The plague arrived in Europe in October , when 12 ships from the Black Sea docked at the Sicilian port of Messina. People gathered on the docks were met with a The Crusades were a series of religious wars between Christians and Muslims started primarily to secure control of holy sites considered sacred by both groups. In all, eight major Crusade expeditions occurred between and The bloody, violent and often ruthless The Knights Templar was a large organization of devout Christians during the medieval era who carried out an important mission: to protect European travelers visiting sites in the Holy Land while also carrying out military operations.
A wealthy, powerful and mysterious order Live TV. This Day In History. History Vault. The Catholic Church in the Middle Ages After the fall of Rome, no single state or government united the people who lived on the European continent. The Crusades. Recommended for you. How the Troubles Began in Northern Ireland. Heavy Cavalry of the Middle Ages. Reagan on Middle East Policy. Ice Age. Voting Age Lowered. Bronze Age The Bronze Age marked the first time humans started to work with metal.
Stone Age The Stone Age marks a period of prehistory in which humans used primitive stone tools. Ice Age An ice age is a period of colder global temperatures and recurring glacial expansion capable of lasting hundreds of millions of years.
Pandemics That Changed History In the realm of infectious diseases, a pandemic is the worst case scenario. Black Death The Black Death was a devastating global epidemic of bubonic plague that struck Europe and Asia in the mids. Though the Carolingian dynasty had dissolved by the end of the ninth century Charlemagne himself died in , his legacy would provide the foundations—including books, schools, curricula and teaching techniques—for the Renaissance and other later cultural revivals.
But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Twice a week we compile our most fascinating features and deliver them straight to you. Live TV. This Day In History. History Vault. The Church replaced the Roman Empire as the most powerful force in Europe, redefining the relationship between church and state. The growth of monasticism had important implications for later Western values and attitudes. But in practice, and in law, people got married by declaring clearly that they wanted to marry each other.
There had to be consent, and ideally there should be witnesses in case either party later had a change of mind. But you could marry very simply. We tend to think of literacy as one thing, but in fact it combines various different skills, of which the physical act of writing is only one. For much of the Middle Ages, working as a scribe — writing — was seen as a kind of labour, and was not something that tremendously clever, important people like theologians and intellectuals would bother doing themselves.
Instead, they would use the medieval equivalent of voice recognition software: a scribe who would write down what the author dictated. The Middle Ages famously features great examples of extreme religiosity: mystics, saints, the flagellants, mass pilgrimage, and the like. But it would be wrong to assume that people were always very focused on God and religion, and definitely wrong to think that medieval people were incapable of sceptical reflection. There is solid evidence of some ordinary people who looked askance at particular beliefs — at the miracles performed by saints, or the nature of the Eucharist, or what was said to happen after death.
Others thought that there was no reason to think that it was God who made plants and crops grow, but just the innate properties of working and feeding the soil. There is also ample evidence of people just not bothering very much with religion — most of all not going to church on a Sunday. Furniture consisted of wooden benches, long tables, cupboards, and pantries. Linen, when affordable, could be glued or nailed to benches to provide some comfort.
Beds, though made of the softest materials, were often full of bedbugs, lice, and other biting insects. Peasants usually ate warm porridges made of wheat, oats, and barley. Peasants rarely ate meat, and when they did, it was their own animals that were saved for the winter. Peasants drank wine and ale, never water. Even though peasant households were significantly smaller than aristocratic ones, the wealthiest peasants would also employ servants.
Service was a natural part of the cycle of life, and it was common for young people to spend some years away from home in the service of another household. This way they would learn the skills needed later in life, and at the same time earn a wage. This was particularly useful for girls, who could put the earnings towards their dowries. Nobles, both the titled nobility and simple knights, exploited the manors and the peasants, although they did not own land outright but were granted rights to the income from a manor or other lands by an overlord through the system of feudalism.
During the 11th and 12th centuries, these lands, or fiefs, came to be considered hereditary, and in most areas they were no longer divisible between all the heirs as had been the case in the early medieval period.
Instead, most fiefs and lands went to the eldest son. The dominance of the nobility was built upon its control of the land, its military service as heavy cavalry, its control of castles, and various immunities from taxes or other impositions.
Nobles were stratified; kings and the highest-ranking nobility controlled large numbers of commoners and large tracts of land, as well as other nobles. Beneath them, lesser nobles had authority over smaller areas of land and fewer people. Knights were the lowest level of nobility; they controlled but did not own land, and had to serve other nobles. The court of a monarch, or at some periods an important nobleman, was the extended household and all those who regularly attended on the ruler or central figure.
Foreign princes and foreign nobility in exile could also seek refuge at a court. Etiquette and hierarchy flourished in highly structured court settings. Most courts featured a strict order of precedence, often involving royal and noble ranks, orders of chivalry, and nobility. Some courts even featured court uniforms.
One of the major markers of a court was ceremony. Most monarchal courts included ceremonies concerning the investiture or coronation of the monarch and audiences with the monarch.
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