The Age of Chivalry (40 page)

Jews had always been seen as stubborn, but they were now also viewed as a malevolent force bent on destroying society from within. It was the increasing restrictions on their professional careers that turned so many Jews to money lending, a practice forbidden to Christians, and their prominence in that trade gave a new and vicious twist to anti-Semitic sentiment.

In 1170 William the Conqueror invited a number of Jews to move from Rouen in Normandy and settle in England, where they became the kernel of the country's earliest substantial Jewish community. The financial skills of English Jews served the Anglo-Norman Crown well in subsequent decades, and they enjoyed special privileges as a result. A royal charter issued by Henry I (r. 1100–35) gave Jews the right to move around the country without paying tolls, to buy and sell property, and to swear on the Torah rather than the Christian Bible. For most of the 12th century Jews enjoyed greater security in England than on the continent, and their numbers increased through immigration after the expulsion of French Jews in 1182 by King Philip Augustus.

Preparations for English participation in the Third Crusade, however, exposed the country's Jews to new levels of danger. Houses in the City of London's Jewish quarter (“Old Jewry”) were attacked in the days following the coronation of Richard I (“the Lionheart”) on September 3, 1189, and after the king's departure on crusade anti-Semitic violence spread to the counties of Essex and Norfolk. The city of York had seen extensive anti-Jewish rioting in early March 1190, and Jewish families were granted refuge within York Castle by its constable. Congregated within a central wooden tower, the Jews were then surrounded by a mob outside the castle walls who demanded their immediate conversion to Christianity on pain of death. When the warden left the castle the Jews, fearful of the consequences of opening the gates, refused to readmit him and a siege by the local militia followed. On March 16 the tower caught fire and most of the Jews killed themselves rather than face the Christian mob. Those who did surrender were then killed, despite having received assurances of their safety. At least 150 Jews died. The ringleaders of the massacre subsequently burned documents kept in York Cathedral which specified the local debts owed to the dead Jews. English Jews were supposed to come under the king's special protection and the murders did not go unpunished. But it was the harm to its financial interests that really motivated the Crown, since an attack on Jews was also an attack on its own revenue resources. Some 50 of York's citizens were fined, and King Richard I introduced a system whereby debts held by Jews were duplicated to the Crown.

Jews wearing identifying pointed hats and yellow
rouelle
badges are burned at the stake in 1348, in this illustration from the
Lucerne Chronicle
of 1513
.

Medieval European culture reflected the dominant role of the Christian Church as arbiter of human conduct and as authoritative guide to the truths revealed by God in the person of Christ. The
magisterium
or teaching authority claimed by the clergy expressed orthodox belief, and the Church's disciplinary powers, based on scriptural interpretation and formulated in canon law, prescribed correct behavior. Astrology retained a widespread appeal despite its implicit contradiction of the Christian doctrines that asserted God's sovereign omnipotence. Predictions concerning the future persisted therefore, and a belief in magic, witchcraft and the powers of good and evil spirits subsisted beneath the official structures of ecclesiastical order
.

Christianity was also the filter through which a selective interpretation of ancient Roman culture was transmitted to Europe's evolving medieval civilization. Latin was used for the celebration of the Mass, and it was also the medium of communication used by both the Church's officialdom and that of secular princes. As a result, the language acquired a new lease of life—albeit one that was prone to bureaucracy's stiff jargon. When it came to preaching sermons a good deal of pragmatism was needed by priests if they were to communicate with a largely illiterate population. Most, therefore, opted for a kind of rustic Latin patois (
rustica Romana lingua
). Alternatively, they used one of the vernacular European languages that were acquiring a distinctive form by the eighth century—such as
Theotiscam
, a form of early German.

The kings of early medieval Europe ruled in a Roman style after establishing themselves in the former imperial territories. They issued laws for their own people and for their newly acquired subjects who had been Roman citizens, and the coins they struck were modeled on imperial currency. Although these kingdoms—Frankish, Lombard, Anglo-Saxon, Visigothic in Spain and Ostrogothic in Italy—were newly formed, they preferred to be considered as old. Antiquity lent authority, just as it had done in ancient Rome. The officially sponsored histories of these peoples, such as Paul the Deacon's
History of the Lombards
written in the 790s, claimed therefore that the kingdoms had a longer established, and more exclusive, ethnic foundation than was in fact the case.

R
IGHT
An image from the 15th cenury
Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry
depicting young Parisian aristocrats on horseback
.

