CCS Junior Certificate History: The Middle Ages

THE MIDDLE AGES

Overview:

Roughly a period of 1,000 years (400 A.D. – 1400 A.D.) between collapse of Roman Empire and Renaissance
Known as Middle Ages/Dark Ages/Medieval Period
Sources for the Middle Ages include buildings (Castles/Cathedrals), books (Book of Kells) or Paintings/Tapestries (Bayeux Tapestry)
No single strong ruler like the Emperor of Rome = constant warfare across Europe
Gradually strong rulers become Kings & organise society under the Feudal System
Feudalism = system of land ownership where strong rulers divided land among their followers (vassals) in return for loyalty in battle etc
Bits of land (fiefs) were given in exchange for vows of loyalty (fealty)
Feudal Society = Kings ® Barons/Earls/Bishops/Abbots ® Knights/Lords ® Peasants (Freemen/Serfs)
Feudalism came to Ireland with the Normans after 1169
Feudal Ireland = large forests, great stone castles, small country villages (manors), large stone cathedrals, open & unfenced fields, monasteries and small towns/cities

The Medieval Manor & Village:

Manor = land belonging to knight or lord
Village = Manor House (often stone), church (often stone), forge (blacksmith), mill (bread made), common (area for grazing animals), three-field system (one left fallow each year) and nearby forest for fuel & timber
Peasants = self-sufficient (grew own food, made own clothes etc)
Main work done is farming
Peasants are Freemen (owned his land, could leave village if he wanted to) or Serfs (“property” of the lord, cannot leave land without lord’s permission, didn’t own their land)
KEY AREA = SERF IN THE MIDDLE AGES:
- House = very small, wattle & daub walls, earth floor, thatched roof, animals kept inside for warmth, dark & smoky
- Work = farming, crops (oats, barley, wheat etc) sown on strips of land in the three fields, all work done by hand, must work for lord two days per week, 10% of yield given as tax to church (tithe)
- Food & Drink = ale/beer (safer than water), bread, cheese, vegetable soup (pottage), meat only twice a year
- Clothing = all hand-made, wool or linen, wild berries for dye, shoes/coats from animal leather
- Law = forbidden to hunt in forests, lords made the laws, bailiffs enforced them, punished in stocks for small crimes, death for big crimes
- Leisure = drinking, singing, dancing, wrestling, shooting
- Life = generally very hard, constant threat of war, famine and disease (Black Death), short life expectancy
  
  Medieval Castles:
Used for shelter & defence
Built on high ground, near rivers or coasts, on open ground but with supply of wood nearby
Early castles built from wood & have two parts = motte and bailey
Motte = high, man-made hill for defence with fort or keep built at the top
Bailey = courtyard at bottom of hill, soldiers, animals, store-houses etc kept here
Wood can decay, burn etc so castles are rebuilt in stone for greater strength
Common defensive features = ditch, moat, high & thick stone walls, battlements, drawbridge, portcullis, murder-holes, spiral staircase, inner walls, turrets, gatehouse, narrow windows
Main building = the keep, 4/5 storeys high, often have doorway at raised level for defence
Courtyard = area inside the walls, housing stables, store-houses, soldiers quarters, gardens, wells etc
Common ways to capture a castle = battering rams, siege towers, undermine the walls, starve out the defenders, poison the water supply, bribe insider to betray
KEY AREA = LORD OF THE CASTLE:
- Lord = very powerful person, owns huge amounts of land, has lots of knights & foot soldiers to protect him
- Lives with family on top floor of keep, private chapel and warm sunny room (solar)
- Eats in the Great Hall, huge fire-places & tapestries on walls (castles are draughty), great feasts (beef, mutton, pork, duck, pheasant, rabbit etc) or banquets held there, dogs ate scraps, no forks, minstrels gallery above in the wall for musical entertainment
- Leisure = hunting, jesters, jousting tournaments, hawking
- Duties = judge, cases heard in Great Hall, dungeons in cellars of castle
- Lady of the Castle = managed budgets, ordered food & drink, sewed tapestries, grew food in garden
Medieval soldiers = foot soldiers (swords, daggers, shields, leather padded jackets for protection), archers (bow & arrows, longbows, crossbows, little protection) and knights (must have horse and armour which was very expensive, lance, shield, sword, mace)
KEY AREA = BECOMING A KNIGHT:
- Age 7 = page, fostered to another lord, learn to ride horse, use a sword, sing, dance and the manners of the king’s court, helped lady of the castle
- Age 14 = squire, learn to fight while on horseback, accompany lord to battle, help lord dress for battle
- Age 21 = knight, spent night before in vigil in chapel, dressed in white robe, ceremony of dubbing, vow of chivalry (stay loyal to lord, fight for the poor and weak)
  
