Medieval Background

Arab civilization

The Arab civilization was the birthplace of one of the three major religions, its culture was dominant in the Middle Ages, its economy was developed, trade and trade were long ahead of the backward markets of Europe at that time, and there was a great emphasis on the study of secular culture.

One: the founding of Islam and its scriptures

The founder of Islam, Muhammad, was born in poverty, and after becoming rich in business, he began to go to a cave to think about problems. When he was forty years old, he heard what Allah was teaching him and called him the messenger of Allah. So he began to preach to the people around him, from family to friends and some of the poor, but the social response was not great. Later, because of the many social problems involved, it was suppressed by the local merchants and nobles, and moved from the city of Mecca to the suburbs, where it began to continue preaching, which attracted the attention of the people of another city, and the two sides signed an agreement to transfer the mission center to Medina, began to establish a predominantly religious entity state, and began to carry out a series of reform measures. Roughly the following points:

First, the establishment of a place of worship mosque, which became the model for all future mosques: with a courtyard, a pulpit, and a Friday for the rituals to be held, and the direction of worship was the Ka'b, replacing the nature worship of the time.

Second, the slogan "Whoever joins Islam is a brother."

Third, the establishment of the Medina Charter: Unity with the Outside World.

Fourth, build up an army and call for jihad. Make war a sacred obligation. At first it was a slogan for the war against Mecca, and later it became a slogan for attacking other parts of the country, spreading Islam everywhere.

Muhammad had accumulated Liliang in Medina for eight years, built an army of more than 10,000 men, and personally led the army to attack Mecca. After the conquest of Mecca, a series of measures were implemented: Mecca was used as a resort, and the meteorite in the temple of Ka'ber was used as a sacred object. He personally presided over the first pilgrimage. He made the rules for the pilgrimage and gave a "farewell speech" on the mountain, and died of illness in Medina the following year.

It is well known that Islam formed a systematic canon in its founding: the Koran. This book was not written by Muhammad. Rather, it was a compilation of the teachings of Muhammad recorded by different disciples, and thus different sects arose. Its main content consists of two parts: the first is the Mecca Chapter, which is taught during the time of the accident, and the second is the Mehca Chapter, which is taught during the time of the accident in Medina.

This book lays down the most basic teachings of an Islamic follower:

The first is faith: you must believe in Allah, you must believe in angels. It is the intermediary between Allah and the Prophet; believing in the Scriptures, not only the Qur'an, but also the Old and New Testaments; the New Prophets. Obey the knowledge imparted by the prophets of the ages, believe in the Last Days, believe in the doctrine of the Last Judgment.

The second is the practical action, also known as the Five Exercises: the first is to recite the testimony, which must be recited every day, the second is to pray, which is done five times a day, and every Friday is to gather at the mosque, and the third is fasting, the ninth month of the Islamic calendar. Adult men and women are required to fast for a month (from sunrise to sunset), after which the ritual is Eid al-Fitr. The fourth is zakat, which is the payment of taxes, which can also be used as a kind of poor tax, stipulating that a person must devote 2.5% of the excess money to zakat in a year. The fifth is the pilgrimage. Followers are required to personally visit the temple of Mecca at least once in their lifetime, on the 7th, 8th, and 9th day of December every year.

The biggest difference between Islam and other religions is that Islam advocates equal emphasis on religion and secularity, opposes monasticism and abandonment of life, and therefore has no monasteries and monks, and opposes asceticism and celibacy. This was mainly due to the fact that Arab commerce was developed and people lived by doing business, and religion had to be born in accordance with the social realities of the time.

Second: Arab academic culture

Before the creation of Islam, the Arabs were culturally backward. It was not until after the founding of Islam that it began to enter the period of feudalization and the formation of the state. The surrounding areas were highly educated, and in order to spread the faith, believers were encouraged to learn to write (e.g., Hebrew, Syriac) and to educate Arab children by literate captives captured during the war. From then on, education and scholarship began to develop in Arabia, which was also related to its territorial expansion, and the Arab annexation of a large number of civilized regions through wars and the formation of several cultural centers.

Academically, it is first and foremost a local cultural center. In the region of Mecca and Medina, the first academic centers for the study of Islam were developed, and the most developed in the region were the studies of history and hadith.

