1.6K: European Cultural Developments

unity

AP Theme

Cultural Developments and Interactions

Learning Objective 1K

Explain how the beliefs and practices of the predominant religions in Europe affected European society.

Historical Development 1

The Roman Catholic Church was the most powerful institution in Western Europe.

Historical Development 2

Differences between Christian leadership in Western Europe and the Byzantine Empire led to a split in the Catholic Church and the creation of Eastern Orthodox Christianity.

Historical Development 3

Interaction between Christian, Jewish, and Islamic communities led to both conflict and cooperation.

The Catholic Church was powerful across large portions of northern and western Europe and held influence over the lives of ordinary people and elites. Christian monasteries functioned as centers of religion but were also important places of learning and the arts.

Differences between Christian leadership in Western Europe and the Byzantine Empire led to a split in the Catholic Church and the creation of Eastern Orthodox Christianity.

The Crusades were a series of conflicts between the 11th and 13th centuries that sought to spread Christinaity into new areas of Europe and reconquer territory from Muslims that had previously been Christian.

Contents

The Roman Catholic Church Was the Most Powerful Institution in Western Europe

Main idea

The Catholic Church was powerful across large portions of northern and western Europe and held influence over the lives of ordinary people and elites. Christian monasteries functioned as centers of religion but were also important places of learning and the arts.

In the year 1000 CE, there was little that unified Western Europe. The politically fragmented continent had many large and small kingdoms with independent rulers. Warfare between kingdoms was common, and borders shifted often. Different European people also spoke many languages and had varying cultural practices.

Christianity provided a common link:  Christianity was one commonality that provided a unifying force across Europe. In Western Europe, until the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century, Christianity was the Roman Catholic Church. The Catholic Church was the center of social, political, and religious life, from kings and nobles to peasants and serfs.

  • Until the 16th century, the Roman Catholic Church was Western Europe’s most powerful political institution.
  • Most in Europe accepted the Pope as God’s representative on earth.
  • When the Pope crowned a king, it symbolized God crowning and supporting a king’s rule.
  • For most people, daily existence was challenging and full of suffering. The Church offered a path to salvation and the promise of eternal bliss beyond earthly pain.
Historical trend

Rulers across history have claimed authority to rule from God. Catholic Popes claimed that God chose them to lead the Church. Monarchs in Europe also claimed authority to rule from God. In Europe, they called it the divine right of kings. In China, it was called the Mandate of Heaven.

The decline of Church power: While the Catholic Church and Pope remain influential in the modern world, their power began steadily declining in the 15th century. By the 19th century, the Pope had gone from an influential political and religious figure to a purely spiritual leader.

Church law

Canon law was the law of the Church. It dictated many areas of life, including marriages and religious practices.

  • For people who strayed from the Church’s teachings, the Church held the power of ex-communication (removal from the Catholic Church), which Catholics believed led to the soul’s eternal damnation into hell.
  • The Church’s excommunicating power covered everyone, from agricultural workers to kings.

Christian monasticism

Christianity is a monastic belief system. Christian monks and nuns lived away from society in monasteries and devoted their lives to prayer, meditation, and reflection.

  • Monasteries also served as centers of European learning.
  • Christian leaders also supported the creation of art in monasteries.
  • Monks and nuns could often read and write and produced the written documents and books used by churches.
  • Monasteries had extensive libraries that stored intellectual knowledge and religious texts.

Monasteries were centers of European culture: Christian monasteries were also centers of creative and artistic production. As monastic scribes produced books and manuscripts, artists would decorate pages with elaborate artistic drawings and detail. Musical arrangements were also composed in monasteries to aid Christian worshipers in prayer and scripture reading. Because European artists were associated with the Church, most European art in the middle ages focused on religious themes.

Saint Thomas Aquinas

Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) was an Italian monk, philosopher, and Catholic priest considered one of the Catholic church's greatest religious scholars and philosophers. Aquinas spent his life attempting to meld faith and philosophical reason. He believed that God's existence could be proven using the principles of reason, as laid out by the ancient Greek philosophers. Philosophies that Islamic scholars had recently reintroduced to Western Europe through Muslim Spain.

