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The population of Europe grew steadily from the beginning of the recovery in the late tenth century to the onset of the Black Death (1348). This resulted in an expansion of rural population as well as the appearance and expansion of urban populations. Urban settlements began to emerge strongly again by about 1000 and to continue to grow in numbers and size at a fairly rapid rate until about 1275. This included the revival of a few of the old "cities" that had remained alive as mere agricultural communities during the crisis of the ninth and tenth centuries, but the emergence of many new urban locations dictated by strategic economic necessity coupled with occasional political intervention. The basic element in the urban population was the merchant class, but by the end of this growth phase craftsmen have also become a very substantial segment of the urban population. In Italy the ruling nobility and government officials resided in the urban environment along with the merchants and craftsmen, but this was not the case in northern Europe.
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The beginnings of rural population growth were accompanied by a variety of short term or transitory results such as unemployment and starvation produced in part by insufficient amounts of worn-out land. The limits imposed by hours of daylight, distance and speed also dictated how large the population of a single village could grow. The long-term results were the new villages, carved out of the frontier of virgin wild by the hundreds year afer year, which increased both employment and food production. Adapting these frontier territories to agriculture was intensive work but the fertility of the virgin soil produced bumper crops.
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Merchants great and small, as a class, throughout this period spent many months a year traveling with their merchandise from the source to market. They lived, traveled and did business under their own unique rules. Just as the clergy lived by ecclesiastical law, merchants' law was universal and surprisingly uniform from one corner of Europe to any other. Merchants were by definition "outlaws" and "foreigners" in most rural communities, and only gradually and grudgingly during this period, were they recognized as legitimate and respectable members of society. Because they represented the wealth and the wonder of the wider world, the more intelligent and powerful local political leaders came to tolerate and eventually to desire their presence, if only to keep all that wealth out of the hands of some enemy. For their part merchants sought to make peace with the more powerful local leaders in order to enjoy the protection of camping beside the their fortifications.
The merchant's settlement camps became the first settlements where agriculture was not the main occupation of 98% of the inhabitants. Some of these settlements grew to become towns or cities. Local governments (always rural in northern Europe) from the first were persuaded by rather modest prospects of future income together with some up front payment to allow the merchants the freedom to govern these settlements. Local government leaders competed among themselves to see which ones could attract the richest merchant settlement. Late in this phase some seigneurs even transformed one or more of their agricultural villages into self-governing towns in the attempt to attract merchant wealth. The villagers--whether quasi-serf, true serf or free--were released from all individual hereditary or customary obligations to the seigneur in return for a collective obligation as a community. Some of these grew in to modest sized towns. The merchants remained the dominant figures in the government of the cities throughout this expansion period.
Craftsmen who, like everybody else in Europe outside of Italy, had to live in agricultural villages during the ninth-tenth century crisis rapidly begin to migrate to and accumulate in the towns and cities. By the twelfth century, craft production was becoming a very important part of the economic activity in most urban communities. Craft production in stone, wood, metals, leather, and textiles were each important, depending on the availability of raw materials and the market demand for the craft product. Each individual craftsman owned his tools, purchased his own raw materials, operated his own shop and sold his finished product directly to the consumer, often in the same structure where he raised his family. By the twelfth century several of the crafts, especially the textile crafts, were beginning to organize on the local level for self-protection. The goal was to monopolize and defend the local market for their product, negotiate as an organization for the best price on raw materials, and both fix and enforce standards of quality and the price of the finished product.
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Here it is my purpose merely to call attention to the very considerable drain on the European population caused by the conquest, conversion, and to various degrees the colonization, of additional territory. More may be said at appropriate later points about the conquest of Spain from the Muslims and the expansion into Prussia and the Baltic regions as well as the results of crusading conquests in the Middle East.
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European life was further transformed by the rapid emergence of a monetary economy during this period. Staple markets, stimulated by the increasing non-agricultural consumers in the urban settlements, paved the way for the reemergence of silver coinage as a practical medium of exchange in market transactions. Increasingly, long-distance trade radiated out from a focus of towns in eastern France (Champaign County) where international merchants' fairs were held nearly year around to accommodate the native European merchants. They brought goods from outlying areas like Russia, Scandinavia, Spain, England, Italy, the Muslim Middle East and the Roman Empire in Constantinople to the Champaign fairs.
