Middle Ages

A3

b

Growing Discontent

Some people were discontented not just with the papacy but also with the church and its teachings as a whole. Englishman John Wycliffe, a professor at the University of Oxford, taught that popes and clerics did not make up the church. Instead, Wycliffe claimed that the church was the community of all believers. Wycliffe believed that salvation came through study of the Bible, not through the rituals of priests and bishops. According to him, the king, not the pope, should control church reform.

Wycliffe's ideas were extremely popular in England. Some of the peasants in the revolt of 1381 were influenced by him. He had support among the nobles as well, and even many priests adopted his views. Although Wycliffe was not persecuted during his lifetime, his supporters, called Lollards, were condemned as heretics after his death. Many were killed, but others survived, and Lollardy continued into the 16th century.

Some of Wycliffe's ideas also became popular among Czechs in Bohemia. Bohemia was part of the Holy Roman Empire, and it grew rich during the 14th century. It too was hit by famine and plague, and many Czechs revolted under the pressures of hardship. Their protests were largely religious. Led by religious reformer Jan Hus (John Huss), they demanded changes in the church, focusing on the part of the Mass called communion, which involved the ritual consumption of the body and blood of Christ in the form of bread and wine. Over the years, priests had come to take communion in both forms, but ordinary believers were only allowed the bread. Huss’s followers, called Hussites, insisted that everyone be allowed to take communion in both bread and wine. This was more than an argument over ritual—it was a demand for equality. Huss was burned at the stake in 1415 and a civil war broke out in Bohemia. Huss’s followers were defeated in 1436, but their demand for communion in both forms was granted.

B

Origins of the Renaissance

At the same time that Europe was enduring famine, plague, war, and religious dissent, it was also experiencing a new birth of Latin and vernacular literature. In the mid-1300s, the Italian poet Petrarch wrote vernacular love poems and also imitated the great ancient Latin authors. Although at that time all learned people read and most even spoke Latin, the Latin of the church, of Scholasticism, and of the law courts was not the Latin of the ancient Romans; it had changed and grown over the centuries as all languages do. Petrarch loved the language of the ancient Romans, and he spent a great deal of time searching for manuscripts of the old Roman writers and learning their style.

---

---

Petrarch was one of the first humanists. He emphasized the second of the liberal arts, rhetoric. He and other humanists absorbed the ideas of the ancient Romans and made them their own. When Florence and Milan went to war in the first half of the 15th century, many Florentines discovered that ancient Roman writers gave them a way to express their own feelings of patriotism. This civic humanism of the Florentines was not simply an exercise in ancient rhetoric, it was an effective way to describe their contemporary political ideas and interests. See Humanism.

Renaissance art also had its roots in the Late Middle Ages. Gothic sculpture had freed human figures to bend, turn, and interact with one another. In the early 1300s the Florentine painter Giotto painted scenes on church walls using figures with a three-dimensional, sculptural feel. Renaissance artists built on Giotto's naturalistic style, emphasizing human interaction and individual emotion. See Renaissance Art and Architecture.

VI

Conclusion: The Significance of the Middle Ages

The word medieval is often used today to mean barbaric, ignorant, and backward. It is true that some aspects of the Middle Ages horrify many people today—the ideas of heretics being burned at the stake, mercenary armies on the rampage, and plagues for which there are no cure are not pleasant ones. Yet it is also true that there are similar—and sometimes worse—horrors today.

Although the period is often portrayed negatively, the Middle Ages was a time when the precursors of many important modern institutions were created. Medieval universities are the direct ancestors of modern ones. The liberal arts of the Middle Ages remain the core of the arts and sciences programs of today's colleges. The English Parliament that currently meets in London can trace its origins to the days of Henry III.

Similarly, modern cities grew out of medieval ones. Although ancient cities had existed before the Middle Ages, they had been centers of political and religious life, not centers of commerce. Medieval cities, in contrast, were primarily commercial. They were supported by trade, exchange, production, consumption, and moneymaking. Many of the sorts of businesses that exist today, such as banks and corporations, can trace their ancestry to the Middle Ages.

The modern state system of Europe is also at least partly a result of medieval evolution. Even nationalism began in the Middle Ages, as was demonstrated by the Hundred Years' War and Joan of Arc. The seeds of the idea of separation of church and state, so important for the founders of the United States, were planted in the medieval period. After the Gregorian Reform, kings and emperors could not claim power over the church, but they found value and dignity in the state alone. The Founding Fathers of the United States went further, seeing the state as the guarantor and protector for men and women to worship as they please.

It is important, however, to know not only what the Middle Ages produced but also the way in which these things were produced. The Middle Ages was a period in which different groups—Romans, Franks, and Visigoths, for example—mingled, fought, worked together, and changed. Today there are no Romans (other than citizens of the city of Rome), no Franks, and no Visigoths. As Germans were absorbed into the Roman army and as Romans dealt with them day after day, their cultures changed and merged. Similarly, the history of medieval states shows how they rose, broke apart, and reappeared in new forms. There was no right or wrong form: The Merovingian kingdoms were as much an achievement in their own day as the republic of France is today. Medieval social, economic, and artistic transformations both reflected and provoked creative responses and accommodations. The Black Death provoked conflict that ultimately led to the end of serfdom in England; Renaissance artists thought they were breaking away from medieval styles even as they drew upon the achievements of Gothic sculptors. The history of the Middle Ages is a story of ceaseless borrowing, adaptation, and change.

	More from Encarta
	•  Presidential Myths Quiz •  Coffee break: Recharge your brain