Gone Medieval - What are the High Middle Ages?

Episode Date: June 6, 2025

Dr. Eleanor Janega and Matt Lewis embark on a rollicking journey through the High Middle Ages, unearthing the epic power struggles between popes and kings, and getting to know standout figures like the audacious Frederick II.They discuss how game-changing innovations like the heavy plough and crop rotation systems transformed medieval farming and sparked a social revolution, exploring the intellectual boom of the 12th-century Renaissance, the relentless Norman conquests, and the majestic Mongol Empire. It's a period packed with fascinating advancements and larger-than-life characters.MOREEmperor Frederick II: Scourge of the Papacyhttps://open.spotify.com/episode/0f2RDfAxdDuaQFCvrDJ1HBGengis Khan's Pax Mongolicahttps://open.spotify.com/episode/6KtWTM2HM99H29Aotldkc9Gone Medieval is presented by Matt Lewis and Dr. Eleanor Janega. Audio editor is Joseph Knight, the senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.All music used is courtesy of Epidemic Sounds.Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world,

to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, I'm Matt Lewis. Welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We've got the most intriguing mysteries, the gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research from the Vikings to the printing press, from kings to popes to the crusades. We cross centuries and continents to delve into rebellions, plots and murders to find the stories big and small that tell us how we got here. Find out who we really were with Gone Medieval. Here at Gone Medieval, we are always on a mission to bring you all of the juiciest bits

from the best thousand years of history. And yes, the fact that it is the best millennium is settled science. Please feel free to look it up. Thank you very much. But as we've mentioned before, just the fact that we have taken a specific, range of a thousand or so years and called it medieval is a product of periodization, where historians attempt to put a name to a time frame in order to have a working vocabulary to describe it. I think that we can all agree that a thousand years is a

really, really long time, which is why within the medieval period we have even more periods. Hooray! A few months ago, Matt and I took the time to talk us through the much maligned and sadly overlooked early medieval period. Do go back and have a listen to that episode, if you haven't already. It is a banger. But today we are moving on in our mission to highlight the various periods of the medieval period. And that means that we have reached the year 1000 and the high medieval period. As the name indicates, these 300 years are absolutely chockful of the most medieval of medieval happenings. And so to help us get stuck into the most quintessential period of the Middle Ages,

I have negotiated Matt's release from the Gone Medieval Dungeon once again. Matt, it is wonderful to see you in broad daylight on a Tuesday. I know we've been unleashed again. Who keeps putting us together, man? Well, you know, it's the dream team or the nightmare team depending on who you ask. But, you know, it's very important, I think, to get the brains trust together here collectively. whenever we get back to talk about the sexiest possible medieval thing, periodization, Gamer horns, beo, pew, boo, pew.

What better way to spend our day than talking about why we cut the medieval period into three different periods and why we define them those ways? Yeah, exactly. And I think last time we did the early medieval period, which is connoisseurs delight, I think. But for most people, the high medieval period that we're going to talk about today, I think this is what is sort of like the crem de la creme. When people imagine what the medieval period is, I think that they're actually thinking about the high medieval period. Yeah, I think this is the knights in increasingly plate armor, riding around the castles. This is the damsels in distress. I mean, there's a reason that most Arthurian stuff is written in this period is nominally set in,

the late Roman early medieval period, but always looks a lot like the high medieval period. So we have this almost distorted view that the whole of the medieval period looked like this. But this is the medievalist's medieval period, isn't it? Oh, absolutely. And so for the purposes of actual dates, what we should set out is, you know, roughly. And again, as we said last time, all of these are rough. You know, medieval itself as a term, it's a 475 to question mark. We'll get to that. we get to the late medieval period. But the high medieval period, roughly, we're saying about 1,000 to 1,300. So this is encompassing, I think, when most people start sort of paying attention, because you've got the heavy hitters of the medieval period in here. And now we're going to

talk about some of them, but I want to start talking about what I think is actually probably the most important thing in the high medieval period. And, you know, real heads will know that one of the big things that happens in the high medieval period, which allows for everything else, like it allows for the knights in shining armor, it allows for the castles, it allows for the resurgence of cities is advances in farming tech. Let's go. Woo, woo, woo, get the sirens going again. That's right, baby. This is, this is what the people came for. Absolutely. Let's talk farming. Well, okay, so the thing is, farming, right, you have to talk about it because everybody's a farmer. 80% of everybody is a farmer at this point in time.

And I think there is this tendency to think about the medieval period as a time when there aren't advances in tech, when there aren't advances in science. And that's wild because actually medieval people are great at farming and getting really good at farming is what allows you to kind of do everything else. And one of the very big ones that I like to shout out is the heavy plow. Baby, look at this. Oh, my plow's so heavy. But you don't know what soil I might till, right? Don't let me tell you sizes and everything. And this is a really interesting piece of tech, right?

Because it sort of does what it says on the tin. It's just a real big, heavy plow. But what that allows you to do is cut through the heavier soils in places like Northern Europe. So in the German lands, in the low countries, even here in England, you suddenly have more available land to cultivate. And I love this one because you know who couldn't figure this out? The Romans in your face. Oh, was that your light little plow Romans? What's going on?

Oh, oh, can your plow? Does the heavy soil make your plow sad? Romans, we got that medieval tech, baby. We're plowing more hectares than you could ever imagine. And just to reinforce the nerdiness of all of this, one of the big advances that that allows is a move from the two crop rotation system to the three crop rotation system. Let's go!

