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Tonic:; in This Chapte r

The M erovingian Kin gdom: Eur ope's Nu cleus The Franks' Neighbors

The Carolingian Era Ret r en ch ment and Reorga nization

The Cult ur e of Euro pe's Dark Ag e

The Emergence of Europe

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O u e s t i o n How did Europe build on its legacies from the ancient world?

The explanation Einhard (c 770- 840) gave for his de cision to pen an account of the life of his king. Charlem agne. reveals how di fferent his w orld w as fr om our s. In our abundantly document ed age. It IS unthinkable t hat a ma n like Charlemag ne, who ruled mu ch of Europe, migh t be forgotte n Emhard. however. w as right to be concerned . He w as a mem ber of Cila rleillag ne 's Inner Circle from 793 unt il the em peror's death in 8 14, but he had no infor ­ m ation about his subjec t 's birth and you th. There we re no publi c record s, and no one w ho ' new Charlem aSjn (' as a hoy w as strll alive. Onl y a few years had passed, but already part oj the great n12I1l 's his tory w as los t. Unue l such CIrcumstanc es, even the me mo ry of ex traor­ dinary eve nts could fad e qurc klv Tlus w orried Einbard, fo r he bel ieved that his generation hitd w itnessed one of histo ry 'S turning po mts-i- th e em erge nce of Europe as a world powe r.

Although Emhard and hrs comemporanos had a very limited know ledge of history, the past was a pote nt force in their lives. No empero rs had reigned in the w estern half of the Roman Enl plre afte r the deposuion of Rom ulus Augus tulus in 476, but on Christ mas Day 800, the peo­ ple of Rome had ended a 324-year-long interregnum by reviving the imperial title and bestow­ ing It on Charlemagne. Charlemagne bore litt le resemb lance to Rom e's previous emp erors, and

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his lands w ere not coterminous w ith those of their empire. His domain extended from the Pyre­ nees (the mountains between France and Spain) to the Oder River in eastern Germany and from the North Sea to Naples. Much of the territory that Rome had formerly governed, from Spain in the w est across North Africa to Egypt and Syria in the east, had come under Muslim control. The Balkans, Greece, and Asia Minor w ere ruled from Constantinople, whose emper­ ors' line of succession stretched back to the Roman Caesars.

The Greeks co ined t he w ord Europe (perhaps from an Assyrian term mean ing w est), but they knew little about the region to wh ich it refer red. Much of the land that lay to the north and w est of Greece w as of peripheral importance to the civilized w orld even after the Romans added Gaul, Britain , and part of German y to their empire . This changed fo llowing the w est ern empire 's collapse. Rome's former northwestern provinces began to expand, coalesce, and devel op a sense of identity. Their emerging self-awareness is reflected in the title that one of Einhard 's colleagues , A lcuin (c. 737-804). bestowed on Charlemagne : Europae p ater ("father of Europe").

Charlemagne believed that the great continental state he had created entitled him to the prestige that the imperia l title conferred . His coronation was also meant to put the w orld on not ice that Europe w as emerging from the decl ine into w hich it had slipped in the fifth century and w as asserting its claim to the civilizat ion that w as Rome 's legacy. Charle­ magne's subjects we re cult urally inferior to the ancient empire's other heirs, the Byzantines and Muslims, but histo ry more than vindicated Charlemagne 's confidence in his people 's fu­ ture. Rightly or w rongly, Europeans w ould one day regard themsel ves as the sole guardians of West ern civilizat ion .

W hen the Roman Empire broke up, w hat had been a politically unified territory with a ve­ neer of common cult ure split into regions with ever more diverging identities . As dist inctions between east and w est- and north and south-increased, shared traditions dimin ished, and memories of com mon origins faded. Initially, the inhabitants of the lands along the eastern and southern shores of the Med iterranean, the Byzantines and Muslims, did the best job of pre­ serving and building on the foundat ions laid by the ancient w orld. But by the end of the Middle Ages, the peoples who lived north and west of the Mediterranean had taken the lead (thanks in no small me asure to help they had received from their eastern and southern neighbors) and w ere poised to spread the West' s civilization around the globe. Mu ch of the modern w orld, there fo re, has experienced Wes tern civilization in a form mediated by Europe. Because Eu­ rope's physical and cultural environments w ere different from those of the ancient Med iter­ ranean region, Europeans had both cont inued and diverged from the legacies of the ancient world to create a version of its Western civilization appropriate to their conte xt.

The Merovingian Kingdom: Europe's Nucleus

When the Franks, for whom France is named, first appeared in history, they were a gaggle of German tribes inhabiting the eastern bank of the lower reaches of the Rhine River. Em­ peror Constantine's father, Constantius I, settled some of them (the Salian, or "Salt­ water," Franks) in the Netherlands to create a buffer between the empire and wilder folk to the north. Some of the Franks who remained in the Rhineland (the Ripuarian, or "River;' Franks) also entered Rome's service. In 406, after Honorius (r. 395-423) recalled Rome's le­ gions to Italy to fight the Visigoths, the Franks tried to hold the Rhine frontier for the em­ pire. Franks were part of the army with which the Roman general Aetius blocked the Huns' advance into Gaul in 451. Thirty years later, a Frankish chief named Clovis united his peo­ ple and founded a dynasty that turned Roman Gaul into medieval Francia.

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Clovis and the Franks Clovis (c. 466-511) was about 10 years old when the last western Roman emperor was deposed, and he was still in his teens when he succeeded his father as one of many Frankish tribal chiefs. His people lived near Tournai in Austrasia ("Eastern Lands"), a region between the Rhine and Somme rivers. Clovis's early campaigns extended his power south beyond Paris to the Loire Valley. The Franks called this territory Neustria ("New Lands"). Clovis pushed the Visigoths south to the Garonne River, elimi­ nated rival Frankish chiefs, brought much of Germany under ills control, and married to form an alliance with the Burgundians, whose kingdom lay on his southeastern border.

Two decades after Clovis's death in 511, the Byzantine Emperor Justinian still dreamed of regaining control of what had been the western Roman Empire . He succeeded in tem­ porarily occupying Italy, but by then, much of western Europe was firmly established on the road to independence. This was thanks in large part to Clovis, who did more than con­ quer territory. He helped unify a world that had been culturally fragmented by the events that brought down the western empire. Germans, such as Clovis's Pranks, constituted a small minority of the population of the new lands their kings aspired to rule. Most of Gaul's residents were Romanized Celts, Catholic Christian descendants of the subjects of the old empire . Religion was especially important to them , for their leaders were their bishops. The clergy had inherited responsibility for Rome's civitates (the city-states that composed the old empire) when the empire's secular government crumbled. Clovis's Gaul was a loose as­ sociation of regions headed by Catholic bishops from powerful aristocratic families, and German kings, like Clovis, had to come to terms with these native magnates.

This could be difficult for several reasons. Some Germans, Clovis and the Franks among them, were pagans who worshiped ancient tribal gods. Others, such as the Visigoths and Burgundians with whom the Franks competed for control of Gaul, were heretics-Arian Christians. The Catholic clergy despised the Arian faith as a perversion of their religion, but they viewed pagans more positively as candidates for conversion. Clovis, therefore , had a slight advantage in negotiations. Like Constantine a century and a half earlier, he under­ stood the political advantages of conversion , and like Constantine, he justified abandoning his ancestral gods by claiming that the Christian God gave him victory in a crucial battle. The church , which welcomed him as its defender and patron, had much to offer him. It sup­ ported him in his wars with the Arian kings and helped him create a more effectivemonar­ chy by utilizing what was left of the imperial tax and administrative systems.

Many of the German tribes remained aloof from the peoples whose lands they oc­ cupied, but not the Franks . The conversion of the Franks made it possible for them to intermarry with the Romano-Celts and join them in developing a common culture. This required compromises on both sides. The Christian religion and Roman practice altered some German traditions-particularly those governing marriage, the status of women, inheritance, and property rights. Frankish customary law influenced courts and enforcement of justice-the prosecution and punishment of crime becoming a pri ­ vate matter rather than the duty of the state. Government's function was primarily to restrain the vendettas that threatened to break out among quarreling families . Accused persons could clear their names by undergoing physical ordeals or by compurgation (that is, finding a number of individuals who would swear to their innocence) . The guilty could avoid physical punishment by paying wergeld ("man money"), monetary

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VISIGOTHS

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ATLANTIC OCEAN

The Franks' Neighbors The Franks were not the only Germans to try to build new states amid the ruins of Rome's western empire. Other groups made promising starts, but like the Franks, they suffered reversals. The political contours of a new Europe were slow to emerge.

