Western Civilization: The Last Day

So...This is it. Our last day with Mr. Schick. For some it has been an excellent semester, and for others an excellent school year. Though before I go, I'd just like to say, you were fantastic, just absolutely fantastic!...And you know what? So was I! (Ask your daughter or any other Dr. Who fan) Today we spent going over the Feudalism test and reviewing for the final exam. The exam will have 120 multiple choice and possibly an essay. Yes, we were told that it is possible the iron plow will show up on the exam.

Feudalism Test

Today in Western Civilization, Mr. Schick abandoned us for the first ¾ of class. Then when he arrived he gave us a choice. We could either take the test right then and there or we could take it tomorrow and cut into our exam review. 11 people voted yay and 7 voted nay. Therefore, we ended up taking the test today. Before this vote, Mr. Schick called the classroom and instructed us to pray and study for the test. Fast forwarding to the test, it was probably the quickest test we have had all year. In fact, the class before us that took it got it done in about 10 minutes and had an average score of a high B. It tested us to see basically to see if we knew what feudalism was and if we could identify the iron plow by sight. Mr. Schick told us that he should have changed the question to say, “What is in the picture below, makes Mr. Schick very happy, and Mr. Camello very upset.”

Feudalism Study Guide

If I wanted to ace the Feudalism test,

I would look up the following terms in Chapter 11 in the textbook:

Feudalism- term used to describe social/political relationship between people

Feudal compact- knight pledges allegiance to a lord, who grants him a fief which transforms the knight into the lords “vassal”

Fief- piece of land given to a knight by a lord

Vassal- a knight who has become a lord’s servant

Knight- medieval warrior

Homage-respect

Serf- lowest class in the social hierarchy, provided a workforce

Baron- a lord who controlled a large amount of land  

Peasantry- commoners, worked in guilds, made up of craftsmen

Estates

Manor- the place where the lord lived

Three-field-system- farm divided into 3 rotated your 2 sets of crops.

Internal colonization

Suburb

Guild- a group of craftsmen under a single trade

Master- artisan

Journeyman- Master’s second in command

Apprentice- one who is learning a trade

Masterpiece- something that a journeyman makes to become a master

Water mill

And yes, iron plow

Giant Bird and Ugly Paintings

Western Civilization class today was…interesting. We took notes on our next new topic and made-fun of medieval artwork and plows. In fact we even renamed the plow, the “I-plow” for some apparent reason. Also, the grammar! Oh, good gosh, the grammatical errors made by the publisher that made the PowerPoint were countless. Then, the artwork we saw was horrendous. I mean really, the quail, or at least that is what we thought it was, came up to at least chest level on the women feeding it. On top of that, the women’s feet were disproportional and bloody. The next painting we looked at was an attempt to show depth. However, this was a miserable failure at perspective. I mean really, I've seen amateur work better than it. For his painting, to try to show depth, he painted everything vertically. Meaning, that if something was farther back, it was placed farther up the page. It was almost as if humanity’s progress had just decided to plummet. To show how even more pathetic they were, the biggest technological breakthrough was a plow with wheels. I mean really, People LOOOONG before the Romans and Greeks had invented the wheel, and people have been using plows since not long after the idea of farming first came about.     

Christianity Test

Today we did not really do a whole lot in Western Civilizations class. We started by allowing Henry to make up the pop quiz on barbarians. Then we got back our last test on Christianity. I honestly cannot believe that Mr. Schick actually put “What is the last letter in the word ‘pax’?” on the test still. As for scores, our class came in second for highest average. I was not one of the people to get a hundred, though I did get a ding for getting an A, but only barely. I say this because Mr. Schick was having a really great day and decided to give everyone the question about Byzantium. This is because there were a lot of people who got it wrong and he was not even sure if he brought up the fact that Constantinople was originally Byzantium. Also, I pretty much knew what I got wrong and what I did not. Though I did not expect to get ½ credit for 207 A.D. for when the Pax Romana began and ended. 

Hagia Sophia

Today in West Civ., class we got our last pop quiz back most of us got hundreds. Then, we had ANOTHER pop quiz on barbarians. HOW BARBARIC!!!! Then we took notes on “Post Rome,” a name that I just invented myself. These notes started with some wrap up/review info on Romulus Augustulus, and the Anglo-Saxons. We then moved on to the Byzantines. First up for this topic is Justinian. He tried to restore Rome (with the Maryland flag for some reason). However that didn’t happen because a plague swept through their ranks. Then, they formed the “Holy Roman Empire.” Justinian, decided that it would be grand if he built the most awesome church EVER!!!! If you are an architect, then this church is the equivalent of God. What’s even more awesome about this building is that it is still around today! The original isn’t though, Justinian built this 3 times in order to make it more stable. This church is called the Hagia Sophia, meaning “Holy Wisdom.” Today, it is no longer a church, but a museum.  

