מתנה ליום ההולדת של קרייזי טוסט

מתנה ליום ההולדת של קרייזי טוסט

Dom_Quixote • 13 באפר׳ 2005

כבוד,

לכבוד יום הולדתו של הטוסט, הייתי רוצה להעלות לדיון בפורום מכובד זה נושא הקרוב ללבי, והוא האומה הצרפתית בתקופה ימי הביניים. להנאתם מובא פה מאמר מרתק מאת ד"ר ריצ'רד הוקר מאוניברסיטת וושינגטון-סטייט:

There is no real distinct break between the Germanic culture of the Franks and the distinctly European culture of the French, based as it is on several models—classical, Latin, German, Celtic, and Scandinavian. The area within the boundaries of France had one of the most dynamic histories of diversity in the European Middle Ages, occupied as it was at first by native Europeans, then the Celts, then the Romans, then the Germans, and, in the last wave of migration, and influx of Scandinavians. The amazing thing about this history is the culture that the French forged from all these materials, eventually, with England, becoming the central culture in the larger process of the invention of Europe.


The Carolingians The emergence of a distinct European culture in France emerged with the creation of the Carolingian dynasty among the Franks in Gaul. The early Franks fiercely protected their culture even against inroads made by Christian missionaries. While the Merovingians had consolidated power over all of Frankish territories, Frankish Gaul still remained culturally diverse with distinct populations of both Celts and Franks.

But the Merovingians, as discussed in the section on the Germans, were being caught up in a larger project by the church to found a new central government in Europe to provide the foundation for the conversion of Europe to Christianity. The Merovingians, so promising at the start, did not prove to be this foundation.

That foundation would appear in the person of Carolus Magnus or Charlemagne, who ruled Frankish Gaul from 768-814 and from whom we derive the name, "Carolingian." Backed by the papacy, Carolus Magnus embarked on a tireless series of wars of conquest; by the end, he had fought just about every European state around. He eventually controlled most of central Europe, the northern sections of Italy, as well as Frankish Gaul.

Carolus Magnus, however, did not have a working model of government over such a vast territory, so he improvised. He appointed regional governors to rule separate localities—these he called counts—and he granted the counts tremendous independence and authority. Almost all the centralized functions of the state, such as the raising of revenue and the maintenance of a military, fell exclusively to the administration of the diverse counts. These two functions would eventually divide. Among the nobility, the count was responsible for revenue and finances while a separate title, the duke, took responsibility for the maintenance of a military.

The problem, however, was in controlling all of these folks. While it made sense to devolve authority to more or less autonomous local governments, there was nothing to insure their loyalty outside of the physical presence of the monarch. In order to bring some semblance of centralized authority to this system, Carolus Magnus instituted the office of the missi, meaning "sent out" in Latin. The missi travelled around the kingdom and checked up on the counts, dukes, and local officials. The Carolingian model of government, then, contained two very new innovations that allowed for the paradoxical creation of a centralized government over autonomous local governments.

This was to be a significant innovation—the government of Carolus Magnus was the first, centralized government in western Europe after the collapse of the western Roman Empire. The model he formed, a centralized government that consisted largely of independent local rulers, would become the foundation of the later innovations in government structure in the later Middle Ages.

The administration of a large and diverse population also demonstrated the inadequacies of German judicial methods which largely relied on oaths and the ordeal. If two parties had a dispute, they would swear oaths and undergo either a physical trial of torture or fight one another. Roman models of jurisprudence were largely lost in the darkness of time. Carolus Magnus invented a new judiciary form that was built on the Germanic model: the inquest. In a dispute between two people, the judge at an inquest would call several people forward and have them, under oath, deliver their impressions and opinions concerning the dispute. The inquest was eventually abandoned on the continent but was continued in England by the Normans, particularly Henry I. In England and later America, the inquest would eventually develop into the jury trial.

