Lesson 6---Castles, Crusades and Cathedrals

The Coronation of Charlemagne

Day 1

One result of the collapse of the Rome was that the old empire was divided into hundreds of little kingdoms, each controlled by the most powerful in the area. Sometimes he was called a king, sometimes a duke, lord, earl or a prince. Whatever he was called, the man who could amass the largest army in the neighborhood usually ruled, at least until someone with a larger army, or gang of thugs, came along. It all really does remind one of gang warfare all over Europe. All of the land in his area belonged to the king (or whatever he was called), and he promised to protect the people living on his land from all the other thugs. Sometimes he protected his people by harboring them in his local fortress, known as a castle.

http://www.castles-of-britain.com/castle6.htm

The land belonged to the local ruler, but the peasants were expected to farm it. In return they had to promise the local leader their loyalty, a considerable portion of the harvest, and military service. The frequent battles of one local king against his neighbor were called feuds, and this system of mutual responsibility between lord and vassal was called feudalism (pronounced FYOO-dul-is-um).

This link will give you more information on feudalism:

http://www.mrdowling.com/703-feudalism.html

In the beginning of the ninth century even the Papacy was in complete confusion. Rival Popes fought one another for control of the Church. At one time there were as many as three different men claiming to be the true Pope. The office of bishops were sold to the highest bidder. (The selling of a church office is called simony.) One monastery in the French town of Cluny (kloo-NEE) attempted to impose rules on the various Christian noblemen that were fighting one another. Their so-called truce of God forbade attacks on priests or nuns, farmers, women or children, and it prevented any warfare from sunset on Mondays until Wednesday morning or on holy days. These Cluniac Reforms were only partly successful, however. When a nobleman’s army would violate the truce of God, other noblemen would form an army to punish the offender. Then, still other armies were formed to punish the avengers. Thus Christian armies fought with Christian armies almost constantly. One can only guess about what the risen Christ, who had taught his followers to turn the other cheek, would have thought about all this bloodshed.

The army of Charlemagne (Charles the Great), Emperor of the Franks, swept into Rome in 799 and imposed order by restoring Leo III to the Papacy in Rome. To return the favor, and without being asked, Pope Leo crowned Charlemagne as Emperor of the on Christmas Day in the year 800 at St. Peter’s basilica in Rome. Charlemagne and his successors were very devout and also very powerful. They firmly believed that God had given them authority in the world (temporal authority) just as God had given the Pope spiritual authority. As a result these rulers felt that God had ordained them to protect Christendom, establish order in the world, and even to attempt to reform the Church. One result of Charlemagne’s rule was a revival of study of the ancient letters and arts, known as the Carolingian Renaissance (renaissance means “rebirth”, or “re-awakening.”) Enjoy these pictures of the life and reign of Charlemagne by clicking on this link:

http://www.bnf.fr/enluminures/themes/t_1/st_1_04/a104_002.htm

Another result of Charlemagn’s rule was that the kings, earls, and dukes began to assert their power in appointing bishops and priests. Previously this right had been granted only to the Church. The Popes insisted that no layperson, even if he were the Emperor, had the right to appoint a bishop or priest. This controversy was known as the dispute over lay investiture. “Investiture” is the act of putting on the bishop’s robes, part of the worship service surrounding the appointing of a bishop. Another problem arose when many of the bishops who had been appointed by the rulers assumed that their office was hereditary. They passed along their status as bishops to their sons. The Church declared this practice illegal, but many political rulers continued to follow the Emperor rather than the Pope on this issue. Many reforms were initiated by Pope Gregory VII (a monk formerly known as Hildebrand), but the secular rulers were gaining in wealth, and therefore also in power. Still, they did not think of themselves as separate from the Church. Rather they thought of themselves and their domains as part of the Church, part of one worldwide Christian community they called Christendom (KRIZ-en-dum). Look at this link and its related links. http://www.mrdowling.com/703-christendom.html

Here is a medieval woodcut showing a kitchen preparing for a feast.

Now, you go feast on your favorite munchies and tell your parents what you learned in this lesson. They will be VERY impressed. That’s it for today.

Day 2

A contemporary depiction of knights setting out on a Crusade.

