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9 Christian EuropeEmerges, 600–1200
CHAPTER OUTLINEThe Byzantine Empire, 600–1200
Early Medieval Europe, 600–1000
The Western Church
Kievan Russia, 900–1200
Western Europe Revives, 1000–1200
The Crusades, 1095–1204
DIVERSITY AND DOMINANCE: Archbishop Adalbert of Hamburg and the
Christianization of the Scandinavians and Slavs
ENVIRONMENT AND TECHNOLOGY: Cathedral Organs
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Christmas Day in 800 found Charles, king of theFranks, in Rome
instead of at his palace at Aachenin northwestern Germany. At
six-foot-three, Charlestowered over the average man of his time,
and hisroyal career had been equally gargantuan. Crownedking in his
mid-twenties in 768, he had crisscrossedEurope for three decades,
waging war on Muslim in-vaders from Spain, Avar˚ invaders from
Hungary, anda number of German princes.
Charles had subdued many enemies and had be-come protector of
the papacy. So not all historiansbelieve the eyewitness report of
his secretary and bi-ographer that Charles was surprised when, as
the kingrose from his prayers, Pope Leo III placed a new crownon
his head. “Life and victory to Charles the August,crowned by God
the great and pacific Emperor ofthe Romans,” proclaimed the pope.1
Then, amid thecheers of the crowd, he humbly knelt before the
newemperor.
Charlemagne˚ (from Latin Carolus magnus,“Charles the Great”) was
the first in western Europe tobear the title emperor in over three
hundred years.Rome’s decline and Charlemagne’s rise marked a
shiftof focus for Europe—away from the Mediterraneanand toward the
north and west. German custom andChristian piety transformed the
Roman heritage to cre-ate a new civilization. Irish monks preaching
in Latinbecame important intellectual influences in someparts of
Europe, while the memory of Greek and Ro-man philosophy faded.
Urban life continued the de-cline that had begun in the later days
of the RomanEmpire. Historians originally called this era
“medieval,”literally “middle age,” because it comes between theera
of Greco-Roman civilization and the intellectual,artistic, and
economic changes of the Renaissance inthe fourteenth century; but
research has uncoveredmany aspects of medieval culture that are as
rich andcreative as those that came earlier and later.
Charlemagne was not the only ruler in Europe toclaim the title
emperor. Another emperor held sway inthe Greek-speaking east, where
Rome’s political andlegal heritage continued. The Eastern Roman
Empire
was often called the Byzantine Empire after the sev-enth
century, and was known to the Muslims as Rum.Western Europeans
lived amid the ruins of empire,while the Byzantines maintained and
reinterpretedRoman traditions. The authority of the Byzantine
em-perors blended with the influence of the Christianchurch to form
a cultural synthesis that helped shapethe emerging kingdom of
Kievan Russia. Byzantium’scenturies-long conflict with Islam helped
spur thecrusading passion that overtook western Europe inthe
eleventh century.
The comparison between western and easternEurope appears
paradoxical. Byzantium inherited arobust and self-confident late
Roman society andeconomy, while western Europe could not
achievepolitical unity and suffered severe economic decline.Yet by
1200 western Europe was showing renewed vi-tality and flexing its
military muscles, while Byzantiumwas showing signs of decline and
military weakness.As we explore the causes and consequences of
thesedifferent historical paths, we must remember that theemergence
of Christian Europe included both devel-opments.
As you read this chapter, ask yourself the follow-ing
questions:
● What role did Christianity play in reshaping Euro-pean society
in east and west?
● How did the Roman heritage differently affect theeast and the
west?
● How can one compare Kievan Russia’s resemblancesto western
Europe and to the Byzantine Empire?
● How did Mediterranean trade and the Crusades helprevive
western Europe?
THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE,600–1200
The Byzantine emperors established Christianity astheir official
religion (see Chapter 5). They also rep-resented a continuation of
Roman imperial rule andtradition that was largely absent in the
kingdoms thatsucceeded Rome in the west. Byzantium inherited
im-perial law intact; only provincial forms of Roman law
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survived in the west. Combining the imperial role withpolitical
oversight over the Christian church, the emper-ors made a
comfortable transition into the role of all-powerful Christian
monarchs. The Byzantine drama,however, played on a steadily
shrinking stage. Territoriallosses and almost constant military
pressure from northand south deprived the empire of long periods of
peace.
Having a single ruler endowedwith supreme legal and reli-gious
authority prevented thebreakup of the Eastern Em-
pire into petty principalities, but a series of
territoriallosses sapped the empire’s strength. Between 634 and
An EmpireBeleaguered
650, Arab armies destroyed the Sasanid Empire andcaptured
Byzantine Egypt, Syria, and Tunisia (seeChapter 8). Islam posed a
religious as well as a politi-cal challenge. By the end of the
twelfth century, sometwo-thirds of the Christians in these former
Byzan-tine territories had adopted the Muslim faith (seeMap
9.1).
The loss of such populous and prosperous provincesshook the
empire and reduced its power. Although ithad largely recovered and
reorganized militarily by thetenth century, it never regained the
lost lands. ThoughCrusaders from western Europe established
short-livedChristian principalities at the eastern end of
theMediterranean Sea in the eleventh century, the Byzan-tines found
them almost as hostile as the Muslims (see
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the section below on the Crusades). Eventually the em-pire
succumbed to Muslim conquest in 1453.
The later Byzantine emperors faced new enemies inthe north and
south. Following the wave of Germanicmigrations (see Chapter 5),
Slavic and Turkic peoples ap-peared on the northern frontiers as
part of centuries-long and poorly understood population migrations
inEurasian steppe lands. Other Turks led by the Seljuk fam-ily
became the primary foe in the south (see Chapter 8).
At the same time, relations with the popes andprinces of western
Europe steadily worsened. In themid-ninth century the patriarchs of
Constantinople hadchallenged the territorial jurisdiction of the
popes ofRome and some of the practices of the Latin Church.These
arguments worsened over time and in 1054 cul-minated in a formal
schism˚ between the Latin Churchand the Orthodox Church—a break
that has been onlypartially mended.
Imperial authority and urbanprosperity in the eastern prov-inces
of the late Roman Empireinitially sheltered Byzantium
from many of the economic reverses and populationlosses suffered
by western Europe. However, the two re-gions shared a common
demographic crisis during asixth-century epidemic of bubonic plague
known as “theplague of Justinian,” named after the emperor who
ruledfrom 527 to 565. A similar though gradual and less pro-nounced
social transformation set in around the sev-enth century, possibly
sparked by further epidemics andthe loss of Egypt and Syria to the
Muslims. Narrative his-tories tell us little, but popular
narratives of saints’ livesshow a transition from stories about
educated saints hail-ing from cities to stories about saints who
originated aspeasants. In many areas, barter replaced money
transac-tions; some cities declined in population and wealth;and
the traditional class of local urban notables
nearlydisappeared.
Society andUrban Life
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C H R O N O L O G YWestern Europe Eastern Europe
711 Muslim conquest of Spain732 Battle of Tours
800 Coronation of Charlemagne843 Treaty of Verdun divides
Carolingian Empire
among Charlemagne’s grandsons
910 Monastery of Cluny founded962 Beginning of Holy Roman
Empire
1054 Formal schism between Latin and OrthodoxChurches
1066 Normans under William the Conqueror invadeEngland
1077 Climax of investiture controversy1095 Pope Urban II
preaches First Crusade
634–650 Muslims conquer Byzantine provinces ofSyria, Egypt, and
Tunisia
882 Varangians take control of Kiev
980 Vladimir becomes grand prince of Kievan Russia
1081–1118 Alexius Comnenus rules ByzantineEmpire, calls for
western military aid againstMuslims
1204 Western knights sack Constantinople in FourthCrusade
600
800
1000
1200
Schism (SKIZ-uhm)
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As the urban elite class shrank, the importance ofhigh-ranking
aristocrats at the imperial court and of ru-ral landowners
increased. Power organized by familybegan to rival power from
class-based officeholding. Bythe end of the eleventh century, a
family-based militaryaristocracy had emerged. Of Byzantine emperor
AlexiusComnenus˚ (r. 1081–1118) it was said: “He consideredhimself
not a ruler, but a lord, conceiving and callingthe empire his own
house.”2 The situation of womenchanged, too. Although earlier Roman
family life wascentered on a legally all-powerful father, women had
en-joyed comparative freedom in public. After the seventhcentury
women increasingly found themselves confinedto the home. Some
sources indicate that when they wentout, they concealed their faces
behind veils. The onlymen they socialized with were family members.
Para-
doxically, however, from 1028 to 1056 women ruled theByzantine
Empire alongside their husbands. These socialchanges and the
apparent increase in the seclusion ofwomen resemble simultaneous
developments in neigh-boring Islamic countries, but historians have
not uncov-ered any firm linkage between them.
Economically, the Byzantine emperors continuedthe Late Roman
inclination to set prices, organize grainshipments to the capital,
and monopolize trade in lux-ury goods like Tyrian purple cloth.
Such government in-tervention may have slowed technological
developmentand economic innovation. So long as merchants and
pil-grims hastened to Constantinople from all points of thecompass,
aristocrats could buy rare and costly goods.Just as the
provisioning and physical improvement ofRome overshadowed the
development of other cities atthe height of the Roman Empire, so
other Byzantinecities suffered from the intense focus on
Constantinople.In the countryside, Byzantine farmers continued to
useslow oxcarts and light scratch plows, which were effi-cient for
many, but not all, soil types, long after farmersin western Europe
had begun to adopt more efficienttechniques (see below).
