26.3 Europe: a.d. 1101 to 1200  (Page 6/8)

NOTE: Insert FRANCE IN 1180

Of 15 universities established in France in the Middle Ages, only two allowed the study of medicine - Montpellier and later the University of Paris. After 1180, Jews and Arabs could be admitted to Montpellier. (Ref. 125)

The netherlands and belgium

We have previously noted that in this century commercial development in Italy took a quantum jump. A secondary commercial center appeared in the Low Countries where the navigable Rhine, Meuse and Scheldt rivers converge. Overland portage routes linked these channels to Italy and exchanges between the two centers occurred regularly at great fairs in Champagne. (Ref. 279) The independent area of Flanders had the great, busy port of Bruges, which was the center of the Hanseatic League, an alliance of merchants from ports all across the North and Baltic seas. It was designed to promote member cooperation against external competition and pirates, to arrange for congenial association of merchants away from home and to protect against fluctuating currencies, defaulting debtors and feudal tools. The League had a detailed Code of Maritime regulations and initially, at least, was an agent of civilization. Merchants of Flanders brought English wool to Flemish weavers and then sold the cloth throughout the north, soon dominating all this north trade. It is unfortunate that eventually the league became an oppressor as well as a defender of rights. (Ref. 49, 137)

British isles

England

The Thames at London was already bordered by a continuous line of docks for the business of exporting wool, cloth and tin and importing such things as Arabian spices, Chinese silks, Russian furs, and French wines. Iron was mined and this necessitated a revival of coal mining to process the metal. While prior to the Norman conquest all English wool had been taken to Flanders for weaving, now Flemish artisans went to England and taught the English how to use wool, so that it eventually became a foundation of British wealth. Up until the middle of the 12th century Anglo-Saxon (Old English) was the language of England; then Middle English developed. (Ref. 213)

The early kings of this century - Henry I (the last Norman), Stephen and the six month queen, Matilda, were of little consequence to history. Near the middle of the era a six year civil war broke out and as a result Henry II of the Plantagenet line became king (1154). The name Plantagenet comes from "Planta Genesta", the broom, which was the emblem of the house of Henry Fitz-Empress of Angevin. Henry II, as noted above in the discussion of France in this century, married the heiress of Aquitane and thus acquired the Norman Angevin and Aquitanian fiefs on the continent. He became one of England's greatest kings, known for establishing the jurisdiction of the secular courts over the clerical and thus liberating English law from feudal and ecclesiastical limitations. He quarreled with his former friend, Thomas Becket, the archbishop of Canterbury, as the latter began to champion church against crown. Killed by the king's knights, Becket became a martyr and the king lost the people's confidence. Nevertheless, his reign marked the beginning of the English Common Law and the beginnings of trial by jury. Jurymen were witnesses as well as judges of the fact, picked because they were the most likely to know the facts. (Ref. 49, 137)