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Dr.
Richard Baldwin, Gulf Coast State College.
This page last updated 3/17/12
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HIGH MIDDLE AGES: RISE
OF STATES (1000-1270)
I. England Roman legions
withdrew in the 5th century A.D. from Britain to protect Rome from barbarians
and left Britain at the mercy of Anglo-Saxon invaders who pushed out the Celtic
inhabitants.
1. Alfred the Great (r. 871-899) This
king of Wessex was powerful enough to defeat the Viking invaders (Danes) who had
conquered most of Anglo-Saxon England. He
had reorganized the militia of freemen and built ships to protect Britain from
other Vikings. “In the counties
or shires, the administrative units into which England was divided, the king was
assisted by an agent appointed and controlled by him, the shire-reeve or
sheriff. An efficient chancery or
writing office was responsible for issuing writs (or royal letters) conveying
the king’s orders to the sheriffs” (Spiel. 265).
Having unified England, he also founded a palace school and invited scholars from abroad.
Unfortunately by the 10th c. England was in decline because the kings
could not control the powerful nobles.
2. William the Conqueror (r. 1066-1087), Duke of Normandy, invaded
England and defeated the English King Harold (the last Anglo-Saxon monarch) in
the Battle of Hastings on October 14, 1066.
He imported the Norman system of feudalism and forced every property
owner in England to swear an oath of allegiance directly to him to eliminate
divided loyalties, the Oath of Salisbury Plain in 1086 (Spiel. 324).
That is, in England there is from now on a strong, centralized monarchy.
He called his tenants-in-chief 3 times per year as a court for the great
barons and as an advisory council (beginnings of Parliament).
He also ordered a census of people and property in every village--called
the Domesday Book (probably in order to assure a complete collection of taxes).
[called Domesday because many felt it was a sign of the end of the world]
3. Henry II (r. 1154-1189), the first of the Plantagenets, emerged as the
king of England after a civil war following the death of Henry I. Introduced
into England: 1) circuit courts, 2)
a jury system, 3) a common law. In
his attempt to usurp power from the nobles he provided circuit judges to whom
appeals from the feudal courts could be made.
A jury system was instituted to settle civil as well as
criminal cases. From the decisions
of these circuit courts a body of precedents began to form a common law for all
Englishmen. “He was count of
Anjou, duke of Normandy, and through marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine, duke of
Aquitaine as well. Indeed, while
theoretically a vassal of the French king, Henry’s Angevin empire, as it is
called, made him incomparably more powerful than his lord, the king of France”
(Spiel.4th 284). Justice had been administered in England by local courts in
the counties and also in the courts of the various lords.
The king’s court had been concerned primarily with affairs germane to
the king’s rights as feudal lord. As
overlords of the entire kingdom, however, English kings, beginning with Henry I,
had begun to expand matters subject to the king’s jurisdiction.
In 1166, Henry II issued the Assizes of Clarendon, instructions for his
royal justices about to tour England. The
Assizes expanded the number of cases to be tried in the king’s court by
establishing a finding-jury, which was a group of landholders in each hundred
who swore an oath to reveal any criminal acts that had taken place in their
territory or declare the true owner of disputed or stolen property.
Those accused were then brought before the king’s justices.
The finding-jury was the ancestor of our modern grand jury.
Henry also transferred property cases from feudal and county courts to
the royal courts and allowed knights to appeal from the courts of their lords to
the royal courts. "Henry’s goals
were clear: expanding the
jurisdiction of the royal courts extended the king’s power and, of course,
brought revenues into his coffers. Moreover,
since the royal justices were administering law throughout England, a body of
common law (law that was common to the whole kingdom) began to develop to
replace the customary law used in county and feudal courts, which often varied
from place to place” (Spiel.4hEd. 284).
4. John (r. 1199-1216) and the Magna Carta
John was at war with Philip August of France who was attempting to take
the land in France owned by English kings.
In 1204 John lost Normandy to the French king Philip Augustus.
John needed money to fight Philip and imposed illegal feudal dues on his
barons only to have them rebel and force him to sign the Magna Carta
("Great Charter") at Runneymeade in 1215 guaranteeing them such rights
as no taxation without representation, trial by a jury of one's peers, etc. Two great principles were read into the Magna Carta:
1) the law is above the king; 2) the king can be compelled by force to
obey the law of the land. Over time
the Magna Carta became celebrated as the root of the unique English respect for
basic rights and liberties. John
also had trouble with the church (Pope Innocent III):
in a struggle over the election of the archbishop of Canterbury John was
excommunicated and had to become a vassal of the Pope, receiving England as a
fief.
