Week 10

Question 1

The End of the Pax Romana

Answer 1

-The Severan Dynasty (193-235 CE)
-The Pax Romana, the Roman Peace, which ended with the death of Emperor Marcus Aurelius in 169 CE
~His son, Emperor Commodus, was a disaster, and in the early 200s, the system, that held Rome together began to break down
-The Severan Dynasty, which ruled for about 40 years, became increasingly reliant on the military to maintain a hold on power
~A portrait of the first Severan, Septimius Severus, his wife, and their sons [the one whose face is clear is the future emperor Caracalla]
-Due to increased pressure on the boards (both from the Persians to the east and various Germanic tribes to the north), the Severans greatly expanded the military, but to maintain the loyalty of their troops, they had to increase their pay or simply bribe victories, and consequently, unsatisfied bodyguards or troops overthrew and assassinated the last four Severans (Caracalla, Macrinus, Elagabalus, and Alexander Severus)

Question 2

Crisis of the Third Century

Answer 2

-Political Choas
~Emperors
~Local Identities
-Devaluation
-In the later Third Century; Emperors rose and feel as their troops deposed them, they died in battle against their opponents, or they committed suicide
~Between 235 and 285 CE, some twenty-two emperors ruled, and only six of those died of natural causes (and some of those cases are disputed as possible assassinations)
*The longest-serving emperor of this era ruled for some fifteen years, but most of them ruled for a matter of weeks or months
**Growing regional differences in the empire exacerbated this political turmoil
-In Gaul (modern France) and the Eastern Mediterranean, local identities began to develop in the absence of centralized leadership from Rome
~From 260-24 CE, Gaul, and Britain split away as local leaders attempted to develop their own empire
*In the East, Zenobia, the Queen of Palmyra, led a revolt that managed to conquer most of the Eastern Mediterranean from 270 to 273 CE
-The political chaos, the unrest along the borders, and the diseases
~The trade networks that had connected the Roman world started to fall apart as it became no longer practical or safe to engage in long-distance trade
*Cities and country estates began to develop local industries in order to become economically independent
-In addition, in order to support their lifestyles and keep the loyalty of their troops, emperors began to devalue the currency
~Roman coins were made of gold or silver mixed with other, cheaper metals
*While everyone recognized that their coins were mixed with other materials, there was enough gold and silver in the coins to justify the value
-However, in the Third Century, emperors ran short of the precious metals necessary to mint more coins, but they needed more and more coins to pay their armies and keep their troops loyal
~As a result, they began to issue new coins in which there were less and less gold and silver and more and more base metals
*A diagram shows the decline of the Antoninianus from about 40% silver to less than 5% silver)
~While they claimed that the coins were the same value, people recognized that the new coins were worth less and less
*Inflation was the result as prices skyrocketed, and people began hoarding old coins that contained higher values of the precious metals

Question 3

Reform and Recovery

Answer 3

-Diocletian (r. 384-305 CE, Dies 312 CE)
~Reforms
~Reorganization
~Tetrarchy
-Constantine (r. 306-337 CE)
~Christianity
-Problems
~Localization
-Starting in the 270s, emperors gradually expanded their authority and stabilized the situation by securing the borders, reconquering the breakaway portions of the empire, and ending the devaluation of the currency
-In 285, Diocletian rose to power, became the sole ruler of the empire, and set about attempting to reform the state and society
~He ended the devaluation of the currency, attempted to prevent people from shifting careers or moving by decreeing that sons had to follow the trades of their fathers (which extended to all aspects of society,) and froze prices
-Diocletian’s main contribution was a reorganization of the empire
~He recognized that, given the complexity and size of Rome, a single individual ruling from the center was impractical
*The empire had simply grown too large as it could take weeks for news to arrive from the boarders
-Instead, he reorganized the provinces in order to make them easier to manage, and he split the empire into four main sections
~While he still ruled over the empire as the primary emperor, he focused on running the eastern portions and he appointed his friend Maciman to run the western half of the empire
-In addition, both he and Maximan had an additional sub-emperor to help run their sections of the empire
~Thie resulted in a form of government known as the Tetrarchy
*Images of Tetrarchs; the statue is from around 300 CE, and it was originally in Constantinople, but it is currently embedded in the corner of St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice
-In theory, this system allowed for all sections of the empire to be kept under close supervision, and it would result in a more peaceful transition of power since, when an emperor was ready to retire, they would leave the throne to their sub-emperor who would the appoint and train their sub-emperor as their future successor
~However, in reality, the system collapsed before Diocletian dies
*He retired in 305, but civil war soon broke out between sub-emperors as they tried to end the Tetrarchy and seize total control
-Constantine, Diocletian’s successor, ended the Tetrarchy by winning these civil wars, but he continued many of Diocletian’s administrative reforms
~Constantine founded a new eastern capital as the site of the Greek colony of Byzantium
*This new city, Constantinople, served as the main administrative center for the easter portions of Rome
**He also continued to reform the state and the army, in particular by expanding the ranks to include non-Roman individuals from across the borders
-Constantine is also famous, of course, for legalizing Christianity
~While Diocletian had persecuted Christians, Constantine made Christianity a legal religion with the Edict of Milan in 313 CE
-According to Christian legends, he converted in 312 on the eve of the final battle in his struggle for control of Rome when he has a vision of a cross, and the words “Under this sign, you will conquer”
~While these legends state that Pope Sylvester eventually baptized Constantine, that’s probably not the case
*Throughout his life, he continued to honor the traditional gods as well as the Christian God
-Regardless, the reform that Diocletian and Constantine enacted stabilized the empire, but the efforts of diocletian to make society more stable, the integration of new people into the army, and the chopping up of the empire into smaller administrative units. had the effect of localizing society
~During the heyday of Rome, the local elites were the ones who helped finance the building of infrastructure and helped to maintain cities
-However, during the Third Century, elites began to retreat from the chaos of cities in favor of country estates
~As a result, cities became increasingly distant as non-Romans gradually entered Rome and their cultures began to blend with those of Rome
*Combined, this meant that the state began to break into separate cultures and traditions, which accelerated when Constantine’s sons split the empire into two halves; the eastern half was ruled by Constantinople, and the Western half was ruled by Rome
**East and West started to go their separate ways as a result