The Crusades which we will discuss in another connection helped increase trade with the more advanced civilizations in the Eastern Mediterranean. This in turn stimulated Italian economic growth, both the seaport cities like Venice, Genoa, Amalfi, and Naples, and the inland towns in the Po River valley region then called Lombardy whose merchants distributed the "outlandish" products all across northern Europe. Transactions were becoming large enough by the thirteenth century that gold coinage was once more a practical alternative.
By the thirteenth century the money economy had so thoroughly penetrated rural European life that payments in coinage had begun to replace payments in kind and service. Frequently, land rents were being paid at least in part with money payments in place of labor. Less frequently, the part of the rent paid in produce was likewise translated (commuted is the proper term) into a money payment. The standard of living in most villages--both new and old--by 1275 was noticeably more prosperous than it had been during the ninth-tenth century crisis time.
The standard of living of most of the European rural nobility (seigneurs, governmental officials, warlords, high-ranking churchmen, etc.) had also improved materially by 1275. The pressure was on among the nobility to find ways of generating and/or increasing their income in silver and gold in order to demonstrate that they were at least as important in society as the wealthy merchant in the nearby town. For example, an enemy warlord has become worth much more alive than dead since his supporters would certainly pay a huge ransom for his release. Soon vassals would be expected to pay money to the lord if they failed to show up for their service. The young noble might also end up marrying the daughter of a wealthy merchant, or selling part of his lands to a merchant family.
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The rough and tumble descent of Europe into the chaos of the Dark Ages with its rising tide of violence was first confronted effectively in northern Germany in the tenth century where the government of the Saxon kings found a solution. Beginning with Otto I (936-973) a strong alliance with the church allowed Otto to depend on churchmen to assist them in governing the land. Otto I re-asserted royal protection over church property and appointed local advocates as his agents to supervise and protect the churches' lands. By the end of his reign there were 108 monasteries under royal advocacy. He also demanded and exercised the royal right of investiture for all bishops and abbots. Most of the invested churchmen were originally attached to the clergy of the Royal Chapel and not necessarily members of the Germanic tribe in whose region they served. He also endowed such bishops and abbots with property and titles in order to make them more dependent on him.
As the successful Saxon ruler of Germany, Otto I began to intervene in Italian politics in 951 when he married the widow of a former Lombard warlord and claimed the title, King of the Lombards. After his success over the Magyars at Lechfeld (south Germany) in 955 he returned to Italy in 961. He was called upon to help get the current Pope, John XII, out of political entanglement with the warlords around Rome. Otto I insisted that John XII must return the favor and crown him Roman Emperor. Otto I was crowned Emperor at Rome in February 962. In 963 he returned to Rome and confirmed the Donations of Pepin and Charlemagne but insisted that the Germanic Emperor must approve all future popes. Some years later the Count of Tuscany became the Emperor's resident advocate for dealing with the Papacy. The Emperor gave the Count the ancient title patricius romanorum, protector of the Romans. Despite the Emperor's reputation the descendants of Marozia continued to depose and expel the Emperor's nominees almost as fast as they were elected to the Papal office.
Most of the existing proprietary churches and monasteries in Germany had been restored to royal control by Otto I. It was not, however, until near the end of the reign of Otto II (973-983) that the last of the German Dukes were forced to surrender the investiture rights they had usurped. Yet, certain of the great bishops of Germany became rebellious and were able to gain immunity from the king's agents (counts and advocates) under Otto II (973-983). Occasional new proprietary churches and monasteries were being founded. The Roman warlord, Cresentius I, dominated Rome in defiance of the Emperor until he was crushed in 980.
Otto III (983-1002) determined to build royal power on an ecclesiastical nobility of powerful churchmen in Germany to counterbalance the lay nobility of counts and regional dukes. He provided that many of the royally invested churchmen, both bishops and abbots, became politically powerful and almost autonomous. These royally invested bishops or abbots served the king in place of a count as the royal judicial and administrative agent over a whole county. They not only served in these capacities they were granted all the prerogatives and respect of the regular counts. This arrangement was based on imperial grants of immunity, ecclesiastical advocacy and various other sovereign prerogatives including sometimes the right to mint coins and collect tolls. Otto III's actions were not without precedent. Charles the Fat had granted such honors to the bishop of Langres in 887, and Henry the Fowler similarly honored the bishop of Toul in 927.