Because Byzantium’s Roman inheritance remainedso much more
intact than western Europe’s, few peoplerecognized the slow
deterioration. Gradually, however,pilgrims and visitors from the
west saw the reality be-yond the awe-inspiring, incense-filled
domes of cathe-drals and beneath the glitter and silken garments of
theroyal court. An eleventh-century French visitor wrote:
The city itself [Constantinople] is squalid and fetidand in many
places harmed by permanent darkness,for the wealthy overshadow the
streets with buildingsand leave these dirty, dark places to the
poor and totravelers; there murders and robberies and othercrimes
which love the darkness are committed.Moreover, since people live
lawlessly in this city,which has as many lords as rich men and
almost asmany thieves as poor men, a criminal knows neitherfear nor
shame, because crime is not punished bylaw and never entirely comes
to light. In every respectshe exceeds moderation; for, just as she
surpassesother cities in wealth, so too, does she surpass themin
vice.3
A Byzantine contemporary, Anna Comnena, the bril-liant daughter
of Emperor Alexius Comnenus, expressedthe view from the other side.
She scornfully described aprominent churchman and philosopher who
happenedto be from Italy: “Italos . . . was unable with his
barbaric,stupid temperament to grasp the profound truths of
phi-losophy; even in the act of learning he utterly rejected
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the teacher’s guiding hand, and full of temerity and bar-baric
folly, [believed] even before study that he excelledall
others.”4
Though the greatest Byzan-tine architectural
monument,Constantinople’s Hagia Sophia˚(“Sacred Wisdom”)
cathedral,
dates to the reign of Justinian, artistic creativity
continu-ally manifested itself in the design and ornamentation
ofother churches and monasteries. Byzantine religious art,featuring
stiff but arresting images of holy figures againstgold backgrounds,
strongly influenced painting in west-ern Europe down to the
thirteenth century, and Byzan-tine musical traditions strongly
affected the chantingemployed in medieval Latin churches.
Another important Byzantine achievement dates tothe empire’s
long period of political decline. In the ninthcentury brothers
named Cyril and Methodius embarkedon a highly successful mission to
the Slavs of Moravia(part of the modern Czech Republic). They
preachedin the local language, and their followers perfected
awriting system, called Cyrillic˚, that came to be used bySlavic
Christians adhering to the Orthodox—that is,Byzantine—rite. Their
careers also mark the beginningof a competition between the Greek
and Latin forms ofChristianity for the allegiance of the Slavs. The
use todayof the Cyrillic alphabet among the Russians and
otherSlavic peoples of Orthodox Christian faith, and of the Ro-man
alphabet among the Poles, Czechs, and Croatians,testifies to this
competition (see the section below onKievan Russia).
EARLY MEDIEVAL EUROPE,600–1000
The disappearance of the imperial legal frameworkthat had
persisted to the final days of the WesternRoman Empire (see Chapter
5) and the rise of variouskings, nobles, and chieftains changed the
legal and polit-ical landscape of western Europe. In region after
region,the family-based traditions of the Germanic peoples,which
often fit local conditions better than previouspractices,
supplanted the edicts of the Roman emperors.
Fear and physical insecurity led communities toseek the
protection of local strongmen. In places where
CulturalAchievements
looters and pillagers might appear at any moment, a lo-cal lord
with a castle at which peasants could take refugecounted for more
than a distant king. Dependency ofweak people on strong people
became a hallmark of thepost-Roman period in western Europe.
In 711 a frontier raiding party ofArabs and Berbers, acting
underthe authority of the Umayyadcaliph in Syria, crossed the
Strait of Gibraltar and overturned the kingdom of theVisigoths
in Spain (see Chapter 8). The disunited Euro-peans could not stop
them from consolidating their holdon the Iberian Peninsula. After
pushing the remainingChristian chieftains into the northern
mountains, theMuslims moved on to France. They occupied much of
thesouthern coast and penetrated as far north as Tours, lessthan
150 miles (240 kilometers) from the English Chan-nel, before
Charlemagne’s grandfather, Charles Martel,stopped their most
advanced raiding party in 732.
Military effectiveness was the key element in the riseof the
Carolingian˚ family (from Latin Carolus, “Charles”),first as
protectors of the Frankish kings, then as kingsthemselves under
Charlemagne’s father Pepin (r. 751–768), and finally, under
Charlemagne, as emperors. At thepeak of Charlemagne’s power, the
Carolingian Empireencompassed all of Gaul and parts of Germany and
Italy,with the pope ruling part of the latter. When Charle-magne’s
son, Louis the Pious, died, the Germanic tradi-tion of splitting
property among sons led to the Treaty ofVerdun (843), which split
the empire into three parts.French-speaking in the west (France)
and middle (Bur-gundy), and German-speaking in the east
(Germany),the three regions never reunited. Nevertheless, the
Car-olingian economic system based on landed wealth anda brief
intellectual revival sponsored personally byCharlemagne—though he
himself was illiterate—pro-vided a common heritage.
A new threat to western Europe appeared in 793,when the Vikings,
sea raiders from Scandinavia, attackedand plundered a monastery on
the English coast, thefirst of hundreds of such raids. Local
sources fromFrance, the British Isles, and Muslim Spain attest
towidespread dread of Viking warriors descending frommulti-oared,
dragon-prowed boats to pillage monaster-ies, villages, and towns.
Viking shipbuilders made versa-tile vessels that could brave the
stormy North Atlanticand also maneuver up rivers to attack inland
towns. Inthe ninth century raiders from Denmark and Norway
A Time ofInsecurity
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harried the British and French coasts (see Diversity
andDominance: Archbishop Adalbert of Hamburg and
theChristianization of the Scandinavians and Slavs)
whileVarangians˚ (Swedes) pursued raiding and trading inter-ests,
and eventually the building of kingdoms, along therivers of eastern
Europe and Russia, as we shall see. Al-though many Viking raiders
sought booty and slaves, inthe 800s and 900s Viking captains
organized the settle-ment of Iceland, Greenland, and, around the
year 1000,Vinland on the northern tip of Newfoundland.
Vikings long settled on lands they had seized in Nor-mandy (in
northwestern France) organized the most im-portant and ambitious
expeditions in terms of numbersof men and horses and long-lasting
impact. William theConqueror, the duke of Normandy, invaded England
in1066 and brought Anglo-Saxon domination of the islandto an end.
Other Normans (from “north men”) attackedMuslim Sicily in the 1060s
and, after thirty years of fight-ing, permanently severed it from
the Muslim world.
Archaeology and records keptby Christian monasteries andconvents
reveal a profoundeconomic transformation that
accompanied the new Germanic political order. The newrulers
cared little for the urban-based civilization ofthe Romans, which
accordingly shrank in importance.Though the pace of change differed
from region to re-gion, most cities lost population, in some cases
becom-ing villages. Roman roads fell into disuse and
disrepair.Small thatched houses sprang up beside abandoned vil-las,
and public buildings made of marble became dilapi-dated in the
absence of the laborers, money, and civicleadership needed to
maintain them. Paying for pur-chases in coin largely gave way to
bartering goods andservices.
Trade across the Mediterranean did not entirelystop after the
Muslim conquests; occasional shipmentsfrom Egypt and Syria
continued to reach western ports.But most of western Europe came to
rely on meager lo-cal resources. These resources, moreover,
underwentredistribution.
Roman centralization had channeled the wealth andproduction of
the empire to the capital, which in turnradiated Roman cultural
styles and tastes to the prov-inces. As Roman governors were
replaced by Germanicterritorial lords who found the riches of their
own cul-ture more appealing than those of Rome, local self-
A Self-SufficientEconomy
sufficiency became more important. The decline of liter-acy and
other aspects of Roman life made room for thegrowth of Germanic
cultural traditions.
The diet in the northern countries featured beer,lard or butter,
and bread made of barley, rye, or wheat, allsupplemented by pork
from herds of swine fed on forestacorns and beechnuts, and by game
from the sameforests. Nobles ate better than peasants, but even
thepeasant diet was reasonably balanced. The Roman dietbased on
wheat, wine, and olive oil persisted in the south.The average
western European of the ninth century wasprobably better nourished
than his or her descendantsthree hundred years later, when
population was increas-ing and the nobility monopolized the
resources of theforests.
In both north and south, self-sufficient farming es-tates known
as manors became the primary centers ofagricultural production.
Fear of attack led many com-mon farmers in the most vulnerable
regions to give theirlands to large landowners in return for
political andphysical protection. The warfare and instability of
thepost-Roman centuries made unprotected country housesespecially
vulnerable to pillaging. Isolated by poor com-munications and lack
of organized government, land-owners depended on their own
resources for survival.Many became warriors or maintained a force
of armedmen. Others swore allegiance to landowners who hadarmed
forces to protect them.
A well-appointed manor possessed fields, gardens,grazing lands,
fish ponds, a mill, a church, workshopsfor making farm and
household implements, and a vil-lage where the farmers dependent on
the lord of themanor lived. Depending on local conditions,
protectionranged from a ditch and wooden stockade to a stone
wallsurrounding a fortified keep (a stone building). Fortifica-tion
tended to increase until the twelfth century, whenstronger
monarchies made it less necessary.
