Deck 10: Commercial Quickening and Religious Reform, 1050-1150

Question 1

What were guilds and how were they organized?

Answer 1

Answer would ideally include the following. Guilds were highly organized professional corporations that charged dues, negotiated with lords and local governments, regulated working conditions, and determined quality. In short, they set the professional standards for their trade. Guilds were hierarchical. Apprentices stood at the bottom, journeymen were in the middle, and the masters stood at the top. Only the masters were allowed to help draw up regulations and serve as overseers, inspectors, and treasurers for the guilds.

Question 2

Describe the technologies that contributed to the advent of light industry in the eleventh century.

Answer 2

Answer would ideally include the following. Innovative machines were used in the cloth industry. Flails, for cleaning and thickening cloth, and presses, to remove oil from fibers, were powered by water mills. Europeans were able to mine previously untapped ore deposits with deep-mining technology. As forging techniques improved, iron became readily available for use in agricultural tools, weapons, armor, and ornaments. The availability of iron plows and tools improved farm production, which fed the commercial revolution.

Question 3

Explain why townspeople seemed different both to themselves and to outsiders.

Answer 3

Answer would ideally include the following. Townspeople did not fit into the typical medieval categories of those who prayed, those who fought, and those who labored on the land. Their occupations did not depend on the land, and they were free of the servile dues and services required of peasants and vassals. Living in close quarters and relying on a moneyed economy also gave them a sense of solidarity. Consequently, urban dwellers sought freedom from bishops, kings, and aristocrats and fought for the right to govern themselves via communes.

Question 4

Describe changes in the claims of papal authority during the pontificate of Leo IX. How did these changes affect his relations with the patriarch of Constantinople?

Question 5

What was the Concordat of Worms (1122)? What impact did it have on church-state relations in the empire?

Question 6

Describe the Cistercian monastic order's approach to religious worship. How did other religious orders influence the Cistercians' development of this lifestyle?

Question 7

Which secular and military concerns in the Middle East were behind the launching of the crusades?

Question 8

Describe and explain the attack on Jews by members of the First Crusade.

Question 9

Though they ended in failure for the Europeans, the crusades had a number of significant long-term effects on both the Christian and Islamic worlds. Please describe the long-term impacts.

Question 10

How did the Norman kings organize and administer England after the conquest?

Question 11

Describe the scope and impact of the commercial revolution that took place in Europe starting in the tenth century. Explain how it affected the organization of commerce and the relationship between commoners and lords in the towns and the countryside.

Question 12

What is a guild? Trace the trajectory of someone who is part of a guild that manufactures wool cloth from the bottom of the hierarchy to the top. What would their function be at each level?

Question 13

What factors propelled the movement for church reform between the tenth and twelfth centuries? Please discuss the solutions proposed, including the creation of new monastic orders and new sacramental understandings.

Question 14

Explain the origins of the First Crusade. Who were the crusaders, and what motivated them?

Question 15

Describe the impact of the Norman conquest on English politics and kingship, society, and language.

Question 16

The widespread use of money, corporations, banks, and urban centers that thrived on economic success was characteristic of the

A) crusades.
B) commercial revolution.
C) Gregorian reforms.
D) Benedictine monasteries.

Question 17

Medieval fairs functioned primarily as

A) sources of entertainment.
B) marketplaces.
C) venues for arranging marriages.
D) religious festivals.

Question 18

By the early Middle Ages, most Jews lived in which region?

A) Northern France
B) Along the Mediterranean coast
C) England
D) Poland

Question 19

How did medieval cities differ from cities in the ancient world?

A) Medieval cities sprang up as centers of commerce and economic activity, whereas ancient cities emerged to meet religious, social, and political needs.
B) Medieval cities featured thick walls to defend against invading Magyars, Vikings, and Saracens, while ancient cities did not need such walled fortifications because of the peace that predominated in the Hellenistic and Roman worlds.
C) Medieval cities featured far better systems of sanitation, since medieval engineers were able to improve upon the models and systems designed by Romans and Greeks.
D) Medieval cities were usually run directly by ecclesiastical authorities, whereas cities in the Roman and Hellenistic world were controlled by emperors, senates, and despots.

Question 20

Most developing cities featured

A) a castle, a cathedral, and stone houses.
B) a castle, wooden houses, and a monastery.
C) a marketplace, a castle, and churches.
D) a marketplace, a park, and a cathedral.

Question 21

According to this map, which profession operated both within and outside of the city walls by 1265?
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A) Textile makers
B) Smiths
C) Leather workers
D) Merchants

Question 22

The centers of commerce that developed during the commercial revolution tended to grow fastest and most densely

A) around fortified castles.
B) along key waterways, including seacoasts and river systems.
C) around monasteries and churches.
D) on the sites of old Roman forts.