In 1054 the reformers of Pope Gregory VII insisted that the Eastern Church acknowledge the authority of the Pope in Rome. The Patriarch of Constantinople refused. The Pope in Rome then excommunicated the Eastern Orthodox Church, and the Eastern Church returned the insult. This mutual excommunication, when each of the two halves of the Church of Jesus Christ declared the other half to be non-Christian was a lamentable tragedy. The explosion of the supernova that we know as the Crab Nebula in the constellation Taurus (the Bull) also appeared at the same time. This exploding star was brighter than the full moon for several months, and was regarded by many as a sign of God’s displeasure with the mutual dislike of Christians for other Christians. Remember that despite the decline of government and order in Western Europe, the Eastern Roman Empire, ruled from Constantinople had been doing quite well. However, around 1095 A.D. the Emperor of the Eastern Empire faced a major problem. Those pesky Muslim warriors, the Turks, who were busy trying to take over the world, were at his doorstep, and his empire happened to be in their way. He needed some serious help. He swallowed his Eastern Orthodox pride and asked Pope Urban II for assistance, and his holiness convened an ecumenical council in the French town of Clermont. There Pope Urban made a brilliant proposal: instead of Christians fighting against Christians in their petty, feudal wars, why not go to war against those nasty infidel Muslims? Not only would Western Christendom help preserve their sister Christian Empire, they would also have the added bonus of freeing all of the holy sites in Palestine so that pilgrims might visit them again. The birthplace of Jesus, the city of Jerusalem, and all of Palestine and Galilee had become part of the Muslim Empire. Christians would go on a “Holy War”, a war under the Cross of Christ, or to coin a word a “Crusade” to recapture the holy places in Palestine. Urban promised forgiveness of all sins to anyone who would die in battle during the Crusade, and also to anyone who might die going to the Holy Land.

Click on this link to see some very old pictures of the Crusades.

http://www.bnf.fr/enluminures/themes/t_1/st_1_02/a102_006.htm

Urban II’s suggestion of going on a Christian Holy War was an idea whose time had come, and it spread like wildfire. We still have a copy of a sermon of one Peter the Hermit, who appealed to Frenchmen to enlist for the Crusade and met with unbelievable success. Christians by the tens of thousands signed up to go and free the holy sites. There were several reasons for this successful recruitment. First, the kings and nobles saw these wars as a way of extending their own power and influence into new lands. Secondly, nobles and peasants alike really did possess an enthusiastic piety that convinced them that ”Dieu le veult!,” God wills it. This shout became their battle cry, and they really meant it. Thirdly, many peasants signed up simply to get something interesting to do. Day after day, year after year, most peasants spent all their waking hours looking at the rear end of an ox hitched to a plow. The idea of traveling to distant lands and pursuing adventure, wealth and glory certainly had its attractions. Finally, though, these Christian soldiers really did believe that God willed that they should go fight, and that Christ himself was their general.

The noblemen who went to fight in the Crusades provided the foundation for what later became the orders of knighthood. Special honor and virtue were believed to belong to one who would show courage in battle for the cause of Christ. The king would often organize his knights in orders, just as monks were members of their orders. Some of these orders transcended nationalities, and were open to all warriors who would dare to undertake an especially dangerous mission. One order of chivalry was known as the Knights Templars. They derived their name from their intention to liberate the Holy Temple of Jerusalem from the control of the infidel Muslims. A similar order was the Knights Hospitalers. Both groups established houses along the route from Rome to Jerusalem to give shelter, protection, assistance, and lodging to crusaders or pilgrims traveling to the Holy Land. In some ways they functioned like a modern hotel or hospital system. Sometimes they would accept large amounts of money or valuable possessions for safekeeping in case a crusader were killed in battle. These orders provided a network that linked the East and the West long after the religious wars had ceased.