Manor life reflected personal status. Nobles andtheir families
exercised almost unlimited power over theserfs—agricultural workers
who belonged to the manor,tilled its fields, and owed other dues
and obligations.Serfs could not leave the manor where they were
bornand attach themselves to another lord. Most peasants inEngland,
France, and western Germany were unfreeserfs in the tenth and
eleventh centuries. In Bordeaux˚,Saxony, and a few other regions
free peasantry survivedbased on the egalitarian social structure of
the Germanicpeoples during their period of migration. Outright
slav-ery, the mainstay of the Roman economy (see Chapter
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5), diminished as more and more peasants became serfsin return
for a lord’s protection. The enslavement of pris-oners to serve as
laborers became less important as anobject of warfare.
Europe’s reversion to a self-sufficient economy limited
thefreedom and potential for per-sonal achievement of most peo-ple,
but an emerging class of
nobles reaped great benefits. During the Germanic mi-grations
and later among the Vikings of Scandinavia,men regularly answered
the call to arms issued by warchiefs, to whom they swore
allegiance. All warriorsshared in the booty gained from raiding. As
settlementenhanced the importance of agricultural tasks, layingdown
the plow and picking up the sword at the chief-tain’s call became
harder.
Those who, out of loyalty or desire for adventure,continued to
join the war parties included a growingnumber of horsemen. Mounted
warriors became thecentral force of the Carolingian army. At first,
fightingfrom horseback did not make a person either a noble-man or
a landowner. By the tenth century, however,nearly constant warfare
to protect land rights or supportthe claims of a lord brought about
a gradual transforma-tion in the status of the mounted warrior,
which led, atdifferent rates in different areas, to landholding
becom-ing almost inseparable from military service.
In trying to understand long-standing traditions oflandholding
and obligation, lawyers in the sixteenth cen-tury and later
simplified thousands of individual agree-ments into a neat system
they called “feudalism,” fromLatin feodum, meaning a land awarded
for military ser-vice. It became common to refer to medieval Europe
asa “feudal society” in which kings and lords gave land to“vassals”
in return for sworn military support. By analyz-ing original
records, more recent historians have discov-ered this to be an
oversimplification. Relations betweenlandholders and serfs and
between lords and vassals dif-fered too much from one place to
another, and from onetime to another, to fit together in anything
resembling asystem.
The German foes of the Roman legions had equippedthemselves with
helmets, shields, and swords, spears, orthrowing axes. Some rode
horses, but most fought onfoot. Before the invention of the stirrup
by Central Asianpastoralists in approximately the first century
C.E., horse-men had gripped their mounts with their legs and
foughtwith bows and arrows, throwing javelins, stabbing spears,and
swords. Stirrups allowed a rider to stand in the sad-
Early MedievalSociety in theWest
dle and absorb the impact when his lance struck an en-emy at
full gallop. This type of warfare required grain-fedhorses that
were larger and heavier than the small, grass-fed animals of the
Central Asian nomads, though smallerand lighter than the draft
horses bred in later times forhauling heavy loads. Thus
agricultural Europe ratherthan the grassy steppes produced the
charges of armoredknights that came to dominate the
battlefield.
By the eleventh century, the knight, called by differ-ent terms
in different places, had emerged as the centralfigure in medieval
warfare. He wore an open-faced hel-met and a long linen shirt, or
hauberk˚, studded withsmall metal disks. A century later, knightly
equipmentcommonly included a visored helmet that covered thehead
and neck and a hauberk of chain mail.
Each increase in armor for knight and horse entaileda greater
financial outlay. Since land was the basis ofwealth, a knight
needed financial support from land rev-enues. Accordingly, kings
began to reward armed servicewith grants of land from their own
property. Lesser no-bles with extensive properties built their own
militaryretinues the same way.
A grant of land in return for a pledge to provide mil-itary
service was often called a fief. At first, kings grantedfiefs to
their noble followers, known as vassals, on a tem-porary basis. By
the tenth century, most fiefs could beinherited as long as the
specified military service contin-ued to be provided. Though
patterns varied greatly, theassociation of landholding with
military service madethe medieval society of western Europe quite
differentfrom the contemporary city-based societies of the Is-lamic
world.
Kings and lords might be able to command the ser-vice of their
vassals for only part of the year. Vassals couldhold land from
several different lords and owe loyaltyto each one. Moreover, the
allegiance that a vassal owedto one lord could entail military
service to that lord’smaster in time of need.
A “typical” medieval realm—actual practices variedbetween and
within realms—consisted of lands directlyowned by a king or a count
and administered by his royalofficers. The king’s or count’s major
vassals held and ad-ministered other lands, often the greater
portion, in re-turn for military service. These vassals, in turn,
grantedland to their own vassals.
The lord of a manor provided governance and jus-tice, direct
royal government being quite limited. Theking had few financial
resources and seldom exercisedlegal jurisdiction at a local level.
Members of the clergy,as well as the extensive agricultural lands
owned by
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Adam of Bremen’s History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen,
consists of four sections. The third is devotedto the Archbishop
Adalbert, whose death in 1072 stirredAdam to write. References to
classical poets, the lives ofsaints, and royal documents show that
Adam, a churchman,had a solid education and access to many sources.
He alsodrew on living informants, in particular the Danish
kingSvein Estrithson, a nephew of Canute, king of England from1015
to 1035, and father-in-law of Gottschalk, a lord overthe Slavs
mentioned below. The excerpts below illustrate theclose connection
between political and religious institutionsin establishing a
structure of domination in lands on the Eu-ropean frontier.
Archbishop Adalbert held the see for twenty-nine years.
Hereceived the pastoral staff from the [Holy Roman] EmperorHenry,
the son of Conrad, who was, counting from CaesarAugustus, the
ninetieth Roman emperor to sit upon thethrone . . . The
archiepiscopal pallium [i.e., bishop’s cloak]was brought to him . .
. by legates from the Pope Bene-dict . . . [who] was the one
hundred and forty-seventh afterthe Apostles in the succession of
Roman pontiffs. His conse-cration took place in Aachen in the
presence of Caesar and ofthe princes of the realm. Twelve bishops
assisted and laidtheir hands on him . . .
This remarkable man may for all that be extolled withpraise of
every kind in that he was noble, handsome, wise,eloquent, chaste,
temperate. All these qualities he comprisedin himself and others
besides, such as one is wont to attachto the outer man: that he was
rich, that he was successful,that he was glorious, that he was
influential. All these thingswere his in abundance. Moreover, in
respect of the mission tothe heathen, which is the first duty of
the Church at Ham-burg, no one so vigorous could ever be found . .
. Althoughhe was such in the beginning, he seemed to fail toward
theend. Not being well on his guard against any defect in
hisvirtue, the man met with ruin as much through his own
neg-ligence as through the driving malice of others . . .
Keen and well trained of mind, he was skillful in manyarts. In
things divine and human he was possessed of great
prudence and was well known for retaining in memory andsetting
forth with matchless eloquence what he had ac-quired by hearing or
by study. Then, besides, although hand-some in physical form, he
was a lover of chastity. Hisgenerosity was of a kind that made him
regard asking favorsas unworthy, that made him slow and humble in
acceptingthem but prompt and cheerful in giving, often generously,
tothose who had not asked. His humility appears doubtful inthat he
exhibited it only in respect of the servants of God,the poor, and
pilgrims, and it went to such lengths that be-fore retiring he
often would on bended knees personallywash the feet of thirty or
more beggars. To the princes of theworld, however, and to his peers
he would in no way stoop.Toward them he even broke out at times
with a vehemencethat at last spared no one he thought outstanding.
Somehe upbraided for luxury, others for greed, still others
forinfidelity . . .
On seeing that the basilica [i.e., cathedral] which hadlately
been started was an immense structure requiring verygreat
resources, he with too precipitate judgment immedi-ately had the
city wall, begun by his predecessors, pulleddown, as if it were not
at all necessary, and ordered its stonesbuilt into the temple. Even
the beautiful tower, . . . fitted outwith seven chambers, was then
razed to its foundations . . .Alebrand before him had begun [the
cathedral] in the styleof the church at Cologne [in western
Germany], but heplanned to carry it out in the manner of the
cathedral atBenevento [in southern Italy] . . .
And because the great prelate saw that his Church andbishopric .
. . was troubled again by the iniquitous might ofthe dukes, he made
a supreme effort to restore to thatChurch its former freedom, that
thus neither the duke northe count nor any person of judicial
position would have anyright or power in his diocese. But this
objective could not beattained without incurring hatred, since the
wrath of theprinces, rebuked for their wickedness, would be further
in-flamed. And they say that Duke Bernhard, who held the
arch-bishop under suspicion because of his nobility and
wisdom,often said that Adalbert had been stationed in this
countrylike a spy, to betray the weaknesses of the land to the
aliens
D I V E R S I T Y A N D D O M I N A N C EARCHBISHOP ADALBERT OF
HAMBURG AND THE
CHRISTIANIZATION OF THE SCANDINAVIANS AND SLAVS
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and to Caesar. Consequently the duke declared that as longas he
or any of his sons lived, the bishop should not have ahappy day in
the bishopric . . .
