Chapter Summary

Although the Roman Empire in the West seemed undisturbed after the deposition of the last emperor in 476, real power lay in the hands of Germanic kings and military commanders.

There were two Gothic kingdoms in the fifth century: the Ostrogothic kingdom of Italy and the Visigothic kingdom of Toulouse. Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, was the most successful Gothic monarch. He established a bipartite government in Italy that continued the Roman civil administration for the Italo-Roman population and recognized Germanic kingship and military authority for the Goths. On Theodoric’s death, succession disputes broke out among the Goths. Sensing the weakness of Germanic government, the Byzantine emperor Justinian ordered an invasion of Italy. After twenty years of warfare, the Goths were defeated and ceased to exist as an independent people. The Byzantines were able to hold only the southern parts of Italy. The northern half of Italy fell to a subsequent tribe of Germanic invaders, the Lombards. The bishops of Rome emerged as the most efficient protectors of the Italo-Roman population. Tensions between Lombards and the Roman population eased when the Germanic peoples converted to orthodox Christianity.

The Visigothic kingdom of Toulouse did not long survive the Ostrogothic kingdom of Italy. Defeated by the Franks in 507, the Visigothic kingdom became concentrated in Spain. Originally Arian, like the Ostrogoths, the Visigoths finally converted to orthodox Christianity in the mid-sixth century. Conversion allowed the use of the Spanish episcopacy as a governing council. Persecution of the large Jewish population and division between the kings and the aristocracy weakened the Visigothic kingdom by the eighth century. In 711 the Muslims easily overthrew the Visigothic kings and established an independent caliphate under the Umayyads.

The Germanic conquerors of Britain did not create a single kingdom, but organized themselves in small political units numbering as many as eleven kingdoms. Less exposed to Roman culture than the Goths, the Anglo-Saxons generally destroyed remnants of the ancient empire. Anglo-Saxon society consisted of free farmers dominated by petty kings and war-band leaders. The Anglo-Saxons were pagans at the time of their migration. Two groups of missionaries, Irish and Roman, were responsible for the conversion of the Germanic tribesmen. As the Irish and Roman churches differed in organization and calendar of religious observances, eventually their missionary efforts came into conflict. King Oswy of Northumbria decided the issue in 664 at the Synod of Whitby. Oswy selected the more hierarchical Roman form of Christianity, thus tying the Anglo-Saxons to Rome and the Continent. Under the Roman church, Anglo-Saxon society became a source of scholars, artists, and missionaries. After the beginning of the eighth century, the Anglo-Saxons provided many of the missions to convert the heathen Germans of the continent of Europe.

Until the end of the fifth century, the Franks were a loosely organized client confederation of the Roman Empire. Their primary function was to supply soldiers for the Roman frontier defenses. In 486, the Frankish king Clovis began a series of military conquests, beginning with the elimination of Syagrius, the last Roman military commander in the West. Clovis’ conversion to orthodox Christianity allowed him to ally himself with the Gallo-Roman aristocracy. The mixed force of Gallo-Romans and Franks eliminated most Germanic rivals. In short order, the Burgundians, Thuringians, Bavarians, and Visigoths fell before the Frankish advance. After Clovis death his kingdom was divided among his heirs, but his dynasty, the Merovingians, lasted only until the mid-eighth century.

Although the establishment of the Germanic kingdoms caused few overt changes in the lives of inhabitants of the western half of the Roman Empire, a new society consisting of agricultural laborers and a combined Gallo-Roman/Germanic aristocracy emerged. Germanic and Roman political institutions slowly evolved into medieval kingship.

Slavery, commonplace in the Roman agricultural system, disappeared in the early Middle Ages. Previously servile families were moved to independent households. The social gulf between free and formerly servile agricultural laborers narrowed. Both groups formed the medieval peasantry, subject to the private justice of those who had authority over the land.

