Midevil research project
...ty plays were approved by the Church, as they were dramas depicting scenes from the Bible. Bands of actors traveled from place to place, putting on these various plays. Mystery plays were those which included a medieval dramatic form that was based on a Biblical story, usually dealing with the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. Miracle plays were based on religious subjects, such as Biblical stories or saints’ lives, and were usually presented in a cycle or series by the crafts guild. Morality plays always dealt with the Good and Evil; being Good was right and being Evil was sinful. These plays personified vices and virtue. Chivalry: Chivalry was the sum of the ideal qualifications of a knight, including courtesy, generosity, valor, and dexterity in arms; it was the code of laws under which all knights must follow. Under the Code of chivalry, knights were required to fight fair, to show mercy to a defeated knight, and to be ready to rescue any lady in distress. They needed to be religious and to dedicate all of their warlike actions by prayer. Knights needed to obey their nobleman and serve him with all of the spirit and bravery he possessed. Knights were required to be polite and gracious towards the lady he loved, in the form of courtly love (admiring from afar). There are many famous stories depicting these characteristics: Sir Walter Raleigh of England once spread his cloak over a mud puddle so that Queen Elizabeth of England would not get her shoes muddy. In the story, “The Glove and the Lion,” by the English poet Leigh Hunt, a knight and his lady were watching battling lions in an arena. In order to test her knight’s chivalry, the lady tossed her glove into the pit where the lions fought. Without hesitation, he jumped into the pit and retrieved the glove. After climbing back to his seat, though, the knight slapped his lady’s face with the glove. The action was approved by the King sitting nearby, because the knight had showed his bravery and allegiance to his lady, but she deserved a slap in the face were causing him to risk his life. The manners of today are based on the Codes of chivalry of the Middle Ages. Feudalism: Feudalism was an extremely harsh system of living in Europe that set a firm hierarchy. People were born into these social classes, and it was impossible to change them; simply leaving their farm or marrying someone from another farm required their lord’s permission. The lord, who ruled his farmers, or serfs, on his land, was under the King. Lords lived in great stone castles and often fought each other, rounding up their serfs to fight under their lord. Feudalism originated when Rome was conquered by the many wild tribes of the East and the North. Farmers strongly feared these invaders, who would ruin their land, steal their crops and animals, and kill them and their families. Wanting the protection of the more powerful lords, they gave up their land to become a serf, gaining protection from the lord and his army in exchange for a large share of their crops. Each lord has a bodyguard whom he rewarded by giving a part of his land with the serfs on it. These bodyguards became knights, and in return, they kneeled down in front of their lord and solemnly swore service under him, paying homage. These knights were vassals of the land; they owned land and took a share of what the serf’s produced as castle. Knights lived in the lords’ castles and fought in wars. The clergy of the Roman Catholic Church separated: some become feudal lords and soldiers, but many wanted to escape feudalism and entered monasteries to pray and work in peace. They ordered soldiers not to kill women and children, nor to fight on weekends or holy days. When a knight argued with another knight, they would go to their lord for settlement. Lords would gather a number of knights to decide who was right, in a similar system that a modern jury follows. Other ways of decided also included throwing the accused man into a pool of water, determining that if he floated he was guilty, and if he sank he was innocent, as the water would not take a guilty man. Serfs lived a very harsh life, and shared their home with their pigs and cattle. Feudalism lasted for thousands of years, and gradually ended as people became richer, countries traded with each other more frequently, and serfs either saved money to pay lords to free them, or ran away to growing towns to become shopkeepers and craftsmen. The kings of England and France conquered the lords to set up a central government with armies and police forces. Beowulf: Beowulf is a 3182 line epic poem about a hero named Beowulf, a Nordic prince from Sweden, who set off to Denmark to kill a monster called Grendel. There are three parts to the poem: the first part describes that Hrothgar, the king of the Danes, has built a great banquet hall called Herot. For twelve years, the Danes are terrorized by a giant monster, Grendel, who attacks the hall at night and carries off his human victims. Beowulf, of the Geats, hears of this monster and comes with his men to help the Danes. He and his men are welcomed into the land, and feast in the great hall. At night, Grendel breaks in and kills one of Beowulf’s men. He grapples with the monster, and, with his bare hands, tears off one of its arms. Grendel is mortally wounded and drags himself away to die under the sea, in his mother’s lair. The second part of the poem describes Beowulf’s battle with Grendel’s mother. She becomes angered by her son’s death and invades the hall, killing a Danish noble. Beowulf plunges under the sea, and kills the mother in her lair, after a ferocious struggle. In the last part of the story, the hero has returned home to tell his story to Higlac, the King of the Geats. After both Higlac and his son die, Beowulf becomes king and rules peacefully for fifty years. A sleeping dragon that guards a treasure is awakened and angered when a cup is stolen from him. As a result, the dragon ravages the land and burns a hall. The King Beowulf determines to fight this dragon in a single combat with twelve of his companions as witnesses, but only one man, Wiglaf, stays with the king. Together, they kill the dragon, but Beowulf is mortally wounded. The dying hero asks for his ashes to be enshrined in a great mound on the headlands