Aftermath of the Decline of the Roman Empire
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The widespread and long-term social disarray and insecurity following the decline of the Roman Empire and the gradual affiliation of masses of people with military overlords who could protect them constitutes the big picture of medieval society in Europe from the 10th to 15th centuries. Baldwin makes the point that classical education basically "dissolved" and that for several centuries the only repositories of learning were the monks, whose physical plants, isolated from "the confusion of the times" (35), were suited to the task of preserving ancient texts. Thus it should be no surprise that, among those who were learned at all, there was remarkable unity of belief and intellectual method, just as there was remarkable similarity in medieval iconography and the placement of windows and doors in Romanesque, then Gothic, cathedrals from and to the proper direction, e.g., at Chartres (Baldwin 110-111).Southern (16) says that the church was identified with "the whole of organized society [and] is the fundamental feature which distinguishes the Middle Ages from earlier and later periods of history." That would explain the strength of the scholastic culture that emerged in the 11th century. It would explain the alarm with which the churchmen viewed Abelard's systematic use of the scholastic method to pose contradictions that he would not resolve, as for example in "Sic et Non," which invites scholars to draw their own conclusions as long as they are rigorous in their interpretive
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ut and increase efficiency, thus surplus for trade. Water wheels and grist mills were also in use, although Gies and Gies point out that the mills, often owned by lord of a manor, were controversial because of the charges farmers incurred when they went to grind their crops (111ff).
Better agriculture, even though nobody actually sat down and planned it that way, fostered the appearance of commodities trading and various financial instruments (109ff). By the 13th century the Italians had also figured out double-entry bookkeeping as the core record-keeping device of commerce, which led to rationalization of monetary exchange as well as international banking (Gies and Gies 184-5). What was going on here was the emergence of banking as a discrete industry, although early attempts to institute stock exchanges, especially when involved with the English and French governments during the Hundred Years War, led to some disastrous bankruptcies.
An important feature of social progress between the 10th and 14th centuries was the transition out of the feudal system, which involved the relationships of aristocrats to each other. It is contemporary with the manorial system, which attached serfs to manors (i.e., the lands) and the lords that
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Gies Gies, Hundred War, Roman Empire, Middle Ages, Black Death, Latin Catholicism, Gregory VII, Antwerp Amsterdam, McGraw-Hill Education, Short Sourcebook, gies gies, sourcebook 4th ed, 4th ed ed, medieval europe, 4th ed, warren hollister, ed warren, ed ed, hollister joe leedom, york mcgraw-hill, warren hollister joe, europe short, ed ed warren, short sourcebook, middle ages,
Approximate Word count = 1337
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)
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