The European Middle Ages (Part 1 of 2)

27:05As he approaches, he observes a spirited discussion between the emir and the man sitting next to him, Zeyab, the cultural advisor responsible for this new way of serving food. It is something to do with the stars, although the details make no sense to the servant. But the emir is a learned man, and such debates on points of astronomy and philosophy are a regular feature of life at court. The servant bows and backs away, before once again retracing his steps to the kitchen. It will be time for the sweet course soon. He sighs. Thanks to Zayab's innovations, he will be running up and down the stairs to the kitchen all night.

27:55Al-Andalus flourishes like nowhere else in Europe. It is a multi-ethnic society, home to Muslims, Jews, and Christians. Non-Muslims must pay a poll tax, but are otherwise allowed to practice their faiths. Communities of Christian worshippers form in Toledo, Seville, Merida, and Cordoba itself. Jewish people are equally free to worship and live according to their own laws and customs, and many become prominent members of the Emir's court and Cordoba's cultural elite. Agriculture provides the backbone of the economy, with farmers growing wheat, barley, fruit, and olives. Cities are centers of trade and artisan production, where silk, leather goods, and armor are manufactured as well as fine metal and glass vessels.

28:46But the jewel in the Andalusian crown is Cordoba itself. Under Muslim rule, the city reaches unprecedented heights as a center of commerce and culture, with a population of a quarter of a million. It is a figure unmatched in the West, rivaled only by the Abbasid capital of Baghdad and Constantinople, the seat of the Byzantine Empire. Its citizens can walk down streets that are well-paved, clean, and lit by lanterns hung from the roofs of buildings. There is access to plentiful running water, thanks to an aqueduct constructed by the first emir, and the city is home to numerous bathhouses. Ambitious building projects are undertaken, including the construction of Cordoba's famous Grand Mosque, with its distinctive red and white striped arches.

29:40The city's fame is such that by the 10th century, word has reached far beyond the Iberian Peninsula. A nun, Roswitha of Gandersheim, considered the first female German writer, sings Cordoba's praises in Latin verse. Despite criticizing its Muslim rulers, she hails the city as the glittering ornament of the world, shining in the western regions. Cordoba might outshine other European cities for now, but other countries are by no means stagnating. For these same centuries see a remarkable level of political dynamism across the continent and the establishment of ever larger kingdoms under ever more powerful kings.

30:25From about the year 700 onwards, we see increasing unity, sophistication, and kingdom building in a wide range of these success estates that have risen out of the wreckage of the Western Roman Empire. The first and most impressive of these is the Carolingian Empire, named after both its founder, Charles Martel, and his grandson, who becomes Charles the Great, or to give him the name by which he is better known, Charlemagne. Charlemagne, Charles the Great, unified much of Western Europe. Charlemagne ruled from 768 to 814. He expanded his empire over what we'd now call modern France, areas of Germany, the Low Countries, Northern Italy, and beyond.

31:13The descendant of a Frankish aristocratic family, his grandfather and father wrested power from the ruling Merovingian kings. By 771, he has become the sole ruler in Francia. He then sets about expanding his domain. Over the course of several long and brutal campaigns, he conquers the Lombard Kingdom of northern Italy, forces the submission and conversion of the Saxons on his northern border, expands into Bavaria and establishes a frontier in Catalonia. His achievements are triumphantly marked on Christmas Day 800 when he takes the new title of Emperor of the Romans. It was a revival of something of Roman-ness, of imperial connectivity in the West.

32:03And so Charlemagne was effectively Emperor of the new Roman Western Empire, as it were. And the church blessed that because it was part of stability, part of protection of the new community that was emerging, which was increasingly a Christian community. But it was also a symbolic revival of the Western Empire. And it linked the Frankish kingship with ancient Roman authority and with a Christian mission.

32:29Under the Carolingians, agricultural production in Francia increases, thanks to more active land management by the aristocrats and monasteries who own the fields and pastures. A network of markets springs up, selling goods like wine and cloth. While the peasantry is subjugated, often violently, the elites become extremely wealthy, and twice a year they make the journey to the new imperial court at Aachen, near the modern German border with Belgium.

33:01Attended by military retinues, they bring with them glittering piles of gifts for the emperor. The purpose of these assemblies is to discuss important matters of state, though the emperor's voice always prevails. The Carolingian Empire is also marked by its commitment to learning. Charlemagne sponsors intellectuals who come to his court from all All over Europe, Latin literacy is revived. A palace school is set up at Aachen, and monastery schools are encouraged to train both monks and local elites. But with so much power falling to one man, the empire is fragile. After Charnamé's death, his empire fragmented under his heirs, culminating in the Treaty of Verdun in 843, which divided the empire into three kingdoms, broadly speaking, precursors what you might call France, Germany, and Italy.