  Medieval Towns:
Build on rivers or coasts for trade (trade = money) or near castles for protection
Common features = high walls, strong gates, main street, narrow lanes, few sewers meant streets muddy & dirty, church, wooden merchants houses several storeys high, trades advertised by pictures (not words), market square
Gates closed every night
Visitors pay a toll to enter
Curfew enforced at night due to risk of fire
Towns very cramped & dirty = disease spreads quickly (Black Death)
Once a year a fair held on green outside the town = foreign merchants, silks & spices, coloured cloths, acrobats, musicians, exotic animals, drinking and fighting
Towns need a charter from the king = contract for the town (taxes to be paid in return for king’s protection) that organised a corporation to run the town (the town’s government, kept walls in repair, dealt with dirt & sewage, paid sentries who guarded the walls, enforced the curfew etc)
Merchants & craftsmen organised themselves into guilds (groups of people who did same job = blacksmiths, bakers, shoe-makers etc), these set standards of quality, regulated prices & wages, cared for old & sick members
KEY AREA = BECOMING A MASTER CRAFTSMAN:
- Age 12 = apprentice to a master craftsman to learn the job, no pay, often treated harshly
- Age 19 = journeyman, qualified craftsman, paid for work, free to travel for work, paid by the day
- Age ? = master craftsman, when skilled enough to create a masterpiece, worked from home with shop in front, workshop in back and bedroom upstairs, leisure interests include boxing, cockfighting, drinking etc
  
  Medieval Churches & Monasteries:
Middle Ages = very religious time, all of Western Europe is Catholic, Popes are very powerful
Countries divided into dioceses (run by Bishop in cathedral) and parishes (run by priest in church)
Priest = often only literate person in village, tends sick, says masses, baptises, marries and prays for the peasants for which he is paid his tithe
Bishop = lives in palace, often very rich & powerful, many behaved more like warlords than holy men
Buildings built in two main architectural styles = Romanesque (earlier) and Gothic (later)
Romanesque = rounded arches, thick columns, small windows, thick walls for support
Gothic = pointed arches, slender columns, large stained glass windows, flying buttresses for support
KEY AREA = MONK IN A MEDIEVAL MONASTERY:
- Joins monastery around age of 17, follows rule of St. Benedict
- Takes vows of poverty (no possessions), chastity (no women), obedience (to Abbot)
- Has bald patch shaved into hair = tonsure
- Typical day = up at 3am for matins, wear a brown habit, pray in church 6 times a day including mass, meals in refectory and usually in silence, all food grown on monastery farm, each monk has own job to do, evening prayers (vespers) and bed at 8pm after final prayers (compline)
- Jobs = copying manuscripts (scribes) in the scriptorium using vellum for “paper”, farming, metal work, baking, cooking, tending to sick guests etc
- Buildings = church, refectory (meals), dormitory (sleeping), almonry (helping poor), infirmary (tending sick), chapter house (meetings for running the monastery), cloisters (covered walkway for prayer and thought)
  - Monasteries served as hotels (for travelling guests), schools (only places of reading & writing) and hospitals (took in the sick)
  - Medieval monasteries in Ireland = Holy Cross (Tipperary), Mellifont (Louth), Duiske (Kilkenny)
  - Monks stayed in monasteries away from ordinary people = friars were new kind of monks who travelled around
  - Order of monks = Benedictines
  - Order of friars = Franciscans

