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Speaker 1: Oh, lessons from the world's top professors anytime, anyplace, world

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Speaker 1: history examined and science explained. This is one day university Welcome.

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Speaker 1: This is half our history, Secrets of the Medieval World.

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Speaker 1: I'm your host, Mike Coscarelli. We're moving from the countryside

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Speaker 1: into the medieval cities, and those cities had a lot

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Speaker 1: of the same things that ours do today. Educational systems,

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Speaker 1: governing bodies, the exchange of goods and services, and some

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Speaker 1: really over the top cathedrals. Let Chris take it from here. Now,

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Speaker 1: we should say right off that more people in the

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Speaker 1: Middle Ages are still living in the countryside than in

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Speaker 1: the cities. In fact, it's not until about seventeen fifty

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Speaker 1: that more people in Europe live in cities than in

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Speaker 1: rural areas. It's not until eighteen fifty in the United

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Speaker 1: States that more people live in cities than in rural areas. Nevertheless,

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Speaker 1: people are living in cities at a higher rate than

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Speaker 1: they had been for about five hundred years. In fact,

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Speaker 1: by about eleven hundred. In medieval Europe you have cities

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Speaker 1: that have not been seen in number and size since

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Speaker 1: the Roman Empire, and they're bigger now than they were then. Again,

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Speaker 1: We said when we talked about the agricultural revolution that

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Speaker 1: the key was the agricultural revolutions increased production of food

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Speaker 1: because of particular technology, so that you have a surplus

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Speaker 1: and not a subsistence economy, and the people in the

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Speaker 1: cities can buy food, prepared food in terms of meals

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Speaker 1: that are ready to eat already, or prepared food in

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Speaker 1: terms of milk that's already been separated, created into cheese,

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Speaker 1: or animals that have already been slaughtered into portions to

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Speaker 1: be cooked. Most of the population of cities are free.

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Speaker 1: If you're in a city, you are either born free

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Speaker 1: or you're a surf who's escaped the countryside. Now this

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Speaker 1: got a little tricky because the cities, of course want

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Speaker 1: people to populate them. They need to give incentives, and

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Speaker 1: city charters said that if you're a surf and you

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Speaker 1: live in a city for a year and a day

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Speaker 1: and you're unclaimed, you're free. Now think about this. If

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Speaker 1: you're away surf and you come into a city, the

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Speaker 1: last thing you want to do is record your name

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Speaker 1: and a date, because if your lord comes in looking

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Speaker 1: for you, or he sends his steward or bayliff in,

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Speaker 1: there's a place to look. So there are all sorts

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Speaker 1: of backroom deals and underground under the table lists of

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Speaker 1: people so that they could claim a year and a day.

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Speaker 1: And the cities encouraged this kind of movement. Back on

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Speaker 1: the farm, some of the stewards and the bailiffs sweetened

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Speaker 1: the pot for surf so they wouldn't leave, but plenty did.

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Speaker 1: And when we talk about cities, we think of New York.

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Speaker 1: So what kind of size are we talking about in

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Speaker 1: the Middle Ages. Well, you had about fifteen or twenty

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Speaker 1: cities that would have had twenty five thousand people. That's

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Speaker 1: a good size. Remember we you know we'd have some

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Speaker 1: version of running water. We really don't quite have flush toilets.

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Speaker 1: You've got to get refused out of the city. You've

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Speaker 1: got to keep law and order, crime and punishment. Twenty thousand,

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Speaker 1: it is a pretty good number. And let's look at

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Speaker 1: some a couple of sites in all the major areas.

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Speaker 1: Barcelona had twenty five thousand, Valencia to lose, Bordeaux. In Germany,

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Speaker 1: Cologne and Nuremberg. Then you had some which were larger. London,

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Speaker 1: Bruges and Ghent all had forty thousand. Now if you

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Speaker 1: think of where London and Bruges and Ghent are right.