Question 23

What name was given to those on the middle rung of the guild hierarchy in medieval Europe?

A) Senior apprentices
B) Masters
C) Apprentices
D) Journeymen

Question 24

In northern and central Italy, most long-term business ventures were structured as

A) corporations with a board of directors and shareholders.
B) family corporations run by those within an extended family.
C) joint-stock corporations that sold common shares to all interested parties.
D) royal partnerships over which the local kings had ultimate power.

Question 25

Because of the church's ban on usury,

A) interest from loans was often disguised as a penalty charge for late payment.
B) many wealthy men subsidized trade without charging interest.
C) few were willing to invest in new businesses.
D) almost all commercial capital was supplied by Jews.

Question 26

How did the diversely employed inhabitants of medieval towns express solidarity?

A) By petitioning local rulers for the right of self-government
B) By dressing and behaving differently from neighboring towns
C) By demanding that the castellans exempt them from unpaid labor
D) By seeking marriage alliances with aristocrats

Question 27

What was the term for the institutions of self-government that developed in towns in the Middle Ages?

A) Fiefs
B) Manors
C) Communes
D) Castellans

Question 28

Why did so many aristocrats experience high levels of debt by the twelfth century?

A) They were competing with wealthy townsmen over levels of patronage, personal generosity, and displays of wealth.
B) So many peasants had gained their personal freedom and left the manors for the towns that the income generated for the nobles by the peasantry had drastically declined.
C) Kings were in the process of expanding their realms and were drastically increasing the levels of taxation on the aristocracy.
D) Many had left to go on crusades, leaving their families and estates impoverished.

Question 29

What belief drove monastic movements for religious reform in the tenth and eleventh centuries?

A) The belief that there was no biblical justification for the existence of popes and bishops
B) The belief that the church had become too worldly and had been corrupted by its contacts with secular authorities
C) The belief that Islam threatened the heart of western Christianity and that only a spiritually pure church could combat this peril
D) The belief that secular rulers needed to exert more control over the church, which had become too corrupt

Question 30

Who generally initiated the movement to reform the church?

A) Outside reformers outraged by clerical excesses such as the sale of church offices and debauched conduct by the clergy
B) Scholars at universities who looked askance at the corruption they saw in the church
C) High-ranking clergy who controlled churches and monasteries
D) The papacy, since it was trying to reconcile with eastern Orthodoxy and a church perceived as corrupt threatened those aspirations

Question 31

Why did the Benedictine monastery at Cluny establish itself as an early center of religious reform?

A) Its location in east-central France was sufficiently far removed from Rome that it could challenge the papacy on many key questions without fear of reprisal.
B) Since the monastery's possessions and property were in the hands of Saints Peter and Paul and not those of its benefactors, the abbots of Cluny were not beholden to any one ruler and could position themselves as universal reformers.
C) The Cluniac monks argued that the Cistercians and Carthusians had become too lax in their devotional practices and too worldly in their orientation; Cluny's liturgical reforms ensured its role as the vanguard of reform.
D) The Cluniac monks were drawn overwhelmingly from the peasantry and as such were in a strong position to call for reform of an institution whose members generally hailed from the higher orders of society.

Question 32

What two breaches of canon law did the reform movement particularly emphasize in its effort to purify and reinvigorate Christianity during the eleventh century?

A) Clerical marriage and simony
B) Investiture and celibacy
C) Worldliness and usury
D) Property and perjury

Question 33

Collection in 74 Canons represented a giant step in the efforts of Pope Leo IX to

A) shore up canon law against secularization.
B) clarify and reaffirm the divinity of Christ.
C) assert and increase papal power.
D) stamp out the practice of lay investiture.

Question 34

The schism of 1054 was a split between

A) the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches.
B) the papacy and Cluny.
C) Pope Gregory VII and King Henry IV.
D) the French church and the Italian church.

Question 35

The reconquista referred to western Christian hopes of restoring Christianity by retaking

A) Greece and Anatolia from the Byzantine Empire.
B) Sicily from the Muslims.
C) Spain from the Muslims.
D) England from the Normans.

Question 36

The Investiture Conflict was fought by Pope Gregory VII and King Henry IV over

A) whether clergy were to remain celibate.
B) control of disputed territory in northern Italy and Switzerland.
C) the divinity of Jesus.
D) whether secular rulers or popes had the power to appoint bishops and clergymen.

Question 37

What was an important long-term effect of the Investiture Conflict?

A) Papal control of Italian cities was firmly established.
B) Secular rulers were no longer involved in the investiture of churchmen.
C) The clerical reform envisioned by Leo IX was now complete.
D) German princes took advantage of the conflict to increase and consolidate their own power.

Question 38

From approximately 1070 through 1122, Sicily was under the control of
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A) the Normans.
B) Germany.
C) the Italians.
D) Poland.

