Chapter 8 - European Civilization in the Early Middle Ages, 750-1000

Chapter 8.1 - Europeans and the Environment

• The cultivation of new land proved especially difficult in the Early Middle Ages. Given the crude implements of the time, it was not easy to clear forests and prepare the ground for planting.
• Agricultural methods also worked against significant crop yields.
• Land was allowed to lie fallow every other year to regain its fertility, but even so it produced low yields.
• Evidence indicates that Frankish estates yielded incredibly low ratios of two measures of grain to one measure of seed.
• Drought or too much rain could mean meager harvests, famine, and dietary deficiencies that made people susceptible to a wide range of diseases.
• This was a period of low life expectancy.
• One study of Hungarian graves found that of every five skeletons, one was a child below the age of one, and two were children between one and fourteen; more than one in five was a woman below the age of twenty.

Chapter 8.2 - The World of the Carolingians

• Pepin’s death in 768 brought to the throne of the Frankish kingdom his son, a dynamic and powerful ruler known to his-tory as Charles the Great or Charlemagne .
• Charlemagne was a deter-mined and decisive man, intelligent and inquisitive.
• In the tradition of Germanic kings, Charlemagne was a determined warrior who undertook fifty-four military campaigns.
• Charlemagne’s campaigns took him to many areas of Europe.
• Although his son was crowned king of Italy, Charlemagne was its real ruler.
• Four years after subduing Italy, Charlemagne and his forces advanced into northern Spain.
• Charlemagne had a strong desire to revive learning in his kingdom, an attitude that stemmed from his own intellectual curiosity as well as the need to provide educated clergy for the church and literate officials for the government.
• His efforts led to a revival of learning and culture that some historians have labeled the Carolingian Renaissance, or ‘‘rebirth’’ of learning.
• For the most part, the revival of Classical studies and the efforts to preserve Latin culture took place in the monasteries, many of which had been established by the Irish and English missionaries of the seventh and eighth centuries .
• Following the example of the Irish and English monks, their Carolingian counterparts developed new ways of producing books.
• The manuscripts, some of them illustrated, that were produced in Carolingian monastic scriptoria were crucial in preserving the ancient legacy.
• About eight thousand manuscripts survive from Carolingian times.
• Some 90 percent of the ancient Roman works that we have today exist because they were copied by Carolingian monks.
• Charlemagne personally promoted learning by establishing a palace school and encouraging scholars from all over Europe to come to the Carolingian court.
• Best known was Alcuin , from the famous school at York, founded as part of the great revival of learning in the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria.
• From 782 to 796, while serving at Charlemagne’s court as an adviser on ecclesiastical affairs, Alcuin also provided the leadership for the pal-ace school.
• Charlemagne encouraged his own artists to look to the arts of ancient Rome and the Byzantine Empire.
• All in all, the Carolingian Renaissance played an important role in keeping the Classical heritage alive.

Chapter 8.3 - Disintegration of the Carolingian Empire

• Charlemagne was succeeded by his son Louis the Pious.
• Though a decent man, Louis was not a strong ruler and was unable to control either the Frankish aristocracy or his own four sons, who fought continually.
• Although this division of the Carolingian Empire was made for political reasons , two different cultures began to emerge.
• By the ninth century, inhabitants of the western Frankish area were speaking a Romance language derived from Latin that became French.
• The later kingdoms of France and Germany did not yet exist, however.
• In the ninth century, the frequent struggles among the numerous heirs of the sons of Louis the Pious led to further disintegration of the Carolingian Empire.
• In the meantime, while powerful aristocrats acquired even more power in their own local territories at the expense of the squabbling Carolingian rulers, external attacks on different parts of the old Carolingian world added to the process of disintegration.

Chapter 8.4 - The Emerging World of Lords and Vassals

• In time, many vassals who held such grants of land came to exercise rights of jurisdiction or political and legal authority within their fiefs.

• As the Carolingian world disintegrated politically under the impact of dissension within and invasions from without, an increasing number of powerful lords arose.

• The vassals of a king, who were them-selves great lords, might also have vassals who would owe them military service in return for a grant of land from their estates.

