WHAP Chapter 10 – Flashcards

The Byzantine Empire, once part of the greater Roman Empire, continued flourishing from an eastern Mediterranean base after Roman decline. Although it inherited and continued some of Rome's patterns, the eastern Mediterranean state developed its own form of civilization.

Emperor Constantine in the fourth century C.E. established a capital at Constantinople. Separate emperors ruled from it even before Rome fell. Although Latin served for a time as the court language, Greek became the official tongue after the sixth century. The empire benefited from the high level of civilization in the former Hellenistic world and from the region's prosperous commerce. It held off barbarian invaders and developed a trained civilian bureaucracy.

In the sixth century, Justinian, with a secure base in the east, attempted to reconquer Western territory but without lasting success. The military efforts weakened the empire as Slavs and Persians attacked frontiers, and they also created serious financial pressures. Justinian rebuilt Constantinople in classical style; among the architectural achievements was the huge church of Hagia Sophia. His codification of Roman law reduced legal confusion in the empire. The code later spread Roman legal concepts throughout Europe.

Justinian's successors concentrated on the defense of their Eastern territories. The empire henceforth centered in the Balkans and western and central Turkey, a location blending a rich Hellenistic culture with Christianity. The revived empire withstood the seventh century advance of Arab Muslims, although important regions were lost along the eastern Mediterranean and the northern Middle Eastern heartland. The wars and the permanent Muslim threat had significant cultural and commercial influences. The free rural population, the provider of military recruits and taxes, was weakened. Aristocratic estates grew larger, and aristocratic generals became stronger. The empire's fortunes fluctuated as it resisted pressures from the Arabs and Slavic kingdoms. Bulgaria was a strong rival, but Basil II defeated and conquered it in the eleventh century. At the close of the tenth century, the Byzantine emperor may have been the strongest contemporary ruler.

Byzantine political patterns resembled the earlier Chinese system. An emperor, ordained by god and surrounded by elaborate court ritual, headed both church and state. Women occasionally held the throne. An elaborate bureaucracy supported the imperial authority. The officials, trained in Hellenistic knowledge in a secular school system, could be recruited from all social classes, although, as in China, aristocrats predominated. Provincial governors were appointed from the center, and a spy system helped to preserve loyalty. A careful military organization defended the empire. Troops were recruited locally and given land in return for service. Outsiders, especially Slavs and Armenians, accepted similar terms. Over time, hereditary military leaders developed regional power and displaced aristocrats who were better educated. The empire socially and economically depended on Constantinople's control of the countryside. The bureaucracy regulated trade and food prices. Peasants supplied the food and provided most tax revenues. The large urban class was kept satisfied by low food prices. A widespread commercial network extended into Asia, Russia, Scandinavia, western Europe, and Africa. Silk production techniques brought from China added a valuable product to the luxury items exported. Despite the busy trade, the large merchant class never developed political power. Cultural life centered on Hellenistic secular traditions and Orthodox Christianity. Little artistic creativity resulted, except in art and architecture. Domed buildings, colored mosaics, and painted icons expressed an art linked to religion.

Byzantine culture, political organization, and economic orientation help to explain the rift between the eastern and western versions of Christianity. Different rituals grew from Greek and Latin versions of the Bible. Emperors resisted papal attempts to interfere in religious issues. Hostility greeted the effort of the Frankish king, Charlemagne, to be recognized as Roman emperor. The final break between the two churches occurred in 1054 over arguments about the type of bread used in the mass and the celibacy of priests. Even though the two churches remained separate, they continued to share a common classical heritage.

A long period of decline began in the eleventh century. Muslim Turkish invaders seized almost all of the empire's Asian provinces, removing the most important sources of taxes and food. The empire never recovered from the loss of its army at Manzikert in 1071. Independent Slavic states appeared in the Balkans. An appeal for western European assistance did not help the Byzantines. Crusaders, led by Venetian merchants, sacked Constantinople in 1204. Italian cities used their navies to secure special trading privileges. A smaller empire struggled to survive for another two centuries against western Europeans, Muslims, and Slavic kingdoms. In 1453, the Ottoman Turks conquered Constantinople.

The Byzantine Empire's influence spread among the people of the Balkans and southern Russia through conquest, commerce, and Christianity. In the ninth century, missionaries Cyril and Methodius devised a written script, Cyrillic, for the Slavic language, providing a base for literacy in Eastern Europe. Unlike Western Christians, the Byzantines allowed the use of local languages in church services.

