Deck 12: The Medieval Synthesis and Its Cracks, 1215-1340

Question 1

In which ways did the canons about marriage, passed by the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, change the church's role in marriages? What did this mean for ordinary laypeople?

Answer 1

Answer would ideally include the following. The church now claimed jurisdiction over all marital disputes. The church required that marriage banns (announcements) had to be made public by priests to ensure that any objections to a projected union could be voiced. The church's claims also affected inheritance law and career options because the canons declared that children of clandestine or forbidden marriages could not inherit from their parents or become priests.

Question 2

Describe the process by which inquisitions attempted to find and root out heresy. What happened to those identified as heretics?

Answer 2

Answer would ideally include the following. Inquisitors would go to a suspected district and call everyone to a "preaching," a sermon in which the inquisitors attempted to persuade people to return to orthodox belief and promised them clemency if they confessed their heresy. Aided by secular authorities, the inquisitors rounded up suspects and questioned everyone about suspected heresies. If individuals were unaware that they were following heretical beliefs, or if a person quickly recanted, that individual was let off with a relatively light penance. Those heretics who would not repent were punished severely, since it was assumed that their heresy threatened the souls of all in the community.

Question 3

What unintended effects did the church's new teaching about the Eucharist have on some pious women believers?

Answer 3

Answer would ideally include the following. The new emphasis on the holiness of the transformed wine and bread induced some women to eat only consecrated bread, which they believed literally was God; sinners who ate Christ's sacrificial body would be redeemed. These women renounced all other foods, and many of them gave their uneaten food to the poor. Other women claimed to receive the Eucharist directly from Christ, removing the need for a male priest in this sacrament and empowering the women in their devotions.

Question 4

What was scholasticism? What was St. Thomas Aquinas's role in this movement?

Question 5

Which common feature was shared by the thirteenth-century innovations in music, architecture, and literature?

Question 6

Discuss the characteristics of the Gothic style.

Question 7

How did Henry III's reign (1216-1272) strengthen representative parliaments in England?

Question 8

What did the removal of the papacy to Avignon, near France, from 1309 to 1378 signify about the changing relationship between the papacy and Europe's kings?

Question 9

How did the Mongol invasion of Europe change the relationship between Europe and Asia?

Question 10

What precipitated the Great Famine of the 1310s and 1320s, and what effects did it have on society?

Question 11

The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) was called by Pope Innocent III to clarify church doctrine. How did it contribute to the development of inquisitions? Whom did inquisitions target, and what did they do to their victims?

Question 12

Describe the circumstances in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Europe that caused Jews to be stigmatized as outsiders in the cities where they had lived for generations. Did conditions worsen during these years for western Europe's Jewish population?

Question 13

What is scholasticism and what are some of the characteristics of scholastics? Who were the scholastics most inspired by, and who became the most famous scholastic? Explain the work of the most famous scholastic and how this style of work impacted society overall.

Question 14

In the thirteenth century, papal attempts to bring all of Christian Europe under the guidance of the pope suffered severe challenges. Describe the ways in which several thirteenth-century popes attempted to assert and define their power. How did these attempts conflict with the goals of the German emperor Frederick II and the French king Philip the Fair? By the end of the century, how had these struggles affected the positions of the pope, the German emperor, and the French king?

Question 15

Discuss how and why the Mongols began to attack regions in central and eastern Europe. What were the long-term effects of the Mongol invasions?

Question 16

By the thirteenth century, the church sought to purify

A) all of society.
B) the secular world.
C) internal corruption.
D) the monarchy.

Question 17

How did Pope Innocent try to realize his vision of the papacy as the supreme lawmaker and of law as an instrument of moral reform?

A) He convened and presided over a church council that attempted to regulate all aspects of Christian life.
B) He excommunicated those secular rulers who refused to accept his vision and yield on the issue of lay investiture.
C) He directly intervened in the growing conflict between English and French kings over the disputed territory of Aquitaine.
D) He declared his supremacy over the patriarch of the Greek Orthodox church and ordered the leaders of the Fourth Crusade to sack and plunder Constantinople.

Question 18

The Fourth Lateran Council promoted the doctrine of transubstantiation, which referred to that moment in

A) the sacrament of baptism in which the holy water was transformed into salvation.
B) the sacrament of confession in which sins were forgiven.
C) the sacrament of communion in which the bread and wine were changed into the body and blood of Christ.
D) the sacrament of marriage in which the man and wife ceased being one and were forever joined together.

Question 19

The Fourth Lateran Council required that Jews

A) convert to Christianity.
B) pay a special tax in exchange for toleration of their religion.
C) abandon the profession of moneylending or usury.
D) wear distinguishing clothing so they could be easily identified.