Italy and the Lombards While Clovis was building a Frankish domain in Gaul, the Ostrogoths, under the leadership of their king Theodoric (r. 489-526), were taking control of Italy. Theodoric restored political stability to Italy,protected its Roman inhabitants, and safeguarded its classical culture. After his death , the Byzantine emperor, Justinian (r. 527-565), invaded Italy, and the peninsula was devastated by a war that dragged on to

didates had to offer them gifts in exchange for their support. The last significant Merovin­ gian monarchs were Chlotar II (d. 629) and his son Dagobert (d. 638). After them , the throne passed to youths and weaklings whose fortunes steadily diminished until the last Merovingian kings were reduced to living modestly on a small farm outside of Paris.

about 570 to 613, civil war raged between the two original Merovingian courts, Austra ­ sia and Neustria. The survivor of the conflict laid claim to all of Francia, but by then the power base of the Merovingian kings was seriousl y eroded.

The Franks viewed their kings less as administrators of territorial states than as tribal leaders. Their king was a warlord who was supposed to settle disputes among his followers and lead them on profitable raids. A Frank expected his loyalty to his king to be rewarded by a steady stream of gifts. This custom had developed when the Franks were bands of semi-nomadic warriors who made their livings by dividing up the cattle and movable goods they captured from their neighbors. But once they settled down and land became the source of their wealth, their kings had difficulty meeting their expec­ tations . A king who acquired new lands through conquest was able to enrich himself and reward his men . But when conquests ceased , kings sometimes had to give away their own lands to maintain the support of their followers. Over time, important nobles greatly enriched themselves at the expense of the royal family, and the balance of power shifted to them and away from their impoverished monarch.

A proliferation of heirs also helped to weaken the Merovingians and encourage their tendency to fight among themselves. Royal marriages were fluid, and the distinction be­ tween a wife and a concubine vague. Kings often had children by many women , and be­ cause there was no tradition of primogeniture ("first born") mandating that the whole kingdom pass to a king's eldest son , every male with a bit of Merovingian blood could claim a share of the royal estate. This played into the hands of the Frankish nobles, for rival can­

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compensation. Amounts were determined by the nature of the injury and the status of the person who had been harmed . As more formal governmental procedures evolved under Roman influence, the German laws, which had been preserved as an oral tradi­ tion, were translated into Latin and written down . Latin survived as the language of scholarship and formal documents, but the "street" Latin spoken by the majority of Gaul's residents was gradually transformed into the Romance ("Roman") dialects that are the ancestors of modern French. As the Frankish and Romano-Celtic peoples fused, Gaul's cultivated, literate nobility disappeared, and the new aristocracy that emerged at the top of society adopted the lifestyle of the German warrior elite. In short, the features of a new medieval civilization began to appear in western Europe.

The Merovingian Succession Clovis's kingdom was a collection of separate re­ gions that he kept together by force. He did not think of his domain as a state, a politi­ cal entity to be handed down intact from generation to generation. He understood it to be a private estate-the property of his family, the Merovingians (descendants of a qua si-mythical Merovech ). This had ma jor consequences for the future of Francia. Ger­ man tradition dictated that private property be divided among all a man's heirs. Con­ sequently, the Frankish kingdom was repeatedly divided and recombined-giving each generation of Merovingian princes an excuse to fight among themselves and fatally weaken the ir dynasty (see Map 8-1).

Clovis divided his kingdom among four sons . Fortunately, they were more inter­ ested in war s of conquest than in fighting among themselves . One of the boys outlived the others and briefly reunited the realm, but he divided it again for his heirs. From Map 8-1 Western Europe in the Merovingian Era Clovis and his descendants assembled what

might have become the core territory for a continental state. a united Europe. But they failed to overcome centers of regional power and develop a stable monarchy.

Question: Did geography work for or aga inst Francia's development into the country

of France?

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552. The Ostro goths ultimatel y yielded and left Italy to join the Visigoths in Gaul and Spain (see Chapter 7).

In 568 the exhausted Byzantines fell back as another wave of German invaders, the Lombards, descended on Italy. Alboin, their king , establ ished his seat at Pavia (south of Milan ) in what came to be known as Lombardy. The Lombard kingdom was weak, and it failed to impose its authority throughout Italy. Lombard chiefs carved out indepen­ dent duchies, and the Byzantines hung on to Ravenna and a few outposts in southern Italy. The peninsula was divided up among small states that preyed on one another and kept the region in turmo il.

Spain: The Visigoths and the Muslims After sacking Rome in 410, the Visi­ goth s settled in southern France and began to spread into Spain . Fighting among fac­ tions kept them weak, and in 507 Clovis and the Franks seized much of the land they had occupied in Gaul. Their hold on Spain was not much more secure. The Visigothic nobles elected their kings, and their preference was often for a weak candidate who posed no threat to their independence. The Visigoths' Arian religion was also a problem, for it drove a wedge between them and the ir Catholic subjects. The Visigoths finally converted to Catholici sm in 589, but the continuing reluctance of the Visigoths to m arry native Spaniards kept Spain's two peoples divided. The Visigoths spent much of their time fight­ ing among themselves, and in 711 a group of rebels asked Tarik, the Muslim governor of North Africa, to help them overthrow their king. The army that Tarik landed at "Tarik's Mountain" ( Jebel el-Tarik, or Gibraltar) chose instead to conquer Spain. Spain's Chris­ tians lost everything but the tiny state of Asturias in the northwest corner of the Iberian Peninsula. Spain became, and was for a long time to remain, a Muslim country.

In 720 the Muslims crossed the Pyrenees bent on the conquest of Francia. By then the authority of the impoverished Merovingian kings had all but disappeared, and the Frank s found a new leader in Charles Martel, the head of a powerful noble family. In 732 he halted the Mu slim advance near the city of Tours . The Muslims retreated but re­ tained control of a strip of France's Medit erranean coast until about 750. In that year the Abbasids overthrew the Uma yyad caliph . He and most of the members of his fam­ ily were slaughtered, but one Umayyad pr ince escaped and fled to Spain. He waged a bloody struggle th at culminated in Spain's repudiation of the Abbasids and the estab ­ lishment of a rival caliphate with its seat at Cordoba.

England The Franks and Goths who founded kingdoms in Gaul and Spain got their starts as foederati (allies) of Rome's empire . They were influenced by Roman culture , and they tried to save some of the empire 's institutions. The situation in the Roman province of Britain was different. The cities the Romans founded in Britain failed to flourish , but the rural villas they scattered about the countryside thrived. During the fifth century, when the migrations of the Germans disrupted production on the continent, demand for British goods soared and Britain's economy prospered. The island's Romano-Celts, the Britons, were understandably dismayed when, about 406, Rome withdrew its troops and told the people of Britain that they would have to defend themselves. Their situation was precari­ ous. They faced raids from Ireland and Scotland , and the wall that the emperor Hadrian had built across northern England was useless without an army to back it up.

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Local strongmen emerged to fill the political vacuum left by Rome's departure, and some of them raised armies by recruiting German mercenaries from the tribes of Anglesand Saxonswho roamed the continent's North Seacoast. These soldiers-for-hire turned on their employers, and by 450 the homeland of the Britons was becoming Angleland (England).

The Anglo-Saxons, in contrast to other Germans, had been little exposed to Rome 's civilizing influence, and the Britons gave them no help . The Germans who established the new kingdoms on the continent came from tribes that had a history of involvem ent with Rome, and when they settled in their new territories, they had the advantage of mixing with Rome 's former subjects. But as the Anglo-Saxons moved into Britain, the native Britons either fled or were exterminated. So many emigrated to northwestern Gaul that the area came to be called Brittany. Others mo ved to Ireland and Spain . Few stayed behind to try to convert the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity or instru ct them in the arts of civilization. This period in England's history is largely undocumented, but the memory of at least one battle in which Britons triumphed over Anglo-Saxons survived into the twelfth century. It inspired a cycle of romantic tales about a King Arthur and a legendary land of Camelot. Scholars have proposed various Latin and Celtic roots for

the name Arthur, but Camelot's king is a creature of mythology.

Ireland As civilization declined in Britain, it began to flourish in Ireland, a land that had never been part of the Roman Empire or had much contact with its civilization. Ire­ land was divided into clan territories headed by petty kings. It had no cities and no lit­ erate culture until a ch ance event set in motion a chain of events that fundamentally

altered its way of life. In the fourth century Irish raiders sacked the coast of Britain and abducted a youth

named Patrick, the son of a Roman official. Patrick spent six years as a slavein Ireland before

escaping to the continent. For two decades, he studied in various monasteries, and about 432 he was consecrated a bishop and sent back to Ireland. He was phenomenally successful at converting the Irish to Chris­ tianity, and the new faith promoted the spread of monasticism and literacy.

Because Ireland was, for some time, cut off from the rest of the Christian world, it evolved some unique religious customs . Ireland did not have cities like those that provided seats for bishops in former

The Book of Kells This page from an illumi­ nated (decorated) text of the gospels was probably created about 750 at lana . an Irish monastery on the western coast of Scotland. It lavishly ornaments the Greek letters that begin a verse from the f irst chapter of the Gospel of Matthew. Celtic and Germanic arts featured complex designs that util ized abstract geomet ­ rical forms.