The Roman warlord, Cresentius II, rose successfully to defy imperial Papal appointments until 996 when the first German pope was elected. Pope Gregory V (996-999) was a cousin to Emperor Otto III. Otto III's brilliant tutor, Gerbert of Aurillac, who is introduced below, succeeded Gregory V.
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The Ottonian Renaissance was in one sense a tenth century continuation of the Carolingian, but it was represented by a significant revival of vigor in monastic and cathedral schools. However, there was no scholar involved that ranked in significance with Alcuin or John Scotus Erigena. There was somewhat less emphasis on the liberal arts and more emphasis on both the practical and fine arts. The church patronized sculptors in stone and bronze, and provided leadership in the practical arts.
The most important historical scholars of the period include Liudprand of Cremona (d. 972) who is important because of his Gesta Ottonis, Deeds of Otto, and several lesser works. Widukind, a monk from Corvey, wrote Res Gestai Saxonicae, Deeds of the Saxons. Hrotswitha, a nun from Gandersheim in Saxony, wrote several historical pieces and some saint's lives. More often noted were her several plays.
The most noteworthy school was that founded by Bishop Bruno of Cologne which was to prepare those who were to serve either the church or the state as administrators. The Latin scholar of the greatest reputation in the period was Ekkehard I of the monastery of St. Gall in Switzerland. Gerbert of Aurillac may well have been his peer in the knowledge of classical literature; at least Gerbert appeared to enjoy it more.
Gerbert, a Frenchman, was educated in the monastery of Aurillac in south central France. He studied Moslem science in Spain for two years. He studied more at the cathedral school at Rheims and became the master of the school. He was brought to the court of Otto III as his tutor, and later that Emperor got him elected as Pope Sylvester II (999-1003)--the first Frenchman to hold the Papal office. Gerbert probably introduced "Arabic" numerals and the abacus to Western Europe from Spain. He was a musician and builder of musical instruments, particularly water organs. He was also interested in astronomy. He designed and built instruments to use in direct observation of the heavenly bodies. Indeed, his brilliance caused suspicions among his contemporaries. He was accused of witchcraft.
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Effective ruling power had severely fragmented during the crisis of the ninth and tenth century in Frankland. Nearly everybody's problem at the beginning of this period was that degrees of governmental power in had been usurped by anybody who exercised any grassroots seigneural rights, whether over his family's villages or over the villages of the fiefs he held from others. Seigneurs, by default, governed these village populations on their domain as sovereign monarchs. The less well-off seigneurs of the region were typically linked by vassalage contracts to the most powerful local seigneur (as their lord). The authority of the local lord's council of vassals extended only to the vassals who were members of it, not to the people dwelling in the villages and working the lands held by those vassals.
In the aftermath of the dark ages individuals holding various historical titles such as King, Duke, Count, were as a general rule no more powerful than many other individuals who had no title at all. The King, the Dukes and the Counts were just like any other seigneur, sovereign only in the parts of their own family lands not given to others as fiefs. Like the lands of many titled families in the late eleventh century, the Capetian royal family's lands were held by a number of minor untitled and uncontrollable warlords. Some of these had usurped royal land by violence and refused to enter into, or honor, vassalage arrangements for it with the Capetian king.
There were exceptions, however. Among the various parts of France the Duchy of Normandy on the coast of the English Channel was one of the better-governed areas. Dukes Richard II (996-1026) and William II (1026-1087) developed the strongest regional monarchy in France by 1050. Young Norman adventurers were leaving Normandy to escape the restrictive control of the Duke's government. The eight Hauteville brothers led by Robert Guiscard together with other Norman warriors sought their fortunes in south Italy in the early eleventh century. Others in mid-century sought their fortunes in Spain fighting against the Muslims and still more, at the end of the century, departed to the Middle East. Not to be forgotten was the Norman conquest of England beginning in 1066. After that William II's rule straddled the English Channel. The efficient utilization and control of vassalage as a royal policy that was characteristic of Normandy was now planted in England as well.