Question 20

Why was the impact of the Fourth Lateran Council's measures against illegitimate births less than council members had hoped?

A) Illegitimacy rates continued to soar despite the council's measures.
B) Local political leaders ignored and failed to enforce these measures.
C) Local religious leaders rarely received word of these measures because of poor systems of communication and transportation.
D) Pope Innocent III himself took offense at the measures and challenged the legitimacy of the very council that he had convened.

Question 21

What did the term inquisition originally mean?

A) Investigation
B) Interrogation
C) Torture
D) Punishment

Question 22

Why did the church impose such harsh sanctions on heretics who refused to repent of their allegedly false beliefs?

A) Church leaders believed that burning heretics at the stake would save the souls of those sinners.
B) Church leaders believed that unrepentant heretics jeopardized the souls of those around them.
C) Church leaders believed that unrepentant heretics were likely to forge an alliance with other enemies of the faith, including Jews and Muslims.
D) Church leaders thought that unrepentant heretics could be enlisted by ambitious political rulers such as Frederick Barbarossa who had clashed with ecclesiastical authorities.

Question 23

Which of the following is evidence that the message of mendicant friars preaching in towns, cities, and villages was enthusiastically received?

A) Peasants entering orders such as the Franciscans
B) Laity who consciously modeled their lives after those of the friars
C) Laypeople volunteering for crusades both at home and abroad
D) Laity who set out to raise money for the church

Question 24

What were tertiaries?

A) Members of a three-tiered order of mendicant monks
B) Laypeople who adopted the practices of the friars while leading normal lives
C) Preliminary hearings of inquisitions
D) Men who founded convents for their daughters

Question 25

Some women for whom religion was the center of their lives

A) responded to the church's teachings by confining themselves to their homes in imitation of religious recluses.
B) lived together in residences called hermitages and cared for the homeless.
C) implored their bishops to allow them to become ordained as priests.
D) took the Fourth Lateran Council's pronouncement literally and ate nothing but the Eucharist.

Question 26

Why did many kings and lords restrict moneylending to Jews?

A) It benefited them financially, since they could tax the Jews heavily and, on occasion, even attack them to free themselves of their debts.
B) In Christian Europe, it was impossible to find Christian moneylenders, since they had been threatened with excommunication by the papacy.
C) Jewish merchants, as a rule, were wealthier than Christian merchants and accordingly had more money to lend.
D) They believed that the Jews did not wish to pursue other economic opportunities available to them in the countryside or the towns.

Question 27

When Christians charged Jews with blood libel, they accused them of

A) being responsible for Christ's death.
B) not slaughtering their meat in accordance with Christian customs.
C) killing Christian children and using the children's blood in their Passover ritual.
D) forcibly circumcising Christian boys.

Question 28

Which ancient philosopher did most medieval scholastics draw upon as the ultimate authority and voice of human reason?

A) Aristotle
B) Socrates
C) Plato
D) Plotinus

Question 29

Which statement best characterizes the views of most medieval scholastics, including Thomas Aquinas?

A) Human reason can only flow from truths emanating from divine illumination.
B) Since the world is orderly, human beings can understand many parts of it through rational thought.
C) God bestowed only certain individuals with the ability to understand the world and endowed them with a mission of enlightenment.
D) Our knowledge of things is but a pale representation of eternal truths or forms.

Question 30

Which scholastic denied that human reason could be used to find God, proposing instead that human reason was dependent on divine illumination?

A) John Duns Scotus
B) Dante Alighieri
C) Giotto
D) St. Thomas Aquinas

Question 31

What intellectual goal was shared by medieval scholastics?

A) To show that knowledge gained through the senses and reason was compatible with that gained from revelation
B) To create as many universities as possible in order to disseminate knowledge to a wider range of people rather than just to clerics
C) To increase literacy rates throughout the population, including the majority of peasants
D) To demonstrate that knowledge gained from a reading of scriptures was necessarily superior to that gained from empirical observation

Question 32

In his Divine Comedy, Dante explored the soul's search for meaning and its discovery of God and used as his guide through paradise

A) the Greek philosopher Plato.
B) the scholastic St. Thomas Aquinas.
C) a Florentine girl named Beatrice.
D) the Roman poet Virgil.

Question 33

Whom did Dante choose as his guide through hell and purgatory?

A) Cicero
B) Aristotle
C) Cato
D) Virgil

Question 34

Thirteenth-century vernacular literature, such as Quest of the Holy Grail, sought to

A) inspire knights to adopt chivalry as their code.
B) convince nobles to abandon crusading in favor of an interior pilgrimage.
C) make human love the center of Christianity.
D) express the harmony between heaven and earth.