Outside of the mainland, Iraq is the first region, where wealth is concentrated, academics are developed (it is the seat of ancient civilizations and empires), and there are many cultural traditions. Baghdad, the capital of the Arab Empire, was home to a large number of scholars and scholars who discussed linguistics, philosophy, and medicine. This was followed by Syria and Damascus, where a large number of Greek philosophical works were preserved and collected, from which translation work was carried out and a large number of texts were preserved. Then there was Egypt, where the ancient civilization was cut off by foreign invasions, but there was also the existing center of learning: Alexandria, which was built by the Macedonian king Alexander the Great, and was built with well-developed academic facilities for both architecture and scholarship.

Through geographical expansion, the Arab Empire absorbed the cultures of various peoples and made them a part of Arab culture, which had a great influence on later Europe.

In terms of education, there were no schools in the Arab region before the creation of Islam. From Muhammad onwards, education also began to take off. In the beginning, schools were built mainly in temples (mosques) for the purpose of learning characters and reciting scriptures, but the scope was narrow.

During the Arab Empire, there were schools and primary schools, which consisted mainly of the Qur'an and included arithmetic, grammar, and poetry, and the method of learning was memorization, and corporal punishment was advocated, and the cost depended on the teacher's personal financial situation.

By the ninth century, there were a large number of mosques and education was widespread. The characteristics of running a school are non-governmental, the government has set up special funds for running a school and unified standards for running a school, and the school has its own curriculum and conditions, and anyone can enter the school. By the time of the Atis Dynasty, government-run educational institutions and research institutions began to appear, absorbing a large number of talents for research and consciously cultivating a group of high-level officials.

In 1067, the first Arab institution of higher learning, the University of Niezemia, was recognized and funded by the government. The organization and management are strict, and the employment of teachers must be approved by the emperor, and there are 2~3 assistants. Students have scholarships, room and board are in the school, and there are many subjects to offer. Its institutions and methods influenced the development of universities in Europe in the future.

In terms of librarianship, the Arab library system is well developed. The new construction is the same as the old one. Such as the Library of Alexandria. Every school in the two river basins has a library, but there are also cases where texts have been destroyed during the war and the library has been preserved. and thus triggered several large-scale translation campaigns in history. Every Arab king has presided over it.

Moreover, the Arab Empire's personal collection of books was also very rich, which made the society have a strong academic atmosphere.

Part 3: Arabic literature and art

Arabic literature, as far as we can read it now, takes two main forms: poetry and prose stories.

Poetry is a literary tradition of the Arabs, with very early origins, long before the founding of Islam, when it entered its first flourishing period. Poems of the time: long poems - Gesuda and short poems - Magtua. It consists of upper and lower sentences. Rhyme at the end of the line, sing the praises of tribal heroes, battles, missing loved ones, or describing desert scenery. The poet was highly respected at the time and became a tribal spokesman or spiritual leader. At that time, there was also a special poetry competition, which was held at the Temple of Kerber, and the victors were called "poets of suspense". At that time, the famous "poet of hanging poetry" was Ulum Geis. He has a good personality and writes a lot of poems about his lover.

The advent of Islam interrupted the tradition of poetry, and poetry went into decline. Islam's emphasis on the study of the scriptures led to the decline of secular poetry. It was not until the empire began to expand that poetry regained its recovery and flourished, and its content was mainly philosophical questions, reflecting two attitudes towards life's pleasure and misanthropy: hedonism taught people to have fun in time and drink all day long;

The well-known style of prose stories is the maigamai (meaning gathering) style, which reflects the richness and variety of social life in terms of content and provenance, and is relatively colloquial, widely circulated, and has a great influence on future generations.

His masterpieces are Arabian Nights (also known as One Thousand and One Nights): the heavenly side, referring to the Temple of the Kaaba (Kaaba), referring to Arabia, and the Tales of the Night, referring to the stories told at night. It collects the existing legends of various places, periods, and nationalities, and processes and sorts them out, with complex contents, mainly aphorisms, languages, fairy tales, love, adventure, and proverbs, reflecting various common phenomena of the vast strata at that time, as well as the hatred of evil, praising noble qualities, and showing people's yearning for a better life.

Arabic art, because there is still a dogma that statues cannot be made, is mainly expressed in architecture.

The mosque is the main representative of the building, and its style was prescribed during the Muhammadic period, which was relatively simple at first, but contained three essential things: the courtyard must be spacious, with a roof and a pulpit.

With the expansion of the Arab Empire, the period of building mosques began. In 691, the Rock Mosque was built in Jerusalem and was one of the most famous early buildings. Features: Octagonal in shape, with huge domes, tiles painted with flowers and plants, and decorated with scriptures, it is considered to be the oldest Arabic building that has survived to this day.

