April 18, 2023 • 26 mins
Chris gives a status update on France, England, Germany, and Spain during this critical Medieval period. He talks about why the King of France is above the law and how the Magna Carta relates to modern-day due process.
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Speaker 1 (00:11):
Lessons from the world's top professors anytime, any place, world
history examined and science explained. This is one day university Welcome.
You were listening to half hour history Secrets of the
(00:34):
Medieval World. I, of course, I'm your host, Mike Coscarelli.
Last time the emperors and the popes were jockeying for power.
Now we're leaving those squabbles behind for a bird's eye
view of how territories became nations and.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
How nations became nation states.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
We've got the Magna Carta, Columbus Louis, the fourteenth eleanor
of Aquitaine, King Richard. The name drops are ridiculous. Here's
Chris with the crash.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Course, let's say right from the beginning that when we
talk about nations, you can't think of borders and nations
and the un in the way we think of them nowadays.
Maybe we should talk about territories. But that's not quite
(01:28):
right either, because what we're getting toward is the nation state.
It's an early modern and modern construction, and it's something
that becomes very important in that period, and we live
with it every day of our lives today. But since
we are going toward nations, we're going in that direction.
I think it's okay to talk about nation building with
(01:50):
that caveat. And the reason we look upon this in
this way is that if you look at Europe about
nine hundred, right, so we have the early, the High
and the late Medieval period. So as we look at
it at the end of that early going toward that
High Midias period about nine hundred, and then we look
at Europe in fifteen hundred. Yeah, the map looks different,
(02:13):
there's no question about that. And so let's look first
in overview of some of these chunks, and then we
can look specifically at some of those chunks.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
The first thing is France.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
France does not look then like it looks now and
again these are very subtle and gray areas. There's a
very slow emergence of something called royal primacy in France.
France's borders move a lot. So even saying France is
(02:49):
kind of tough. We might want to put that in
quotation marks, because there's Aquitaine in the Bordeaux region and
the Norman region, and all of these have very very
strong leaders almost to the points of being kings, but
not quite being kings, and they can't quite get pushed
back by the person who's sitting in Paris, who's pretty strong.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
He's a first among.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
Equals, but he's got to keep these other people at
bay as well. So power is centered in Paris, but
you have other very very strong areas, and some of
those regions could be run by women. The one I
think of is Eleanor of Aquitaine, who's a great movie
done in the sixties called The Lion in Winter with
(03:32):
two great actors. Eleanor of Aquitaine is played by Catherine
Hepburn and Henry the Second of England is played by
Peter O'Toole, and they have this huge battle because Eleanor
basically controls all of Aquitaine, incredibly rich, incredibly important. She
can't be queen in the sense of being the total monarch,
(03:53):
but she's basically running England and France at the same time.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
So the king in.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Paris is a king of Paris, the ancient capital, but
he doesn't have total sway over all of those other people. Meanwhile,
in England I just mentioned Henry the Second. In England,
Henry the Second is in a weird position because in
one way he is the King of England, but in
another way, as the Duke of Normandy, he's under the
(04:23):
King of France. And you really want to complicate it.
Eleanor of Aquitaine is married to Henry the Second, but
she used.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
To be married to the King of France.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
A reminder that England and France literally intermarried with each other.
And in the years eleven hundred and twelve hundred, as
late as thirteen hundred, the language at court in England.
In England was not English but French. England has another heritage.
(04:56):
It's the heritage of the Angles and the Saxons and
the Celts who had all been there in the central
portion of the island, and in the western portion of
the island, and in the eastern portion of the island.
Remember the Vikings at the Jorvik Center York as it's
called nowadays. So you also had this regionalization in England
(05:17):
as well, and this role of the local community. So
on paper a monarchy, in practice not so much. And
England and France are married together, why are they speaking
French in the English court? In eleven and twelve hundred,
ten sixty six, the Norman invasion, William, the Duke of
Normandy invades and becomes the William the Conqueror, and then
(05:44):
he's the same person who's called William the first King
of England. And this close relationship is not going to
get unlocked for three hundred years around thirteen fifty. It
begins around fourteen fifty, it ends the one hundred Years War.
So England and France from ten sixty six to fourteen
fifty three are in this very very close relationship. Then
(06:07):
you have Germany and the Holy Roman Empire. We've been
talking about that for some time, and I'll get to
that in a minute.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
And then Spain.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
Now we've been talking a little bit about Spain. Spain
is its own animal. Remember, Spain is dominated by Islam.
