The period from 600 to 1450 experienced a number of cultural and social changes. Explain how the following passages reflect the events and ideas that caused change during this period. What other documents would you include to discuss change and why?

Source: The following are selected provisions of the Magna Charta, which English barons forced King John to sign in 1215.

John, by the grace of God, king of England, lord of Ireland, duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, count of Anjou; to the archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls, barons, justiciars, foresters, sheriffs, reeves, servants, and all bailiffs and his faithful people greetings. . . .

12. No scutage [money paid by a vassal to his lord in lieu of military service] or aid shall be imposed in our kingdom except by the common council of our kingdom, except for the ransoming of our body, for the making of our oldest son a knight, and for once marrying our oldest daughter, and for these purposes it shall be only a reasonable aid. . . .

20. A freeman shall be amerced [fined] for a small offence only according to the degree of the offence; and for a grave offence he shall be amerced according to the gravity of the offence, saving his contenement [property necessary for support his family]. And a merchant shall be amerced in the same way, saving his merchandise; and a villein in the same way, saving his wainage [seed crops]—should they fall into our mercy. And none of the aforesaid amercements shall be imposed except by the oaths of good men from the neighborhood.

28. No constable or other bailiff of ours shall take grain or other chattels of any one without immediate payment therefor in money, unless by the will of the seller he may secure postponement of that payment.

29. No constable or other bailiff shall distrain [require] any knight to pay money for castleguard when he is willing to perform that service himself, or through another good man if for reasonable cause he is unable to perform it himself. And if we lead or send him on a military expedition, he shall be quit of castle-guard for so long a time as he shall be with the army at our command.

30. No sheriff or bailiff of ours, nor any other person, shall take the horses or carts of any freeman for carrying service, except by the will of that freeman.

31. Neither we nor our bailiffs will take some one else’s wood for repairing castles or for doing any other work of ours, except by the will of him to whom the wood belongs.

39. No freeman shall be captured or imprisoned or disseised [deprived] or outlawed or exiled or in any way destroyed, nor will we go against him or send against him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.

41. All merchants may safely and securely go away from England, come to England, stay in and go through England, by land or by water, for buying and selling under right and ancient customs and without any evil exactions. Except in time of war if they are from the land at war with us. And if such persons are found in our land at the beginning of a war, they shall be arrested without injury to their bodies or goods until we or our chief justice can ascertain how the merchants of our land who may then be found in the land at war with us are to be treated. And if our men are to be safe, the others shall be safe in our land.

Source: Buddhist missionaries were sent from India to what is now Sri Lanka, Burma [Myanmar], Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia. The excerpt below tells the story of one mission.

The wise Majjhima preached in the Himalaya region whither he had gone with four theras [religious teachers]. . . . The five theras separately converted five kingdoms; from each of them a hundred thousand persons received . . . doctrine. . .

Together with the thera Uttara, the thera Sona of wondrous might went to Suvannabhumi [lower Burma or Bengal]. Now at this time, whenever a boy was born in the king’s palace, a fearsome female demon who came forth out of the sea was wont to devour [the child] and vanish again. And at that very moment a prince was born in the king’s palace. When the people saw the theras they thought: “These are companions of the demons,” and they came armed to kill them. And the theras asked: “What does this mean?” . . . Then the demon came forth from the ocean with her following, and when the people saw them they raised a great outcry. But the thera created twice as many terrifying demons and therewith surrounded the demon and her following on every side. She thought: “This [country] is come into possession of these [people]” and, panic-stricken, she took flight.

When the thera had made a bulwark round the country he pronounced in the assembly the [Buddhist doctrine.]

. . . [S]ixty thousand were converted to the true faith.

Source: The selection, written by Francis Bacon in 1620, discusses the discoveries and inventions of previous centuries.

It is well to observe the force and virtue and consequences of discoveries. These are to be seen nowhere more conspicuously than in those three which were unknown to the ancients [Greeks], and of which the origin, though recent, is obscure and inglorious; namely, printing, gunpowder, and the magnet. For these three have changed the whole face and state of things throughout the world, the first in literature, the second in warfare, the third in navigation; whence have followed innumerable changes; insomuch that no empire, no sect, no star, seems to have exerted greater power and influence in human affairs than these mechanical discoveries.

Source: Ibn Battuta, an Islamic jurist and historian in the 1300s, describes the devastation caused by the bubonic plague in Southwest Asia and North Africa.

Early in June we heard at Aleppo that the plague had broken out at Gaza, and the number of deaths there reached over a thousand a day. On travelling to Hims I found that the plague had broken out there: about three hundred persons died of it the day I arrived. So I went on to Damascus, and arrived there on a Thursday. . . . The number of deaths among them reached a maximum of 2,400 a day. . . . We revisited Hebron, and then went to Gaza, the greater part of which we found deserted because of the number of those who died there of the plague. I was told by the qadí that the number of deaths there reached 1,100 a day. We continued our journey overland to Damietta, and on to Alexandria. Here we found that the plague was diminishing in intensity, though the number of deaths had previously reached a thousand and eighty a day. I then traveled to Cairo, where I was told that the number of deaths during the epidemic rose to twenty-one thousand a day.