As soon as the metropolitan [i.e., Archbishop Adalbert]had
entered upon his episcopate, he sent legates to the kingsof the
north in the interest of friendship. There were also dis-persed
throughout all Denmark and Norway and Sweden andto the ends of the
earth admonitory letters in which he ex-horted the bishops and
priests living in those parts . . . fear-lessly to forward the
conversion of the pagans . . . [Svein, theDanish king who died
after invading England in 1013 and lefthis throne to his son
Canute] forgot the heavenly King asthings prospered with him and
married a blood relative fromSweden. This mightily displeased the
lord archbishop, whosent legates to the rash king, rebuking him
severely for hissin, and who stated finally that if he did not come
to hissenses, he would have to be cut off with the sword of
ex-communication. Beside himself with rage, the king thenthreatened
to ravage and destroy the whole diocese of Ham-burg. Unperturbed by
these threats, our archbishop, reprov-ing and entreating, remained
firm, until at length the Danishtyrant was prevailed upon by
letters from the pope to givehis cousin a bill of divorce. Still
the king would not give earto the admonitions of the priests. Soon
after he had putaside his cousin he took to himself other wives and
concu-bines, and again still others . . .
While these events were taking place there, the mostChristian
king of the Swedes, James, departed this world, andhis brother,
Edmund the Bad, succeeded him. He was born ofa concubine by Olaf
[the Lapp King] and, although he hadbeen baptized, took little heed
of our religion. He had withhim a certain bishop named Osmund, of
irregular status,whom the bishop of the Norwegians, Sigefrid, had
oncecommended to the school at Bremen for instruction. Butlater he
forgot these kindnesses and went to Rome for con-secration. When he
was rejected there, he wandered aboutthrough many parts and so
finally secured consecration froma Polish archbishop. Going to
Sweden then, he boasted thathe had been consecrated archbishop for
those parts. Butwhen our archbishop sent his legates to King
[Edmund], theyfound this same vagabond Osmund there, having the
crossborne before him after the manner of an archbishop. Theyalso
heard that he had by his unsound teaching of our faithcorrupted the
barbarians, who were still neophytes [i.e.,beginners] . . .
In Norway . . . King Harold surpassed all the madness oftyrants
in his savage wildness. Many churches were de-stroyed by that man;
many Christians were tortured to deathby him. But he was a mighty
man and renowned for the vic-tories he had previously won in many
wars with barbarians inGreece and in the Scythian regions [i.e.,
while assisting theByzantine empress Zoë fight the Seljuk Turks].
After he cameinto his fatherland, however, he never ceased from
warfare;
he was the thunderbolt of the north . . . And so, as he
ruledover many nations, he was odious to all on account of hisgreed
and cruelty. He also gave himself up to the magic artsand, wretched
man that he was, did not heed the fact thathis most saintly brother
[i.e., Saint Olaf, one of Harold’s pred-ecessors] had eradicated
such illusions from the realm andstriven even unto death for the
adoption of the precepts ofChristianity . . .
Across the Elbe [i.e., east of the river Hamburg is on] andin
Slavia our affairs were still meeting with great success.
ForGottschalk . . . married a daughter of the Danish king and
sothoroughly subdued the Slavs that they feared him like aking,
offered to pay tribute, and asked for peace with sub-jection. Under
these circumstances our Church at Hamburgenjoyed peace, and Slavia
abounded in priests and churches . . .Gottschalk is said to have
been inflamed with such ardentzeal for the faith that, forgetting
his station, he frequentlymade discourse in church in exhortation
of the people—inchurch because he wished to make clearer in the
Slavicspeech what was abstrusely preached by the bishops orpriests.
Countless was the number of those who were con-verted every day; so
much so that he sent into every provincefor priests. In the several
cities were then also foundedmonasteries for holy men who lived
according to canonicalrule . . .
I have also heard the most veracious king of the Danessay . . .
that the Slavic peoples without doubt could easilyhave been
converted to Christianity long ago but for theavarice of the
Saxons. “They are,” he said, “more intent onthe payment of tribute
than on the conversion of the hea-then.” Nor do these wretched
people realize with what greatdanger they will have to atone for
their cupidity, they whothrough their avarice in the first place
threw Christianity inSlavia into disorder, in the second place have
by their crueltyforced their subjects to rebel, and who now by
their desireonly for money hold in contempt the salvation of a
peoplewho wish to believe” . . .
QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS1. Using this work as a historical source,
what would you
consider the main concerns of the church in northernGermany?
2. How does Adam distinguish Christians from pagans inhis
descriptive passages?
3. What appears to be the relationship between ecclesias-tical
lords like the archbishop and the secular kings anddukes?
Source: Excerpts from History of the Archbishops of
Hamburg-Bremen, tr. Francis J.Tschan (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1959 [new ed. 2002]), 114–133. Reprintedwith the permission
of the publisher.
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monasteries and nunneries, fell under the jurisdiction ofthe
church, which further limited the reach and author-ity of the
monarch.
Noblewomen became enmeshed in this tangle ofobligations as
heiresses and as candidates for marriage.A man who married the
widow or daughter of a lord withno sons could gain control of that
lord’s property. Mar-riage alliances affected entire kingdoms.
Noble daugh-ters and sons had little say in marriage matters;
issues ofland, power, and military service took precedence.
No-blemen guarded the women in their families as closelyas their
other valuables.
Nevertheless, women could own land. A noble-woman sometimes
administered her husband’s estateswhen he was away at war. Nonnoble
women usuallyworked alongside their menfolk, performing
agriculturaltasks such as raking and stacking hay, shearing
sheep,and picking vegetables. As artisans, women spun, wove,and
sewed clothing. The Bayeux˚ Tapestry, a piece ofembroidery 230 feet
(70 meters) long and 20 inches(51 centimeters) wide depicting
William the Conqueror’s
invasion of England in 1066, was designed and executedentirely
by women, though historians do not agree onwho those women
were.
THE WESTERN CHURCH
Just as the Christian populations in eastern Europe fol-lowed
the religious guidance of the patriarch of Con-stantinople
appointed by the Byzantine emperor, so thepope commanded similar
authority over church affairsin western Europe. And just as
missionaries in the eastspread Christianity among the Slavs, so
missionaries inthe west added territory to Christendom with forays
intothe British Isles and the lands of the Germans. Through-out the
period covered by this chapter Christian societywas emerging and
changing in both areas.
In the west Roman nobles lost control of thepapacy—the office of
the pope—and it became a morepowerful international office after
the tenth century.Councils of bishops—which normally set rules,
calledcanons, to regulate the priests and laypeople (men and
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women who were not members of the clergy) under
theirjurisdiction—became increasingly responsive to
papaldirection.
Nevertheless, regional disagreements over churchregulations,
shortages of educated and trained clergy,difficult communications,
political disorder, and thegeneral insecurity of the period posed
formidable obsta-cles to unifying church standards and practices.
Clericsin some parts of western Europe were still issuing
prohi-bitions against the worship of rivers, trees, and moun-tains
as late as the eleventh century. Church problemsincluded lingering
polytheism, lax enforcement of pro-hibitions against marriage of
clergy, nepotism (givingpreferment to one’s close kin), and simony
(selling ec-clesiastical appointments, often to people who were
notmembers of the clergy). The persistence of the papacyin
asserting its legal jurisdiction over clergy, combatingpolytheism
and heretical beliefs, and calling on secularrulers to recognize
the pope’s authority, including un-popular rulings like a ban on
first-cousin marriage, con-stituted a rare force for unity and
order in a time ofdisunity and chaos.
In politically fragmented west-ern Europe, the pope
neededallies. Like his son, Charle-magne’s father Pepin was a
strong supporter of the papacy. The relationship be-tween kings
and popes was tense, however, since boththought of themselves as
ultimate authorities. In 962 thepope crowned the first “Holy Roman
Emperor” (Charle-magne never held this full title). This
designation of asecular political authority as the guardian of
generalChristian interests proved more apparent then real.
Es-sentially a loose confederation of German princes whonamed one
of their own to the highest office, the HolyRoman Empire had little
influence west of the RhineRiver.
Although the pope crowned the early Holy Romanemperors, this did
not signify political superiority. Thelaw of the church (known as
canon law because each lawwas called a canon) gave the pope
exclusive legal ju-risdiction over all clergy and church property
whereverlocated. But bishops who held land as vassals owed
mil-itary support or other services and dues to kings andprinces.
The secular rulers argued that they should havethe power to appoint
those bishops because that was theonly way to guarantee fulfillment
of their duties as vas-sals. The popes disagreed.
In the eleventh century, this conflict over the con-trol of
ecclesiastical appointments came to a head.
Politics and theChurch
Hildebrand˚, an Italian monk, capped a career of reor-ganizing
church finances when the cardinals (a group ofsenior bishops)
meeting in Rome selected him to bePope Gregory VII in 1073. His
personal notion of the pa-pacy (preserved among his letters)
represented an ex-treme position, stating among other claims,
that
§ The pope can be judged by no one;§ The Roman church has never
erred and never will
err till the end of time;§ The pope alone can depose and restore
bishops;§ He alone can call general councils and authorize
canon law;§ He can depose emperors;§ He can absolve subjects
from their allegiance;§ All princes should kiss his feet.5
Such claims antagonized lords and monarchs, whohad become
accustomed to investing—that is, conferringa ring and a staff as
symbols of authority on bishops andabbots in their domains.