The Christians are pushing the Muslims down. From seven point
thirty two about ten eighty five is a halfway will
Mark with Toledo, which is about center in the box
of modern day Spain and Portugal. And the interesting thing
(06:36):
about the development of kingdom's plural kingdoms in Spain is
that they are coming together as the Christians are pushing
the Muslims down. The Christians are coming together to fight
a common enemy. Right, so they may not like each
other very much, but they have a common enemy.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
So that's how uniting takes place in Spain. Okay, a
little overview. Now, let's look at France, England, Germany and
Spain a little bit separately. France from about one thousand
to about fifteen hundred is ruled by a family called
Cupet cap Et, the Kapitian dynasty. Hugh Cupet was the
(07:21):
father of this family. But as I said earlier, the
king in Paris, the Kpetians control Paris and the surrounding area,
has very very severe limits within French territories, and they're
always fighting off these English claims as well. And yet
that king in Paris, in fact, the kings all over
(07:41):
have a much stronger royal Christian claim to authority. There
are much stronger liturgical, ritualistic religious overtones than you find
in England. France also has less experience with representation than England.
So what you have is a king and then a
(08:03):
court around him, the couria rageous and England, by contrast,
has something called parliament.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
So the king and his court control a.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
Small area but not much beyond that, whereas the king
in England has this other body over there called parliament
where power flows from the bottom up. So there's gonna
be some conflict there. Paris has something called a parliament,
but it's something that comes together rather infrequently. The King
of France preserves the law, but he is above the law.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Now that strikes us as odd.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
When Pete Rose was thrown out of baseball by Bart Giamatti,
Bart Giamatti, the commissioner of baseball, said, let no man
think that he is above the game. And we say,
thinking perhaps to Nixon and Watergate, let no man think
that he is above the law. Well, that's exactly what
it was in Paris. The king preserves the law, but
(08:59):
he is above the law. He has stronger bloodlines, he
has prestige, he has aura. The stylized ritual in the
French court is going to last for centuries ahead.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Think of Louis the.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
Fourteenth and Versailles, Louis the fifteenth, Louis the sixteenth.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
And Marie Antoinette. The killing.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
The beheading of Louis the sixteenth is so striking to
the world because this is a divine right monarchy. In fact,
they call themselves the ancient regime, the ancient regime, the.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
Way it had always been.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
So France, though it has these competing powers, has this
aura about it. So the French king, meaning the man
in Paris, has less territory under his direct control. We
call this institutional centralization the corea regis, but geographic decentralization,
how did it really work? Listen, the king in Paris
(09:55):
wants you to pay your taxes. If you pay your
taxes and show up to fight when he asks you,
the king is going to leave you alone. So Paris
is one the the biggest piece, the most prestigious piece.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
In a patchwork.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
You're not going to have a strong king of France
until fourteen fifty three. And you're not going to have
that strong king of France until they start pushing the
English out again they unite against a common enemy. Other
side of the channel, there's England. England has a stronger
drive to centralize in the France French, but they had
that longer tradition of local authority of Anglo Saxon. Even
(10:30):
in the area where the Vikings were. It was still
as late as Oney eleven hundred called the Dane law.
The area where the law of the Danes the people
from Denmark, the Vikings where that Law was in charge,
and that's around York, and then the Norman invasion in
ten sixty six when William beats Harold. If you've ever
seen the Bayeux tapestry, either in real life or in photos,
(10:53):
what you have is the story like in a series
of cartoons that would be pasted along a wall of
the battle. And so you see William crossing the channel,
and you see William attacking Harold, and Harold getting an
arrow in the eye and Harold falling off the horse,
and William taking the throne as an example of what
goes on between this other authority, this other power that
(11:16):
goes from the bottom up. Think of Magna carta. So
you have King John, remember King John from robin Hood.
In Robinhood, King John is Prince John and his brother
is Richard, the lion Hearted, both children by the way
of Henry the Second and Eleanor of Aquitaine. And King
Richard is off fighting the Crusades. He couldn't care less
(11:36):
about England. He's French in his heart, He's French in
his tongue. It's his language. He goes off fighting the Crusades.
He's killed while he's fighting the Crusades. Prince John becomes
King John, and he finds that he needs the baron's
help to rule, and so the barons force him to
sign something called the Great Charter or the Magna Carta
(11:59):
in the year twelve fifteen. Now it's often said, oh,
the Magna Carta doesn't have anything to do with us,
meaning everyday blue collar, middle class people.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
That's true. King John signed the Magna Carta with.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
The barons, and the barons aren't asserting they don't care
about rights and privileges for people below them. They care
about their rights. When they say our rights, that's what
they mean, their own rights. Nevertheless, trial by a jury
of your peers, being forced to be charged explicitly with
the crime within a certain amount of time what we
call habeas corpus. You could draw a line between the
(12:35):
Magna Carta and the reading of your miranda rights in
something that we call due process. And what is magna
carta fundamentally? Magna carta fundamentally is a restriction of state
power represented by the king against individuals. This is a
process that's called federalism, and it's something that Americans fight
(12:57):
about all the time.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
What is the size of government?
