| Term | Definition |
|---|
| Clovis | King of the Franks in 481 |
| Mayors of the Palace | Government officials who had gotten power when it passed from the king |
| Charles Martel | Mayor of the Palace in 714. Defeated Muslim forces in Tours, France in 732 |
| Pepin the Short | Son of Charles Martel, became King of the Franks in 752 |
| Charlemagne | Pepins son, became King of the Franks in 768 |
| Frankish Empire | When Charlemagne doubled the borders of his kingdom it came to be known as the Frankish Empire |
| Counts | Created by Charlemagne, they were local officials who assisted Charlemagne and took care of smaller local problems |
| The Vikings | Vicious attackers from Scandinavia |
| Feudalism | A highly decentralized from of government that stressed allaiances of mutaul protection between monarchs and nobles of varying degrees of power |
| Fiefs | Estates with peasants, often granted to warriors by nobles |
| Vassal | A noble who served a lord of the next higher rank |
| Homage | A solemn ceremony during which ties between a lord and vassal were made |
| Lord | A nobleman which owned a fief |
| Lady | A noblewoman who had very few rights |
| Tournaments | Mock battles between knights |
| Chivalry | A code that called for knights to act nobly |
| Peasants | People who lived and worked on the land of a feudal lord |
| Manoralism | A system of agriculture production that concerned the economic ties between nobles and peasants |
| Serfs | people who were bound to the manor and could not leave it without permission (not slaves though, could not be bought or sold) |
| Sacraments | Church rituals, the only way to receive grace |
| Benedict | A Roman official in 529 who founded a monastery at Monte Cassino |
| Abbot | Monastery head |
| Abbess | nun, women equivalent of a monk |
| Gregory I | Pope in 597 who sent monks to England to convert anglo-saxons to christianity |
| Cardinals | high church officials directly below the pope |
| Lay investiture | A practice in which secular rulers gave the symbols of office, ring and staff, to the bishops they had appointed |
| Heresy | The denial of basic church teachings |
| Excommunication | Expulsion from the church |
| Friars | Wandering preachers |
| Francis of Assisi | Founded the Franciscan friars in 1210 |
| Dominic | A spanish priest who organized the dominican friars in 1215 |
| Alfred the Great | United the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and defeated the Danes in 886 |
| England | The united kingdom resulting from Alfred the Great |
| William the Conquerer | Invaded and took over england in 1066 |
| Common law | Set up by Henry II, used traveling judges to enforce the law equally throughout the land |
| Grand jury | Met with the judges and submitted the names of suspects |
| Petit jury | Established guilt or innocence of the accused |
| Thomas a Becket | Archbishop of canterbury in 1170, came into disagreement with Henry II and was murdered by four of Henry's knights who thought they were doing the kings bidding |
| Eleanor of Aquitaine | Henry II's wife owned vast lands in southwestern france and made them english upon her marrige |
| Middle class | A new social class that emerged during the reign of Henry III |
| Philip Augustus | Also known as Philip II ruled france from 1180-1223, and nearly doubled the size of his domain in that time |
| Henry IV | Had arguments with the pope though ultimately sought his forgiveness in 1077 |
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