Read more about knights here

http://historymedren.about.com/library/weekly/aa031398.htm

http://historymedren.about.com/library/weekly/aa030598a.htm

The various noblemen from the many different kingdoms, dukedoms, earldoms, and fiefs making up modern-day France went throughout the countryside forming their separate armies. When the armies were all assembled they marched eastward to Constantinople. Immediately there were problems. One problem was that the timing was bad. The split dividing Eastern and Western Christendom had occurred only forty years earlier. When the Crusaders arrived in Constantinople the Eastern Emperor wanted the various armies to swear loyalty to him. However, the Frenchmen would swear loyalty only to the Pope. From the outset the Christian warriors from the West and the Emperor of the East were at odds with one another. Then other problems arose. It became apparent that not all of the Christian kings and generals were as devoted to the cause of the Pope as they were to their own enrichment. One French noble captured the city of Edessa in southeast Turkey and set up his own independent kingdom there, refusing to go out to fight further. Another leader did the same thing in Antioch in Syria. Nevertheless, the armies were able to remain together long enough to win the city of Jerusalem in 1099. All of the Muslims in the city were slaughtered, so that the horses waded in blood up to their fetlocks. The Christian Church in the West set up the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, which lasted until 1244, despite terrible misgovernment. The infighting among the puppet rulers of Palestine set up by the West never stopped.

A second crusade was launched half a century later under St. Bernard of Clairvaux, with limited success. Some of the armies began immediately to expel the Muslim Infidels (called Moors) from Spain. A Third Crusade was called at the end of the twelfth century. It also had only limited success. Some of the later crusading armies attacked Constantinople, a Christian city. Much of the rest of Palestine was lost in Muslim counterattacks under the amazing leadership of the Muslim general Saladin. He was ruthless and brilliant in battle, yet remarkably humane and gentle to the wounded and to prisoners of war. Some crusading armies marched from the West overland, while others went through the Mediterranean Sea by ship. The silliness of some of the later crusades is shown by the so-called ”Children ’s Crusade.” An overly sentimental church came to believe that because of the innocence of children, an army made up of children would be granted victory by God. In the twelfth century an army made up totally of young children was sent to Palestine to battle the Infidel Turk. As they marched overland from Rome to Constantinople, many were kidnapped and abused, and many died of hunger, thirst, or illness. The few children who made it as far as Constantinople were slaughtered in battle. As far as we know, not one ever returned home alive. Similarly one Crusade was conducted by an army made up entirely of the poor. The church again believed that God would provide special help to the poor.

Crusade after crusade was called until finally the idea of a crusade became a worn-out concept. In 1270 King Louis of France (later to be called St. Louis) set sail for his second Crusade. He died a month later of an infection in Tunis, North Africa, and the crusade turned into a murderous fiasco. Many Christians in the West were then convinced “Deus non veult,” (God does not will it.) Still, the Church called for a dozen or so Crusades right up until the 1600s. These later Crusades were usually not directed against the Muslim Turks, but against heretics such as the Albigenses or the Waldenses, or others with whom the Church did not agree. Finally the idea of the Crusades just ”petered-out.”� And besides, once the Protestant Reformation got underway in the sixteenth century, the Roman Catholic Church had its hands full with other matters.

Something To Do:

If you or your parents would like to read more about the Crusades, click on this link and its related links : http://www.medievalcrusades.com/

Read more about the Muslim General Saladin. His Arabic name, Sala-ed-Din, means Sala the Servant (of God). He was a Kurd, born in Tikrit, a town that has been in the headlines recently as the hometown of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. http://members.tripod.com/~snowlion2/slahadin.html

An artist’s conception of the Muslim General Saladin

Wherever the Crusaders went they constructed forts, and the only forts they knew were their castles. Several of their castle-fortresses are still standing in the Middle East. One of the most famous is the Crac de Chevalier in modern Syria. Here is a picture of it, with a hyperlink that will take you to other photographs.

http://www.stefaniasofra.it/viagginelmondo/Siria/imagepages/image1.htm

Do you think you would have enjoyed living in a castle? Why or why not? Talk to your Mom and Dad about what you have learned, and show them these photographs.

Some Results of the Crusades

In some ways the Crusades were not very effective. The Christian nations of Europe banded together, at least for a little while, and set up a weak puppet kingdom in Palestine. Politically and theologically the effects of the Crusades were not all that important. However, in other ways it is almost impossible to calculate the effect of the Crusades on Europe and the Church. The Crusades virtually laid the foundation for our modern world.

