Out of the Middle Ages Notes

The Middle Ages  Sometimes called the Medieval Period.  The time between the fall of the Roman empire and the Renaissance. (5 th -15 th century)  2 parts – Dark Ages and High Middle Ages.

The Dark Ages  This refers to the beginning of the Middle Ages because after the Barbarians conquered the Romans, much of the ideological advances that the Romans had made were lost due to the uncivilized nature of the Barbarians.

The High Middle Ages  This is referring to the last part of the Middle Ages.

Characteristics of the Middle Ages  The church became the universal and unifying institution (they controlled the books, they made the laws, etc)  The church had power over the king.  Nobles protected the king in exchange for land.  Peasants worked for the nobles for their own protection and their own small parcel of land.

Life in the High Middle Ages  Cities were small, but at the end of the Middle Ages, more people left the country to live in small towns and cities.  After the Crusades, knights and soldiers brought back with them stories of differing cultures and began to adopt those ways of life.  Eventually as the middle class grew, so did the desire for education, arts, and trade with outsiders.  Italy becomes a center of culture.

The Plague  Trade was both a blessing and a curse.  Blessing  Merchants were able to import silks, cotton, and rare spices from all over the world.  Curse  The ships bringing in goods also brought the plague known as the Black Death.  The plague hit in the late Middle Ages and the early years of the Renaissance.  The disease was spread primarily through rats and fleas.  100% mortality rate for those infected.  Killed 1/3 of Europe, which led to an economic depression that didn’t pick up until the late 1400s

Gutenberg and the Printing Press  At the end of the Middle Ages, Europe saw some humanity changing developments.  One important invention during this time came from Johannes Gutenberg.  In 1445, he developed a new way to print on paper, the printing press.

Original printing  The process was very difficult and time consuming.  Scribes would hand write books.  Some hand carved entire scenes and stories onto page sized wooden blocks.  Books and printed materials were hard to come by.

 Most of the literature of the time was religious in nature.  It was written in Latin.  Readers began to want a variety of books in their own languages (almanacs, travel books, poetry, etc)

Gutenberg’s Printing Press  His idea would change the course of human history.  Moveable type - Gutenberg’s idea was to create individual letter blocks that could be organized to form a page, then re-used on another completely different page.

How did the printing press change the world?  This made printing books faster and easier, thus making books cheaper and more readily available to the public.  It also encouraged literacy and learning.  New ideas are easily communicated between societies allowing society to change quicker than before.

Humanism Emerges  As society begins to change, people begin to return to the works of the ancient Greeks and Romans.  People begin to pay more attention to the study of human life.  There is an emphasis placed on man, his intellect and his life on Earth.

 Focus on the church and the spiritual life fades away to a focus on science, government, philosophy and art.  Humanists believed that the church should not rule civic matters, only guide spiritual matters.

The Renaissance  People living during this time period of change believed they were witnessing a rebirth of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds.  To them, this rebirth marked a new age.  Historians later called this time period the Renaissance, meaning “rebirth”