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P E 0 P LEI NCO N T EXT Brunhild (d. 613) and Fredegund (d. 597): Powers Behind the Throne

1. n 567 Sigibert, king ofAustrasia, made a prestigious marriage that threatened the balance .I of power in Francia . He wed Brunhild , daughter ofthe Visigothic king of Spain . Th is gave him a major ally in his competitons wit h his brother, Chilperic , king of Neustria . But Chilperic quickly checked Sigibert 's move by winning the hand of Brunhild's sister , Gal­ swinth . For some unkno wn reason , Ch ilperic then turned against his bride , murd ered her, and returned to a former wife, Fredegund (d. 597), a wo ma n of humble origin with whom

he was apparently infatuated . Merovingian princes often wed commoners to avoid the troublesome entanglements

associated with aristocratic marriages, but a match wit h Fredegund did not make life any easier for Chilperic . She became a power at his court and cleared the way to the throne for her children by eliminating his sons by other women. The only one of her boys to outlive Ch ilperic was an infa nt named Chlotar II . Although his paternity was questioned, Fredegund successfull y defended his claim to the throne and served as regent during his minor ity.

War erupted between Austrasia and Neustria after Galswinth 's murder, but no contem­ porary source claims that it was caused by Brunhild 's desire for vengeance . Dynastic ambi ­ tions may be enough to explain the bloody conflict that raged between her and Fredegund and Chilperic. In 575 Fredegund engineered the assassination of Brunhild's husband, Sigibert . Ch ildebert II , Brunhild 's young son by Sigibert, retained control of Austrasia with the help of an uncle , but Brunhild fell into Chilperic's hands . She tried to recoup her for­ tunes by marrying Merovech , one ofChilperic's sons who was attempting to unseat his fa­ ther. When their coup failed, Merovech committed suic ide , and Brunhild escaped to her son 's court. Two of Fredegun d 's agents, both clergymen , then tried but failed to assassinate

Brunhild and Childebert. Although one of the Merovin­

gian queens was a foreigner and the other a commoner, both wielded great power. The sources depict them as scheming behind the scenes , but both were highly visible figures . Fredegund 's assassination of Sigibert reversed the course of a wa r, and the queen dominated her husband 's successor until her death in 587. Brunhild received flattering letters from Pope Gregory the Great (r . 590-604), who assumed that she had the po wer to reform the Merovingian church , and her hus­ band and her son were both ac­

Gold Fibula Th is pin for a cloak was cast for a wealthy Merovingian who liv ed in the seventh century. cused of be ing under her thumb.

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Brunh ild manipulated the feuds that d ivided Franc ia's aristocratic families , and by 585 she and her son Childebert were firmly in control of Austrasia and busil y eliminat­ ing their opponents. In 584 Brunhild avenged Fredegund's assassination of Sigibert (Brunhild's husband) by murdering Fredegund's husband , Ch ilperic I. By 589 Brunhild and Ch ildebert had become the dominant powers in Francia, and the death of an uncle in 592 allowed Childebert to add Burgund y to his possessions .Childebert died four years later, and Brunhild ruled as regent for his sons , Theudebert II and Theuderic II.

When Theudebert reached his majority (c . 600), a coalition of Austrasian nobles forced Brunhild to flee to Burgundy, Theuderic's territory. She then announced that Theudebert was the bastard child of a palace gardener and that Theuderic was the legit­ imate heir to Austrasia. Her influence over her grandson increased as she encouraged his sexual affairs and dissuaded him from a marriage that would have raised up a rival queen . Reform-minded clergy were scandalized , and declared Theuderic's offspring ille­ gitimate . Brunhild then had the kingdom 's bishops denounce the reformers .

In 612 Brunhild finally persuaded Theuderic to attack Austras ia. Theuderic killed Theudebert and his son, and he was on the verge of inva d ing Neustria to unseat Frede­ gund's son Chlotar II when he died of dysentery. Brunhild prevented the division of Theuderic's estate among his sons, and arranged for the eldest, her great-grandson Si­ gibert II , to inherit a unified kingdom . At that juncture, a block of aristocrats defected to Neustria and helped Chlotar II capture Brunhild and Sigibert. Chlotar claimed that Brunhild had been respons ible for the deaths of ten kings, and he condemned the eld­ erly woman to be torn apart by wild horses .

Question: What do the careers of Brunhild and Fredegund suggest about the roles that other less well-documented aristocratic women may have played in medieval politics?

._------_._._- -- - -- . ..... Roman territory. Its church was organized around monasteries established in the territories

of the Irish clans. The abbots who presided over these houses were more important leaders

of Ireland's church than its bishops.

Christianity brought literacy to the Irish, and Iri sh monks became renowned for

their superior scholarship at a time when learning was declining on the continent. Irish monasticism also placed a great deal of emphasis on ascetic self-denial. Some monks embraced self-exile as an ascetic discipline. Some became missionaries to En­

gland and the continent. They helped to convert the Anglo-Saxons. They planted monastic outposts as far afield as Gaul and Italy, and one of them even tried to reform

the morally lax court of the Merovingian queen Brunhild.

The Carolingian Era

In 751 the last of the Merovingians was deposed, and the Franks transferred their alle­

giance to the family of the Carolingians, whose most famous king was Charlemagne (a contraction of the French for "Charles the Great").

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A Transition of Dynasties The Carolingian family was formed by the intermar­ riage of the heirs of the two most powerful men at the Austrasian court of the Merovingian king Dagobert (d. 638). The Carolingians controlled th e office of "m ayor of the palace;' a kind of prime min istry, and were more powerful than the rulers they theoretically served. In 679 Pepin of Heristal, the Carolingian mayor of Austrasia, extended his authority over Neustr ia and united both Frankish homelands under a Merovingian puppet king. When he died in 714, his illegitimate son, Charles Martel, dispossessed his half-brothers, who were min ors, and assumed control of th e family's enterpri ses. It was Martel (c. 688-741) who repulsed the Muslim invasion of Francia in 732. Further militar y successes won him the submission of Aquitaine and Burgund y, and new lands in Germany.

Some of Martel 's contem porar ies called him rex (" king" ), but this was only a cour­ tesy or flatter y. It was Martel's son and heir, Pepin III, "the Short" (r, 74 1-768), who for­ mally elevated the Caro lingian family to royal statu s. He might simpl y h ave appro priated the Mero vingians' title , but that would have diminished its worth. Titles are only significant when people believe that the y are legitimate, and it was hard for Pepin to challenge the Merovingians' legitimacy. Because the Franks had no memory of a time when the y had not been ruled by Merovingian s, the Merovingians' right to the throne appeared to be part of the divine order of creation.

Given that the Franks had embraced Christianity and no longer worshiped the gods who had reigned at the start of the Merovingian era, Pepin reasoned that the y would accept a change of dynasties if it were app roved by th e Christian God . The difficult y, of course, lay in finding som eone who could speak for God . The bishop of Rome claimed that right, and it was in Pepin 's interest to support his claim .

The Christian community had never acknowledged a suprem e leader. The emperor dominated the church in Constantinople , and the groups of Chri stians that were scat­ tered and cut off insid e the Muslim emp ire attended to their own affairs. The church in western Europe was far from un ified, but one of its bishops could m ake a case for prece ­ den ce over the others. The bishop of Rome (the pope ) headed the onl y diocese in the region that had been founded by on e of Jesus' apostle s, and its founder, Peter, was a very special apostle. Jesus (in the sixteenth chapter of Matthew's Gospel) h ad granted him the "power of the keys." Jesus had 'said that whatever Peter "loosed" or "boun d" on Earth would be "loosed" or "bound " in heaven. Catholic dogma holds that this authority passed to Peter 's successors in Rome-giving them the right to speak and act for God. A wide gap existed , ho wever, between the powers the early medieval popes claimed and the po wers the y actuall y exercised.

The chur ch came of age as one of the institutions of the Roman Empire, and its leaders clung to the empire as long as they could. After the line of western emperors ceased in 476, the bishops of Rome looked to the eastern emperors for protection . But this was not a sat­ isfactory arrangement. Byzantine emperors and popes quarreled over doctrine , and the mil­ itary assistance that Constantinople could offer Rome steadily dimini shed as the Lombards moved into Italy. Rome's Senate is not recorded as meeting after 579, and as the city's secu­ lar government faded away, responsibility for defending and admini stering Rome fell to its bishop. During the seventh century, som e popes had courted Frankish rulers in hopes of winning their help, but the Franks were reluctant to be drawn into a war with the Lombards.