Review Questions
1. Explain how feudalism worked.
2. What was chain mail?
3. What did a page learn?
4. What did a squire learn?
5. What happened during the knighthood ceremony?
6. What was a tournament?
7. What was an archer?
8. What was the main weakness of a motte and bailey castle?
9. What was a keep?
10. What was a portcullis?
11. What was a tapestry?
12. What was the Great Hall in the castle used for?
13. What were some of the main weapons used in a siege?
14. What was the difference between a serf and a freeman?
15. Describe the home of a serf on a manor.
16. Explain how the system of farming worked on the manor.
17. What was the land called the commons used for?
18. What was a tithe?
19. Name a famous Order of monks?
20. Who was the Abbot of the monastery?
21. What were the main vows taken by monks?
22. What was the almonry in a monastery?
23. What was the scriptorium?
24. What was the Chapter house?
25. What was the cloisters?
26. What were some of the main religious services that took place in the church?
27. What was a town charter and what did it say?
28. Why were towns surrounded by high walls?
29. What happened at the town gates at night?
30. Who had to pay tolls in order to get into towns?
31. How did some streets in towns get their names?
32. List five different types of craftsmen that you might find in a town in the Middle Ages
33. What was a guild and what power did it have?
34. What happened to a boy when he became an apprentice?
35. What was a journeyman?
36. How did a person become a master craftsman?
37. Why was fire such a danger in Middle Ages towns?
38. What was a curfew?
39. Explain what the Black Death was
40. How was the problem of the Black Death solved?

Answers

1. A king was not able to control all the land himself, so he gave large pieces to men who were called Lord’s. These lords promised to always obey the king and to provide knights to protect him if a war broke out.
2. It was iron rings linked together and worn by soldiers to protect them from arrows.
3. A boy was called a page at the age of seven and spent most of his time with the lady of the castle learning good manners and how to read and write.
4. At the age of fourteen a page became a squire and learned how to fight on horse back, how to wear armour and how to use weapons such as lances, swords and shields.
5. He fasted for twenty-four hours and then went to the church where he was given his own special sword and spurs by the lord in a special ceremony and after this he was ready to fight when required to do so.
6. It was a competition or a mock-battle between two knights on horse-back in which they tried to knock each other off with a lance.
7. Soldiers who used bows and arrows. Some used a cross-bow.
8. It was made of wood so that meant it could be burned down easily.
9. It was the main building in the castle in which the lord and his family lived. Usually 4-5 storey’s high with battlements on top where guards kept watch during daytime.
10. It was a special iron spiked gate that could be dropped easily and quickly if enemies managed to get across the drawbridge.
11. It was a large piece of hand-woven cloth that was specially decorated and was usually hung on the wall of the great hall.
12. It was used for special feasts and also as a place where the lord acted as a judge and collected taxes.
13. Siege tower, mangonel and battering ram.
14. A serf was not free and even had to ask permission from his local lord to marry or travel outside the village. A freeman could move about freely and paid money rent to the lord for his land.
15. The walls were made of mud and wood and the roof was made of straw. No windows and only a hole in the roof for a chimney. Very smoky and smelly because animals were kept inside at night. Very little furniture.
16. Each person was given strips of land and the main crops grown were oats, barley and wheat. Every family kept some farm animals and a large common field was used for grazing these animals.
17. It was one large meadow and was used by the serfs of the village as grazing land for all their animals.
18. It was the money or the crops (10%)that the serfs had to give to their local church each year.
19. Benedictines who were founded by Saint Benedict.
20. The abbot was the monk who was in overall charge of a monastery and all monks had to obey him at all times.
21. Promise to obey abbot(obedience) to own no possessions except your own clothes (poverty) to never marry (chastity)
22. The place where the very poor and the sick could come for help.
23. The part where special manuscripts (hand-written books) were produced on calf- skin called vellum and where special inks and colours were used.
24. The place where the abbot had daily meetings to discuss the running of the monastery and to deal with problems that may develop. A chapter from the rule book was read and that is how it got the name.
25. This was a covered walkway in the centre of the monastery which surrounded a garden.
26. Daily mass, matins in the morning and vespers in the evening.
27. Towns were given charters by the king to have their own mayor and to select a special council to run the town or city.
28. To protect them from attack.
29. All town gates were closed at night and opened at dawn.
30. Traders who wanted to set up stalls in town markets had to pay a special toll before they got in.
31. Streets were named after the main activities that were carried out there. For example, Winetavern Street in Dublin
32. Tanner, goldsmith, baker, cooper, tailor.
33. Each craft had its own guild and the guild made sure proper standards were kept as well as the proper prices. Also looked after old and sick
members.
34. He went to live with a master-craftsman to learn his trade for 7 years. He did not get paid but was given food and a place to live.
35. A journeyman had completed 7 years training and could then travel from town to town in search of paid work.
36. He had to produce a masterpiece for his guild to inspect and if it was passed he could then set up his very own workshop.
37. Most houses were built of wood and had thatch roofs.
38. The order given at night to put out all fires in towns.
39. A horrible disease caused by fleas which lived on rats and caused the death of one-third of the population of Europe.
40. A huge clean-up of all the major towns and cities.