Question 4

The Germanic Migrations

Answer 4

-Steppe Migrations
-Nature of the Germanic people
-Visigoths
-The division of East and West accelerated in the late 300s and early 400s as more and more Germanic people began to move into Roman territory
~The root cause of this is unknown, but the standard historical narrative suggests that it originated out in the steppes of Asia where various nomadic groups began to move about for unknown reasons
*Some of these people moved east into China, while others began to move west across the steppes toward Rome
**As they moved, they either conquered the groups they encountered, absorbing them into their nomadic confederations, or drove those groups further west where they in turn began to run into more groups of people who were either conquered and absorbed, or pushed further west
-The most famous of these groups were the Huns
~The Huns were probably not a single people but instead a confederation of nomadic tribes that began to move west and started to appear on the fringes of Eastern Europe in the mid-300s CE
*This meant that the Germanic people living on the borders of Rome began to come under increasing pressure
-Historians usually refer to these individuals as the Germanic people, but they really had nothing in common with one another except for their languages
~Most of them were farmers who had lived along the borders of Rome for centuries
They traded with Rome, often married across the borders, some had converted to various forms of Christianity, and served in the Roman army
**They were not completely ignorant of Roman traditions and society, quite the opposite in many cases
**When they began to come under pressure from the east, they looked to Rome as a bastion of peace and security, as a place where they could find safety in a time of conflict and chaos
-The first of these groups to seek the safety of Rome were the Visigoths who lived in modern Ukraine north of the Black Sea
~Sometime in the early 370s, the Huns destroyed their kingdom, and the remnants of the Visigoths field west
*The Romans allowed them to enter the Balkans in 376, where they were provided land on which to settle
-However, Roman officials abused and exploited them, and they consequently rebelled in 378, killing the western emperor, Valens
~They then marched into Italy and moved north into southern Gaul where they settled and began to establish an alliance with the Romans in order to defend their new homeland from the Huns
-The same sort of thing occurred with a wide variety of Germanic groups in the early 400s
~Various confederations of germanic people began to enter the Roman territory, sometimes independently but sometimes via agreements with the Romans
*These people settled in various locations and entered into treaties and alliances with the Romans in which they agreed to help protect the borders in exchange for cash and security
-However, when the Romans treated these people poorly or they sought to expand their territory, wars were the result
~Once those wars were over, they would settle down again and enter into new alliances with Rome against the Huns or other Germanic groups
*In all of this, most of these groups were not necessarily interested in plundering Roman cities or destroying Roman civilization
**They wanted the peace and security that Rome offered, and they wanted to preserve as much of Roman society and culture as they could

Question 5

Germanic Kingdoms

Answer 5

-Rome itself, particularly the west, was increasingly unable to create that peace and security
~As more and more Germanic groups moved into Western Europe, the cities continued to fall apart
Increasing numbers of aristocratic elites retreated to country estates, and they took people with them by offering the peace and security private armies could offer in return for oaths of loyalty and dependence
As a result, western society became increasingly rural
*This was problematic because cities were the lifeblood of Rome
**Roman government was based on cities, and most importantly, they were where the state collected the majority of the taxes
***There were a small number of cities in Western Europe, and as those cities declined, so did the tax revenue collected by the state
-In the mid-400s Ce, the emperors in Rome could not afford to maintain the infrastructure of cities, an army, or the bureaucracy necessary to maintain the state
~As a result, they began to turn administrative authority over to bishops, local aristocrats, and Germanic elites, and Germanic soldiers began to dominate the court of the emperors in Rome
*Aristocratic elites across the west began to work with the new Germanic rulers since they could offer some level of stability
**As a result, by the time the last Roman Emperor abdicated the throne in 476 CE, a series of Germanic kingdoms had developed in the place of Rome
-In the east, the same process occurred
~Cities began to decline, but there were vastly more of them compared to the west, and they contained far more people
*In addition, while various Germanic people moved into the Balkans, they never were able to cross into Anatolia and Egypt, the heartland of the east
**As a result, the revenues in the east were always enough to support the army, maintain the borders, and keep the bureaucracy running
***In addition, they had enough that they could bribe the Huns or other groups to go away when they got too close to Constantinople
**As a result, the Huns tended to stay along the borders, they occasionally frightened people by threatening to invade, and then sat back and reaped the material rewards of their posturing
**Thus, the Roman emperors in Constantinople maintained their power for another thousand years (until 1453)
-However, historians usually refer to this continuation of Roma as the Byzantine Empire because it gradually began to develop more Greek characteristics and culture as it slowly diverged from its Italian roots

Question 6

Blend of Rome and Germanic Traditions

Answer 6

-Roman Administration
-Latin Christianity
~Clovis (496 CE)
-War Bands
~Loyalty
~Oaths
-Not to say that the Germanic Kingdoms developed in Western Europe were actually interested in doing away with Roman culture
~Instead, in many of the early kingdoms, Germanic rulers did what they could to ally with Roman elites and preserve aspects of Roman government and society that provided legitimacy to the Germanic kings
*None actually claimed to be emperors on their own but instead recognize the authority of the emperors in Constantinople and sought their legitimacy
-In Gaul, the King of the Franks, Clovis, sent away to the east in order to become a consul
-In Italy, Theoderic, King of the Ostrogoths, maintained the Senate, employed Romans in elite positions, held governmental positions that he was offered by the Byzantine Emperor (The Master of Soldiers), and ruled from the city of Ravenna rather than Rome in order to show his respect for the Roman elites
-In Spain and southern France, the Visigothic kings relied on Roman structures to collect taxes and rule their territory, and they employed imperial Roman rituals and designs to make them seem above the Roman and Visigothic aristocracy
-A similar blending occurred with religion
~While some of these groups had converted to Arian Christianity (a form of Christianity that argued that Jesus and the Holy Spirit were lesser than God the Father), others retained their Germanic religious traditions
*This resulted in conflict since many of the Roman elites and all of the bishops were Latin Christians (the main form of Christianity practiced in the west)
-In order to bridge this divide, Germanic rulers began to convert
~Clovis, the Kings of the Franks, was the first Germanic ruler to convert
According to tradition, his wife first advised him to convert, but he refused
**Instead, she baptized their firstborn son, who promptly died
**This did nothing to endear Christianity to Clovis, but when they had a second son, his wife baptized the child again
**THis time the son fell direly ill, bit he survived
-In 496, as Clovis was about to fight a battle the thought he would lose, he prayed to the Christian God who his wife kept talking about, and when he won the battle, he decided to be baptized and brought along the elites fo the Frankish kingdom
~According to tradition, when he was baptized, the Holy Spirit descended in the form of a dove to participate