Some of the most important legends and literature from early Europe come from this period. Stories about the Crusaders‚ Richard the Lionhearted, Geoffrey de Bouillon, Frederick Barbarossa, Saladin, The Song of Roland, the story of the hero Tancred, all come from this period. It was the absence of King Richard the Lionhearted, away on a crusade, that left England in the hands of his regent, King John. The English nobles were able to extract from this relatively weak ruler a list of legal rights in a document known as the Magna Carta. Similarly, the people in the many kingdoms of France stopped thinking of themselves as people of Burgundy, Provencal, Normandy or Puy, and all started to think of themselves as Frenchmen. This subtle change would play an important role in the unification of the nation of France. It is interesting to note that the Arabic word for anyone who comes from the West today is still “ Frank! (Frenchman).”

Not only were the Crusades a stimulus to literature and government, the Crusades allowed West and East to open up to each other for the first time. Although a great many Crusaders died in the Holy Land, the ones returning brought us many things that Europe had never seen, heard, or tasted before. Coffee, sugar, candy, tea, and pastries were unheard of in Europe but were common in the Middle East. Indeed, the words “coffee,” and ”sugar‚” are Arabic words. It was on the Crusades that Western Europeans saw chickens for the first time. (The Greeks called them “Persian birds”). One very important discovery in the East was pepper. Before the days of refrigeration all meat must be eaten soon after it was slaughtered. Covering meat with pepper allowed it to be kept for much longer periods and it also added flavor. There are reports that some French noblemen gave about a year’s salary for just a few pounds of pepper.

The practices of marching armies around in close-order drill, and playing military music were obtained from the Muslims in Turkey. Crusaders brought back a new invention which the Middle East had borrowed from China, namely paper. Before the Crusades any document had to be written on a sheepskin scraped very clean and thin. After the discovery of paper, books could be copied and distributed much more cheaply. Paper offered an enormous advantage even before the invention of the printing press enhanced its value further. After the Crusades every nobleman wanted to be dressed in silk, a fabric previously unknown in Europe. Even after combat stopped, trade continued. The “Great Silk Road” stretched from Vienna in Austria all the way through the Holy Land to distant China. A few hardy merchants dared to travel to the East to buy, sell, and trade. Tales of their exploits fired the imagination of the Polo family of Venice, and one of their sons Marco Polo, left a travel diary that described his journeys to eastern Asia. Indeed, the Venetian merchants began to communicate and trade with Constantinople and the East by sea, and became the commercial jewel of the early Italian Renaissance. The famous statues of the four lions in front of St. Mark’s Cathedral in Venice, incidentally, were stolen from Constantinople. It was the desire for a shorter sea route that inspired the Portuguese to go around the Horn of Africa, and Christopher Columbus to go west in order to reach the East.

The writings of Plato and Aristotle, as well as the Bible in its original Hebrew and Greek, had been lost to the West, but not to Constantinople, and copies were brought to Europe. The West had largely forgotten how to read Greek or Hebrew, but translators knowing these languages were brought back from the Middle East and also from Muslim Spain. Soon scholars wanted to read the Bible in its original languages. The stage was set for modern Biblical scholarship. Scholars also wanted to read the philosophers who had preceded Jesus. Once his work was translated, Aristotle caught on like wildfire in the budding new universities that sprang up in towns such as Paris in France, Oxford in England, and Cologne in Germany. The Pope put Aristotle’s books on a list of banned writings, yet their popularity increased. Finally the Pope ordered a little-known scholar-priest from the little town of Aquino in Italy to “christianize Aristotle,” St. Thomas Aquinas thus began his Summa Theologica, which remains the official Roman Catholic theological masterwork to this day.

One other noteworthy literary work of the period was written by the Italian Dante Alighieri. The Divine Comedy presented such a depiction of hell it still pervades the popular notion of what hell is like. Many Christians today would be surprised if you told them that their ideas about hell come more from Dante than from the Bible, yet such is the case. The Divine Comedy was important for another reason. Previously almost all literature had been written in Latin. Dante’s book, written in Italian, showed a move toward using the vernacular, or the common language, rather than Latin, for literary work.

St. Thomas Aquinas

Day 3

Here are some study questions. Print out these questions on another piece of paper and write down your answers. Bring them to class on Sunday. You may get help from your parents or from other members of the class. You may want to Instant Message your classmates on Yahoo or AOL. Open up your own Chat Room with your classmates and discuss the weird stuff your pastor is expecting you to learn in Confirmation Class.

