Lesson video

Hello, I'm Mr. Olivey, and this is a very old book.

It certainly smells old anyway.

Now, today we're going to continue learning about the power of the Pope in mediaeval Europe.

But for us to be able to do that, you need to do two things before we start the lesson.

First, make sure that you've got pen and some paper.

So if you haven't got those yet, pause the video now and go and get them.

Good.

You've now got a pen and paper.

Well done.

Let's make a start.

But before we do that, Second thing, make sure you're in a relatively quiet space, like my little study here, so that you can do some good work and have some good thoughts about history and the Pope and mediaeval Europe.

Okay.

I really can't wait to get going.

So let's get started.

So this is lesson two of an inquiry of four lessons.

And the title for today's lesson is Peter's Pence.

And our big inquiry question is, how powerful was the Pope? The first thing I'd like you to do this lesson is just to look at this coin.

And just think, where was it from? Where was it made? And where was it found? So where was it from? Where was it made? And where was it found? I'm going to give you 10 seconds to write an answer to that down.

I'm also going to write down some guesses, and we're going to come back to those in a little bit of time.

So where was it from? Where was it made? And where was it found? Good.

Well done for writing down those early guesses.

We'll see how accurate they were later in the lesson.

But we're going to say goodbye to this coin for now, because we need to jump back to our big inquiry question, which is how powerful was the Pope? And last lesson, we learned a story about a pope who was not very powerful at all.

Because last lesson, we learned about the story of Leo third, and Charlemagne.

We found that Pope Leo the third was actually attacked in Rome, in 799 by his enemies, and he only survived because he was rescued by two men.

And these two men worked for the powerful Frankish King, Charlemagne, shown here in this painting, holding a sword to show his earthly power and an orb to show his Christianity.

So Pope Leo the third was rescued by Charlemagne`s men, and they took him to Charlemagne in Germany.

And as a reward for this, in 800 A.

D, on Christmas Day, Pope Leo the third crown Charlemagne, the first Holy Roman Emperor.

And in doing so, he chose to give Charlemagne some of his power.

And this was a shocking decision for many people in Europe, because the Pope was choosing to give away a bit of his power.

And at the end of that lesson, we all had a go down to this question, we really got to grips with the idea that actually, despite the fact that Pope Leo the third should have been the most powerful man on earth because many Christians believed he was put there by God.

In reality, he had to rely on people like Charlemagne to prop him up and to keep him safe.

So that was last lesson.

But this lesson we're going to learn a bit of a different story.

And this story, revolves around this coin.

This coin has a very interesting life.

And you can actually go and see it in the British Museum, where I've taken this image from.

Because this coin is not a normal mediaeval coin.

It's actually a fake.

Because if you look on the image on the left, you can see a name, 'OFFA'.

And then you can see another word that you might not know, 'Rex', which is not a type of dinosaur, it's actually Latin for King.

So we can see 'Offa', King so we know that this coin belong to a king called Offa.

And I happen to know that there was an Anglo Saxon king called Offa.

There he is.

But the puzzle gets a little bit more complicated.

Because if we look on the other side of the coin, we can see that there is some writing that does not look like the rest of it.

And that writing is actually in Arabic.

Because this coin is not an Anglo Saxon coin.

It is actually a copy of a Arabic coin called a 'Dinar'.

So it's a gold coin that's been made by King Offa, that copies in Arabic coin.

So suddenly, this coin is very puzzling, isn't it? But it gets more puzzling.

Because Offa didn't just have his men make a coin that looked like an Arabic coin.

Oh no.

He got the design from the Arab world, which is why it has that Islamic declaration of faith on the one side in Arabic, although it's actually spelt wrong, because the people who made the coin put it on upside down.

He didn't just have to make the coin so that hecould have it look nice in England.

He chose to then take the coin, to Rome, where it was found about 100 years ago.

So this coin, this 'Offa Dinar', has had a very complicated life, because it started out a sort of fake Arab Dinar that would have been made in England, based on a coin from the Middle East, and then it was taken to Rome, which is an incredibly complicated story.

Now, just to check that we've all understood that this is a little bit confusing.

I would like you to have a go at these true or false questions.

Pause the video now, and resume it once you've done the answers.

Okay, let's find out how you've got up.

So, A is false.

The gold dinar wasn't originally a Roman coin.

It was actually an Arabic coin, that was used in trading in Europe.

But B is true the 'Offa Dinar' was found in Rome.

So King Offa, chose to copy this Arabic coin and then he chose to take it to Rome.

C is false, the Pope did not give the coin to Offa as a gift for his loyalty.

And D is true.

Offa's dinar was made in England and based on an Arabic dinar.

So this coin has quite a complicated story.

And the story that this coin helps us tell as historians is the story of something.

Peter's Pence.

Now, Peter's Pence begins with this man, St.

Peter.

St.

Peter was one of the leaders of the early Christian church.

He lived, from 30 to 64 A.

D.

He is one of the 12 apostles of Jesus Christ for 12 immediate followers of Jesus.

And he was perhaps the most important mediaeval saint, because people believe that he had a place next to God in Heaven.

So St.

Peter, was a leader of the early church and was incredibly important to mediaeval Christians.

Okay, let's just see how much we understood about St.

Peter then.

So pause the video now, decide whether these are true or false, and resume once you're done.

Right, let's see how you've got on.

So St.