Hildegard of Bingen

Hildegard of Bingen was a 12th-century nun who was a renowned artist and composer. She wrote about her visions of God and the divine in multiple novels, songs, and plays. Artists incorporated her dreams into elaborate works of art that adorned the manuscripts that contained her writings.

The Catholic Church Splits: The Rise of Eastern Orthodox Christianity

Main idea

Differences between Christian leadership in Western Europe and the Byzantine Empire led to a split in the Catholic Church and the creation of Eastern Orthodox Christianity.

From the time of the Roman Empire, European Christianity had developed two competing power centers: the Catholic Pope in Rome and the Eastern Orthodox Pope in the Byzantine Empire (old Easter Roman Empire).

The Great Schism: Disagreements between the Pope in Rome and Byzantine Christian leaders were common. Eventually, the differences led to the official separation of the Catholic and Byzantine churches in 1054. The Catholic Pope was in Rome, and the Eastern Orthodox Patriarch (the leader of the Orthodox Church) was in Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire.

Portions of Eastern Europe slowly converted to Eastern Orthodox Christianity: Eastern Europe was one of the last European regions to convert widely to Christianity. Because the Eastern Orthodox Church was closer to the kingdoms of Eastern Europe, its influence spread into the region.

  • Kievan Rus (modern Kyiv, Ukraine) was a 10th-century power in Eastern Europe. In 989, their leader Prince Vladimir I, legally abolished the old pagan religions of the area when he converted to Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Eastern Orthodox Christianity became the official state religion of Kyiv Rus.
  • Russia later became a significant Eastern European power and adopted Orthodox Christianity.
Historical trend

All religions and belief systems change over time and as they diffuse into new places. Just like Christianity developed various versions, so did Buddhism as it moved across trade routes from South Asia to East and Southeast Asia. Original Theravada Buddhism adopted new practices and beliefs, which resulted in the Mahayana and Tibetan forms of  Buddhism.

The Crusades: The Christian, Jewish, and Islamic Communities Collide

Main idea

The Crusades were a series of conflicts between the 11th and 13th centuries that sought to spread Christinaity into new areas of Europe and reconquer territory from Muslims that had previously been Christian.

By the 11th century, Muslim armies had conquered and converted portions of Europe and the Mediterranean region that had formerly been Christian. The Christian holy lands in modern Palestine and Israel had also fallen to Muslim armies.

What were the Crusades?

The Crusades were a series of conflicts to spread Christianity and the power of Christian states. The Crusades were not one event but several events with various goals that took place between the 11th and 13th centuries.

The goals of the Crusades

The Crusades had several goals.

Goal 1: recapture the Holy Lands

Crusaders conquered Jerusalem during the First Crusade in July 1099. Following the defeat of Islamic forces in the region, the Crusaders set up several small kingdoms led by Christian European nobles known as Crusader Kingdoms. However, a Muslim leader named Saladin defeated the Christian Crusader kings in 1187 and reconquered the Holy Lands. Christian rule over the Holy Lands ended again after less than 100 years.

Goal 2: retake other Christian lands conquered by Islam

In 711, Muslim forces began the conquest of the Iberian Peninsula in Eastern Europe. Muslims controlled at least some portion of the peninsula until 1492, when the armies of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella drove out the last Muslim armies when they defeated the Granada Caliphate.

Goal 3: purify the Christian world

At times, Popes approved of various campaigns called crusades against those in and around Europe whose Christian practice the Church viewed as heretical (sinful and not Church approved). While the Church did suppress some short erm dissent, dissenting views eventually split the Church apart during the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century.

Goal 4: expand Christianity into non-Christian European lands

The Church also approved military campaigns against northern and eastern European groups who continued to practice their traditional pagan belief systems. Targeted groups and regions included modern-day Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Sweden, Russia, and Ukraine. By the 14th century, most leaders of these areas had converted and suppressed the practice of their people's older traditional beliefs.

The effects of the Crusades

The Crusades left a legacy in Europe that reshaped European life.