Barbaric Tribes

The Huns were a nomadic tribe that first popped up in China but move to Europe and establish the Hunnic Empire. One of their most famous rulers, Attilla the Hun, ruled from 434 to 453. He was also one of the most feared enemies of the Roman Empire. The Ostragoths are one of two branches of the “Goths” (the other would be the Visigoths). They established a kingdom under Theodoric, the Great. The Visigoths as I mentioned earlier, are the other branch of the “Goths.” They invaded and defeated the Roman Empire in 378 at the Battle of Adrianople. They fell away from Rome then established their own kingdom. The Vandals were an East Germanic tribe that dwelt in Africa. There, they established their own kingdom, which included the Roman Africa province. On top of that, they were also successful in conquering the city of Rome itself.  You may have heard of the Franks, because they made themselves a home in Gaul (present day France). In fact, France is actually derived from “Franks.” The Franks are sort of like us Americans because they did what they wanted, some looted Roman territory, while others joined Rome in Gaul. The Angles and Saxons, or “Anglo-Saxons” as they are more commonly called, inhabited Britain. These barbarians settled down to form the English nation. They spoke what we now call “Old English.”

LO-1 notes

Tonight’s Western Civilization assignment is to read and take notes on Ch. 10 LO-1. Here are my notes. The Frankish Kingdom started to fall apart in 700 A.D. Eventually, a man named Charles Martel (Charles the Hammer) won the throne in a civil war. This was the start of the Carolingian dynasty. Anyway, the Carolingian rebuilt the Frankish kingdom. Frankish rulers centered on rewarding followers (giving them land) and crushing opponents (conquering enemies). When it came to land distribution, the Franks never distributed gave out their own land because it was their source of wealth and power. Often, rulers would give out conquered land, or another source in Charles the Hammer’s case, that land was from the Church. However, he mostly took from noble families that he mistrusted. He thought, “It’s fine if I take land from people who are going to use it to oppose me.” All the influential people had sworn loyalty to the Merovingian descendants of Clovis, so it was difficult to attain any legal power. This lead to an alliance between the Frankish kings and the pope, since the pope now has the ability to transfer royal power. After Pepin, Charlemagne was next in line. His name meant “Charles the Great.” His rule lasted for 46 years. Charlemagne built an empire and he also gained the power to appoint bishops. Charlemagne ruled his empire by breaking it up into “counties” which were ruled by “counts.” A count was a representative of the king in his county. Eventually and inevitably, his empire was conquered by the Vikings or “Norsemen” (men of the North) as they called them.    

test questions

For the 1^st half of Western Civilization today, we were asked to brainstorm questions for the test. Here are mine:

1)      Which of the following are NOT one of the problems we discussed that was wrong with the Roman Empire?

A.      Disease

B.      Too many poor people

C.      Corrupt government

D.      Trouble defending the outer edges of the empire

2)      Name and describe one of Diocletian’s reforms. (At least 3 sentences)

One of Diocletian’s reformations was increasing the size of the Military. Diocletian recruited so many new soldiers, that the size of the military increased by 33%. He was able to get these numbers by recruiting from conquered barbarians.

OR

One of Diocletian’s reformations was dividing the Roman Empire into provinces. He then assigned a separate ruler, or governor, to be in charge of collecting taxes and other governmental functions for that area. This meant that they were more efficient at gathering the money for taxes since there were local people that the people knew to gather it. Also, because of this reform, the number of officials was 10 times the amount that Caesar Augustus had.

3)      How many Edicts were published by Diocletian?

A.      2

B.      12

C.      7

D.      6

E.       4

4)      When was the 1^st Edict that Diocletian made published.

A.      284 A.D.

B.      303 A.D.

C.      300 A.D.

D.      44 B.C.

Diocletian and Constantine

SHEESH! Why is it, that humans are always horrible to people who are different from them! I mean REALLY! Today we learn about how Diocletian ordered that any Christian churches within the Empire could be razed and that Christian MUST worship the Roman gods. On top of that, he even publically tortured a Christian by tying them up raising them up, then scourging him with a multi-ended whip with tacks on the end. Then more than a millennia later, the Nazis come along and try to wipe Judaism off the face of the planet! Fortunately, there are plenty of people in this world that actually have some sense in them. For example, Constantine took the throne and before the Battle of Milvian Bridge, he saw a vision of a cross with the words “in this you will conquer.” AND HE DID!!! Not only that, but after getting these great results from praying to God, he passed the Edict of Milan. This stated that Christians could publically worship and if anybody had their land taken away from them by Diocletian, they would be given it back. Basically Constantine was like “He da man!”