The Emergence of Europe 219

In 751 the Lombards conquered Ravenna , Constantinople's major base in Italy, and the danger the y posed to Rome increased. Pope Zacharias (r, 74 1- 752) m ade a desper­ ate appe al to Pepin for help . Pepin was willing to negotiate, for the pope now had some­ thing of value to offer a Frankish leader. Zacharias endorsed Pepin 's argument that the man who had the responsibility of king ought also to have the title, and he urged the Franks to elevate Pepin to their throne accord ing "to their custom." Pepin, su pp orted by the clergy, deposed the last Merovingian king and confined him to a monastery. Pepin was then crowned in a ceremony that included a new ritual-an anointing, a spiritual consecration . This added dignity and awe to the new dynasty, but it raised troubling quest ions. Did it give kings clerical status and authority over the church? Or did it im­ ply that the church, because it cons ecrated kings, also had the right to depose them? A serious struggle between church and state was to break out in the distant future, but in Pepin's day kings were so much stronger than popes that the possibility of a conflict be­ tween secular and spiritual authorities may not even have occurred to them.

Pepin 's sons were both married to Lombard princesses, and his reluctance to offend his Italian allies delayed repayment of his debt to the papac y. In 754 a desperate Pope Stephen II (r. 752-757) came to Paris to plead with Pepin in person-and to reconse­ crate him as king . Pepin finally took his army to Italy, dro ve the Lombards back from Rome , and ceded the land s that he liberated to the pope. This "D on at ion of Pepin" con­ firmed the existence of a papal kingdom (the Papal States) . The pop e had conferred spiritual status on Pepin , and Pepin had reciprocated by shoring up the pope's secular power. The pope doubtless needed a base of his own so that he could resist domination by lay lords and kings, but the papacy's temporal interests inevitably conflicted with its spiritual role-at considerable cost to both church and state.

Charlemagne Builds an Empire When Pepin died in 768, his throne was well established. However, his decision to divide his kingdom between his two sons, Car­ loman (r, 768-771).·and Charles (Ch arlemagne, r. 768- 8 14), cast doubt on its future. Carlornan's premature death in 771 pre vented the outbreak of civil war, for Charle­ magne quickl y deprived Carlornan's young sons of their inheritance and reunited the Frankish kingdom. He then set about building an empire.

Charlemagne's first acquisition was the Lombard kingdom in northern Italy. Its ruler, Desiderius, was Charlemagne's father-in-law, but that did not prevent Charlemagne from responding to another appeal from the papacy (in 774) for help against the Lombards. He defeated Desiderius, imprisoned him, and appropriated the Lombard crown. This remo ved one threat from the papacy, but posed another. With much of France, Germ any, and Italy under the control of the Frankish king, the pope had little latitude for independent action.

The papacy's concern for its independence may account for the appearance in the eighth century of a forged do cument called the "Donation of Constantine." In fairness, the forging of documents was not the crime then that it is today. The decline of literacy meant that man y people lacked documents confirming rights to which they were entitled . Often the forger's motive was to create records that should have existed but did not. The popes believed that , as the only officials of the Roman Empire left in western Europe, they took precedence over the new German monarchs. The Donation of Constantine made

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Map 8-2 Growth of the Carolingian Empire By spreading their civilization and government across much of Europe, the Romans created a trad ition of European unity that was never forgotten . It inspired repeated efforts to reun ite the peoples of Europe under a single political authority.

Question: Does geography work for or against the formation of a continental European state?

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thority. The most obvious authority was the surviving Roman emperor who ruled in Constantinople, and in 780 Charlemagne began to negotiate with the Byzantine Em­ pire for recognition as the eastern ruler's western colleague.

To bolster his claim to the imperial title, Charlemagne embarked on a program that would make him look as imperial as possible . German kings tended not to have fixed, per­ manent seats for their governments. They found it easier to feed their court by moving it from one royal estate or monastery to another than by shipping food from distant farms to a central location. Poor communications also meant that the king had to travel to stay in touch with his subjects . The lifestyle of Roman and Byzantine emperors was different.

their case by appealing to a popular, but groundless, legend that claimed that Pope Sylvester I (r. 314- 335) had cured the emperor Constantine of leprosy. The grateful em­ peror had supposedly repaid the pope by ceding the empire to the church, but the pope had graciously decided to allow Constantine to continue to rule the eastern half. The me­ dieval popes did not claim, on the basis of this story, to be emperors. As early as the fifth century, Pope Gelasius I (d. 496) had declared the church and state to be separate and equal partners. He said that kings, like popes, were established by God. The former was given a secular, and the latter a spiritual, "sword."Ideally,each was to assist the other without trans­ gressing on his colleague's turf. In practice, however, popes had a difficult time preventing royal encroachments on the church, and the Donation of Constantine was an attempt to intimidate kings by implying that popes were the final arbiters of the legitimacy of the West's monarchs .

The Donation ofConstantine complicated disputes between popes and kings until it was proved to be a forgery in the fifteenth century. Charlemagne was far too powerful to worry about its implications for church -state relations, and he may actually have found it useful in improving his position. His father, Pepin, wanted to become a king, and Charlemagne sought recognition as an emperor. The church helped both men reach their objectives.

If any German leader deserved recognition as an emperor, it was Charl emagne, for he came to control most of western Europe. Following his victory over the Lornbards, he turned his attention to Muslim Spain . Spain seemed vulnerable, for the Muslims were fighting among themselves. But as soon as the Franks appeared, the Muslims closed ranks and forced Charlemagne to withdraw. As his army retreated over the Pyre­ nees, the native Basques attacked its rearguard . This was an inconsequential event that did not alter history, but for some reason it captured the popular imagination. Stories began to be told about a Roland, an alleged duke of Brittany and favorite of Charle­ magne's, who died in the encounter. In the late eleventh century these inspired the first major piece of French literature, an epic poem entitled The Song of Roland.

. Although Charlemagne's first Spanish campaign failed, he continued to probe Muslim territory, and by 801 he had taken Barcelona and created the Spanish march (a frontier mil­ itary district). The march provided Christians with a base south of the Pyrenees from which they launched crusades in the eleventh century to reconquer Spain (see Map 8-2).

Most of Charlemagne's wars were aimed at winning German territory. From 772 to 804 he waged annual campaigns in Saxony (the region south of the Danish peninsula). Mass executions and deportations were needed to pacify Saxony, which became one of Germany's stronger duchies. In 787 Charlemagne put down a rebellion in Bavaria, and a subsequent campaign culminated in the founding of the East March (Ostrnark, or Aus­ tria). Next, he drove down the Danube Valley into the territory of the Avars, invaders from the Russian steppes who had grown wealthy extorting tribute from Constantinople and the Balkans. In 796 the Franks secured Germany's eastern border by defeating and dis­ persing the Avars, and Charlemagne returned home with massive amounts of treasure.

Charlemagne wanted the imperial title as a recognition of his achievement in unit­ ing much of western Europe, but its quest confronted him with the same problem his father Pepin had faced. If the title was to be more than a presumptuous affectation, he could not simpl y assume it. His right to it had to be confirmed by an appropriate au­

222 Chapter 8

Charlemagne's Chapel at Aachen The palace complex at Aachen was laid out as a rectangle covering an area of about 50 acres. Charlemagne's palace occupied one side of the rectangle, and the church the other. A long covered gallery connected the two . The church was rebu ilt and added on to by later generations, but the center portion remains much as Charlemagne knew it .

They resided in capital cities ornamented with monuments testifying to their power. Charlemagne, therefore, decided to construct a grand palace complex as a permanent seat for his court. The site he chose revealed, however, that his capital was to be more a symbol than a center of government. Charlemagne settled in Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle), an old Roman spa. Its appeal was not its potential as a center for a communications network, but a pool fed by hot springs in which the

king enjoyed swimming. The centerpiece of the new capital was a church in Byzantine style. It was as magnificent as the best European artists could make it. They looted Ravenna, the old capital of the western Roman empire, for architectural elements to use in its construction, but the finished building fell far short of the splendors of Constan­ tinople's Hagia Sophia.

Charlemagne's negotiations with Constantinople dragged on for over 20 years with­ out making much progress. The delay was due in part to political confusion in the eastern empire. In 797 the eastern emperor's mother, Irene, overthrew him and became the first woman to assert a claim of her own to either a Roman or a Byzantine throne. Because there was doubt about the legitimacy of a female emperor, a case could be made that the office was vacant and therefore available for someone else to claim. The situation might have had some influence on Charlemagne's decision to go to Rome in 800 to extricate Pope Leo III (r. 795- 816) from some political difficulties. He stayed on to celebrate Christmas, and atthe holiday mass the pope and the Roman populace hailed him as emperor. Einhard, Charle­ magne's biographer, claims that the pope did this without Charlemagne's prior knowledge and that it infuriated Charlemagne. That seems unlikely. Leo was on shaky ground and could hardly have risked taking such a momentous step without Charlemagne's approval. It is also hard to imagine how he could have carried out a coronation ceremony without Charlemagne's cooperation. The story of Charlemagne's displeasure may have been circu­ lated to smooth things over with Constantinople. It provided diplomatic cover for Charle­ magne by shifting responsibility for the event to the papacy.

