Under the leadership of wealthy merchants the towns began to challenge the power of the nobles who ruled the countryside. The merchants often supported the regional ruler in his campaigns against unruly vassals, at the same time exacting from him privileges designed to promote commerce and to strengthen the town and the position of the merchant class. (3) In the early Middle Ages such political entities as the counties of Flanders and Holland, the bishopric of Utrecht, and the duchies of Brabant and Gelderland were established. In the far north, however, the Frisians did not submit to a regional ruler but continued to obey their local headmen. The association of the Netherlands with the Holy Roman Empire remained largely nominal throughout the Middle Ages. Some trade was conducted with German coastal cities to the east, such as Bremen and Hamburg, but the major cultural influence came from France. (3) 2.4 The Renaissance
Dialectal differentiation accelerated after the breakup of Kievan Rus' in approximately 1100. On the territories of modern Belarus and Ukraine emerged Ruthenian and in modern Russia medieval Russian. They became distinct since the 13th century, i.e. following the division of that land between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Poland and Hungary in the west and independent Novgorod and Pskov feudal republics plus numerous small duchies (which came to be vassals of the Tatars) in the east. The official language in Moscow and Novgorod, and later, in the growing Muscovy, was Church Slavonic, which evolved from Old Church Slavonic and remained the literary language for centuries, until the Petrine age, when its usage became limited to biblical and liturgical texts. Russian developed under a strong influence of Church Slavonic until the close
annaabi.ee 
