Medieval European History

[BeerDrinkingBurke]

Many thanks! Very educational points.

[BeerDrinkingBurke]

My last post was a bit too darn long to put together, so I'm going to try and make the next few nice and short.

The Transition to the High Middle Ages

Koenigsberger outlines how the situation gradually changes in the western kingdoms. A few key points:

Agricultural advances.

• Iron tools help with the development of the iron plough, which is used in lands with darker, heavier soil. Such  plough require 6-8 oxen to pull though, and this is a reason for the distinctive long but narrow 'medieval' fields. They require less turning for the oxen. In places like Italy though, with their easier to till soil, wooden ploughs were still used, and the old square shaped fields remained common.
• Iron tools also helped with the spread of windmills. Watermills were a relatively old technology, but the newer and more sophisticated invention of windmills allowed for mechanised grain milling to be conducted in more places, such as flat lands like Flanders / Netherlands regions. Of course, as Jubal and I have experience with in the game Vintage Story, this mechanical power could also be used in smithing!
• The 3 field fallow system spread. Gradually farmers learned that you could grow things like beans to put nitrogen back into the soil, so rather than 2 fallow years and 1 productive year, you could have 2 productive years, and 1 fallow year. This meant quite a bit increase in how much food you could get out of the soil. Although Koenigsberger also notes that this technique did tend to exhaust the soil faster. It was still effective, but not as huge an improvement as we might think. It depended more on the quality of the soil.
• Expansion into more areas also allowed for an increase in food supply. A famous example would be the work of the Dutch and the dyke system later, but clearing of forests, draining of marshes etc. were part of this process. The limits of expansion were beginning to be felt by the 13th century though.

Economic advances

• The spread of silver coinage (more silver mines) made it easier for people to trade, and therefore specialise in different things. You see more people who might still be small farmers, but also they produce things like boots or clothing and sell them in their shop. I believe this is what Manor Lords tries to show with the way 'burghers' were still in many cases still farming their own food out the back too, given the long strips of land that were used.
• An extra level of specialisation begins to emerge. Architects, sculptors, scribes, teachers. These people were often itinerant, because there is not enough demand in any one place to support them long term. So while the common people were relatively less likely to roam about (with the exception of pilgrimages, which gradually became more popular), there was a class of international people who worked around the continent. These people often knew each other, and used Latin as a living language. This helps to set the scene for the coming renaissance movements.

Urbanism

• Agricultural advances mean a greater population, and specialisation and trade help foster the return of urban areas. Places like London, Paris, Bruges, Milan and Florence start to turn into little cities. (By the 14th century Paris apparently boasted around 80,000 people, with London at around 30,000 I think.)
• Cities started to develop their own laws, independent of the feudal system. This is something I didn't really appreciate before. It makes sense, in that merchants and other 'citizens' of cities needed a certain relative freedom from those older obligations (including things like trial by combat!) in order to be able to do their business. In places like Italy, this progresses to the point of cities really becoming their own 'city states'. I get the impression that while this was more of an Italy thing, still the relative legal independence of cities was something that was found to some degree throughout Europe. This is also where we see the development of fraternities or brotherhoods of different sorts, trade unions, guilds and so on. A different kind of bond between people could exist in this spaces than the feudal bonds of liege and subject.
• The (although still modest) growth in wealth allowed for the building of great castles, monasteries, churches and cathedrals (warfare and worship of God were high social priorities for spending any surplus wealth). The itinerant specialist builders mentioned above developed their skills, and constructed the great "Romanesque" (pre-Gothic) buildings. These are dominant in the 11th and 12 centuries. This is a pan-European style, the first to emerge it seems following the collapse of the Western Empire. This speaks to the international / itinerant nature of the specialist builders of this time.

[BeerDrinkingBurke]

Another entry. This time I'm going to focus on the Crusades. This is largely from a dedicated section, but there are other related bits and pieces from later sections in here too, which makes sense because the period of the crusades is quite long and overlaps with so much else that is going on:

• I wasn't aware there were so many of these as distinct moments. Wikipedia lists nine major ones. But it seems there is disagreement on how many there really where. Some might argue that two 'crusades' should actually be understood as an ongoing larger one, for example. I believe the major ones were declared / launched by the Catholic church, but it seems as though this is not required by historians as a condition on something constituting a 'crusade'. Moreover, if I understand correctly, each 'crusade' was not always directed at a specific target (like recapturing the Holy Land). Sometimes it could be closer to a kind of church sanctioned open season on non-Christians in broader regions. This makes the history of the crusades a bit messy.