The beans are taking turns. Which sounds like nothing, but makes a massive difference. It's huge, it's huge. Yeah, the three-field system, baby, of crop rotation, where you have crops that really leech the soil, followed by a fallow period, followed by crops that reintroduce nitrogen in particular to the soil is what's going. Like, baby,

what you know about Viches, but it makes a huge difference. And it is kind of one of these things where it's a really interesting observation because it sort of goes against everything that you would think logically. Like, how could you possibly get more food by giving the crops a break, by giving the land a break, right? It doesn't necessarily follow. But medieval people find this out, and it makes a huge difference in terms of food production. It's just much, much, much more abundant and so food just happens to be around more, which has all kinds of knock on effects. So if you've got more land, because you can plow more land, you've got more scope to rotate crops in this way and produce the same amounts of food. But what we're talking about with that is

that's a serious scientific advancement. That's a mechanical advancement that leads to a scientific one of understanding that you can take better care of the soil and it will take better care of you. Exactly. And this is a really important. big deal in terms of just feeding mouths. The days of being a lot more worried about cycles are kind of behind us. And now there are going to be exceptions to that when we get into the late medieval period, of course. But it just means that things take over a little bit better.

Things are a little bit more reliable. And this also means, you know, hey, we've got great crops going. We have really great ways of tilling it. There's this interesting knock on. effect where people say, well, is there any more land available? And the answer is we've kind of like come up against some pretty hard nose on that in areas of especially Northern Europe. And that means that suddenly we get really good at land reclamation, which is a very big deal indeed. So in England, if you go out into East Anglia, in particular, a lot of the time you're standing on land that

was created. Literally, people in the high medieval period learn how to drain these huge swamps, these morasses, you know, places that were incredibly tidal are now suddenly open, particularly for farming and for people to move into. So this is essentially what creates the lowlands, which become kind of the economic engines of the high medieval period. And that's happening inland as well. You think of places like Ely Cathedral, you know, Ely Cathedral for a long time is on an island, in the middle of a huge fenland that is virtually impenetrable, well, it's not now, and that is a high medieval thing. And you think about round Glastonbury, you know,

all of that was swamp land and it was unusable. And suddenly they developed the technology and the ability and the understanding to drain all of that, make it accessible for farming, accessible for living on, and you just get an explosion in the amounts of food and the amounts of livestock that you can sustain with more land being available. Oh yeah, and livestock is really the big one because a lot of the time when you do land reclamation, it's not the greatest for doing crops on immediately.

So you say, okay, well, we can run some sheep through here. And that's great news because sheep, that's the economic equivalent of planting oil. This is where the moneymakers really come from. And it's no surprise that we see England begin to really emerge as a wool powerhouse. at this point in time. They have great advances in sheep breeding, in particular. They have all these new places that you can run sheep. And it's similar, again, in the lowlands. So, you know, in what is now the Netherlands, in what is now Belgium, okay, yeah, maybe you can't quite get your rye crop in yet, but you absolutely can get sheep in there. And funnily enough, well,

that's the cash crop. So you're laughing. And also, a bit of salt marsh lamb, anyone. And, you know, these are things which seem a bit dull, I suppose now, because why, What we want are like big, sexy kind of scientific advancements, right? You know, when we think about advancements now, we're like, well, it's not exactly the moon landing, is it? And, well, I'm like, well, hey, you can't get to the moon unless there is enough guaranteed food. And medieval people are the ones who really figured out how to do that in an incredibly, yeah, scientific manner. You know, this is hard-won stuff. And I just think it's cool that regular people figured this out, too.

I think that, you know, we spent a lot of time in the medieval period talking about kings and popes and quite right, too. I'm not saying that they aren't interesting, but what are the regular folks doing? And I'll tell you what they're doing. Really incredible engineering feats is the answer. And I guess we also have to allow that playing into this is the emergence of the medieval warm period. So you've got a little bit of climate change. You've got the climate being warmer. That is always a bit of a crucible for advancement.

you think, you know, the Roman Empire had this kind of warm period at the beginning that allows it to produce more crops, to sustain more people, and that kind of drives those kinds of thing on. So we're into the medieval warm period here too, where the climate is conducive to these kinds of advancements as well. Oh, absolutely. And so this really allows ordinary people to be thriving, which has real knock-on effects, right? because what happens when you have a bunch of happy well-fed peasants who can keep their families alive because everyone is eating well is that it creates non-peasants also. Because if you don't need every single one of your peasants tied to the land because things are ticking over really well, people can leave and they leave and they go to cities. And I'll tell you what else happens in the high medieval period.

cities are back, baby. It's not just Roman Constantinople anymore, all right? We got city O'clock. And that is because there's enough food out in the countryside that people can move into the city. And also, crucially, there's enough food in the countryside that lords are like, I don't really need you to bring me all of my tithes in wheat and sheep anymore. Have got any cash? Is cash around the joint?

And the answer is we have like a big resurgence in coinage? circulation at this point in time, which is very conducive to cities as well. So suddenly you have people who are like, you know what? I think mom and dad have got the farm ticking over just fine with my three brothers. I am going to move down the road to Bruges and see if I can make it as a weaver because there's a lot of people weaving wool there and we'll see what happens. And that is possible because your landlord isn't going to run you down in the same way where they're not like, I need every single hand on deck, actually. And also, there's a city to go to, right?

That's a really big deal. Yeah. So you get this increase in urbanization because you've got this almost a surplus of population who aren't needed on the farm in the way that they might have been in the past. And that means they get into these newly emerging bigger towns and cities. And they kind of need something to do. They're almost like spare people. So you get more people getting involved in trades where there's trades and where there's

a surplus of food, there's commerce. So these cities become much more into. connected than they ever have been and all of these networks are building up and people are able to just be artisans and tradesmen. They don't have to be subsistence farmers anymore. So you get this move to people living in towns and cities doing what we would probably recognize as a profession today. Yeah, absolutely. So this is when we get the rise of what will become, especially in the later medieval period guilds. So this is when you have leather workers and Mercers and hey, grossers, my favorite guys, who are trading spices from all over the world.

