior of the cathedral is decorated with a gilded ceiling and numerous marble sculptures. The sculptural works in the temple are associated with the name of the outstanding Italian master Niccolò Pisano. Many researchers see in the work of Pisano the first glimpses of the Renaissance. His father's work was continued by his son, Giovanni Pisano, who also worked hard on decorating the temple. Inside the cathedral is huge and bright. Icons, mosaics and bas-reliefs, along with sculpture, make the cathedral look like a large ship of the finest decoration, sailing to unknown fertile shores. There is a legend that, watching the swing of the censer (lamp) of the cathedral, Galileo discovered the law of isochronism of pendulum oscillations. Now the lamp is stationary. Over the centuries, much becomes immovable... - but this does not detract from the value of the discoveries, does it?
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Another legend associated with Galileo is also known. It tells of an experiment in which Galileo dropped objects of different masses from the top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa and later described their fall to prove that the acceleration of gravity does not depend on the mass of the body. The construction of the bell tower was begun in 1173, but due to unsteady silty subsoil, the tower began to lean to one side immediately after the construction of the first floor. Construction was suspended until 1275, when the brilliant architect Giovanni di Simone tried to straighten the bell tower, erecting each successive floor in a vertical manner. The Leaning Tower has become one of the landmarks in the world. The height of the tower is 60 m, the deviation from the perpendicular is 5 m. The inclination of the tower after 1945 began to increase. The tower was girded with metal support "belts", the last of which became possible to remove in June 2001. Visits to the tower are again allowed, but only in a strictly specified way. A tour group of 40 can climb 294 steps every 40 minutes. When you climb them, it literally takes your breath away - it seems that the tower is about to collapse with you. In addition to the official versions of the "fall" of the tower, there is a legend: the architect Pisano undertook to build a bell tower for the cathedral. She was beautiful as lace and straight as an arrow. It was crowned with seven bells. But when the work was completed, the architect was refused to be paid for the work. The local duke did not like something in this bell tower. Then the master went up to the tower, stroked the third column to the right of the entrance and said: “Follow me!”. And she leaned over. The architect was immediately paid, but the tower remained standing - tilted to where its creator called ...
Designation of the period of world history following history ancient world and previous new history. The concept of the Middle Ages (Latin medium aevum, literally - middle age) appeared in the 15th and 16th centuries among Italian humanist historians, who considered the period of history preceding the Renaissance to be the “dark ages” of European culture. The Italian humanist of the 15th century Flavio Biondo gave the first systematic exposition of the history of the Middle Ages in Western Europe as a special period of history, in historical science the term "Middle Ages" was established after a professor at the University of Halle X. Keller called one of the three books of his textbook "History Middle Ages” (Ch. Cellarius, Historia medii aevi, a tempori bus Constantini Magni ad Constantinopolim a Turcas captain deducta..., Jenae, 1698). Keller divided world history on antiquity, the Middle Ages, modern times; believed that the Middle Ages lasted from the time of the division of the Roman Empire into East and West (395) and the fall of Constantinople (1453). In the 18th century, a special branch of historical science arose that studied the history of the Middle Ages - medieval studies.
The concept of the Middle Ages
In science, the Middle Ages date from the end of the 5th century - the second half of the 15th century. The collapse of the Western Roman Empire in 476 is considered the conditional date for the beginning of the Middle Ages, and the end date of the Middle Ages is associated with the fall of Constantinople in 1453, with the discovery of America by H. Columbus in 1492, Reformation of the 16th century. Supporters of the theory of the "Long Middle Ages", based on data on changes in the life of ordinary people, connect the end of the Middle Ages with the Great French Revolution. Marxist historiography has preserved the traditional three-part division of history into ancient, medieval, and new - the so-called "humanistic trichotomy". She considered the Middle Ages as the era of the birth, development and decay of feudalism. Within the framework of the theory of the change of socio-economic formations, Marxists associated the end of the Middle Ages with the time of the English Revolution of the mid-17th century, after which capitalism began to actively develop in Europe. The term "Middle Ages", which arose in relation to the history of the countries of Western Europe, is also used in relation to other regions of the world, especially to the history of those countries that had a feudal system. At the same time, the time frame of the Middle Ages may differ. For example, the beginning of the Middle Ages in China is usually dated to the 3rd century AD, in the Near and Middle East - from the spread of Islam (6th-7th centuries). In the history of Russia, the period of Ancient Rus' stands out - before the Mongol-Tatar invasion. Consequently, the beginning of the Middle Ages in Rus' refers to the 13th-14th centuries. The end of the medieval period in Russia is associated with the reforms of Peter the Great. Differences in chronology and the impossibility of applying the unambiguous application of the term "Middle Ages" to all regions of the world confirms its conditional nature. In this regard, it seems reasonable to consider the Middle Ages at the same time as a global process, and as a phenomenon that had its own characteristics and chronological framework in each country.