facing the sea, so that sailors could see it and be guided by it. The poem is the only complete epic written in Old English, and has survived in a single manuscript, dated to about the year 1000. The author is unknown, but is definitely a Christian, as the themes are strongly based on the ideas of Christianity and chivalry: courage, honor, fame, loyalty, and, especially, glory. Evil is ultimately defeated by God and his followers, and one’s fate is always predetermined by God. II. 1066 A.D. In the year 1066, England was invaded by both the Norwegian armies in the North, and William the Conqueror and the Normans. William defeated the English, led by King Harold, on October 14, and founded the present line of English kings. King Harold: Harold was born in 1022 as the son of one of the greatest English nobles. Edward the Confessor, the king of England until he died in 1066, decided that Harold would be the next king, as the leading nobles once chose the king. William, the Duke of Normandy, argued that Edward had promised him the throne, and attacked Harold from the south. King Harold was killed in the evening, at the end of the Battle of Hastings. William the Conqueror: William the Conqueror, born in 1027 at Falaise, Normandy, was the son of Robert I, Duke of Normandy. He is considered the first king of modern England, ruling between the years 1066 till he died in 1087. He was the duke of the French territory of Normandy. In 1066, he invaded England with his Norman army from the South, while Harold was busy defeating the Norwegians in the north, and defeated the English in Battle. His victory is called the Norman Conquest. He brought an end to local rebellions and took land from those who resisted him. Following the system of feudalism, he would keep some of the land and gave the rest to his men in return for military service. William brought many changes to English society, making the king the true ruler of the country, and bringing order and peace in government. Normandy: The land of Normandy lies across the English Channel in the Northwest section of France. It is named after the Normans, or Norsemen, who ruled the region before the 1000’s. Modern-day Normandy is known for its dairy products, and the farmers who produce them in very old-fashioned methods, with few modern appliances in their homes. The city people of Normandy generally work in large textile mills and important ports, such as: Rouen, Le Havre, and Cherbourg. Norman cities are very old, and are famous for their beautiful churches and castles. Battle of Hastings: The Battle of Hastings was fought between King Harold and his men, with their spears, swords, and arrows, against William the conqueror’s army of 10,000 Norman men and European adventurers. Fighting on horseback with bows and arrows, William and his men invaded the South of England, and were met at the hill of Senlac, near Hastings, by Harold and the English. William tricked his opponents by having his horsemen pretend to run away. When the English left their hill to chase them, the horsemen turned around and attacked. King Harold was killed by an arrow, and eventually, the remaining English soldiers were either killed or fled the battle. The Battle lasted only one day, and William the Conqueror’s victory is dubbed the Norman Conquest. Anglo-Saxon: The Angles, Saxons, and Jutes occupied almost all of England in the fifth century. They were German peoples, mostly warriors and sailors, and lived in seven major kingdoms: Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia, Essex, Sussex, Kent, and Wessex. Alfred the Great, a king of Wessex, restored much of the peace between these kingdoms and unified England in the 800’s. England’s name, and that of its language, comes from the term “Angle-land.” Modern-day English is derived from Old English, the language of the Anglo-Saxons, and a very harsh sounding Germanic language that seems almost nothing like what is spoken today. III. Writers of the Medieval Period Boccacio: Giovanni Boccacio, born in 1313 in Florence, Italy, was an Italian poet and storyteller. At the age of fifteen, he was sent to Naples to learn business. Instead of concentrating on this subject, he fell in love with the princess, Maria d’Aquino, the daughter of King Roberto of Naples. The two had a very unhappy lover affair, and Boccacio returned to Florence. All of his saddest and most beautiful poems are about Maria, although his greatest book contains neither sadness nor poetry. Decameron, a collection of one hundred humorous stories, was written between 1348 and 1353. It contains the most detailed descriptions of the onslaught of the Black Death. The short stories are narrated by seven women and three men who have fled to a country estate to escape the plague. At this estate, they spend two weeks holding storytelling sessions, and each day, the group elects one to determine the general theme of the next day. The stories are very close in spirit to the French fabliaux, fables, as their primary intention is to entertain. The Decameron has a reputation for realism, because of Boccacio’s frank and frequent treatment of sex. The author argues that it Is not realism at all, but representative of the effort to escape the grim realities of the plague-swept world, creating amusing tales of fantasy which exclude the unpleasant aspects of society. This imaginative flight from reality is a prominent feature of the literature of the late Medieval period. The themes include those of love, fortune, and human thought and intelligence. Dante: Dante Alighieri was born in Florence in 1265. In 1302 he was banished after the side he had taken in a civil war had lost. In 1321, he died in Ravenna. When Dante was nine years old, he fell in love with a beautiful girl named Beatrice, who died when he was twenty-six years old. His most famous poem is The Divine Comedy, which was written mostly after his banishment. The piece is not really a comedy, but a combination of religious and political descriptions. It is also written in Italian, not Latin, which was the most popular language of the time, in Italy, and understood by most everyone. The poem describes Dante’s journey, under the guidance of the Roman poet Vergil, and then Beatrice, through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, the three parts of the poem, and int...