Medieval Europe Study Guide

Medieval Europe Study Guide
Chapter 9: Civilization in Eastern Europe: Byzantium & Orthodox


1. How did Byzantine Empire originate?

• initially part of Roman Empire
• 4 CE
• Roman capital in Constantinople / Byzantium
• separates from Rome
• emphasis on Greek
• lots of trade
• Justinian’s code of law

2. Which people threatened the empire? How did the Empire survive for 1,000 years?

• Sassanian Empire (Persia), Arabs, Bulgaria, & Germanic tribes
• use of local military
• naval supremacy
• Greek Fire
• petroleum, quicklime, and sulfur mixture

3. What were the significant Byzantine political, social, and religious institutions?

• politics
• similar to China
• ruler ordained by God
• was head of state & church
• appointed bishops
• passed religious & secular laws
• court rituals
• women could rule
• elaborate bureaucracy
• Greek classics, philosophy, science, & priesthood
• all social classes
• aristocrats dominate
• provincial governors oversee military duties
• military
• land for service
• hereditary inheritance of land & military duties
• social
• aristocrats regulate trade
• peasants needed to supply food, goods & tax
• trade
• silk
• merchants never gain political power
• secular traditions of Hellenism
• education
• Eastern/Orthodox Christianity
• LITTLE INNOVATION except in art & architecture
• icon painting vs iconoclasm

4. What led to the split between the Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches? How do they differ?

• developed differently and gradually
• West translates bible from Greek to Latin
• East resent pope for iconoclastic dispute
• West tried to make East conform to their church-state relation
• East thinks West were unsophisticated
• did not want to follow Charlemagne
• TRAILED OFF, BUT NEITHER MADE DEFINITIVE BREAK
• East Orthodoxy can marry, Roman Catholics can not
• art conveys different messages

5. How did orthodoxy spread throughout eastern Europe and with what results?

• missionaries
• Cyril & Methodius
• spoke Slavic language which helped
• created written script for language
• convert most people in the Balkans
• failed in Czech & Slavic republics
• Roman Catholics already presided
• southern Russia

6. How did Christianity influence society in Byzantium and Eastern Europe?

• series of regional monarches
• loose government, powerful landowning aristocracy
• trade
• language
• Cyrillic
• emphasis on education & literacy

7. What contributions did the Byzantines make to the development of Europe?

8. How did the Byzantine Empire influence the development of Russia?

• Russia
• Slavic language and customs learned from Byzantines
• Kiev
• monarchy
• trade flourished
• growing knowledge of Christianity
• Prince Vladimir I converts
• forced conversions of all subjects
• creation of Russian Orthodox
• formal law code
• religion
• devotion to God & Eastern saints
• ornate churches
• prayer & charity
• monogamy

9. What were the significant Russian political, social, and religious institutions?

• religion = Russian Orthodox
• forced conversions
• (see above question)
• literature
• Cyrillic alphabet
• religious
• art
• religious
• social
• peasants were free farmers
• landowning aristocracy
• aristocrats = boyars
• less political power than those in Europe, but princes had to negotiate with them

10. How did Eastern Europe fall behind Western Europe in terms of political development?







Ch 10: A New Civilization Emerges In Western Europe


1. What characteristics define medieval west European civilization?

• Fall of Rome = chaos
• Catholic Church most powerful institution
• Spain flourishes and has great impact intellectually & economically
• not a predominant society
• frequent invasions
• hard to develop durable government & economy
• weak rulers
• subsistence farming
• literacy limited to hierarchy & monasteries of Catholic Church

2. How did manorialism affect the legal, social, and economic position of the serfs?

• agricultural workers
• had to give some of their goods/crops to stay on land
• limited tools
• moldboard
• three-field system
• received protection
• repaired lord’s castle or working his lands

3. What economic and demographic developments changed Western society after the collapse of the Roman Empire?

• Catholic Church in power
• missionaries
• political & spiritual power
• people want to pray and have religious discipline to escape limits of ordinary material life
• improved cultivation of land
• education & literacy

4. How did feudal monarchies organize power? How was their power limited?

• feudalism
• gained territory through alliances & marriages
• developed bureaucracies
• merge feudal principles w/ slighty more centralized approach
• national law codes
• limitations
• divided into regional units
• church limits political claims
• feudal aristocracy uproars
• Magna Carta limits king’s powers
• parliaments represent nobles & church
• monarchs consult w/ vassals
• key three estates
• church, nobles, urban leaders

