Mikaila Medeiros, Kayla Toohey, and Katherine Maurno
Humanities
11/9/11
6C
What are the middle Ages? I know! The middle ages are the period in time, European history
between 500 A.D and about the 1400’s. During the Middle Ages Charles Martel was Frankish war leader.
Martel’s grandson was the greatest leader of the Franks. The land that Charmangle conquered was
kingdoms in the southwest part of what is now France. The reason the people popped down
Charmangled as Holy Empire because he arrived with his army in Rome. Feudalism is a system for
organization and governing society based on land and service. It started in Europe around A.D 800. It
worked to help control their lands. Feudalism helped maintain peace and order because it was
developed to. Vassals were nobles who took an oath of loyalty to their lords. A lord is a king. The
relationship between a lord and a vassal is that the lord or other powerful landowners would give to the
vassals. A fief is a property given to a vassal in return for loyalty. An oath of featly is the promise the
vassal makes to the lord. The Code of Chivalry is a code of conduct that knights believed they should
follow. The knights were the nobles, but when they were in armor. The responsibilities of knights were
to fight for the king. The role the serfs had was they lived in the villages around fortified house that
belonged to the fiefs owner, or lord. A manor was a large self-sufficient estate granted to a lord and
worked by serfs. The Norse (Viking) is any of the tribes that came from the Northern part of the area.
What William Duke accomplished in 1066 is that he crossed the English Channel with about 5,000
knights. William defeated Harold, the Saxon king of England. King John was one of the kings of England.
The group that forced King John to sign the Magna Carta was his vassals. The Magna Carta was an
important document because it stated that the king could not violate the rights of free men and women
by setting unfair taxes or making demands of goods or labor. The production or right it gave was legal
rights enjoyed by English people and Americans. The primary religion in the middle Ages was Roman
Catholicism and Christianity. Monks were priests that dedicated their life to god. Monks spend most of
their time during the day in the prayer. They also farmed, studied, and made wines, medicines and craft
goods. A monastery was communities where monks lived. The role that monks played in learning and in
education was working at a monastery which was a learning center. Most monasteries had a
scriptorium, or a room for making books. Since no printing presses existed, all books were carefully
copied by hand. They also copied old Greek and Roman texts. They copied beautiful books called
manuscripts. Nuns are women who shared religious life, and who chose to serve god by becoming nuns.
A cathedral is a large Christian church. The crusades were series of wars to take the holy land. The
Christian crusades went into battle with the Muslims to capture Jerusalem and nearby lands where Jesus
had lived. A Reconquista was a long war fought by Christian armies to recapture Spain. Merchants and
craftsman, during the Middle Ages were ones whose occupation was the buying and selling of goods.
Job or trades they did was they were tailors, shoemakers, drapers, bakers, locksmiths, painters, joiners,
stone makers, and masters. if I were an apprentice what typically would be expected of me is work for
another designated amount of time in return for instruction in trade, art, and business. A journey crafts
man is after you served for the apprentice. You also you around to towns to show them how good you
are at what you do. The relationship between a journeyman and an apprentice was after a journeyman
served for the apprentice since they were 8 to when they are 20, the journeyman goes to all these
different towns to show the people in the towns how good he is at doing what he was taught to do by
the apprentice. You can become a master craftsman by going to different towns and getting someone
to hire you. A gild is to cover with or as if with a thin coating of gold. The Black Death of Bubonic plague
was a sickness that that wiped out one third of the western European population during the next 130
years. This is what the Middle Ages are.