Both eastern and western Christian missionaries competed in eastern Europe. Roman Catholics, and their Latin alphabet, prevailed in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland. The region became a long-standing site of competition between the two influences. A series of regional monarchies—Poland, Bohemia, Lithuania—with powerful landowning aristocracies developed. Eastern Europe also received an influx of Jews from the Middle East and western Europe. They were often barred from agriculture but participated in local commerce. They maintained their own traditions and emphasized education for males.

Slavic peoples from Asia migrated into Russia and eastern Europe during the period of the Roman Empire. They mixed with and incorporated earlier populations. They possessed iron and extended agriculture in Ukraine and western Russia. Political organization centered in family tribes and villages. The Slavs followed an animist religion and had rich traditions of music and oral legends. Scandinavian traders during the sixth and seventh centuries moved into the region along its great rivers and established a rich trade between their homeland and Constantinople. Some traders won political control. A monarchy emerged at Kiev around 855 under the legendary Danish merchant, Rurik. The loosely organized state flourished until the twelfth century. Kiev became a prosperous commercial center. Contacts with the Byzantines resulted in the conversion of Vladimir I (980-1015) to Orthodox Christianity. The ruler, on the Byzantine pattern, controlled church appointments. Kiev's rulers issued a formal law code. They ruled the largest single European state.

Kiev borrowed much from Byzantium, but it was unable to duplicate its bureaucracy or education system. Cultural, social, and economic patterns developed differently from the western European experience. Rulers favored Byzantine ceremonials and the concept of a strong central ruler. Orthodox Christian practices entered Russian culture—devotion to God's power and to saints, ornate churches, icons, and monasticism. Polygamy yielded to Christian monogamy. Almsgiving emphasized the obligation of the wealthy toward the poor. Literature focused on religious and royal events, while art was dominated by icon painting and illuminated religious manuscripts. Church architecture adapted Byzantine themes to local conditions. Peasants were free farmers, and aristocratic landlords (boyars) had less political power than similar Westerners.

Kievan decline began in the twelfth century. Rival princes established competing governments while the royal family quarreled over the succession. Asian invaders seized territory as trade diminished because of Byzantine decay. The Mongol invasions of the thirteenth century incorporated Russian lands into their territories. Mongol (Tatar) dominance further separated Russia from western European developments. Commercial contacts lapsed. Russian Orthodox Christianity survived because the tolerant Mongols did not interfere with Russian religious beliefs or daily life as long as tribute was paid. Thus when Mongol control ended in the fifteenth century, a Russian cultural and political tradition incorporating the Byzantine inheritance reemerged. The Russians claimed to be the successors to the Roman and Byzantine states, the "third Rome."

Determining where individual civilizations begin and end is a difficult exercise. The presence of many rival units and internal cultural differences complicates the question. If mainstream culture is used for definition, Orthodox and Roman Catholic religion, each with its own alphabet, offers a logical answer. Political organization is more complicated because of loosely organized regional kingdoms. Commercial patterns and Mongol and Russian expansion also influenced cultural identities.

With the Mongol invasions, the decline of Russia, and the collapse of Byzantium, eastern Europe entered into a difficult period. Border territories, such as Poland, fell under Western influence, while the Balkans fell to the Islamic world of the Turks. Western and eastern Europe evolved separately, with the former pushing ahead in power and cross-cultural sophistication.

The Byzantine Empire was active in interregional trade; Constantinople was one of the world's great trading cities, and the empire served as a link between northern Europe and the Mediterranean. When Byzantium declined and the Mongols conquered Russia, a period of isolation began. By the fifteenth century, Russia began to regain independence and faced decisions about how to re-engage with the West.

The postclassical period in western Europe, known as the Middle Ages, stretches between the fall of the Roman Empire and the fifteenth century. Typical postclassical themes prevailed. Civilization spread gradually beyond the Mediterranean zone. Christian missionaries converted Europeans from polytheistic faiths. Medieval Europe participated in the emerging international community. New tools and crops expanded agricultural output; advanced technologies improved manufacturing. Mathematics, science, and philosophy were stimulated by new concepts.