For our purposes, however, the most important aspect of Carolus Magnus's rule was his formal patronage of Christianity and learning. Of all the events in early European history, this was the most significant first step in developing a distinct European monoculture. So important was this period that historians have called it the Carolingian Renaissance. From this point onwards, a process began that eventually identified "Europe" as synonymous with "Roman Christian"—this process started with Carolus Magnus's attempt to revive learning.

Carolus Magnus took upon himself the mission of not only controlling most of Europe, but catalyzing the spread of Roman Christianity among Europeans. With the fall of the western Roman Empire, however, Europe had become largely illiterate and this produced a major obstacle to the spread of Christian culture. The most vital and important centers of literacy and learning, however, had sprung up in Anglo-Saxon England in the early 700's. In order to jump start a revival of learning, Carolus Magnus imported an Anglo-Saxon Benedictine monk, Alcuin (d. 804), to institute schools and a program of learning.

Alcuin's basic task was to revive literacy among Frankish clergy and nobles. However, he primarily based his educational program on classical models—in fact, the entire system mirrored the Roman system of education and included grammar and rhetoric. He also used classical as well as Christian works—in the later Carolingian period, heavy emphasis would be placed on Roman writers such as Cicero and Vergil. It is for this reason that the period is called a "renaissance," for it is the first conscious attempt to revive and use classical culture in a distinctly different cultural setting.

But the revival included more than just literature and education. In the court of the later Carolingian king, Charles the Bald, the philosopher John the Scot reintroduced Neo-Platonism into European culture and began a strain of mystical and humanistic Christianity that would eventually effloresce in the Italian Renaissance.

Alcuin introduced other innovations into the Carolingian world. In his effort to increase literacy, Alcuin invented a new style of handwriting that would develop into Carolingian script. Now, I know handwriting is boring, but the great innovation the Carolingians made in writing was to make it readable . Carolingian script is immensely simple and rigorously neat. In order to speed up the writing process, the Carolingians also introduced miniscule letters, that is, lower case letters. Look at this page. See the capital letters? Before the Carolingians, that's what every letter of a sentence would look like. See the small letters? They're there because of the Carolingians.

It is a mistake, however, to read the Carolingians primarily as a continuation of classical culture or the re-establishment of that line of cultural transmission. The cultural context was far more complex. Not only were the Carolingians adopting classical culture to their Germanic world view, they also imported almost all of their learning from the Anglo-Saxon and Irish worlds with only a few scholars coming from Italy. The Carolingian Renaissance, then, was a dynamic period in which the Franks actively imported distinct cultural practices from two very different worlds: the Anglo-Saxons and the Celtic Irish. Over the next one hundred and fifty years, this unique mix of classical, Christian, French, Anglo-Saxon, Irish, and later Scandinavian, culture.

The Carolingians, however, fell victim to the unique government that they had established. While Carolus Magnus could hold this improbably system together, his son and successor, Louis the Pious (814-840), couldn't. By the end of the ninth century, Frankish Gaul had become a series of more or less independent kingdoms under the control of individual dukes. Even though the Carolingian dynasty lasted until 987, the Carolingian monarch was largely irrelevant in the government and control of the territories all throughout the tenth century.


Feudalism The single most important innovation of the Carolingian period was the steady development of feudalism from the governmental model developed under Carolus Magnus. This term, feudalism, has been the subject of tremendous and rancorous debate for over a century. Suffice it to say that there was no such thing as "feudalism" in the Middle Ages—the term was invented much later in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The legal, political, economic, and ideological practices that the term has been applied to vary widely across time and geography—this diversity of practices largely renders the term nonsensical.

Still, there are enough common elements to these practices that the concept of "feudalism" is helpful in starting to understand medieval history and culture, though it is less helpful as you understand more. So, in this spirit, let's come to terms with the origins of medieval feudalism.