33:57So what was done was not permanent, and yet it showed what was possible.

34:04In England, just as Charlemagne's empire is fracturing, a similarly unifying figure emerges from among the patchworks of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. In this case, thanks to the destruction wrought by the Vikings. The wave of Viking invasion and settlement, which begins in the dying days of the 8th century, is often seen by historians as the last of the migrations that began as the Roman Empire was falling. As with the earlier mass movements of people, the period from the late 8th to 11th centuries sees Scandinavians trading, raiding, and setting up communities far outside their homelands. From Russia and Ukraine in the east, to Iceland, and even briefly, North America in the west.

34:54In the 860s, Viking armies begin to launch large-scale attacks on England. One after another, the various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms fall. After 873, only the Kingdom of Wessex in the southwest of the country remains standing. It is led by a king remembered to history as Alfred the Great. The one surviving kingdom, Wessex, the West Saxons, campaigned with a strategy of presenting themselves as the only viable Christian alternative to pagan Norse rule to other English-speaking people who were now under Norse-speaking rule in East Anglia, the Midlands, and the North. And out of that, eventually, a unified kingdom of England would emerge.

35:39Now, Alfred begins the process of reconquering territory from the Viking invaders.

35:48Thanks to a string of victories won by his sons and grandsons within a few decades of his death, the House of Wessex comes to dominate the entirety of England. A united kingdom of England did emerge throughout the 10th century under, for example, Athelstan and those who ruled after him, until finally in 954, the last of the independent Norse-speaking rulers of the north, Eric Bloodaxe, died in battle. And from that period onwards, we can talk about something which is a precociously united, although complicated kingdom, which we now call England. Like Charlemagne, Alfred and his heirs promote learning, especially in Old English, and encourage education for the sons of nobles.

36:38They also build roads and fortified settlements, providing work and security for ordinary people. But the early medieval kingdoms built by rulers like Charlemagne and Alfred are not destined to last. The German lands, once ruled by the Carolingians, are taken over by the Ottonian dynasty, who revive the imperial title and rule as empress. Italy increasingly becomes a series of independent city-states, and England will be conquered by Scandinavians and then Normans in the centuries after Alfred's death. But across the continent, the one international organization that had survived the fall of Rome, the papacy, is experiencing a period of deepening crisis.

37:28The beginning of this tumultuous period is best exemplified by a shocking incident known as the Cadaver Synod. In 897, Pope Stephen has the body of his predecessor and rival, Formosus, exhumed and put on trial. The corpse is dressed in papal regalia and propped up on a throne before being found guilty of perjury, coveting the papacy, and illegally leaving his role as bishop to become pope. Formosus is stripped of his vestments and has the three fingers he used in blessings snapped off in punishment, before being thrown unceremoniously into the Tiber. In the following century, one in three popes is murdered.

38:15The eight years between 896 and 904 alone see the election of nine pontiffs, in an era labelled by historians as the Papal Dark Ages. By the 10th century, there's plenty of evidence that developing papacy had fallen into some significant problems in terms of corruption and local Roman politics, because the Pope was very much a ruler within Rome, so had both secular and spiritual roles. Powerful noble families often dominated the election of Popes, and simony, the buying and selling of church office, was widespread. The Pope's dual secular and religious power in Rome means that competing local families have an incentive to install candidates loyal to them.

39:03They can also hand out lucrative church offices to their followers and allies. One of the popes put into power by a prominent Roman family is John XII, a relative of the powerful Counts of Tusculum. He is elected in 955, while still a very young man. During his time as pope, he is accused of an extraordinary number of crimes and sins, ordaining a deacon in a horse's stable, receiving bribes to make certain men bishops, sleeping with his own father's concubine, blinding his spiritual advisor, hunting and going about clad in armor and a helmet. Even accounting for the biases of contemporary and often deeply hostile chroniclers, John John is still seen today as one of the most depraved occupants of St.

39:56Peter's throne. And it is not only his life that makes him infamous.

40:07It is the 14th of May, 964. In a noble house in Rome, in the blackest part of the night, a servant girl is torn roughly from her slumber by a loud crash ringing out in the darkness.

40:25Blinking awake, she glances at the ceiling. It sounds as though it came from directly above her head, from her mistress's room. She throws off her coverlet and leaps to her feet, hurriedly dragging her dress over her head. Within seconds, she is out of the door and rushing down the corridor and up the stairs towards the raised voices coming from her employer's chamber. She finds a group of servants hovering outside the door, beyond which come the sounds of a fiery argument. The girl peeks through the crack between the door and the frame, nervously chewing on her lower lip. The room is lit by the warm glow of the fireplace.

