The Middle Ages. Учебное пособие

спину. Благодаря легендам крестовые походы были окружены ореолом романтики и величия, рыцарского духа и отваги.

Ex. 12. Combine the words from the boxes to create phrases.

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ADDITIONAL READING

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The Impact Of The Crusades

by Dr. Susanna Throop

It is hard to summarize the impact of a movement that spanned centuries and continents, crossed social lines, and affected all levels of culture. However, there are a few central effects that can be highlighted.

Military orders

First, the earliest military orders originated in Jerusalem in the wake of the First Crusade. A miltary order is a religious order in which members take traditional monastic vows — communal poverty, chastity, and obedience — but also commit to violence on behalf of the Christian faith. Well-known examples include the Knights Templar (officially endorsed in 1129), the Knights Hospitaller (confirmed by papal bull in 1113), and the Teutonic Knights (originated in the late twelfth century).

The military orders represented a major theological and military development, and went on to play central roles in the formation of key political units that still exist today as nation-states.

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Territorial expansion

Second, crusading played a major role in European territorial expansion. The First Crusade resulted in the formation of the crusader states in the Levant (the eastern Mediterranean), which were initially governed, and in small part populated, by settlers from Europe.

Crusading in northern and eastern Europe led to the expansion of kingdoms like Denmark and Sweden, as well as the creation of brand-new political units, for example in Prussia. As areas around the Baltic Sea were taken by the crusaders, traders and settlers — mostly German — moved in and profited economically.

In the Mediterranean Sea, crusading led to the conquest and colonization of many islands, which arguably helped ensure Christian control of Mediterranean trade routes (at least for as long as the islands were held). Crusading also played a role in the conquest of the Iberian peninsula (now Spain and Portugal). This was finally completed in 1492, when the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand II and Isabella I conquered the last Muslim community on the peninsula — the city of Granada. They expelled Jews from the country in the same year. And of course, they also authorized and supported the expeditions of Christopher Columbus, who — like many European explorers of his day — believed that the expansion of the Christian faith was one of his duties.

Impact in Europe (religious and secular)

Third, the crusading movement impacted internal European development in a few important ways. The movement helped both to militarize the medieval western Church and to sustain criticism of that militarization. It arguably helped solidify the pope’s control over the Church and made certain financial innovations central to Church operations. And it both reflected and influenced devotional trends. For example, while there was some dedication to St. George from the early Middle Ages, the intensity of that devotion soared in Europe after he reportedly intervened miraculously at the Battle of Antioch in 1098, during the First Crusade.

Secular political theories were influenced by crusading, especially in France and the Iberian peninsula, and government institutions evolved in part to meet the logistical needs of crusading. Credit infrastructures within Europe rose to meet similar needs, and some locales — Venice, in particular — benefitted significantly in economic terms.

It goes without saying that the crusades also had a highly negative effect on interfaith relations.

Impact world-wide

Fourth, the crusading movement has left an imprint on the world as a whole. For example, many of the national flags of Europe incorporate a cross. In addition, many images of crusaders in our popular culture are indebted to the nineteenth century. Some in that century, like the novelist Sir Walter Scott, portrayed crusaders as brave and glamorous yet backward and unenlightened; simultaneously, they

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depicted Muslims as heroic, intelligent, and liberal. Others more wholeheartedly romanticized crusading.

These trends in nineteenth-century European culture impacted the Islamic world. Sometimes this influence was quite direct. In 1898 German Emperor Wilhelm II visited the grave of Saladin (Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn Yūsuf ibn Ayyūb, a Muslim leader who led the recapture of Jerusalem in 1187) and was appalled at its state of disrepair. He paid to have it rebuilt, thus helping encourage modern Islamic appreciation of Saladin.

Sometimes the European influence was more diffuse. Modern crusading histories in the Islamic world began to be written in the 1890s, when the Ottoman Empire was in crisis. After the Ottomans, some Arab Nationalists interpreted nineteenth-century imperialism as crusading, and thus linked their efforts to end imperial rule with the efforts of Muslims to resist crusading in previous centuries.

It would be reassuring to believe that nobody in the West has provided grounds for such beliefs, but it would not be true. Sadly, the effects of the crusading movement — at least, as it is now remembered and reimagined — seem to be still unfolding.

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Unit 10

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“[Medieval] Art was not just a static element in society, or even one which interacted with the various social groups. It was not simply something which was made to decorate or to instruct — or even to overawe and dominate. Rather, it was that and more. It was potentially controversial in ways both similar and dissimilar to its couterpart today. It was something which could by its force of attraction not only form the basis for the economy of a particular way of life, it could also come to change that way of life in ways counter to the original intent. Along with this and because of this, art carried a host of implications, both social and moral, which had to be justified. Indeed, it is from the two related and basic elements of justification and function — claim and reality — that Bernard approaches the question of art in the Apologia.”