And they are hanging out doing these incredibly skilled crafts that, you know, none of us could ever really think to even do now. Like a glovers, I often think of glovers. You know, just like how everyone's got their little gloves because the world's a bit colder, right? And then so you've got someone making your special gloves for you. And there are all these knock on really interesting trades. and it makes cities these real big cultural melting pots,

and it also means that there's just a lot of cash splashing around in cities once again, which is cool. And I guess all of this is just driving the kind of social change that you can't have when everybody has to be thinking, I have got to make sure that there is enough food to go in someone's mouth, and I can't leave, and I can't concentrate on anything else. So by the time you add in the heavy plow and better crop rotation and a climate that's conducive to growing more food, people are just a little bit, I hesitate to say freer, but freer to go and do what they want to do? Yeah, I suppose that there's a freedom of thought here. It means that we have more people who can become philosophers. We have more people who can become artists. We have more people who can become architects.

And we will see a sort of knock-on effect, especially in the later high medieval period of the creation of Gothic architecture, which I know you and I love to see, right? You know, we're still, at the beginning, we're still doing the Romanesque thing. No shade. I like a rounded arch as much as the next person. You know, and of course, the Normans are doing their particular thing with little tepees on the arches. And we love to see it. But it also means that people just kind of have the time and the space to go, hmm, I'm going to try something new because fundamentally they aren't worried about getting the sorghum crop in, right? And that helps.

And all of that extra hash and all of that extra urbanization means they're, is more scope to build churches, cathedrals, ways to display your commitment to God in Christian Europe, at least, by, you know, I live not too far from Ludlow. People may well have heard me say it's one of my favourite places in the universe. You go to St Lawrence's Church in Ludlow, it's described as the Cathedral of the Marches, you know, it's a, for a parish church, it is immense. And it's because it's built by money that comes from the wool trade and from the Palmer's Guild and places like that, who are able to invest in these astonishing buildings that are some of the things that we walk around towns and cities still today and are in awe of the most. That is the high

medieval period, the money that is coming out of the urbanization and the increased emergence of trades and commerce and things like that. That is what's paying for those buildings that we like looking at today. And I mean, I think that you've also hit on one of the really important things here too in terms of the high medieval period, because we are talking about churches and we're talking about cathedrals because this is also the point in time when the church really gets going. In the earlier medieval period, God bless the popes. You know, they're the bishops of Rome and they're out here working very hard to convince everyone that they are very important, but fundamentally the patriarch of Constantinople is like, cute, that you think you're important, right?

But by the time we hit around the year 1000, they've done it. They've been telling this story for enough hundreds of years, that it has kind of finally kicked in. And we now have the church as sort of the overarching legal juggernaut that I think is what people expect the medieval church to be. Yeah, so you've got your emergence of the medieval Catholic Church as a dominating force across Europe. And I think increasingly in the high medieval period, an institution that views at least part of its role as uniting Christendom. You see the crusading movement obviously will emerge during this period. And I think what we increasingly see is popes, either positioning themselves or believing

themselves, to be the single figure behind which all Christians in Europe should unite. You know, forget your petty squabbles about borders. Forget whether the Duke of Brittany owes fealty to the Duke of Normandy. No need to worry about all of that. You should just all get behind the Pope. and you see popes trying to sort of become the most important figure in Europe, which in turn creates some problems because kings are now thinking, hang on, I'm the most important person.

So you get this increasing friction between the church and an emerging state. So we're getting to a point again in the high medieval period where we've got something that's recognisable as England, something that's recognisable as France, something that's emerging as Germany. The Iberian Peninsula is there in various broken up pieces. but the Pope is trying to say, I can be a leader for all Christians, and increasingly getting friction with rulers who are saying, particularly Holy Roman emperors,

or what will later become known as Holy Roman emperors, as I'm sure you know. Oh, God, yeah. I mean, because that's the thing, is that, you know, the Holy Roman Empire is a high medieval invention. You can trace its roots to our good friend Charlemagne, but that's not the Holy Roman Empire, is that, that's the Carolingian Empire, right?

The Holy Roman Empire comes out of this increasing legal and religious peace, essentially. So, you know, by the time you hit around about the year 1000, most Europeans have Christianized. Most of them, you know, there are stragglers. Of course, you know, there are good friends in Estonia and places like that. And the Vikings, the Vikings are pretty much going to do it now. Like, they're a bit done. They're like, yeah, okay, fair enough. I guess I'll be Christian because there's some good stuff in it for me.

And so this means that you get a conglomeration like the Holy Roman Empire because they can exploit this Christianization. They can also exploit the kind of tensions between varying rival factions in these really big states. You know, like fundamentally Bavaria would be a pretty good kingdom in and of itself. but the German longs in his heart to make an empire. And so you get the Holy Roman Empire, which gives you, of course, the papal imperial rivalry, which is particular. The fact that emperors and popes dislike each other is one specific thing because they're mad about who's crowning who and who controls the empire.