More Christian Notes

More notes were taken today in Western Civilization, however these notes were more focused on the Fall of Rome. However, the notes could have been on what we discussed yesterday if the notes were literally taken. In any case, we took notes on the start of the end of the Roman Empire. Mr. Schick started off by listing some of the 99 problems that arose after and at the end of the Pax Romana. Some of these problems were that disease was spreading, it was difficult to defend the outer borders of the empire, and primarily there were just too many poor people. Then came Diocletian. Diocletian was Rome’s “knight in shining armor,” meaning he had some brilliant reforms in mind. Some of his reformations included increasing the army size by 33% and dividing up the empire into provinces to make ruling it more manageable. Also, under his rule, there were 20,000 officials working for the government (10*the amount there was under Augustus). We were also asked to find out what Diocletian did to the Christians and What Constantine’s connection was to Christianity. The answer to question 1 is that Diocletian made laws that banned Christianity. If you were found guilty of this crime, then your sentence was either imprisonment or execution. Question 2’s answer is that Constantine was the ruler that made Christianity legal due to his personal preference of the religion.

Christianity Notes

Now that we are done with Rome, it is time to move on to Christianity. We will only be learning one section of this chapter, though. Anyway, LO-2 centers on Jesus. What we know about his life, we know from the Gospels (Who da thought!). In case you were unaware, and did not learn anything in Religion class, gospel means “good news.” These 4 books in the Bible focus on Jesus’s birth, teachings, death, and resurrection. Jesus grew up in a Jewish family, and was arguing religion in the temple. An apostle was one of Jesus’ followers and messengers of his teachings. The other important person in the section, is Paul. Paul (originally named Saul) started out persecuting Christians, but then he had a vision on the road to Damascus. In this vision, Jesus told him to stop persecuting him and start preaching about him. Anyway, Paul did as he was told 3 days after this vision, as he was blinded by the light in the vision. Vocab word number 2 is predestination. This refers to God deciding who is saved and who is not.

Final Rome Test

TEST!!!! BUT I DIDN’T STUDY!!!!! Actually, I did. Today Mr. Schick collected our papers, gave us about ten minutes to study, and then handed out the test. The test was 20 questions long, or one could say that it was 8 ½ inches long, since that is how long the piece of paper was. The test itself was not that diff... I mean easy. Mr. Schick was going to say that the test was easy, but he changed his mind because he didn’t want to jinx it and cause half the class to fail like what happened with the last test. Instead, he told us that the test was super difficult. After the test, we checked the blog to see what the homework was on like we usually do. For Chapter 9, we are going to be skipping LO-1 and going straight to LO-2, and then we are going to move on to Chapter 10: The Medieval Era, dun, dun, dun, dun.    

Research Time!

Today in West Civ., we were given our exact expectations for the research paper. Although, in my opinion it is not even really a proper research paper. This is because Mr. Schick told us that we don’t even need to include a works cited page because he is giving us our main sources of information, so he did not feel like it was necessary. After we got our formal instructions, we were set loose to begin work on our papers. My paper is probably going to include most of the topics in the book except for maybe the section on writers and philosophers. The due date for our research papers is Monday at the start of class, if we turn it in any later, submit it to our BLOG, or email it to him, it is late. Thus, he is expecting us to hand him a hard copy of the paper like we are supposed to. After we hand in our paper, Mr. Schick will hand us our test in exchange.

Tiberius movie+Gracchi notes

In today’s class we finished the movie on Tiberius Gracchus and Mr. Schick called a few people a pig-dog in German “schwine-hund” and in Chinese. Anyway, today’s portion of the movie, we saw the death of Tiberius Gracchus. He died because after his one year term as tribune, he tried to run for a re-election which was illegal because in Rome, you could only run for a political office again after ten years. On top of that, people like Octavius, tried to lie to the people to get them to believe that Tiberius was actually trying to declare himself king. This was most likely false information, however, he may have been getting a little power hungry, but he probably did not want to be king. We then got to taking notes on the overthrow of the republic. This discussion included the second half of the song, from “I can hear the brothers Gracchus…” to “Pax Romana is the word that brings the cheers…” After the notes, we were then given our next assignment, a research paper.  This paper, which is on Pax Romana, actually only needs to be 500 words, so it’s not like we are writing a term paper or anything.    

Rome Movie 2

Today’s Western Civilizations class brought us more of the Rome movie that we started to watch on Monday. In today’s portion, we picked up right where we left off on Monday with Tiberius’s battle in Spain. This was a difficult battle for Rome and it ultimately ended in there defeat. Actually the only reason that they made it out alive was because they sent Tiberius to negotiate with the enemy, after they refused to negotiate with their first peace envoy. Tiberius earned them a hero’s welcome back in Rome, since he was able to talk the enemy into letting them go. However, the senate was not so happy. They called for the punishment of Tiberius and the general, but then, one of the senate member’s saved Tiberius. Also, Tiberius’s mother said something that I would like to comment on, “I would like to be known as the mother of Tiberius Gracchus.” The funny thing about this is that she meant that she wants to be remembered as the mother of a great person. However, Tiberius could be the worst ruler human kind has ever known, and she would still be known as his mother.