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Royal law developed on the basis of appeals from the courts of the king's vassals and became an important instrument with which the monarch would insert a degree of control over the affairs of the ruling class (all his vassals) within the kingdom. The monarch was not always personally capable of enforcing the decrees of the royal court but if those decrees were clearly just and fair the monarch's popularity and prestige grew anyway. Royal court business brought substantial revenue in court fees and fines.
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The concept of appeal developed in connection with the development of institution of vassalage. In this period it became customary for most vassals to have multiple lords. In order to reduce and resolve the conflicts that occurred, each vassal recognized the lord to which he owed primary allegiance as his liege lord. Rulings against a vassal in a Council of one of a vassal's lesser lords could be appealed to the Council of his lord's liege lord or the vassal's liege lord. In the case of the Duke of Normandy and the Count of Flanders the ruler was powerful enough to insist that all his vassals' vassals must recognize him as their own lord's liege lord. The Capetians and other powerful rulers subsequently followed this same pattern. Hence any appeals within the vassalage structure came to the ruler's Council as the highest court in the region. This position of judicial supremacy was called suzerainty. For further elaboration of this concept see Lecture sixteen.
Vassalage was gradually brought under royal control and forced to function in systematic ways that recognized and enhanced royal power. This was not an easy task. By means of suzerainty the monarch appealed to the loyalty of his so-called rear vassals (i.e. the vassals of vassals, etc.) to help him control their lords who were the chief vassals of the monarch and the most powerful rulers. He also allied with other royal dynasties in other parts of Europe to strengthen his position. And he skillfully employed the influence and wealth of the Papacy and the church on his side. Even the cities became allies of the ascending monarch contributing funds and foot soldiers in the struggle to force the powerful independent warlords that bucked the system to become subservient royal vassals.
We may easily imagine that medieval kings had more actual ruling power than conditions in the period between 1000 and 1275 permitted. Medieval monarchs developed their administration by using the structure of the papal administration and papal courts as a model. Scholarly Churchmen and lay businessmen from the cities often held positions of administrative leadership in handling the king's day to day business. Medieval monarchy was a government where actual sovereignty is distributed among the collective leadership (rural, urban, and clerical). The monarch functions as the supreme judge (suzerain) and as a persuasive presiding officer whose almost impossible and demanding task was achieving and maintaining a consensus among the ruling leaders who are otherwise working at cross purposes. His very meager legislative powers were subject to the individual and collective vetoes of the sovereign leaders. It was government by manipulation and persuasion.
The foregoing discussion may also be misleading if the trends and developments cited are applied to the Germanic Roman Emperor. We have already observed how his effective power survived the Dark Age disruption. We will note in another connection how that power was seriously and effectively challenged during the Investiture Controversy, and in the subsequent conflict with the Papacy. Hence, it was only in the twelfth century that we see the Emperor begin to attempt to use vassalage to strengthen his much weakened realm.
By 1000 Christianity in Western Europe had survived the utter collapse of advanced civilization, and, for better or worse, had nearly forgotten its roots. That is not to say they had suffered amnesia or deliberately neglected the traditional understanding of their heritage. That traditional understanding had, however, atrophied and crystallized into an oversimplified and poorly understood account that displayed many characteristics of mythology--a statement, by the way, that still truthfully characterizes the average twentieth century Christian's "knowledge" of Christian origins and history.
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Vulgar or common Latin was used universally in all ecclesiastical and scholastic activities throughout the period from AD 950 to 1300 in all parts of Europe. However, in Italy common Latin was also utilized for social contracts, civic records and diplomatic correspondence. Such uses in Italy were regularly in the hands of professionally trained lay clerks or notaries of middle class origin, not in the hands of clergy. This gave Italy a special interest in Latin rhetoric. From the late eleventh century these professional writers, dictatores, taught and practiced the practical business of composing letters, documents and speeches in common Latin. They frequently gained public positions of honor and respect in the turbulent governments of the thirteenth century.
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The Germanic vernaculars of northern and central Europe had very early become literary languages because in those areas Latin had never gained a practical foothold. Germanic literary masterpieces emerged and many functional literary usages flourished during the Middle Ages in spite of the imposition of Latin in all ecclesiastical matters.