Question 7

Blend of Rome and Germanic Traditions

Answer 7

-Roman Administration
-Latin Christianity
~Clovis (496 CE)
-War Bands
~Loyalty
~Oaths
-Not to say that the Germanic Kingdoms developed in Western Europe were actually interested in doing away with Roman culture
~Instead, in many of the early kingdoms, Germanic rulers did what they could to ally with Roman elites and preserve aspects of Roman government and society that provided legitimacy to the Germanic kings
*None actually claimed to be emperors on their own but instead recognize the authority of the emperors in Constantinople and sought their legitimacy
-In Gaul, the King of the Franks, Clovis, sent away to the east in order to become a consul
-In Italy, Theoderic, King of the Ostrogoths, maintained the Senate, employed Romans in elite positions, held governmental positions that he was offered by the Byzantine Emperor (The Master of Soldiers), and ruled from the city of Ravenna rather than Rome in order to show his respect for the Roman elites
-In Spain and southern France, the Visigothic kings relied on Roman structures to collect taxes and rule their territory, and they employed imperial Roman rituals and designs to make them seem above the Roman and Visigothic aristocracy
-A similar blending occurred with religion
~While some of these groups had converted to Arian Christianity (a form of Christianity that argued that Jesus and the Holy Spirit were lesser than God the Father), others retained their Germanic religious traditions
*This resulted in conflict since many of the Roman elites and all of the bishops were Latin Christians (the main form of Christianity practiced in the west)
-In order to bridge this divide, Germanic rulers began to convert
~Clovis, the Kings of the Franks, was the first Germanic ruler to convert
According to tradition, his wife first advised him to convert, but he refused
**Instead, she baptized their firstborn son, who promptly died
**This did nothing to endear Christianity to Clovis, but when they had a second son, his wife baptized the child again
**This time the son fell direly ill, but he survived
-In 496, as Clovis was about to fight a battle the thought he would lose, he prayed to the Christian God who his wife kept talking about, and when he won the battle, he decided to be baptized and brought along the elites of the Frankish kingdom
~According to tradition, when he was baptized, the Holy Spirit descended in the form of a dove to participate
*One can see the depiction in an ivory carving
**The ivory carving shows various miracles associated with Saint baptized Clovis, and one can see the Holy Spirit above his head
-While these stories seem to be later propaganda that solidifies the sanctity of Clovis and his successors, his conversion helped create alliances with the Roman elites, who then supported him in his wars against the Arian Visigoths who ruled southern Gaul and Spain
~The Visigothic kings later followed his example and converted from Arianism in order to ease tensions with the Latin Christian population of Spain
-These Germanic groups did not completely abandon their old ways, and they maintained many of the fundamental germanic traditions
~They maintained the structure of society
*The Germanic tribes were typically focused around kings or chiefs who commanded a war band (Latin as a comitatus)
**These tribes were usually multi-ethnic confederations of people, but the war bands were the elite warriors who helped keep everyone in line and provided a sense of unity
-Kings kept the loyalty of these warriors through gifts of land, gold, and other material goods, but they also demanded that the warriors swear personal oaths of loyalty
~At least in the ideal, that loyalty to the king was supposed to be absolute
-Society expected warriors to die beside the kings that they serve, faithful to the end, and if they survived their lord’s death, they were supposed to take revenge on those who injured or killed him
~This is probably not a reflection of reality
-Everyone promises to be loyal to the end and die with his lord, but when the shit hits the fan, fleeing sometimes seems like the better option
~Regardless, as those Germanic tribes moved into Western Europe, they maintained this idea of the war band, but that war band to intermarry and intermingle with the Roman aristocrats
*This blending of Germanic elites with Roman elites led to the development of a layer of society in which military valor was the key element of their identity, and they were bound to the monarch through promises of land, monetary reward, and oaths of personal loyalty

Question 8

Britain

Answer 8

-The Battle of Maldon (after 991 CE)
~Germanic Migrations
-Old English
~Scandinavians
-Vikings
~Bravery, Loyalty, Valor
-The Battle of Maldon is an epic Old English poem written sometime after 991 CE, but only fragments of it survived (the beginning and end are gone)
~991 is a long time after the period of the 500s
*When Roman and Germanic traditions began to blend on the continent, that did not happen in England
**The Roman army pulled out of Britain in the early 400s CE, and they left the people to end for themselves
-As Germanic groups such as the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Frisians began to migrate into England, large numbers of the Romans-British population decided that they would move further west (modern Wales and Cornwall), south into Brittany, or north into Scotland
~As a result, they took their traditions and customs with them, and the new Germanic occupants of Britain did not have much of a local population with which to blend
-While French, Spanish, Italian, and other Romance languages are the result of the blending of Latin in modern English, Old English, the language of the Anglo-Saxons and the ancestor of modern English, is fundamentally Germanic, which reflects the fact that it did not blend with Latin
~Reads from the Anglo-Saxons, and the text had both the Old English original and modern English translation
*Suggest looking at the Old English as one reads the modern translation; one should be able to identify at least a few words of Old English that have not changed that much since the 900s
-A good deal of our information about the life and society of the Anglo-Saxons comes from archaeology, particularly ship burials like the one at Sutton Hoo
~A helmet comes from the700s and it is decorated with a Latin inscription calling on Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and God, clearly indicating some sort of Christianization by the time the helmet was produced
-England slowly developed into a centralized monarchy over the course of centuries, but starting around 800, we began to see the movement of Scandinavians into the rest of the North Atlantic (Iceland, Greenland, and Newfoundland)
~While the Anglo-Saxons resisted the invasions and attempted to defeat the invaders in the field, they were often unsuccessful in that effort
The Battle of Maldon is a fictional account of the battle between a group of Anglo-Saxons (some are professional warriors while others appear to be less well-trained conscripts) led by their lord, Earl Byrhtnoth, and a group of Scandinavian raiders that occurred in 991 CE
**It was a decisive defeat for the Anglo-Saxons, and it resulted in the decision to start paying the Viking’s bribes to leave England
**In these works, one should be able to discern many of the Germanic values regarding bravery, loyalty, and honor that the Germanic people held up as heroic ideals even in the 500s CE
-However, do not take some of these ideas, as expressed in these poems, too seriously
~This is a heroic work that highlights the valor and honor of the doomed men, so in the end, it’s a piece of propaganda that’s spinning a bad situation