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Speaker 1: They're on either side of the English Channel. And in

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Speaker 1: fact those three cities were in close relationship with each

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Speaker 1: other because people would produce wool in the English countryside,

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Speaker 1: bring it to London, ship out the Thames across the

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Speaker 1: English Channel to Bruges and Ghent. Bruge and Ghent were

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Speaker 1: textile cities where the wool was finished into clothing and

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Speaker 1: that clothing was either shipped back to England or further

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Speaker 1: into the continent. So it makes sense that those three

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Speaker 1: cities were about the same size. And then you've got

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Speaker 1: some pretty good size cities, mostly in Italy because frem Italy,

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Speaker 1: jutting into the Mediterranean, connecting the Western Mediterranean to the

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Speaker 1: Eastern Mediterranean, are trading cities, and trading cities. Ports cities

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Speaker 1: are always exciting places. They're busy places. So a city

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Speaker 1: with about seventy five to one hundred thousand people, Ancient

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Speaker 1: Athens in the four hundreds, the high point of ancient

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Speaker 1: Greek history, had one hundred thousand people and it was

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Speaker 1: a polis where in Italy they're fascinated with Greek culture,

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Speaker 1: and so these self governing cities are in no way

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Speaker 1: part of a kingdom of Italy. They don't see themselves

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Speaker 1: as Italian. Even today you ask somebody from Italy, they

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Speaker 1: would never say they were Italian. They're from Genoa, They're

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Speaker 1: from Pisa, they're from Sicily. They break it down into regionalism.

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Speaker 1: Each of these trading centers saw themselves as a polis

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Speaker 1: seventy five to one hundred thousand people in Venice, in Florence,

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Speaker 1: in Genoa, and even up in Milan, which is not

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Speaker 1: particularly a trading city by water, but a trading city

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Speaker 1: by land, where all of the products and raw material

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Speaker 1: would move down along roads from the continent and then

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Speaker 1: to Milan, and Milan would ship it to these cities

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Speaker 1: on the ports. How did these cities run themselves. The

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Speaker 1: governments of cities were controlled by guilds. When you think

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Speaker 1: of guilds, you think of unions. And that's about right.

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Speaker 1: And remember when we said that feudalism was self policing

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Speaker 1: and had self government, And we said that when those

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Speaker 1: people moved from the countryside to the city, they brought

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Speaker 1: that tradition with them, that heritage with them to organize

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Speaker 1: these self patrolling units. And so there were many guilds

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Speaker 1: of skilled craftsmen. That's essentially what we would call them.

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Speaker 1: And the guilds policed themselves. They set compensation, they set

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Speaker 1: marks of quality and quantity because they're trying to control

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Speaker 1: quality and they're trying to control costs and they're trying

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Speaker 1: to control profits, pricing and education. Now, when you think

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Speaker 1: of guilds, you should think of some names, some words

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Speaker 1: that guilds even use nowadays. If you want to be

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Speaker 1: a plumber or an electrician, you're going to be a

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Speaker 1: journeyman for a time, an apprentice for a time usually

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Speaker 1: seven years. In the ancient system, medieval system, a journeyman

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Speaker 1: and then a muggistare a master. And this is replicated

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Speaker 1: in the American educational system, which came from the European

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Speaker 1: educational system, which reached back to guilds. The first groups

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Speaker 1: of students and teachers in Bologna and Oxford, in Cambridge

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Speaker 1: in the eleven and twelve hundreds were guilds of students

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Speaker 1: and teachers. Now the difference is that we talk about apprentice, journeyman, master,

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Speaker 1: and now in the educational system we have a bachelor

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Speaker 1: student would be the apprentice, the urneyman would be the master,

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Speaker 1: and then the doctorate would be the professor, if you will,

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Speaker 1: So the word master gets played with there. But look

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Speaker 1: at a graduation ceremony. The bachelors have the shortest sleeves,

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Speaker 1: the masters have the longest sleeves, and the people in

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Speaker 1: the doctoral robes have the cool outfits with the floppy

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Speaker 1: hats and the three stripes on their sleeves. And there

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Speaker 1: would be clothing in the medieval guilds for the apprentice,

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Speaker 1: the journman, and the master as well. And these guilds

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Speaker 1: would control the political life of the city, the economic

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Speaker 1: life of the city, the cultural life. They would sponsor

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Speaker 1: festivals and feasts, they would compete with each other to

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Speaker 1: do so. They also took care of their own when

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Speaker 1: things went wrong, what we would call social welfare. So

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Speaker 1: if a man lost his livelihood, lost his life, his

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Speaker 1: widow would be cared for, his children would be cared

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Speaker 1: for his orphans. But if he lost his livelihood, he

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Speaker 1: lost the hands or an arm, a part of his

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Speaker 1: body was disabled permanently. They had the equivalent of workmen's compensation,

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Speaker 1: so much of your paycheck, the version of their paycheck,

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Speaker 1: would go in each week or each month to a

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Speaker 1: common fund, and that the masters would put the common

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Speaker 1: fund money share it among these families of people who

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Speaker 1: could no longer work. Women could often have their own guilds.