1. The selling of church offices is called _____________.

2. The nobles of Christian Europe believed that God had given the Pope spiritual authority, and had given the ruler t__________ authority.

3. One monastery in France that tried to impose rules to prevent or reduce warfare between Christians was in Cluny. The rules it tried to impose are known as the ___________.

4. The idea that a layperson can commission a bishop or priest is known as ___________ ______________.

5. When did the Church split into Eastern and Western halves? __________. Describe what happened.

6. The first Crusade was called by Pope ________________.

7. The second Crusade was called by ________________________.

8. A Christian city in the Eastern Empire which the Crusaders attacked was ______________________

9. When the Crusaders finally captured Jerusalem in 1099, what was the name of the kingdom they established?

10. Name three things in our modern world that came from the Crusades.

11. Name two ancient works of literature lost to Europe, which were rediscovered during the Crusades.

12. Translators were brought back into Europe to read the Bible in its original languages. Name these two languages.

13. Name two of the ancient Greek philosophers who were rediscovered as a result of the Crusades.

14. What was the task given to St. Thomas Aquinas?

15. What famous Italian trading town attempted to model itself after Constantinople? It is also the town that produced Marco Polo.

Here are a couple of links about the Crusades you will enjoy

http://historymedren.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.allcrusades.com%2Findex-2.html

See also http://historymedren.about.com/library/weekly/aa101397.htm

That’s it for today. Nice work. Be sure to bring your written questions to class on Sunday. Tomorrow we’ll take a look at the huge churches known as cathedrals.

Day 4: Cathedrals

Around the beginning of the 1200’s many reforms were brought about in the church. Abuses were corrected partly through the influence of the Cistercian (sis-TER-shun) monks led by Bernard of Clairvaux, and partly through the power of Pope Innocent III. The economy of Europe improved, so that there was more wealth both inside and outside the Church. There was a flurry of church-building throughout Europe in which the new Gothic style of architecture was refined. The first truly Gothic church to be built was the Church of St. Denis (pronounced SAN duh-NEE), constructed by Bishop Suger (pronounced soo-ZHAY) outside of Paris in 1037. Round arches gave way to pointed ones. Thick, heavy walls gave way to very thin walls of stained-glass, supported from the outside by exterior braces called flying buttresses.

The goal was to make a building with walls so high and thin that they looked as though only the light from heaven was supporting them. The tall rooms led the eye and the soul upward toward heaven. Walls became thinner and thinner, and ceilings became higher and higher, until several of these large churches collapsed under their own weight. Each town attempted to outdo its neighbors in the size and beauty of its cathedral. In the twelfth century several million tons of stone were carted into France alone to make eighty cathedrals, five hundred equally large churches, and thousands of smaller chapels. Many of the large cathedrals took hundreds of years to complete. Sometimes the building of the cathedral was the main employment in a town for several generations. Several of the large medieval churches are still uncompleted.

The cathedrals were not built by monks, but by stonemasons. After years as an apprentice, a stone carver could be certified as a professional. Normally people were bound by an oath of fidelity to their lord and could not leave their home town. But a mason was allowed to travel to different cities, or even different countries, to ply his craft. This freedom to move from place to place led to their being called freemasons. Workers in other crafts, such as glassmakers, textile workers, or wood carvers organized themselves into early labor unions called guilds. These guilds bargained with the cathedral owners (the Church) for fair wages and better working conditions.

Some large churches served a large area and were the center of a bishop’s territory. In the old days everyone stood throughout the church service except the bishop, usually because he was a very old man. As a result he got to sit down in a chair. The old Latin word for is cathedra, and the church in which the bishop’s chair sits is called a cathedral church. Many other church buildings serving larger cities may be just as large and fine as a cathedral, but are simply ordinary parish churches because they do not contain the bishop’s chair.

Have some fun painting the west front of the Wells cathedral on this link. Visit all of the related links too. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/programmes/cathedral/

The cathedrals sparkled with stained-glass windows. Since Roman times pictures had been made by gluing little, tiny pieces of tile together to make a design. By the end of the eleventh century artists had figured out how to add certain minerals to glass to give it beautiful colors, and still allow light to pass through it. Workers assembled thousands of pieces of glass, joining them together with tiny strips of lead, to make pictures of Biblical scenes. Since few of the people could read, these depictions of stories from the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament were sometimes called the Bible of the common man. Although they could not read, the worshippers could look at the stained-glass picture at worship, as the ordained clergy read the Bible lesson for the day. Even though the pieces of glass can be tiny, they are sometimes assembled into a huge window. One of the windows of the Lady Chapel at Cambridge in England, if laid flat, would be larger than a tennis court.