It is impossible to account for the origins of feudalism. One distinct origin, of course, was political—in trying to organize a large empire, the Carolingians created a series of relatively autonomous local official, dukes and counts, that were partly under the control of royal representatives. Economically, the feudal system seems to have originated among the monasteries being built throughout Frankish Gaul. Many of these monasteries found themselves with more arable land than they needed or could farm. The abbot, then, granted a "precarious tenure," called a precarium, to commoners. In exchange for rent. Another origin was cultural: the system of feudalism derived from the tribal logic of the Germanic warrior-band, called a comitatus by the Roman historian, Tacitus. The comitatus was held together by the warriors' loyalty to their lord; in return, they enjoyed the protection of the lord. This system is extremely common among tribal groups and is one of the only systems of law and jurisprudence in primarily tribal societies. This, in fact, is why the entire practice got the name, "feudalism." In the comitatus system, as in all tribal systems of clan protection, if a crime was committed against an individual, it was the obligation of the entire comitatus (or clan group) to avenge the wrong. This led to feuds between warrior-bands until some restitution stopped the cycle of retribution.

This three-fold inheritance shows the problem with coming to terms with feudalism. Many historians regard feudalism as primarily a system of government—it is first and foremost a system of decentralized government. Other historians emphasize the economic aspects—here, the use and dispersal of resources determines the social and political structure of feudalism. In recent years, the majority of historians emphasize the cultural and ideological aspects of feudalism—here, feudalism is a system of thought that organizes identity and social class. Feudalism, of course, is all of these. Just as its origins can't be separated, so its reality as a political, economic, and cultural practice, or set of diverse practices, can't be separated.

The entire structure of feudalism is built on the foundation of lordship, that is, a concentration of political, economic, and cultural power in the nobility rather than in a centralized figure such as the monarch. From a political point of view, the nobility control the state in their roles of maintaining an independent military and exercising a certain amount of autonomous control over the finances and revenues from the lands under their control. The nobility were granted these powers, as well as decentralized economic power, by swearing to protect the king, a cultural practice inherited from the Germans. The nobleman became a vassal of the king; the word, "vassal," comes from the Celtic word for "boy." As the Roman Empire began to crumble, aristocrats would surround themselves with young warriors; this, too, was partly the origin of the feudal system.

From an economic perspective, the nobility functioned as chief tenants on land granted to them by the monarch—this land grant was called a fief and the granting of land to a noble was enfeoffment. The nobility rented the land, enfeoffed minor nobility below them, and especially used a dependent class of serf laborers to farm the lands directly under their control. These serf laborers had to farm land belonging to the noble but were also allowed to keep the produce from adjoining strips of land that they farmed. Until the last century and a half of the Middle Ages, almost all the labor in feudal territories was done by what can only be considered slaves. This economic system has been called by historians manorialism; while a fiefdom points to the region of land under the political control of a vassal or sub-vassal, the manor refers to that land under the economic control of the vassal.

Enfeoffment was not an irrevocable process. If the monarch felt that the nobleman was not being true to his obligations, he could declare the fiefdom in forfeiture. Equally, the vassal could break the feudal bond in a process called diffidatio. In either case, the result always involved warfare—vassals did not willingly give over forfeited fiefdoms and monarchs never tolerated the breaking of the feudal bond. Because individual nobility could enfeoff land to vassals beneath them, the same rules applied there as well. A nobleman could declare a sub-vassal's lands in forfeiture or a sub-vassal could break the feudal bond.

From a cultural perspective, each area of localized control became a potential center of cultural production. The court culture that develops in the later Middle Ages is diffused throughout the areas under more or less feudal control. It also produces a social ideology to buttress the conflicting claims of monarchs and autonomous nobility. Court culture of the Middle Ages sought to legitimize the social hierarchy that placed a political, warrior aristocracy over what were essentially slave laborers; most of the literature and culture of the Middle Ages was in the service of developing the ideals of this aristocratic class. These ideals were summed up in courtliness and chivalry, which entailed education, loyalty, warrior virtues such as self-sacrifice and courage, and behaviors. In the twelfth century, this court culture arising from feudalism would produce its highest cultural forms in chivalric literature, entailing both courtliness and warrior ideals, and courtly love, an exclusively literary phenomenon articulating ideologies of gendered behaviors. By the time these cultural products appear, however, feudalism had largely been replaced by more centralized governments. The later middle ages is a period of challenges to the decentralized aspects of feudalism, so the chivalric and courtly culture developed at the time has a strong subversive and critical aspect to it.