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Speaker 1: If they had a husband, the husband was the guilds member,

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Speaker 1: but if the husband died, they often could be a

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Speaker 1: member of a guild on their own. There were certain guilds, though,

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Speaker 1: where women could represent themselves be masters on their own,

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Speaker 1: even if their husband was alive, and these were women

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Speaker 1: only guilds. And an example is in Paris, where there

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Speaker 1: were five guilds controlling the silk industry, the making of silk,

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Speaker 1: the trading of silk, the finishing of silk, all these

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Speaker 1: different steps in the process. There were five guilds women only.

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Speaker 1: So again, as in the countryside, women are having more

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Speaker 1: power than we might think. However, the men wouldn't let

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Speaker 1: them get political power. Sorry, ladies. And so when we

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Speaker 1: talk about the people who ran the government of the cities,

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Speaker 1: we call them the bourgeoisie or the burghers, the people

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Speaker 1: who lived in the burg or the borough. These were

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Speaker 1: the men of the town and they were moving from

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Speaker 1: being subjects of a lord, the vassal, the feudal system,

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Speaker 1: to citizens. And what you have is an emerging middle class.

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Speaker 1: This is an important moment in the history of government. Now,

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Speaker 1: when we talk about the Roman Empire, we say, weren't

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Speaker 1: they citizens? The Roman imperial system had citizens, but they

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Speaker 1: were citizens under an emperor. That's different than Roman citizens

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Speaker 1: in the republic. That was a Roman republic for about

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Speaker 1: five hundred years from five O nine BC or BC

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Speaker 1: to about the time that Julius Caesar is assassinated in

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Speaker 1: four four BC. That was a republic, a self regulating

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Speaker 1: group of people and government. It is the model of

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Speaker 1: our own government because Americans were trying to overthrow an emperor,

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Speaker 1: George the Third in parliament, and so this notion of

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Speaker 1: medieval city dwellers as bourgeoisie as citizens is very important

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Speaker 1: for the development of American government and American political theory

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Speaker 1: as well. So cities are centers of trade, their centers

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Speaker 1: of manufacturing, their centers of consumption. We'll take a quick

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Speaker 1: break here, but when we come back, Chris breaks down

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Speaker 1: trade in the medieval ages. Did you know travelers checks

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Speaker 1: were a thing back then? Plus the pride a craftsman

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Speaker 1: tick in creating a gargoyle. Let's talk about trade. Trade

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Speaker 1: talks about money and goods, of course, but what's interesting,

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Speaker 1: and I want to look at this in a different way,

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Speaker 1: looking not at caricatures or preconceptions, but something more subtle

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Speaker 1: and sophisticated. Trade was an opportunity for inter religious interaction.

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Speaker 1: Now notice I didn't say into religious dialogue, inter religious interaction.

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Speaker 1: People don't have to like each other in order to

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Speaker 1: do business with each other. I think we can all

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Speaker 1: agree that it works if we like each other. But

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Speaker 1: there are all sorts of business. They say politics makes

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Speaker 1: strange bedfellows, economics and business makes even stranger bedfellows. Trade

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Speaker 1: is controlled by capital. If you're dealing with a city,

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Speaker 1: economy and government, you're dealing with money and sales. You're

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Speaker 1: not dealing with a barter system. A difference from the countryside.

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Speaker 1: So rents which had been paid in goods or services

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Speaker 1: we saw in the countryside here are paid in money.

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Speaker 1: And trade has to go across land and sea. Now

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Speaker 1: then and now it is cheaper and faster to transport

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Speaker 1: your goods along water. To jump ahead hundreds of years.

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Speaker 1: One of the reasons why the Industrial Revolution happens in

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Speaker 1: England before it happens anywhere else in the sixteen and

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Speaker 1: the seventeen hundreds is that there is no one spot

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Speaker 1: in England that is more than seventy miles from a

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Speaker 1: body of water, a sea, or a canal or a river.