Question 35

The distinctive new musical form of the thirteenth century, the motet, was

A) a sacred polyphonic chant of four melody lines performed during a liturgy.
B) typically sung by two male and two female voices.
C) a polyphony typically consisting of two or three melody lines sung in Latin and French.
D) developed by Franco of Cologne.

Question 36

What development allowed musicians to become more precise in their performances?

A) The development of the metronome
B) The introduction of a system of musical notation
C) The development of new instruments like the pipe organ and clavichord
D) The use of conductors to lead large choral ensembles

Question 37

What feature of Gothic cathedrals made possible the telling of complicated stories through stained-glass windows?

A) Pointed arches and flying buttresses, which allowed church walls to feature large windows for the first time
B) Interpreters who explained to churchgoers the symbolism and meaning of the images
C) Papal certificates, which were required for approval of all stained-glass windows
D) Special oil paints that were mixed into the glass itself when it was being blown

Question 38

Which region of Europe became the focal point in the dispute between the emperor and the papacy in the thirteenth century?

A) Germany
B) France
C) Spain
D) Italy

Question 39

Why did four popes excommunicate Frederick II?

A) He wanted to control Italy, and in an era of papal expansion, the popes were threatened by his territorial and imperial claims.
B) He had supported heretical movements, including the Cathars in southern France.
C) He had worked too closely with Jews and Muslims because of his Sicilian ties.
D) He had challenged the authority of the clergy to administer the new sacraments created by the Fourth Lateran Council.

Question 40

What was a long-term consequence of Frederick's failed attempt to consolidate his empire?

A) Italian cities suffered under German rule for decades.
B) The papacy was praised for its role in combating Frederick's expansionary quest.
C) Germany would not be united until the nineteenth century.
D) The Spanish were able to claim thrones in Germany.

Question 41

Which of the following statements explains why Italy remained divided at the end of the thirteenth century, as shown in this map?
​
​

A) Emperor Frederick II failed in his attempts to unify Italy under his rule.
B) Venetian and Florentine merchants successfully fought off the pope.
C) Muslim invasions from the south prevented unification.
D) The papacy split, with one pretender in Avignon and one in Rome.

Question 42

Louis IX went on two crusades; for the duration of his first absence, France

A) was ruled by a chief magistrate.
B) was capably ruled by Louis's mother, Blanche of Castile.
C) lacked effective administration, and the collection of taxes was disrupted.
D) lacked an effective administrator, and the papal legate took charge.

Question 43

During the reign of Louis IX in France, certain state institutions began to take shape and stabilize, for example, the royal court of justice, which had a permanent seat in Paris called the

A) parlement.
B) legate.
C) Judicial Assembly.
D) Estates General.

Question 44

Louis IX's kingdom of France included which of the following regions?
​
​

A) Burgundy
B) Normandy
C) Gascony
D) Aquitaine

Question 45

Although Louis IX was generally supportive of the papacy, he simultaneously maintained the monarchy's independence from ecclesiastical authority, as exemplified by which of the following?

A) His insistence that his opinion on the appointment of bishops carry the same weight as that of the pope
B) His rejection of the pope's insistence that all church properties be made tax exempt
C) His refusal to support the church's sentences of excommunication unless he was able to judge the merits of each case for himself
D) His defense and retention of a minister whom the church had accused of being an Albigensian

Question 46

The canonization of Louis IX

A) instilled the French monarchy with tremendous prestige.
B) was based on Louis's successful crusade to the Holy Land.
C) was proclaimed by Pope Boniface VIII in order to infuriate Frederick II.
D) was the price demanded by Philip the Fair to release the bishop of Pamiers.

Question 47

Most European parliaments had their roots in

A) village assemblies that included peasants, nobles, and the clergy.
B) ad hoc advisory sessions that kings held with the nobility and the clergy.
C) church councils that consisted of lay and clerical representatives.
D) local militias.

Question 48

The cortes of Castile-León were among the earliest examples in medieval Europe of

A) representative assemblies.
B) courts of law.
C) federated states.
D) municipal councils.

Question 49

After the battle of Lewes, in which he defeated King Henry III of England, Simon de Montfort

A) became England's de facto ruler and subsequently had himself crowned as King Edward I.
B) nullified all baronial debts to the crown and redistributed crown lands among opposition barons, thereby sowing the seeds of another civil war.
C) convened a parliament to which he summoned not just noblemen but also, for the first time, commoners.
D) ruled as regent until Henry's more agreeable son, Edward I, was old enough to assume the throne.