But there's knock-on effects for everyone. Fundamentally, the investor context is something that is as potent here in England as it is anywhere in the German lands, I would say. Yeah. And I mean, you get a point where Henry II threatens to convert to Islam because he's falling out with the, you know, probably not seriously. But, you know, he's in such a turmoil with the papacy and they're trying to impose themselves. He's trying to regain powers in England that he believes kings of England have always had to appoint bishops and all of that sort of stuff where the church is trying to insert itself and get involved. You get this one moment where he's like, that's it, I'm just going to become an Islamic

ruler then. And it's clearly an effort to, you know, it's part frustration, but it's part a jab at the Pope that you're not all powerful because actually I could choose to go and do something else if I wanted to. So you do see that kind of rivalry outside the Holy Roman Empire as well of rulers butting heads with the papacy because they worry about the papacy's secular incursion into their power, whether the papacy might claim that it's trying to rule Christians, but kings worry that they actually want an awful lot of secular power. They're getting an awful lot of money out of lots of kingdoms. They want more and more secular power. I mean, you get people like, Innocent the Third, for me, one of the most dynamic popes there has ever been, this is a guy

who becomes Pope like in his late 30s. You know, you think about that today, a Pope in his late 30s. This is a guy with a long-term plan and a long-term mission to make a reality of the authority of the papacy over the whole of Europe. Oh, absolutely. I think that Innocent the Third is kind of like the or pope. You know, he's the one who really drags the papacy up to this legal level that we expect from it. And, you know, it's unsurprising because he's kind of, he's trained as a lawyer. And he's like, hmm, how do we do that for the church? What are we going to do here? And then he's this great intellectual mind. And he has sort of the discipline and fortitude to establish the church as able to prosecute.

I suppose is the way that we should think about it. And what that means is more particularly able to prosecute, you know, kings and emperors. Like, let's be so real. They do not care what some peasant in, you know, Aragon is doing right now. That has absolutely no bother to them at all whatsoever. But what Henry II is doing, oh, we're interested in that. You know, like what's going on over there? And that, of course, makes burying monarchs.

very, very uncomfortable. And so we will see this, right? So Innocent the Third, has kind of passed on by the time one of my favorite emperors, Frederick II gets to the throne. But he gets cajoled all the time by varying popes who are saying, I want you to go on crusade, I want you to do this. And he's like, well, I want to take a bath in my harem. And so I don't know that I'm going to do that. So, you know, you see these kind of real brushes up against what it is that. that rulers are supposed to do and what the papacy is supposed to do. And that's high medieval, baby. You know, like, no one is having these conversations in the year, you know, 940. That's just not going to happen because the Pope fundamentally doesn't have enough power to have those

conversations. One of the things that people often forget or don't talk about very much is the fact that, you know, it's under Innocent III that John hands the Kingdom of England over to the papacy. He makes England a papal fiefdom in his efforts to get out from under the barons and avoid all kinds of trouble with his own barons. He essentially says, okay, the Pope is now the ultimate ruler of England. And that's kind of never legally undone until the Reformation, really,

when Henry VIII breaks with Rome. But for Innocent, this is exactly what he believes the papacy should be doing. And by this point, we've got the structures and the foundations in place. Previous popes have kind of created this environment in which Innocent can step up to the stage

and say, right, the Pope should be the leader of Europe. And I suppose we need to rewind just a little bit to talk about one of those popes in particular, which is who's Gregory the Great, who is behind the Gregorian reforms. He is pretty great. He is pretty, to be fair, you know, like, there's a reason, that's the reason why we're called old Greg, old Greg is pretty great, you know. And the Gregorian reforms are incredibly important because the early medieval church and the the early medieval clergy behave is usually quite shocking to people now.

Because I mean, one of the most important things that the Gregorian reforms does is like, I'm sorry, guys, you cannot keep getting married. Like, you have got to stop shagging. That's like one of the big ones that old great G wants us to know about. Yeah. And so, again, I think you're seeing the church becoming more self-confident, defining itself more clearly, trying to become. a single entity to take the regionality out of Christianity,

that there is this one core doctrine that comes from the Pope in Rome, and Gregory is setting the foundations for that that people like Innocent will later go on to build further upon to say that, yeah, this is what it is to be Christian. And there's no ifs, there's no butts, this is how we do it in Germany, but this is how we do it in France and this is how we're going to do it in Scotland. No, you do it this way. And it doesn't matter if you as, you know, the bishop of Würzberg have decided that you are going to hand the bishopric down to your son because that's not how this works. And yes, we may get in an argument about who gets to appoint the bishop, whether or not it's the king or the pope, but we know who doesn't get to do it.

And that's the guy who was just really good who was married and had a son. You know, we're not going to have any more people who are using the church in a sort of hereditary way. We are not having essentially little feasts within the church. You have to join the church, work your way up through it and be appointed. And now they're still going to be major families who are sending their sons off to be bishops. Yes, absolutely. But in theory, there's a little bit more of a proving ground before you get to go on to be a bishop or an archbishop or. or indeed a cardinal later.

I think one of the interesting things about this that sort of goes a little bit against what we've just been talking about is the emergence of what we would recognize now as universities during this period because that's sort of a break from the church's teaching. They often come out of church schools

and things like that, but they're now teaching people how to be lawyers in a secular world. They're not just preparing people for the church in the way that they were, but with the emergence of cities, we get this kind of creation of a bunch of universities suddenly cropping up across Europe. Yeah, absolutely.

And prior to this, what we had instead was the cathedral school. And the cathedral school, in theory, anyone can send their son to the cathedral school, right? You can say, okay, off you go, Jimmy, and he'll toddle along to St. Paul's, and there he'll get taught to read and write. But in practice, what happens if you go to a cathedral school? is you're being groomed to become a member of the clergy. And also in practice, you know, not everyone can let Jimmy out of the house because Jimmy needs to be helping with the tanning or bringing in the crops or whatever.