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Speaker 1: So it's cheap to get your goods to the water,

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Speaker 1: and it's cheaper then to move your goods and faster

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Speaker 1: along the water. The people who are transporting the goods

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Speaker 1: are Muslim ship captains. Italians and Muslims are in close

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Speaker 1: connection because the Roman Lake that's what the Mediterranean was

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Speaker 1: called under the Roman Empire, had now become Muhammad's Lake,

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Speaker 1: as they referred to it themselves, and so Muslim ship

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Speaker 1: captains were really good. Now. An example of this, to

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Speaker 1: again jump forward in time, is if you've ever seen Othello,

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Speaker 1: Shakespeare's play, even though that's written around sixteen hundred, the

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Speaker 1: ship captain in that Othello the more and so he

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Speaker 1: is an example of one of these Muslim ship captains.

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Speaker 1: So what you have here now in the cities running

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Speaker 1: the economy is a merchants class. They're buying and selling.

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Speaker 1: They're not manufacturing. Guilds manufacture goods. They're very diversified, they're

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Speaker 1: very powerful, but the most powerful people are the merchants.

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Speaker 1: They're the middlemen between the producer and the purchaser. They're

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Speaker 1: the ones doing the markup. And so in order to

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Speaker 1: do all of this financing, they need what we call

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Speaker 1: credit instruments. Now I'm going to use some words that

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Speaker 1: you might find very modern. They are, in fact very medieval.

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Speaker 1: Loans checks, travelers checks. Are you ready for this? Insurance premiums,

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Speaker 1: what's called a c loan, letters of credit or letters

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Speaker 1: of exchange. There's no ATM in the Middle Ages. I'm

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Speaker 1: not quite sure anybody nowadays uses travelers checks anymore. But

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Speaker 1: the reason you used to use traveler's checks for those

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Speaker 1: of you of a certain age will remember Karl Malden

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Speaker 1: telling you not to leave home without them for American Express,

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Speaker 1: and they had to be American Express. Those travelers checks

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Speaker 1: acted as money, but they weren't money. Well, you can't

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Speaker 1: move trunks of coins in this period of time, and

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Speaker 1: money is coins, it's not paper money, really, And so

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Speaker 1: in order to run this economy, to get all this

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Speaker 1: stuff going, what you need to do or create documents

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Speaker 1: where you can deposit money in one bank in one city,

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Speaker 1: get a piece of paper, travel hundreds of miles to

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Speaker 1: another bank and another city, and cash in if you

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Speaker 1: will that piece of paper, and very often the people

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Speaker 1: controlling those banks were the Jews. Because Jews were allowed

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Speaker 1: to make money on money, that is, they could charge

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Speaker 1: interest on loans. Christians could not do this. This was

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Speaker 1: called usury. So because of this, Jews began to get

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Speaker 1: involved in financing more than manufacturing. The Merchant of Venice

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Speaker 1: Shylock in the Merchant of Venice a very unfortunate example

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Speaker 1: of the rampant anti Semitism that was going on at

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Speaker 1: that period of time. Again, though Shakespeare's writing in sixteen

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Speaker 1: hundred days reflecting an earlier time. And so this is

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Speaker 1: where you get the development of these very famous families

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Speaker 1: that exist into the modern period, the Fougers and the

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Speaker 1: Rothschilds all across Europe. So you have an at home

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Speaker 1: lender who's Jewish. He's called a commenda. He gives you

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Speaker 1: a loan or a credit or a traveler's check. You

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Speaker 1: travel basically to either another Jew or his relative who

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Speaker 1: is another Jew, and that's that distant bank, and that's

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Speaker 1: how you do business. What does a city look like?

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Speaker 1: If you've ever been to a city, you can always

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Speaker 1: tell who the tourists are. They're looking up because if

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Speaker 1: you've been from a small city or never been to

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Speaker 1: a city. The first thing you notice is the height

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Speaker 1: of the buildings. Then and now, what does the Gothic

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Speaker 1: city look like? Now, this word Gothic is a little

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Speaker 1: bit controversial because you know, nowadays we talk about kids

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Speaker 1: wearing white makeup and dressed all in black and they're Goths.

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Speaker 1: Or we talk about the Goths and the Visigoths and

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Speaker 1: the Ostrogoths as barbarians, and we've already knocked down that

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Speaker 1: phrase earlier. What about this Gothic city, Well, goth is

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Speaker 1: just a word refers to one of those tribes that

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Speaker 1: married Roman imperial structures with their own tribal structures and

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Speaker 1: made kind of this hibrid sort of culture that we

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Speaker 1: call Gothic. And that hybrid culture actually starts in ancient

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Speaker 1: Greece and Rome, part of a Renaissance, and the fundamental

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Speaker 1: structure in the Roman world was the basilica. Now, when

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Speaker 1: I say basilica to you, you think of a Catholic church.