With the division of agricultural labor into individual households responsible for cultivation of larger estates, the manse, the individual household unit, became the foundation of the agricultural economy. Heads of households, male or female, exercised authority over other members of the family group. The peasantry was largely a Christian population, unlike the agricultural laborers of the ancient world. By the sixth century, pagan rites had largely been transformed into Christian ones. By the ninth century, parish churches existed in almost every peasant village. Christianity and the Christian celebrations became an integral part of peasant society.

The Germanic traditions of aristocracy depended on wealth derived from military service under the kings. Roman aristocracy derived its authority from its control of landed wealth. The Roman source of authority was inextricably bound up with Christianity. Many of the Gallo-Roman aristocrats were bishops themselves or related to the episcopacy.

Aristocratic society highly prized the martial activities of hunting and warfare. Within the elite, women held a higher social status than in either Germanic or Roman society. The opening of religious life in monastic organizations to women broadened their opportunities for economic and political independence.

The aristocracy and the kings of early medieval kingdoms shared an uneasy partnership, normally limited to military ventures. During times of war, the kings’ powers were absolute. At other times, his authority was strictly limited. Monarchs had no formal judicial authority other than as a voluntary court of appeal. Kings attempted to place themselves at the head of the remnants of the old Roman civil administration with mixed success. Better hope for authority stemmed from the kings’ role as protectors of the Church, and many royal advisers were drawn from the ranks of the clergy. Kings had no fixed capitals, but wandered from one part of their kingdoms to another. Local authority in the king’s absence was held by the aristocracy. Among the Franks, local representatives of the king were called counts. In Anglo-Saxon England, the royal appointees were called ealdormen. When kings were not vigilant, counts and ealdormen could become virtually independent lords within their territories.

By the end of the seventh century, the Merovingian kings of the Franks had lost most of their authority to regional aristocrats, the most important of which was the family of Charles Martel, the Carolingians. From their positions as mayors of the palace of Austrasia, the Carolingians extended their authority over Neustria and Burgundy. Critical to the growth of Carolingian influence was their policy toward the Church. Loyal followers were rewarded with bishoprics and abbacies. More importantly, Charles Martel aligned himself closely with the bishop of Rome. The Carolingian alliance with the pope paid off in 751 when the papacy recognized Pippin III as king of the Franks in preference to the Merovingians. Royal legitimacy was thus based on ecclesiastical sanction.

The greatest Carolingian was Pippin’s son, Charlemagne. He engaged in a number of successful military ventures: conquest of the kingdom of the Lombards in Italy, incorporation of the Saxons, annexation of the buffer zone between the kingdom of the Franks and the Islamic caliphate in Spain, and the destruction of the Avars. The spoils of conquest were dedicated to cultural rejuvenation.

Charlemagne established schools and recruited intellectuals to promote an educational renaissance. The Carolingians also sought to reform ecclesiastical institutions. The kings attempted to get all monasteries to conform to the Benedictine rule and to regularize the education of parish clergy. In order to finance ecclesiastical reforms, tithes, the ten percent tax on all Christians, became mandatory.

To govern his vast kingdom, Charlemagne made use of counts. To curb the propensity of the counts toward independence, the king sent teams of emissaries, the missi dominici, to examine the government of each county. Churchmen were frequent members of the royal administration. Although crude in comparison to the Roman Empire, Charlemagne’s government was the most sophisticated Germanic administration until the thirteenth century. Charlemagne’s kingdom spanned much of the western half of the old Roman Empire. Only Britain and Spain lay outside his jurisdiction. His association with the papacy allowed Charlemagne to portray himself as the protector of all Christians under the pope’s obedience. As recognition of these facts, the bishop of Rome crowned Charlemagne emperor on Christmas Day, 800. The imperial coronation at the hands of the pope cemented the relationship between the empire and the Church.

Before the Carolingians, Germanic art was largely abstract and decorative. Charlemagne wished to reestablish an artistic style more consonant with Roman culture. Artists from Italy and Byzantium came to the Carolingian court, but the Frankish artists created their own interpretations of the classical forms. More energized than ancient art, Carolingian presentations expressed the new culture resulting from the combination of Roman and Germanic societies.

