CHAPTER FOURTEEN


STUDY QUESTIONS
  1. Define "papal monarchy." Summarize its significance in European political and religious developments.
  2. Why did the founding of the monastery of Cluny represent an important step toward the development of papal power?
  3. Explain the significance of the decree on papal elections issued in 1059.
  4. What were the contributions of Pope Gregory VII to the rise of the papal monarchy? What was Gregory's conception of "right order in the world"?
  5. The investiture struggle was seemingly a quarrel over symbols and ceremony. What were the real underlying issues? How were they settled?
  6. What were the goals of Pope Innocent III? To what extent did he attain them?
  7. Explain the assertion that, for all of its accomplishments, the reign of Innocent III "sowed some of the seeds of future ruin" for the papal monarchy.
  8. How did the clash between the popes and various monarchs in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries ultimately weaken the power of the papacy?
  9. What were Urban II's motives in calling the First Crusade? What did the First Crusade accomplish?
  10. What were the religious causes of the Crusades?
  11. "While the crusading idea helped build up the papal monarchy, it also helped destroy it." Explain how.
  12. Estimate the positive and negative effects of the Crusades on European society and economy.
  13. What change in religious beliefs is indicated by the twelfth-century cult of the Virgin Mary? How did this change affect social attitudes and artistic expression?
  14. How do you account for the rise of popular heretical movements in the late twelfth century?
  15. How did the emergence of new orders of friars fit into Innocent III's larger reform objectives?
  16. Describe the nature and effects of the "high-medieval educational boom."
  17. What was the relationship between cathedral schools and high-medieval universities?
  18. Show how the great medieval universities set the pattern for higher education in the modern Western world. In what ways were they different from modern institutions?
  19. How did the live of medieval students differ from that of their modern descendants?
  20. To what extent were Robert Grosseteste and Roger Bacon forerunners of modern science?
  21. What was St. Thomas Aquinas attempting in writing his Summaries? In what way, if any, did his thought differ from that of the early Church father St. Augustine?
  22. What were the main types of secular literature in the High Middle Ages? Give examples of each type.
  23. How do the ideas and attitudes expressed in the Divine Comedy contrast with those of the early Middle Ages?
  24. Dante's Divine Comedy has been described as a synthesis of high-medieval knowledge and beliefs. In what ways does it also show originality?
  25. Point out the differences between the Romanesque and Gothic styles of architecture.
  26. In addition to their religious function, what aspects of high-medieval culture are reflected in the great Gothic cathedrals?
PROBLEMS
  1. Investigate further any of the following:
      a. The Cluniac reform movement
      b. St. Francis of Assisi
      c. One of the first four Crusades
      d. Medieval science
      e. The Goliard poets
      f. A major Gothic cathedral (e.g., Chartres, Notre Dame of Paris, Amiens, Lincoln, Canterbury, or Cologne)
  2. Compare modern universities with their medieval prototypes.
  3. Read the chapter titled "The Virgin and the Dynamo" in Henry Adams' The Education of Henry Adams and decide whether or not it expresses accurately the medieval religious temper.
  4. To what extent was medieval Scholasticism a "rationalist" philosophy? Was it an example of rationalism in the modern sense?
  5. Which, in your opinion, was a better summation of late medieval ideals and attitudes: Gothic architecture or vernacular literature?
  6. Read the Song of Roland and explain how it illustrates the interests and ideals of high-medieval civilization.
  7. The Scholastics "had extraordinary faith in the powers of human reason--probably more than we do today." Do you agree or disagree? Substantiate your argument.
  8. Examine the High Middle Ages as an "age of faith." What made it so? What were its tangible results?


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REVIEW: World Civilizations
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