Causes of the Middle Ages
The time period between the Roman Empire and the Renaissance.
What is the Middle Ages/Medieval Period?
A political system based on land control.
What is feudalism?
An agricultural method where farmland was divided into three parts, allowing for annual crop rotation.
What is a three-field system?
A holy war that thousands of Europeans joined.
What is a Crusade?
A disease that kills 2 in 3 people and devastated Europe in the Medieval Ages.
What is the Black Plague?
A cause of the fall of the Roman Empire.
What is invasions by Germanic tribes, political instability, economic decline, loss of trade...?
Land granted by a lord to a vassal in exchange for services.
What is a fief?
A peasant who was bound to a lord's land and worked it in exchange for protection and a small plot to grow their own food.
What is a serf?
The goal of the Crusades.
What was to recapture the Holy Land?
Two animals that circulated the Plague.
What are rats and fleas?
What is vernacular?
What knights gave to lords in exchange for land.
What is military protection?
A 1215 English charter of rights signed by King John that established the principle that everyone, including the king, is subject to the law.
What is the Magna Carta?
A reason people joined the Crusades.
What is redirecting knightly violence, chance for wealth and land, promise of salvation...?
A violent mob attack generally against Jews, and often condoned by the forces of law.
What is a pogrom?
A reason how invasions hurt trade in cities after Rome fell.
What made trade routes unsafe, merchants stopping long-distance trade, cities being abandoned, reducing markets and tax revenue...?
An advantage for peasants in the system and a disadvantage for peasants in the system.
What is advantage example: protection, access to land...; disadvantage example: bound to land, heavy obligations/taxes...?
A conflict between the kingdoms of England and France and a civil war in France during the Late Middle Ages.
What is the Hundred Years War?
The outcome of the First Crusade.
What is capturing Jerusalem and slaughtering the Muslim inhabitants?
A reaction people had to the Plague.
What are flagellant movements, pogroms against Jews, abandonment of sick, changes in religious faith...?
An effect of losing the centralized Roman government that affected the Medieval Period.
What is fragmentation into small kingdoms, decline of literacy and learning, local warlord rule replaced centralized laws...?
The three main groups of the Medieval society.
What are those who fight (nobles/knights), those who pray (monks/nuns/clergy), those who work (peasants/serfs)?
The Duke of Normandy and the leader of the Norman conquest of England. He became the first Norman king of England.
Who is William the Conquerer?
An effect of the Crusades on Europe.
What is weakened papal authority over time, expansion of trade with Southwest Asia, cultural exchange and lasting hostility between Christians and Muslims, persecution of Jews...?
A consequence that the Plague had on Europe.
What are massive population loss, labor shortages, wages rising, decline of serfdom in some areas, economic disruption...?