So it means a very particular group of people go. And the universities come up because that has sort of got to the limit it's going to get to. So our very, very first university happens in Bologna. And it's really cute because students there, they demand something better. The students unionize, and they say that they want better teaching, and they essentially say, okay, well, here we are. We're the students who's going to come teach us. And a bunch of philosophers sort of show up to do that. Which is very different from the students union wanting better pub facilities. It is. Although I'll tell you what. One fun thing about medieval kids is that they still be drinking

in those universities. These kids are rowdy as anything. I love them. I love a medieval student. But in Paris then, there is the opposite thing where the church is like, oh gosh, I guess universities sort of thing. So University of Paris, that's us. We're doing that. And then after that, you kind of get Oxford, which is the king in England saying, well, no, we have those two and starting them. But universities, you know, as you say, they are this really interesting thing because anyone can be trained in them. But in theory, you kind of have to become a member of the clergy to do it. Like, it is a member of holy orders to be a student, which is an interesting one. So you have to wear robes and be, you know, like a little monk, which is where we get the term town gown

relations for between like how universities get on with the people who live there because the students are wearing gowns because they're members of the clergy. But, you know, here we get to learn the trivium is the usual one, which is your grammar, your logic and your rhetoric, which is to say you learn Latin and you learn how to argue with each other in the Aristotelian mode, which is great. And then And once you're done with that, you can go on to do the quadrivium, which is astronomy, mathematics, which is like arithmetic, geometry and music. And then if you do all of those things, then one becomes a doctor. But that means that you have two things happen.

So one, a lot of these people will end up working for the church later. But you also have a bunch of people who end up working in the courts. And this becomes this new way for people to kind of rise in the world. If you can get into university, then in theory you can show up at court and say, yeah, hey, check it out, did the trivium. Any jobs for someone who can read and write really good Latin? And the courts are like, hell yeah. And you have this new really educated populace as a result of that. Which is partly where you see people like Thomas Beckett rising to the four.

Here's a guy you went to Paris to go to university and traveled around and was educated and is then able to turn up at first at the Archbishop of Kansas. of his household and be spotted and be recognized and there's something about him, shove him in front of the king, and the king thinks, oh, this guy's all right. So it becomes a new social ladder, a new mechanism to get higher than you ever, ever could have before there was a university. And this is still where our real understanding of what universities do and what they are meant to do comments from, you know, anyone now who is meant to have a liberal arts education, this is where it's come from. You know, this idea that, you know, to be a well-rounded individual, you have to know these certain things. And this leads us on to what we historians call the 12th century Renaissance,

which was a very good time indeed to be alive. You have all of these guys who are really good at Latin and things like that. And that means that there is a resurgence in the classical once, I mean, not that medieval people ever stop being interested in the classical. But they're on the lookout for new texts. They are writing rather a lot. You know, this is when you get Arthuriana, you get ideas like this because people are thinking really deeply about the past again. And so they're like, oh, yeah, I want to tell some stories that are about kind of the late Roman period. And I know about them because of X, Y, Z.

So you get these great new forms of literature that are flowing out. You've got new architecture in cities because, well, you need buildings to put all of these guys in. So that happens. And there's just sort of enough prosperity in order to be doing it at the time, which is what's really important. And you get this catalyst of partly the crusading movement, partly all of that increase in trade and those networks that that builds, kind of reconnecting Christian Europe with Roman writing and Greek writing that had been lost to Christian Europe that is, maintained by Islamic scholars. You know, they've always known about it. You know, the Christians are all like, we've discovered this incredible new stuff. Where did you discover it from?

From these guys over there. But we're the clever ones, honest. But they're reconnecting with that idea of the past and what the Roman Empire was, what Greek philosophers were thinking about and talking about. And you see this explosion of translation and people writing it down and spreading those ideas and the impact that that has on art and architecture and painting and things like that It's hard to measure, really, isn't it? Oh, absolutely. And these are the things that really will allow for the creation of what we consider to be a medieval culture. And I mean, as part of this, too, we're getting, you know, increased movement back and forth to the Holy Land, you know, as part of stuff like Crusades.

So you have people who are moving a lot and they're saying, oh, yeah, okay, wow, maybe I'll learn Arabic. And, oh, hey, you know, where you can actually do a lot of that is you can go down to the Iberian Peninsula, Incredible things are happening on the Iberian Peninsula in terms of output intellectually at this point in time. So you have a lot of Aristotle gets into Europe because it's coming through Arabic sources, which are then translated into Latin in what is now Spain, and then they move up through the university. So you have this really potent amount of back and forth, you know, especially in things like the medical arts. to be clear, everyone still believes in humoral theory because it isn't the 19th century yet. But we are seeing major advances in stuff like surgery at this time, which is oftentimes

coming from the Arabic world and then filtering up through places like Salerno, the great medieval medical university, but also just Spain. That's a good place to learn about cataract surgery, which they can do now, right? Yeah, and I think there's a danger or a temptation to see the relationship between Christians and Muslims during this period solely through the lens of crusading and forget that throughout Iberia, places like Sicily, Cyprus, the Near East, there is not just fighting going on. There is exchange of ideas. There is cultural exchange going on throughout this period too.

And mostly I would say the Christians are absorbing Islamic knowledge and culture rather than the other way around because the Christians don't have all that much to offer at this point. God bless them. Yeah, it's true. And I think that this is a really important point because I think there's a tendency when we talk about relations between Christians and Muslims at the time to think, well, you know, oh, you mean the Crusades and everybody's fighting each other. And well, you know, that's not really how the Islamic world sees their relationship with the Christian world. And it really depends on who you ask because, you know, hey, look, if you live in Valencia,

you probably think one thing. And you know, you can tell yourself any story that you want to if you are up in England. But that doesn't mean that you actually know what Muslim people are like or that they're necessarily living cheek by jowl with you in exactly the same way. And people on the Iberian Peninsula,

are they fighting each other? Oh, God, yeah. But like, you're just as likely to find, like, Astores fighting Barcelona as you are to find them fighting with Brannada, right? You know, so they're all fighting each other in the same and normal. ways that all medieval people are doing.