Speaker 3 (12:59):
How close should government be to people's private lives, and
because you always have this tradition of rising up against
a centralized state power in England, this is why monarchy
in England ultimately collapses with the glorious Revolution in sixteen
eighty eight.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Glorious because it is bloodless.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
At the same time, in sixteen eighty eight, when Louis
the fourteenth is the son king in Versailles and basically
thinks he's God on Earth.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
After the break, Chris catches us up on Germany and
the Holy Roman Empire and also explains how Columbus charmed
Queen Isabella.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
What's going around in Germany now? Germany and the Holy
Roman Empire. If you take a look of the Holy
Roman Empire at this period, all the way up to
about fifteen hundred, you have these little states. If you
take a map of the United States and look not
at the borders of the states but the borders of
the counties. Jeez, who knows how many counties there are
(14:11):
within each state, that's kind of what Germany was like.
And so above that, so you had lots of counts,
lots of local dukes, lots of feudalism. But above that
you had that holy Roman Emperor. Just listen to the phrase. Right,
holy Roman Emperor, who was ever on that throne, says,
I'm tracing myself back to Henry the fifth, to Henry
(14:33):
the fourth, to Henry the third, to the Ottos, to
the Fredericks, to Charlemagne, to Constantine.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
I am the defender of the faith.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
I am king of the Romans, even though I'm up
here in Germany and Rome is down there. I am
king of the Romans as well. And the phrase that
they use is the translazzio imperi, the translation of the empire.
Now let's look at that word translation for a moment.
When I late from French into English, I'm taking words,
(15:09):
if you will, from one place to another place, when
relics of a saint in the Catholic tradition are moved
from one place to another. When Pope John Paul the
second was beatified in the spring of the year twenty eleven,
a few months before that, actually his body was translated moved,
(15:32):
not the body itself, but the tomb. The coffin was
moved from its original burial place underneath Saint Peter's to
a spot for veneration, and that spot it happens to
be right next to where Michelangelo's Pata is.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
If you walk into Saint Peter's Basilica, you.
Speaker 3 (15:53):
Go to the right and the first altar is the
piata and the second altar is the body of John
Paul the Second in the spring of twenty eleven, and
that is called the translation of the body.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
So that's a physical translation.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
This is a intellectual translation, in ideological translation, that the
empire has moved. Well, that shouldn't surprise us, because didn't
Constantine move the empire when they moved the capital of
the empire from the Latin west, the city of Rome,
to the Greek east, the village of Byzantium that he
renamed Constantinople. So why can't it move again? Remember Charlemagne
(16:32):
said that Achen was a nova Roma, a new Rome,
a Tertia Roma, a third Rome, Rome, Constantinople, Achen.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
So this is not strange to the medieval mind.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
And the name of the dynasty of the family name
was the Hohenstaufen, a series of autos and Henry's and Frederick's.
My students often ask me why don't they keep changing names?
Why don't they just take the same name again and
again and again, and the answer is, I don't know why.
But you also have many local authorities as well. However,
(17:09):
the Holy Roman Emperor holds sway over Germany in a
much stronger fashion than that King of Paris, call the
King of France holds over the people in France. That
Holy Roman Empire is going to be a problem for
the Church all the way up through Luther. Now let's
go back to Spain. When you say Spain, you think
(17:33):
of a country nowadays, and we always say Spain and Portugal,
that strip of land of Portugal, that small country that
has had a disproportionate influence on world history because of
Henry the Navigator and his school of navigation and those
great ship captains. Spain doesn't exist in the ancient world
(17:56):
in the way we think of it today. The Roman
Empire had a couple of provinces over there in Spain,
but when the Muslim come along, they take over the area.
But it was broken up into various regions, and the
region in Arabic was called al Andalus Andulacia.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
You may have heard that word.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
So if you're doing some reading and you see some
reference to all Andalus, that is a Muslim or an
Arabic reference to the region that we today called Spain
and Portugal dominated by the Muslims from seven thirty two
to fourteen ninety two, and having these smaller kingdoms fusing
(18:40):
together as the Christians defeat the Muslims. Now, we've talked
about that in general terms several times. Now let's look
at it more practically, and some of these names will
be familiar to you from your travels or your study. Barcelona,
for instance, becomes it's a small region which becomes the
(19:00):
Kingdom of Aragon, and that area gets married with a
local kingdom called Catalan, and in the eight hundreds those
two come together in larger kingdoms, smaller kingdoms becoming larger
kingdoms called Leon and Castile, and in the nine hundreds,
(19:21):
Castile goes to Navarre. Around the one thousands, and then
the big event, the Full of Toledo in ten eighty five,
and as the Christians are coming together and fusing their
authority together, it's working, right, so the kings can now
claim that they are defending the faith. They use the
exact same phrase as the Holy Roman emperors are using,
(19:43):
and it's working. They're coming together, they're gathering lands, and
as they defeat the Muslims, they gather those lands in
as well, so that eventually, in fourteen sixty nine, where
the very end of our period, we meet Isabella, Isabella
of Castile leone in the year fourteen sixty nine marries
(20:04):
Ferdinand of Aragon, and make no mistake, she was the
brains of that operation. And so Castillion gets together with Aragon.