Question 9

Bishops

Answer 9

-Bishops
~Church Councils
~Politics
-Patriarchs
~Apostolic Succession
~Papacy
~Problem
-Bishops were early church leaders who oversaw a Christian community (term bishop from episcopus, which means overseer)
~Starting in the last 100s and into the 200s, bishops began to assemble in church councils that sorted through the various written works that early Christians produced to develop the canon of the various written works that early Christians produced to develop the canon of the New Testament
The councils also met to iron out which doctrines should be considered Christian to end heresy and to provide a uniform set of beliefs across Rome
**This process accelerated in the 300s CE one Constantine began to take a direct hand in organizing church councils to determine which practices were orthodox
**The most famous of these events is the First Council of Nicaea in 325 that assembled bishops from across the empire
**Their final product was that Nicene Creed, which outlined the specifics of Christian belief
-As Rome began to decline in the mid-300s and into the 400s, increasingly these bishops took control over their local cities and towns
~They started to take control over providing for the upkeep of walls and public works, they cared for the poor, and in the absence of central authority, they were often the ones negotiating with the Germanic peoples or the Huns
-Originally, townspeople and clergy selected bishops, but as they became increasingly important political and religious figures, aristocratic elites began to dominate these positions
~While all these bishops were originally regarded as equals, five of them started to argue that they were a bit more equal than everyone else was
These were the bishops in Rome, Constantinople, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria
**These bishops argued that their positions were elevated because one or more of the apostles who had carried the message of Jesus to the world had founded their churches
**Thus, the bishops of Alexandria argued that Mark had founded the Church in Rome and that Paul had reinforced that foundation (plus, both of them died in the city)
**Because an apostle had founded their church, these bishops argued that they inherited the spiritual authority of those apostles, and instead of being referred to as bishops, they argued that they more properly should be referred to as Patriarchs because they were above the others
-Something geographical about these five individuals
~Four of them are in the eastern Mediterranean, and only one of them (the bishop of Rome), is in the west
-As Rome started to transform into the Germanic Kingdoms, the Emperors turned over authority over the city to the bishop, which gave them added authority
~It meant that the Bishop of Rome ruled over the symbolic source of power in the Roman world
They began to see themselves as the heirs of Augustus, and as a result, they argued that they were not just above the other bishops; they were a bit more equal than the other four patriarchs were
**To prove these ideas, they not only pointed to the city they ruled and its symbolism, but they also pointed to the New Testament, particularly to the Gospel of Matthew 16:18 where Jesus tells Peter, “thou art Peter, and up on this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”
**In Latin, it winds up being a bit of a pun since in Latin petrus is both Peter and rock, but the Bishop of Rome argued that this meant that since they held the apostolic authority of Peter, they were the ones on which the Church had been built
**They began to define themselves by the Greek word “pappas” (pope), which was a term used to show respect for religious authorities, and they argued that they should be the main authority over church doctrine
-This caused a variety of problems
~The other four patriarchs certainly did not agree with this assessment, but realistically, there was little they could do about the situation
-Starting in the 500s, the eastern and western churches started to go in separate directions
~It started with a whole series of small issues
*They started to disagree with what sort of bread should be used for giving the Eucharist (the holy water given in church that is transubstantiated into the body of Christ)
-In the east, churches argued that one should use yeast to make leavened bread while in the west they argued that no yeast should be used
~In the west, they added words into the Nicene Creed, which churches in the east argued fundamentally changed the document
*The churches started to differ on art and if it was appropriate to use certain images (like the image of the Lamb of God)
**While this did not result in a decisive split, it did mean that the church became slowly separated over the course of centuries as different traditions and customs developed