The patriarch of Jerusalem acknowledged Charlemagne's status as an international Christian leader of the first rank by sending him the keys to the Church of the Holy Sep­ ulcher, the site of Christ's tomb. Harun aI-Rashid (r, 786-809) , the Abbasid caliph of

The Emergence of Europe 223

Baghdad , addressed him as an equal and sent him a gift befitting an emperor, a war ele­ phant. Constantinople grumbled, but in 813 it accepted the fait accompli in exchange for resolving a dispute over some Balkan territories. A few months after Byzantine am­ bassadors hailed Charlemagne as an emperor (but not explicitly a Roman emperor) in Aachen, he shared his title with his son and heir in a ceremo~y that pointedly excluded the clergy. Charlemagne did not want his coronation to set a precedent for the papacy to claim an exclusive right to crown emperors. However, his successor undid his work by subsequently seeking papal confirmation of the title, and thereafter it was firmly es­ tablished that the imperial title was assumed onl y with a papal blessing .

The Nature of the Carolingian Empire Charlemagne's empire was held to­ gether by personal relationships that were maintained by the judicious use of carrots and sticks. The emperor was a daunting man who could physically intimidate his subordinates or seduce them with gifts, as the situation warranted. Their loyalty was essential to the functioning of his government, for primitive communications prevented Charlemagne from knowing much about what was occurring in his far-flung domain. Because he had to grant his officials a great deal of discretionary authority, he bound them to him with oaths and personal obligations. He filled most key offices with Austrasian nobles whose families had ties with his. He required all his male subjects over the age of 12 to swear per­ sonal oaths of loyalty to him, and he persuaded his leading men to take oaths of vassalage. His father was the first to impose vassalage on the nobility as a sign of their subservience to their king. Vassus (or vassallus) was a Celtic term for a servant or slave, but by the end of the eighth century, it had come to designate a far more exalted status.

The empire had seven marches (militarized frontier districts) and about 300 counties, A duke (dux, "general") or count (comes, "companion") headed each of the territorial di­

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visions of the empire, and he was responsible for allaspects of the government and defense of his district. Left largely on his own, he was, in effect, a mini-king, but there were safe­ guards to prevent him from abusing his power. A man was usually assigned to a region where he did not have influential relatives to back him up, and he was moved from time to time to prevent him from building a power base that he might use against his emperor. Charlemagne frequently summoned his officials to court to remind them of their depen­ dent status, and an annual mustering of the army at the beginning of the campaigning sea­ son (the Mayfield) gave him another chance to reinforce ties with them. He circulated open letters called capitularies to establish guidelines for good government, but it was dif­ ficult for him to know if his orders were followed. About 779 he began to send out teams of auditors (missi dominici, "emissaries of the lord") to check up on his governors and hear complaints against them, but it is doubtful that this did much to stem corruption or halt abuse of power. Most of Charlemagne's subjects thought of their emperor as a remote figure who had little to do with their lives. Their fates were decided locally.

The Division of the Empire Charlemagne's empire was held together by the vig­ ilance and energy of its leader, and as age sapped his strength, it too declined. The em­ peror had a bevy of wives, concubines, and children. He avoided some dynastic complications by refusing to allow his daughters to marry, but he planned to divide his realm among his sons. The civil war that this invited was avoided when he outlived all

224 Chapt er 8

but one o f them . Unfor tu nately, the survivor , Lou is the Pious (1'. 814-840 ), m ay have bee n the heir least su ited to be an em peror.

Louis was a well-educated ma n who, had he not been destined for a th ron e, probab ly would have chosen a life in the church. In childho od he had been dispatched to the French region of Aquitaine to serve as its titular king. Raised there under the tute lage of a mo nk, he became a sober ma n who was app alled by the mor al laxity of his fathe r's cou rt. One of his first acts upo n becomin g emperor was to purge the cour t of everyone (including his sisters) whose cond uct was no t up to his strict standards. He believed that the church was also in need of reform , but he was overly deferential to his clerical advisors. Whe n his vassals real­ ized that their lord was as weak-willed as he was pious, they began to take liberties. His own sons ultimately tu rn ed on him and o n on e anot her. After Louis died in 840, his three sur­ viving sons fought for ano ther three years before agreeing to a settlement of their father's estate. In 843 the Treaty of Vel'd un, which ended the ir war, foreshadow ed the emergence of Europe's major nations . The youngest of Louis's sons, Charles the Bald, becam e king of western Francia. His brother, Louis th e Germ an , got th e empi re's eastern territ o ries, and the oldest of the thr ee prin ces, Lothair, claimed the impe rial title and a long, narr ow kingdo m that ran between his brothers' realms from the Nort h Sea down the Rhineland to Italy. Th e new kingdo ms rep resented regions that were already evolving separate ethnic cultures. Ev­ idence for this is preserved in a chronicle th at describes a meeting between Louis and Charles at Strasbo urg in 842. Each swo re an oath in a tongue that the other's followers could understand, and the text of Louis's oath is the earliest specimen of a Roma nce language.

Lothair's kingdom was divided among his heirs and eventually disappear ed. The rulers of Fran cia and Ger many appropriated part s of it. (France and German y were still qua rrel­ ing over Lorraine-Lotharingia-as late as the mid-twen tieth cent ur y.) No new royal dy­

nasty app eared in Italy, and th e imp erial title itself was allowed to lapse in 924. By th en it meant little.

Invasions and Fragmentation The western Rom an Em pi re had fallen to the mig rat ions of Cha rlemagne's Ger ­ m an ances tors, and now a similar fate was to befall hi s em pi re. Sign s of what was to come appea red during th e closing years of his reign .

In the secon d half of th e eighth cen­ tur y,Viking fleets began to sally forth from

A Viking Ship Viking chief s wer e som etim es bu ried in their ship s, and well-preserv ed specim ens have been excavated and preserved in Norw ay's mus eum s. This vessel dates to about 820. Frits Sol vang !CJ Darling Kind ersley, Courte sy of the Univ ersitet ets kutturh lstor lske mu seerN ikingskipshuset.

The Emergence of Europe 225

Scandi navia, d riven by overpopul ation or by oppo rtunities fo r pillage. Th ese No rseme n (Nor thm en, or No rmans) had develop ed th e best seafaring technology of their day.Viking ships could handle the high seas, but their shallow drafts also enabled the m to navigate Eu­ rope's many rivers and strik e deep inland .

Wh ile the Vikings attacked from the no rth , the Muslims renewed th eir assault from the so uth. In 800 the Abbasid calipha te ceded Algeria to the Aghlabids, a dynasty of local prin ces. Th e Aghlabids ended a lon g fight between Berber and Arab Muslims in No rth Africa by divertin g th eir qu arr eling subjects to Chris tian targets. In 827 th ey began the co nquest of Sicily, which was still Byzant ine territory. From Sicily the y raided Euro pe's Mediter ranea n coasts . Th ey assaulted Rom e in 846, and in 888 they established bases in th e south of France from which th ey attacked tr aders who used th e Alpine passes.

By th en, a third thre at to the Carolingian kingdo ms had appea red on Germ any's east­ ern fron tier. The Magyars m igrated westward from the Russian steppes 'and began to push up the Danube Valley into the heart of Europe (see Map 8-3 ).

T he Caroli ngian sta tes were poorly equi pped to coun ter sim ulta ne o us attac ks o n mu lti ple fronts, for they had little in frastructure to su ppor t centralized governme nt. Some paved roa ds existed in tho se part s of Euro pe th at had on ce belon ged to Rom e, but neither information nor tro op s could tr avel qu ickly. A kin g could not respond rap idly eno ugh to fen d off raids to his realm th at m ight com e from any direction o r h it differ­ ent places simu ltaneously. It made mor e sense to disper se reso ur ces and co mman d au­ thority, fo r every pa rt of a kingdom needed a strong leader who was perm an en tly in residen ce and p repa red to defend it. Kings did not disappear, but power sh ifted deci­ sively to th eir mi litary vassals. Kings becam e firsts-among-equ als who reigned rathe r th an rul ed . T heir sta tus was superior to th at of their vassals, but thei r primary respo n­ sibility, like th at of an ord inary lord , was to govern and defend th eir ow n estates.

Retrenchment and Reorganization

The medieval era in Western histor y is on e of th e mo st difficult to understand, for it had no cen t ral focus-no city like Athen s or leaders like the Rom an em perors to give st r uc­ ture to its na r rat ive. The radical poli tica l fragme ntatio n of Europe th at followed the in ­ vasions of th e nin th century confro nts stude nts of histo ry with a specia l cha llenge. Scholars rely o n m odel s and gene ralizations to crea te an overview that helps to m ake sense out of the past, but the peop le th ey stud y actually lived in particular sit uatio ns. Th ey were conce rne d with surv ival, not co n formi ng to a th eor y. They did wha tever th ey deemed best to ada pt to th e specific circu ms ta nces they confro nte d. The Eur o pea n co n­ tinent has m any diverse enviro nme nts, and its m edieval inh abit ant s had a rich legacy of trad ition s and custom s to dr aw o n when exploiting them. Co nseq uently, it is difficult for h istorians to say much that is eq ually true of all medi eval peop le- pa r ticularly dur­ ing the years of their mo st extreme political and cultur al fragmen tatio n .