41:08The lady of the house cowers on the edge of the bed, still wearing the thin nightgown the girl had dressed her in before bed. But her hair is in disarray, unraveled from the neat braids she usually sleeps in. She sobs loudly as her raging husband paces back and forth in front of her. The girl notes a broken ceramic dish lying in the corner of the room. As she watches, he flings aside the heavy wooden chair that stands in front of the dressing table, causing it to crash to the floor. It's only now that the girl notices the third figure in the room. Huddled under the bedclothes, trying and failing to pull the sheets over his naked chest, is a man.

41:56Though the light from the fire casts distorting shadows around the room, his face is clearly illuminated. He has visited her mistress before when her husband was absent. It is none other than Pope John himself. The master's rage is clearly increasing as he gesticulates wildly from his wife to the man in her bed, bellowing about betrayal. The servants draw in a collective breath when the master picks up a fearsome metal poker from the fireplace. Without a word, he lashes out, catching the naked pope across the temple. John slumps forward, a dark trickle of blood running down his face. The lady of the house screams, reaching to try and pull the poker out of her husband's hands.

42:45But he simply shakes her off and throws the weapon to the floor before storming from the room, slamming the door open violently and sending the assembled eavesdroppers scattering. Hurrying into the room, the girl finds her mistress wailing in her blood-stained marital bed, calling for help as she cradles the lifeless body of her lover.

43:16John XII, who allegedly dies in his married mistress's bed, is perhaps the most notorious Pope of the papal Dark Ages. But in the decades following his violent demise, the papacy will begin to pull itself out of the gutter and towards the light once more. calls for reform began to increase over this increasingly influential institution. And we see aspects of this showing itself in a number of ways. So a revival began with a monastic reform movement centered on Cluny Abbey, founded in Burgundy. Cluniac monks sought to purify the church by restoring clerical celibacy, rejecting simony, and asserting papal independence from secular rulers.

43:58In 1049, Leo IX becomes Pope. Pope. Though, like several of his predecessors, he is nominated for the role by the German emperor, Leo seeks to reassert the independence of the papacy from powerful secular rulers. After his election, he arrives in Rome barefoot in the manner of a pilgrim, and promises to leave if the Romans do not want him as Pope. The clergy and people unanimously declare their support for this humble man.

44:30The reform movement reaches its peak with one of Leo's successors, Gregory VII. This culminated in many ways in the Gregorian reforms, often named after Pope Gregory VII, 1073 to 1085, who sought to free the church from lay control, leading to what we sometimes call the investiture controversy with the German emperor Henry IV over who had the right to appoint bishops. As a reformer, Gregory's goals are threefold. Firstly, he seeks to enforce total celibacy among all priests and prohibit them from marrying. Secondly, he puts an end to simony, the buying and selling of church appointments. And, most importantly, he removes secular influence over the church, in particular by preventing kings from choosing the bishops in their territories.

45:26And Gregory's stance that the Pope held supreme spiritual authority over kings dramatically increased the power and prestige of the papacy, while also helping define Western Christendom as a distinct spiritual and moral community under papal leadership. As well as extricating itself from secular interference, the church gradually attempts to impose its moral authority over more areas of society. By this period, the social structure of Western European life can simply be imagined as a pyramid. At the top is the king, or other ruler, beneath whom are the military landowning elites. And the whole system is supported on the backs of the peasant class, whose lives in many ways remain the same throughout the medieval period.

46:17It is a system often referred to as feudalism, and it solidifies more fully in the 11th and 12th centuries. Through the 10th and 11th century, there is real cause for concern for many of these people who are living within these violent societies as a form of feudalism begins to emerge. And the church tries to impose some form of moral standards on this because there is still a great deal of decentralization which bred violence and instability with knights trading for war, frequently turning their aggression on local peasants or rival lords, sees the church in response launching a number of significant movements, like the Peace of God movement in the late 10th century and the Truths of God movement in the early 11th century, which sought to limit private warfare and its impact on ordinary people by threatening spiritual sanctions on those who attacked the poor, attacked women or clergy, or fought on certain holy days.

47:14Despite his powerful convictions, The path to reform is not smooth for Gregory or his successors. The expansion of papal power is opposed by rulers, including the German emperor, at times violently. But in the dying days of the 11th century, a stunning intervention by Gregory's successor, Urban II, demonstrates the unquestionable centrality of the Pope to both the political and religious life of Europe. In November 1095, at a church council in France, Pope Urban II delivers a sermon that changes the course of history. In 1095, Pope Urban II called the First Crusade at the Council of Clermont. He urged Western knights to cease fighting each other and instead fight a holy war to aid Eastern Christians in the Eastern Roman Empire, in the Byzantine Empire, to eventually, it was hoped recover Jerusalem from Muslim control.

