High Middle Ages

Examples of High Middle Ages in the following topics:

• Daily Medieval Life

  • During the High Middle Ages, the population of Europe more than doubled, but daily life remained harsh, with risk of disease and illness.
  • The High Middle Ages was a period of tremendous expansion of population.
  • A major factor in the development of towns included Viking invasions during the early Middle Ages, which led to villages erecting walls and fortifying their positions.
  • Women in the Middle Ages were officially required to be subordinate to some male, whether their father, husband, or other kinsman.
  • Compare and contrast the lives of different groups of the population during the Middle Ages

• Italian Politics

  • By the Late Middle Ages (circa 1300 onward), Latium, the former heartland of the Roman Empire, and southern Italy were generally poorer than the North.
  • Sicily had prospered for 150 years during the Emirate of Sicily and later for two centuries during the Norman Kingdom and the Hohenstaufen Kingdom, but had declined by the late Middle Ages.
  • The new mercantile governing class, who gained their position through financial skill, adapted to their purposes the feudal aristocratic model that had dominated Europe in the Middle Ages.
  • A feature of the High Middle Ages in Northern Italy was the rise of the urban communes which had broken from the control by bishops and local counts.
  • The biggest accomplishments of the Medici were in the sponsorship of art and architecture, mainly early and High Renaissance art and architecture.

• Crime and Punishment

  • Crimes were punished harshly during the Middle Ages with torture and executions common place for even the smallest of offenses.
  • To be hanged, drawn and quartered was from 1351 a statutory penalty in England for men convicted of high treason, although the ritual was first recorded during the reigns of King Henry III (1216–1272) and his successor, Edward I (1272–1307).
  • For reasons of public decency, women convicted of high treason were instead burned at the stake.
  • Describe the ways in which crimes were punished in the Middle Ages

• Europe's Early Trade Links

  • A prelude to the Age of Discovery was a series of European expeditions crossing Eurasia by land in the late Middle Ages undertaken by a number of explorers, including Marco Polo, who left behind the most detailed and inspiring record of his travels across Asia.  
  • A prelude to the Age of Discovery was a series of European expeditions crossing Eurasia by land in the late Middle Ages.
  • Most were Italians, as trade between Europe and the Middle East was controlled mainly by the Maritime republics.
  • The geographical exploration of the late Middle Ages eventually led to what today is known as the Age of Discovery:  a loosely defined European historical period from the 15th century to the 18th century that witnessed extensive overseas exploration emerged as a powerful factor in European culture and globalization.
  • Recall the exploration of Eurasia in the Middle Ages by Marco Polo, which was a prelude to the advent of the Age of Discovery in the 15th Century

• The Hittites

  • The Hittites were an ancient Anatolian people of the Bronze Age, who manufactured advanced iron goods, ruled through government officials with independent authority over various branches of government, and worshipped storm gods.
  • After c. 1180 BCE, the empire came to an end during the Bronze Age collapse, and splintered into several independent "Neo-Hittite" city-states, some of which survived until the 8th century BCE.
  • The Hittites are usually depicted as a people living among the Israelites—Abraham purchases the Patriarchal burial-plot from "Ephron HaChiti" (Ephron the Hittite), and Hittites serve as high military officers in David's army.
  • Although their civilization thrived during the Bronze Age, the Hittites were the forerunners of the Iron Age and were manufacturing iron artifacts from as early as the 14th century BCE.
  • The history of the Hittite civilization is known mostly from cuneiform texts found in the area of their kingdom, and from diplomatic and commercial correspondence found in various archives in Egypt and the Middle East.

• Greek Dark Ages

  • The Late Bronze Age collapse, or Age of Calamities, was a transition in the Aegean Region, Eastern Mediterranean, and Southwestern Asia that took place from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age.
  • The palace economy of the Aegean Region that had characterized the Late Bronze Age was replaced, after a hiatus, by the isolated village cultures of the Greek Dark Ages, a period that lasted for more than 400 years.
  • Excavations of Dark Age communities such as Nichoria in the Peloponnese have shown how a Bronze Age town was abandoned in 1150 BCE, but then reemerged as a small village cluster by 1075 BCE.
  • High status individuals did exist during the Dark Ages, however, their standards of living were not significantly higher than others in their village.
  • Migrations, invasions, and destruction during the end of the Bronze Age (c. 1200 BCE).

• Italian Trade Cities

  • Italian city-states trading during the late Middle Ages set the stage for the Renaissance by moving resources, culture and knowledge from the East.
  • During the late Middle Ages, Northern and Central Italy became far more prosperous than the south of Italy, with the city-states, such as Venice and Genoa, among the wealthiest in Europe.
  • Wool was imported from Northern Europe (and in the 16th century from Spain) and together with dyes from the east were used to make high quality textiles.

• Enlightenment Ideals

  • The Age of Enlightenment, also known as the Enlightenment, was a philosophical movement that dominated the world of ideas in Europe in the 18th century.
  • There is little consensus on the precise beginning of the Age of Enlightenment, with conventional starting points of the beginning of the 18th century (1701) or the middle of the 17th century (1650).
  • The cultural exchange during the Age of Enlightenment ran in both directions across the Atlantic.
  • The prime example of reference works that systematized scientific knowledge in the Age of Enlightenment were universal encyclopedias rather than technical dictionaries.
  • A great number of the entries were dedicated to describing the sciences and crafts in detail, and provided intellectuals across Europe with a high-quality survey of human knowledge.

• Trade and Commerce

  • During the late Middle Ages, the increasingly dominant position of the Ottoman Empire in the eastern Mediterranean presented an impediment to trade for the Christian nations of the west, who in turn started looking for alternatives.
  • The Hanseatic League was an alliance of North German and Baltic cities during the Middle Ages.
  • The revolt had various causes, including the socio-economic and political tensions generated by the Black Death in the 1340s, the high taxes resulting from the conflict with France during the Hundred Years War, and instability within the local leadership of London.
  • List the factors that lead to a change in commerce and trade in the Late Middle Ages

• The Sultanates of Somalia

  • From the Middle Ages until Europeans colonized the territory of today's Somalia, the region was never dominated by a centralized empire and instead witnessed the development and decline of several powerful trading sultanates whose cultures were deeply rooted in Islam.
  • During the Middle Ages, Somalia's territory witnessed the emergence and decline of several powerful sultanates that dominated the regional trade.
  • Following the Middle Ages and Early Modern period, Arab sultanates continued to dominate the region, until it fell under the colonial control of Europeans in the 19th century.
  • He described Mogadishu as "an exceedingly large city" with many rich merchants, which was famous for its high quality fabric that it exported to Egypt, among other places.