Historians apply the term in-vestiture controversy to the medieval
struggle betweenthe church and the lay lords to control
ecclesiastical ap-pointments; the term also refers to the broader
conflictof popes versus emperors and kings. When Holy RomanEmperor
Henry IV defied Gregory’s reforms, Gregoryexcommunicated him in
1076, thereby cutting him offfrom church rituals. Stung by the
resulting decline in hisinfluence, Henry stood barefoot in the snow
for threedays outside a castle in northern Italy waiting for
Greg-ory, a guest there, to receive him. Henry’s formal act
ofpenance induced Gregory to forgive him and restore himto the
church; but the reconciliation, an apparent vic-tory for the pope,
did not last. In 1078 Gregory declaredHenry deposed. The emperor
then forced Gregory to fleefrom Rome to Salerno, where he died two
years later.
The struggle between the popes and the emperorscontinued until
1122, when a compromise was reachedat Worms, a town in Germany. In
the Concordat ofWorms, Emperor Henry V renounced his right to
choosebishops and abbots or bestow spiritual symbols uponthem. In
return, Pope Calixtus II permitted the emperorto invest papally
appointed bishops and abbots with anylay rights or obligations
before their spiritual consecra-tion. Such compromises did not
fully solve the problem,but they reduced tensions between the two
sides.
Assertions of royal authority triggered other con-flicts as
well. Though barely twenty when he becameking of England in 1154,
Henry II, a great-grandson ofWilliam the Conqueror, instituted
reforms designed tostrengthen the power of the Crown and weaken
the
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nobility. He appointed traveling justices to enforce hislaws. He
made juries, a holdover from traditional Ger-manic law, into
powerful legal instruments. He estab-lished the principle that
criminal acts violated the “king’speace” and should be tried and
punished in accordancewith charges brought by the Crown instead of
in re-sponse to charges brought by victims.
Henry had a harder time controlling the church. Hisclosest
friend and chancellor, or chief administrator,Thomas à Becket (ca.
1118–1170), lived the grand andluxurious life of a courtier. In
1162 Henry persuadedBecket to become a priest and assume the
position ofarchbishop of Canterbury, the highest church office
inEngland. Becket agreed but cautioned that from then onhe would
act solely in the interest of the church if it cameinto conflict
with the Crown. When Henry sought to tryclerics accused of crimes
in royal instead of ecclesiasticalcourts, Archbishop Thomas, now
leading an austere andpious life, resisted.
In 1170 four of Henry’s knights, knowing that theking desired
Becket’s death, murdered the archbishop inCanterbury Cathedral.
Their crime backfired, and anoutpouring of sympathy caused
Canterbury to become amajor pilgrimage center. In 1173 the pope
declared themartyred Becket a saint. Henry allowed himself to
bepublicly whipped twice in penance for the crime, but hisauthority
had been badly damaged.
Henry II’s conflict with Thomas à Becket, like theConcordat of
Worms, yielded no clear victor. The prob-lem of competing legal
traditions made political life inwestern Europe more complicated
than in Byzantium orthe lands of Islam (see Chapter 8). Feudal law,
rooted inGermanic custom, gave supreme power to the king.Canon law,
based on Roman precedent, visualized a sin-gle hierarchical legal
institution with jurisdiction over allof Western Christendom. In
the eleventh century Romancivil law, contained in the Corpus Juris
Civilis (see Chap-ter 5), added a third tradition.
Monasticism featured promi-nently in the religious life ofalmost
all medieval Christian
lands. The origins of group monasticism lay in the east-ern
lands of the Roman Empire. Pre-Christian practicessuch as celibacy,
continual devotion to prayer, and livingapart from society (alone
or in small groups) came to-gether in Christian form in Egypt.
The most important form of monasticism in west-ern Europe,
however, involved groups of monks or nunsliving together in
organized communities. The personmost responsible for introducing
this originally Egyp-
Monasticism
tian practice in the Latin west was Benedict of Nursia(ca.
480–547) in Italy. Benedict began his pious careeras a hermit in a
cave but eventually organized severalmonasteries, each headed by an
abbot. In the seventhcentury monasteries based on his model spread
far be-yond Italy. The Rule Benedict wrote to govern the
monks’behavior envisions a balanced life of devotion and work,along
with obligations of celibacy, poverty, and obedi-ence to the abbot.
Those who lived by this or othermonastic rules became regular
clergy, in contrast to sec-ular clergy, priests who lived in
society instead of inseclusion and did not follow a formal code of
regula-tions. The Rule of Benedict was the starting point formost
forms of western European monastic life and re-mains in force today
in Benedictine monasteries.
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Though monks and nuns, women who lived bymonastic rules in
convents, made up a small percentageof the total population, their
secluded way of life rein-forced the separation of religious
affairs from ordinarypolitics and economics. Monasteries followed
Jesus’ ax-iom to “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and untoGod
what is God’s” better than the many town-basedbishops who behaved
like lords.
Monasteries preserved literacy and learning in theearly medieval
period, although some rulers, like Charle-magne, encouraged
scholarship at court. Many illiteratelay nobles interested
themselves only in warfare andhunting. Monks (but seldom nuns) saw
copying manu-scripts and even writing books as a religious
calling.Monastic scribes preserved many ancient Latin worksthat
would otherwise have disappeared. The survival ofGreek works
depended more on Byzantine and Muslimscribes in the east.
Monasteries and convents served other functions aswell (see
Environment and Technology: Cathedral Or-gans). A few planted
Christianity in new lands, as Irishmonks did in parts of Germany.
Most serviced the needsof travelers, organized agricultural
production on theirlands, and took in infants abandoned by their
parents.Convents provided refuge for widows and other womenwho
lacked male protection in the harsh medieval worldor who desired a
spiritual life. These religious housespresented problems of
oversight to the church, however.A bishop might have authority over
an abbot or abbess(head of a convent), but he could not exercise
constantvigilance over what went on behind monastery walls.
The failure of some abbots to maintain monastic dis-cipline led
to the growth of a reform movement centeredon the Benedictine abbey
of Cluny˚ in eastern France.Founded in 910 by William the Pious,
the first duke ofAquitaine, who completely freed it of lay
authority, Clunygained similar freedom from the local bishop a
centurylater. Its abbots pursued a vigorous campaign, eventuallyin
alliance with reforming popes like Gregory VII, to im-prove
monastic discipline and administration. A mag-nificent new abbey
church symbolized Cluny’s claimsto eminence. With later additions,
it became the largestchurch in the world.
At the peak of Cluny’s influence, nearly a thousandBenedictine
abbeys and priories (lower-level monastichouses) in various
countries accepted the authority of itsabbot. The Benedictine Rule
had presumed that eachmonastery would be independent; the Cluniac
reform-ers stipulated that every abbot and every prior (head of
apriory) be appointed by the abbot of Cluny and have
personal experience of the religious life of Cluny. Monas-tic
reform gained new impetus in the second half of thetwelfth century
with the rapid rise of the Cistercian or-der, which emphasized a
life of asceticism and poverty.These movements set the pattern for
the monasteries,cathedral clergy, and preaching friars that would
domi-nate ecclesiastical life in the thirteenth century.
KIEVAN RUSSIA, 900–1200
Though Latin and Orthodox Christendom followeddifferent paths in
later centuries, which had a morepromising future was not apparent
in 900. The Poles andother Slavic peoples living in the north
eventually ac-cepted the Christianity of Rome as taught by
Germanpriests and missionaries (see Diversity and
Dominance:Archbishop Adalbert of Hamburg and the Christianiza-tion
of Scandinavians and Slavs). The Serbs and othersouthern Slavs took
their faith from Constantinople.
The conversion of Kievan Russia, farther to the east,shows how
economics, politics, and religious life wereclosely intertwined.
The choice of orthodoxy over Catholi-cism had important
consequences for later Europeanhistory.
The territory between the Blackand Caspian Seas in the southand
the Baltic and White Seasin the north divides into a se-
ries of east-west zones. Frozen tundra in the far northgives way
to a cold forest zone, then to a more temperateforest, then to a
mix of forest and steppe grasslands, andfinally to grassland only.
Several navigable rivers, includ-ing the Volga, the Dnieper˚, and
the Don, run from northto south across these zones.
Early historical sources reflect repeated linguisticand
territorial changes, seemingly under pressure frompoorly understood
population migrations. Most of theGermanic peoples, along with some
Iranian and westSlavic peoples, migrated into eastern Europe
fromUkraine and Russia in Roman times. The peoples whoremained
behind spoke eastern Slavic languages, exceptin the far north and
south: Finns and related peopleslived in the former region,
Turkic-speakers in the latter.
Forest dwellers, farmers, and steppe nomads com-plemented each
other economically. Nomads traded an-imals for the farmers’ grain;
and honey, wax, and furs from
The Rise of theKievan State
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the forest became important exchange items. Traderscould travel
east and west by steppe caravan (see Chap-ters 7 and 12), or they
could use boats on the rivers tomove north and south.
Hoards containing thousands of Byzantine and Is-lamic coins
buried in Poland and on islands in the BalticSea where fairs were
held attest to the trading activityof Varangians (Swedish Vikings)
who sailed across theBaltic and down Russia’s rivers. They
exchanged forestproducts and slaves for manufactured goods and
coins,which they may have used as jewelry rather than asmoney, at
markets controlled by the Khazar Turks. Thepowerful Khazar kingdom
centered around the mouth ofthe Volga River.
