Unit: Medieval Europe

Lesson Title: Challenges to Church Authority (See textbook pages 282-285)

Pre-reading the text

• Read all main titles (in blue), sub-headings (in red) and captions on pages 282-283.

• Look at the pictures.

• Read “The Big Idea,” pg. 282.

Answer in your notebook:

What do you think will be the most interesting topic to you? Why?

What do you think will be the least interesting topic to you? Why?

Describe Christians’ reactions to different groups.

Heretics Moors Jews

By the late Middle Ages, some Christians began to question church teachings in Europe. Many felt that Church leaders focused more on land and possessions than on God.

Religious ideas that opposed accepted church teachings are called heresy. People who have such ideas are called heretics.

Church officials sent priests throughout Europe tofind heretics.

Some heretics were tortured until they confessed. Some were put in prison or killed for their beliefs.

In the 1200s, Pope Innocent III called a crusade against heretics in southern France and asked the kingto get rid of them

This led to a bloody war that lasted about 20 years. Towns were destroyed. Thousands lost their lives.

Why would the pope oppose heresy so much?

In Spain and Portugal, Christians also fought to drivethe Muslims out of Europe throughout the Middle Ages.

For centuries, most of Spain and Portugal had been under the rule of the Muslim Moors.

The Christians called their efforts to retake Spain from the Moors, the Reconquista.

By the 1250s, the Christian armies had nearly pushed the Moors completely out of Europe.

In 1496 King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain finally conquered the Moors and brought an end tothe Reconquista.

That same year they required all Jews and Muslims to convert to Christianity or leave Spain.

In class reading activity

Read “The Spanish Inquisition” and “Jews Face Discrimination” on pages 284-285.

Answer these questions:

1. What was the Spanish Inquisition?

2. What happened to people who were found guilty of heresy in Spain in the late Middle Ages?

3. What three groups were punished for their beliefs in the Middle Ages?

4. Why did some Christians discriminate against Jews?

Expulsion of Jews from France

As the Church spread in Europe, many Jews were pressured to become Christian or leave their homes.

The Spanish Christian government, with the blessing of the church, forced the Jews to leave Spain. They went to North Africa, Holland, Italy, Greece, Egypt, or the Holy Land. This scattering of large groups of Jews to new countries is called a “diaspora”.

Right side notebook activity

Read “Queen Isabella” on page 284.

Rewrite her biography section for a

world history book to be published

in a Muslim country or for a Jewish

academy in Europe. Highlight facts

that have affected the history of your

people. (Think about what you read

on the Reconquista and the Spanish

Inquisition.) Would she be considered

one of the greatest monarchs in

Spanish history, as the first line in the

biography in our textbook states?