5. Why did Europeans support the Crusades and how did they impact Europe?

• Reasons
• population growth
• memories of Rome’s lost greatness
• righteous zeal from church
• full forgiveness of sins if died in battle & ensured entry to heaven
• attack Islam
• win goods from rich Arab lands
• feudal warriors want excitement
• ruled kingdom of Jerusalem for a century
• Third Crusade = death of German Emperor & imprisonment of English king
• truce w/ Saladin = Christian pilgrims could visit Jerusalem
• exposed West to new cultures & economy

6. What problems did the Medieval church face and how did it solve them?

• many religious officials sought land & power, behaving like feudal lords
• reforms that demonstrated spirit of purity & dedication to church
• St. Clare of Assisi
• no marriage
• investiture
• state appointment of bishops
• ended by Pope Gregory VII
• church free & superior to state

7. How did the rise of universities affect religion, society, and learning?

• more job opportunities
• reason challenges religion
• eagerness for learning = students pay teachers directly
• wanted mix of spiritualism & rationalism
• preservation of Greco-Roman philosophies & science
• spread of Arab & Jewish learning
• learning = education of natural order, moral law, nature of God
• Summas
• eliminate all objections to truth that were revealed by reason & faith
• scholasticism
• characterized by absurdity
• looked at past discoveries, rarely made any of their own

8. What changes occurred in agriculture, towns, and commerce after 1000 C.E.?

• decline of manorialism
• higher taxes from landlords
• peasant-landlord battles
• agricultural technology improves
• urban growth
• manufacturing & commercial activities
• greater trade
• introduction of banking
• luxury goods
• Asian spices
• capitalism
• rise of merchant class
• guilds
• contradictions
• commercial & capitalism vs. guilds & agriculture
• peasants vs. citylife
• group welfare vs. individual profit

9. What social, economic, religious, and political changes ended the medieval era?




10. How did Christianity affect the social, legal, and economic status of women?

• Christian stress on egalitarianism
• women monastic groups vs. marriage
• female religious figures give them prestige vs. Eve as source of sin
• less segregation in church services
• commercial status
• could be in guilds
• primarily male dominance
• women should do household tasks & have submissive virtues

Chapter 11
The Americas on the Eve of Invasion

1. What was the relationship between war and religion in the rise of the Aztecs?
2. How did the Aztecs organize their agriculture?
3. What social, political, and technological problems did the Aztecs face?
4. How did the Inca overcome geographic problems to unite their large empire?
5. How did the Inca use institutions and policies to unify their empire?
6. How did the Inca trade and tribute differ from other civilizations?
7. What characteristics did American Indians share? How were they different?
8. How were American societies different from European societies?


1. Hagia Sophia

Who? Byzantines (Eastern Roman Empire)

What? Massive Cathedral showing Byzantine emphasis on ornate worship of God

When? Early Post-classical Byzantine Empire

Where? Constantinople (modern day Istanbul)

2. Icons

Who? Catholic saints, the Virgin Mary

What: Images of religious figures that became objects of veneration within Christianity; prevalent in Eastern monasticism

When: Byzantine Empire

Where: Eastern Europe

3. Boyars

Who: Russian aristocrats

What:  a member of the highest rank of  the feudal Moscovian, Kievan Rus'ian, Bulgarian, Wallachian, and  Moldavian aristocracies, second only to the ruling princes

When? Post-classical

Where?  Eastern Europe

4. Justinian

Who? Byzantine Emperor

What? Wrote the Justinian Code, built the Hagia Sophia, expanded the Byzantine Empire

When? 527-565 CE (Post-classical Byzantine Empire)

Where? Byzantine Empire (Throne at Constantinople

5. Body of Civil Law (Justinian Code)

Who? Emperor Justinian

What?  a code of law comprised of existing Roman laws in a compacted form in a resurgence of Roman culture

When? completed in 534

Where? Byzantine Empire

6. Tsar

Who? Russian political & spiritual leader

What? N/A

When?Most of Russian history until Communist revolution

Where? Russia/ E. Europe

7. Great Schism

Who?pope leo IX and patriarch of constantinople michael cerularius

What?split of roman catholic church and eastern orthodoxy

When?1054

Where? Europe

8. Gothic

Who?

What?style of architecture which evolved from the Romanesque period and gradually changed into the renaissance period.featured pointed arches and flying buttresses as external supports on main walls

When?high and late medieval period

Where?france, england, spain, portugal, italy

9. Manorialism

Who: landlords and peasant laborers

What: system that described economic and political relations between landlords and their peasant laborers; involved a hierarchy of reciprocal obligations that exchanged labor or rents for access to land

When: Middle Ages

Where: Europe

10. Feudalism

Who? Included Serfs (below) and Lords.

What?Serfs would give loyalty ie: food and other services, to Lords in exchange for protection

When?Middle Ages...

Where?Europe...