Question 10

Monasteries

Answer 10

-Desert Monasticism
~St. Simeon Stylites (d. 459 CE)
-Western Monasticism
~Tonsure
~Nuns
-The other main institution is monasticism
~Monasticism started in the east, probably in Egypt, Syria, and Mesopotamia where we start to see individuals retreat from the hustle and bustle of cities
Cities were wealthy and worldly places that were filled with temptations that needed to be avoided and made it difficult to live a truly Christian life
**Individuals began to argue that one should go out into the desert to combat the demons and spirits that lived in the wilderness and that there, through a life of prayer, poverty, and chastity, one could live a truly Christian life that was dedicated entirely to God
**Some of these people went out on their own and became hermits, but others settled in small communities controlled by an abbot
-In Syria, one of the very popular forms of early monasticism was climbing on top of a pillar and staying there to pray and contemplate the glory of God
-One of the most famous of these individuals was Saint Simeon Stylites who in the early 400s climbed on top of a pillar to escape the crowds of people who sought his miraculous intervention or healing
~A devotional image of him
*One might assume that the snake represents evil or the devil, but according to the Lourve, it represents a story in which a snake came to the saint looking for help in healing its mate
**These individuals formed the first monastic communities in Christian history, and it’s from the east that these ideas began to spread west in the 400s and 500s
-However, monasticism spread slowly in the west, and originally they were not particularly prominent institutions
~Early, monasteries in Western Europe tended to be very low profile
*Typically, they were close to the walls of cities so monks could flee to safety in times of trouble, and usually, they consisted of just a few monks and a few slaves who would farm for them
**Because these monks usually settled on the low-quality land that the local farmers did not want, they tended to struggle to survive alongside the rural laity
-The rural laity started to regard these monks as particularly special people because they appeared to be living Christian lives of poverty and chastity alongside normal people
~They identified with these monks more than they did with the urban bishops sitting in their palaces, and they are the ones who began to support monks and ask that they begin to separate themselves in some significant way
-The tonsure, seems to have developed due to the desire of the laity to be able to identify who was a monk and who was not
~The tonsure is the special haircut that monks still get today in which they shave the top of the head and leave a small fringe along the outside
*The haircut might seem like a small thing, but for the Germanic people, and the Romans as well, hair was very important
-Germanic kings grew their hair long because it was a sign of their authority and freedom
~Forcibly cutting someone’s hair was a crime because it was an assault upon his or her honor
*Having a shaved head was something that was done to slaves to indicate that they were not a part of normal society
**Thus, the tonsure was a visible and obvious symbol that monks were not a normal part of society but had consecrated themselves to the service of God
-Around the same time, rulers were established for nuns as well
~Convents started to develop in the 300s and 400s out of traditions surrounding holy virgins who households would keep as an element of family piety
*From the classical and medieval point of view, it was much harder for women to maintain their chastity compared to men, and thus the struggle to remain pure, along with the fact that they were not prone to nocturnal emissions, meant that they were holier than monks were because their bodies were intact
**Nuns tended to stay closer to cities than monks did, and they were more confined as they were not supposed to ever leave the convent once they entered its walls

Question 11

St. Benedict of Nursia (ca. 480-547 CE)

Answer 11

-The Benedictine Rule
~Prayer
~Work
~Obedience
~Poverty
~Chastity
-The individual who was responsible for creating monasticism in Western Europe was St. Benedict of Nuasia
~Benedict was the son of a Roman noble, but he abandoned his life and wealth and retreated into the wilderness of southern Italy where he could focus on prayer and dedicating his life to God
*He founded a series of monasteries across the region, the most prominent of which was Monte Cassino in 530
-In order to regulate the life of the monks who lived in these institutions, he wrote the Benedictine Rule sometime around 529, which was distributed to these monasteries
~A twelfth-century image of Benedict handing over his Rule
~The Benedictine Rule highlight three main things
*Prayer
*Work
*Obedience
-The first point is self-explanatory, monks need to pray to dedicate their lives to God
~They also needed to dedicate themselves to their communities, and they need to work in the kitchens to provide food, or caring for the elderly or sick of the surrounding areas
They also need to obey their abbot in all things
**He is the one who helped to guide the entire community toward the proper worship of God, and thus he is the final arbiter of all maters within the monastery
**In additions, Benedict emphasized the need for poverty and chastity
**Monks did not own anything; the abbot owned and controlled everything
-At least in part, these rules were so strict because Benedict did not necessarily see monasteries as places where holy people went in order to honor God
~Instead, he saw them as reform schools where sinners went in order to learn how to rectify themselves and lead more holy lives
*Where these ideas might seem extreme, this was actually a moderate document when compared to some of the more ascetic or religiously demanding rules that existed in the 500s

Question 12

Challenges to Christianization

Answer 12

-Roman Pagans
~paganus
-Germanic People
~Clashing Values
-These institutions (bishops, papacy, and monasteries) took up the task of Christianizing Western Europe in the 500s and 600s
~This was a monumental task since, even though Christianity had spread widely in the great cities of Rome and their surrounding areas, large numbers of people were certainly not Christian
In rural areas, the poor who made up the majority of the Roman population did not convert but retained their old beliefs
**They continued to honor Mars, Jupiter, and the other deities that had been making rain come and their crops flourish for untold centuries
**These gods continued to work for people and they saw little reason to convert to Christianity
-Christians began to refer to these people as pagans, from the Latin paganus, which originally meant someone living in a small town or rural area, but Christians used it to refer to anyone who was non-Christian
-The arrival of the Germanic people made their problem worse
~While there were certainly some Germanic people who converted to Christianity, the majority of the Germanic people did not cover but retained their traditional gods and beliefs
*A medallion showing a Germanic deity from the migration period
-Realistically, Christianity did not offer these people very much
~They lived in a society that celebrated martial valor and personal loyalty that was earned by giving gifts of gold or land and oaths of personal loyalty
-The Germanic people celebrated heroes who earned honor and glory by tearing monsters limb from limb, stabbing dragons, or taking vengeance on those who had harmed or violated the families
~A religion that preached temporal poverty, chastity, turning the other cheek, and suffering through the pain of the world in return for a heavenly reward did not correspond with their cultural values and expectations
*Moreover, their religion seemed to be working for them
**They had conquered kingdoms and established their rule over vast swaths of Roman territory, so turning their back on their traditional gods was not something in which most of the Germanic people were interested

Question 13

Gregory the Great (r. 590-604 CE)