5. Parliament This
legislative body of England grew out of the tradition of the kings' consulting
their tenants-in-chief. In a baronial revolt against Henry III (John's son),
Simon de Montford, the leader, summoned the barons and two knights from every
shire and two burghers from every borough to the Great Council in 1265.
Edward I (12722-1307), Henry III's son, would call Parliament and pack
the Great Council with representatives that would support him against the
barons; he founded Parliament as a continuing institution.
Eventually, the knights and burghers ("commons") would begin to
meet separately from the lords, and Parliament would develop into the bicameral
legislature it is today with a House of Commons and a House of Lords. II.
France
1. Hugh Capet (r. 987-996) When
the last of the weak Carolingian kings died in 987, Hugh Capet was elected by
the nobles as the successor. He
made Paris the capital of his feudal kingdom, and his descendants (the Capetians)
would rule for 300 years. “Other
French nobles possessed lands equal to or greater than those of the Capetians
[who at first only controlled the territory around Paris known as the Ile-de-France]
and assumed that the king would be content to live off the revenues of his
personal lands and not impose any burdensome demands on the nobility.
Hugh Capet did succeed in making his position hereditary, however.
He asked the nobles, and they agreed, to choose his eldest son Robert as
his anointed associate in case Hugh died on a campaign to Spain in 987.
Although Hugh Capet could not know it then, the Capetian dynasty
would rule the west Frankish kingdom, or France as it came to be known, for
centuries” (Spiel. 264-5).
2. Philip (II) Augustus (r. 1180-1223) “...in the eleventh and most of
the twelfth centuries, the Capetians did little beyond consolidating their
territory in the Ile-de-France” (Spiel. 330).
Philip was the first Capetian king to actually extend the royal domain to
make France the strongest monarchy in Europe (replacing Germany).
His goal was to take from the English kings the land they held in France,
and he was successful in taking Normandy, Maine, Anjou, and Touraine from King
John, thus tripling the size of France. He
is, by the way, the king that Pope Innocent III forced to take back the wife he
divorced.
3. Parlement Louis IX
,“greatest of the medieval French kings...A deeply religious man, he was later
canonized as a saint by the church, an unusual action regardless of the
century” (Spiel 330).”Louis was also responsible for establishing a
permanent royal court of justice in Paris whose work was carried on by a regular
staff of professional jurists. This
court came to be known as the Parlement
of Paris” (Spiel. 331).
4. Philip (IV) the Fair (r. 1285-1314)
A man of craft, deceit, and violence, Philip the Fair expelled the Jews
from France in order to confiscate their property in 1306.
Still needing more money, he attempted to tax church property and got
into a conflict with Boniface VIII. This
conflict proved too much for the old Boniface and he died leaving the church in
the hands of the French. This
period of French Popes is called the Babylonian Captivity of the Church. “Philip IV was also responsible for bringing the French
parliament, or Estates-General, a representative assembly, into being.
When he became involved in a struggle with the pope, Philip summoned
representatives of the church, nobility, and towns to meet with him in 1302,
inaugurating the Estates-General, the first parliament.
The Estates-General proved invaluable to the king since feudal custom had
limited the power of kings to make changes contrary to that custom.
The Estates-General came to function as an instrument to bolster the
king’s power since he could ask representatives of the major social classes to
change the laws or grant new taxes” (Spiel 331). III.
Germany: Otto the Great (r.
936-973) German dukes (formerly
tribal leaders who assumed the title of duke from Latin word dux, meaning
leader) usurped the royal power from the Carolingian kings who were too weak to
protect them from the Magyars. When
the last Carolingian king died in 911, they elected their own king, Conrad of
Franconia. He was weak but on his death bed suggested Henry the Fowler,
duke of Saxony and the strongest duke, be his successor. It is Henry's son Otto I (the Great) who even more than his
father appointed bishops and abbots as his agents in the duchies. “This
practice was in part a response to the tendency of the lay lords to build up
their power at the expense of the king. Since
the clergy were theoretically celibate, bishops and abbots could not make their
offices hereditary, thus allowing the king to maintain more control over them”
(Spiel. 264). They eventually furnished him with 3/4's of his military force.
Otto is called the Savior of Europe with his victory over the Magyars at
Lechfield in 955 (compared to Charles Martel's victory over Muslims at Tours).
He expanded his territory east against the Slavs (60% of German territory
before World War I was taken from the Slavs).
In 962, in return for Otto's help against an Italian duke, the Pope
crowns Otto "Emperor of the Romans."
It will be the intervention in papal and Italian politics by the
"Holy Roman Emperors" that prevents the German territories from
achieving unity in the Middle Ages. |
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