Completed in 705 the Damascus Mosque (originally a Roman temple) is 158 meters long and 100 meters wide, with a triumphal arch at the main entrance, lined with Greek columns, and three minarets - a model for later mosques.

So far, the main features and functions of the mosque have been formed:

First, there is a spacious and clean hall, with corridors on both sides to ensure that the worshippers can enter the hall cleanly and worship.

Secondly, there must be minarets and tabernacles next to the main hall, as well as bathing rooms - to ensure the needs of religious life: to see the water at the entrance.

Thirdly, the majestic architecture and intricate carvings, mainly motifs, were designed to show the majesty and power of the Arab Empire.

Knights

The knights of the Middle Ages, especially the Germanic knights, were a very developed class.

Originally, knighthood was developed from cavalry, and the prerequisite for this was that only when cavalry replaced infantry could the knightly class rise. The first time the cavalry showed their skills was undoubtedly the battle of the Germans to defeat the Eastern Romans, which established the superiority of the cavalry. But knights are not equal to cavalry in the absolute sense, knights are actually a product of Western Europe's military liliang into the feudal system. In the beginning, because of the large number of freedmen, a system of compulsory military service was introduced. However, with the annexation of land, the large estate system led to a great decline in the number of freemen. This made compulsory military service difficult, the range of conscripts narrowed by the narrow, and the freedmen could not afford military equipment. And so the knight began to become the privilege of the lord.

In order to ensure a considerable number of soldiers, the upper echelons of the time took some measures, that is, to combine military service with economic resources, that is, the system of fiefdoms that was common in the Middle Ages later. This system began in the time of Charles Matt in the Frankish Kingdom. Military service was changed from compulsory to fiefdoming, and the army of the feudal lords became the basis of the national army. This system had stability and solidity, transforming the cavalry from a decentralized state into a knightly class. That is, the formation of a knight equal to the cavalry plus the composition of land ownership.

The main duty of knights at that time was to be soldiers, and the image of soldiers was highly respected by society, because frequent military activities were characteristic of the Middle Ages, and in people's minds, war was a normal state of social life. In the economic sphere, knights were part of the feudal system and were loyal to the lord. And through ceremonies such as oaths, this bond is strengthened. And in terms of social class, nobles can be knights in battle, but knights are not necessarily nobles. The knight's main duty was to fight, and he did not have the judicial power and some hereditary power that the nobility had, but was "the retinue of the nobility". It was in the middle class between the aristocracy and the peasantry.

In the period of peace after the 12th ~ 13th centuries, the knightly military could only begin to weaken, improve its status in the economic and political fields, and gradually integrate with the nobility. At that time, the training of knights had to start from birth, and it was a very long process: baptism was supervised by the father at birth, and he was raised by a nursing mother until he was 7 years old, and he was not allowed to live with his family. After the age of 7, he really embarked on the path of a knight. Leaving his residence to a noble family with a higher status than his family, he began to learn the necessary knowledge to become a knight, such as falconry, various religious knowledge, and etiquette. From the age of 14 onwards, he served as the personal attendant of the nobles, which was of a ceremonial nature, and he could learn a lot of experience and knowledge from it until he reached adulthood at the age of 21.

At the age of 21, a special ritual must be passed before he can leave the lord's family and become an independent knight. The ceremony is solemn, and this canonization is considered a continuation or transformation of the old rite of passage: on the first day, two rituals are performed, bathing and praying, in order to purify the body and soul. The next day, the knight was officially conferred: the war horse was accepted, and a symbolic race was held, which became the external symbol of the knight.

Therefore, the knights at that time had fixed characteristics and had a special name called "Bing".

The relationship between medieval knights and the church was a major feature of medieval knights, and it was also a combination of barbarism and theory.

Initially, the two sides were opposed, as the knights represented the destroying side, while Christianity represented the destroyed Roman Empire, and the knights were very martial and characterized by plundering, often aimed at churches. Both sides clashed in theory and practice, with Christianity advocating peace and knights taking pleasure in war.