Answer 13

-Writings
~Letters
~Pastoral Care
~Dialogues
-Missionary Efforts
~Accommodation
~Letter to Mellitus
-Therefore, the problem facing the Church was how to go about converting these people
~The person who was responsible for turning the situation around was Pop Gregory the Great
*Gregory became the Pope in 590, but at the time, the title was essentially meaningless outside of Rome
-Rome was still the largest city in the west, but its population was a tiny fraction of what it had been, and without Roman engineering works, the Tiber was no longer held at bay, and the city was beginning to turn into a swamp
~Gregory cemented control over the city’s day-to-day operations, and to cement his authority with the West, he started to write
*In particular, he wrote an enormous number of letters to everyone and anyone in a position of authority
**Some 850 letters from Gregory survive today, which is an enormous sum, but it is probably a fragment of what he actually wrote
-In these letters, Gregory connected his authority to both the legacy of Augustus and the emperor of the Pax Romana, but he always maintained his connection to the Emperors in Constantinople who he considered the legitimate heirs to the empire
~He also tried to create personal connections with the people with which he communicated
He sent relics of the saints and objects from Rome in order to cement that personal connection and tie people more closely to him
**These letters encourage bishops and rulers to live Christian lives and to follow the teachings of the Church
**He also sent letters to missionaries across the west, giving them instructions on how to convert individuals
-In addition to his letters, Gregory wrote a series of longer works that emphasized similar themes
~In The Book of Pastoral Care, Gregory laid out what it meant to be a proper bishop and clergy member
He emphasized the fact that an individual needed to care for their soul before caring for the souls of others
**In essence, he instructed people to practice what they preached
**If they preached poverty, chastity, and care for the poor, then they actually needed to follow through on that in their own lives
**He wrote the Dialogues, a series of saint’s lives describing the miracles that saints preformed and the miraculous nature of the lives
-Gregory wrote so much that legends began to develop around him
~Illustrated on an ivory carving
*According to legend, the Holy Spirit whispered in Gregory’s ear, and he simply channeled those words onto the page
-Most importantly, Gregory was a steadfast missionary who attempted to convert both rural people fo Rome and the Germanic people
~However, Gregory seems to have realized that the primary conversion strategy used by the Church during this period was fundamentally flawed
*Most missionaries used a strategy in which they smashed and destroyed the statues and temples of the old gods, converted the people who survived, and then rebuilt from scratch
**This type of conversion from the lives of saints across the 400s and 500s CE
-However, the success of these saints was somewhat limited
~While people converted when the saints were present, often saints would return to the villages or towns that they had converted only to find that people had abandoned Christian traditions and returned to the old ways
*Typically, they only survived mobs of annoyed locals through divine intervention
**Gregory seems to have realized that this type of conversion was not particularly effective since it has consistently failed to produce results
-Instead, Gregory began to suggest that it might be more effective to accommodate the beliefs and traditions of the pagans and Germanic people
~The letter is contained in the Venerable Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People on of Gregory’s letters, which he wrote in the 730s
Bede was a monk and author who lived in northern England where he wrote a wide variety of texts, including the history of the Anglo-Saxons and their arrival in England
**According to Bede, Gregory sent this letter to bishop Mellitus, who went to England to convert the Anglo-Saxon people alongside Saint Augustine, another prominent missionary, in the early 600s
**In this letter, Gregory outlines his ideas for how to convert Anglo-Saxons
-Instead of smashing and burning, one should adopt and absorb the beliefs of the pagans and turn their previous traditions towards Christianity and the worship of God
~Keep in mind that this letter undoubtedly reflects the concerns and ideas of Bebe over a century after Gregory wrote the letter, but historians often take this letter as a reflection of Gregory’s strategy of accommodation when converting Germanic people

Question 14

Accommodations

Answer 14

-Stones and Teres
~Anglo-Saxon Crosses
~Chruchyard Trees
-Sacred Springs
~Baptism
-Trial by Ordeal
-Medicine
-While Gregory’s letters sets out these ideas in a very systematic and organized way, it is important to note that this policy of accommodation and adaptation was never adopted as an official policy in the way the letter suggests
~Instead, this policy of accommodation simply became the de facto way that missionaries and clergy operated across Western Europe in order to attract converts
Pagans could keep many of their old traditions and worship in the same places as long as those traditions and places were consecrated for the worship of God
**Pagans often sought a clearer connection to the divine through sacred trees or stones
**People would decorate trees with lights, gold, and other decorations while kings would go to stones in order to pray and honor the gods, before battles
-In England, Christians begin to erect stone crosses
~they decorated the crosses with Christian symbols as well as knot and rope designs that have per-Christian connotations
*They could be decorated with lights, and it was perfectly fine for pagans to perform the same sorts of prayers that they had done before, but instead of going to their old sacred stones, they just needed to go to the new scared stones
**One of these crosses, the Bewcastle Cross, dates to the late 600s or 700s
-The same sort of things occur with trees
~Sacred groves and sacred trees were common, but Christian missionaries tended to cut them down
*To provide a replacement, Christians built churches to shrines in the same spot (occasionally using wood from the sacred trees), and they started to plant trees (mainly yew trees) in churchyards
-After all, if pagans wanted trees then the local churches were more than willing to plant trees to attract new audiences
~The same thing occurred with sacred springs and wells
-The Church emphasized baptism as a key ritual for joining the Church
~If people wanted to be baptized in the same sites or locations that they had previously gone for their sacred rituals, then what was the harm?
-The Church wound up absorbing a wide variety of the other traditions
~They began to incorporate trial by ordeal, which was a Germanic legal tradition in which people accused of a crime underwent some sort of an ordeal
*They might walk across plowshares that were heated until they were red hot, they might reach into a pot of boiling water to pull out a stone, or they might be tossed into a river or steam
-If the gods decreed that the person was innocent, the community leaders would be able to tell (if their feet or arm heals well or if they sink in the water, then they are probably innocent, but if their wounds fester and don’t heal properly, they are probably guilty)
~These traditions simply developed a Christian veneer
*Local priests started to bless the water, instead of the gods judging people it was God, and prayers needed to be said in advance of the ordeals
-Germanic and traditional medicine also began to blend with Christianity
~Instead of wearing holy stones or symbols associated with the pagan gods for protection of healing, people needed to wear relics of the saints or objects that had been blessed
*In the miracles associated with Saint Oswald that the Venerable Bede wrote about in the Ecclesiastical History
**Oswald was a King of Northumbria who converted to Christianity in the early 600s
-In 643, he died in battle against the forces of the pagan kingdom of Mercia, and they dismembered him on the battlefield
~In the aftermath, the site of his death was associated with healing, his bones began to have miracles associated with them, and he eventually became a saint
*The association of healing was special sites and the mixing of holy splinters or other holy objects with water in order to effect cures were all associated with traditional practices, but one can see Bede talk about them in association with Oswald
**In addition, in order to ward off elves or other supernatural beings, traditional medicines and remedies needed to be prepared in basins etched with the Lord’s Prayer and supplemented with prayers and blessings by a local priset