Something to Do

Go into our sanctuary before worship this Sunday to see the stained-glass windows at our church. How many of the Bible stories depicted in our windows can you identify? What style of architecture can be seen throughout our church? (Here’s a hint: all of our windows are set inside pointed arches.)

Just as the stained-glass windows gave a picture of the Bible lesson for non-readers, so also the statues in the cathedral taught lessons about famous saints and bishops. Similarly, there were statues and carvings of demons and other hellish creatures, designed to remind the worshipper of the terrors of hell. Some of these demons, devils, and imps were sculpted high on the eves of the cathedral as gargoyles, grotesque figures whose mouths spouted water away from the outside walls when it rains. Which do you think is uglier, a gargoyle, or a modern downspout? The medieval obsession with hell, demons, and their terrors was not just theoretical. Three different times in the Middle Ages a plague known as The Black Death swept over Europe. Each time it passed over the world almost one-third of the population was destroyed. They believed that sweet-smelling fragrances would keep away the plague, and began to carry flowers in bouquets, in rings around the neck, and even in their pockets. Even children became accustomed to finding family members dead. There was not even time to bury the dead, so the corpses were set alight in huge bone fires, from which we get the word “bonfire.” One nursery rhyme recalling this period is still with us today:

A ring around of roses

A pocket full of posies,

Ashes! Ashes!

We all fall dead.

We now know that the bubonic plague was caused by the fleas that lived on rats and mice. People did not know this in the Middle Ages and often believed that the plague was the judgment of God.

See more pictures of gargoyles at this link http://search.gallery.yahoo.com/search/corbis?p=gargoyles

Here is a page of links to information about cathedrals. Visit as many as your time will allow.

http://www2.art.utah.edu/cathedral/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/programmes/cathedral/map.shtml

Even the very shape of the cathedral was designed to tell a story. This top view of a cathedral floor plan shows that the building itself is in the shape of the cross of Christ. Can you see the cross in this floor plan of a cathedral?

For medieval Christians, who could not read, symbols became very important. A symbol is something that we can picture that reminds us of something that we cannot see. For example, some artists who wanted to symbolize God’s all-seeing knowledge would represent God as a great big eye. An artist wanting to symbolize God as our helper might depict God as a man’s hand. Statues, stained glass, embroidery and other objects of art were designed to tell the story of sin and salvation. In fact, just about everywhere you look in a medieval church is a statue, a carving, a picture or an object that is trying to tell you something about God and His plan of salvation for the world. Many of the architectural features seen in churches ever since were begun with the building of the great cathedrals.

http://www.cathedral.ely.anglican.org/tour/tour.htm This link will help you learn the names of the various parts of a cathedral.

That’s all for today. Be sure to tell your parents what you learned. Go to AOL Instant Messaging and see if your classmates have any questions you can answer about cathedrals.

Day 5

Here are some study questions. Print out these questions on another piece of paper and write down your answers. Bring them to class on Sunday. You may get help from your parents or from other members of the class. You may want to Instant Message your classmates on Yahoo or AOL. Open up your own Chat Room with your classmates and discuss the weird stuff your pastor is expecting you to learn in Confirmation Class.

1. What is the difference between a parish church and a cathedral?

2. In your own words, define “symbol.” Can you give a couple of examples of symbols?

3. The new style of church architecture begun in the eleventh century is known as __________.

4. The weight of the high, thin, glass-filled walls of the new churches were supported from the outside by f_________ ____________.

5. Because few people could read, Bible stories were depicted in beautiful windows made of s_________ g___________.

6. Very ugly statues of demons and other horrible creatures are known as ______________.

7. Do you think that the vast sums of money spent on the cathedrals were well spent, or could the money have been used more wisely in other ways?

8. In the Middle Ages the word “church” came to refer to a building. Before that it referred to an institution or to the community of people who gave their allegiance to Christ. Which meaning do you prefer? Why?

9. What was the cause of the Black Death?