Unlike the Germanic vernaculars, the Romance vernaculars all faced a stiff competition from a firmly established Latin tradition tracing back to the conquest of Julius Caesar. Of the Romance vernaculars the French dialectical families (langue d'oil in the north and langue d'oc in the south) matured into literary languages ahead of the rest. Already about the beginning of the Thirteenth century the greatest of the Chivalric Romances, Roman de la Rose, by William of Lorris and John of Meun, consisted of 18 thousand lines. In the thirteenth century the French dialects had a reputation second only to vulgar Latin as an international language. The dialect of the vicinity of Paris had, by the end of the thirteenth century, established its preeminence among the rest. Castilian (Spanish) had followed approximately 1/2 century behind French in its local literary development but it had not gained worldwide recognition.
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The eleventh and twelfth centuries were a time of self-discovery and definition. It was a "renaissance" of intellectual activity. It was the adolescence of Scholasticism. The stream of intellectual activity in the ninth and tenth century had narrowed to trickle in a society harassed with more immediate matters of life and death. Almost all parts of the stream are now conducted within the institutions of the Church, a fact that inadvertently served to christen many of the surviving aspects of ancient secular culture as "Christian." The revival of intellectual activity was not universally welcomed. As we shall see some considered it a serious threat to Christianity.
The recovery of basic literary and communication skills was accomplished by isolated wandering scholars who had to find and teach one another as they moved about ransacking neglected manuscript collections searching for books to help them learn. Several cathedral and monastic schools began to appear and thrive by 1075. For example, Bishop Fulbert founded one of the first new cathedral schools at Chartres about 990. A wandering scholar from Italy named Lanfranc about 1055 founded another very important school at the monastery of Bec in Normandy.
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Recovering and mastering the Liberal Arts and Late Roman Latin were absolute prerequisites to further intellectual development. The basic communication skills of the Late Roman liberal arts comprised three subjects (Grammar, Rhetoric, Logic) together called the trivium. The grammar books by Priscian (fourth century) and Donatus (fifth century) were their authorities. Their priority in studying grammar was to understand the meaning of words in the grammatical context. The study of rhetoric was based on rhetorical models drawn from several late classical authors, primarily Roman lawyers and preachers. The special study aimed at the recovery of Roman law, particularly the study of Justinian's corpus juris civilis, began with the career of rhetorician Irnerius at Bologna (Italy) early in the twelfth century.
Of the three subjects logic was the most controversial. The authoritative texts were first rediscovered at Chartres about 980, but were not widely studied until about 1125. These texts came from the works of Boethius (sixth century) and included Latin translations of Porphyry's Introduction to Aristotle's Logic, and two of Aristotle's works on logic, Categories and On Interpretation. About 1040 at Constantinople the Greek text of all Aristotle's writings on logic was translated into Latin again by James of Venice. The priority of the dialecticians, as students of logic were called, was to understand the meaning of words in their logical or rational context.
The quadrivium consisted of Geometry, Astronomy, Harmonics, and Physics, and made up the remainder of the Late Roman liberal arts curriculum. This was recovered and studied during the twelfth century. Early in the twelfth century a scholar in Sicily translated an Arabic translation of Euclid's Geometry into Latin. At about the same time a scholar in Spain translated the ninth century Al-Khwarizmi's Algebra from the Arabic into Latin, helping popularize the so-called "Arabic numerals" in Western Europe.
The works of Bede and Gerbert of Aurillac had transmitted the preserved knowledge of astronomy. Also the Muslim invention for navigation by the stars, the astrolabe, was already known by the beginning of this period in Western Europe. In the twelfth century the Greek works of Claudius Ptolemy, the great Alexandrian natural scientist of the second century AD, were found in an Arabic translation in Toledo and translated into Latin under the Arabic name Almagest, The Master. These works on Astronomy, Optics, and Geography were quickly accepted as authoritative.
Late Roman Music theory was surpassed by a number of innovations in music developed very early in this period in the West. Moreover, much scientific information came from Spain or Sicily from Arabic sources that preserved the ancient Greek and Roman knowledge. Adalard of Bath wrote a popular compendium of Arabic science called Natural Questions. Among those works translated at Toledo were Arabic translations of the medical works of Galen and Hippocrates as well as the huge Canon of Medicine written by the Muslim scholar Avicenna. The latter would remain the major authority on medicine in Western Europe until the sixteenth century. Other works dealing with science and alchemy were also translated, including Aristotle's Physics.
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