Historians debate the early meaning of the word Rus(from which
Russia is derived), but at some point it cameto refer to
Slavic-speaking peoples ruled by Varangians.Unlike western European
lords, the Varangian princesand their druzhina (military retainers)
lived in cities,while the Slavs farmed. The princes occupied
them-selves with trade and fending off enemies. The Rus of thecity
of Kiev˚ controlled trade on the Dnieper River anddealt more with
Byzantium than with the Muslim worldbecause the Dnieper flows into
the Black Sea. The Rus ofNovgorod˚ played the same role on the
Volga. The semi-
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Cathedral Organs
The Christian church directly encouraged musical develop-ment.
Pope Gregory I (d. 604) is traditionally credited withmaking a
standard collection of chants then in use. Later, aspecial school
in Rome trained choir directors who were sentout to teach the
chants in cathedrals and monasteries. Organaccompaniment, initially
in the form of long, sustained bassnotes, came into common use by
the end of the seventh
century. The organ worked by directing a current of air to aset
of pipes of different lengths that could be opened orclosed at one
end. Each pipe sounded a tone as long as theair was flowing past
its open end.
A monk named Wulstan (d. 963) described the organ in-stalled in
Winchester Cathedral in England:
Twice six bellows above are ranged in a row, and four-teen lie
below. These, by alternate blasts, supply animmense quantity of
wind, and are worked by 70 strongmen, laboring with their arms,
covered with perspira-tion, each inciting his companions to drive
the wind upwith all his strength, that the full-bosomed box
mayspeak with its 400 pipes, which the hand of the organistgoverns.
Some when closed he opens, others when openhe closes, as the
individual nature of the varied soundrequires. Two brethren of
concordant spirit sit at theinstrument . . . Like thunder their
tones batter the ear,so that it may receive no sound but that
alone. To suchan amount does it reverberate, echoing in every
direc-tion, that everyone stops with his hand his gaping ears,being
in no wise able to draw near and bear the sound,which so many
combinations produce.
A century later huge levers or keys came into use foropening and
closing the pipes. Each was several inches inwidth, one or two
inches thick, and up to three feet inlength. So much muscle was
required to operate the keysthat organists were called “organ
pounders.” Over time, or-gans became smaller and capable of playing
magnificentmusic.
Source: Alexander Russell, “Organ,” The International Cyclopedia
of Musicand Musicians, ed. Oscar Thompson (New York: Dodd, Mead,
1943), 1315.
2nd Pass Pages
Vladimir (VLAD-ih-mir)
legendary account of the Kievan Rus conversion to Chris-tianity
must be seen against this background.
In 980 Vladimir˚ I, a ruler of Novgorod who had fallenfrom
power, returned from exile to Kiev with a band ofVarangians and
made himself the grand prince of KievanRussia (see Map 9.2). Though
his grandmother Olga had
been a Christian, Vladimir built a temple on Kiev’s heightsand
placed there the statues of the six gods his Slavic sub-jects
worshipped. The earliest Russian chronicle reportsthat Vladimir and
his advisers decided against Islam as theofficial religion because
of its ban on alcohol, rejected Ju-daism (the religion to which the
Khazars had converted)because they thought that a truly powerful
god would nothave let the ancient Jewish kingdom be destroyed,
and
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even spoke with German emissaries advocating LatinChristianity.
Why Vladimir chose Orthodox Christianityover the Latin version is
not precisely known. The mag-nificence of Constantinople seems to
have been a consid-eration. After visiting Byzantine churches, his
agentsreported: “We knew not whether we were in heaven or onearth,
for on earth there is no such splendor of [sic] suchbeauty, and we
are at a loss how to describe it. We knowonly that God dwells there
among men, and their serviceis finer than the ceremonies of other
nations.”6
After choosing a reluctant bride from the Byzan-tine imperial
family, Vladimir converted to OrthodoxChristianity, probably in
988, and opened his lands toOrthodox clerics and missionaries. The
patriarch of Con-stantinople appointed a metropolitan (chief
bishop) atKiev to govern ecclesiastical affairs. Churches arose
inKiev, one of them on the ruins of Vladimir’s earlier
hilltoptemple. Writing was introduced, using the Cyrillic alpha-bet
devised earlier for the western Slavs. This extensionof Orthodox
Christendom northward provided a bar-rier against the eastward
expansion of Latin Christianity.Kiev became firmly oriented toward
trade with Byzan-tium and turned its back on the Muslim world,
thoughthe Volga trade continued through Novgorod.
Struggles within the ruling family and with other en-emies, most
notably the steppe peoples of the south,marked the later political
history of Kievan Russia. Butdown to the time of the Mongols in the
thirteenth century(see Chapter 12), the state remained and served
as an in-strument for the Christianization of the eastern
Slavs.
In Kievan Russia political powerderived from trade rather
thanfrom landholding, so the ma-norial agricultural system of
western Europe never developed. Farmers practicedshifting
cultivation of their own lands. They would burna section of forest,
then lightly scratch the ash-strewnsurface with a plow. When
fertility waned, they wouldmove to another section of forest. Poor
land and a shortgrowing season in the most northerly latitudes
madefood scarce. Living on their own estates, the druzhinaevolved
from infantry into cavalry and focused theirefforts more on horse
breeding than on agriculture.
Large cities like Kiev and Novgorod may have reachedthirty
thousand or fifty thousand people—roughly thesize of contemporary
London or Paris, but far smallerthan Constantinople or major Muslim
metropolises likeBaghdad and Nishapur. Many cities amounted to
littlemore than fortified trading posts. Yet they served ascenters
for the development of crafts, some, such as
Society andCulture
glassmaking, based on skills imported from Byzantium.Artisans
enjoyed higher status in society than peasantfarmers. Construction
relied on wood from the forests,although Christianity brought the
building of stonecathedrals and churches on the Byzantine
model.
Christianity penetrated the general populationslowly. Several
polytheist uprisings occurred in theeleventh century, particularly
in times of famine. Passiveresistance led some groups to reject
Christian burial andpersist in cremating the dead and keeping the
bones ofthe deceased in urns. Women continued to use polythe-ist
designs on their clothing and bracelets, and as late asthe twelfth
century they were still turning to polytheistpriests for charms to
cure sick children. Traditional Slavicmarriage practices involving
casual and polygamous re-lations particularly scandalized the
clergy.
Christianity eventually triumphed, and its successled to
increasing church engagement in political andeconomic affairs. In
the twelfth century, Christian clergybecame involved in government
administration, someof them collecting fees and taxes related to
trade. Directand indirect revenue from trade provided the rulers
withthe money they needed to pay their soldiers. The rule oflaw
also spread as Kievan Russia experienced its peak ofculture and
prosperity in the century before the Mongolinvasion of 1237.
WESTERN EUROPE REVIVES,1000–1200
Between 1000 and 1200 western Europe slowlyemerged from nearly
seven centuries of subsistenceeconomy—in which most people who
worked on theland could meet only their basic needs for food,
cloth-ing, and shelter. Population and agricultural
productionclimbed, and a growing food surplus found its way totown
markets, speeding the return of a money-basedeconomy and providing
support for larger numbers ofcraftspeople, construction workers,
and traders.
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Historians have attributed western Europe’s revivalto population
growth spurred by new technologies andto the appearance in Italy
and Flanders, on the coast ofthe North Sea, of self-governing
cities devoted primarilyto seaborne trade. For monarchs, the
changes facilitatedimprovements in central administration, greater
controlover vassals, and consolidation of realms on the way
tobecoming stronger kingdoms.
A lack of concrete evidenceconfirming the spread of
tech-nological innovations frustratesefforts to relate the exact
course
of Europe’s revival to technological change. Neverthe-less, most
historians agree that technology played a sig-nificant role in the
near doubling of the population ofwestern Europe between 1000 and
1200. The populationof England seems to have risen from 1.1 million
in 1086to 1.9 million in 1200, and the population of the
territoryof modern France seems to have risen from 5.2 million
to9.2 million over the same period.
Examples that illustrate the difficulty of drawing his-torical
conclusions from scattered evidence of techno-logical change were a
new type of plow and the use ofefficient draft harnesses for
pulling wagons. The Romanplow, which farmers in southern Europe and
Byzantiumcontinued to use, scratched shallow grooves, as
wasappropriate for loose, dry Mediterranean soils. The newplow cut
deep into the soil with a knife-like blade, whilea curved board
mounted behind the blade lifted the cutlayer and turned it over.
This made it possible to farm theheavy, wet clays of the northern
river valleys. Pulling thenew plow took more energy, which could
mean harness-ing several teams of oxen or horses.