Conrad Rudolph

ART AND ARCHITECTURE

Another way to show devotion to the Church was to build grand cathedrals and other ecclesiastical structures such as monasteries. Cathedrals were the largest buildings in medieval Europe, and they could be found at the center of towns and cities across the continent.

Between the 10th and 13th centuries, most European cathedrals were built in the Romanesque style. Romanesque cathedrals are solid and substantial: They have rounded masonry arches and barrel vaults supporting the roof, thick stone walls and few windows.

Around 1200, church builders began to embrace a new architectural style, known as the Gothic. Gothic structures, such as the Abbey Church of Saint-Denis in France and the rebuilt Canterbury Cathedral in England, have huge stained-glass windows, pointed vaults and arches (a technology developed in the Islamic world), and spires and flying buttresses. In contrast to heavy Romanesque buildings, Gothic architecture seems to be almost weightless. Medieval religious art took other forms as well. Frescoes and mosaics decorated church interiors, and artists painted devotional images of the Virgin Mary, Jesus and the saints.

Also, before the invention of the printing press in the 15th century, even books were works of art. Craftsmen in monasteries (and later in universities) created illuminated manuscripts: handmade sacred and secular books with colored illustrations, gold and silver lettering and other adornments. In the 12th century,

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urban booksellers began to market smaller illuminated manuscripts, like books of hours, psalters and other prayer books, to wealthy individuals.

Ex. 1. Answer the questions.

1.What was another way to show devotion to the Church?

2.In what style were most European cathedrals built between the 10th and 13th centuries?

3.When did church builders begin to embrace Gothic style?

4.What were Gothic structures like?

5.What is the difference between Romanesque cathedrals and Gothic ones?

6.Whose images did artists paint?

7.Books were also works of art before the 15th century, weren’t they?

8.How were they created?

Ex. 2. Give the appropriate Russian variant of the words and expressions given below.

1.substantial

2.barrel vaults

3.masonry

4.stained-glass windows

5.pointed vaults

6.illuminated manuscripts

7.sacred and secular books

Ex. 3. Read about Romanesque and Gothic styles.

1.In the eleventh century a tremendous architectural revival occurred, marked by the recovery of the art of building in stone rather than in wood, as was common during the early Middle Ages.

2.At a much later date the name Romanesque came to be applied to this new style, because, like early Christian architecture, it was based largely on Roman models.

3.Although details of structure and ornamentation differed with locality, the round arch was a standard Romanesque feature.

4.Thick outside walls and huge interior piers were necessary to support the heavy stone barrel and cross vaults.

5.Because the walls would be weakened by large window apertures, the clerestory (the uppermost portion of the nave walls) windows were small or nonexistent.

6.Thus the northern Romanesque interior was dark and gloomy, the exterior massive and monumental.

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развлечений, служившая образцом всему рыцарству. Для ее характеристики используется термин «куртуазность», обозначающий качества идеального придворного кавалера и происходящий от французского слова куртуази (учтивость, любезность, вежливость).

D. Культ прекрасной дамы — необходимая часть куртуазной культуры. Любовное «служение» стало своего рода религией высшего круга. Не случайно

вэто же время столь сильно развивается почитание Девы Марии. Мадонна царит в небесах и сердцах верующих подобно тому, как дама царит в сердце влюбленного в нее рыцаря. Помимо рыцарского романа эта тема развивается и

впоэзии. С конца XI в. в Южной Франции расцветает поэзия трубадуров, писавших на провансальском языке.

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The phrase “Middle Ages” tells us more about the Renaissance that followed it than it does about the era itself. Starting around the 14th century, European thinkers, writers and artists began to look back and celebrate the art and culture of ancient Greece and Rome. Accordingly, they dismissed the period after the fall of Rome as a “Middle” or even “Dark” age in which no scientific accomplishments had been made, no great art produced, no great leaders born. The people of the Middle Ages had squandered the advancements of their predecessors, this argument went, and mired themselves instead in what 18th-century English historian Edward Gibbon called “barbarism and religion”.

This way of thinking about the era in the “middle” of the fall of Rome and the rise of the Renaissance prevailed until relatively recently. However, today’s scholars note that the era was as complex and vibrant as any other.

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ADDITIONAL READING

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Middle-Ages Science

by Martyn Shuttleworth

Science and Medieval Society — Charlemagne, Scholasticism and the Scientific Method

Many historians and scientists regard the Western Europe, after the fall of the Roman Empire, as completely devoid of interest, a barren wilderness in the history of science. Contemptuously, they give medieval Europe the Dark Ages, and this epithet evokes pictures of filthy, illiterate peasants and rulers, with medieval society a pale, superstitious shadow of the Greek and Roman ages of reason and high philosophy.

