| A | B |
|---|
| caltrops | two-inch spikes used to maim warhorses or enemy foot soldiers |
| trebuchet | weapon used to launch a variety of missles over castle walls |
| troubadours | poet-musicians at castles and courts of Europe |
| battering ram | made of heavy timber with a metal tip; used to crack castle walls |
| Eleanor | Famous female resident of Aquitaine who later became queen of England |
| mangonel | weapon that flung huge rocks up to 1300 feet |
| Song of Roland | one of the earliest and most famous medieval epic poems |
| Code of Chivalry | complex set of ideals that knight was expected to live by |
| Marie of Champagne | Medieval women who presided at famed Court of Love |
| tournament | mock battle between groups of knights |
| tortoise | house like structure that moved on wheels and sheltered soldiers from falling arrows |
| Rollo | Viking who was given a fief by Charles the Simple |
| Saracens (Muslims) | group that controlled the Mediterranean Sea and attacked Europe from the south |
| Leif Ericson | Viking who reached America almost 500 years before Columbus |
| tithe | church tax |
| lord | under the feudal system, a landowner |
| knights | mounted warriors who pledged to defend their lord's land in exchange for a fief or shelter |
| fief | under the feudal system, a land grant |
| Northmen/Norsemen | Vikings |
| vassal | under the feudal system, a person receiving a fief |
| Magyars | Group of Finno-Ugarian nomads who attacked Europe from the east terrorizing Germany and Italy |
| serf | people who could not lawfully leave the land where they were born |
| manor | lord's estate |
| Franks | Germanic people who controlled the Roman province of Gaul |
| Papal State | Lands around Rome that were a papal gift from Pepin the Short |
| major domo or mayor of the palace | by 700, the title of the most powerful person in the Merovingian Dynasty |
| Leo III | pope who crowned Charlemagne, Emperor of the Romans |
| Clovis | Leader of the Franks who converted to Christianity |
| Gregory I | pope who broadened the authority of the papacy beyond its spiritual role |
| Middle Ages | period in Europe from 500 to 1500 |
| Charlemagne | Frankish king who build an empire greater than any since the fall of Rome |
| Venerable Bede | English monk who wrote a history of England |
| Charles Martel, the Hammer | Major domo who defeated the Muslim at Tours in 732 |
| monasteries | religious communities where monks resided |
| Scholastica | woman who adapted Benedict's monastic rules for nuns |
| nuns | female counterparts to monks |
| secular | terms used to indicate worldly rather than spirtual |
| Benedict | monk who wrote a book describing the rules for monastic life |
| Carolingian | Frankish dynasty that began when the pope anointed Pepin the Short, king |
| Treaty of Verdun | agreement that settled the conflict among Charlemagne's grandsons |
| clergy | religious officials ordained to perform church ceremonies |
| lay investiture | ceremony in which kings and nobles appointed church officials |
| Concordat of Worms | agreement reached by Church and German state over lay investiture |
| Lombard League | association of Italian merchants and the pope who opposed Frederick I |
| Frederick I (Barbarossa) | First of the German kings to call his land the Holy Roman Empire |
| canon | law of the Roman Catholic Church |
| Battle of Legnano | first battle in which foot soldiers defeated mounted knights |
| Gelasius I | pope who suggested an analogy to solve the conflicts between the church and the state |
| Gregory VII | pope who banned lay investitute |
| Otto I (the Great) | most effective ruler of medieval Germany who tried to emulate Charlemagne |
| excommunication | banishment from the Catholic Church |
| interdict | papal weapon that forbid many sacraments and religious services in a particular area |
