While knighthood was once a noble profession, now knight becoming less effective in the battle are more often were simple sporting entertainment for royal families.
Religion became less influential and even trivialized by some courts, saw the beginning of the The Hundred Years War between England and France. Crusades Knights and kings were attacking the Holy Lands of the Middle East in the name of God and with the blessing of the Christian Church during this volatile period, which is sometimes called the Golden Age of Chivalry.
Military Orders After conquering Jerusalem in , an army was established to keep control of the city. Secularism The Age of Chivalry ebbed after several Crusades, in which Jerusalem was won and lost, and its focus was shifted toward vain and selfish pursuits.
Courts By mid new orders like the Order of the Golden Fleece were formed by royal courts. They did make ordinary Catholics across Christendom feel like they had a common purpose, and they inspired waves of religious enthusiasm among people who might otherwise have felt alienated from the official Church. They also exposed Crusaders to Islamic literature, science and technology—exposure that would have a lasting effect on European intellectual life.
Another way to show devotion to the Church was to build grand cathedrals and other ecclesiastical structures such as monasteries. Cathedrals were the largest buildings in medieval Europe, and they could be found at the center of towns and cities across the continent. Between the 10th and 13th centuries, most European cathedrals were built in the Romanesque style.
Romanesque cathedrals are solid and substantial: They have rounded masonry arches and barrel vaults supporting the roof, thick stone walls and few windows. Around , church builders began to embrace a new architectural style, known as the Gothic. Gothic structures, such as the Abbey Church of Saint-Denis in France and the rebuilt Canterbury Cathedral in England, have huge stained-glass windows, pointed vaults and arches a technology developed in the Islamic world , and spires and flying buttresses.
In contrast to heavy Romanesque buildings, Gothic architecture seems to be almost weightless. Medieval religious art took other forms as well.
Frescoes and mosaics decorated church interiors, and artists painted devotional images of the Virgin Mary, Jesus and the saints.
Also, before the invention of the printing press in the 15th century, even books were works of art. Craftsmen in monasteries and later in universities created illuminated manuscripts: handmade sacred and secular books with colored illustrations, gold and silver lettering and other adornments.
Convents were one of the few places women could receive a higher education , and nuns wrote, translated, and illuminated manuscripts as well. In the 12th century, urban booksellers began to market smaller illuminated manuscripts, like books of hours, psalters and other prayer books, to wealthy individuals. Chivalry and courtly love were celebrated in stories and songs spread by troubadours. It was especially deadly in cities, where it was impossible to prevent the transmission of the disease from one person to another.
The plague started in Europe in October , when 12 ships from the Black Sea docked at the Sicilian port of Messina. Most sailors aboard the ships were dead, and those who were alive were covered in black boils that oozed blood and pus. Symptoms of the Black Death included fever, chills, vomiting, diarrhea, terrible aches and pains — and then death. Victims could go to bed feeling healthy and be dead by morning. The plague killed cows, pigs, goats, chickens and even sheep, leading to a wool shortage in Europe.
Understandably terrified about the mysterious disease, some people of the Middle Ages believed the plague was a divine punishment for sin. During the High Middle Ages, universities gradually began to prosper however, and the scholastic movement, spearheaded by figures such as Italian philosopher Thomas Aquinas, grew rapidly.
Both the high period of the medieval era and the subsequent Late Middle Ages were marked by the rise of organised militaries and international conflict. At the same time as waging costly wars against the French, England also fought a series of conflicts against the Kingdom of Scotland, including the famous Battle of Stirling Bridge in , when Scottish armies led by Sir William Wallace defeated numerically superior English forces. Scottish general William Wallace was a hero of the middle ages in Britain.
It was also during this time that plague stalked the continent, with the Black Death taking the lives of an estimated 75 to million people across both Europe and Asia between and The closing years of the medieval period were marked by discovery, be it technological, artistic, or territorial.
In Italy, the 14th century saw the beginning of the cultural explosion known today as the Renaissance, with painting, sculpture, and architecture seeing marked advancement. Although neither side "won" the Crusades, they were successful in uniting Europeans behind the Roman Catholic Church.
The Crusades also brought many of the advances of Islamic societies to the European continent, helping to set the stage for the coming Renaissance. Although Renaissance-era thinkers often dismissed the medieval period as devoid of artistic value , the period's contributions to both art and architecture are still on full display in the stained glass and incredible architecture found in structures, such as cathedrals, monasteries, and churches, which still stand to this day.
Some of the most famous Gothic-style architecture and religious art still revered today, including frescoes, mosaics, and paintings, date to the medieval period. In addition to grand cathedrals, the medieval period also saw the construction of many grand castles. These grand homes grew up out of the feudal system that existed in rural Europe during the medieval period. Kings granted pieces of land to noblemen and bishops, who in turn granted the right to work the land to peasants.
The feudalism system also gave rise to the many legends we know today that revolve around knights in shining armor and damsels in distress. Whether these legends hold any truth or are mostly fantasy we may never know, as any facts upon which they're based were likely lost to history hundreds of years ago. In fact, scholars still debate whether there was ever a real King Arthur!
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