CHAPTER OUTLINE

I. Introduction

II. Monastic Revival and Papal Reform

A. The Investiture Controversy and Its

Aftermath

B. The New Monastic Orders and the Building

of the Great Cathedrals

III. The Crusades: The Reconquest of Muslim

Europe

A. The Struggle for the Holy Land

B. The Impact of the Crusades upon Europe

IV. The Intellectual Crisis of the Twelfth Century

V. Repression and Renewal (1215–92)

A. The Founding of the Universities

B. Scholastic Thought

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CHAPTER 9

MEDIEVAL RELIGION AND THOUGHT

T

he Latin church survived the fall of the Ro-

man Empire in the west to become the major

unifying element in European society.

Though it suffered from episodes of fragmen-

tation and disorder throughout the early Middle Ages,

it provided western Europeans with a common set of

values and, through its universality and the preservation

of the Latin language, with a measure of diplomatic and

intellectual communication. With the passing of the

great raids, the church gradually evolved into some-

thing more: a vast, institutionalized bureaucracy headed

by popes who claimed full authority over a subordinate

clergy as well as secular rulers. That authority was ve-

hemently contested by the emperor and other princes,

but all agreed that Europe, for all its divisions, was a

Christian commonwealth ruled in theory by divine law.

The church of the High Middle Ages possessed

vast wealth, political influence, and a virtual monopoly

of thought and education, but its importance cannot be

understood in purely institutional terms. Its values,

sacraments, and holidays defined the lives of ordinary

people in ways that are almost inconceivable today.

While medieval people were neither excessively good

nor moral, their personal identities and habits of

thought were formed by near total emersion in Chris-

tian practices and categories of thought. The sacra-

ments, from baptism to extreme unction, defined the

stages of people’s lives. They measured time by refer-

ence to the canonical hours and holidays of the church.

They bound themselves by religious oaths that, to their

minds, carried with them the real threat of eternal

damnation, and they explained everything from politics

to natural phenomena as an expression of God’s will. In

more concrete terms the church building was both the

physical and social center of their communities and the

most visible expression of communal or civic pride.

Priests, monks, and nuns organized the distribution of

charity, cared for the sick, and provided lodging for

travelers in the great monasteries that dotted the coun-

tryside. Chapter 9 describes how the church evolved

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