There are two main factors that lead to the combination of the two: First, it stems from the secularization of the church. Because of the large amount of land acquired, the church became the largest feudal lord in Western Europe, and a small church at that time could own more than 1,000 estates. In order to protect their property and interests, the church began to get involved in secular things, from attachment to the king to domination of the king, which also shifted the object of knights' protection, and the knights, as Christians, could not infringe on the church, and the church changed from an institution opposed to the knights to an institution protected by knights. The second point is that the knights themselves have changed. Because entering the church was a way for the descendants of the nobility to gain social status at that time, the knights received religious education from an early age, followed God's teachings to choose appropriate behaviors, and cultivated faith in God from an early age; in addition, knights often prayed for God's blessing when they encountered difficulties during war; some knights turned to monasticism because the war was too cruel, and the other part of the knights who did not die because they needed spiritual comfort, and absolutely believed in Christianity.

Therefore, the code of conduct of many churches became the code of conduct for the knights, and the knights became the warriors of God. At that time, the main principles of knighthood were the following: Be a devout Christian. After the 12th ~ 13th century, piety became the primary criterion, and belief in Christianity was both a quality and a qualification, and there were regulations and constraints on knights. The knight's equipment also represents the doctrine, the sword is the symbol of the cross, the shield represents the duty to protect the church, and the double-edged sword represents the side of justice and the killing of the enemy. And believing in God, the knight must also have practical actions, for prayer and repentance of sins. It is necessary to be the guardian of the Church, and the secular state is God's room on earth. The king is the representative of the room, and the knight protects the king both for the protection of God and thus translates into the duty of protecting the church.

The aiqing view of medieval knights also has its own peculiarities. It is incompatible with modern people's concepts, but it can be said to be unique.

Marriages at that time were based on property, and the knights pursued aiqing, but the objects were all noblewomen. The notion of not being married, became a theme of propagation in the late Middle Ages, and bards sang in poetry. It had a great impact on later Europe. Moreover, this view of aiqing had a certain social basis at that time.

In peacetime, the knightly military could only weaken, and they began to live dependent on the noble court, paying attention to etiquette and demeanor rather than force. Especially after the Crusades, most of the men went out to fight, and the worldly things fell on women, and their abilities and status improved. The hostess often played an important role in the court, and her status was exalted. Become the object of worship of the samurai who came to attach themselves to him. Moreover, the knight grew up in an aristocratic family, and a lot of education was arranged by the hostess, and the two invisibly constituted a kind of motherly worship. It was also a supplement to the absence of aiqing marriages at the time, where knights married for the sake of profit, in order to satisfy spiritual needs. Looking for spiritual support outside of a normal marriage, the hostess they worship naturally becomes the object of their pursuit. This kind of aiqing has many ideas that are different from those of other eras: it contains the concept of allegiance, but it does not seek equality, it does not aim at marriage, it does not matter if it goes through hardships, it is also an opportunity for moral improvement, and feudal vassal relations are reflected in obedience in aiqing. At that time, the noble lady was the typical type of woman of that period, and the originally rude knight, if favored by him, could become cultivated, conform to the norms of being a high-class person, and was also a requirement in peacetime.

Ecclesiastical chapters

Christianity, and its own religious views, had a great influence on the Middle Ages and summarized the economic structure of the Middle Ages.

Like the knights and aristocrats mentioned above, medieval Christianity had a clear evolutionary process: as we all know, early Christianity was born out of Judaism, and in the later years of Rome it was finally recognized by the state and began to develop and become the state religion of Rome. After the division of Rome, Christianity also formed two religions, Eastern and Western, namely Catholicism in Western Rome and Orthodox Christianity in Eastern Rome, and the main role played in the Middle Ages was Catholicism, but it was customary to call it Christianity; after the great migration of barbarians, the invasion of the Germanic people did not destroy this religion, and the culture of Christianity as a superstructure remained, and began to evolve with reference to the doctrine of ancient Greece, becoming the ideology of the later Middle Ages, which included a wider range than the Roman period, and incorporated the whole society into a system.

In the beginning, the status of Christianity in the whole society was low, when the Roman royal power had already perished, and the Germanic people were like scattered sands, after constantly taking refuge and clinging to different new liliang, and finally settled in the Frankish kingdom, and in the "History of the Franks" there is a detailed process of approaching the church and the kingdom, and by the time of Clovis Christianity was officially accepted. In fact, the Frankish kingdom also needed such a system of moral theories to consolidate its power, and the two sides began to merge. During this phase, the Church was only given a chance to survive, and the clergy were appointed by the king and obeyed the king.