They finally finish the reconquest with the fall of Granada
in the southernmost portion of Spain called Seville. And the
reason Columbus, as the phrase goes, sails the ocean blue
(20:25):
in fourteen hundred and ninety two, is that everybody saw
this coming. It was in inevitability. And Columbus had had
some trouble getting funding, and he was kind of flirting
with Isabella, and he said, come on, come on, give
me some money.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
For some ships. And she said, I can't. Can't you
see him fighting the Muslims?
Speaker 3 (20:39):
And he said to her, would you agree that when
you win, and we all know you're going to win,
your majesty, when you win, you'll give me money for
three ships.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
And she says, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, crazy.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
Genuine go away, And as the story goes, as the
legend goes, she walks into her throne room once she's
the battle is over and Granada has fallen, and she
mocks the Muslims, yelling allah Acbar.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
Don't know whether it's true or not, but it's a
great insult to do it that way.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
And Columbus bows before her and says, congratulations, your majesty,
Now can I have my three ships? So we have
this connection of all of these great events from the
end of a medieval effort that had begun seven hundred
years earlier. Let's bring this together in a little case study.
So in the last topic, we had a case study
(21:31):
of Gregory the seventh Pope and Henry the fourth Holy
Roman Emperor. Let's look at another case study, and it
again has the same topic. The clash is this question
of the king as a religious ruler.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
Now pay attention to that phrase.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
The king as a religious ruler and the pope as
a secular ruler. Nothing new here. Constantine thought he was
a religious ruler. Justinian thought he was a theocrat, a
theocratic king. Moving forward in time, Louis the fourteenth is
going to say he's a divine right king and the
(22:09):
Pope as a secular ruler, because Constantine had given the
Bishop of rome Land and then Peppin and the seven
hundreds had given the Bishop of rome Land. And we
talked about the question at the very end of the
last topic. We talked about the question of whether this
power in this land, what did that do to the
spiritual or moral authority? And some people saw it very
(22:31):
much as a corruption. And so some people say this
incidence that I'm going to talk about now is not
the high point but the low point of papal claims
to be emperor of the world, as some people said,
innocent the third claimed around twelve hundred.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
Who's higher? Who can depose whom? Who?
Speaker 3 (22:52):
Says French example, a pope by the name of Boniface
the eighth, known as a very political man who likely
engineered the abdication of the prior pope by the name
of Celestine.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
And a French king, powerful French king fill up the
fourth in the sources.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
In the French sources, he's Philippe LaBelle Fillip, the fair,
same guy, Phillip the fourth, Philipe.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
Levelle Phillip the fair long rain.
Speaker 3 (23:21):
We're talking about thirteen hundred, and the issue is taxation
without permission. The tradition was that if the French king
wants to tax the clergy, he must ask the pope
for permission.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
Philip says, I don't have time for.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
That, a I need money, and be quite frankly, I
don't have to ask him for permission because I'm the king.
They're subject to me as frenchmen. I'm going to tax them.
Boniface goes crazy over this and to say to show
that no, in fact, you are not in charge of
the church, even though it's in French territory. He reaches
(23:58):
into French territory, he reaches his religious authority in and
he creates a new diocese, and he names a new
bishop without asking the king's permission. So again, this is
a battle royal like Gregory the seventh and Henry the fourth,
and it has to do with ultimate authority, not unlike
(24:21):
the investiture controversy, temporal power and spiritual power. Boniface is
so strong in his claims that he puts out a
document that's called unam sanctam. Church documents are named after
the first couple of words. Sometimes it's an indication of
what the document is about. Sometimes it's not. In this case,
(24:43):
he's talking about unam sanctum one Holy and Apostolic Church.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
There is one and one only, and that.
Speaker 3 (24:52):
Church is the highest authority in heaven and on earth.
And therefore everyone on earth, if he wants to get
to Heaven, must absolutely, at all places and at all times,
acknowledge the ultimate authority on Heaven, in heaven and on earth,
of the pope, including a king. There is no way
(25:15):
Philip is going to stand for this. He sends his
men to chase Boniface. Boniface leaves Rome and he takes
refuge in a castle at a place called Ayani, and
something occurs called the Insult at Ayani. The forces are
coming in. Boniface is abandoned by his own people. He says,
the only safety I have right now is to sit
(25:37):
down and to dress myself in my full robes, wearing
the chasible, wearing the crown, the miter, the fancy triple crown,
wearing my ring, having my crozier.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
They'll never do anything.
Speaker 3 (25:49):
They burst through the door, and we're not quite sure
what happens. We know that they verbally abuse him, they
insult him. Did they physically abuse him? Did they strike him?
We're not quite sure, but what we do know is
that Boniface dies of the shock a few years later
because they had taken possession of him, basically taken im prisoner,
(26:09):
and for the next seventy five years, the papacy will
be in Avenue.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
Thank you for listening to this episode of Half Hour History,
Secrets of the Medieval World. Next time, we're going back
to the Renaissance for spiritual awakening.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
Half Hour History Secrets.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
Of the Medieval World from One Day University is a
production of iHeart Podcasts and School of Humans. If you're
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and check out the Curiosity Audio Network for podcasts covering history,
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Speaker 2 (26:57):
School of Humans
Lessons from the world's top professors anytime, any place, world
history examined and science explained. This is one day university Welcome.