In th e Early Modern Era (pos t-sixteenth centur y), scholars sought explanati ons for the instituti on s and conventions of European society by delving into the medi eval past. Untold numbers oflegal docume nts were preserved in th eir count ries' archives, and many of th ese dealt with right s to a piece of property or revenu e called a feudum or fief. Thi s led to th e

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The Emergence of Europe 227

belief that a coherent "feudal system" had structured the lives of medieval people. But over the years, scholars have defined feudalism in so many different ways and found so many ex­ ceptions to its supposed "system"that the current trend is to dispense with the term entirely.

"0 Medieval societies did, however, have some distinguishing features , and some gen­c: ro

eralizations about them can be useful as points of reference and comparison. Students 1J ro " should always keep in mind, however, that generalizations are only approximations of1::",

. ~ .§ reality. Local and regional studies of medieval peoples will continue to turn up innu­'" .­.r.o. merable variations in the ways they arranged their lives, for people are pragmatists -'" ~ .= when it comes to the struggle for survival. They do what works, not what a theory or

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the pursuit of rational consistency may dictate. o~ '" ro o > " (5 . c: ~ c:.r. Political Model Afeudum or fief was a resource (often land) given to a vassal to sup­rv, ~~ ... "Oro c port him while he served his lord. The minting of coins dwindled drastically following the .,>o.r. ~ ­ c:::> ~ decline of the Roman Empire, and there was little money in circulation. Therefore , rulers 'p-c:.r.'" c

o in early medieval Europe did not collect most of their taxes in coin and pay their officials' '" ­" ro u.r. a: salaries from a publi c treasury. Most financial transactions involved exchanges of consum ­C E ro.- '" .,

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e s: ui able or otherwise desirable items. Because it was too cumbersome to collect all the goods s: '" -",,,'" ec, - c: ~ produced on the state's lands for redistribution to the state's servants, governments parceled :J.S 'c;; .E LJ.J ., out the land itself.A lord paid his vassals by giving them the use of fiefs (usually farmland ~ 8..~ o o..r. ...c: ~ 0- ... equipped with laborers). They did not own the lands that supported them while they served ::> ~ '" ....WO"O ., their lord. They owned only the right to the income from those lands-and that, techni ­S ';. :~ o

","0 III cally, only so long as they rendered the services that their fiefswere meant to fund. ~!£ c

~ "C~'O ., Once a vassal had a fief in his possession, however, it was hard for his lord to re­a3t)! "Olo. ., " claim it. If the vassal had an heir who could perform the tasks for which his fief had been ~c,o ...c: "Oc:", ...

. - 0. ... granted, the easiest thing was to pass it to him. But this risked creating precedents that o '" 0 .r.o~ <Es: c: ::> ., might give the vassal's family a hereditary claim on its fief. To remind an heir of who ","Ow

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A1~o o owned the fief, when he received his inheritance the heir was required to pay his lord c, ~o~

>..> '" 0. "relief" (rele ver, "to pick up again"), a fine that might amount to the first year's income c: - 0 .s:.- co OJ c, from the fief. If there was no competent mature male heir, a compromise between the s:'" '" 0. ~c: Ol

I-ro.r. OIl rights of the lord and the family had to be worked out. The fief's purpose was to sup­o~ ~~ .,

c ... ~ OIl port a soldier. If the heir was a minor, the lord obtained his soldier by making the boy o ::> c: .~ ~~ :'S!

the ward of a man who could provide knight service for him . If the heir was a female > Ol Ol c .2: "C ".,III (either a daughter or widow), the lord could require her to marry a man of his choice. ;.~:: OIl.. ,_ c: c::>., ::> If the family died out, the fief returned to the lord who orig inally granted it. ~ ~ ~ E Cli Because a vassal enjoyed all the income from his fief, it made sense that he (not his (,)00 .s: .i;E- u

lord) bore the costs of providing government services for the people who lived on it. As .5 g .~ ;;j z " c: the individual on the scene, he was also much better situated to do this than a distant lord . III ro ::> ~ ':Q)B Land ownership, therefore, came to entail "jurisdiction" (the right to enforce justice and I- > '" i::ro c: o..,.r.ro to rule ) over those who lived on one's land. There were, however, some restraints on the 'pI - Ol 0000. III ... C:o Cll authority of a fief's owner . In simple, illiterate societies, custom acquires the force oflaw, .. "0 ~ ::s =::c.Il CI and traditions could be quite explicit about the rights and duties of all members of society.

Medieval political and social arrangements had deep roots in the Roman and Ger­ man pasts. Both the Roman patron-client system and the German warrior band, the

226 comitatus, had used oaths of allegiance to structure society, and personal arrangements

228 Chapter 8

of this kind were fund amental to the organizat ion of early med ieval society. Citizenship had no meaning on ce the Roman Empire ceased to provide protection for legal rights. Without a state to rely on, individ uals had to make private arrangements to ensure their sur vival. This usually involved commending on eself to the service of a protector. To com ­ mend oneself was to su rrender some autonomy in exchange for help. Commendation ap­ plied to every rank on the social scale from lord and vassal down to the level of serf (a peasant farmer bound to the land ). These categories of peopl e had different functions in society, but their legal status was the same. None was free, for freedom was not a desirable condition in a chaotic world where power was more important than right. Free persons had failed to find a niche in society. They had no claim on a prote ctor.

Reliance on oath s was a way of organiz ing society by means of contracts. Contracts were promises of mutuall y beneficial exchanges-for example, land for militar y service. The preservation and enforcement of these promises required special arrangements in what was in the early Middle Agesa largely illiterate world . Most of the contracts th at mil­ itar y men and the lord s entered into were probably oral agreements that existed only in the memories of witnes ses. It was important, th erefore , that witnesses understood the pre­ cise meaning of the events they were called on to witne ss. This led to development of rit­ uals and symbolic actions that were widely understood to have specific meanings. Texts describ ing these ceremonies have survived. They often involved a lord enclosing within his hands the hand s of a man doing homage to him. That man would swear an oath of fealty (fidelity) and then be given a clod of earth or som e object to "invest" him with his fief.

In the early med ieval world as in the modern one, birth often determined a person's op­ tions. Children of vassals had the chance to become vassals and those of serfs usually re­ mained serfs. Individuals did, however, personally have to take the oaths their roles required, and there was some social mobility. Noble familiescould lose their wealth and standing, and talented people of humble origins might rise to great heights, particularly if they pursued careers in the church. Not every man born to a knightly family and trained for military ser­ vice receiveda fief. The number of fiefs was limited, and if a fief was divided among all a vas­ sal's sons, the portions soon became too small to support a knight, which defeated the purpose of the fief. This encouraged inheritance rules that passed the fief intact to one son, usually the eldest. His brothers had to find heiresses to marr y or employment as mercenar­ ies.Ther e was a large number of career military men who survived by finding employment with a lord rich enough to maintain them as part of his household. They helped to man the private armies that proliferated as royal government declined. These arm ies provided pro ­ tection, but they were also often disruptive elements in medieval society.

Militari zed local governments took control throughout Europe as Carolinigian rule weakened, bu t they did not assume the sam e form everywhere . What worked in the rich grain -grow ing districts of northern Franc e may not have made as mu ch sense in the dif­ ferent cultural and economic environments of southern France, Germany, or central Europe. In unique region s, such as Switzerland, the terrain may have provided enough protection to m inimize the need for much political and military org aniz ation at all.

Man y places, however, witnessed the rise of a professional military class that en­ joyed significant political authority. This class owed its origin to the increasing impor­ tance of a new kind of warrior, a heavily armed cavalryman called a knight (cniht,"boy"

The Emergence of Europe 229

or "servant"). He was the product of medieval inventions that exploited the military po­ tenti al of the horse in new and highl y effective ways. Schol ars debate when these inven­ tions took hold in Europe and when the fully develop ed kn ight appeared. At the start of the Middle Ages, Frankish soldiers appear to have used hor ses for transportation to the field of battle, but th en to have dismounted for combat. Saddles were in use in the West prior to the first century, but they had no stirrups. Thi s made it hard for a rider to thrust a spear or swing a sword without lofting him self off his horse . The Koreans had stirrups by the fifth century, and the Byzantines were using them by the sixth century. The y had certainly reached Francia by the eighth century, but it took time for their potential to be recognized-and other things were needed before that potential could be realized. Larger, stronger horses that could withstand the rigors of battle had to be bred. The se an im als needed the protection provided by horseshoes, which may not have appe ared until the late ninth cen tury. New weapons and armor had to be designed, and men had to dev ise and ma ster new methods of combat. The fully equipped medie val knight m ay, therefore, not have charged onto the battlefield mu ch before the late ninth century.