• Koenigsberger mentions that it was Christian Spain / Iberia where the initial concept of a religious (Christian) crusade developed, speculating that the inspiration might have come from that of the Muslim 'Jihad'. I don't see a reference to this in the Wiki on Crusades, and I wonder what consensus has formed on this since then.
• The first major pogroms against Jewish peoples in Europe occurred as a result of / as part of a crusade. I was not aware of the connection between these two, but it makes sense.
• Koenigsberger notes that the capture of the holy lands would likely not have been successful if it were not the case that the Turkish princes were fighting among themselves over the remains of the Seljuq empire.
• Apparently at its peak there were around 100,000 Latin speaking people living in the Holy Lands as a kind of quasi-colonial outpost that lasted nearly a century.
• It was interesting to see the contrast between the violence done by the crusaders who successfully captured the Holy Lands, and the restraint of Saladin when he retook them a hundred years or so later. Koenigsberger mentions the regard Saladin enjoyed in Europe for this 'chivalrous' behavior, and how Dante (as a mark of respect) has the muslim Saladin occupying purgatory in his Divine Comedy. "I saw great Saladi, aloof, alone."
• Connected to the above, I think it is another one of those historical moments where the factual barbarism of Europeans contrasts sharply with modern European / Western myth making / self-aggrandisement of itself as civilised vs. the barbarian other. 
• I wonder how the history of the world might have differed had Saladin or a Saladin not occurred. With enough time, would a new culture have developed in the east, similarly to how the Germanic tribes created new cultures through marriage and time in the west? Or was this always precluded by religious differences? The Germanic tribes Christianized after all, which made cultural blending far more simple.
• Koenigsberger mentions that one of the positive outcomes for Europe was that having a lot of surplus 'quarrelsome' young men go to the Holy Lands to live / die made everything generally more peaceful in the west. Which is kind of amusing. How much of war and violence in micro-scale or macro-scale is an outcome of / powered by the energies or 'will to power' of young men in general (and here by men I don't mean to be reductive in speaking of some 'biological' concept, hormones, or whatever, nor to exclude the biological, but being inclusive here of the political / cultural institution of men.)
• There is some mention of Catharism, and how the Church's fight against it spiralled out into a great deal of violence in the Albigensian Crusade. This is a very interesting (read, terrible) bit of history I wasn't familiar with. For example, the massacring of the the entire population of the city of Béziers. In reading of such stories as this and the massacres in the Holy Lands, I wonder more broadly about the nature of massacres. Of the above point about the violent capacities of (young?) men, and the nature of evil. The massacres of civilians by the Romans. Of more modern such events, and so on. It seems like a recurring theme over the course of human history, but given with different variations.  Of course, this event was not new in terms of violence being directed against innocent people in the name of Christianity. But what does appear to be new here is the way this directed, 'religious' violence was now occurring within the Christian west, against the Cathars, Jews, and other 'heretics', where once it was targeted at Pagans on the frontiers. Here Koenigsberger notes that we see the beginnings of the dark period of the Inquisition. I'm also wondering about parallels with the modern concept of Imperial Boomerang, where once violence is sanctioned on outsiders, it eventually 'comes home'. Hmm.. (Above, I say 'religious'. I don't want to imply that literally 'religion' itself (however we define this) is the cause of this violence. I really am not a fan of this line of argument that we saw in recent decades among prominent atheists. This is a different subject, but to begin with what we categorise as 'religious' is very difficult, particularly in a time of history such as this, where 'worldly' and 'religious' concerns and understandings are intertwined as they are.
• Catharism itself is really interesting too (I feel like I am saying that -everything- is interesting, but there is so much in history that stimulates the intellect isn't there. When one is in the right mood and looking for connections / growing one's understanding.)
  
  

  By reputation, Cathars believed that human souls were the sexless spirits of angels trapped in the material realm of the evil god. They thought these souls were destined to be reincarnated until they achieved salvation through the consolamentum, a form of baptism performed when death is imminent. 
  
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catharism
  
   

  I unknowingly learned a little bit about Cathar-like beliefs when playing The Seance of Blake Manor a few months ago (incidentally, a great game that I thoroughly recommend.) Relevant spoilers for a character in the game:
  
  
  Spoilers for The Seance of Blake Manor

  There is a Catholic priest character, named Lorcan Sinnot. It is revealed (or, rather, it can be revealed, if the player succeeds with this quest line) that he is actually a 'gnostic' who believes all of humanity is "trapped in the Black Iron Prison." This is actually a Cathar belief. The wiki calls Catharism 'pseudo-Gnostic', so certainly it is also the reverse, in that Cathar beliefs have a 'gnostic' character. Still, from my cursory look at it, I believe this specific idea of humanity being trapped in a prison created by an evil one seems to be specifically a Cathar-version of Gnostic thinking. Again, interesting! I do now want to learn more about Gnosticism, and the Cathar heresy
  
  
  Similarly, there is the heretic with gnostic beliefs in Pentiment, Vacslav.
  
• Another thing the crusades helped to foster was the growing dominance of the Italian city states over trade in the Mediterranean. Although simply walking to the Holy Lands was possible, it was difficult. Many died on the way over, and this did lead in at least one case to the outright collapse of an army. There was also Constantinople to contend with. An alternative was to take boats over and arrive much more speedily. Then once established the colonies there were supplies to deliver, wealth to extract, and soldiers, pilgrims and settlers who wanted to come and go. This meant an increased need for shipping, and Italy primarily fulfilled that need. This was an impetus for certain related financial / economic developments that we can discuss in the next post that would have significant ramifications for the course of European history (proto-capitalism, mathematical-rationalism).
• What else? Hmm.. I think lastly, I learned about the Crusaders (in Crusader #4) sacking the city of Constantinople (1204).  Koenigsberger has mentioned this in parting, but I haven't reached the part of the book where he deals with this properly yet. Still it seems worth mentioning here. He has noted that this action contributed to the eventual ability of the Ottomans (Turks) to subsequently end the Byzantine empire and strike further into Europe / the Balkans. It's ironic that it was the western Christians who ultimately brought about the end of the Eastern empire, which had functioned for so long as a bulwark against non-Christian forces pushing into the continent from the east. Another bit of history I was not familiar with.
• EDIT: Oh, and I forgot to mention another part of this story: the formation of the knightly 'holy orders' such as the Knights Templar and the Hospitallers (the Order of St John). Incidentally, we have a national 'priory' of St John here in Australia which provides ambulance services in various states, including here in Western Australia. One of those bits of history that jumped out at me after reading about the Hospitallers. Apparently the Order of St John was constituted in 1888, and does indeed trace itself back to the Hospitallers.