By the time of the Carolingian dynasty of the Frankish kingdom, the process of feudalization in Western Europe was completed, and it was also the period of liliang accumulation of the church. Because the Frankish kingdom pursued unity, it needed to rely on the liliang of the church. Pepin the Short helped the Church establish the Papal States, and Charlemagne used the Church to fight heresy and waged a large number of wars, and the Church became the pretext for the wars at that time. At the same time, the liliang of the church also began to develop, mainly in the economic aspect: it received a large amount of land from the king, which transformed the church from a religious and ideological institution into an organization with wealth, which laid the economic foundation for its future strength.

After the ninth century AD, especially the eleventh~thirteenth centuries was the heyday of the Church, which was manifested in various aspects: first, the Church began to argue for the legitimacy of the Papal States, forged the "gift of Constantine", and confirmed the sanctity of the Papal States, a deception that was not exposed until the Renaissance. Secondly, the Church also began to form a secular ruling body, that is, the well-known system of hierarchy: the highest authority was the Pope, who presided over the internal affairs of the Vatican, the cardinals were elected by cardinals for a long time, and the cardinals were the main leaders of the Church, then there were the metropolitans, patriarchs and archbishops, who were all leaders of the grand diocese, and the last was the bishops and priests, whose authority was the church, and they could not preside over the sacraments. Zuihou, the Church began to compile a complete theological and theoretical system of kingship. The famous "double-sword (double-edged) theory" emerged, that is, both kingship and divine authority were granted to the church by God, and then the church was given to the king. The church became the mediator of royal power, and the conclusion that royal power could be taken back by the church was the theory of the church in its heyday.

With this, the power of the pope reached its zenith. Feudalism in Central Europe was also the time when Christianity spread, so it soon spread throughout Europe, and it was also an important reason for the rise of Christianity. As a result, the whole of Europe was Christianized, and the Church established itself as the general representative of the Middle Ages culturally, economically, and institutionally:

Politically, all theories arose by embracing hierarchies, merging social hierarchies with the Trinitarian theory, making prayer, war, and labor an essential part of society, and evolving the whole society into an organic one: that is, the monk equals the eye. Giving people a direction represents ideology, the aristocracy is the arm, and the people are the lower body of the human body, and no one can be misplaced. At the same time, he vigorously promoted the samurai spirit, and integrated the beliefs of the church and the concept of the samurai. A perfect union was formed to transform the knights from secular support to ecclesiastical support. The Church also maintained the feudal system and established feudal laws, and many of the civil laws of the time when the Church was the feudal lord came from the Church, and the Church itself began to have a court, that is, the Inquisition.

Economically, the church was the representative of the feudal lords, mainly reflected in the fact that the church itself owned a large amount of real estate, a monastery could have thousands of estates, and at the same time the church also obtained the right to tax the believers, so that a large amount of money flowed to the church at that time, and the monastery itself also operated the most basic commercial transactions at that time, becoming the manager and operator of the market and bazaar at that time. In economic life, the church was very active, although this contradicted its theory. The Church owns a large amount of land and money, and is also the largest consumer: the consumption of the church is a fixed consumer group, and the church is also involved in commercial activities. The Church borrowed money, which was carried out by way of mortgage loans, and it had a corps of merchants, i.e., procuring merchants, who were responsible for conducting commercial transactions for the Church, and the proprietors and managers of markets, often in the name of a "truce of God."

In short, the Church was the greatest beneficiary of the feudal system at that time, and therefore restricted the feudal system in order to maintain its position.

Aristocracy

The Middle Ages was a typical period of aristocratic rule, and the aristocracy was a class structure that maintained the rule, regardless of whether the governor had the right to rule, and the composition was complex, and constantly changed with the early, middle and late periods.

In the early period, people did not pay attention to genealogy, because it was a period of mixed integration between the nation and Rome, and they attached importance to the existing shili and land; in the middle period, the society was basically stereotyped, and people began to pay attention to genealogy, emphasizing titles, and paying attention to origin, and the aristocratic group was also formed at this time, becoming a closed group; in the later period, because of the development of the commodity economy and the increase in the flow of social components, people from the lower classes began to join the ranks of the aristocracy, and at the same time, some dilapidated nobles with titles but no land appeared.

