《第六章 中世纪(The West in the Middle Ages)》识记要点 完整版

分期：
I. The Early Middle Ages, 500-900 中世纪前期
II. The High Middle Ages, 900-1300 中世纪中期
III. The Later Middle Ages, 1300-1500 中世纪后期

I. The Early Middle Ages, 500-900

1. THE MAKING OF THE BARBARIAN KINGDOMS, 500-750
1.1 Italy: From Ostrogoths to Lombards
1.1.1 The Ostrogoths had created an Italian kingdom in which Romans and barbarians lived side
by side.
1.1.2 In 568, the whole Lombard people invaded the exhausted and war-torn Italian peninsula.
The Byzantine presence in Rome was weak, and by default the popes, especially Gregory the
Great (590-604), became the defenders and governors of the city. Gregory organized the
resistance to the Lombards, fed the population during famines, and comforted them through the
dark years of plague and warfare. A vigorous political as well as spiritual leader, he laid the
foundations of the medieval papacy.

1.2 Visigothic Spain: Intolerance and Destruction

The Visigoths ruled Spain and southern Gaul by combining traditions of Roman law and barbarian
military might.

1.3 The Anglo-Saxons: From Pagan Conquerors to Christian Missionaries

1.3.1 The Anglo-Saxons were pagans, and although Christianity survived, the relationship
between conquered and conquerors did not provide a climate conducive to conversion.
1.3.2 The conversion of England resulted from a two-part effort. The first originated in Ireland. In
the fifth century, merchants and missionaries introduced an eastern monastic form of Christianity
to Ireland. Around 565, the Irish monk Columba (521-597) established a monastery on the island
of Iona off the coast of Scotland. From there, wandering Irish monks began to convert northern
Britain.
The second effort at Christianizing Britain began with Pope Gregory the Great. In 596, he sent the
missionary Augustine (known as Augustine of Canterbury) to attempt to convert the English.
Augustine laid the foundations for a hierarchical, bishop-centered church based on the Roman
model.
1.3.3 By the eighth century, England itself had begun to send Christian missionaries to the
Continent to convert their still pagan Germanic cousins.

1.4 The Franks: An Enduring Legacy

1.4.1 In the fourth century, various small Germanic tribes along the Rhine coalesced into a loose
confederation known as the Franks.
1.4.2 Although the dynasty established by Clovis, called the Merovingian after a legendary
ancestor, lasted only until the mid-eighth century, the Frankish kingdom was the direct ancestor
of both France and Germany.
2. THE CAROLINGIAN ACHIEVEMENT, 751-900
2.1 Charles Martel
Charles Martel looked beyond military power to the control of religious and cultural institutions.
Missionaries and Frankish armies worked hand in hand to consolidate Carolingian rule.

2.2 Pippin III

Following this declaration the last Merovingian was deposed, and in 751 a representative of the
pope anointed Pippin king of the Franks.
The alliance between the new dynasty and the papacy marked the first union of royal legitimacy
and ecclesiastical sanction in European history.
The new Frankish kingship led Europe into the first political, social, and cultural restructuring of
the West since the end of the Roman Empire.

2.3 Charlemagne and the Renewal of the West

Charlemagne was a conqueror, but he was also a religious reformer, a state builder, and a patron
of the arts. Charlemagne changed the West more profoundly than anyone since Augustus.

2.4 Disintegration of the Empire

In time, the western kingdom became France, and the eastern kingdom became the core of
Germany. The middle kingdom, which included modern Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Lorraine ,
Switzerland, and northern Italy, remained a disputed region into the twentieth century.

2.5 Conclusion
Although the political structure created by Charlemagne did not survive his grandsons, the
Frankish model proved enduring in every other respect.
(1) The cultural renaissance laid the foundation of all subsequent European intellectual activities.
(2) The alliance between the Church and monarchy provided the formula for European kings for
almost a thousand years.
(3) The administrative system with its central and local components provided the model for later
medieval government in England and on the Continent.
(4) The idea of the Carolingian Empire, the symbol of European unity, has never entirely
disappeared from the West.

II. The High Middle Ages, 900-1300

1. Population Growth
Various reasons have been proposed for this growth: (1) less warfare and raiding, (2) the decline
of slavery, (3) gradually improving agricultural techniques and equipment, and possibly (4) a
slowly improving climate.

2. Religion
2.1 The Church: Saints and Monks
The most important of these supernatural powers was not some distant divinity but the saints—
local, personal, even idiosyncratic persons.
Through their bodies, preserved as relics in the monasteries of Europe, they continued to live
among mortals even while participating in the heavenly court.
2.2 Monastic Culture
Benedictine monasteries reached their height in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Within their
walls developed a religious culture.

3. Crusades
3.1 The Crusades are religious wars of conquest authorized by popes and directed against
Europe’s non-Christian neighbors.

3.2 The First Crusade originated in 1095, when Pope Urban II (1088-1099), hoping to direct noble
violence away from Christendom, urged Western knights to use their arms to free the Holy Land
from Muslim occupation. After terrible hardships, the crusaders succeeded in taking Jerusalem in
1099 and established a Latin Kingdom in Palestine.

3.3 In 1187, the Muslim commander Saladin recaptured Jerusalem, causing Emperor Frederick
Barbarossa and the kings of France and England, Philip II Augustus and Richard the Lion-Hearted,
to embark on the Third Crusade (1187-1192). This crusade also failed, but Richard signed a peace
treaty with Saladin.

3.4 The Idea of the Crusade

The Crusades were brutal and vicious, and the crusaders were often motivated as much by greed
as by piety. Doubts about the spiritual significance of such wars contributed to their decline. So,
too, did the rise of centralized monarchies, whose rulers usually viewed the Crusades as wasteful
and futile.

4. Culture
Bologna and Paris became the undisputed centers of the new educational movements. Bologna
specialized in the study of law, while Paris became the leader in the study of liberal arts and
theology. Students at Bologna organized a universitas, or guild of students, the first true
university.

5. State
5.1 Two types of political entities
The disintegration of the Carolingian Empire in the tenth century left political power fragmented
among a wide variety of political entities. In general, these were of two types. The first, the
papacy and the empire, were elective traditional structures that claimed universal sovereignty
over the Christian world, based on a sacred view of political power. The second, largely hereditary
and less extravagant in their religious and political pretensions, were the limited kingdoms that
arose within the old Carolingian world or on its borders.

5.2 How England became a nation-state

5.2.1 Conquest
The kingdom of England that was originally forged by Alfred and his descendants was
transformed by the successors of William the Conqueror.
5.2.2 Accounting
The recorded account , known as the Domesday Book《末日审判书》, was the most extensive
investigation of economic rights since the Merovingians abandoned the late Roman tax rolls.
5.2.3 Cooperation
In June 1215, King John was forced to accept the “great charter of liberties,” or Magna Carta 大宪
章, a conservative feudal document demanding that the king respect the rights of his vassals and
of the burghers of London. The great significance of the document was its acknowledgment that
the king was not above the law.