Unit 1: Chapter 1
Times of Change
Introduction
• Guiding Question: In what ways can changing social
structures affect a society’s worldview?
• Has there been an event in your life that changed your
way of thinking. (e.g. move to a new location, meeting
someone who had different ideas, etc
• Read story about Black Death p.17
• If half the people in Canada suddenly died of a terrible
disease, how do you think this would affect out
society?
• Put greater value on scientific and medical research
• People may be cautious and suspicious
• Spend more time with families and loved ones
• Fewer wage earners, standard of living would go down
• How does Orcagna’s art
capture the mood of the
people affected by the
Black Death?
– The mood is bleak and
dark
– People think, fearful
• What change would you
like to see in our society’s
thinking today and what
aspect of our way of
thinking would you not
want to see change?
• Less emphasis on
materialism
• Greater concern for the
environment
• Wouldn’t want to lose our
governmental system,
technological advances
Section 1: A Changing Society
• Guiding Question: In what ways can changing
social structures affect a society’s worldview?
• Feudalism – system of political organization
during the middle ages. Lord owned the land
and all other served him.
• Hierarchy- social system where status is
ranked. Power is concentrated in the higher
ranks.
• Knights – pledged allegiance to the king,
promised to fight for him in exchange for
rights to pieces of land (manor or fief)
• Commoners (freeholders and serfs) –
freemen – peasants who rented land from
lord or worked for pay
• serfs – peasants who worked the land for
the lord, not allowed to leave the manor
without the lord’s permission.
Feudalism Game
• Do you think the serfs ever tried to revolt? Why or why
not? (Reminder: serfs had very little power and no
weapons.)
• What would you do if you were a serf?
• Have the students predict what might happen if the
serfs refused to harvest the lord’s crops.
• What motive (reason) did the serfs have for staying on
the manor?
• (protection from the lord)
• How would the various positions in society influence a
person’s worldview?
• Imagine living in Europe during this era.
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How would they spend their time?
What would their hopes and dreams be?
What would their world view be?
Compare that life with life today.
Part II
• Read: Medieval Country Life p.18-19 and Town Life p. 22-23
Country life:
Town life:
peasants assigned strips of land
centers for farm communities
peasants worked together plowing, haying
castles, monastery (buildings, lands in which
monks lived, carried out religious duties.)
peasant gave noble portion of produce
local goods available
build roads, clear forest
crowded, dirty
freedom, new opportunities
unskilled peasants could learn trades
• Identify positive and negative aspects of
both ways of life.
• Where would you have liked to live and
why?
• BRAVEHEART
Part III
• Who’s interests where best served by
feudalism? What kinds of pressures many
have caused feudalism to break down?
• Challenges to the Feudal System
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Revolts
• 1337, war between England and France
• fighting devastated the countryside
• peasants revolted because of high rents and taxes
• Black Death
• millions died from a plague between 1346 – 1350
Do the Math Problem
• Before the Black Death there
were 200 serfs living and
working on your manor.
Freeman are sometimes hired
but wages are low. You want
to hire 80 additional workers
for 300 days a year and you
pay a wage of 1 penny/day.
What are your total expenses
for one year?
• 24 000 pennies
• After the Black Death sixty
serfs died in the plague or left
to work for higher wages
elsewhere. Freeman now
demand higher wages as well.
You need to hire an additional
80 workers for 300 days/year
at 3 pennies/day. What are
your total expenses for one
year?
• 72 000 pennies
• Manors had to operate with
fewer serfs. How might that
have affected those still living
on the manor?
• labor shortages
on manor, estates
went bankrupt
• nobles began to
rent out land or
sell it to the serfs.
Wealth in Society
• Marriage at Cana
• Urban people now could move from one social level to
another
• Top
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Church officials lords
Lords of large manors
Old noble families
Wealthy merchants
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merchants and business people
craftspeople
shopkeepers
bankers
priest and lower church officials
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peasants
rural laborers
urban laborers
servants
unemployed
• Middle class
• Lower class
• New middle class emerged
• Social position based on money, not on ownership of
land
• People became more focused on material possessions
– clothing, furniture, etc
• Sumptuary laws: laws that controlled the consumption
or how people spent their money. Like the G.S.T
• Men and women wore sumptuous clothes of silks,
brocades, cut velvets and lace; precious stones and
gold nets on their hair. Materials streamed with silver
and gold were always vivid in color. Warm, flesh-tinted
cosmetics were applied freely. Servents, pages, lackeys
and ushers were clad gaudily, half red and half yellow,
or half green and half white.
• Read page 24-27
Section 2: A Religious Society
• Guiding question- In what ways do religious
beliefs shape a society’s worldview?
• Consider various religions from around the world.
Do you think the world views in some societies
are influenced more by religion than in other
societies?
• Read pages 29-30
• Discuss: How did the power of the church
influence the way people reacted to the Black
Death?
The Church Community
• Make a list of hierarchies you can identify in society today,
what are some positive and negative affects these
hierarchies have on people?
• Read page 31
• Draw in your notebooks the Church Hierarchy Diagram on
pg 31
• Read aloud “The Monastic Life on page 32 and “Learning
and the Church” pg 33
• To what extent does the church still play some of the
same roles as in the Middle Ages?
• Read page 34, and then make a list of how attitudes
toward religion were changing, and what caused these
changes.
• Reflect and Respond-Homework
• Review the past section we read and create a symbol that
represents the Power of religion during the middle ages.