Scholars now have different views on the origins of the aristocracy, which are divided into two main types: the first comes from the scholar Bullock, who believes that the Middle Ages were divided into two periods. The first period (before the 11th and 12th centuries) was the period of no aristocracy, when the original nobility of Rome disappeared with the demise of the empire, while the barbarian aristocracy was not formed, and the second period (after the 12th century) began to appear aristocracy, which was characterized by the formal emergence of the knightly class, that is, the knight was equal to the nobility. However, later scholars disagreed with the above statement through investigation. After the Germanic invasion, the Roman aristocracy did not really die out, and later merged with the upper echelons of the barbarian states, there were already nobles in the early Middle Ages, and in the later period the nobles and knights were integrated, but there were also differences between the two, and it was not until the period of peace that the military function of the knights was weakened and the two became one.

After the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, with the integration of nobles and knights, a clear hierarchy between nobles began to form, and in order to become a nobleman, one must become a knight, and the hierarchy and group nature were obvious. The knights must be the descendants of the knights, and this gap widens with other class groups, making the nobility obviously closed, and the nobility is also divided into different registers and shows different powers:

The Duke, a title given to a tribal chief, is the ruler of a land, who still has political, economic, legal, and rights, and these actions often determine the fate of many people, who are only nominally subordinate.

Marquises, most of whom were border chiefs. It was the state that appointed the governor of the border region to rule several counties, and most of these people came from large local families and were semi-independent. Local officials may be appointed.

The earl, who is the magistrate of the place, such as the head of the county, is appointed by the king. After a long time, it also became semi-independent. The appointee of the duke, also known as the count, has great powers, especially when representing the duke. Rulers were often the maintainers of social order, such as the Counts of Anjou, who founded the Annajou dynasty in England, and the Counts of Champagne in France.

The above three types of nobility were high nobles, all of whom possessed a large amount of territory and were able to exercise independent or semi-independent rule.

The viscount, who was originally an attendant or assistant to a high-ranking nobleman, led him to deal with matters and judicial matters. The nobility of the high nobility was not present and could exercise their rights independently. Later, the construction of the castle began, forming a small ruling center.

Barons, most of whom are connected to the army, receive land from the king on the condition of military service to support the land, a baron has at least 40~50 knightly lords (a knight's title refers to the land area required to support a knight).

The characteristics of the aristocracy are also reflected in various other aspects of social life.

Clothing, food, housing and transportation: The color and style of clothes are prescribed by law. Those who are not nobles are not allowed to wear gold or silver, and they are not allowed to wear velvet or fur clothes. The peasants could only wear black and gray, and the aristocracy could pursue luxury, and they were the promoters of the clothing reform at that time, but there were still many defects in the clothing of the time, such as no shirts and pajamas, and there was little difference between the style of men and women's clothes. In terms of diet, there are two kinds of differences: restriction and economic strength. For example, game: peacocks, venison, and swans are restricted, and because of the strong smell of game, the backwardness of storage jishu at that time made the long-distance transportation of spices from the East equivalent to gold, which became the patent of the nobles at that time. In terms of residence, the medieval aristocracy was the landed aristocracy, they were born in clothes and land, and there was a noble residence in the center of the manor, but the owner did not live for a long time; the other is the castle that represents the place of power, which was originally a royal prerogative, generally built on a hill, and is a place that is easy to defend and difficult to attack, a defensive and representative of power, not the pursuit of comfort, and the interior is damp and dark; the castle has many functions, not only the residence and social place of the noble family, but also the refuge of the surrounding residents in times of war.

Marital and family status: The marriage of the nobility in the Middle Ages was a political marriage, and the purpose of aristocratic marriage was to continue the offspring and strengthen the ties between the noble families. A marriage can form an alliance and resolve conflicts. Therefore, the eldest son of the nobles was more concerned with political factors, while the second son without inheritance rights was concerned with economic interests, so it became a custom to pursue widows at that time. Because there was no free love in the Middle Ages, marriages were arranged by parents and families, so although the status of women at that time was low, noble ladies were an exception. They all have a dual role, on the one hand, they are good wives and mothers, responsible for husbands and children, and take care of family affairs, and on the other hand, they are romantic types, becoming the objects and ideals of knighthood, and they carry the ideals of purity, nobility and aiqing. At that time, the aristocratic family was an enlarged family, including servants, servants, and dependents, i.e., poor relatives, foster caregivers, knights, etc., and if a person could live in the nobleman's house for a year and one day, he could become a full member of the family, so that there was a lot of things in the noble castle. At that time, the family was centered on the patriarchal system, but the foster care system at that time made the relationship between the children and their biological parents very weak.