The most critical cultural aspect of feudalism, whether or not you accept that such a system ever existed, was the stress on interpersonal relationships. Unlike anything in classical, Celtic, or Germanic society, the feudal system produced a series of obligations that were voluntarily entered into. While the essential logic comes from the tribal and kinship logic of obligations and reciprocity, the relationship between lord and vassal became increasingly contractual and conflictual in its basic orientation. The entire system was based on loyalty , and the cultural ideology that developed from it stressed the importance of loyalty in interpersonal relationships. As a result, interpersonal relationships became the main focus of medieval political, ethical, and literary accomplishment. The greatest products of the later medieval court culture, such as chivalric literature and courtly love, were ruthlessly focussed on interpersonal relationships, loyalty, and the mechanisms through which interpersonal relationships go awry.

Feudalism developed slowly. Its origins, as stated above, lay in the German comitatus and the practice by Roman aristocrats in the later Empire of surrounding themselves with a group of loyal, young fighters, a practice called patrocinium or "holding clients." The next stage involved granting to warriors lands in exchange for their service. This happened early on but did not become the dominant feature of feudalism until beyond the tenth century. By the end of the tenth century, when most historians agree that feudalism was in place, almost all of the vassals of the French monarch had no lands.

The next stage involved the granting of lands by the nobility to soldiers beneath them—this was sub-vassalage or subinfeudation. This was largely due to a change in warfare technology. Both the Romans and the Germans fought on foot—soldiers on horse were extremely rare and almost never fought. Between the fifth and eighth centuries, however, central Europeans began to develop methods of cavalry fighting. This meant creating a new breed of fighter, the horse soldier or chevalier (cniht or "knight" in German).

Outfitting an infantry was a fairly inexpensive affair; outfitting a cavalry took enormous amounts of resources. Individual lords who were asked to supply a large number of chevaliers couldn't afford to outfit these horsemen themselves. So they began to enfoeff large tracts of lands to chevaliers, or knights, who would then use the extra resources to outfit themselves.

The development of knighthood significantly changed the picture of medieval society. In its primitive way, it created a new kind of social mobility. It inspired knights to seek out lords who would grant them large areas of land and inspired both other knights and the nobility to actively seek out more fiefdoms to add to their own. This land hunger fueled many of the historical events of the early Middle Ages, such as the conquest of England by the Normans, the conquest of Wales and Scotland, and so on.

The next stage, carried out largely by the Carolingians, was to decentralize monarchical power by diffusing it to enfeoffed nobility. This created a precarious governmental situation. The remainder of the Middle Ages in France, England, and Germany would involve a long series of struggles between the centralized authority of the monarch and the decentralized authority vested in the nobility.

The very last stage was developed in the north of France in the duchy of Normandy. This duchy had been granted by the Carolingians to raiding Scandinavians, hence the name, "Normans," or "men from the North." The Normans adopted the feudal system as developed by the Carolingians but added one significant twist. They used, paradoxically enough, the decentralized authority of the feudal system to increase the power of the centralized authority—in this case, the duke.

The feudal system was largely in place in France by the tenth century. By that century, the noblemen had extracted from the monarch the rights to collect taxes and to run their own courts—the centralized authority of the monarch had largely disappeared. When the Normans invaded England in the latter half of the eleventh century, they brought the feudal system there as well. In the twelfth century, the system was adopted by German kingdoms and principalities. It was never, however, adopted in its fullest forms Italy, the Slavic countries, or Muslim Spain. As a European phenomenon, then, feudalism was a very limited experiment—the bulk of European culture went in other directions.