Question 15

The Dream of the Rood

Answer 15

-Germanic Heroic Values
-The same occurred with Germanic heroes and traditions of honor
~Rather than rejecting traditional Germanic values, Christianity simply began to absorb and assimilate Germanic heroic traditions
*An image of Jesus from the Stuttgart Psalter illustrating Psalm 91:13
-The Dream of the Rood is one of the earliest known Old English poems
~The first record of the poem is a short passage that was carved into the Ruthwell Cross (one of the Anglo-Saxon stone crosses), which dates to the 700s
-However, the main manuscript containing the poem dates to the 900s
~The poem is an example of a dream vision in which an individual has a dream of the True Cross, which tells him about the crucifixion and its aftermath
*In particular, think about how the poet described Jesus and his attitude toward death
**Compare him and the attitude of his followers to what we read about in The Battle of Maldon
-In the end, the result of this policy of accommodation was a new form of Christianity that varied widely from place to place
~While missionaries, popes, and rulers attempted to create a uniform Christianity in which everyone believed the same set of beliefs, in reality, each local area developed its own traditions and beliefs that blended traditional pagan or Germanic customs with a vague understanding of Christianity
*While everyone understood the basics about Jesus, his life, the goal of attaining heaven, and the importance of rituals like baptism, beyond that there was no single form of Chirstianity in the Middle Ages
**While talk about attempts by the Church to create that uniformity at the end of the semester, realistically they never fully succeeded

Question 16

Merovingian Kings

Answer 16

-Civil Wars and Division
~Mayor of the Palace
~Pippinids
-Pippin III (r. 751-768 CE)
~Alliance with the Papacy
-Clovis ruled over most of what is today France in the early 500s and his descendants held that territory for about 200 years
~Known as the Merovingians, these kings and queens occasionally managed to dominate large chunks of territory, but they never developed a strong centralized government
*At least in part, this was because Merovingians did not practice primogeniture (the practice of giving a kingdom or estate to a single male hair)
-Instead, kings tended to divide their realm among their sons, once their father died, these new rulers would quarrel with one another over who was going to be the primary ruler
~Clovis’s empire evolved into four main states, each of which was ruled by a separate king
*Because of this policy, the history of the Merovingian kings is one of the seemingly never-ending civil wars, assassinations, and intrigues as kings attempted to consolidate power by killing off their rivals
-Because most of these individuals were uninterested in the finer points of state management, over the course of the 500s CE, the Merovingian kings created the position of “mayor of the palace” to help them run and organize their palaces
~However, during the 600s, these mayors gradually rose in power until they were the ones who controlled most of the day-to-day functioning of the kingdoms
-In the mid-600s, the position of mayor in the northern kingdom of Neustria and the eastern kingdom of Austrasia gradually fell under the sway of the Pippinid family (the later Carolingians descend from the Pippinids)
~By the early 700s, they were the real rulers while the Merovingian kings had become, essentially, figureheads
-In 751, Pippin III got tired of ruling from behind the scenes as mayor and simply took control openly, making himself king and thus the first Carolingian monarch
~However, he could not simply seize power from rulers who could trace their lineage back to the divinely baptized Clovis, and so he needed to justify and legitimize this overthrow in some way
*This justification came in the form of an alliance with the papacy
-In the 700s, the city of Rome and the popes were under threat from the Lombards, a pagan Germanic people who had started to move into Italy in the late 500s
~By the 700s, the elites were Christian, but they were still threatening to conquer Rome
*While the popes initially looked to the Byzantine emperors in Constantinople for support, in the 700s, the east was in the middle of religious and political turmoil due to their defeat by Islamic armies that had emerged from Arabia
**As a result, the popes were looking for new allies who could protect and support them
-In 752, Pop Zachary sanctioned Pippin’s overthrow of the Merovingians, and his successor, Pope Stephen II, traveled to Paris in 754 in order to crown Pippin
~While in Paris, he asked Pippin to intervene in Italian politics by protecting the papacy against the Lombard threat
-In the late 750s, Pippin invaded on multiple occasions, defeating the Lombards, and giving the popes secular control over central Italy, a swath of territory known as the Papal States
~He also consolidated control over southern France, and during his ruler, be began to reform the Church and the government of his territory, but he died before the process was complete
*His greatest legacy was the alliance of the papacy that both elevated the position of the Carolingian monarchs and decisively refocused the papacy away from Byzantine world of Constantinople and put them in orbit of the Frankish kings

Question 17

Charlemagne (r. 768-814 CE)