Question 39

In the wake of the Gregorian reform, the church, for the first time, claimed power over

A) baptism and religious instruction of children.
B) conduct of the Mass.
C) the appointment of bishops.
D) marriage ceremonies and other matrimonial affairs.

Question 40

Which of the following sacraments represented the key to salvation in the eyes of Roman Catholic reformers beginning in the twelfth century?

A) Confirmation
B) The Eucharist
C) Marriage
D) Ordination

Question 41

Why did many church reformers make clerical celibacy a centerpiece of their reforms?

A) With their new emphasis on the sacraments, they believed a celibate clergy was necessary to set priests apart from the laity.
B) They were driven primarily by hatred for the eastern Orthodox church, which they regarded as a corrupt institution.
C) They were singularly fixated on the possibility that church property might be turned over to surviving spouses, should married clergy pass away.
D) They believed that allowing clergy to marry might open the door to the ordination of women.

Question 42

Gratian's Decretum (1140) was published in an effort to

A) bring order to canon law by showing that seemingly conflicting decrees of popes and councils were actually in harmony.
B) settle the dispute between the Cistercian and Benedictine orders over the correct practice of St. Benedict's Rule.
C) discipline churchmen below the rank of bishop for infractions of canon law.
D) reconcile church doctrine with the newly rediscovered works of Aristotle, especially ideas on the application of logic to matters of faith.

Question 43

Which of the following was a characteristic of Cistercian architecture and design?

A) Cistercian churches made widespread use of sculpture and statuary to call attention to the glory of God.
B) Cistercian monasteries were divided into two halves-one half for the monks and the other half for the lay brothers.
C) Cistercian churches featured vaulted ceilings and impressive stained-glass windows.
D) Cistercian churches featured dark windowless interiors in accordance with the order's emphasis on austerity and simplicity.

Question 44

St. Anselm's treatise, Why God Became Man, put a new emphasis on which of the following?

A) The redemptive nature of human charity
B) The fall of man through Adam and Eve
C) The transformative power of the sacraments
D) The need for a celibate clergy

Question 45

Though they reacted against the wealth of the commercial revolution, the Cistercians ironically became part of it by

A) lending money to the poor and charging interest.
B) becoming skilled craftsmen and selling their craft goods for profit at local fairs.
C) assuming prominent positions in local guilds in an effort to free them from corruption.
D) running farms and estates that produced large profits.

Question 46

The Seljuk Turks who defeated the army of the Byzantine emperor Romanus IV were

A) a new tribe, related to the Magyars, that had come west in search of fertile land.
B) Sunni Muslims who had already captured Baghdad.
C) bands of Slavic raiders who had unified and converted to Islam.
D) former Christians who had been ostracized for their failure to follow the official doctrines of the church.

Question 47

The map reproduced here tells us what about the First Crusade (1096-1099)?
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A) Naval forces were vital to transporting crusaders.
B) Most crusaders came from modern-day France and Germany.
C) Crusaders needed to control river valleys to defeat the Muslims.
D) The Turks employed psychological warfare to divide the Crusaders.

Question 48

What did the battle of Manzikert (1071) signify?

A) The end of Byzantine domination in eastern Turkey
B) The final disintegration of the Muslim world into numerous small states
C) Pope Alexander II's defeat of Emperor Henry IV and the reduction of the Roman emperorship to a largely ceremonial post
D) The beginning of the Christianization of the Middle East during the crusades

Question 49

Which of the following precipitated the First Crusade?

A) With the support of Pope Urban II, the Byzantine emperor Alexius I launched a campaign against the Turks in 1095 to reclaim Jerusalem for the Byzantine Empire.
B) At the Council of Worms in 1095, the Franks launched a campaign that sent bands of knights (crusaders) to spread Christendom in the "heathen" Near East.
C) The Byzantine emperor sent messengers to the pope to plead for mercenary troops to combat the Turks, but instead Pope Urban II issued a general call to arms to free Jerusalem.
D) Muslim Seljuk Turks captured Jerusalem in 1095, burning down churches and terrorizing the Christian population, who appealed to European Christians for aid.

Question 50

The armies of the First Crusade

A) consisted of Jews and Christians who sought to free the Holy Land from Islamic control.
B) were led into battle by Pope Urban II, who inspired them with his speeches and his ferocity on the battlefield.
C) suffered greatly from the cold and malnutrition on their trek across Russia.
D) were organized as separate militias, each commanded by a different individual.

Question 51

What was one ominous result of the First Crusade?

A) Unprecedented, systematic persecution of the Jews
B) Movement to restrict women's mobility by accusing female crusaders of witchcraft
C) Expansion of rural poverty as crusaders increased dues to finance their journeys
D) An increase in lawlessness and piracy on the Mediterranean Sea

Question 52

Which of the following statements is supported by this map of the crusader states in 1109?
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A) By 1109, the crusader states had conquered the Byzantine Empire in its entirety.
B) The Byzantine Empire had expanded significantly to conquer most of the crusader states by this time.
C) The kingdom of Jerusalem had been completely overtaken by the Byzantine Empire by this time.
D) By 1109, the crusader states had occupied a small area of the Byzantine Empire.

