Department of History

EUH-5934:     EAST CENTRAL EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES

Professor: Dr. Florin Curta

Office: 202 Flint Turlington Hall

Office hours: W 2:00-4:00 or by appointment

Phone: 273-3367

E-mail: fcurta@history.ufl.edu

    Rural life is fundamental to the understanding of medieval society, since so many more people lived in villages than in castles or cities. But the understanding of the life of medieval peasantry is obscured by both sources and the prejudice of more recent times. Not all peasants were serfs, and not all serfs were peasants. By 800 A.D., the growing economy of the Carolingian world had produced dramatic changes in both rural settlement patterns and the lives of the people who inhabited them. At the same time, on the fringes of Carolingian Europe (the northwestern Balkans, Scandinavia, northeastern Spain, parts of Italy) a substantial number of people continued to live without any direct connection with the rolling engines of early medieval economy. By 1100 A.D., however, the picture had changed radically. The expansion of agriculture that had its beginnings shortly before or after A.D. 1000 was responsible for a significant alteration of the landscape. One of the great accomplishments of the tenth and eleventh centuries was land clearance. Nevertheless, famines were a relatively common phenomenon of medieval rural life. In the early eleventh century, a Benedictine monk named Radulfus Glaber wrote with a note of fatalism: "Some time later a famine began to ravage the whole earth, and death threatened almost all the human race." Despite the constant threat of disaster, the rural population of Europe grew steadily from the tenth century onward. And with that came the new challenges to which the technological innovations of the period were supposed to respond. The tenth and eleventh century were a time when social mobility was possible despite a general prejudice against anyone of low rank who would try to reach too high a position. Medieval writers of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were not kind to peasants and the shifting economies of the fourteenth century did not help improve the image of peasants in medieval sources. In the words of Froissart, the chronicler of the Hundred Years War, the peasants were "mischievious people who assembled without a captain or armor, robbed, burnt and slew all the gentlement that they could lay hand on." And John Ball, the priest who led the English peasant revolt of 1381, was even sharper: "When Eve delved and Adam span, who was then the gentleman?" Some historians have argued that such revolts represent a systemic "crisis of feudalism," others that they were spontaneous uprisings. This course will focus upon the history of medieval rural life and of peasants, more specifically, upon the cultural, economic, and political changes taking place two to three centuries on both sides of A.D. 1000. Through reading and discussion of such concepts as manorialism, corvée, manumission, gender, and power, we will hopefully come to some understanding of the experience of rural life in the Middle Ages.

As this is a graduate level course, I assume that everyone enrolled has a basic familiarity with the resources available in the library and is willing to use foreign language sources when appropriate. I also assume that everyone knows the mechanics of researching and writing a scholarly paper. By this, I mean the proper use and acknowledgment of sources as well as the fundamentals of compositions, (English) grammar, and spelling.

The format of this course will be reading- and discussion-oriented. In lieu of written examinations, I will require a brief (3-5 page) essay on the readings each week, due in class on the day that they are to be discussed. You are also to complete a substantial research paper on a relevant topic. After we finish with the core set of required readings, I will expect you to locate and read sources on your own, then come to class prepared to discuss them. I have found this to be the most effective way to learn about a topic which is best examined through case studies.

Requirements for the course include attendance at class meetings, participation in class discussion, and the timely completion of all assignments.
 

August 21: Introduction. Eastern Europe, East Central Europe, and the periodization of the Middle Ages: concepts and approaches.

August 28: 

Christianization

The medieval transformation.

                Read:

• Klápštĕ, Czech Lands
• PrzemysławWiszewski, "Politics and change: the Silesian dukes and the transformation of the land in the thirteenth and fourteenth centurie," in Kleingärtner, pp. 183-203

Villages and rural landscape

                Read:

• Hammerow, Early Medieval Settlements
• Mats Widgren, "Fields and field system in Scandinavia during the Middle Ages," in Astill and Langdon, pp. 173-192
• visit Wharram Percy

Crusades

                Read:

• Gładysz, Forgotten Crusders
• Darius von Güttner-Sporzyński, "The archetypal crusader. Henry of Sandomierz, the second youngest son of Bolesław III." In  Rome, Constantinople and Newly-Converted Europe. Archaeological and Historical Evidence. Edited by Maciej Salamon, Marcin Wołoszyn, Aleksandr E. Musin and Perica Špehar, vol. 1 (Cracow/Leipzig/Rzeszów/Warsaw, Instytut Archeologii i Etnologii PAN/Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2012), pp. 215-232.
  

Dynasties

                Read:

• Schofield, Peasant and Community
• Wojciech Kozłowski, "The marriage of Bolesław of the Piasts and Kinga of the Árpáds in 1239 in the shadow of the Mongol menace." In „In my spirit and thought I remained a European of Hungarian origin”. Medieval Historical Studies in Memory of Zoltan J. Kosztolnyik. Edited by István Petrovics, Sándor László Tóth and E. A. Congdon (Szeged,:JATE Press, 2010), pp. ?.
  

September 29: Peasants in the eyes of others

              Read:

Freedman, Images of Medieval Peasants

October 6: Peasant rebellions

                Read:

• Hilton, Bond Men Made Free
• Bruce Campbell, "Economic rent and the intensification of English agriculture," in Astill and Langdon, pp. 225-250

October 13: Late medieval changes

                Read:

• Hoppenbrouwers and van Zanden, Peasants into Farmers?
• Mavis Mate, "Agricultural technology in southeast England, 1348-1530," in Astill and Langdon, pp. 251-274

October 20: On the fringes

                Read :

• Erik Thoen, "The birth of the 'Flemish husbandry': agricultural technology in medieval Flanders," in Astill and Langdon, pp. 69-88
• Peter Hoppenbrouwers, "Agricultural production and technology in the Netherlands, c. 1000-1500," in Astill and Langdon, pp. 89-114
• Bjørn Poulsen "Agricultural technology in medieval Denmark," in Astill and Langdon, pp. 115-145
• John Langdon, "Was England a technological backwater in the Middle Ages?" in Astill and Langdon, pp. 275-292

Topics for research project, with preliminary bibliography due.

October 27: Medieval demographics

                    Locate and read one book on medieval populations, families, or migration

November 3: Medieval diet

                    Locate and read two articles (or one in a foreign language) on medieval foodways in rural areas

November 10: The Church and the peasants.

Locate and read two articles (or one in a foreign language) on rural parish churches or Church attitudes towards peasants.

November 17: Peasants and heresy.

Locate and read one book on medieval heresy.

November 24: Peasants elsewhere.

Locate and read one book on the archaeology and/or history of medieval peasants outside western Europe.

December 1: Presentations

December 8: Presentations