A lance driven by the combined weight and momentum of a charging horse and rider delivered a lethal blow, and a knight could slice through a company of foot sol­ diers like a tank. The knight marked an advance in military technology that every lord who wanted to rema in com petitive had to match. The pro cess of making the transi­ tion to the new technology was, however, not easy, for knights were extraordinarily expensive. One knight might represent an investment equivalent to the cost of abo ut 20 plow teams . As earl y as the generation of Charlemagne's grandfather, Charles Mar­ tel, Frankish leaders had begun to mobili ze the resources of their society for the sup ­ port of their expensive armies. The church , as well as holders of secular property, was compelled to provide lands for the maintenance of soldiers, and the use of land for thi s purpose created an association in som e places of landownership with m ilitary service . It also signaled a change in the st atus of the ordinary man . The pea sant foot soldier ceased to be of much importance as cavalry came to dominate in fantry in me­ dieval warfare. Hordes of men on foot might still be marshaled to attend the knights, but fighting-the politically empowering function of providing protection-was in­ creasingly a job for professionals.

Economic Model Given the economic burden that the new milit ar y technology imp osed on med ieval society, transition to the new kind of warfare would not have been possible if advances in agriculture had not been made to support it.

The methods used to work the thin, dr y soils of the M iddle East and the Mediter­ ranean 's shores did not translate well to northern Europe. Farmers in Francia, Britain , and Germany had to contend with heavy, wet soil and short growing seasons . A simple "scratch plow" (a pointed stick ) worked well in southern regions where the ground was easy to break up, and farmers wanted to conserve the moisture it contained by disturb­ ing the land as little as possible. A much heavier, animal-drawn wheeled plow was needed to cultivate northern Europe's fields, and plowshares had to be invented that did not merely break the soil but turned it over to promote drainage. It may have been the sixth century before such farming equipment was widely available.

230 Cha pter 8

Draft animals and metal plowshares were expens ive. In regions where they were use­ ful, farmers banded togeth er to affo rd th em. The y established what have been called manors t manere;"to dwell"), medie val agricultural cooperatives. Manors differed from most modern communes in that the y combined private ownership ofland with common ownership of th e tool s th at worked the land . Each serf (servus, "servant") who was com ­ mended to a manor held title to certain fields on the manor. He did not receive a percent­ age of the total production of the manor, but was entitled only to the crops that grew on the fields designated for his m aintenance. Furthermore, his holdings were not concen ­ trated in on e part of the manor, but divided up into strips that were scattered throughout its arable land. Th is "o pen-field " system helped spread the risk involved in farming with communal equ ipment. It pr event ed fights over who got to use the plow first and ensured that everyone had a bit ofland in whatever part of the manor plowing began and ended . T his was im po rta nt, for growing season s were sho rt in northern Europe. Serfs who had to sow their crop s late ran a greater risk of starvation than those who could plant early.

Mediev al farmer s developed new m ethods as well as new tools to enhance their pro­ ductivity. The y understood the use of fertilizer s (chiefly, lime and animal manure), but these were in short supply. The common method for maintaining the fertility of fields was fallow farming-plowing , but not planting, land, so that it "rested" fo r a seaso n. An­ cient farmer s and medieval farmers in the Mediterranean region s employed a two-field system . That is, they plowed all their land , but planted onl y half of it-alternating halves annually. The kind of land worked by many of medie val Europe's farmers could support more intensive cultivation by a three -field system that co mbined fallow farming with crop rotation. The y divided their land into thirds and planted on e-third in the fall with a grain crop, another in the spring with bean s and peas (that restored nitrogen to the soil), and left the third fallow. Thi s reduced the amount of nonproductive plowing, provided some protection in case one of the crop s failed, and increa sed harvests . Farmers made no major improvements on these early medieval techniques until the eighteenth century.

Serfs were not free people . In 332 an edict of Emperor Constantine, which was de­ i

signed to counter the shrinking of the empire's workforce.had required agric ultural la­ borers to stay on the lands they worked. But the anci ent Roman coloni and the medieval serfs were not slaves. They had right s. They cou ld not be separated from the land and sold like chattel. The y were better off th an many free people , for they were at least guaranteed a cha nce to earn a living. The y also had a good deal of autonomy in th e conduct of their affairs, for a vassal to whom a manor was given as a fief did not supervise h is serfs' work . He was a soldier, not a farmer. His serfs man aged their own affairs (guided by the cus­ toms of their manors). The vassal was suppo rted in the sam e way as his serfs. He received whatever grew on his dem esn e (do ma in) , the fields assigned to him. The serfs' chief ob­ ligatio n was to work tho se fields for him . His serfs might also have to pay for the use of a mi ll and oven he provided, and he profited from fines levied by his manorial court. Serfs were some time s assessed a head tax as a sign of their inferior status. Payments from their estates were due to their lord s wh en th ey died, and th ey were taxed for the support of the church. In some region s the y may have had to forfeit half their annual income.

It is important to rem emb er that not all med ieval peasant farmers lived on manors and that many owned property outright. In so me regions , the land was best worked by

The Emergence of Euro pe 231

scattered , indi vidual farmsteads, and many of Europe's pea sants may have continued the ancient cu stom of working fields un til their fertility decl ined and then moving to new locations . It m ight not have been until the eleventh century that the ruling classes began to force them into more stable, permanent village communities.

The Culture of Europe's Dark Age

Some people mistake nly assume that the whole medieval era was a dark age-and many Hollywood movies have depicted the Middle Ages as literall y dark and dism al. A dark age, however , is so-called beca use it is dark to historians, not to tho se who lived it. It is a period that left few, if any, written records to inform later generations about its his­ tor y. By thi s standard Europe's early medieval period might best be described as shady rather than dark. Literacy declined in what had been the western Roman Empire, but it did not disappear. Scholarly work continued in scattered places, and there were even flashes of creative genius.

Scholarship in a Period of Transition The fifth century produced a trio of great Latin intellectuals who laid the foundation for medieval Europe's Christian cul­ ture. Augustine (d . 430), bishop of the North African city of Hippo, remains one of the West's most important theologian -philosophers, a figure who is studied today not just for his historical significance but for the continuing relevance of his ideas . Bishop Am­ brose of Milan (c. 340-397), who converted August ine, shaped the preaching and litur­ gical practices of the Latin church. Jerome (c. 340-419 ), an ascetic scholar, produced the Vulgate, the Latin translation of the Bible that was used throughout the Middle Ages.

During the years immediatel y following the deaths of these men, the confusion created by the migrations of the Germans into the western empire peaked, and intellectual activity in the Latin world declined. Whenever German kings restored a bit of stability, however, scholarly work resumed. The 30 years of order that Theodoric the Ostrogoth (r.489-526) maintained in Italy gave Boethius (480-524) and Cassiodorus (490-580 ) the opportunity to create translations and textbooks that influenced education in Europe for centuries (see Chapter 7). Benedict of Nur sia (c. 480-543 ), their contemporary, was no scholar, but he was largely responsible for the survival of schools and libraries in Europe. The rule that Benedict wrote for the monastery he founded in southern Italy at Monte Cassino spread throughout Europe and was ultimately mandated by the Carolingian mon­ archs for al1 the monasteri es in their empire. The rule owed its success to the skillful balance it struck between the radical asceticism of the eastern hermits and monks and the more pragmatic values of western Europeans. Benedict's monks did not just strive for individual, personal salvation. Their vocation, they believed,was to pray and intercede with God for the sinful world while caring for its poor and needy. Benedict believed that monks should sup­ port them selves, so he divided their day into periods for work as well as worship, recreation, and rest. Although Benedictine monks, in the early years, did manual labor, many of their working hours were eventual1y devoted to the study and production of books .

Turmoil returned to Italy following Theodoric's death in 526, but by then his con ­ temporary, Clovis (c. 466-511) , had founded Fra ncia's Merovingian dynasty. Over the

232 Chapte r 8

Cultural leaders ofthe Early Middle Ages

TRANSMIITERS OF CLASSICAL CULTURE

Ambr ose of Milan (c. 340-397) Jerom e (c. 340-41 9) Augustine of Hipp o (354- 430) Pat rick (c. 380-c. 461) Ben ed ict o f Nursia (c. 480-c. 550) Boethius (c. 480-524)

MEROVINGIAN ERA

Colum ba (52 1-597) For t un atu s (c. 535- 605) Grego ry of Tours (c. 538-594 ) Gregory the Great (c. 590-604 ) Bede (c. 672-735) Isido re of Seville (c. 570-636 ) Augustin e of Canterbury (d. 604) Cassiodorus (c. 490-c. 580)

CAROLINGIAN RENAISSANCE

Alcuin (c. 735- 804) Paul the Deaco n (c. 720-c . 800) Peter of Pisa (744- 799) Theo dul f of O rleans (c. 750-82 1) Ein hard (c. 770-840)

years, several scholars surfaced at , or corresponded with, the Mero vin gian courts. The elegant Latin poetry of Fortunatus (535- 605), an Italian who was supported by Merovingian patrons, pro ves that excellent liter ar y ed ucations could still be obtained in Europe. Fortunatus 's Frank ish contemporary, Bishop Gregory of Tour s (c. 538-594), compl ained, however, that standards ofliteracy had declined dramati cally in his part of the world . The Latin of his History of the Franks supports this , but scholars debate whe ther the obscurity th at plagues the text is the fault of its author or of the copyists who tr an smitted it to us. Despite its literary weaknesses, Gregor y's book is a major achievemen t. In his day, the writing of history was a nearly forgotten art. Had he not re­ vived it, we wo uld know very little about the Mero vin gian s.