The aristocracy belonged to the upper class in medieval society, so there were characteristics in all aspects, such as the aristocracy was only in contact with the aristocracy, the living customs were fixed, the connection was fixed, and the sense of nobility was shared by everyone in the closed group, and it was established through external decrees, so that the class was fixed and formed a clear boundary with other classes.

By the middle of the Middle Ages, the consciousness of the aristocratic group was obvious, mainly in the following ways:

First of all, the aristocracy consciously drew a line between the freed. Becoming a nobleman is not only a requirement of property, but also must go through a ceremony of conferral of entitlement, which is becoming more and more strict, so that nobility can only be produced in the children of nobles, and the conferment can only be carried out by the king, and the conditions for becoming a nobility have become increasingly harsh.

Secondly, the aristocracy began to pay more attention to genealogy, in which there could be no ambiguity. The aristocracy also began to adopt the family emblem, the origin of which was related to war, when the warring sides used to use a special mark to distinguish friend from foe, and later gradually evolved into the emblem of the nobility.

Then, as aristocrats, they were also strictly different from others in terms of occupation, and most of the work they did was associated with war. At that time, the society generally divided the types of work into warriors, prayer (church) and laborers (peasants), and war was the privilege of knights and nobles and a symbol of status.

Zuihou, the lifestyle and concept of the aristocracy are different from those of other classes, and they advocate loyalty, romance, and demeanor. Its honor is not tarnished.

The aristocracy itself was a relatively independent class, but there was also mobility within it. Especially in the later period, with the development of the commodity economy and the increase in the flow of social components, people began to join the ranks in the late Middle Ages. Some of them are through marriage. Because of the imbalance between men and women within the aristocratic group, there were marriages between low-ranking families and nobles, some were given the title of nobility because of their service in the royal family and nobles, and some were economically wealthy who rose to nobility by virtue of their economic strength. At the same time, there were also landless, dilapidated aristocrats. The family emblem became a symbol of poverty.

The status of the king

Medieval kingship was often subject to change, especially in the late Middle Ages. The concept of the unity of kingship in the Middle Ages preceded the Carolingian dynasty of the Frankish kingdom. At that time, the characteristics of relative unity could also be seen, and after this era, because the geographical concepts of the respective countries and nations were formed, they embarked on their own paths of development, and at the end of the period, the royal power began to transition to capitalism, and gradually entered a period of weakening.

As for the origin of kings, the general principle is that it is the result of a combination of divine and popular election. Both are indispensable. This has to do with the primitive notion of the Germanic peoples, who believed that the king was divine and therefore able to exercise his rights in the world, and thus was invincible, and this divinity was shared by the entire royal family. Therefore, all members of the family are eligible to become kings. But this divinity must be voted by the people to prove its divinity, and it seems that in general the kings of the Middle Ages were born in this way, and Clovis was elected in the citizens' assembly, and his ancestor was the half-man, half-god Mollock. Later, the Carolingian dynasty replaced the Clovian dynasty, and in order to prove its legitimacy, they befriended the pope, and the pope granted this position to become the legitimate king, and the pope also benefited from it, forming the future papal state. This custom was inherited from the Germanic peoples and further strengthened by Christianity.

This aspect is manifested in theory, the early Christian theologians have already discussed the royal power: that is, the king is God, and he is also the representative of God in the world, the representative of the church, so he has a divine nature, and in order to ensure the divinity of the king, the church has added a series of enthronement ceremonies for this purpose, the most important is the anointing ceremony (the original ancient Hebrew ritual), which mostly uses olive oil as a spice, which can only be used by the king. Generally speaking, the enthronement ceremony has four elements: election, oath-taking, anointing, and coronation.

The election of the king is narrow, and after the election of the king, the oath of responsibilities and obligations to be fulfilled, and after the election, the sacrament of the religious ceremony is also performed, which has a strong religious connotation. Coronation in the church illustrates his connection to God. The complex process shows both the divinity of the king and the belief of the people in him: not only the king, but also a figure with miraculous effects, but there are also times when there is no explanation: the divine mandate is from the top down, the popular election is from the bottom up, and there will always be contradictions, and then there will be a situation in which two kings will rule together, which is one of the important reasons for the chaos of the Middle Ages: for example, the division of the Frankish kingdom came about because of the co-rule of the three sons.