The Carolingian kingdom provided the connective links between the Germanic and Slavic worlds of the north and the Islamic and Byzantine worlds of the Mediterranean. The medium of exchange in the commerce that flowed across Charlemagne’s territories was the silver coinage instead of gold. Among the products exchanged was northern furs, luxury goods from the Middle East and slaves from Eastern Europe.

At the outset of the ninth century, the king of Mercia was the strongest monarch of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. Mercia was surpassed by Wessex. Invasions of Scandinavian warriors, the Vikings, interrupted the expansion of Wessex. Bit by bit, the Vikings extended their control of England to include all but the kingdom of Wessex. King Alfred of Wessex not only forestalled a complete Viking victory, but began the process of uniting the various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms under the aegis of the king of Wessex. At his death, Alfred was only partly successful. The northeast of England remained in the hands of the Vikings.

Because of their expertise on the sea, the Scandinavians were the greatest long-distance traders of the early medieval West. Scandinavian society was little different from that of the Germanic tribes prior to their entry into the Roman Empire. A military aristocracy (jarlar) commanded a free society of farmers and herdsmen. Below the freemen were large numbers of slaves or thralls. By the eighth century, the decentralized political organization of Scandinavia began to change in favor of three kings of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. At about the same time as the creation of the kingdoms, extensive raiding began. The Swedes raided and settled along the shores of the Baltic and down the Volga, Dvina, and Dneper Rivers as far as the Byzantine Empire. The Norwegians sailed westward to Ireland and the coast of the Frankish kingdom. The Danes were responsible for the settlement of England and Normandy in the kingdom of the Franks.

The Slavic world felt the political and commercial influences of the Scandinavian, Germanic, and Byzantine worlds. In the eighth century, the largest Slavic political confederation was the Moravian Empire, a prize sought both by the Byzantines and Carolingians. The Byzantine missionaries Cyril and Methodius enjoyed the first successes in Moravia; but in the mid-ninth century, the Carolingian king Louis “the German” conquered Moravia and imprisoned the Byzantine churchmen. The Magyars, invaders from the Asiatic steppes, in turn drove out the Franks and divided the Slavic world into northern and southern halves.

After the overthrow of the Umayyad Caliphate in the Middle East, the last surviving member of the Umayyad family, ‘Abd ar-Rahman, established an independent emirate in Spain in 756. Like the emergence of the Carolingian empire, the coming of the Umayyads set off a cultural and economic renaissance.

For all its apparent successes, the Carolingian empire remained dependent on the uneasy partnership with the Frankish and Gallo-Roman aristocracy. As long as the empire expanded, there was plenty of land and booty with which to reward loyal followers. When in the course of the ninth century the empire was put on the defensive, rewards for the aristocracy were taken from the property of the kings.

The return to the practice of dividing the kingdom among all the sons of the king weakened monarchical authority. In 843 the grandsons of Charlemagne divided the empire into three parts. The newly divided kingdoms were unable to meet the challenge of Scandinavian, Muslim, and Magyar attacks. The kings were equally unable to control the growth of regional authority in the hands of the aristocracy, who began to transform the offices of count and bishop into hereditary positions. Eventually new royal families arose from the regional aristocracy in preference to the ineffectual Carolingians. By the tenth century, the Germanic kingdom was no longer the model of political organization in western Europe.

Eventually, new royal families arose from the regional aristocracy in preference to the ineffectual Carolingians. In 987, Hugh Capet succeeded the Carolingians as king of the West Franks. In the Eastern Germanic kingdom, the Carolingians were replaced by Henry of Saxony in 918. His son Otto the Great revived the imperial title when he was crown emperor by Pope John XII in 962. He and his successors never attained the political power and cultural achievements of the Carolingians.

Church reform began in earnest with the founding of the monastery of Cluny. Cluniac monks expanded Benedictine monasticism throughout western Europe. Late ninth century Christianity spread to Scandinavia, Poland and Hungary.