You were listening to half hour history Secrets of the
(00:34):
Medieval World. I, of course, I'm your host, Mike Coscarelli.
Last time the emperors and the popes were jockeying for power.
Now we're leaving those squabbles behind for a bird's eye
view of how territories became nations and.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
How nations became nation states.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
We've got the Magna Carta, Columbus Louis, the fourteenth eleanor
of Aquitaine, King Richard. The name drops are ridiculous. Here's
Chris with the crash.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Course, let's say right from the beginning that when we
talk about nations, you can't think of borders and nations
and the un in the way we think of them nowadays.
Maybe we should talk about territories. But that's not quite
(01:28):
right either, because what we're getting toward is the nation state.
It's an early modern and modern construction, and it's something
that becomes very important in that period, and we live
with it every day of our lives today. But since
we are going toward nations, we're going in that direction.
I think it's okay to talk about nation building with
(01:50):
that caveat. And the reason we look upon this in
this way is that if you look at Europe about
nine hundred, right, so we have the early, the High
and the late Medieval period. So as we look at
it at the end of that early going toward that
High Midias period about nine hundred, and then we look
at Europe in fifteen hundred. Yeah, the map looks different,
(02:13):
there's no question about that. And so let's look first
in overview of some of these chunks, and then we
can look specifically at some of those chunks.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
The first thing is France.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
France does not look then like it looks now and
again these are very subtle and gray areas. There's a
very slow emergence of something called royal primacy in France.
France's borders move a lot. So even saying France is
(02:49):
kind of tough. We might want to put that in
quotation marks, because there's Aquitaine in the Bordeaux region and
the Norman region, and all of these have very very
strong leaders almost to the points of being kings, but
not quite being kings, and they can't quite get pushed
back by the person who's sitting in Paris, who's pretty strong.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
He's a first among.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
Equals, but he's got to keep these other people at
bay as well. So power is centered in Paris, but
you have other very very strong areas, and some of
those regions could be run by women. The one I
think of is Eleanor of Aquitaine, who's a great movie
done in the sixties called The Lion in Winter with
(03:32):
two great actors. Eleanor of Aquitaine is played by Catherine
Hepburn and Henry the Second of England is played by
Peter O'Toole, and they have this huge battle because Eleanor
basically controls all of Aquitaine, incredibly rich, incredibly important. She
can't be queen in the sense of being the total monarch,
(03:53):
but she's basically running England and France at the same time.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
So the king in.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Paris is a king of Paris, the ancient capital, but
he doesn't have total sway over all of those other people. Meanwhile,
in England I just mentioned Henry the Second. In England,
Henry the Second is in a weird position because in
one way he is the King of England, but in
another way, as the Duke of Normandy, he's under the
(04:23):
King of France. And you really want to complicate it.
Eleanor of Aquitaine is married to Henry the Second, but
she used.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
To be married to the King of France.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
A reminder that England and France literally intermarried with each other.
And in the years eleven hundred and twelve hundred, as
late as thirteen hundred, the language at court in England.
In England was not English but French. England has another heritage.
(04:56):
It's the heritage of the Angles and the Saxons and
the Celts who had all been there in the central
portion of the island, and in the western portion of
the island, and in the eastern portion of the island.
Remember the Vikings at the Jorvik Center York as it's
called nowadays. So you also had this regionalization in England
(05:17):
as well, and this role of the local community. So
on paper a monarchy, in practice not so much. And
England and France are married together, why are they speaking
French in the English court? In eleven and twelve hundred,
ten sixty six, the Norman invasion, William, the Duke of
Normandy invades and becomes the William the Conqueror, and then
(05:44):
he's the same person who's called William the first King
of England. And this close relationship is not going to
get unlocked for three hundred years around thirteen fifty. It
begins around fourteen fifty, it ends the one hundred Years War.
So England and France from ten sixty six to fourteen
fifty three are in this very very close relationship. Then
(06:07):
you have Germany and the Holy Roman Empire. We've been
talking about that for some time, and I'll get to
that in a minute.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
And then Spain.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
Now we've been talking a little bit about Spain. Spain
is its own animal. Remember, Spain is dominated by Islam.
The Christians are pushing the Muslims down. From seven point
thirty two about ten eighty five is a halfway will
Mark with Toledo, which is about center in the box
of modern day Spain and Portugal. And the interesting thing
(06:36):
about the development of kingdom's plural kingdoms in Spain is
that they are coming together as the Christians are pushing
the Muslims down. The Christians are coming together to fight
a common enemy. Right, so they may not like each
other very much, but they have a common enemy.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
So that's how uniting takes place in Spain. Okay, a
little overview. Now, let's look at France, England, Germany and
Spain a little bit separately. France from about one thousand
to about fifteen hundred is ruled by a family called
Cupet cap Et, the Kapitian dynasty. Hugh Cupet was the
(07:21):
father of this family. But as I said earlier, the
king in Paris, the Kpetians control Paris and the surrounding area,
has very very severe limits within French territories, and they're
always fighting off these English claims as well. And yet
that king in Paris, in fact, the kings all over
(07:41):
have a much stronger royal Christian claim to authority. There
are much stronger liturgical, ritualistic religious overtones than you find
in England. France also has less experience with representation than England.
