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Educated Wandering Jews, 800–1250

Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein

in The Chosen Few: How Education Shaped Jewish History, 70-1492

This chapter shows that once the Jews became literate, urban, and engaged in skilled occupations, they began migrating within the vast territory under Muslim rule—stretching from the Iberian ... More

This chapter shows that once the Jews became literate, urban, and engaged in skilled occupations, they began migrating within the vast territory under Muslim rule—stretching from the Iberian Peninsula to India during the eighth through the twelfth centuries, and from the Byzantine Empire to western Europe via Italy and within western Europe in the ninth through the thirteenth centuries. In early medieval Europe, the revival of trade concomitant with the Commercial Revolution and the growth of an urban and commercial economy paralleled the vast urbanization and the growth of trade that had occurred in the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates four to five centuries earlier. The Jewish diaspora during the early Middle Ages was mainly the outcome of literate Jewish craftsmen, shopkeepers, traders, scholars, teachers, physicians, and moneylenders migrating in search of business opportunities to reap returns on their investment in literacy and education.Less

India, Tibet, China, Byzantium, and Other Control Cases

Christopher I. Beckwith

in Warriors of the Cloisters: The Central Asian Origins of Science in the Medieval World

This chapter examines the essential elements that produced a full scientific culture in Western Europe by comparing the constituent elements in the one culture in which it developed with other ... More

This chapter examines the essential elements that produced a full scientific culture in Western Europe by comparing the constituent elements in the one culture in which it developed with other cultures that had the same constitutive elements but did not develop science. These are the control cases, which include India, Tibet, China, and the Byzantine Empire. The first civilization in the world to develop a full scientific culture was medieval Western Europe. It led directly to the scientific revolution—during which some changes to the details of the constituent elements took place—and continued on down to modern science. The essential elements of medieval science were introduced to Western Europe via Classical Arabic civilization. The chapter describes the appearance of science in Medieval Latin Europe and the decline of science in the medieval Islamic world.Less

Introduction

Christopher I. Beckwith

in Warriors of the Cloisters: The Central Asian Origins of Science in the Medieval World

This book investigates how the recursive argument method, the actual medieval “scientific method,” was transmitted along with the college to medieval Western Europe from Classical Arabic ... More

This book investigates how the recursive argument method, the actual medieval “scientific method,” was transmitted along with the college to medieval Western Europe from Classical Arabic civilization, and how the Muslims of Central Asia had earlier adopted both from Buddhist Central Asian civilization. It analyzes the recursive argument method and gives examples showing its formation and development at each stage and in each of the relevant languages. This chapter considers the recursive argument method and related issues, especially the colleges, in the context of the full scientific culture that developed in medieval Western Europe in connection with the transmission of these two cultural elements.Less

Philip Grierson 1910–2006

Christopher Brooke and Lord Stewartby

in Proceedings of the British Academy, Volume 150 Biographical Memoirs of Fellows, VI

Philip Grierson, historian and numismatist, was for seventy years a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and for over sixty of them he lived in the same set of rooms. His work on the ... More

Philip Grierson, historian and numismatist, was for seventy years a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and for over sixty of them he lived in the same set of rooms. His work on the Cambridge Medieval History, culminating in his production of the Shorter History in 1952, brought him an encyclopaedic knowledge of the political structures of medieval Europe. This gave Grierson a much broader historical background than most historians or numismatists can command. He was equally at home in the fifth century and the fifteenth, in western Europe or the Byzantine east.Less

The Middle Ages

Joel Mokyr

in The Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic Progress

This chapter discusses the medieval Western technology that drew from classical antiquity, Islamic and Asian societies, and its own original creativity. It observes that diffusion of new technology ... More

This chapter discusses the medieval Western technology that drew from classical antiquity, Islamic and Asian societies, and its own original creativity. It observes that diffusion of new technology was usually slow, and that the old techniques often stubbornly survived and coexisted with the new for decades and even centuries. The chapter notes that in terms of direct contribution to aggregate output, changes in agricultural technology were particularly important, as the bulk of the population was engaged in farming. It also discusses energy utilization as the second area in which early medieval Europe was successful. The chapter notes that wind power had been used in sailing ships, but had not been harnessed in the West in other ways until the first windmills were built there in the twelfth century. In waterpower, radical improvements came early, and during the Merovingian and Carolingan eras, better and bigger waterwheels spread through Europe.Less