Peter was not seen by Christians as the Son of God, that would be Jesus, but he was seen as being very close to God.

St.

Peter was not a coin.

He was a pastor.

St.

Peter was the leader of the early Christian Church in Rome.

And it is true also that he lived in Rome until he died.

So now we know about St.

Peter, and we're ready to learn about the story of something very interesting.

And that is the story of Peter's Pence.

And the story of Peter's pence begins with the 'Offa Dinar'.

So author of Mercia was a king in Anglo Saxon England.

He ruled the small Kingdom of Mercia.

And he really wanted to show the pope what a good Christian he was.

So what he did is he made a pilgrimage, which is a religious journey, from England, all the way to Rome, carrying with him some gold coins, like this one.

And he chose to give them to the Pope to show what a good Christian he was and to support the Pope.

So offer hasn't been forced to give these coins.

He's chosen to give the coins.

And many other kings from other parts of Europe made similar journeys.

100 years after Offa, there was a great Anglo Saxon king called Alfred.

Alfred was an incredibly religious man, when he was a young boy, in the 850s, He chose to go on a pilgrimage to Rome to study and learn and to pray.

And once he became king, he was obsessed with showing how good a Christian he was.

He would invent certain things that helped him to know how much time he had to pray, which were like candle clocks.

He would spend time devoted to translating the Bible into English so people could read it.

And he also sent lots of money to the Pope in Rome.

Now hundred years after Alfred, Edgar the Peaceful, picked up his tradition of sending money to Rome, but by this point, it had been made even more official and important in England.

So by the time of Edgar, there was a thing called Peter's Pence, the title of this lesson.

And what Peter's pence was, was that it was a tax that every household had to pay to Rome, once a year.

So every household in England, had to give one penny to pay to St.

Peter, to pay to the Pope in Rome.

And this was collected by the priests and the bishops in England, and it was all very official, and it raised huge amounts of money to send to the Pope.

And Edgar wasn't doing this because he was forced to by the Pope, he was choosing to send the Pope money.

Which if we think about our big inquiry question says a lot about how powerful the Pope was in mediaeval Europe.

Okay, time for a quick quiz.

So, which king sent a dinar to ancient Rome? Pause the video now and answer this question.

Okay, time for the answer to that first one.

It was.

Offa of Mercia , who was the king who sent the gold dinar to Rome.

Next question, which King made a pilgrimage to Rome as a boy? Pause the video now and write an answer.

Okay, the king that made a pilgrimage to Rome as a boy was, Alfred the Great.

The incredibly Christian, Alfred the Great went to Rome in the 1850s as a young boy to pray and to study.

Finally then, which King made Peter's Pence a regular official payment? Pause the video now and write an answer.

It was Edgar the Peaceful.

Well done on those answers.

So once again, if we come back to our big inquiry question, how powerful was the Pope? This is now a very different story to what we had last lesson.

Last lesson we saw a Pope who was weak Leo the third, who needed a king like Charlemagne to prop them up.

But now we can see Pope's who are strong, because they're gaining money and they're gaining support by choice.

, from England, Anglo Saxon kings.

We will have a chance to add some more of a complicated answer to our inquiry question at the end of the lesson.

But now it's time for you to go and do a little bit of reading first.

So pause the video now, read the slides on the next page, and then answer the comprehension questions and resume once you're finished, and we'll go through the answers.

Right.

Now it's time to do the answers to the comprehension questions.

The question one was who was St.

Peter? The correct answer would be the first Pope.

But a better answer would be St.

Peter led the early Christian church from Rome.

Some people consider him to have been the first Pope.

So well done if you've got something similar to those answers.

Question two.

What did midieval pilgrims bring to the church in Rome? Now the correct answer would be coins.

But a better answer would be mediaeval pilgrims bought gold and silver coins to Rome to give as gifts to the Pope.

So well done if you've got that one, correct.

Three.

How much money did Edgar the Peaceful make every household in England pay to the pope? The correct answer will be one penny.

And even better answer would be, Edgar made each household in England pay one penny to the pope each year.

This was known as St.

Peter's Pence.

If anyone failed to pay, you fine them lots more money.

Question four.

What evidence do historians have about the existence and importance of Peter's pence? The correct answer would be coin hoards and law codes.

But an even better answer would be historians use hoards of Anglo Saxon coins found in Rome, Law codes to find out how important Peter's Pence was in mediaeval Europe.

Well done if you've got that one right.

And finally, question five.

In what ways does Peter's Pence show the power of the Pope? The correct answer would be, that it shows he could collect money from kings.

But even better answer would be Peters Pence shows the Anglo Saxon kings chose to send lots of their money to the Pope.

This shows how important the Pope was in mediaeval Europe.

And now for one final time this lesson, we're going to come back to our inquiry question.

And based on everything you've learned this lesson about Peter's Pence, and these gifts of gold and silver coins to the Pop in Rome, Can you write a short paragraph, answering our inquiry question, that builds on the stuff we wrote last lesson.

So pause the video now and just do that in your notes.

Okay, well done for completing that paragraph.

The final thing, is to do the exit quiz and to share your work with Oak National if you'd like to.

So if you'd like to, please ask your parent or carer to share your work on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter, tagging Oak National and hashtag learn with Oak.

Thank you very much for coming to this lesson , well done on your hard work.

I look forward to seeing you next time.

Bye.