Horses plowed faster than oxen but were more deli-cate. Iron
horseshoes, which were widely adopted in thisperiod, helped protect
their feet, but like the plow itself,they added to the farmer’s
expenses. Roman horse har-nesses, inefficiently modeled on the yoke
used for oxen,put such pressure on the animal’s neck that a
horsepulling a heavy load risked strangulation. A mystery
sur-rounds the adoption of more efficient designs. The horsecollar,
which moves the point of traction from the ani-mal’s throat to its
shoulders, first appeared around 800 ina miniature painting, and it
is shown clearly as a harnessfor plow horses in the Bayeux
Tapestry, embroidered af-ter 1066. The breast-strap harness, which
is not as welladapted for the heaviest work but was preferred
insouthern Europe, seems to have appeared around 500.In both cases,
linguists have tried to trace key technicalterms to Chinese or
Turko-Mongol words and have ar-gued for technological diffusion
across Eurasia. Yet third-
The Role ofTechnology
century Roman farmers in Tunisia and Libya used bothtypes of
harness to hitch horses and camels to plows andcarts. This
technology, which is still employed in Tunisia,appears clearly on
Roman bas-reliefs and lamps; butthere is no more evidence of its
movement northwardinto Europe than there is of similar harnessing
movingacross Asia. Thus the question of where efficient har-nessing
came from and whether it began in 500 or in 800,or was known even
earlier but not extensively used, can-not be easily resolved.
Hinging on this problem is the question of when andwhy
landowners in northern Europe began to use teamsof horses to pull
plows through moist, fertile river-valleysoils that were too heavy
for teams of oxen. Stronger andfaster than oxen, horses increased
productivity by reduc-ing the time needed for plowing, but they
cost more tofeed and equip. Thus, while agricultural surpluses
didgrow and better plowing did play a role in this growth,areas
that continued to use oxen and even old-styleplows seem to have
shared in the general populationgrowth of the period.
Independent cities governedand defended by communesappeared
first in Italy andFlanders and then elsewhere.
Communes were groups of leading citizens who bandedtogether to
defend their cities and demand the privi-lege of self-government
from their lay or ecclesiasticallord. Lords who granted such
privileges benefited fromthe commune’s economic dynamism. Lacking
extensivefarmlands, these cities turned to manufacturing andtrade,
which they encouraged through the laws they en-acted. Laws making
serfs free once they came into thecity, for example, attracted many
workers from the coun-tryside. Cities in Italy that had shrunk
within walls builtby the Romans now pressed against those walls,
forcingthe construction of new ones. Pisa built a new wall in1000
and expanded it in 1156. Other twelfth-centurycities that built new
walls include Florence, Brescia˚,Pavia, and Siena˚.
Settlers on a group of islands at the northern endof the
Adriatic Sea that had been largely uninhabited inRoman times
organized themselves into the city ofVenice. In the eleventh
century it became the dominantsea power in the Adriatic. Venice
competed with Pisa andGenoa, its rivals on the western side of
Italy, for leader-ship in the trade with Muslim ports in North
Africa andthe eastern Mediterranean. A somewhat later
merchant’s
Cities and theRebirth of Trade
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list mentions trade in some three thousand “spices” (in-cluding
dyestuffs, textile fibers, and raw materials), someof them products
of Muslim lands and some coming viathe Silk Road or the Indian
Ocean trading system (seeChapter 7). Among them were eleven types
of alum (fordyeing), eleven types of wax, eight types of cotton,
fourtypes of indigo, five types of ginger, four types of paper,and
fifteen types of sugar, along with cloves, caraway,tamarind, and
fresh oranges. By the time of the Cru-sades (see below), maritime
commerce throughout theMediterranean had come to depend heavily on
shipsfrom Genoa, Venice, and Pisa.
Ghent, Bruges˚, and Ypres˚ in Flanders rivaled theItalian cities
in prosperity, trade, and industry. Enjoyingcomparable independence
based on privileges grantedby the counts of Flanders, these cities
centralized thefishing and wool trades of the North Sea region.
Around1200 raw wool from England began to be woven intowoolen cloth
for a very large market.
More abundant coinage also signaled the upturn ineconomic
activity. In the ninth and tenth centuries mostgold coins had come
from Muslim lands and the Byzan-tine Empire. Being worth too much
for most tradingpurposes, they seldom reached Germany, France,
andEngland. The widely imitated Carolingian silver pennysufficed.
With the economic revival of the twelfth cen-tury, minting of
silver coins began in Scandinavia,
Poland, and other outlying regions. In the following cen-tury
the reinvigoration of Mediterranean trade madepossible a new and
abundant gold coinage.
THE CRUSADES, 1095–1204
Western European revival coincided with and con-tributed to the
Crusades, a series of religiouslyinspired Christian military
campaigns against Muslimsin the eastern Mediterranean that
dominated the pol-itics of Europe from 1095 to 1204 (see Chapter 8
and Map9.3). Four great expeditions, the last redirected againstthe
Byzantines and resulting in the Latin capture ofConstantinople,
constituted the region’s largest militaryundertakings since the
fall of Rome. The cultural impactof the Crusades upon western
Europe resulted in noblecourts and burgeoning cities consuming more
goodsfrom the east. This set the stage for the later adoptionof
ideas, artistic styles, and industrial processes fromByzantium and
the lands of Islam.
Several social and economiccurrents of the eleventh cen-tury
contributed to the Cru-sades. First, reforming leaders
of the Latin Church, seeking to soften the warlike tone
ofsociety, popularized the Truce of God. This movement
The Roots ofthe Crusades
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limited fighting between Christian lords by specifyingtimes of
truce, such as during Lent (the forty days beforeEaster) and on
Sundays. Many knights welcomed a reli-giously approved alternative
to fighting other Christians.Second, ambitious rulers, like the
Norman chieftainswho invaded England and Sicily, were looking for
newlands to conquer. Nobles, particularly younger sons inareas
where the oldest son inherited everything, werehungry for land and
titles to maintain their status. Third,Italian merchants wanted to
increase trade in the east-ern Mediterranean and acquire trading
posts in Muslimterritory. However, without the rivalry between
popesand kings already discussed, and without the desire ofthe
church to demonstrate political authority overwestern Christendom,
the Crusades might never haveoccurred.
Several factors focused attention on the Holy Land,which had
been under Muslim rule for four centuries.Pilgrimages played an
important role in European reli-gious life. In western Europe,
pilgrims traveled underroyal protection, a few actually being
tramps, thieves,beggars, peddlers, and merchants for whom
pilgrimagewas a safe way of traveling. Genuinely pious
pilgrimsoften journeyed to visit the old churches and sacredrelics
preserved in Rome or Constantinople. The mostintrepid went to
Jerusalem, Antioch, and other citiesunder Muslim control to fulfill
a vow or to atone for a sin.
Knights who followed a popular pilgrimage routeacross northern
Spain to pray at the shrine of Santi-ago de Compostela learned of
the expanding efforts ofChristian kings to dislodge the Muslims.
The Umayyad
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Caliphate in al-Andalus had broken up in the eleventhcentury,
leaving its smaller successor states prey to Chris-tian attacks
from the north (see Chapter 8). This was thebeginning of a movement
of reconquest that culminatedin 1492 with the surrender of the last
Muslim kingdom.The word crusade, taken from Latin crux for “cross,”
wasfirst used in Spain. Stories also circulated of the war
con-ducted by seafaring Normans against the Muslims inSicily, whom
they finally defeated in the 1090s afterthirty years of
fighting.
The tales of pilgrims returning from Palestine fur-ther induced
both churchmen and nobles to considerthe Muslims a proper target
for Christian militancy. Mus-lim rulers, who had controlled
Jerusalem, Antioch, andAlexandria since the seventh century,
generally toleratedand protected Christian pilgrims. But after
1071, whena Seljuk army defeated the Byzantine emperor at theBattle
of Manzikert (see Chapter 8), Turkish nomadsspread throughout the
region, and security along the pil-grimage route through Anatolia,
already none too good,deteriorated further. The decline of
Byzantine powerthreatened ancient centers of Christianity, such as
Eph-esus in Anatolia, previously under imperial control.
Despite the theological differences between the Or-thodox and
Roman churches, the Byzantine emperorAlexius Comnenus asked the
pope and western Euro-pean rulers to help him confront the Muslim
threatand reconquer what the Christians termed the HolyLand, the
early centers of Christianity in Palestine andSyria. Pope Urban II
responded at the Council of Cler-mont in 1095. He addressed a huge
crowd of peoplegathered in a field and called on them, as
Christians, tostop fighting one another and go to the Holy Land
tofight Muslims.
“God wills it!” exclaimed voices in the crowd. Peoplecut cloth
into crosses and sewed them on their shirts tosymbolize their
willingness to march on Jerusalem. Thusbegan the holy war now known
as the “First Crusade.”People at the time more often used the word
peregrina-tio, “pilgrimage.” Urban promised to free crusaders
whohad committed sins from their normal penance, or actsof
atonement, the usual reward for peaceful pilgrims toJerusalem.
The First Crusade captured Jerusalem in 1099 andestablished four
crusader principalities, the most impor-tant being the Latin
Kingdom of Jerusalem. The next twoexpeditions strove with
diminishing success to protectthese gains. Muslim forces retook
Jerusalem in 1187. Bythe time of the Fourth Crusade in 1204, the
original reli-gious ardor had so diminished that the
commandersagreed, at the urging of the Venetians, to sack
Constan-tinople first to help pay the cost of transporting the
armyby ship.
Exposure to Muslim culturein Spain, Sicily, and the cru-sader
principalities establishedin the Holy Land made many
Europeans aware of things lacking in their own lives.Borrowings
from Muslim society occurred gradually andare not always easy to
date, but Europeans eventuallylearned how to manufacture pasta,
paper, refined sugar,colored glass, and many other items that had
formerlybeen imported. Arabic translations of and commen-taries on
Greek philosophical and scientific works, and
The Impact ofthe Crusades
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equally important original works by Arabs and Iranians,provided
a vital stimulus to European thought.