Heartland and Border: The Mental and Physical Geography of Medieval Europe

Robert Bartlett

in Power and Identity in the Middle Ages: Essays in Memory of Rees Davies

This chapter argues that the identity that emerged as normative, metropolitan, and central in medieval western Europe was Roman and French. Metropolitan insensitivity, the blind assertion of the ... More

This chapter argues that the identity that emerged as normative, metropolitan, and central in medieval western Europe was Roman and French. Metropolitan insensitivity, the blind assertion of the value of certain sites, still, of course, exists but may not represent the path of the future. Some recent developments in Europe (and elsewhere) mean that the core-periphery model, the distinction between heartlands and borders, is less significant than it was. The value and power of metropolitan centres is less taken for granted; small-nation nationalism, seen everywhere from Catalonia to Estonia, entails the re-establishment of smaller political units and this process is not always violent; the decentralizing tendency of widespread private transport, electronic communications, and the general move from industrial production to services and the professions means that location is not so tightly tied to the economic imperatives of the age of steam, steel, and central parliaments.Less

Transmission to Medieval Western Europe

Christopher I. Beckwith

in Warriors of the Cloisters: The Central Asian Origins of Science in the Medieval World

This chapter examines how the recursive argument method was transmitted to medieval Western Europe. The appearance of the recursive argument method in Latin texts was preceded by more than a century ... More

This chapter examines how the recursive argument method was transmitted to medieval Western Europe. The appearance of the recursive argument method in Latin texts was preceded by more than a century in which Classical Arabic learning was increasingly translated and introduced to the Medieval Latin world. A trickle of translations of Arabic scholarly books into Latin had already begun to appear in Italy and Spain by the mid-eleventh century, but none of the works known to have been translated at that time seem to use the Arabic version of the recursive argument method. The recursive argument method first appears in Western Europe in Avicenna's De anima “On the Soul” or “Psychology.” The chapter considers other examples of the recursive argument method in Latin, including works by Robert of Curzon, Alexander of Hales, Albertus Magnus (Albert the Great), and Thomas Aquinas.Less

Speaking and Writing

Julia M. H. Smith

in Europe after Rome: A New Cultural History 500-1000

This chapter approaches the question of writing from the perspective of spoken language. It asks: what languages did people speak in the early Middle Ages? And how readily could they understand one ... More

This chapter approaches the question of writing from the perspective of spoken language. It asks: what languages did people speak in the early Middle Ages? And how readily could they understand one another? Why and how did the linguistic map of Europe change during these centuries? These questions introduce a major theme running throughout this book — the diversity of early medieval experience, which was so different from the universalizing tendencies of the ancient world. The second section of this chapter analyses the interrelationship between Latin, the language of Roman imperialism and culture, and the local languages of early medieval Europe. The third section builds on the analysis of the relative prestige of different languages in the second section and argues that literacy must be understood as a technology of power.Less

Introduction: rural credit

Chris Briggs

in Credit and Village Society in Fourteenth-Century England

This book focuses on the credit dealings of medieval Europe. In medieval Europe, manor courts served as private jurisdictions by the landlords which were attended by the peasants to hear and settle ... More

This book focuses on the credit dealings of medieval Europe. In medieval Europe, manor courts served as private jurisdictions by the landlords which were attended by the peasants to hear and settle their private lawsuits, many of which were concerned about debts. The long lists of manorial court rolls which were predominantly concerned with debt disputes prove the existence of large numbers of credit relationships within the medieval villages of Europe. Yet, despite the abundance of materials and the recent growth in research on this material, no extensive studies have been conducted on medieval credit relationships. This book is the first extensive and detailed investigation of credit in the countryside of medieval Europe. Rural credit is a subject matter that demands closer attention as it gives a glimpse of the function of credit in an agrarian economy. It also sheds light on the socio-economic conditions of the medieval villages which were predominantly battered by poverty. It also has contemporary relevance as it provides insight on the provision of microcredit as a tool for eradicating, if not alleviating, poverty, and for giving gains to those in less developed countries. Addressed in this book are: who were the people, creditors, and debtors involved in the credit relationships of Europe; and why the debts came about. The book also evaluates the changing availability of village credit in various forms, analyses the role of credit in relations between families and individuals, and tackles the terms and conditions attached to credit transactions.Less