So what you have is a king and then a
(08:03):
court around him, the couria rageous and England, by contrast,
has something called parliament.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
So the king and his court control a.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
Small area but not much beyond that, whereas the king
in England has this other body over there called parliament
where power flows from the bottom up. So there's gonna
be some conflict there. Paris has something called a parliament,
but it's something that comes together rather infrequently. The King
of France preserves the law, but he is above the law.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Now that strikes us as odd.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
When Pete Rose was thrown out of baseball by Bart Giamatti,
Bart Giamatti, the commissioner of baseball, said, let no man
think that he is above the game. And we say,
thinking perhaps to Nixon and Watergate, let no man think
that he is above the law. Well, that's exactly what
it was in Paris. The king preserves the law, but
(08:59):
he is above the law. He has stronger bloodlines, he
has prestige, he has aura. The stylized ritual in the
French court is going to last for centuries ahead.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Think of Louis the.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
Fourteenth and Versailles, Louis the fifteenth, Louis the sixteenth.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
And Marie Antoinette. The killing.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
The beheading of Louis the sixteenth is so striking to
the world because this is a divine right monarchy. In fact,
they call themselves the ancient regime, the ancient regime, the.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
Way it had always been.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
So France, though it has these competing powers, has this
aura about it. So the French king, meaning the man
in Paris, has less territory under his direct control. We
call this institutional centralization the corea regis, but geographic decentralization,
how did it really work? Listen, the king in Paris
(09:55):
wants you to pay your taxes. If you pay your
taxes and show up to fight when he asks you,
the king is going to leave you alone. So Paris
is one the the biggest piece, the most prestigious piece.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
In a patchwork.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
You're not going to have a strong king of France
until fourteen fifty three. And you're not going to have
that strong king of France until they start pushing the
English out again they unite against a common enemy. Other
side of the channel, there's England. England has a stronger
drive to centralize in the France French, but they had
that longer tradition of local authority of Anglo Saxon. Even
(10:30):
in the area where the Vikings were. It was still
as late as Oney eleven hundred called the Dane law.
The area where the law of the Danes the people
from Denmark, the Vikings where that Law was in charge,
and that's around York, and then the Norman invasion in
ten sixty six when William beats Harold. If you've ever
seen the Bayeux tapestry, either in real life or in photos,
(10:53):
what you have is the story like in a series
of cartoons that would be pasted along a wall of
the battle. And so you see William crossing the channel,
and you see William attacking Harold, and Harold getting an
arrow in the eye and Harold falling off the horse,
and William taking the throne as an example of what
goes on between this other authority, this other power that
(11:16):
goes from the bottom up. Think of Magna carta. So
you have King John, remember King John from robin Hood.
In Robinhood, King John is Prince John and his brother
is Richard, the lion Hearted, both children by the way
of Henry the Second and Eleanor of Aquitaine. And King
Richard is off fighting the Crusades. He couldn't care less
(11:36):
about England. He's French in his heart, He's French in
his tongue. It's his language. He goes off fighting the Crusades.
He's killed while he's fighting the Crusades. Prince John becomes
King John, and he finds that he needs the baron's
help to rule, and so the barons force him to
sign something called the Great Charter or the Magna Carta
(11:59):
in the year twelve fifteen. Now it's often said, oh,
the Magna Carta doesn't have anything to do with us,
meaning everyday blue collar, middle class people.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
That's true. King John signed the Magna Carta with.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
The barons, and the barons aren't asserting they don't care
about rights and privileges for people below them. They care
about their rights. When they say our rights, that's what
they mean, their own rights. Nevertheless, trial by a jury
of your peers, being forced to be charged explicitly with
the crime within a certain amount of time what we
call habeas corpus. You could draw a line between the
(12:35):
Magna Carta and the reading of your miranda rights in
something that we call due process. And what is magna
carta fundamentally? Magna carta fundamentally is a restriction of state
power represented by the king against individuals. This is a
process that's called federalism, and it's something that Americans fight
(12:57):
about all the time.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
What is the size of government?
Speaker 3 (12:59):
How close should government be to people's private lives, and
because you always have this tradition of rising up against
a centralized state power in England, this is why monarchy
in England ultimately collapses with the glorious Revolution in sixteen
eighty eight.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Glorious because it is bloodless.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
At the same time, in sixteen eighty eight, when Louis
the fourteenth is the son king in Versailles and basically
thinks he's God on Earth.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
After the break, Chris catches us up on Germany and
the Holy Roman Empire and also explains how Columbus charmed
Queen Isabella.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
What's going around in Germany now? Germany and the Holy
Roman Empire. If you take a look of the Holy
Roman Empire at this period, all the way up to
about fifteen hundred, you have these little states. If you
take a map of the United States and look not
at the borders of the states but the borders of
the counties. Jeez, who knows how many counties there are
(14:11):
within each state, that's kind of what Germany was like.
