The High Middle Ages

This is Unit Eleven of Western Civilization One, part two of two: the Church at its height, the schools where Aristotle came back, the six procedures the exam tests on the High Middle Ages, and the chain that explains why Europe grew. Part one ended with Magna Carta's principle outliving its privileges. Carry the same chain through this part, because its last link is the school. Aristotle came back through Arabic and Hebrew, scholasticism gave a method of lecture and disputation, Bologna and Paris became universities, Aquinas reconciled reason and faith, and Gothic builders opened walls into light. Around it the Church reached its high-water mark under Innocent the Third, the friars carried it into the towns, and monasteries grew rich while their clergy sold office, because without the sacraments there was no alternative. Then six procedures, and the chain whole: peace, plow, coin, town, school. By the end you will be able to describe Innocent, the friars, women and corruption. To trace learning from one percent literacy to the Summa. To describe Gothic and Hildegard. To sequence, map, read two documents, classify and compare. And to state the chain.

Four entries on the Church at its height: Innocent the Third and Lateran, Francis and Dominic, women in theory and practice, and wealth beside corruption.

Kings as vassals, and a council that defined the Mass.

WC1 1025 Innocent III and the Fourth Lateran Council, 1215

Innocent the Third, eleven ninety-eight to twelve sixteen, made kings his vassals, launched the Fourth Crusade and the Albigensian Crusade against the Cathars, and called the Fourth Lateran Council in twelve fifteen, which defined transubstantiation, required yearly confession, and marked Jews by dress: the papacy's high-water mark. This entry rests on the witness texts; the anchor omits Innocent.

Beggars in the towns, and the schools.

WC1 1026 Francis, Dominic, and the Mendicant Orders

Francis of Assisi founded the Franciscans on absolute poverty and preaching in towns; Dominic founded the Dominicans to preach against heresy with learning. Mendicants begged rather than owned, lived among townspeople, and staffed the Inquisition and the universities, friars against Cathars and Aquinas a Dominican. This entry rests on the witness texts, not the anchor.

Misogynist theory, and a practice that owned property.

WC1 1027 Medieval Women: Theory Against Practice

Theory drew on Greek medicine and Eve, and male writers were predictably misogynist. In practice women inherited and owned property, marriage required both consents, widows held estates and even led troops, peasant women worked every day, queens consort ruled through husbands, and guilds excluded women as they consolidated. Life expectancy ran in the early forties for both sexes, the anchor says.

Corruption that changed nothing.

WC1 1028 Monastic Wealth and Clerical Corruption

Monasteries farmed, brewed and copied profitably, and bequests gave them the anchor's twenty percent of arable land. The upper Church came from the nobility and parish priests from the peasantry; concubines, pluralism and purchased office, simony in the witness's word, were open, and hell-paintings showed clergy. Yet without the sacraments, damnation, so there was no alternative and corruption changed nothing.

Five entries on the school: literacy's nadir and revival, Aristotle's route through three civilizations, the scholastic method, the first universities, and the Summa.

From one percent to merchants who read.

WC1 1029 Literacy's Nadir and Revival: Monastery and Cathedral School

Literacy fell to perhaps one percent by ten fifty, the anchor's figure, mostly priests, then rose until merchants and some peasants read by the fourteenth century. Monastic tutoring taught Latin to laypeople, and cathedral schools trained priests and bureaucrats on Cicero and the Aeneid, scholarship prospering inside a corrupt Church. The anchor rejects the dark-ages bias: learning grew from one thousand.

Three civilizations in one transmission.

WC1 1030 Aristotle Returns Through Arabic and Hebrew

The decisive event was Aristotle's return: his logic, preserved in the Arab world, translated from Arabic to Latin by Jewish scholars in Spain and North Africa, later from Greek by Byzantines. It gave a formal system for reading difficult scripture, the camel and the needle, not peace but a sword. Three civilizations in one transmission, and the exam tests the route.

Lecture, meditation, disputation.

WC1 1031 Scholasticism: Lecture, Disputation, Law

Scholasticism applied Aristotle's logic to scripture. The cathedral-school method by about eleven hundred ran lecture, a reading with authorities, then meditation, then disputation, debate with evidence, and Italian lawyers revived Roman law the same way by the twelfth century. Anselm's argument for God from reason alone is on the primary layer, Fordham's Proslogion, and is unwitnessed.

Guilds of teachers and students.