Some works were brought directly into the Latinworld through the
conquests of Sicily, parts of Spain andthe Holy Land, and
Constantinople (for Greek texts).Others were rendered into Latin by
translators whoworked in parts of Spain that continued under
Muslimrule. Generations passed before all these works werestudied
and understood, but they eventually trans-formed the intellectual
world of the western Europeans,who previously had had little
familiarity with Greekwritings. The works of Aristotle and the
Muslim com-mentaries on them were of particular importance to
the-ologians, but Muslim writers like Avicenna (980–1037)were of
parallel importance in medicine.
Changes affecting the lifestyle of the nobles tookplace more
quickly. Eleanor of Aquitaine (1122?–1204),one of the most
influential women of the crusading era,accompanied her husband,
King Louis VII of France, onthe Second Crusade (1147–1149). The
court life of heruncle Raymond, ruler of the crusader principality
of An-tioch, particularly appealed to her. After her return
toFrance, a lack of male offspring led to an annulment ofher
marriage with Louis, and she married Henry ofAnjou in 1151. He
inherited the throne of England asHenry II three years later.
Eleanor’s sons Richard Lion-Heart, famed in romance as the
chivalrous foe of Saladinduring the Third Crusade (1189–1192), and
John rebelledagainst their father but eventually succeeded him
askings of England.
In Aquitaine, a powerful duchy in southern France,Eleanor
maintained her own court for a time. The poet-singers called
troubadours who enjoyed her favor madeher court a center for new
music based on the idea of“courtly love,” an idealization of
feminine beauty andgrace that influenced later European ideas of
romance.Thousands of troubadour melodies survive in manu-scripts,
and some show the influence of the poetrystyles then current in
Muslim Spain. The favorite trouba-dour instrument, moreover, was
the lute, a guitar-likeinstrument with a bulging shape whose design
andname (Arabic al-ud ) come from Muslim Spain. In cen-turies to
come the lute would become the mainstay ofRenaissance music in
Italy.
CONCLUSION
The legacy of Roman rule affected eastern and west-ern Europe in
different ways. Byzantium inheritedthe grandeur, pomp, and legal
supremacy of the impe-rial office and merged it with leadership of
the Chris-
tian church. Byzantium guarded its shrinking frontiersagainst
foreign invasion but gradually contracted aroundConstantinople, its
imperial capital, as more and moreterritory was lost. By contrast,
no Roman core survivedin the west. The Germanic peoples overwhelmed
thelegions guarding the frontiers and established king-doms based
on their own traditions. The law of the kingand the law of the
church did not echo each other. Yetmemories of Roman grandeur and
territorial unity re-surfaced with the idea of a Holy Roman Empire,
howeverunworkable that empire proved to be.
The competition between the Orthodox and Catholicforms of
Christianity complicated the role of religion inthe emergence of
medieval European society and cul-ture. The Byzantine Empire,
constructed on a Roman po-litical and legal heritage that had
largely passed awayin the west, was generally more prosperous than
theGermanic kingdoms of western Europe, and its arts andculture
were initially more sophisticated. Furthermore,Byzantine society
became deeply Christian well before acomparable degree of
Christianization had been reachedin western Europe. Yet despite
their success in transmit-ting their version of Christianity and
imperial rule toKievan Russia, and in the process erecting a
barrier be-tween the Orthodox Russians and the Catholic Slavs
totheir west, the Byzantines failed to demonstrate the dy-namism
and ferment that characterized both the Euro-peans to their west
and the Muslims to their south.Byzantine armies played only a
supporting role in theCrusades, and the emperors lost their capital
and theirpower, at least temporarily, to western crusaders in
1204.
Technology and commerce deepened the politicaland religious gulf
between the two Christian zones.Changes in military techniques in
western Europe in-creased battlefield effectiveness, while new
agriculturaltechnologies led to population increases that
revitalizedurban life and contributed to the crusading movementby
making the nobility hunger for new lands. At the sametime, the need
to import food for growing urban popula-tions contributed to the
growth of maritime commercein the Mediterranean and North Seas.
Culture and man-ufacturing benefited greatly from the increased
pace ofcommunication and exchange. Lacking parallel devel-opments
of a similar scale, the Byzantine Empire steadilylost the dynamism
of its early centuries and by the end ofthe period had clearly
fallen behind western Europe inprosperity and cultural
innovation.
■ Key TermsCharlemagne
medieval
Byzantine Empire
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Kievan Russia
schism
manor
serf
fief
vassal
papacy
Holy Roman Empire
investiture controversy
monasticism
horse collar
Crusades
pilgrimage
■ Suggested ReadingStandard Byzantine histories include Dimitri
Obolensky, TheByzantine Commonwealth (1971), and Warren Treadgold,
AHistory of Byzantine State and Society (1997). Cyril
Mango’sByzantium: The Empire of New Rome (1980) emphasizes
cul-tural matters. For later Byzantine history see A. P. Kazhdan
andAnn Wharton Epstein in Change in Byzantine Culture in
theEleventh and Twelfth Centuries (1985), which stresses social
andeconomic issues, and D. M. Nicol, Byzantium and Venice
(1988).
Roger Collins’s Early Medieval Europe, 300–1000 (1991)
surveysinstitutional and political developments, while Robert
MerrillBartlett, The Making of Europe (1994), emphasizes
frontiers.For the later part of the period see Susan Reynolds,
Kingdomsand Communities in Western Europe, 900–1300, 2d ed.
(1997).Jacques Le Goff, Medieval Civilization, 400–1500 (1989),
stressesquestions of social structure. Among many books on
religiousmatters see Richard W. Southern, Western Society and
theChurch in the Middle Ages (1970), and Richard Fletcher,
TheBarbarian Conversion (1997). Susan Reynolds makes the casefor
avoiding the term feudalism in Fiefs and Vassals (1994).
More specialized economic and technological studies beginwith
the classic Lynn White, Jr., Medieval Technology and SocialChange
(1962). See also Michael McCormick, Origins of theEuropean Economy:
Communications and Commerce, AD 300–900 (2002); C. M. Cipolla,
Money, Prices and Civilization in theMediterranean World, Fifth to
Seventeenth Century (1956); andGeorges Duby, Rural Economy and
Country Life in the MedievalWest (1990), which includes translated
documents. J. C. Russell,The Control of Late Ancient and Medieval
Population (1985),analyzes demographic history and the problems of
data.
On France see the numerous works of Rosamond
McKitterick,including The Frankish Kingdoms Under the Carolingians,
751–987 (1983). On England see Peter Hunter Blair, An
Introductionto Anglo-Saxon England (1977), and Christopher Brooke,
TheSaxon and Norman Kings, 3d ed. (2001). On Italy see
ChrisWickham, Early Medieval Italy: Central Power and Local
Society,400–1000 (1981), and Edward Burman, Emperor to Emperor:
Italy Before the Renaissance (1991). On Germany and the
HolyRoman Empire see Timothy Reuter, Germany in the Early Mid-dle
Ages, c. 800–1056 (1991). On Spain see J. F. O’Callaghan, AHistory
of Medieval Spain (1975), and R. Collins, Early MedievalSpain:
Unity and Diversity 400–1000 (1983). On Viking Scan-dinavia see
John Haywood’s illustrated Encyclopaedia of theViking Age
(2000).
Amy Keller’s popularly written Eleanor of Aquitaine and theFour
Kings (1950) tells the story of an extraordinary woman.Dhuoda,
Handbook for William: A Carolingian Woman’s Coun-sel for Her Son,
trans. Carol Neel (1991), offers a firsthand lookat a Carolingian
noblewoman. More general works includeMargaret Wade’s A Small Sound
of the Trumpet: Women in Me-dieval Life (1986) and Bonnie S.
Anderson and Judith P. Zinsser’sA History of Their Own: Women in
Europe from Prehistory to thePresent (1989). In the area of
religion, Caroline Bynum’s Jesusas Mother: Studies in the
Spirituality of the High Middle Ages(1982) illustrates new views
about women.
On Kievan Russia see Janet Martin, Medieval Russia,
980–1584(1995); Simon Franklin and Jonathan Shepard, The
Emergenceof Rus: 750–1200 (1996); and Thomas S. Noonan, The
IslamicWorld, Russia and the Vikings, 750–900: The Numismatic
Evi-dence (1998).
Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Crusades: A Short History (1987), is
astandard work. He has also a more colorful version in The Ox-ford
Illustrated History of the Crusades (1995). For other viewssee
Jonathan Phillips, The Crusades, 1095–1197 (2002), andNorman
Housley, Crusading and Warfare in Medieval and Ren-aissance Europe
(2001). For a masterful account with a Byzan-tine viewpoint, see
Steven Runciman, A History of the Crusades,3 vols. (1987). For
accounts from the Muslim side see CaroleHillenbrand, The Crusades:
Islamic Perspectives (1999).
Henri Pirenne, Medieval Cities: Their Origins and the Revival
ofTrade (1952), and Robert S. Lopez, The Commercial Revolutionof
the Middle Ages, 950–1350 (1971), masterfu