Question 53

The crusader states were treated as

A) kingdoms under the direct control of the pope.
B) battleground territory between the eastern Orthodox church and western Christianity.
C) an extension of the Holy Roman Empire and were ruled by the emperor himself.
D) lordships in which rulers granted fiefs to their vassals.

Question 54

Why did the Second Crusade lead to a massive defeat at Damascus and prove to be a failure?

A) The crusaders lacked coordinated strategies, clear plans, and a central organization.
B) The papacy had given up on crusading altogether.
C) The crusaders lacked support from the crusader states in the Near East.
D) The crusaders were sidetracked by the possibility of sacking and looting Constantinople.

Question 55

Much like the Carthusians, the Knights Templar belonged to a monastic order sworn to chastity and poverty, but the Templars dedicated themselves to

A) active service to the poor.
B) scholarship and the study of laws.
C) warfare and the protection of Christian pilgrims.
D) the defense of Jerusalem and the remains of its temple.

Question 56

In 1291, the crusader states

A) were regrouped into a single state.
B) changed their allegiance to the Byzantine emperor and the patriarch of Constantinople.
C) fell permanently to the Muslims.
D) formed an alliance with the new Seljuk king.

Question 57

Why did the crusaders' goal of keeping the Holy Land under Christian rule ultimately fail?

A) The Ottoman Turks proved to be too strong and resourceful of an opponent.
B) The Europeans were not willing to commit the resources necessary to maintain the crusader states when more pressing needs arose at home.
C) Muslims throughout the Middle East were able to put aside their internal differences and form a united front against the Christian threat.
D) An outbreak of bubonic plague from 1347 to 1352 put an end to any future crusades.

Question 58

What price did the emperors of the Comnenian dynasty have to pay for increasing their military power?

A) They increased the threat of rebellion by their subject peoples.
B) They faced attacks from the Rus in the north.
C) They bankrupted the Byzantine Empire.
D) They were forced to grant the nobility significant concessions.

Question 59

Why is the battle of Hastings (1066) referred to as one of history's rare decisive battles?

A) Harold, earl of Wessex, and his Anglo-Saxon army succeeded in wiping out the army of the Norman invader, William, in a single day.
B) Lord Hastings led his Anglo-Saxon army into a trap laid by William, duke of Normandy, resulting in the army's total encirclement and its immediate surrender.
C) William and his army of Norman soldiers so decimated the Anglo-Saxon army, killing its leader, King Harold, that they were able to overtake England unopposed.
D) Both contenders to the English throne-the duke of Normandy and the earl of Wessex-were killed, opening the way to a successful invasion by Harald Hardrada, the king of Norway.

Question 60

Which of the following statements describe William's rule in England?

A) He ruled peacefully for forty years and concentrated his attention on England rather than on Normandy.
B) He claimed it by right of conquest and ruthlessly replaced the Anglo-Saxon nobility with his Norman followers.
C) He was aided by the Anglo-Saxon nobility, who cooperated fully with the new regime.
D) He destroyed Anglo-Saxon institutions that had proved inadequate and replaced them with Norman traditions and customs.

Question 61

What was the Domesday?

A) An apocalyptic text discussing the end-time that inspired King William to conquer England
B) A cathedral erected in Kent, England, by the Norman conquerors
C) A survey and census of England ordered by William
D) The name given to the Norman conquest by the displaced Anglo-Saxon nobility

Question 62

How did the Norman conquest tie England to the continent for centuries to come?

A) It placed England under the rule of the Capetian kings of France.
B) It linked together dynastic holdings on both sides of the English Channel.
C) It tied the fortunes of English commerce to wool manufacturers in northern Italy.
D) It introduced Roman Catholicism to the island nation.

Question 63

During the twelfth century, the kings of France exercised royal power and control over

A) only the Île-de-France, with its capital in Paris.
B) all of the former Carolingian Empire, with its capital in Aachen.
C) only the territory west of Paris, with its capital in Rouen.
D) only Paris and the land west and south of it, excluding Normandy.

Question 64

Which of the following was a characteristic of the Concordat of Worms?

A) It ended Emperor Henry V's power over the papacy.
B) It expressed the church's dismay at the massacre of Jews during the First Crusade.
C) It conceded considerable power within the church to the king.
D) It solidified the royal line of succession after Henry V.

Question 65

According to this map, by 1150, a significant portion of North Africa, Spain, and the Middle East were under the control of
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A) Rus.
B) the Byzantine Empire.
C) Muslim rulers.
D) Germany.