48:15The Eastern Roman Empire had been facing increasing problems in Anatolia and had lost huge amounts of territories to Islamic expansion, and this call for the First Crusade sought to roll back that. Urban's appeal to the lords and knights of France builds directly on wider church efforts to curb the violence and depredations of the knightly classes. It unites Europe's warrior class under a common religious cause, offering them forgiveness for their sins and eternal salvation in return for their participation in this holy war to reclaim the Christian sacred places in the East. And it demonstrates the renewed power and influence of the papacy.

49:02It's both a product of papal power at its zenith and a response to the instability of the feudal world as well, to try to turn that round and outward against people who are perceived as being cultural opponents, in this case, a clash between Christianity and Islam.

49:20The response to a band's call is immediate. Leaders from across Europe, including Robert, the Duke of Normandy, and eldest surviving son of William the Conqueror, gather armies of loyal knights and begin the journey eastwards. Ordinary citizens are also inspired by the promise of salvation. What becomes known as the People's Crusade, made up of thousands of peasants and low-ranking knights, also sets off for Jerusalem, led primarily by a charismatic preacher named Peter the Hermit. As they travel overland through Central Europe, these zealous Christians, whipped into frenzy by sermons about the evil of non-believers, carry out brutal massacres of Jewish communities.

50:07800 are killed in the German town of Worms, and over a thousand in neighboring Mainz. The total death toll is impossible to quantify, but maybe as high as 10 ,000. They never make it to Jerusalem. In October 1096, the peasant army is largely destroyed by Turkish forces in Anatolia. The crusading armies, led by European lords, however, fare better. Chronicled by the priest Fulca, who travels with them, they pass through Constantinople and proceed to capture huge swathes of territory in the Middle East. Against all odds, Jerusalem falls to the Christian forces in 1099. The massacre of Muslims is so great that one contemporary account describes ankle-deep rivers of blood.

50:59flowing through Temple Mount. In the wake of their victories, four crusader states, ruled by Western Christians, are founded in the Middle East. For the first time in its history, Latin Christendom extends beyond the continental borders of Europe. So the crusader movement brought together a whole range of different trends that had been flowing through Western Europe and diverted them, or rather focused them, perhaps one should say, focused them on this particular activity of the recovery and maintenance of Jerusalem and then the kingdoms of Utreme, the kingdoms outside Western Europe, the kingdoms across the sea.

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52:55Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions, including ALS Lou Gehrig's disease, myasthenia gravis or Lambert-Eaton syndrome, and medications, including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects. Why wait? Ask your doctor. Visit BotoxChronicMigraine.com or call 1-800-44-BOTOX to learn more. At the beginning of the Middle Ages, European political and economic life had been thrown into crisis by the fall of the Roman Empire. By 1095, when Pope Urban preached what became the First Crusade, he could call on the lords and kings of Western Europe to form and finance armies and take them to fight in distant lands, inspired by a shared vision of the Christian faith.

53:38the crusade also reflected a growing sense of christendom as a concept a shared european identity defined by latin christianity and papal authority western europe once exclusively inward looking and fragmented now for a time at least projected power abroad under a common religious ideal so by the end of the early medieval period we see many of the features that have characterized the beginning of it begin to roll back as a foundation is laid for what would then occur in the High Middle Ages. On the cusp of the 12th century, countries across Europe had stronger rulers and developing governmental institutions.

54:24Their burgeoning legal systems and societies were largely based on an evolving feudal order of knightly landholders and peasants who worked that land. These era-defining developments were all thanks to the early Middle Ages and the people and events that had shaped them. From the ashes of Rome, a new world had risen. It remained to be seen what the later Middle Ages would bring. Join us for part two to discover how the renewed papacy would attempt to increase the reach of the church into more areas of people's lives, what impact the feudal class system would have on the peasantry, and whether they would push back against their subjugation, and what would come of the connections Europe was forging with the rest of the world, for good and for ill.

55:23Next time on Short History of, we'll bring you the final part of a special two-part Short History of the European Middle Ages I would say that in several significant ways the Middle Ages are the foundation for what we now are. The concept of European-ness, of Christendom, of something that is bigger than the nation-state, the concept of the emerging nation-states themselves, The idea of the challenge of how communities should live together and work together, both religiously and ethnically, and our contested and complex global world also has its roots in the voyages of discovery, with their positive and terribly negative effects too, which are also products of the late medieval period.

56:24the middle ages are still very much with us whether we like it or not

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