Because the king knew that he was godless, he needed a certain amount of strength as the basis for his royal rule: among them, the economic foundation was the most important. The king of each country controlled a central area, which provided the king with a lasting economic base and security, and the king's army was able to supply it, so that this central area often became the capital of the kingdom. In addition, the king owned a large number of movable and immovable properties that were part of his economic base. In addition to the domain, looting and tribute were the king's main sources of income. At the same time, the king's economy was based on social relations. As a nobleman, the king formed a collective liliang in his rule, and strengthened his rule through marriage, so that women played a large role in the political life of the time, and the failure of marriage often meant a war that would cause chaos throughout Europe, and commoners married for economic gain. These social liliang strengthened social rule, but the concept of co-governance and sharing caused disaster, father and son were often rivals with each other, and the form of royal power was not fully managed, because in theory the land of the whole country was owned by the king, but in practice it was self-governing by the nobility and so on. At that time, there were also official positions such as the chief chef, the secretary of the palace, the chief of the stables, and the chief steward, all of whose roles were to administer the king's domain, not the national land. It was not until the late Middle Ages that the land gradually evolved into a state of government management, which shows that it was not a dictatorship, but a state of co-governance and popular election.

And the relationship between kingship and clergy also became the main thread of the Middle Ages.

In the early period, with the strengthening of the church's shili and the economic strength of the church due to the tithes of the land, its religious ideas were a sign of the unity of various countries in the secession, so the period of struggle for power with the king began. The Church's Krini Reform Movement put forward the slogan that the clergy is higher than the royal power, declaring that the royal power is both granted by the clergy and withdrawn by the church, which opened the struggle between the clergy and the kingship in the late Middle Ages.

The medieval clerical power both supported and limited the royal power, and its main characteristics were as follows: first, the royal power was theoretically different from the practice, theoretically supreme and sacred, and was the law-maker; Second, feudalism and royal power are not opposed, the supremacy of monarchy is still the concept of feudal rule, the king laid the foundation of the rule, that is, the feudal system, in the feudal relationship the kingdom still has many privileges, such as foreign affairs can only be done by the king, justice is the king's supreme authority, so it can ensure the king's rule in the period of fragmentation.

Culture (Philosophy, Literature and Art)

In the Middle Ages theology was dominant, so there was no purely philosophical system. At that time, the means of studying theology were to demonstrate the correctness of theology, and only scholasticism existed, philosophy for the purpose of discussing the Bible, but it also added human reasoning, and rejected absolute obedience and blind faith, and the disharmony that appeared in the deduction naturally gave rise to controversy, that is, practical problems.

At that time, philosophers debated two main issues: one was the importance of philosophy and reason, as well as faith, that is, whether faith should be higher than reason or reason above faith, and believers believed that theology itself could only be known by faith, and God could not be known, and those who advocated reason believed that faith could only be practiced through rational arguments. The second is the question of the relationship between the general and the individual. Theologians believe that the knowledge of all things starts from the single, that there is a concept before the individual, and that everything goes from the general to the individual, while the rational person thinks that the concept is a symbol of induction, that is, from the individual to the general. The perception of man is also different from that of faith: empiricism began to emerge (the tabula rasa - that is, the belief that man's intellect is like a tabula rasa, and that everything is derived from acquired experience).

Although the philosophy of that time was based on the purpose of argumentation theology, the argumentation methods and beliefs of scholasticism went beyond the scope of theology, starting from the nature of human beings to understand the universe, and promoting human reason to the highest level, which became the foundation of the Renaissance movement in the future.

The art of the Middle Ages, as most people know, was closely related to religion. At that time, the types of art were dependent on religion, and the spirit of expression was also common to religion. The art of that period is best reflected in the art of church culture, and the sculptures of the Middle Ages are mostly Madonna, Jesus and apostles (angels), and their expressions have had a great influence on European culture, and most of them are from biblical stories.

There are two main forms of churches in the Middle Ages: the first is the architecture of the Roman period, which focuses on defensive capabilities, with thick walls and small windows. Churches adopt this style to make churches appear solid and serious, such as Pisa's Cathedral in Italy and Worms Cathedral in Germany. When Europe began to become more and more stable, the church began to appear in another style, which felt light and bright, and was mostly dominated by spires (including windows), and began to highlight its religious mystery, mainly through the decoration of the windows: the use of stained inlaid glass to reflect, and depict biblical stories on it, creating a mysterious atmosphere of light, such as the famous Notre Dame Cathedral in France, which is a typical Gothic architectural style, and the Canterbury Cathedral in England, etc., all show the characteristics of the times.

(To be continued.) )