• Those vassals, in turn, might likewise have vassals, who at such a level would be simple knights with barely enough land to provide their equipment.

• The lord-vassal relationship, then, bound together both greater and lesser landowners.

• They possessed little real power over the great lords who held fiefs throughout France.

• The lord-vassal relationship at all levels always constituted an honorable relationship between free men and did not imply any sense of servitude.

• With their rights of jurisdiction, fiefs gave lords virtual possession of the rights of government.

  The Manorial System

• Free peasants gave up their freedom to the lords of large landed estates in return for protection and use of the lord’s land.

• Although a large class of free peasants continued to exist, increasing numbers of them became bound to the land as serfs.

• Unlike slaves, serfs could not be bought and sold, but they were subservient to their lords in a variety of ways.

• Serfs were required to provide labor services, pay rents, and be subject to the lord’s jurisdiction.

• By the ninth century, probably 60 percent of the population of western Europe had become serfs.

• A serf’s labor services consisted of working the lord’s demesne , the land retained by the lord, which might encompass one-third to one-half of the cultivated lands scattered throughout the manor , as well as building barns and digging ditches.

• Although labor requirements varied from manor to manor and person to person, a common work obligation was three days a week.

• The serfs paid rent by giving their lord a share of every product they raised.

• Serfs also paid the lord for the use of the manor’s common pasturelands, streams, ponds, and surrounding woodlands.

• For example, if tenants fished in the pond or stream on a manor, they turned over part of the catch to their lord.

• Although free to marry, serfs could not marry anyone outside their manor without the lord’s approval.

• Moreover, lords sometimes exercised public rights or political authority on their lands.

• This gave the lord the right to try serfs in his own court, although only for lesser crimes . In fact, the lord’s manorial court provided the only law that most serfs knew .

• Finally, the lord’s political authority enabled him to establish monopolies on certain services that provided additional revenues.

• Serfs could be required to bring their grain to the lord’s mill and pay a fee to have it ground into flour.

• Thus, the rights a lord possessed on his manor gave him virtual control over both the lives and the property of his serfs.

• A single village might constitute a manor, or a large manor might encompass several villages.

  

Chapter 8.5 - The Zenith of Byzantine Civilization

• By 750, the empire consisted only of Asia Minor, some lands in the Balkans, and the southern coast of Italy.

• Although Byzantium was beset with internal dissension and invasions in the ninth century, it was able to deal with them and not only endured but even expanded, reaching its high point in the tenth century, which some historians have called the golden age of Byzantine civilization.

• During the reign of Michael III, the Byzantine Empire began to experience a revival.

• The Bulgars mounted new attacks, and the Arabs continued to harass the empire.

  The Macedonian Dynasty

• The problems that arose during Michael’s reign were effectively dealt with by a new dynasty of Byzantine emperors known as the Macedonians .

• Thanks to this prosperity, the city of Constantinople flourished. To western Europeans, it was the stuff of legends and fables.

• In the midst of this prosperity, Byzantine cultural influence expanded due to the active missionary efforts of eastern Byzantine Christians.

• Eastern Orthodox Christianity was spread to eastern European peoples, such as the Bulgars and Serbs.

• Under the Macedonian rulers, Byzantium enjoyed a strong civil service, talented emperors, and military advances.

• The Byzantine civil service was staffed by well-educated, competent aristocrats from Constantinople who oversaw the collection of taxes, domestic administration, and foreign policy.

• At the same time, the Macedonian dynasty produced some truly outstanding emperors skilled in administration and law, including Leo VI and Basil II .

• In the tenth century, competent emperors combined with a number of talented generals to mobilize the empire’s military resources and take the offensive.

• The Bulgars were defeated, and both the eastern and western parts of Bulgaria were annexed to the empire.