MEDIEVAL CULTURE

c
.731
The English monk Bede has finished writing his
Ecclesiastical History of the English People
. The
anno domini
order of chronology that he adopts will become the European norm.

910
Foundation of Cluny Abbey, Burgundy. An international federation of monastic houses, all under the ultimate authority of Cluny's abbot, develops subsequently.

c
.1127
Hugh of Saint-Victor writes the
Didascalicon
, a pioneering example of the medieval encyclopedia.

c
.1150
Emergence of coats of arms: heraldic devices are unique to the bearer and painted on the shield carried by a knight or lord.

c
.1200
The Gothic script has evolved: consistency of style and legibility promote standardized and reliable texts for teaching purposes.

1204
The sack of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade: Europe's cultural divide between Greeks and Latins becomes a chasm.

1256
Thomas Aquinas starts to teach at the University of Paris.

1300
Secular love poetry is being set to music in the form of the
motet
, and pastoral subjects are evoked in madrigals.

Christianity's cultural influence on medieval European life and thought was continuous with its status in the civilization of late antiquity. Following Theodosius I's adoption of Christianity as the empire's official religion in 380 the clergy became aligned with the grades of the imperial civil service, and the religion was largely shorn of its earlier pacifist tendencies. Early medieval Christian culture built on this establishment status and was attuned to the pragmatic needs of warrior-kings who saw themselves as agents of a sacral and divine power. Many kings and aristocrats were converted by their wives. Queen Clotilda (
c
.474–
c
.545), the Burgundian and Catholic wife of Clovis, persuaded him to abandon the ancestral paganism of the Franks. The Bavarian princess Theodelinda (
c
.570–628), who married Agilulf, king of the Lombards, influenced his decision to abandon Arian Christianity in favor of Catholicism. The warrior ethic of previously pagan leaders acquired thereby a new focus, and the Church sanctioned the authority of Christian kings whose campaigns of conquest waged against hostile neighbors and dissidents led to new, and mostly enforced, conversions. Some of the monarchies, especially those of the Franks and of the Spanish Visigoths, adapted ancient Jewish rituals on the basis of a reading of the Old Testament. Kings were anointed liturgically with holy oil and reminded in sermons, prayers and Church councils of their responsibilities to God, who had chosen them to rule. The new culture of kingship was a potent mixture of public power and spiritual self-confidence. Underpinned by successful generalship, it spread to regions of Europe that had never been ruled by Rome, such as Ireland, northern Britain and areas to the east of the River Rhine.

Irish missionaries were especially active in converting Europe's non-Roman peoples and Columbanus (
c
.543–615), the most celebrated evangelist, also founded new communities in Luxeuil in Burgundy and Bobbio in north Italy. The spread in Europe of the penitential practice of confession made individually to a priest—a distinctive feature of Celtic Christianity—owed much to Columbanus's pioneering example. Within the island of Britain earlier forms of Celtic Christianity clashed with the more hierarchical Roman form until the Synod of Whitby (664), when Roman Christianity's regulations were adopted for the kingdom of Northumbria with the other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms falling into line subsequently. It was therefore a very Romanized English Church structure that produced its greatest
missionary in Boniface (
c
.675–754), who became archbishop of Mainz and spent most of his career evangelizing on the borders of the kingdom of the Franks.

The “secular clergy” served the needs of the laity through the parish-based system, while monks and religious women lived in communities set apart from the world. Monasticism's earliest exponents were ascetics who had withdrawn to the deserts of Egypt and Syria, and the transmission of their influence to Western Europe, especially by the monk and traveler John Cassian (360–435), was a rare example of how the earlier communication networks across the Mediterranean could still operate in late antiquity. The rules prescribed for the monastic life varied, but the most influential were composed by Benedict of Nursia (
c
.480–
c
.547), who structured the day into periods of prayer, contemplation and work. The Order that followed his rule was named after him and the Benedictine elevation of manual labor in God's service marked a real shift in cultural attitudes, since the élites of classical antiquity had long since scorned such work as a sign of servility. Great monasteries such as the one at Cluny in Burgundy enjoyed a close association with the secular nobility, who endowed them with lands. The Cistercians, an Order of reformed Benedictines, were particularly active in cultivating and developing Europe's marginal lands during the 12th century. Monks constituted a disciplined, self-reliant, and unpaid labor force which could therefore develop farming practices in an innovative way and without having to rely on manorial customs.

A
BOVE
Saint Columbanus, who founded monasteries in France and Italy in the late sixth century, is portrayed in this fresco in the 12th-century cathedral at Brugnato, near Genoa
.