11. Serfs

Who? Peasantry

What? Gave loyalty, food, and other services to the Lords in exchange for protection. (Feudalism) deteriated with the growth of towns and cities because they could now get jobs and have money, instead of being Serfs with no place to go. When serfs they had no where to go because they had no money and there were no towns.

When? Post Classical Era, Middle Ages

Where? Europe

12. Vassals

Who: members of military elite

What: received land or a benefice from a lord in return for military service and loyalty

When: Post Classical Era

Where: Europe

13. Magna Carta

Who? English Citizens & King John

What? Limited King John's Power, formed parliament and helped break down feudal system

When? Post Classical Era 1215

Where? England

14. Parliaments

Who?

What: bodies representing privileged groups; institutionalized feudal principle that rulers should consult with their vassals

When: Post Classical Era

Where: England, Spain, Germany, and France

15. Hundred Year’s War

Who: England v. France

What: conflict fought over lands England possessed in France and feudal rights versus the emerging claims of national states

When: 1337-1453

Where: France

16. Scholasticism

Who? N/A

What: dominant medieval philosophical approach; so-called because of its base in the schools or universities; based on use of logic to resolve theological problems

When: High Middle Ages

Where: Western Europe

17. Lay Investiture

Who? Feudal lords of western europe

What? the appointment of bishops, abbots and other church positions by f eudal lords and vassals.

When? Post Classical Era

Where? Western Europe

18. Holy Roman Empire

Who? N/A

What? Empire that encompassed much of modern day Germany, France and some of Italy, Charlamange was the first HRE

When? Post Classical Era

Where? West Europe

19. Theodora

Who? Wife of Justinian, Byzantine Emperor

What? She was the driving force behind many of Justinian's policies and laws

When? Post Classical Age

Where? Byzantium

20. Cyrillic Alphabet

Who? East Europe and Russia

What? Alphabet developed in 10th Century, Russian is one of the most recgonized languages to use it.

When? 10th century-present

Where? East Europoe

21. Hanseatic League

Who: Germans and Scandinavians??

What: organization of cities for the purpose of establishing a commercial alliance

When: Post Classical Era

Where: northern Germany and southern Scandinavia

22. Guilds

Who: sworn associations of people in the same business or trade in a single city

What: stressed security and mutual control; limited membership, regulated apprenticeship, guaranteed good workmanship; often established franchise within cities

When: Post Classical Era

Where: Europe

23. Black Death

Who?Killed a quarter of Europeans

What?Plague that spread over Europe and killed an estimated quarter of the population

When? 14th Century

Where?Europe

24. Pipiltin

Who? The Aztecs

What? they were the highest class in the Aztec society, part of the hereditary nobility. They occupied high government, military, and preistly positions.

When? During the Aztec Civilization (postclassical Mesoamerica 1000-1500 ce.)

Where? Mesoamerica, Central America

25. Calpulli

Who: clans

What: later expanded to include residential groups that distributed land and provided labor and warriors

When: Post-Classical Era

Where: Aztec society

26. Chinampas

Who? Aztecs

What? Floating squares of dirt used effectively to grow crops & live on

When?Post Classical Era

Where? Mexico, Central America

27. Split inheritance

Who: Incas

What: practice of descent; all titles and political power went to successor, but wealth and land remained in hands of male descendants for support of cult of dead inca's mummy

When: Post-Classical Era

Where: Americas

28. Curacas

Who: Ayllu chiefs

What: had privileges of dress and access to resources; community leaders

When: Post-Classical Era

Where: Andean societies

29. Mita

Who: Incas

What: Labor extracted for lands assigned to the state and the religion; all communities were expected to contribute; an essential aspect of Inca imperial control

When: Post Classical Era

Where: Americas

30. Tambos

Who: Incas

What: way stations used by Incas as inns and storehouses; supply centers for Inca armies on move; relay points for system of runners used to carry messages

When: Post-Classical Era

Where: Americas

31. Pochteca

Who: Aztecs

What: special merchant class; specialized in long-distance trade in luxury items

When: Post-Classical Era

Where: Aztec society, the Americas

32. Quipu

Who: Incas

What: system of knotted strings utilized in place of a writing system; cound contain numerical and other types of information for censuses and financial records

When: Post Classical Era

Where: Americas

33. Francesco Petrarch

Who: Italian author and humanist

What: one of the major literary figures of the Western Renaissance

When: Western Renaissance

Where: Italy

34. Spanish Inquistion

Who? Ferdinand & Isabella

What? Purged Spain of Jews, Muslims and other non-christians in extremely violent ways

When? Post Classical Age

Where? Spain

35. Zhenghe

Who: Chinese Muslim admiral

What: commanded series of trade expeditions under third Ming emperor, Yunglo

When: 1405-1433

Where: Indian Ocean, Persian Gulf, and Red Sea