Page 260 - Western Civilization A Brief History, Volume I To 1715 9th - Jackson J. Spielvogel

forever mired in endless petty conflicts, some medieval kings began to exert a centralizing authority and inaugurated the process of developing new kinds of monarchical states. By the thirteenth century, European monarchs were solidifying their governmental institutions in pursuit of greater power.
The recovery of the Catholic Church produced a reform movement that led to exalted claims of papal authority. This increase in church power, coupled with the rise of monarchical states, made it almost inevitable that there would be conflicts between church and state. At the same time, vigorous papal leadership combined with new dimensions of religious life to make the Catholic Church a forceful presence in every area of life. The role of the church in the new European civilization was quite evident in the career of a man named Samson, who became abbot of the great English abbey of Bury Saint Edmunds in 1182. According to Jocelyn of Brakelond, a monk who assisted him, Abbot Samson was a devout man who wore “undergarments of horsehair and a horsehair shirt.” He loved virtue and “abhorred liars, drunkards and talkative folk.” His primary concern was the spiritual well-being of his monastery, but he spent much of his time working on problems in the world beyond the abbey walls. Since the monastery had fallen into debt under his predecessors, Abbot Samson toiled tirelessly to recoup the abbey’s fortunes by carefully supervising its manors. He also rounded up murderers to stand trial in Saint Edmunds and provided knights for the king’s army. But his actions were not always tolerant or beneficial. He was instrumental in driving the Jews from the town of Saint Edmunds and was not above improving the abbey’s possessions at the expense of his neighbors: “He built up the bank of the fish- pond at Babwell so high, for the service of a new mill, that by the keeping back the water there is not a man, rich or poor, but has lost his garden and his orchards.” The abbot’s worldly cares weighed heavily on him, but he had little choice if his abbey were to flourish and fulfill its spiritual and secular functions. But he did have regrets; as he remarked to Jocelyn: “If he could have returned to the circumstances he had enjoyed before he became a monk, he would never have become a monk or an abbot.”1
222 Chapter 10
The Emergence and Growth of European Kingdoms, 1000–1300
Q FOCUS QUESTIONS: What steps did the rulers of England and France take during the High Middle Ages to reverse the decentralizing tendencies of fief-holding? What were the major political and religious developments in Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, and northern and eastern Europe during the High Middle Ages?
The domination of society by the nobility reached its apex in the High Middle Ages. During the same period, however, kings began the process of extending their power in more effective ways. Out of this growth in the monarchies would eventually come the European states that dominated much of later European history.
Kings possessed some sources of power that other lords did not. Usually, kings had greater opportunities to increase their lands through war and marriage alliances and then could use their new acquisitions to reward their followers and bind powerful nobles to them. In the High Middle Ages, kings found ways to strengthen governmental institutions and consequently to extend their powers. The growth of cities, the revival of commerce, and the emergence of a money economy enabled monarchs to hire soldiers and officials and to rely less on their vassals.
England in the High Middle Ages
In 1066, an army of heavily armed knights under Wil- liam of Normandy landed on the southeastern coast of England and soundly defeated King Harold and his Anglo-Saxon foot soldiers at the Battle of Hastings on October 14. William (1066–1087) was crowned king of England at Christmastime in London and began the process of combining Anglo-Saxon and Norman institu- tions. Many of the Norman knights were given parcels of land that they held as fiefs from the new English king. William made all nobles swear an oath of loyalty to him and insisted that all people owed loyalty to the king rather than to their lords.
Gradually, fusion between the victorious Normans and the defeated Anglo-Saxons transformed England. Although the Norman ruling class spoke French, inter- marriage of the Norman-French and the Anglo-Saxon nobility gradually blended the two cultures and vastly enriched the English language. The Normans also took over existing Anglo-Saxon institutions, such as the
The Rise of Kingdoms and the Growth of Church Power
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