Gregor y of Tours had a contemporary, also named Gregory, who was one of Rome 's most important popes. Gregor y I, the Great (r, 590-604 ), defend ed Rome from the Lombards, laid a foundation for th e Papal States, and still found tim e for literary work that earned him the title "Eu ro pe's schoolm aster." Gregory became pope at a time when the church in the Latin world was in near total disarray. His correspondence with bish ­ ops throughout Eur ope during an era of great con fusion helped susta in them and re­ tain a semblance of Chri stian un ity. In addition to his many letters and serm ons, he wrot e several influential books. Dialogues, the mo st popular of his works, is a collection of stories abo ut saints and mir acles that had a tremendous impact on medie val prea ch ­

The Emergence of Europe 233

ing and spi rituality. Gregor y struggled to raise th e stand ards of the church and furth er the spread of Christianit y. He tried to interest the Merovingian que en Brunh ild in church reform , and in 597 he sent missionaries to England to convert the pagan Anglo ­ Saxons. Augustine (d. 604), the Benedictine monk who led the m ission , set up head­ qu arters in Canterbury, the capital of the Anglo -Saxon kingdom of Kent. The archb ish ops who head England's church today still have their cathedral there .

By the time the pope's em issaries arrived in England, Irish missionaries were already at work. About 565, a monk named Columba (521- 597) had established a monastery on the island of Iona, off the coast of Scotland , and launched a mission that spread into northern England. The schools that the Irish an d Roman mission s established in England produced some of the era's greatest scholars . The most notable of these was a remarkably original th inker named Bede (672-735). His interests ranged from natural science to th e­ ology and histor y. His major contribution to history, The EcclesiasticalHistory of the En­ glish People, is noteworthy for research methods that were far ahead of its time . Bede searched out evidence to document historical event s and carefully critiqued his sources. He also helped establish the custom of dating historical events fro m the birth of Chri st.

Visigothic Spain produced a notable scholar in th is per iod , Isidore of Seville (c. 570-636 ), a contemporary of Pope Gregor y. Isidore's m ajor work, Etymologiae (or Origines), was a cros s between an encyclopedia and a dictionar y. It drew material from man y ancient so urces to suggest explanations for the mean ings of words, and it pro­ vided medie val readers with an immense amount of useful information and dubious speculation. Typical was Isidore's claim that the word medicine deri ved from "m odera­ tion" because excess causes disease.

Spain's intellectual life received a great boost about 75 years after Isidore's death . The Muslim conque st of th e Iberian Peninsula exposed Spaniards to influences from the Islamic world, th e seat of th e most dynamic of the early medie val civ­ ilizations. Muslims, Chri stian s, and Jews rubb ed shoulders in Spain. They learned each other's languages, traded litera­ ture s, and engaged in learned conversations . The vi­

~'. ;10brant intellectual life that evolved in Spain eventually drew students from northern Europe and stim­ ulated Europe's recovery from the cultural slump into which it fellat the end of the Roman era.

The Caroling ian Ren aissa nce About th e time that Bede died (735) another scholarly Englishman was born. His name was Alcuin, and th e excellent train ing he re­ ceived at the cathedral of York from a student of on e of Bede's students prepared him to become

Bust of Charlema gne No contemporary portraits of Charlemagne surv ive-if indeed, any were ever m ade. But in the medieval lite rary t radit ion he was ho nored as a model king, and art ists imag ined him as the embodiment of majesty.

234 Chapter 8

Europe's most prominent educator. Charlemagne persuaded him to move to Francia and undertake the leadership of a project that historians call the Carolingian Renaissance.

Charlemagne knew that the level of civilization in Europe had declined dramati­ cally since the days of the Roman Empire . The church was in a particularly lamentable condition , for many clergy were illiterate . Village priests , who were often peasants with­ out formal educations, could not chant the mass accurately. Even some bishops could not read and found preaching a challenge . Charlemagne hoped to correct this by order­ ing monasteries and cathedrals to establish schools. To provide these institutions with teaching materials, curricula, and a model, he asked Alcuin to set up a school at court, and he combed Europe for scholars to staff its faculty. Italy yielded a historian, Paul the Deacon, and a Latin grammarian, Peter of Pisa. Spain sent Theodulf, a poet. A couple of Irish scholars were in residence, and the most prominent Frank was Charlemagne's biographer, architect, and master of the palace works, Einhard (who was quoted at the beginning of this chapter) .

The Carolingian Renaissance did not aspire to much original work . Its objective was to rescue literacy so that Europeans could access the intellectual legacy of the an­ cient world. Given the situation Charlemagne's scholars faced, their achievement was considerable. Following the example set by Roman textbooks, they designed an educa­ tional curriculum divided into seven liberal arts, the areas of knowledge needed by a liber("freeborn man"). A liberal arts education emphasized literary skills. It began with the study of the trivium (grammar, dialectic, rhetoric), instruction in reading and writ­ ing Latin. The quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music) , which fol­ lowed, taught clergy what they needed to know to manage estates, calculate dates for church feasts, and sing liturgies .

Alcuin and his colleagues wrote textbooks for their schools . They sought out man­ uscripts of neglected works to build library collections, and they published improved editions of ancient texts. They even reformed the mechanics of writing. So many differ­ ent scripts had evolved in so many places in Europe that it was difficult for scholars from one region to read what those in another had written. Charlemagne's schools standard­ ized shapes for the letters of the alphabet and taught students to leave spaces between words to make reading easier and more efficient. Our system of writing is based on this Carolingian "minuscule."

The Carolingian Renaissance had some notable successes. It reformed the liturgy of the church by building on Roman customs that it believed went back to the generation of Pope Gregory the Great. The tradition of Gregorian chant, which the renaissance promoted, thrived for centuries and produced music that still moves worshipers. Charlemagne's scholars also halted the loss of books and rescued what was left in Eu­ rope of the literary legacy of the ancient world. Few major works exist today in copies older than those made by Carolingian scribes . Primarily, the renaissance's claim to be a decisive moment in European intellectual history rests on the fact that it halted the cul­ tural decline that began with the passing of the Roman Empire and put western Europe back on the road to recovery. The political confusion that broke out after Charlemagne's death was a setback, but things were never again to be as bad as they had been before Charlemagne.

The Emergence of Europe 235

Charlemagne may have hoped for more than he got from his investment in Eu­ rope's re-education. The schools that he ordered monks and bishops to establish were not always able to fulfill their missions. His nobles ignored his call to educate them­ selves, and he may secretly have empathized with them. Einhard says that Charlemagne learned to read but that he started too late in life to master the motor skills that writing requires. He did not give up trying, however. He kept a slate under his pillow and prac­ ticed the alphabet before falling asleep.

KEY QUESTION I Revisited Despite a healthy dose of barbarian ancestry, the inhabitants of early medieval Europe be­ lieved that they were legitimate heirs to the civilization of the ancient Mediterranean world, and they were determined to assert their claim to their legacy:They revered Rome's memory, the shreds of classical literature that had survived in their shrunken libraries, and the Christian religion. But they struggled with harsher and more primitive conditions than had faced most of the subjects of Rome's Mediterranean empire. They survived by innovating new technologies. They integrated information from their tribal oral tradi­ tions with classicism'sliterary legacy and their understanding of the Christian faith. They adapted to a challenging physical environment, to an economy that offered little more than basic sustenance, and to a society that had nearly lost all order and structure. Their unique needs and resources shaped what they did with their inheritance from the past. For a long time, the culture they were pioneering remained inferior to the civilizations of Islam and Byzantium, but they were slowly feeling their way toward a great future.

Review Questions

1. When did the northwestern provinces of the Roman Empire cease to be Roman and become European? What changes mark the transition between the two eras?

2. How did the problems that brought down the Merovingian dynasty differ from the problems that caused the fall of Rome's dynasties?

3. How did Charlemagne's empire differ from the realm of the Roman emperors whose title he claimed?

4. Why were medieval Europeans unable to sustain progress toward a continental

empire? 5. How did Europeans adapt politically and economically to the Carolingian empire

and its decline? 6. How did the civilization of early medieval Europe differ from the classical

civilization of the ancient Greeks and Romans? Was it at all similar?

Please consult the Suggested Readings at the backof the book to continue your study of the material covered in this chapter. Fora list of documents on the Primary Source DVD· ROM that relate to topicsin this chapter, please referto the backof the book.