Question 50

The French king Philip IV (Philip the Fair) wanted to tax the French clergy to finance which of the following?

A) A war with Edward I of England
B) A new crusade
C) A dowry to give Blanche of Castile
D) A crusade against the Mongols

Question 51

How did Edward I counter Boniface VIII's move against secular taxation of the clergy?

A) By increasing the taxation of the nobility in order to finance his war with France
B) By declaring that all clerics who refused to pay the new state tax would henceforth be considered outlaws without legal protection
C) By coordinating his response with Philip the Fair and refusing to allow clergymen and pilgrims to leave England for Rome
D) By sending a deputation to Rome to negotiate with Boniface on a compromise, with pope and king sharing the taxation proceeds

Question 52

In the ongoing struggle with the church, how did the French king Philip IV assert his jurisdiction over southern France in 1301?

A) By deposing Innocent's brother, the bishop of Pamiers, and dissolving the bishopric
B) By arresting the bishop of Pamiers for an exaggerated charge of treason
C) By suspending the Inquisition in Languedoc, a region Innocent considered deeply heretical
D) By establishing a royal court to hear appeals of cases tried by ecclesiastical courts

Question 53

What event in 1303 led to the significant weakening of papal authority?

A) French royal agents attempted to capture Pope Boniface VIII and put him on trial.
B) Boniface VIII failed in his attempt to mediate a dispute between the English and French kings.
C) The papacy moved to Avignon, thereby cutting the popes off from their traditional base of support in Rome.
D) Boniface XIII agreed to submit himself to the authority of kings and lords.

Question 54

What was one significant achievement of the Avignon popes (1309-1378)?

A) They increased the power of the papacy vis-à-vis secular rulers.
B) They promoted costly new crusades to the Holy Land.
C) They established a new and efficient organization.
D) They opened new negotiations with the patriarch in Constantinople.

Question 55

In most places, struggles between noble and non-noble factions in Italian communes eventually led to

A) both sides being defeated by the papacy.
B) both sides being overwhelmed by German invasions.
C) the triumph of the non-noble factions after much fighting.
D) takeovers by great regional nobles.

Question 56

What factor may have pushed the Mongols on to the path of aggressive expansion in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries?

A) A change in climate that reduced the amount of grassland available for grazing
B) An invasion by the Chinese that robbed the Mongols of their homeland
C) Conversion to Islam, as a result of which the Mongols desired to repay the Europeans for the crusades
D) The desire to take over the wealth of western Europe

Question 57

After 1260, much of the territory of modern-day Russia was under the control of the
​
​

A) Chaghatai Empire.
B) Sultanate of Delhi.
C) Khanate of the Golden Horde.
D) Ilkhanid Empire.

Question 58

Following its conquest of Rus, how did the Mongol Empire rule that vast territory?

A) By annihilating most of the Rus aristocracy
B) By leaving most of the old institutions in place
C) By launching a full assault on the Rus church
D) By sending in proxy rulers from China, which was under Mongol control

Question 59

What factor allowed Marco Polo and other traders to reach China in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries?

A) The Mongols had conquered most of the East and were willing to grant Westerners access to China.
B) The crusader armies had conquered much of the Middle East, thereby giving Westerners access to the overland trade routes to the Far East.
C) The growing power of the papacy gave Western merchants and missionaries the financial resources necessary to undertake such long journeys.
D) The Chinese emperors sent envoys to the West to invite merchants to visit the royal court.

Question 60

What was the primary outcome of the thirteenth-century European visits to China?

A) The accidental discovery of India
B) The conversion of about a third of the Chinese to Christianity
C) The opening up of new land routes to China
D) The exposure of Europeans to Chinese riches

Question 61

Which of the following proved most devastating for northern Europe in the 1310s and 1320s?

A) The invasion of the Mongols
B) The Golden Horde
C) The outbreak of the plague
D) The Great Famine

Question 62

Which of the following happened during the Great Famine?

A) Political leaders were more effective than the church in responding to the disaster.
B) Peasants fled the affected areas by migrating westward to France.
C) Peasants resisted heavy taxes imposed by rulers.
D) The initial crop failure was caused by a plague of locusts.

Question 63

Which region was relatively insulated from the negative impacts of crop failure and famine?

A) Norway
B) The Mediterranean
C) Denmark
D) England

Question 64

By about 1340, which empire had control over a significant portion of western Europe?
​
​

A) The Ottoman Empire
B) The Byzantine Empire
C) The Khanate of the Golden Horde
D) The Holy Roman Empire

Question 65

In about 1340, the Holy Roman Empire controlled which of the following?
​
​

A) France
B) Germany
C) Hungary
D) England