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Speaker 1: But a basilica was a judgment hall in ancient Rome.

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Speaker 1: And at the end of the judgment hall sat the

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Speaker 1: judge who was the provincial governor, or if you're in Rome,

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Speaker 1: the emperor himself. You've got to walk down this long aisle,

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Speaker 1: and this long aisle is called a nave, and at

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Speaker 1: the front it is kind of a cross aisle, which

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Speaker 1: is called an apse. And if the building is very high,

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Speaker 1: it lets a little light in, and that kind of atrium,

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Speaker 1: if you will, is called a chlorestery. This fundamental structure

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Speaker 1: becomes the first Christian basilicas because when the Christians along,

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Speaker 1: they're not going to knock that building down, that's stupid.

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Speaker 1: What they're going to do is convert that building, if

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Speaker 1: you will. And that's why the altar is at the

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Speaker 1: front and the bishop's chair, etc. And so in the

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Speaker 1: aftermath of Rome's transformation not fall. Remember, you have these

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Speaker 1: buildings that are like Roman buildings, roman Ish, or to

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Speaker 1: use the phrase Romanesque, and this is the style of building. Now,

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Speaker 1: some people say there's an artificial distinction between Romanesque and Gothic,

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Speaker 1: and I think what you can do is if you

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Speaker 1: look at take a good art history class, what you'll

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Speaker 1: see is that Romanesque over time becomes Gothic. So if

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Speaker 1: you're looking at a building from ten fifty and eleven fifty,

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Speaker 1: which is which, But if you're looking at a building

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Speaker 1: from five to fifty and thirteen fifty, Yeah, you're going

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Speaker 1: to see a big difference. And the big difference is

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Speaker 1: that the Romanesque building is not as tall. It's heavy,

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Speaker 1: Its walls are very thick, its windows are very small

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Speaker 1: because the weight of the building is much that they

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Speaker 1: can't go high. And so the innovations becoming in how

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Speaker 1: do you distribute the weight? And you distribute the weight

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Speaker 1: using something called vaulted ceilings, and these vaults are called

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Speaker 1: barrel vaults or groin vaults. And to use an example,

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Speaker 1: think of a baseball game. So here's a player, he's

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Speaker 1: rounding third, he's coming home. The catcher has the ball.

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Speaker 1: The catcher's not going to stand straight up to receive

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Speaker 1: getting hit by this guy coming. What's he gonna do.

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Speaker 1: He's going to spread his legs, he's going to crouch down.

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Speaker 1: He's going to lower his center of gravity to receive

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Speaker 1: that weight. And because of that he can receive more

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Speaker 1: weight at greater speed. That's what a vault does, and

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Speaker 1: so it allows you to kind of make the walls

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Speaker 1: a little thinner, allows you to build your basilica a

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Speaker 1: little higher, and you can open up your windows a

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Speaker 1: little bit, and so the facades can now be decorated

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Speaker 1: because the facade doesn't have to carry so much weight.

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Speaker 1: The vault is carrying the weight, and you can start

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Speaker 1: to decorate the facade as well. So this transition is

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Speaker 1: occurring one thousand, eleven hundred around there, twelve hundred, and

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Speaker 1: we're moving toward the Gothic style. Now, when you think

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Speaker 1: of the buildings when you go on those tours, when

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Speaker 1: you look in your own communities and you see Gothic

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Speaker 1: or Neo Gothic basilicas and cathedrals, you'll see that style

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Speaker 1: not just in church buildings but in secular buildings as well.

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Speaker 1: So a town hall or a guild hall, or a castle,

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Speaker 1: or a university or even a residence is start going

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Speaker 1: to start to look like this very distinctive Gothic style.

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Speaker 1: And so what is that Gothic style? Very elaborate arches.

