Okay, let's finish our Unit 1 tour of the world and see what kind of spicy developments are going on in Europe from 1200 to 1450. So if you're ready to get them brain cows milked feudalistically, well, let's get to it. Okay, first let's talk religion, and for Europe we're going to talk about Christianity. Now, back during the time of the Rome- Empire, Christianity became the official state religion thanks to our boy Emperor Constantine. And for a while that belief system united Romans all over the dang place.
But in 476 CE, the western half of the Roman Empire fell. So sad. But cheer up, because the eastern half of the Roman Empire, known as the Byzantium, The Byzantine Empire kept the faith and its politically and socially organizing properties alive for another millennium.
The Byzantine flavor of the faith was known as Eastern Orthodox Christianity, and it provided a belief structure that helped Byzantine rulers justify and consolidate their power structure, which was highly centralized. But over in the West, after the highly centralized Roman Empire fell, this region broke apart politically into many decentralized entities, and we'll talk more about that in a minute. But despite that fragmentation in the West, Christianity maintained a powerful presence in the form of Roman Catholic Christianity.
Now by 1200 the Byzantine Empire had experienced a thorough butt-whipping by neighboring Islamic powers and ended up losing significant amounts of territory to them. However, that didn't mean that they didn't still wield enormous influence on the Eastern Mediterranean and Southwest Europe, because they did. That is until 1453, when a new Muslim power known as the Ottoman Empire sacked the crown jewel of Byzantium, namely the capital city of Constantinople, and went ahead and changed the name to Istanbul.
And that was the end of the Byzantine Empire. Moment of silence, please. Okay, that's enough.
Now wipe that single tear from your face because while the Byzantine Empire fell, Eastern Orthodox Christianity would be picked up off the ground and embraced by another group who would keep it alive, namely the Kievan Rus. Now to be fair, they had adopted Eastern Orthodoxy way before the fall of Constantinople, but But now that the Byzantines were smashed to pieces, the Rus became the main embodiment of this branch of Christianity. And in doing so, they borrowed quite a bit from their Byzantine pals, like their architectural styles, their alphabet, the idea of using church structures to organize the state. But again, over in Western Europe, this kind of centralization was not occurring.
These states were pretty isolated from everyone else in the world in terms of trading connections, but still Roman Catholicism was one constant across the continent. The Church hierarchy of popes and bishops and cardinals provided at least some common structure among the various states of Western Europe. And in addition to the common structure, the Roman Catholic Church also provided occasions to whip European Christians into a religious fury and go fight Muslims in distant lands.
These occasions of course are known as the Crusades, and with the exception of the First Crusade, Europeans pretty squarely got whipped by the Muslims. But it did have the effect of connecting Europeans. to larger trade networks, but we'll talk about that in Unit 2. But before we move on to the juicy political organization of these states, it's important to know that while Christianity was certainly the dominant belief system here, Islam and Judaism held important minority positions. For example, over here on the Iberian Peninsula, Muslims had invaded in the 8th century, and by our period, they ran the place. Additionally, Jews were scattered throughout Europe and regularly facilitated and participated in trade.
But as it turns out, a lot of European Christians were suspicious of Jews, and so various ways of anti-Semitism or Jewish marginalization and persecution kind of kept them living at the edges of European society. Okay, now, if you've been watching my previous Unit 1 videos, hold on to your butts, because what I'm about to say might come as a shock. Around the start of this period, there were precisely no large empires in Europe. What? Like think about all the places that we visited in Unit 1. The Aztecs and the Incas were running crap in the Americas.
The Song Dynasty in China was massive. Islamic empires were grabbing land all over the dang place. But not in Europe.
Instead, decentralization and political fragmentation was the soup du jour in Europe, and so let's talk about it. In Western Europe, the social, political, and economic order was essentially organized around a system known as feudalism. And maybe that's an unfamiliar word, but don't worry, your efforts to understand it are not… feudal.
Anyway, feudalism was a system of allegiances between powerful lords and monarchs. Basically, the greater lords and kings gained allegiance from lesser lords and kings, and land was exchanged to keep everyone loyal. Now all these patches of land were owned and ruled pretty much independently, and the system at work here was known as menorah.
So here, peasants were bound to the land and worked it in exchange for protection from the Lord and his military forces. And that kind of makes it sound like a mutual exchange, but in truth these peasants, known as serfs, were little different than slaves. The big difference was that serfs were not owned by the Lord, but rather, as I said, they were bound to the land and the manor. And that's how it was for a long time in Europe.
However, around the start of our period in 1200 and, you know, a little bit before, Europe's political structures began to change. Monarchs in various states began to gain power and centralize their states by introducing large militaries and bureaucracies. And this was a big deal because prior to this, it was the European nobility that held most of the power. But more and more, monarchs in this period are going to get on their power pants and centralize their authority under themselves. But you didn't think there weren't going to be any consequences for that increasing centralization, did you?
Don't be crazy. No, with powerful monarchs on the rise, they would increasingly be looking toward one another and competing for influence and territory, which led to all kinds of wars of conquest to determine who indeed wore the biggest power pants. Alright, click here to watch all my videos covering Unit 1 and click here to grab my AP World Heimler Review Guide which has everything you need to get an A in your class and a 5 on your exam in May.
So I'll see you over in Unit 2. Heimler out.