And so above that, so you had lots of counts,
lots of local dukes, lots of feudalism. But above that
you had that holy Roman Emperor. Just listen to the phrase. Right,
holy Roman Emperor, who was ever on that throne, says,
I'm tracing myself back to Henry the fifth, to Henry
(14:33):
the fourth, to Henry the third, to the Ottos, to
the Fredericks, to Charlemagne, to Constantine.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
I am the defender of the faith.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
I am king of the Romans, even though I'm up
here in Germany and Rome is down there. I am
king of the Romans as well. And the phrase that
they use is the translazzio imperi, the translation of the empire.
Now let's look at that word translation for a moment.
When I late from French into English, I'm taking words,
(15:09):
if you will, from one place to another place, when
relics of a saint in the Catholic tradition are moved
from one place to another. When Pope John Paul the
second was beatified in the spring of the year twenty eleven,
a few months before that, actually his body was translated moved,
(15:32):
not the body itself, but the tomb. The coffin was
moved from its original burial place underneath Saint Peter's to
a spot for veneration, and that spot it happens to
be right next to where Michelangelo's Pata is.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
If you walk into Saint Peter's Basilica, you.
Speaker 3 (15:53):
Go to the right and the first altar is the
piata and the second altar is the body of John
Paul the Second in the spring of twenty eleven, and
that is called the translation of the body.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
So that's a physical translation.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
This is a intellectual translation, in ideological translation, that the
empire has moved. Well, that shouldn't surprise us, because didn't
Constantine move the empire when they moved the capital of
the empire from the Latin west, the city of Rome,
to the Greek east, the village of Byzantium that he
renamed Constantinople. So why can't it move again? Remember Charlemagne
(16:32):
said that Achen was a nova Roma, a new Rome,
a Tertia Roma, a third Rome, Rome, Constantinople, Achen.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
So this is not strange to the medieval mind.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
And the name of the dynasty of the family name
was the Hohenstaufen, a series of autos and Henry's and Frederick's.
My students often ask me why don't they keep changing names?
Why don't they just take the same name again and
again and again, and the answer is, I don't know why.
But you also have many local authorities as well. However,
(17:09):
the Holy Roman Emperor holds sway over Germany in a
much stronger fashion than that King of Paris, call the
King of France holds over the people in France. That
Holy Roman Empire is going to be a problem for
the Church all the way up through Luther. Now let's
go back to Spain. When you say Spain, you think
(17:33):
of a country nowadays, and we always say Spain and Portugal,
that strip of land of Portugal, that small country that
has had a disproportionate influence on world history because of
Henry the Navigator and his school of navigation and those
great ship captains. Spain doesn't exist in the ancient world
(17:56):
in the way we think of it today. The Roman
Empire had a couple of provinces over there in Spain,
but when the Muslim come along, they take over the area.
But it was broken up into various regions, and the
region in Arabic was called al Andalus Andulacia.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
You may have heard that word.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
So if you're doing some reading and you see some
reference to all Andalus, that is a Muslim or an
Arabic reference to the region that we today called Spain
and Portugal dominated by the Muslims from seven thirty two
to fourteen ninety two, and having these smaller kingdoms fusing
(18:40):
together as the Christians defeat the Muslims. Now, we've talked
about that in general terms several times. Now let's look
at it more practically, and some of these names will
be familiar to you from your travels or your study. Barcelona,
for instance, becomes it's a small region which becomes the
(19:00):
Kingdom of Aragon, and that area gets married with a
local kingdom called Catalan, and in the eight hundreds those
two come together in larger kingdoms, smaller kingdoms becoming larger
kingdoms called Leon and Castile, and in the nine hundreds,
(19:21):
Castile goes to Navarre. Around the one thousands, and then
the big event, the Full of Toledo in ten eighty five,
and as the Christians are coming together and fusing their
authority together, it's working, right, so the kings can now
claim that they are defending the faith. They use the
exact same phrase as the Holy Roman emperors are using,
(19:43):
and it's working. They're coming together, they're gathering lands, and
as they defeat the Muslims, they gather those lands in
as well, so that eventually, in fourteen sixty nine, where
the very end of our period, we meet Isabella, Isabella
of Castile leone in the year fourteen sixty nine marries
(20:04):
Ferdinand of Aragon, and make no mistake, she was the
brains of that operation. And so Castillion gets together with Aragon.
They finally finish the reconquest with the fall of Granada
in the southernmost portion of Spain called Seville. And the
reason Columbus, as the phrase goes, sails the ocean blue
(20:25):
in fourteen hundred and ninety two, is that everybody saw
this coming. It was in inevitability. And Columbus had had
some trouble getting funding, and he was kind of flirting
with Isabella, and he said, come on, come on, give
me some money.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
For some ships. And she said, I can't. Can't you
see him fighting the Muslims?