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Speaker 1: One of the most interesting things to do when you

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Speaker 1: go on these tours is to lay on the ground

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Speaker 1: or to look up. And some of the best churches

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Speaker 1: allow you to look up, either with binoculars or they

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Speaker 1: have mirrors on the ground or on pivots, and you

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Speaker 1: can look up at the ceiling and they're magnified, and

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Speaker 1: you can see how elaborate these vaults are, higher and higher,

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Speaker 1: more and more elaborate. And these arches which begin to

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Speaker 1: cross each other, and because you do that, they soar up. Hey, listen,

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Speaker 1: you walk into a Gothic cathedral. You look one place,

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Speaker 1: and you look one place, only up. The architecture makes

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Speaker 1: you look up, form and function, being married. Because you're

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Speaker 1: in a church building, you're supposed to be raising your

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Speaker 1: eyes from the earth to spiritual matters, from this age

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Speaker 1: into the next age. And so the next big development,

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Speaker 1: the development of the Gothic cathedral, are these things called

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Speaker 1: flying buttresses. You take your arches and you put them outside,

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Speaker 1: and what these things as a scaffold or a skeleton

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Speaker 1: outside an eggxoskeleton, and it takes the pressure of those

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Speaker 1: walls outward. And because it does that, the walls can

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Speaker 1: get even thinner, and they can go even higher, and

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Speaker 1: the windows can way open up. Because the windows aren't

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Speaker 1: doing any work for you, the walls aren't doing any

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Speaker 1: work for you. The roof can now be peaked. And

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Speaker 1: so the weight bearing architectural element is the flying buttress.

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Speaker 1: The impact on light and windows on exteriors and facades

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Speaker 1: is amazing, and all of that stuff is done by

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Speaker 1: the guilds. The people designing what we would call architects

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Speaker 1: and engineers, the people doing the scaffolding, the people cutting

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Speaker 1: the wood and finishing it, the people cutting the stone

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Speaker 1: from afar and finishing it near, the people building the pulleys,

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Speaker 1: the people making the glass, the people staining the glass,

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Speaker 1: the people installing the glass, the people later on painting frescoes,

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Speaker 1: the people making the vestments, the people making the vessels.

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Speaker 1: Those are all guilds. When a bishop says we're going

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Speaker 1: to build a cathedral, everybody goes crazy because every buddy

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Speaker 1: has a job for a hundred years. It fuels the economy.

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Speaker 1: It becomes the center of the town to the point

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Speaker 1: where you have to get water away from the roof,

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Speaker 1: and you don't want the water to spill on the

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Speaker 1: people down below. So you put a gargoyle up there,

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Speaker 1: and you take that gargoyle and you make them some

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Speaker 1: fantastic figure, some really silly looking figure, caricatureish figure. He's

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Speaker 1: going to be three hundred feet in the air. Why

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Speaker 1: would you possibly make it so special if nobody's going

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Speaker 1: to see it because you made it because you're a craftsman,

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Speaker 1: because you have pride, and you believe that that is

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Speaker 1: your contribution to the creation of this cathedral that will

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Speaker 1: last forever a tremendous amount of what we say. No

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Speaker 1: people say, nobody has craftsmanship anymore, nobody has pride anymore.

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Speaker 1: The people in the Middle Ages did, and so it's

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Speaker 1: an economic engine when this happens. Now, one of the

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Speaker 1: questions is, could people really see that stained glass way

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Speaker 1: up there? It looks like a person, and all those

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Speaker 1: profits look alike. We always see a woman up there,

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Speaker 1: and somebody invariably says, must be marry. It's a Catholic church,

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Speaker 1: it must be marry. Could people read those stained glass windows?

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Speaker 1: You often hear that this was for an illiterate population.

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Speaker 1: The answer is probably not, but a preacher could make

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Speaker 1: reference to it, and the light that came in in

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Speaker 1: different colors would have had an impact. So what we

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Speaker 1: begin to see is that we have economics, we have

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Speaker 1: religion coming together, and it's all fueled by a bishop

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Speaker 1: who sits under a papacy. So we need to next

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Speaker 1: look at what was the papacy like in the Middle Ages.

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Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to another episode of Half hour

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Speaker 1: History Secrets of the Medieval World. Next Time Feudalism and

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Speaker 1: Feuding Popes. Half Hour History Secrets of the Medieval World

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Speaker 1: from One Day University is a production of iHeart Podcasts

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Speaker 1: and School of Humans. If you're enjoying the show, leave

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00:26:11,239 --> 00:26:13,960
Speaker 1: a review in your favorite podcast app, and check out

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Speaker 1: the Curiosity Audio Network for podcasts covering history, pop culture,

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Speaker 1: true crime, and more. School of Humans