Although western European society was not as commercially or culturally developed as the great world civilizations, it had its own distinctive characteristics. Western political structures had many similarities with those of the other more recent civilizations of Japan, Russia, and sub-Saharan Africa. Europeans long lived under threat of incursions from the stronger Islamic world. There were many indications of a developing, vital society: population growth, economic productivity, increased political complexity, technological innovation, and artistic and intellectual complexity. Major contributions to the development of Western civilization occurred in politics and social structure; in intellectual life medieval striving produced the university and Gothic architectural forms.

From the middle of the sixth century C.E. until about 900, disorder prevailed in western Europe. Rome's fall left Italy in economic, political, and intellectual decline. The Catholic Church remained strong. Muslim-controlled Spain maintained a vibrant intellectual and economic life but only later influenced European development. The center of the postclassical West was in France, the Low Countries, and southern and western Germany. England later joined the core. Continual raids by Scandinavian Vikings hindered political and economic development. Intellectual activity sharply diminished; most literate individuals were Catholic monks and priests.

Until the tenth century, most political organization was local. Manorialism was a system of reciprocal economic and political obligations between landlords and peasants. Most individuals were serfs living on self-sufficient agricultural estates (manors). In return for protection, they gave lords part of their crops and provided labor services. Inferior technology limited agricultural output until the ninth century introduction of the moldboard plow and the three-field cultivation system increased yields. Serfs bore many burdens, but they were not slaves. They had heritable ownership of houses and land as long as they met obligations. Peasant villages provided community life and limited self-government.

The Catholic Church in the first centuries after 500 was the single example of firm organization. The popes headed a hierarchy based on the Roman imperial model; they appointed some bishops, regulated doctrine, and sponsored missionary activity. The conversion of Germanic kings, such as Clovis of the Franks, around 496, demonstrated the spiritual and political power of the church. It also developed the monastic movement. In Italy, Benedict of Nursia created the most important set of monastic rules in the sixth century. Monasteries had both spiritual and secular functions. They promoted Christian unity, served as examples of holy life, improved cultivation techniques, stressed productive work, and preserved the heritage of Greco-Roman culture.

The Carolingian dynasty of the Franks ruling in France, Belgium, and Germany grew stronger during the eighth century. Charles Martel defeated Muslim invaders at Tours in 732. Charlemagne built a substantial empire by 800. He helped to restore church-based education and revived traditions of Roman imperial government. The empire did not survive Charlemagne's death in 814. His sons divided the territory and later rulers lacked talent. Subsequent political history was marked by regional monarchies existing within a civilization with strong cultural unity initially centered on Catholic Christianity. French, German, English, and other separate languages emerged, providing a beginning for national identity. The rulers reigning in Germany and northern Italy initially were the strongest; they called themselves holy Roman emperors, but they failed to create a solid monarchy. Local lords and city-states went their own way.

During the ninth and tenth centuries, new agricultural techniques—the moldboard plow, the three-field system—significantly increased production. Horse collars, also useful for agriculture, and stirrups confirmed lordly dominance. Viking incursions diminished as the raiders seized territorial control or regional governments became stronger. Both factors allowed population growth and encouraged economic innovation. Expanding towns emerged as regional trade centers with a merchant class and craft production. The need for more food led to colonization to develop new agricultural land. The demand for labor resulted in less harsh conditions for serfs. The growing urban centers increased the spread of literacy, revitalized popular culture, and stimulated religious life. By the eleventh century, cathedral schools evolved into universities. Students studied medicine and law; later theology and philosophy became important disciplines. Art and architecture reached new peaks.

From the sixth century, feudalism, a system of political and military relationships, evolved in western Europe. Military elites of the landlord class could afford horses and iron weapons. The greater lords provided protection to lesser lords (vassals) who in return supplied military and other service. Feudal relationships first served local needs, but they later were extended to cover larger regions. Charlemagne acted in that fashion. Later rulers, notably the Capetian kings of France from the tenth century, used feudalism to evolve from regional lords to rulers controlling a larger territory. In their feudal monarchy, they began bureaucratic administration and specialization of official functions. William the Conqueror invaded England in 1066 and merged feudal techniques with a more centralized government. Royal officials, sheriffs, supervised local justice. The growth of feudal monarchies independently duplicated measures followed in other centralizing societies.