Living and Dying

Julia M. H. Smith

in Europe after Rome: A New Cultural History 500-1000

Men and women in early medieval Europe lived intimately with deprivation and death. In the face of intermittent climatic disasters, periodic epidemics, and harsh everyday living conditions, the ... More

Men and women in early medieval Europe lived intimately with deprivation and death. In the face of intermittent climatic disasters, periodic epidemics, and harsh everyday living conditions, the population of Europe laboured to produce a living from the land and to raise children to carry on their efforts. Most lived at or near subsistence level; others reflected on the meaning of human existence and its moral qualities amid the fearfulness of unexpected death and the likelihood of dearth. This chapter enquires into the interaction of humans and their natural environment. It also reflects upon their understanding of it. The first section addresses the environment: climate, landscape, and settlement distribution. Against this background, the second section turns to demographic questions, to estimate population levels and to suggest explanations for the fluctuating rates of fertility and mortality that seem to have been characteristic of the early Middle Ages. The final part asks how men and women coped with deprivation, disease, and death, and seeks answers in a range of cosmologies and curative strategies. In all these respects, a pattern of intense localism emerges.Less

Conclusion

BENJAMIN ARNOLD

in Power and Property in Medieval Germany: Economic and Social Change c.900-1300

Power in medieval societies was a mental construction then represented in reality through the religious ideology informing family life and the household, urban government, the institutions of ... More

Power in medieval societies was a mental construction then represented in reality through the religious ideology informing family life and the household, urban government, the institutions of kingdoms, empires, and principalities, the cathedral and monastic churches, and the various forms of manorialism exhibited in the regions. A commonplace which recurs hundreds of times in the ecclesiastical, historical, and literary residue from medieval Germany, and indeed from all of medieval Europe, is the innate superiority of a nobleman or noblewoman in virtue, character, and ability as opposed to the vast mass of the lower population. The sources are surprisingly inexact about the medieval meaning of nobilis, and its actual social foundation and the reasons for its numerous variations are controversial in the modern literature. But at the time, no one was in doubt about the value and desirability of the nobilis label.Less

Introduction

Julia M. H. Smith

in Europe after Rome: A New Cultural History 500-1000

This introductory chapter presents the main argument of this book, namely that contrary to existing paradigms, the dynamic transformation of Europe's cultures between Antiquity and the Middle Ages ... More

This introductory chapter presents the main argument of this book, namely that contrary to existing paradigms, the dynamic transformation of Europe's cultures between Antiquity and the Middle Ages has a fundamental significance in its own right. It focuses on the period between of AD500 and AD1000 to demonstrate that, within the overall matrix of social and cultural development across these centuries, change occurred at different times and speeds in different places. The book also calls attention to the role of the Roman heritage in early medieval constructions of power. Whether in Rome's former provinces or in regions that were never within the imperial boundaries, it is argued that the reception, reinterpretation, or abandonment of that inheritance made a formative contribution to all the cultures of early medieval Europe.Less

Rye and Oats: The Agrarian Revolution of the Early Middle Ages

in Why Europe: The Medieval Origins of Its Special Path

This chapter analyzes the European agrarian revolution, the characteristic features of which were not apparent in every location where rye or oats were grown in early medieval Europe, as demonstrated ... More

This chapter analyzes the European agrarian revolution, the characteristic features of which were not apparent in every location where rye or oats were grown in early medieval Europe, as demonstrated by the contrasting examples of Russia and Ireland. Even the joint appearance on the scene of the two crops in question, which can be traced back to Roman times and earlier, did not exhibit every single one of the revolution's defining features, either at the time or afterward. The “concatenation of circumstances” that constitutes the phenomenon of the European agrarian revolution stretches far beyond the combination of rye and oats, two new domesticated crops that receive priority in the total ensemble of agrarian innovations because they were the first to appear. Moreover, subsequent key effects and connections can be traced back to them.Less