In the narrow sense of the word, the term "Middle Ages" is used only in relation to the history of Western Europe and implies a number of specific features of religious, economic, political life: the feudal system of land use, the system of vassalage, the dominance of the church in religious life, political power churches (the inquisition, church courts, feudal bishops), the ideals of monasticism and chivalry (a combination of the spiritual practice of ascetic self-improvement and altruistic service to society), the flowering of medieval architecture - Gothic. The European Middle Ages is conditionally divided into three periods: the early Middle Ages (end of the 5th - the middle of the 11th centuries), the high, or classical, Middle Ages (the middle of the 11th - the end of the 14th centuries), and the late Middle Ages (15th-16th centuries).
The Middle Ages is an extensive period in the development of European society, covering the 5th-15th centuries AD. The era began after the fall of the great Roman Empire, ended with the beginning of the industrial revolution in England. During these ten centuries, Europe has come a long way of development, characterized by a great migration of peoples, the formation of major European states and the appearance of the most beautiful monuments of history - Gothic cathedrals.
What is characteristic of medieval society
Each historical era has its own unique features. The historical period under consideration is no exception.
The era of the Middle Ages is:
- agrarian economy - most people worked in the field of agriculture;
- the predominance of the rural population over the urban (especially in the early period);
- the great role of the church;
- observance of Christian commandments;
- Crusades;
- feudalism;
- the formation of nation states;
- culture: gothic cathedrals, folklore, poetry.
What are the Middle Ages?
The era is divided into three major periods:
- Early - 5th-10th centuries. n. e.
- High - 10-14th centuries. n. e.
- Later - 14th-15th (16th) centuries. n. e.
The question "The Middle Ages - what are the centuries?" does not have an unequivocal answer, there are only approximate figures - the points of view of one or another group of historians.
Three periods seriously differ from each other: at the very beginning of a new era, Europe experienced a troubled time - a time of instability and fragmentation, at the end of the 15th century a society with its characteristic cultural and traditional values was formed.
The eternal dispute between official science and alternative
Sometimes you can hear the statement: "Antiquity is the Middle Ages." An educated person will grab his head when he hears such a delusion. Official science believes that the Middle Ages is an era that began after the capture of the Western Roman Empire by barbarians in the 5th century. n. e.
However, alternative historians (Fomenko) do not share the point of view of official science. In their circle one can hear the statement: "Antiquity is the Middle Ages." This will be said not from ignorance, but from a different point of view. Who to believe and who not - you decide. We share the point of view of official history.
How It All Began: The Fall of the Great Roman Empire
The capture of Rome by the barbarians is a serious historical event that served as the beginning of an era
The empire existed for 12 centuries, during this time invaluable experience and knowledge of people was accumulated, which sunk into oblivion after the Ostrogoths, Huns and Gauls captured its western part (476 AD).
The process was gradual: first, the captured provinces came out of the control of Rome, and then the center fell. The eastern part of the empire, with its capital in Constantinople (now Istanbul), lasted until the 15th century.
After the capture and sack of Rome by the barbarians, Europe plunged into the dark ages. Despite a significant setback and turmoil, the tribes were able to reunite, create separate states and a unique culture.
The early Middle Ages is the era of the "dark ages": 5th-10th centuries. n. e.
During this period, the provinces of the former Roman Empire became sovereign states; the leaders of the Huns, Goths and Franks declared themselves dukes, counts and other serious titles. Surprisingly, people believed the most authoritative personalities and accepted their power.
As it turned out, the barbarian tribes were not as wild as one might imagine: they had the rudiments of statehood and knew metallurgy at a primitive level.
This period is also notable for the fact that three estates were formed:
- clergy;
- nobility;
- people.
The people included peasants, artisans and merchants. More than 90% of people lived in villages and worked in the fields. The type of farming was agricultural.
High Middle Ages - 10th-14th centuries n. e.
The heyday of culture. First of all, it is characterized by the formation of a certain worldview, characteristic of a medieval person. The horizons expanded: there was an idea of beauty, that there is a meaning in being, and the world is beautiful and harmonious.
Religion played a huge role - people revered God, went to church and tried to follow biblical values.
