Why Europe Grew After 1000: Peace, Plow, Coin, Town, School

The idea

The exam's medieval questions cluster on this unit because the anchor's chapter answers one question: why a barter Europe of villages became, in three centuries, a Europe of cathedrals, universities, parliaments and banks. The answer is a chain. First, peace. About one thousand the Vikings had settled, the Magyars were in Hungary and the Saracens repelled, and violence fell though it never vanished. Second, the plow. The shoulder collar, the carruca, iron horseshoes, three-field rotation and the mill multiplied yields, and population grew from the anchor's fourteen million to seventy-four. Third, coin. Surplus let lords take cash rent, kingdoms minted money, and a cash economy existed by eleven hundred. Fourth, the town. Serfs walked to freedom in a year and a day, charters bought self-government, guilds organized crafts, Italians carried silk and spices and became bankers, and merchants rose despite contempt. Fifth, the school. Aristotle came back through Arabic and Hebrew, scholasticism gave a method, Bologna and Paris became universities, Aquinas reconciled reason and faith, and Gothic builders opened walls into light. Around the chain stood the Church and the crown, each growing too. Cluny and Gregory VII freed the Church from lay lords at Canossa and Worms, Innocent III made it Europe's arbiter, and the friars carried it into the towns; Henry II's courts and Magna Carta built England, the Capetians' judges built France. And outward from all of it ran the crusades, from Clermont in ten ninety-five to Las Navas in twelve twelve, carrying the same energy east and south, and bringing back Italian wealth and, the anchor says, a harsher Christianity.