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The Dark Ages - Was Science Dead in Medieval Society?

With the aid of arrogant hindsight, the modern perspective of medieval society is of a war-torn and barbaric Europe. Poverty and ignorance replaced the great engineering works and relative peace of the Pax Romanum, and the controlling, growing church stifled development.

This view is biased and prejudiced, because the term “Dark Ages” is simply means that there are few written records remaining from that era, especially when compared to the meticulous record-keeping and prolific writing of the Romans. The Middle Ages have very little evidence to support the idea that there was any progress in society during the periods 500 to 1400, and modern scholars regard the Golden Age of Islam and the enlightenment of the Byzantine Empire as the true centers of knowledge.

In the years immediately after the fall of Rome, there was a period of readjustment, where medieval society was more concerned with keeping peace and empire building than nurturing centers of learning. Despite this, Charlemagne tried to establish a scholastic tradition, and the later Middle Ages saw advancements in the philosophy of science and the refinement of the scientific method. Far from being a backwards medieval society, overshadowed by Islam and Byzantium, scholasticism acted as a nucleus for the Renaissance and the Enlightenment.

Early Medieval Society — The Dark Ages After the Collapse of Rome

The Early Medieval period, from about AD 500 to 1000, is regarded as the true Dark Ages, where medieval society slipped into barbarism and ignorance. There is some truth in this view, but even this era saw scientific and technological advances amongst the maelstrom of constant war and population shifts. This period was not a complete desert and, whilst we understand that raiding Saxons, Vikings, and other people halted progress, to a certain extent, there were still faint glimmerings that great minds were exploring the universe and trying to find answers.

In the west of the continent, where verdant Ireland meets the destructive power of the grey Atlantic, ascetic monks produced beautiful, vibrant illuminated manuscripts. In England, the Venerable Bede (672/673–735) meticulously recorded the Saxon Era during a time of raids from the fierce Northmen, bringing terror with their dragonboats. This English also created a fine book about using astronomical observations to calculate the start of Easter.

During this period, it is tempting to dismiss the Northmen as fierce, uncouth barbarians, forgetting that their famous longboats were marvelous feats of engineering, hundreds of years ahead of their time. The Vikings and the Saxons were capable of exquisite metalwork and metallurgy, with the fine swords and beautiful jewelry found in sites such as Sutton Hoo and Ladbyskibet showing that, even if the

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progress of empirical and observational science was slowed, craftsmen still pushed boundaries and tried new techniques. In this, they were undoubtedly influenced by ideas that filtered up the trade routes from Greece, Egypt, and even China and India.

The Norse sailors were master navigators and, whilst lacking compasses, could use the stars and a few instruments to navigate the trackless ocean to Iceland, Greenland, and Vinland. For those of us in Western representative republics, such as the UK, US, and Scandinavia, our political model and idea of Parliament or congress was built upon the Norse model.

Despite these advances, it is safe to say that the centuries immediately after the fall of Rome, from the 5th Century until the 9th Century, saw little progress in what we come to regard as the scientific method. Classical thought and philosophy were lost to the west and became the preserve of Islam and Byzantium, as an increasingly rural and dispossessed population began to rebuild after the collapse of Rome.

However, monastic study kept some of the scientific processes alive and, while most of their scholastic endeavors concerned the Bible, the monks of Western Europe also studied medicine, to care for the sick, and astronomy, to observe the stars and set the date for the all-important Easter. Their astronomy kept alive mathematics and geometry, although their methods were but an echo of the intricate mathematical functions of the Romans and the Greeks.

The Middle Ages - Charlemagne, Science, and Learning

During the 9th Century, these small embers of preserved knowledge leapt to life, as Western Europeans tried to systemize education; rulers and church leaders realized that education was the key to maintaining unity and peace. This period was known as the Carolingian Renaissance, a time when Charles the Great, often known as Charlemagne, tried to reestablish knowledge as a cornerstone of medieval society.

This ruthless emperor, often depicted as the Golden Hero of the Church, was a brutal man of war, but he was also a great believer in the power of learning. His Frankish Empire covered most of Western Europe, and he instigated a revival in art, culture, and learning, using the Catholic Church to transmit knowledge and education. He ordered the translation of many Latin texts and promoted astronomy, a field that he loved to study, despite his inability to read!

In England, a monk named Alcuin of York instigated a system of education in art and theology, and also in arithmetic, geometry and astronomy. Like the Carolingians, he began promoting the establishment of schools, usually attached to monasteries or noble courts. While the Carolingian Era was a pale reflection of the Classic Age, there were attempts to promote knowledge and the process only ended because of the breakup of the Frankish Empire after the death of Charlemagne, and a renewal of the barbarian incursions.

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