Study Guide for Middle Ages Test
We have covered all of this material in class through notes, videos, lectures, simulations, and at home reading assignments/homework.
Look to those resources to help you study.
Understand major themes and concepts:
Main issue during the Middle Ages: a struggle for land and power, both political and religious.
Concept of feudalism: granting of fiefs and protection in exchange for loyalty and services.
- Be able to describe its social structure.
Be able to put in sequential order, the events that led to the rise of feudal society
- for ex. Rome falls, Clovis rules the Franks, Charlemagne is emperor, feudalism develops in England (see notes)
Know the causes for the fall of the Roman Empire and how the church gained power.
- Reasons people turned to the church during this time, clergy were the ones mostly educated then, struggle of power (Pope Gregory
VII and King Henry IV
- Be able to identify the church’s influence on art, architecture and medieval culture = art used for religious purposes.
- Understand why the Crusades were started
Know about Muhammad and Islam
- How it started and the conflicts that arose (ex. Sunni / Shiite )
- How it spread (how far east and west)
Know how medieval towns and guilds were started and who governed them
- Know what led to the growth of towns (look at magnet words)
- Be able to describe life in a medieval town (living conditions)
- Be familiar with the purpose and function of guilds and the services they provided
- Town Councils and the increasing merchant power (guilds began to govern towns)
Understand the shift in power from the monarchs/feudal lords to the common people gaining power & the decline of feudalism
- Know about Henry II’s legal reforms & King John and The Magna Carta - changes they brought (ex. changes in judicial system)
- Hundred Years’ War
- How it started: When Philip VI of France declared that the French fiefs of England’s King Edward II
were part of his own realm)
- Joan of Arc and the unification of France against Henry V
- How it’s events contributed to the decline of feudalism
- The impact of The Black Death (its origins , spread and effects)
- New advanced weaponry (English: longbow, later at start of the Renaissance: gunpowder)
Know the time span of the Middle Ages 500 – 1450 CE also referred to as Medieval Times, Dark Ages, Age of Faith
- and the dates for the three periods historians that divide the Middle Ages
Be able to name a few primary sources from the Middle Ages (such as: the Magna Carta, Doomsday Book, Bayeux Tapestry etc.)
Know these people or terms and their importance, role or accomplishments:
Manor
Lord
Vassal
Serf
Fiefs
Towns
Guilds
Master
Journeyman
Apprentice
Charter
Clovis
Pope Leo III
Charlemagne
William the Conqueror
Doomsday Book
Battle of Hastings
Harold
Saxons
Normans
Bayeux Tapestry
Illumination
King Henry IV
Pope Gregory VII
Excommunication
Sacrament
Clergy
Salvation
Pilgrimage
Muhammad
Caliph
Sunni
Shiite
King Henry II
King John
Magna Carta
Edward I
Parliament
Hundred Years War
Joan of Arc
Heretic
Bubonic Plague
Peasants’ Revolt
Primary Source