The Capetians When the Carolingian dynasty came to an end in the tenth century, the government had become so decentralized that the monarch was relatively irrelevant. A new dynasty began when Hugh Capet, the count of Paris, became king in 987. The Capetian dynasty lasted until 1328, but the first Capetians had no success in centralizing government. Throughout this entire period, France was essentially composed of independent political units that in many ways began to develop a high degree of cultural independence as well. When the Capetians began to unify the country in the twelfth century, they literally had to do it from the ground up.

At the end of the Carolingian period, the word, "France," was being used to describe the geographical area that had been under the control of the Franks. This word, however, was only a geographical term. In political, economic, linguistic, and cultural terms, this territory was composed of an incredible diversity of small states with differing sub-cultures and languages. The area to the north spoke a series of languages and dialects that would eventually produce modern-day French—the area controlled by the King in the north-central region, the Ile-de-France, included these languages. To the south, however, the French spoke languages a dialects related to Spanish and Italian; to the west, near Germany, German languages often prevailed.

The various duchies and counties were nominally under the control of the king. Technically, the king was the overlord of the dukes and counts, but in the later years of the Carolingians and the first couple centuries of Capetian rule, the dukes and counts ran their regions as more or less independent kingdoms. They dealth with each other independently, administered and taxed their own regions without any interference from the monarch, and refused to submit any feudal obligations to the king when they were requested. The situation was so bad during the first century of Capetian rule, that the monarchs didn't even control their own territory, the Ile-de-France. Instead the territory came under the control of "robber barons" who set up their own castles. The monarch, fearing for his life, rarely left Paris.

The situation began to change with Louis VI, called Louis the Fat or Louis the Wide-Awake, who ruled from 1108-1137. While all the earlier Capetian monarchs hatched grand plans to conquer and unify other regions, Louis assumed the more modest task of reseizing control over his own domain, the Ile-de-France. By the end of his reign, he had defeated the robber barons and so provided himself with a source of revenue from his own lands the earlier Capetians lacked.

In the reign of his son, Louis VII, from 1137 to 1180, things began to turn around. In fact, most historians date the beginning of the French state to Louis VII. It happened mainly by accident rather than any systematic effort on Louis's part to assert control over France. Two situations contributed to an elevation of his importance as a centralized figure. By the twelfth century, the military power between various duchies and counties had equalized. Settling disputes militarily had become extremely costly and the military equality between barons obviated negotiated settlements. The second accident was the ascendancy of Norman power in France. The Anglo-Norman king, Henry II, acquired a vast stretch of central France, the Duchy of Aquitane, when he married Eleanor of Aquitane (who, by the way, had divorced Louis VII). This gave Henry II control over the huge territory of Normandy in the north and Aquitaine in the south and gravely upset the balance of power among the French barons.




כבוד,
קיחוט

תקציר (C):

טוב-ששאלתם.-ובכן,-הצרפתים-בימי-הביניים-...

Tobias​(אחר) • 13 באפר׳ 2005

הכתוב מלא בחורים
אין ביבליוגרפיה
והכותב בבירור מושפע מזרמים עיקרים , רנסנסים במקורם שהתיעוד שלהם לקוי ולא קביל ואין לבסס עליו מאמר שלם.

אני רוצה להפנות אותכם אל הספר של "לואי ברטון" בשם-"מחשבות שלא חשבתי ולמה לעזזל אותם כתבתי"
שם תוכלו למצוא מספר נקודות מבט מעניינות שלא נכללו בכתבה צרת המוחין הזאת.

בתודה
זה שהקדיש חמש דקות בחמש בבוקר אחרי לילה במועדון לכתוב תגובה לאחד אביר מפוקפק בן בליעל, שסונט בנו עם פילפולי דעות צרפתיים,
קיחוט יקירי
שים את כל הדעות שלך בלאפה,
ותן להמונים,
אוכל למחשבה.