Speaker 3 (20:39):
And he said to her, would you agree that when
you win, and we all know you're going to win,
your majesty, when you win, you'll give me money for
three ships.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
And she says, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, crazy.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
Genuine go away, And as the story goes, as the
legend goes, she walks into her throne room once she's
the battle is over and Granada has fallen, and she
mocks the Muslims, yelling allah Acbar.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
Don't know whether it's true or not, but it's a
great insult to do it that way.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
And Columbus bows before her and says, congratulations, your majesty,
Now can I have my three ships? So we have
this connection of all of these great events from the
end of a medieval effort that had begun seven hundred
years earlier. Let's bring this together in a little case study.
So in the last topic, we had a case study
(21:31):
of Gregory the seventh Pope and Henry the fourth Holy
Roman Emperor. Let's look at another case study, and it
again has the same topic. The clash is this question
of the king as a religious ruler.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
Now pay attention to that phrase.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
The king as a religious ruler and the pope as
a secular ruler. Nothing new here. Constantine thought he was
a religious ruler. Justinian thought he was a theocrat, a
theocratic king. Moving forward in time, Louis the fourteenth is
going to say he's a divine right king and the
(22:09):
Pope as a secular ruler, because Constantine had given the
Bishop of rome Land and then Peppin and the seven
hundreds had given the Bishop of rome Land. And we
talked about the question at the very end of the
last topic. We talked about the question of whether this
power in this land, what did that do to the
spiritual or moral authority? And some people saw it very
(22:31):
much as a corruption. And so some people say this
incidence that I'm going to talk about now is not
the high point but the low point of papal claims
to be emperor of the world, as some people said,
innocent the third claimed around twelve hundred.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
Who's higher? Who can depose whom? Who?
Speaker 3 (22:52):
Says French example, a pope by the name of Boniface
the eighth, known as a very political man who likely
engineered the abdication of the prior pope by the name
of Celestine.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
And a French king, powerful French king fill up the
fourth in the sources.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
In the French sources, he's Philippe LaBelle Fillip, the fair,
same guy, Phillip the fourth, Philipe.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
Levelle Phillip the fair long rain.
Speaker 3 (23:21):
We're talking about thirteen hundred, and the issue is taxation
without permission. The tradition was that if the French king
wants to tax the clergy, he must ask the pope
for permission.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
Philip says, I don't have time for.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
That, a I need money, and be quite frankly, I
don't have to ask him for permission because I'm the king.
They're subject to me as frenchmen. I'm going to tax them.
Boniface goes crazy over this and to say to show
that no, in fact, you are not in charge of
the church, even though it's in French territory. He reaches
(23:58):
into French territory, he reaches his religious authority in and
he creates a new diocese, and he names a new
bishop without asking the king's permission. So again, this is
a battle royal like Gregory the seventh and Henry the fourth,
and it has to do with ultimate authority, not unlike
(24:21):
the investiture controversy, temporal power and spiritual power. Boniface is
so strong in his claims that he puts out a
document that's called unam sanctam. Church documents are named after
the first couple of words. Sometimes it's an indication of
what the document is about. Sometimes it's not. In this case,
(24:43):
he's talking about unam sanctum one Holy and Apostolic Church.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
There is one and one only, and that.
Speaker 3 (24:52):
Church is the highest authority in heaven and on earth.
And therefore everyone on earth, if he wants to get
to Heaven, must absolutely, at all places and at all times,
acknowledge the ultimate authority on Heaven, in heaven and on earth,
of the pope, including a king. There is no way
(25:15):
Philip is going to stand for this. He sends his
men to chase Boniface. Boniface leaves Rome and he takes
refuge in a castle at a place called Ayani, and
something occurs called the Insult at Ayani. The forces are
coming in. Boniface is abandoned by his own people. He says,
the only safety I have right now is to sit
(25:37):
down and to dress myself in my full robes, wearing
the chasible, wearing the crown, the miter, the fancy triple crown,
wearing my ring, having my crozier.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
They'll never do anything.
Speaker 3 (25:49):
They burst through the door, and we're not quite sure
what happens. We know that they verbally abuse him, they
insult him. Did they physically abuse him? Did they strike him?
We're not quite sure, but what we do know is
that Boniface dies of the shock a few years later
because they had taken possession of him, basically taken im prisoner,
(26:09):
and for the next seventy five years, the papacy will
be in Avenue.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
Thank you for listening to this episode of Half Hour History,
Secrets of the Medieval World. Next time, we're going back
to the Renaissance for spiritual awakening.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
Half Hour History Secrets.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
Of the Medieval World from One Day University is a
production of iHeart Podcasts and School of Humans. If you're
enjoying the show, leave a review in your favorite podcast app,
and check out the Curiosity Audio Network for podcasts covering history,
pop culture, true crime, and more.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
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