Western Europe remained politically divided. The Holy Roman Empire's territories in Germany and Italy were controlled by local lords and city-states. The pope ruled in central Italy. Regional units prevailed in the Low Countries. In strong feudal monarchies, power was limited by the church, aristocratic military strength, and developing urban centers. King John of England in 1215 was forced to recognize feudal rights in the Magna Carta. Parliaments, bodies representing privileged groups, emerged in Catalonia in 1000. In England a parliament, operating from 1265, gained the right to rule on taxation and related policy matters. Most members of societies were not represented, but the creation of representative bodies was the beginning of a distinctive political process not present in other civilizations. Despite the checks, European rulers made limited progress in advancing central authority. Their weakness was demonstrated by local wars turning into larger conflicts, such as the Hundred Years War of the fourteenth century between the French and English.

The ongoing political and economic changes spurred European expansion beyond initial postclassical borders. From the eleventh century, Germanic knights and agricultural settlers changed the population and environmental balance in Eastern Germany and Poland. In Spain and Portugal, small Christian states in the tenth century began the reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula from Muslims. Viking voyagers crossed the Atlantic to Iceland, Greenland, and Canada. The most dramatic expansion occurred during the Crusades against Muslims in the Holy Land. Pope Urban II called the first in 1095. Christian warriors seeking salvation and spoils established kingdoms in the Holy Land enduring into the thirteenth century. Their presence helped to expose Europeans to cultural and economic influences from Byzantium and Islam.

The Catholic Church went through several periods of decline and renewal. The church's wealth and power often led its officials to become preoccupied with secular matters. Monastic orders and popes from the eleventh century worked to reform the church. Leaders, such as St. Francis and St. Clare, both from Assisi, purified monastic orders and gave new spiritual vigor to the church. Pope Gregory VII attempted to free the church from secular interference by stipulating that priests remain unmarried and that bishops not be appointed by the state. Independent church courts developed to rule on religious concerns.

Postclassical Western civilization reached its high point during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Creative tensions among feudal political forms, emerging monarchies, and the authority of the church produced major changes in political, religious, intellectual, social, and economic life.

Western civilization is hard to define, since the classical Mediterraneans did not directly identify what "Western" was and because of the lack of political unity in western Europe in the postclassical era. However, western Europeans certainly would have recognized Christianity as a common element. The rapid spread of universities and trade patterns increasingly joined much of western Europe. Furthermore, defining Western civilization is complicated because Europe borrowed so much from Asian civilizations.

Christianity was the clearest unifying cultural element in western Europe, even though it changed as European society matured.

Before 1000 C.E., a few church members had attempted to preserve and interpret the ideas of earlier thinkers, especially Aristotle and Augustine. The efforts gradually produced a fuller understanding of the past, particularly in philosophy, rhetoric, and logic. After 1000, the process went to new levels. Absolute faith in God's word was stressed, but it was held that human reason contributed to the understanding of religion and the natural order. Peter Abelard in twelfth-century Paris used logic to demonstrate contradictions in doctrine. Many church leaders opposed such endeavors and emphasized the role of faith for understanding religious mysteries. St. Bernard of Clairvaux successfully challenged Abelard and stressed the importance of mystical union with God. The debates matched similar tensions within Islam concerning philosophical and scientific traditions. In Europe, there were increasing efforts to bridge this gap. By the twelfth century, the debate flourished in universities, opening intellectual avenues not present in other civilizations. In China, for example, a single path was followed. The European universities produced men for clerical and state bureaucracies, but they also motivated a thirst for knowledge from other past and present civilizations. By the thirteenth century, Western thinkers had created a synthesis of medieval learning. St. Thomas Aquinas of Paris in his Summas held that faith came first but that human reason allowed a greater understanding of natural order, moral law, and the nature of God. Although scholasticism deteriorated after Thomas, it had opened new paths for human understanding. Medieval philosophy did not encourage scientific endeavor, but a few scholars, such as Roger Bacon, did important experimental work in optics and other fields.

Although we do not know much about popular beliefs, Christian devotion ran deep within individuals. The rise of cities encouraged the formation of lay groups. The cults of the Virgin Mary and sundry saints demonstrated a need for intermediaries between people and God. Pagan practices endured and blended into Christianity.

Christian art and architecture reflected both popular and formal themes. Religious ideas dominated painting, with the early stiff and stylized figures changing by the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to more realistic portrayals that included secular scenes. Architecture followed Roman models. A Romanesque style had rectangular buildings surmounted by domes. During the eleventh century, the Gothic style appeared, producing soaring spires and arched windows requiring great technical skills. Literature and music equally reflected religious interest. Latin writings dealt with philosophy, law, and politics. Vernacular literature developed, incorporating themes from the past, such as the English Beowulf and the French Song of Roland. Contemporary secular themes were represented in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Courtly poets (troubadours) in fourteenth-century southern France portrayed courtly love.

