The Feudal West | history of feudal west | psychology

The Feudal West

The situation in the Western Europe started to Detroit gradually after the empires capital moved from Rome to Constantinople. West Europe was ravaged by war, drought, and disease. Even the elite were generally ignorant and illiterate in the social classes. The Church, left in Western Europe as the only foreign organization, tried to maintain order and culture. (Brennan, 2003)

The Papacy gained immense power during the mediaeval period. In 590, Papa Gregory the Great (540-604) was elected bishop of Rome. Within the Western Church, a trend toward centralization was established. Papal authority was further amplified in 756 when the Frank king, Pepin, donated the lands of central Italy to the Pope. The popes were made formal spatial rulers by all these papal estates, which they followed to be until 1870. Charlemagne was crowned by Pope Leo III as emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in 800. (Brennan, 2003)

The Papacy continued throughout the Middle Ages to have both good and bad periods. Cycles of abuses and reforms have occurred, but the spiritual and temporal authority of the popes has steadily increased. The schism between the Western and Eastern forms of Christianity was one by-product of growing papal authority. The patriarch of Constantinople and the Pope excommunicated each other and the followers of each other in 1054. The Holy Wars of Islam, meanwhile, threatened all of Europe and the Muslim invasion of Islam. (Brennan, 2003)

Intellectual life in western Europe was isolated and losing ground by the year 1000. Most of the classic writings were lost, and because of pagan authors, the Church censored others. With people sharing a common religion and allegiance to the papacy, Europe was almost entirely Christian. Feudal disputes between emerging nations, sometimes with great severity, will continue. (Brennan, 2003)

The Crusades

From 1095 to 1291, the Crusades were a series of eight military campaigns to secure the Holy Lands of the Near East from Muslim control. On another level, the Crusades may be seen as the beginning of Western Europe's reawakening. The Greek masters had been sustained by Islamic scholars; under Muslim rule, mathematics, architecture, and medicine had blossomed. Along with more comprehensive copies of the ancient historians, these new ideas were brought back to Europe. (Brennan, 2003)

The Crusades were a result of a homogeneous Christianity that permeated all facets of European life in Western Europe. The Papacy was influential enough just to decry the new Turkish rulers of Palestine's reports of persecution of Christians. A vacuum created by the weakness of the Byzantine Empire was filled by the Crusades, writes historian William Barrett. Barrett: The Crusades served as a catalyst for removing feudalism and intellectual lethargy from western Europe. The town-states of the peninsula of Italy. (Brennan, 2003)

The Crusades succeeded in propelling western Europe into a more mature consolidation and organizational era. They encouraged rivalries to be restructured from a territorial level to a national identity. The Crusades opened up opportunities for large consumer markets, promoting the growth of the commercial economy. (Brennan, 2003)

In the West, scholarly pursuit of psychology was halted and regressed with the collapse of Roman rule. Feudal society's theocratic character combined religion with science. Psychology is part of the moral teachings that the Church taught regarding actions. Mental disorder and societal deviancy were considered evil curses or demonic possession. According to St. James' Commentary, the known cure for these diseases did not require comprehension or research, but rather prayer or exposure to relics. (Brennan, 2003)

REFERENCE

Brennan, F . J . (2003). History and System of Psychology. USA: Prentice Hall