WC1 1032 Abelard, Bologna, Paris: The First Universities

Peter Abelard, ten seventy-nine to eleven forty-two, applied reason to faith at Paris and angered the hierarchy. Universities grew from cathedral schools as guilds, with degrees, exams, robes, the trivium and quadrivium: Bologna chartered in eleven fifty-eight, Paris by about twelve hundred, the Sorbonne a college within it from twelve fifty-seven. Where the anchor calls the Sorbonne the university, it was a college.

Two paths to one truth.

WC1 1033 Thomas Aquinas and the Summa

Thomas Aquinas, a Dominican at Paris, wrote the Summa Theologica to reconcile Aristotle with Christian doctrine: reason and faith as two paths to one truth, each question posed, objected to, and answered, with five ways to prove God's existence from reason. His synthesis became the Church's standard philosophy. This entry rests on the witness texts; the anchor omits Aquinas.

Two entries on stone and an exception: the pointed arch and the buttress that let walls become glass, and the abbess who wrote to popes.

Weight carried outside, walls opened into light.

WC1 1034 Gothic: Pointed Arch, Buttress, Glass

Gothic architecture, from twelfth-century France, replaced the thick-walled Romanesque with the pointed arch, ribbed vault and flying buttress, which carried the roof's weight outside so walls could open into stained glass and cathedrals could rise, light as theology in stone. This entry rests on the witness texts; the anchor omits Gothic.

Where a learned woman could exist.

WC1 1035 Hildegard of Bingen

Universities were male. Hildegard of Bingen, ten ninety-eight to eleven seventy-nine, an abbess, was theologian, medical writer, composer and correspondent of popes and emperors, later a saint, the anchor's exception that shows where learned women could exist: in convents and by tutoring, not in the schools. Hildegard rests on the anchor alone.

Six procedures: three tracks merged, two maps, a king's charter for the sample question, five institutions, three clauses of Magna Carta, and France against England.

Church, crusade, crown: three tracks.

WC1 1036 Sequencing the High Middle Ages, 1054 to 1314

Church, crusade and crown run in parallel, so build three tracks. Church: Cluny nine ten, Canossa ten seventy-seven, Worms eleven twenty-two, Lateran twelve fifteen. Crusade: Clermont ten ninety-five, Jerusalem ten ninety-nine, Hattin eleven eighty-seven, Constantinople twelve oh four, Las Navas twelve twelve. Crown: Hastings ten sixty-six, Bologna eleven fifty-eight, Magna Carta twelve fifteen, Philip the Fourth thirteen oh seven. Merged: the Schism precedes Hastings and Canossa; Canossa comes eighteen years before Clermont; Worms after the First Crusade and before Hattin; Bologna between Worms and Hattin; then Constantinople, Las Navas, and twelve fifteen with Magna Carta and Lateran in the same year; Philip's seizure of the Templars ends the unit. A question cannot ask which of the two twelve fifteens came first, only which track each belongs to, and Cluny's founding belongs to the previous unit's century.

A coastal strip, and a frontier moving south.

WC1 1037 Reading a Map of the Crusader States and the Reconquista

For the Levant, read a strip: four crusader states down the coast from north to south, Jerusalem at the bottom, Muslim powers inland. For Iberia, a frontier moving south from almost the whole peninsula in seven eleven to Granada alone by the late thirteenth century. A strip with Jerusalem shaded is between ten ninety-nine and eleven eighty-seven. The same strip with Jerusalem unshaded is after Hattin. An Iberian map with the Christian north holding Lisbon and the center but not Andalusia is after eleven forty-seven and before twelve twelve. Only Granada in Muslim hands is after the mid-thirteenth century and before fourteen ninety-two. A Baltic state of monk-knights is the Teutonic Order after the twelve twenties. The crusader states were coastal forts with hostile populations, so shading exaggerates their depth, and the Reconquista's line is not one date.

Conquest regulated, not conversion.

WC1 1038 Reading a Charter: Jaume I's Terms for Valencia's Muslims

Sample question seven quotes a thirteenth-century charter by which a Christian king regulated the Muslims of a conquered city. Use the Pact of Umar's method: who grants, who receives, what each side gives, what it assumes. Jaume the First of Aragon's terms for Valencia's Muslims after the twelve thirties, read in translation, are the case. The conquering king grants in his own name. The Muslim community receives, as a community. They give submission, taxes, acceptance of Christian rule and limits on public worship. They get their own law, judges and religion, their property and their mosques within limits. It assumes that conquest does not mean conversion, that religious communities are units of law, and that a king profits more from taxed subjects than expelled ones. The answer follows: conquest accompanied by regulation of religious communities, not their destruction. The charter mirrors the dhimma, and neither side was tolerant in the modern sense.

