It was through greater use of horses as draft animals. A horse is significantly more efficient than an ox. He does more work for the same amount of food, perhaps even a little bit less. He is stronger, thus larger fields can be plowed, or fields can be plowed more times, and the soil can be turned more carefully.
A horse requires very different harnessing than an ox, and so we see, from about the year or a little after, the proliferation of the horse collar. Learn more about the differences between Egypt and Mesopotamia. New harnessing was required.
The hooves of horses are particularly sensitive, and therefore they had to be shod. This virtually universalized the use of horseshoes in Europe. Certain other things have to develop, as horse harnessing and the use of horses as draft animals increases.
The new heavy, wheeled plow, with an iron plowshare, fits into this picture as well. This type of plow appears to be an invention of the Slavic world and came into Western Europe in the Carolingian period.
It was used on large estates: On the estates of the Carolingian family and the greatest churches and monasteries. The heavy, wheeled plow played a significant role in changing how farming was conducted. Once again, using horses to pull it allowed more work to be completed. The heavy, wheeled plow was able to turn the soil, which aerates it.
This new plow with its iron plowshare also called for a greater proliferation of iron in this society leading to more smithing. We can see connections between the use of the plow, the advantages that it brought, and then some of the requirements that flowed from its development. Watermills were widely used in the 11th century. In some parts of northern Europe, for example, in the Low Countries windmills were used, but watermills were fairly common.
Mills demanded engineering gains, in terms of gearing. If we had a flow of water, a water wheel could be laid parallel to that flow of water, which makes the gearing turn a mill wheel fairly easily. If I sent the water wheel perpendicular to the flow of water, it is a much more efficient way to turn the water wheel, but I now have to turn vertical motion into horizontal motion.
I have to engineer some elaborate gearing. The mill wheel also has to run at a common speed, whether the water is running very fast or very slow. Engineers had to make the water go past the water wheel, whether the water wanted to or not, to do the milling at the convenience of the miller, and not by the movements of the river naturally.
A variety of technologies were spawned by the need to use more mills. Mills were imperative because there was an increase in grain. As more and more land was brought under cultivation, the new technological inputs made the land that was being plowed and farmed more productive, producing yet more grain.
A rising population needs more food. Bread is the staple of the diet and is baked from flour. To make flour, all the grain must be ground. One factor drives another factor that drives another factor. We begin to see the interconnectedness of the elements of this economy. Learn more about Europeans living between and Farmers began to use the land more efficiently.
In early European history—northern Europe at the time of the Romans and the Greeks—agricultural communities would often farm a particular area quite intensively for a brief period, and then move. Slowly but surely, as people began moving into the Middle Ages, communities began to anchor themselves. For a long time, they tended to practice what we would call two-field agriculture. About half of your land was plowed, and about half of it was left fallow.
On that fallow land, you would also run your animals, so that animal manure would provide some enrichment to the soil. Household wastes and so on might also be spread on that land to provide some enrichment. About half of the available land was under the plow at a given moment.
In the Carolingian era, there was the proliferation of the three-field system, but again mostly on the estates of the Carolingian family, and the estates of the Church. By the High Middle Ages, after the year to , we begin to see the three-field system widely used across Europe.
What exactly is the three-field system? You divide the available land of an estate into three roughly equal parts. One of these is left fallow, one of these is planted in winter crops and one of these is planted in spring crops. You work your way through a rotation this way.
Second, by balancing winter and spring crops, we guarantee against one season of terrible weather or blight. It also means that one can vary the agricultural regime. You can plant different kinds of crops and have different plants coming in at different points in the year. This is interesting in connection with the horses. Learn more about the Greek Dark Ages. If I produce excess, I can sell in local markets.
With more land under the plow, a greater variety of crops, and greater insurance against individual seasons of bad weather, we also see a growing tendency towards agricultural specialization.
By the 8th cent. The far-flung empire created by Charlemagne illustrated this fusion. However, the empire's fragile central authority was shattered by a new wave of invasions, notably those of the Vikings and Magyars. Feudalism , with the manorial system see also tenure as its agricultural base, became the typical social and political organization of Europe.
The new framework gained stability from the 11th cent. Instead, the Catholic Church became the most powerful institution of the medieval period. Kings, queens and other leaders derived much of their power from their alliances with and protection of the Church. These policies helped it to amass a great deal of money and power. Meanwhile, the Islamic world was growing larger and more powerful. At its height, the medieval Islamic world was more than three times bigger than all of Christendom.
Under the caliphs, great cities such as Cairo, Baghdad and Damascus fostered a vibrant intellectual and cultural life. Poets, scientists and philosophers wrote thousands of books on paper, a Chinese invention that had made its way into the Islamic world by the 8th century.
Scholars translated Greek, Iranian and Indian texts into Arabic. Inventors devised technologies like the pinhole camera, soap, windmills, surgical instruments, an early flying machine and the system of numerals that we use today.
And religious scholars and mystics translated, interpreted and taught the Quran and other scriptural texts to people across the Middle East.
Crusaders, who wore red crosses on their coats to advertise their status, believed that their service would guarantee the remission of their sins and ensure that they could spend all eternity in Heaven. They also received more worldly rewards, such as papal protection of their property and forgiveness of some kinds of loan payments. The Crusades began in , when Pope Urban summoned a Christian army to fight its way to Jerusalem , and continued on and off until the end of the 15th century.
In , Christian armies captured Jerusalem from Muslim control, and groups of pilgrims from across Western Europe started visiting the Holy Land. Many of them, however, were robbed and killed as they crossed through Muslim-controlled territories during their journey. Around , a French knight named Hugues de Payens created a military order along with eight relatives and acquaintances that became the Knights Templar , and they won the eventual support of the pope and a reputation for being fearsome fighters.
They did make ordinary Catholics across Christendom feel like they had a common purpose, and they inspired waves of religious enthusiasm among people who might otherwise have felt alienated from the official Church.
They also exposed Crusaders to Islamic literature, science and technology—exposure that would have a lasting effect on European intellectual life. Another way to show devotion to the Church was to build grand cathedrals and other ecclesiastical structures such as monasteries.
Cathedrals were the largest buildings in medieval Europe, and they could be found at the center of towns and cities across the continent. Between the 10th and 13th centuries, most European cathedrals were built in the Romanesque style. Romanesque cathedrals are solid and substantial: They have rounded masonry arches and barrel vaults supporting the roof, thick stone walls and few windows.
Around , church builders began to embrace a new architectural style, known as the Gothic. Gothic structures, such as the Abbey Church of Saint-Denis in France and the rebuilt Canterbury Cathedral in England, have huge stained-glass windows, pointed vaults and arches a technology developed in the Islamic world , and spires and flying buttresses. In contrast to heavy Romanesque buildings, Gothic architecture seems to be almost weightless.
Medieval religious art took other forms as well. Frescoes and mosaics decorated church interiors, and artists painted devotional images of the Virgin Mary, Jesus and the saints. Also, before the invention of the printing press in the 15th century, even books were works of art. Craftsmen in monasteries and later in universities created illuminated manuscripts: handmade sacred and secular books with colored illustrations, gold and silver lettering and other adornments. Convents were one of the few places women could receive a higher education , and nuns wrote, translated, and illuminated manuscripts as well.
In the 12th century, urban booksellers began to market smaller illuminated manuscripts, like books of hours, psalters and other prayer books, to wealthy individuals.
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