We love a battle, don't we, in the medieval period? What could I say? Yeah, absolutely. And I guess can we talk about how much of the high medieval period is a Norman conquest? Yeah, it's true. There's a famous Norman conquest. It's true. I mean, if you want to talk about guys who are fighting, dear Lord, right?

You know, the Norman conquest is, I think, really one of the big ones, right? And I mean, you're right, you're back on. There is the Norman Conquest of England, which I think is the one that everyone thinks of. But gosh, I think we'd be remiss if we didn't talk about like the formation of Normandy's kind of Norman conquest, right? It's like these Vikings being like, now we're going to stay. Yeah, no, we're, we're Norman now. Like, okay, cool, yeah. And what do the Normans do with all of those spare sons that everywhere else they're going to towns and learning to be leather makers?

is, well, the Norman fourth, fifth, and sixth sons are heading down to Italy and Sicily to carve out new Norman kingdoms down that way. And they really do. You know, that's the thing. It's very, very easy to look at England because we are so formed by Normanness. And, you know, all of our big stone buildings are a result of the Norman conquest here. But Palermo is pretty bloody Norman, actually, when you go look at it because of this, you know, that you have sons who set sail and they go lots of places other than just England.

But I think, yeah, Sicily, that is the big and interesting one, because Sicily is one of these places where it's kind of up for grabs. We do have a sizable Muslim population there, but, you know, they had taken it over. So everyone's kind of eyeing it. And the papacy is like, it sure would be cool if someone went and re-Christianized it because, you know, the papacy wants that sweet, sweet tithe money. Of course, I'm not saying that they also don't want more Christians. Obviously, they do. but a great reason to want Christians is because you can tie them. Tax them.

Tax them. And this is when the kingdom of Sicily as well includes an awful lot of the southern mainland of Italy as well. We're not even just talking about the island of Sicily. The Normans are making their way throughout the heel of the boot of Italy as well. And then, you know, can you frame crusading as a Norman endeavor? Yes. Thank you. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

And I do think in many ways it is because, granted, yes, obviously the papacy has a real mission here that is specifically religious and character. But it's also a really great way to get these guys who keep beating up each other and their fellow Christians sort of out of your hair for a little bit. And if you are one of the Norman sons who hasn't landed with enough land, this in you. your mind is a great way in to more. Like, oh, what about the county of Edessa, anybody? You know, like, what a, ooh, Tripoli. I'm looking at it right now, you know. There are all these different ways of doing that.

And, you know, obviously, yes, the Crusades comes out of a call from Byzantium saying, can anyone help us get our lands back? But then the Normans are like, yeah, buddy, we'll get them back. And then some. For you? Like, just I would never invite a Norman to help me. like, you know, weed my garden because by the time you turn your back, they're going to take it over. I'm just saying.

They've built a shed at the end and created a kingdom out of it. But I just think it's interesting that we talk so much about the early medieval period being the Viking age and the Vikings raiding left, right and center. Does that really stop? I guess is my question, because what are the Normans, but Vikings who have settled and decided to create kingdoms everywhere? And they carry on doing that throughout the high medieval period as well. And that is, you know, when you're looking at the names of anyone who's participating in the crusades, the big ones over and over are Normans. You know, you've got Bohemann. You've got all these people who are really high up the top. And this isn't to say that there aren't Germans around the shop or anything like that.

But it does tend to be that it's the later crusades, which are also, you know, a function of the high medieval period, where suddenly, you know, English people are like, oh, us too. you know, I could do that, you know, or just regular old French people get involved a lot more. Whereas the first crusade, you know, the one that worked, that is a Norman thing. And I mean, I could think that there's even here, you know, an argument to be made about like once Normans lose their potency and this drive to go out and conquer because they just kind of become a little bit more regularized. That's when Crusades stop working. because it's like, oh, yeah, like, are you going to be able to take over this land and hold it in a really hostile position? You need some kind of like real push to make that happen, I think. And I guess we can't really talk about the high medieval period without getting out of Europe a little bit further.

And there is one big word that we need to talk about, isn't there? Oh, gosh, yes. And you know who it is, guys. It's the Mongols. Again, Gamer Horns. Bo, Bo, Bo, Bo! Bo! We love them. I love to see it. The coalescing of very many nomadic tribes under one person, I love to see it.

The invention of passports, that's it for me, buddy. I love to see an egalitarian society emerge. Is there killing? Yes. Yes, there is some killing. But, I mean, as opposed to where, right? Like, you know, this is one of those things where I don't think that it's helpful to classify the Mongols as uniquely violent what I'm like, as opposed to the Crusaders who are

famously a bunch of really chilled dudes. Or the Vikings or the Normans that we've just been talking about who are going out, conquering everything. Yeah, they were mostly arm wrestling. That's how they did it. But yeah, you get our good friend, Chingiz Khan, who really manages to amalgamates rather a lot of people and make the largest contiguous land empire the world has ever seen, which ain't Nothing, baby. A lot of different people under that umbrella.

Bigger than the Roman Empire, bigger than the British Empire, in terms of one solid piece that isn't broken up by sea. And again, if only there was a wonderful episode of Gone Medieval from a few weeks ago about the Pax Mongolia, where people would go and find out even more about how this, again, is a huge, there is fighting, there is war, there is lots of killing and it's gruesome. But then there is also huge amounts of peace, increase in trade, a flow of food. It's a civilizing moment for a region that had always been so fractured and torn apart.

Having an empire that does say, essentially the thing that we need to do is get everyone to chill out and we need to get everybody into a place where we can trade. I mean, really, in theory, that's what empires are for. They're for the facilitation of commerce.