  

Chapter 8.6- The Slavic Peoples of Central and Eastern Europe

• Eastern Europe was ravaged by these successive waves of invaders, who found it relatively easy to create large empires that were in turn overthrown by the next invaders.
• Over a period of time, the invaders themselves were largely assimilated by the native Slavic peoples of the area.
  • The Germans assumed responsibility for the conversion of these Slavic peoples because German emperors considered it their duty to spread Christianity to the ‘‘barbarians."
  • The non-Slavic kingdom of Hungary, which emerged after the Magyars settled down after their defeat at Lech Feld in 955, was also converted to Christianity by German missionaries.
• The southern Slavic peoples were converted to the Eastern Orthodox Christianity of the Byzantine Empire by two Byzantine missionary brothers, Cyril and Methodius, who began their activities in 863.
• Although the southern Slavic peoples accepted Christianity, a split eventually developed between the Croats, who accepted the Roman church, and the Serbs, who remained loyal to eastern Christianity.
• Although the Bulgars were originally an Asiatic people who conquered much of the Balkan peninsula, they were eventually absorbed by the larger native southern Slavic population.
• Together, by the ninth century, they formed a largely Slavic Bulgarian kingdom.
• Although the conversion to Christianity of this state was complicated by the rivalry between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, the Bulgarians eventually accepted the latter.
• The acceptance of Eastern Orthodoxy by the southern Slavic peoples, the Serbs and Bulgarians, meant that their cultural life was also linked to the Byzantine state.
• The eastern Slavic peoples, from whom the modern Russians, White Russians , and Ukrainians are descended, had settled in the territory of present-day Ukraine and European Russia.
• Swedish Vikings, known to the eastern Slavs as Varangians, moved down the extensive network of rivers into the lands of the eastern Slavs in search of booty and new trade routes.
• After establishing trading links with the Byzantine state, the Varangians built trading settlements, became involved in the civil wars among the Slavic peoples, and eventually came to dominate the native peoples, just as their fellow Vikings were doing in parts of western Europe.
• According to the traditional version of the story, the semi-legendary Rurik secured his ruling dynasty in the Slavic settlement of Novgorod in 862.
• Although much about Rurik is unclear, it is certain that his follower Oleg took up residence in Kiev and created the Rus state, a union of eastern Slavic territories known as the principality of Kiev.
• By marrying Slavic wives, the Viking ruling class was gradually assimilated into the Slavic population, a process confirmed by their assumption of Slavic names.

Chapter 8.7- The Expansion of Islam

• The Abbasid rulers brought much change to the world of Islam.
  • They tried to break down the distinctions between Arab and non-Arab Muslims. All Muslims, regardless of their ethnic background, could now hold both civil and military offices.
  • This helped open Islamic life to the influences of the civilizations the Arabs had conquered.
• Many Arabs now began to intermarry with the peoples they had conquered. In 762, the Abbasids built a new capital city, Baghdad, on the Tigris River far to the east of Damascus.
• The move east-ward allowed Persian influence to come to the fore, encouraging a new cultural orientation.
• The Arabs had conquered many of the richest provinces of the old Roman Empire, and they now controlled the trade routes to the east.
• Baghdad became the center of an enormous trade empire that extended into Europe, Asia, and Africa, greatly adding to the wealth of the Islamic world.
• From the beginning of their empire, Muslim Arabs had demonstrated a willingness to absorb the culture of their conquered territories.
• The Arabs were truly heirs to the remaining Greco-Roman culture of the Roman Empire.
• The Muslims created a brilliant urban culture at a time when western Europe was predominantly a rural world of farming villages.
• One caliph, al-Hakeem , collected books from different parts of the world and then had them translated into Arabic and Latin.
• Large numbers of women served as teachers and librarians in Cordoba.
• Islamic cities had a distinctive physical appearance due to their common use of certain architectural features, such as the pointed arch and traceried windows, and specific kinds of buildings.
• Muslims embellished their buildings with unique decorative art that avoided representation of living things because their religion prohibited the making of graven images.
• Although the Qur’an instructed men to treat women with respect, the male was dominant in Muslim society.
• Women were to be good mothers and wives by raising their children and caring for their husbands.
• Nevertheless, women did have the right to own and inherit property. Islamic custom required that women be secluded in their homes and kept from social contact with males outside their own families.
• The custom of requiring women to cover virtually all parts of their bodies when appearing in public was common in the cities and is still practiced today in many Islamic societies.