Rachel's Western Civ Blog

Reading Guide:  1. Humanists influenced artists to continue classical traditions and made studies similar to classical education popular. 2. The spirit of society was secular. Church leaders and the wealthy believed that they could enjoy life without offending God. 3. They spent money to help artists and architects create works. 4. They painted portraits of prominent citizens and glorified the human body in natural postures. 5. They wrote in vernacular and for either self expression or to portray their individual subjects. 6. Petrarch wrote sonnets about Laura, the ideal woman, Boccaccio write about the follies of his characters and Machiavelli wrote about the imperfect conduct of humans in the prince. Renaissance - the rebirth of art and learning that began in northern Italy humanism - an outlook focusing on human potential and achievements secular - worldly rather than spiritual and concerned with here and now patron - people who financially support the arts per...

1. A pandemic is a disease that is prevalent over a whole country or all over the world. An epidemic is a widespread of an infectious disease in a community at a certain time.  2. The disease I chose was leprosy. Leprosy is a slow developing bacterial disease that causes sores and deformities. It was believed to be a punishment from God that rain in families.  3. The earliest reference to leprosy was in India in about 600 B.C.  4. Some symptoms of leprosy are lighter skin than usual; patches of skin that feel pain and heat; muscle weakness; numbness in the hands, feet, legs and arms and eye problems. It spreads through nasal secretions.  5. Europe was hit the hardest my the pandemic.  6. The mortality rate of leprosy is 2.5 deaths/1,000 population.  The below map shows the different recent cases of leprosy in the world. 

1346 The strain of Y. pestis appears in Mongolia and is possibly passed to humans by a tarabagan. King Janiberg and his army contract the disease after laying siege for a year. May, 1347 The survivors of the siege in Caffa escape by sea and leave dead bodies on the streets. On ship arrived in Constantinople and gets infected, which loses 90 percent of its population. October, 1347 A Caffan ship docks in Sicily with their crew barely alive. The plague kills half the population in Sicily and moves to Messina. When citizens flee, they spread it to Italy. The plague kills 1/3 of the population in Italy by summer. November, 1347 Another Caffa ship brings the plague to France by docking in Marseille. January, 1348 Another plague strain enter Europe through Genoa by another Caffan ship. The Genoans attack the ship and it leaves but the Genoans are still infected. Italy has to deal with the second strain while still facing the first. Y. pestis goes from Sicily into h...

Reading Guide:  1. The Great Schism occurred after the death of Pope Gregory XI when both Clement VII and Urban VI became pope and tried to excommunicate the other. This lead to the split known as the Great Schism. 2. The Schism was ended when all three popes were forced to resign in 1414. 3. People began to ignore papacy and preach that the pope was not the head of the Church but the head was instead Jesus Christ. 4. The plague began in Asia. It was spread through a traveling fleet in 1347 that was carrying the plague and spread it to Sicily which later spread to all of Italy, France, Spain, Germany, England, Europe and North Africa. 5. Town populations fell, trade declined and prices rose, serfs left the manor to find better wages, nobles fiercely resisted peasant demands for higher wages and caused revolts in England, France, Italy and Belgium, Jews were blamed for bringing the plague and were driven from their homes or killed. 6. The Church suffered a loss of prestige whe...

Reading Guide:  1. The land of English lords who supported Harold was lost, William kept 1/5 of England for himself and unified control of the lands and laid the foundation for centralized government in England. 2. Henry II introduced the use of a jury in the English court. Jury trials became more popular and eventually a unified body of law called the common law was created. 3. He seized Normandy and gained the territory and collected all of the King's taxes. 4.  It created a basis for basic human rights and gave everyone in England and the U.S. equality. 5. He created a French appeals court, which could overturn the decisions of local courts. Assessment:  William the Conquerer - the first Norman King of England Henry II - King of England from 1154 to his death common law - a unified body of law formed from rulings of England's royal judges that serves as a basis for law in many English-speaking countries today, including the United States Magna Carta - a docu...

Reading Guide:  1. horses were used to plow fields more than oxen  2. food production increased, well fed people could better resist disease and live longer  3. guilds set standards for quality of work, wages, and working conditions 4. there was a new way of business and an increased ability of trading goods  5. the small communities became a powerful force for changes in Europe 6. merchant class dwellers organized themselves and demanded rights 7. literature was brought to many people and masterpieces were written that are still around today 8. universities were established in Paris, Bologna, Italy and Oxford and Salerno, Italy 9. Europeans discovered a new body of knowledge Assessment:  three field system - a system of farming developed in medieval Europe, in which farmland was divided Ito three fields of equal size and each of these was successfully planted with a winter crop, planted with a spring crop and left unplanted  guil...