And the Mongols are one of the best to ever do that one. And yeah, will they kill you if you resist? Yes, they're going to do that. But, you know, show me an empire where that isn't true. That's what empires do. And it creates some really amusing moments in the high medieval period because, you know, the Mongols eventually get to basically the borders of Europe and the popes are saying to the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick the second, Frederick,

there's Mongols over there. And Frederick's like, wow, that's crazy, bro. Just going to have another bath with Mahareem first. Yeah. And basically the Mongols are writing to. to him being like, come out, bro, like, I'll fight you right here. And Frederick writes back this hilarious letter where he's like, oh, oh, you're going to take over Europe? Are you looking for a falconer? Because I'm really good with falcons. So like, I'm not even going to fight you

about this. The Pope is so angry. But then the Mongols basically just wander off because somebody dies and they've got to go have an election about it. You know, but it creates these hilarious moments between varying imperial factions that I simply love to see. And it tells you a lot about people's personalities at the time. And you know, you really begin because we have so many more texts because it's just closer to us in time and because, you know, you have this flourishing of texts that is brought out by the university and things like that, that you get to like learn more about individuals' characters. And it just cracks me up, you know, what the people get up to. I love a little bit of a trash talking via, you know, messenger. That's a great thing.

I always think the Mongols are a really good exemplar of what a good medieval ruler was supposed to be, and that you're hard and you're fairly ruthless with your enemies, but you give people a chance. And what you're really there for, as you said, is the facilitation of trade and peace and calm. And if you behave yourselves, everything will be fine. If you don't, I will come down on you like a ton of bricks. Kind of what most Europeans expect you from a king, and the Mongols are just out there doing it on a grand scale.

And I think it's really important to talk about because there is this tendency to kind of like other the Mongols in particular of them, I'm like, oh, you're just mad because they did it better. It's like, hey, we should have thought of that first, right? I can't believe they're so good on horses, er, you know, and everyone's so blown away by how excellent they are in terms of horsemanship. I just think it's quite funny. Also, further east, we could talk a little bit about what our friends in Japan are up to at this time because it's a very romantic period in terms of Japanese history.

So, for example, if you are nerds like me and Matt and are really into Japanese history, this is when you get the Genji Monogatari or the tale of Genji written, and you get to learn all about imperial court culture and you have this real flourishing of language and art that is happening at the time. But what is it kind of a very politically perilous time, I think, would be a safe thing to say about the high medieval period in Japan? Yeah, I mean, it's almost, so during echoes of history we did for Assassin's Creed Shadows, we did a lot of Japanese history, which was a lot of 16th century stuff.

And I became so fascinated by Japanese history. It really is the most incredible set of stories and everything. The Tale of Genji is often cited as the first novel ever written in the world, and it's written in Japan during this period. But what you see there is almost the opposite of what you get in Europe, where we're seeing the centralisation of power and the creation of these huge blocks of kingdoms, countries that we would still recognize today, kind of driving cultural change.

In Japan, it's almost the opposite. It's the fact that power is moving away from Kyoto, from the imperial court, out into the regions. You get the emergence of these local warlords who are going to be samurai, samurai, a medieval invention. Yay. Everything cool is medieval. It's almost there that it's the opposite. It's the fracturing of central authority that leads to all of these advancements in art and identity across Japan. And you know, this is what is cool about the big.

medieval period, right, is the smaller pockets that allow you to create more highly localized culture, you know, I would argue. And that's why I love medieval people, because they're all being weird in their own little way, in their own little town. And Japan is absolutely doing that. You're right. You know, the samurai, become the samurai because everyone is like, I just feel like the imperial household is fractured a little bit. I need to go home and make sure that someone is looking after my own lands. And so you have a real focus on warrior. culture and warlord culture as a result of that. And that gives birth to what we now kind of romantically think of as the medieval Japanese, but it didn't really exist until you get to the high medieval

period. So great times. Yeah. And you've got the arrival of kind of Chinese Buddhism, having a big influence, and that creates a lot of the structure and the ritual that we probably still associate with Japan today, and particularly later through the medieval period and into the early modern period, that kind of sense of formality and structure in Japan really comes out of this period and the increased emergence of things like Buddhism in Japan, too. Yeah, you get like the really fun kinds of Japanese Buddhism, like Pure Land Buddhism, which they come up with in this period, where you have new frames of thought being brought out.

And I think that that is, it's a really beautiful and interesting time in Japanese culture as well. And, you know, again, yeah, is there violence? Yes. I'm going to say that there absolutely is. But you know, you get to see really great new art forms and things as a result of it. So from the comfort of 700 years later, I'm like, it's pretty cool. Yeah. And I guess, you know, there's a lot going on in China that I am very much less familiar with Chinese history. The extent of my Chinese history knowledge really comes from understanding that the Mongols were kind of key in the foundation of what we call China

today, so I don't know too much about that, but China is effectively a massive, massive country and a huge power in this period. Absolutely. And so in this point in time, in terms of what we're talking about for a Chinese culture, we have what we call the later imperial period and then we move into then the Song Dynasty. A lot of the time when we are talking about Chinese culture, what we're talking about is just, you know, well, I don't know who's ruling. Because we have like a really good imperial system that tends to keep ticking over no matter who is ruling. Are there Mongol encourages? Yes, there absolutely are. And then that can mean that you, for example, lose the mandate of heaven, this idea that you are meant to be the emperor because you're able to

keep China on an even keel, which is how you have the Song Dynasty come along because things are just getting a little too spicy with the Mongols on the northern borders. So suddenly we have the birth of the Song Dynasty who are going to be around for quite some time. And again, here we see some real advances in terms of Buddhism. We see Chinese culture become much more expressly Buddhist as opposed to just purely Confucianist. And so we see great schools that are kind of cropping up as a result of that. They are opposed, obviously, to the Mongols, but they're able to very astutely take advantage of the Pax Mongolia and, you know, the Silk Road's kind of really kick off around this period of time. So you see more things moving back and