Apart from the cultural cement formed by the Catholic Church, Western society had other common features in economic activity and social structure. The postclassical West demonstrated great powers of innovation. When trade revived in the tenth century, the West became a kind of common commercial zone as merchants moved commodities from one region to another.

Agricultural improvements after 800 C.E. allowed some peasants to shake off the most severe manorial constraints. Noble landlords continued their military functions but used trade to improve their living styles. The more complex economy increased landlord-peasant tensions. From then until the nineteenth century, there were recurring struggles between the two groups. Peasants wanted more freedom and control of land, while landlords wanted higher revenues. In general, peasant conditions improved and landlord controls weakened. Although agriculture remained technologically backward when compared with that in other societies, it had surpassed previous levels.

Urban growth promoted more specialized manufacturing and commerce. Banking was introduced by Italian businessmen. The use of money spread rapidly. Large trading and banking operations clearly were capitalistic. Europeans traded with other world regions, particularly via Italian Mediterranean merchants, for luxury goods and spices. Within Europe, raw materials and manufactured items were exchanged. Cities in northern Germany and southern Scandinavia formed the Hanseatic League to encourage commerce. European traders, although entering into many economic pursuits still generally remained less venturesome and wealthy than their Islamic counterparts. The weakness of Western governments allowed merchants a freer hand than in many civilizations. Cities were ruled by commercial leagues, and rulers allied with them against the aristocracy. Apart from taxation and borrowing, governments left merchants alone, allowing them to gain an independent role in society. Most peasants and landlords were not enmeshed in a market system. In cities, the characteristic institution was the merchant or artisan guild. Guilds grouped people in similar occupations, regulated apprenticeships, maintained good workmanship, and discouraged innovations. They played an important political and social role in cities. Manufacturing and commercial methods in Europe improved, but they did not attain Asian levels in iron making and textile production. Only in a few areas, such as clock making, did they take the lead. By the late Middle Ages, the Western medieval economy contained contradictory elements. Commercial and capitalistic trends jostled the slower rural economy and guild protectionism.

As elsewhere, increasing complexity of social and economic life limited women's roles. Women's work remained vital to families. Christian emphasis on spiritual equality remained important, while female monastic groups offered a limited alternative to marriage. Veneration of the Virgin Mary and other female religious figures provided positive role models for women. Still, even though women were less restricted than those within Islam, they lost ground. They were increasingly hemmed in by male-dominated organizations. By the close of the Middle Ages, patriarchal structures were firmly established.

After 1300, postclassical Western civilization declined. A major war embroiled France and England during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The sporadic fighting spread economic distress and demonstrated the weaknesses of the feudal order. At the same time, key sources of Western vitality degenerated. Agriculture could not keep up with population growth. Famines followed. Further losses came from the Black Death in 1348 and succeeding plagues. Tensions between landlord and peasants, and artisans and their employees, intensified.

There were increasing challenges to medieval institutions. The landowning aristocracy, the ruling class, lost its military role as professional armies and new weapons transformed warfare. Aristocrats retreated into a ceremonial style of life emphasizing chivalry. The balance of power between church and state shifted in favor of the state. As the church leaders struggled to retain secular authority, they lost touch with individual believers who turned to popular religious currents emphasizing direct experience of God. Intellectual and artistic synthesis also declined. Church officials became less tolerant of intellectual boldness and retreated from Aquinas' blend of rationalism and religion.

The Middle Ages has been regarded as a backward period between the era of Greece and Rome and the vigorous new civilization of the fifteenth century. This view neglects the extent of medieval creativity. Much of Europe had not previously been incorporated into a major civilization. Europeans, for the first time, were building appropriate institutions and culture. Medieval thinkers linked classical rationalism within a strong Christian framework. Classical styles were preserved but were surpassed by new expressive forms. Medieval economics and politics established firm foundations for the future. Western European civilization shared many attributes with other emerging regions; among its distinctive aspects was an aggressive interest in the wider world.

Western Europe in the Middle Ages had a love-hate relationship with the world around it. Early on, Europe seemed threatened by Vikings, Asian nomads, and Islam. At the same time, Europeans actively copied many features from Islam and traded with Asians. Through selective acceptance of benefits from the world around them, this civilization developed a global awareness.