Who belongs, and what the rules protect.

WC1 1039 Classifying an Institution: Manor, Town, Guild, Monastery, University

Ask who belongs and what the rules protect. Manor: peasants and a lord, protecting the lord's income and the peasants' customary rights. Town: burghers under a charter, protecting self-government and stable taxes. Guild: masters of one craft, protecting the monopoly and quality. Monastery: monks under vows, protecting prayer, work and the estate. University: teachers and students as a guild, protecting degrees and the right to teach. A body fining an outsider for selling shoes is a guild. A community whose members leave only after a year and a day elsewhere is a manor's serfs. A corporation licensing candidates to teach anywhere is a university. A house with vineyards copying manuscripts under obedience is a monastery. A settlement paying a fixed sum and electing its council is a chartered town. Guilds and universities share a form, so classify by what is protected.

Who is protected, who is bound, what principle.

WC1 1040 Reading the Magna Carta's Principle

For a clause of Magna Carta, read from Fordham's translation, ask who is protected, who is bound, and what principle the clause implies beyond its case. No free man shall be seized except by lawful judgment of his peers or the law of the land: free men, a minority, are protected, the king is bound, and the principle is judgment before punishment. No scutage or aid without common counsel of the kingdom: the barons' purses are protected, and the principle is consent to taxation, which Parliament will embody. London shall have its ancient liberties: the towns are protected, and charters bind the crown. Together, a feudal document protecting feudal privileges whose principle, that even the king must respect the law, outgrew its clauses. Serfs are not free men, so do not read it as rights for all. The exam wants the principle and its limits together.

Growth, instrument, check, Church.

WC1 1041 France and England Compared as Feudal Monarchies

Compare on four paired features. How the crown grew: France outward from the Ile-de-France by judges and marriage over three centuries; England all at once by conquest in ten sixty-six. Instrument: France royal judges and new taxes; England sheriffs, circuit courts and juries. Check: France the great vassals and the pope, until Philip the Fourth broke both; England the barons, Magna Carta and Parliament. The Church: France's king controlled it and seized the Templars; England's king fought Becket, lost the argument, and taxed the clergy through Parliament. A king confined to a small domain growing outward is France; a charter forced by barons is England; a king arresting a pope's agents is France; circuit judges are England. Both were feudal monarchies becoming states, and the contrast is method, not outcome: by thirteen hundred both kings were stronger than any vassal.

One capstone entry: the chain that turned a barter Europe of villages into a Europe of cathedrals, universities, parliaments and banks.

Five links, and what grew around them.

WC1 1042 Why Europe Grew After 1000: Peace, Plow, Coin, Town, School

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 freed the Church from lay lords at Canossa and Worms, Innocent made it Europe's arbiter, the friars carried it into the towns; Henry's courts and Magna Carta built England, the Capetians' judges built France. Outward from all of it ran the crusades, from Clermont to Las Navas, carrying the same energy east and south and bringing back Italian wealth and, the anchor says, a harsher Christianity. The exam does not ask which link mattered most, and the course does not say; it asks what three-field rotation was, what a charter did, who Gregory was, what Aquinas reconciled, what Magna Carta established, what happened at Las Navas. The anchor's figures are attributed, and where it is silent, on Investiture, Cluny, Innocent, the friars, Aquinas, Gothic and Las Navas, the course builds from the witnesses and says so in each entry.

Look at what you can now do. You can describe Innocent making kings his vassals and Lateran defining the Mass, Francis and Dominic in the towns, women owning property against misogynist theory, and monasteries rich and clergy corrupt with no alternative. You can trace literacy from one percent, Aristotle's route through Arabic and Hebrew, lecture and disputation, the guild universities of Bologna and Paris, and Aquinas's two paths to one truth. You can describe the buttress that opened walls into glass, and Hildegard as the exception in a convent. You can merge three tracks, read the strip and the frontier, read Jaume's charter as regulation rather than destruction, classify an institution by what it protects, read Magna Carta for principle and limits, and compare France with England by method. And you can state the chain, peace, plow, coin, town, school, which is this unit's one idea. Unit twelve opens on the century that broke it: famine, plague, a hundred years of war, and a Church with two popes.