forth in and out of China as a result at this point in time. So it again, interestingly, is one of those points in times when we do see an imperial breakdown, but it's because we see a new imperial household come along. I guess one of the things I wanted to tackle before we finish is why do we call this the high middle ages? So we've got early and late. I get middle middle-middle-aged would be a rubbish name for the bit in the middle. Middle medieval period also sounds like too much of a tongue twister. I guess what we've been getting out all the way through this is you can call it high because this is a 200 years or 300 years or so in which there is so much change and advancement. And like you said at the start, people think

the medieval period was a time when nothing changed. Nobody discovered anything or invented anything and the world just bumbled along as it was. We're talking about 300 years here, which set the scene for modern life today? Absolutely. And I think that we do use high here as a form of praise. And that fundamentally is true. We're saying that this is the point in time when things are kind of ticking over best.

And I do think that's true. You see a lot of real movement towards things. You and I, you know, we're more 14th century people. I think that that's kind of fair to say. And when I was in my PhD, one of my best friends who's a 12th century, specialist, she said to me, what is it with you in the 14th century? You know, like, everything is so bad them. And I'm like, well, yeah, that's how you find out what really makes people tick is what they do when they are, when they're panicking. That's how you really know how to get to

the heart of a person. And she's like, I just like it when everyone's having a nice time. And, you know, that's sort of what's happening, you know, if what you want to do, for example, is study intellectual history, which she does, you know, the 12th century is a real time to be having a look at that. A lot of the great intellects, like from your Thomas Aquinas to your Peter Abelard are coming out of this time period. And I think that it is fair that we acknowledge that this is a really kind of nice time to be alive in terms of medieval history. Do you have a favorite high medieval person? Well, that's so hard. It's probably going to be Frederick the second. I just love him. I just love that little guy. It's just such a silly, silly little man with his baths and his

falcons and his annoying the Pope. I mean, he's just like me for real. It's great. I always like to give a shout out to Roger Bacon, who I think he's just a dude. Oh, he's good. Yeah. Absolutely brilliant. Oh, but then it's so hard because you've got like Henry and Eleanor. We love Eleanor of Aquitaine, don't we, folks? Don't let my parents hear me say that I didn't say Eleanor of Aquitaine. Don't be mad. Abelard and Eloise and lots of stuff got up. But Roger Bacon, I find fascinating because this is a guy who, you know, he foresaw ships that were powered by something other than the wind.

And he foresaw flying in a machine that didn't require any human power to make it go. And carriages that would be propelled by a force other than a horse or anything like that. This guy is foreseeing aeroplanes and cars and stuff like that in the kind of the early 13th century, because I'm always struck when people say, you know, if you prompt a medieval person in the world today, they wouldn't believe what was going on. I was like, but Roger Bacon literally said 700 years ago that all of this stuff would happen. They weren't without imagination of what the future could look like. Again, there's this danger in seeing them as stupid people who, if they arrived in 2025, would be utterly blown away by how clever we all are. They know things that we will

never, ever know. And, you know, I think, I always say, I think Roger Bacon would just be bemused that We all have something in our pocket that has the power to change the world in a mobile phone. And what do we do? We play word on it every day and we look at cat memes. Wow. Read me. Okay, man. I guess one more person I would like to shout out here is Morosaki Shikibu, who wrote the tale of Genji.

I just think that she's such an incredibly powerful, artistic voice. And I think it's so interesting to see what is possible when we're able to hear more directly from women at this time and what, you know, a really good court culture allows for in terms of artistic merit. And it's just so interesting to see this particular way of thinking about the court, about romance, about the ways that interpersonal relationships work. And I just, I love that stupid book. I can't help it. I'm a real sucker for it. So, you know, shout out to Murasaki Shikibu. We love her. Have we done the high medieval period justice?

Can anyone do the high medieval period justice? You know, it's just so great. I mean, I think the most thing that anyone can really do is be effusive about it because it is just so incredibly wonderful. And, you know, fundamentally here on Gomneed Evil, we are going to keep making high medieval shows because there's so much in it that you can spend a lifetime always learning new things. Yeah.

If it was a 20th century decade, it would be something like the 80s or something, wouldn't it, when everybody thought things were good? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely, you know, like, I guess maybe the 13th centuries, the 90s, you know, when they're like, it's, oh, it's about to go. But things are pretty good right now, you know. The long, high middle ages, you know, why not? Why not? And I guess at some point, we're going to have to come back and do this for when the wheels come off, the late medieval period. Unfortunately, you and I are going to just be glowing as everything blows up.

This is what happens when you let late medievalists hang out. This is why we don't let each other out of the basement very often because we all are just like, hell yeah, bro. Black Death, the Black Death and the Wars and the Roses are coming. We love it, baby. We love it. But Nat, thank you so much for coming on to talk about, you know, nice things for a change. We can have fun talking about nice things. It's possible. Definitely. Thank you very much for having me, and I will scuttle laugh back to my dungeon there. Bye, Matt, bye.

Bye. Thanks so much to Matt once again for joining me. And thank you for listening to Gone Medieval from History Hit. If you want to learn more about periodization, why not go back and check out our episode on the early medieval period? And for more high medieval hijinks, we have so many options. But why not try our episode on the Investiture controversy, the Pax Mongolia, or our episode on Crusade Camp followers?

Remember, you can enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original TV documentaries, including my recent film The Medieval Apocalypse, and ad-free podcasts by signing. up at historyhit.com forward slash subscription. You can follow Gone Medieval on Spotify, where you can leave us comments and suggestions or wherever you get your podcasts, and tell all your friends and family that you've gone medieval. Until next time,