Lecturing with Chapter 5

This was a feudal week. Here's how it went (spread over 2 classes):

Last week, I had covered the essentials of the origins of feudalism. This week, I covered it’s two stages:

AGE OF FEUDAL LORDS, c. 900-1100. Armed thugs, prominence of war in all aspects of life; marginality of women; castles and castellans; details of the lord-vassal tie.

AGE OF FEUDAL KINGS, c. 1100+. I began by discussing the slow dilution of feudalism.

--Lord-vassal ties less intimate thanks to heritable fiefs, multiplication of feudal ties, and formalization of obligations (always ready to fightà40 daysàscutage).

--The reassertion (in some places) of royal or duchal power . . . creating less decentralization and less public power in private hands.

I then discussed the long, slow growth of royal power in some parts of Europe. I used England and France as examples of how kings slowly reasserted power, esp. through bureaucracy, territorial acquisition, justice, and national assemblies. I highlighted only a few figures (e.g. Philip Augustus, Louis IX, and Philip the Fair for France) and and emphasized these four mechanism of royal aggrandizement. Did it very fast: I hope the brief story I told will help them make sense of the political history in the chapters ahead.

Finally, I dealt with growth of courtly culture. I talked here about how knights, still having to excel at military prowess, now had to serve their lords as diplomats, advisors, supervisors, and the like—and also to compete with a growing cadre of literate churchmen-bureaucrats. And, of course, they also had to excel at courtship and love. Lots of talk about courtly love. The upshot was the knights had an impossible set of roles to juggle, and ladies were stuck on a pedestal from which they were adored or hated. . . .