Middle Ages
Renaissance
Age of Discovery
Modern Era
Classical rational traditions were actively united with Christian mysticism to carve out a new intellectual world.
With the few literate people concentrated in monasteries, little was achieved other than copying older manuscripts.
Universities rapidly created a new intellectual climate in which logic was applied to matters of Christian doctrine.
Western scholars achieved more during this period than their Islamic counterparts.
Artisans
Guildsmen
Serfs
Bourgeoisie
Capetian
Carolingian
Saxon
Norman
Manorialism
Feudalism
Capitalism
The guild system
1066
1095
1130
1453
The Crusades helped open the West to new cultural and economic influences from the Middle East.
The Crusades improved the status of women.
The Crusades increased global trade.
The Crusades demonstrated a new Western superiority in the wider world.
In the former Roman colony of Spain
In Italy, particularly Rome
The central plains of northern Europe
Greece
Muslims
Mongols
Vikings
Chinese
Manorialism
Feudalism
Slavery
Capitalism
A system of justice common to the manorial regime of the medieval West.
A technological innovation, a plow that allowed deeper turning of the soil.
A technological innovation, a water-driven mill for grinding grain.
The peasant council that determined the division of land and labor in a peasant village.
Introduced in the 8th century, the three-field rotation added acres to production by leaving only a third of the land unplanted.
The three-field system removed more land from production than before by reserving one-third for fallow.
The three-field system was rapidly replaced after the 8th century by the two-field system that offered greater flexibility in terms of crop rotation.
The three-field system removed fallow fields and replaced them with nitrogen-bearing crops.
The conversion of the Franks in 596
The banning of lay investiture among kings
The creation of a set of rules for monasteries
The conquest of Constantinople
That the Church was subordinate to the secular monarchs
That the Church was superior to the secular rulers
That the Church should avoid conversion of northern Germanic kings
That such conversion represented a danger to the papal hierarchy
They built upon the Carolingian foundations to establish the most centralized government found in the medieval West.
Building on a feudal framework rather than the Carolingian Germanic foundations, the Holy Roman emperors created a strongly centralized government.
Discarding much of the former Carolingian Empire, the Holy Roman emperors reestablished a centralized government in northern Italy.
The rule of the Holy Roman emperors became increasingly hollow, because they did not build a solid monarchy from regional foundations.
Italy and the Low Countries
England and France
France and the Holy Roman Empire
England and Scandinavia
Fiefs
Benefices
Vassals
Serfs
Although it inhibited the developments of strong central states, some kings were able to use feudalism to build their own power.
Although it provided initial political stability, feudalism was rapidly replaced by a western European imperial system.
Feudalism represented only a brief, and largely unsatisfactory, attempt to create political stability in western Europe.
Feudalism produced centralized monarchies by the 8th century.
English feudal monarchy developed more gradually and slowly in response to the improving economy.
English feudal monarchy was introduced abruptly following 1066, while French feudal monarchy developed more slowly.
French feudal monarchy arose almost immediately in the 10th century as a result of the defeat of the Normans.
France failed to develop feudal monarchy until the 15th century unlike England.
St. Benedict and Clovis.
St. Clare and St. Benedict.
St. Francis and Charlemagne.
St. Francis and St. Clare
The West abandoned its classical heritage.
The universities were not tied into a single bureaucratic system.
In the West, there were no state bureaucracies to hire university graduates.
The West lacked a formal system of education.
Thomas Aquinas.
William of Ockham.
Peter Abelard.
Geoffrey Chaucer.
Wait!
Here's an interesting quiz for you.