A stable trade relationship was established between West and East: merchants and travelers returned from distant countries, bringing porcelain, carpets, spices and new impressions of exotic Asian countries. All this contributed to the general increase in the education of Europeans.
It was during this period that the image of a male knight appeared, which to this day is the ideal of most girls. However, there are certain nuances that show the ambiguity of his figure. On the one hand, the knight was a brave and courageous warrior who swore to the bishop to protect his country. At the same time, he was quite cruel and unprincipled - the only way to fight hordes of wild barbarians.
He always had a "lady of the heart" for whom he fought. Summing up, we can say that a knight is a very controversial figure, consisting of virtues and vices.
Late Middle Ages - 14th-15th (16th) centuries. n. e.
Western historians consider the discovery of America by Columbus (October 12, 1492) as the end of the Middle Ages. Russian historians have a different opinion - the beginning of the industrial revolution in the 16th century.
The autumn of the Middle Ages (the second name of the late era) was characterized by the formation of large cities. Large-scale peasant uprisings also took place - as a result, this estate became free.
Europe has suffered serious human losses due to the plague epidemic. This disease took many lives, the population of some cities was halved.
The Late Middle Ages is the period of the logical conclusion of a rich era in European history, which lasted about a millennium.
Hundred Years War: the image of Joan of Arc
The late Middle Ages is also a conflict between England and France, which lasted more than a hundred years.
A serious event that set the vector for the development of Europe was the Hundred Years War (1337-1453). It was not quite a war, and not quite a century. It is more logical to call this historical event a confrontation between England and France, sometimes turning into an active phase.
It all started with a dispute over Flanders, when the king of England began to claim the French crown. At first, success accompanied Great Britain: small peasant units of archers defeated the French knights. But then a miracle happened: Joan of Arc was born.
This slender girl with a masculine posture was well brought up and from her youth she was versed in military affairs. She managed to spiritually unite the French and repulse England due to two things:
- she sincerely believed that it was possible;
- she called for the unification of all the French in the face of the enemy.
It was the victory of France, and Joan of Arc went down in history as a national heroine.
The era of the Middle Ages ended with the formation of most European states and the formation of European society.
The results of the era for European civilization
The historical period of the Middle Ages is a thousand of the most interesting years of the development of Western civilization. If one and the same person had visited first at the beginning of the Middle Ages, and then moved to the 15th century, he would not have recognized the same place, the changes that took place were so significant.
We list briefly the main results of the Middle Ages:
- the emergence of large cities;
- distribution of universities throughout Europe;
- the adoption of Christianity by the majority of European inhabitants;
- scholasticism of Aurelius Augustine and Thomas Aquinas;
- the unique culture of the Middle Ages is architecture, literature and painting;
- the readiness of Western European society for a new stage of development.
Culture of the Middle Ages
The era of the Middle Ages is primarily a characteristic culture. It means a broad concept that includes the intangible and material achievements of the people of that era. These include:
- architecture;
- literature;
- painting.
Architecture
It was during this era that many famous European cathedrals were rebuilt. Medieval masters created architectural masterpieces in two characteristic styles: Romanesque and Gothic.
The first originated in the 11th-13th centuries. This architectural direction was distinguished by rigor and severity. Temples and castles in the Romanesque style to this day inspire a sense of the gloomy Middle Ages. The most famous is the Bamberg Cathedral.
Literature
European literature of the Middle Ages is a symbiosis of Christian lyrics, ancient thought and folk epic. No genre of world literature can be compared with books and ballads written by medieval writers.
Some battle stories are worth something! An interesting phenomenon often turned out: people participating in major medieval battles (for example, the Battle of Gunstings) involuntarily became writers: they were the first eyewitnesses of the events that took place.
The Middle Ages is an era of beautiful and chivalrous literature. You can learn about the way of life, customs and traditions of people from the books of writers.
Painting
Cities grew, cathedrals were built, and accordingly, there was a demand for decorative decoration of buildings. At first, this concerned large city buildings, and then the houses of wealthy people.
The Middle Ages is the period of formation of European painting.
Most of the paintings depict famous biblical stories- The Virgin Mary with the baby, the Whore of Babylon, the "Annunciation" and so on. Triptychs (three small paintings in one) and diptrichs (two paintings in one) spread. Artists painted the walls of chapels, town halls, painted stained-glass windows for churches.
Medieval painting is inextricably linked with Christianity and the worship of the Virgin Mary. The masters depicted her in different ways: but one thing can be said - these paintings are amazing.
The Middle Ages is the time between Antiquity and New History. It was this era that paved the way for the start of the industrial revolution and the great geographical discoveries.