Answer 17

-Administrative Reforms
~Courts
-Misi dominici (those sent by the king)
-Oaths and vassals
~Chruch Officials
-Clerical Reform
-When Pippin died in 768, he left his empire to his two sons, Charlemagne (which means Charles the great, but “the Great” part was added later so he was generally just known as Charles) and Carloman
~They almost immediately began to quarrel over who would be in charge, but Carloman’s unexpected death in 771 left Charlemagne in charge
*He quickly set about continuing the work of his father
-Administration was the largest issue that Charlemagne faced, specifically how to reorganize the state in order to marshal his resources effectively
~The main administrative offices that existed at the time were the courts (comes in Latin) and bishops
A court was an administrative position that dated back to the last years of Rome
**Courts were in charge of cities and the surrounding territories, and they had served at the pleasure of the Emperor
**They had a variety of duties, but they were typically military officials and governors who controlled the local Roman bureaucracy
-The Merovingian kings had continued to use and appoint counts, but during the late 500s and 600s, the system started to fall apart
~WHen the court died, instead of replacing that individual with someone loyal to the king, kings had simply allowed the office to become hereditary, and so various families started to monopolize these positions
*In addition, with the decline of the Toman bureaucracy, the counts had begun to absorb the various duties that a variety of officials had previously performed and as a result, they were a combination of judge, local ruler, warlord, and tax collector
**They developed their own independent powerbases as they intermarried with locals, started to create alliances between powerful local families, and paid lip service to the Merovingian kings
-To control these counts, Charlemagne reasserted central control
~He broke up their local powerbases, and he asserted his right to appoint counts
When he did, he made sure that individuals were sent to serve in areas where they did not have family connections to ensure that they could not quickly develop strong networks of local support
**In order to monitor them, he sent out royal agents (Known as missi dominici, which means “those sent by the kings”) to supervise
**These individuals traveled to the courts of local counts in order to ensure that they carried out Charlemagne’s orders
-Most importantly, though, Charlemagne ensure the loyalty of individuals by insisting that they swear oaths of loyalty to him
~Such oaths were used to bind people to him personally by making them into vassals
*When dealing with elites he would give individuals grants of money or land in return for their personal oaths, but more often these oaths simply created a bond of the mutual obligation of loyalty that people were expected to keep and honor
-The other main institutions that Charlemagne used to create order were the bishops, abbots, and assesses that dotted his realm
~Under the Merovingian kings, bishoprics were left vacant or were monopolized by families who used these offices as extensions of the personal power
-Consequently, bishops could be uneducated nobles who were uninterested in living a religious life and were simply focused on the political power the position wielded
~Similarly, monasteries, and converts ran themselves instead of being controlled by the local bishop
*This resulted in the nomination by local elites or, at least according to reformers like Charlemagne, the election of abbots or abbesses who let their communities descend into vice and the sins of the material flesh
-To remedy this situation, Charlemagne began to intervene directly in the appointment of bishops and the governance of monasteries
~He saw this in both a very practical and a religious light
*On one hand, these individuals and offices controlled tax revenue and troops that he needed
-Therefore, reforming these offices and putting people who he favored into positions of power enabled him to centralize authority over his realm
~ On the other hand, this was his duty as a Christian king
It was his duty to enforce the laws of the Church and to make sure that the clergy obeyed their superiors
**He encouraged monasteries to adopt the Benedictine Rule, issued laws and guidelines to make sure that the clergy were educated and living pious lives, and he placed his favorites in positions of power within the Church
**As a result, these offices wound up forming a key component of the Carolingian state

Question 18

Relationship with the Church

Answer 18

-Conquest and Cinversion of the Saxons
-Relationship with the Papacy
~Pope Leo III
~Coronation (Christmas Day, 800)
~Caesaropapism
-Two main events reinforced this connection with the Chruch
~First, starting in 772, Charlemagne began to campaign against the Saxons who ruled what is today Northern Germany
*They were a pagan, Germanic people who the Church had attempted to convert for centuries, most notably by Saint Boniface in the mid-700s
-However, the Saxons resisted these efforts, and when previous kings had attempted to conquer the region, this proved difficult because there was no set Saxon kingdom or political hierarchy that could be defended
~Instead, the Saxons consisted of a loosely organized set of tribes who needed to be defeated in a piecemeal fashion
*Charlemagne would invade, and defeat Saxon warriors, forcing them to cover to Christianity via mass baptism, place a count of some other official over the region, and create laws to try to govern the Saxons
-However, as soon as he was distracted with other wars, the Saxons would revert to paganism, rebel, throw off his rule, and then the whole cycle would repeat itself
~It was not until 804 that Charlemagne was able to absorb the Saxons into his empire
*These wars and conversion efforts served to expand his empire and to provide him the reputation as a protector of the missionaries who was attempting to convert the Saxons
-Second, Charlemagne developed a connection to the papacy that his father had established
-In 774, he invaded Italy and conquered the Lombards in order to protect Pope Adrian I
~Then, in 799, Pope Leo III was accused by secular enemies of adultery and was attacked in the streets where, according to most accounts, his enemies attempted to tear out his eyes and tongue
*While they were unsuccessful, they seriously injured the pope, and he fled north to the protection of Charlemagne
-In 800, Leo III and Charlemagne traveled back to Rome where Leo III provided a personal oath assuring everyone that he was innocent of the charges against him
~Most importantly, while he and Charlemagne were attending mass on Christmas Day 800, Leo III crowned Charlemagne Emperor of the Romans, making him the successor to Constantine and the first emperor in the west since 476
-It’s unclear exactly what Charlemagne thought of this event
~On one hand, it seems unlikely that Leo III would have done this without Charlemagne’s approval, and Charlemagne certainly used the title in order to give himself an additional sense of authority and power by connecting himself to Rome
*On the other hand, he quickly left Rome and never returned to the city, which suggests some amount of unhappiness with the situation
**While the title gave him additional authority, many scholars have pointed out that he may have been unhappy with exactly how Leo III gave him the crown
-Charlemagne claimed the right to reform the Church, to appoint bishops, to protect the popes, and thus he seems to have seen himself as God’s agent on earth who was in charge of the Church in the same way that Roman emperors like Constantine had supervised church councils and reform efforts
~This form of government is usually referred to as caesaropapism
*However, the fact that Leo III was the one to give him the title of Emperor suggests that, at least from the perspective of Leo III, the pope was the one who was in charge
-These images might reinforce that idea
~In 779, Leo III redecorated the Lateran Palace (his residence in Rome) with a series of mosaics
*While those mosaics do not survive, they were copied in the 1800s
-One image can see Jesus with two kneeling figures
~On one side, he hands the keys to heaven to Pop Sylvester, who according to legend baptized Constantine, and on the other side, he hands a standard symbolizing military power to Constantine (the text next to him refers to him as a king rather than as emperor)
-The other image one can see Saint Peter, and kneeling beside him are Leo III and Charlemagne (the text refers to him as king as well)
~Peter hands Leo III a symbol of papal authority, and he hands Charlemagne another standard as a symbol of military authority
*This seems to suggest that Charlemagne’s authority comes not from Jesus but from Saint Peter, the founder of the Church and the papacy
**If that is the case, if Leo III was, by crowing at Charlemagne and by producing images like this, attempting to seize that caesaropapist ideal for the papacy, well we can all understand why Charlemagne might have walked away a bit pissed off

Question 19

The Carolingian Renaissance

Answer 19

-Education
-Manuscripts
~Carolingina Miniscule
-Carolingian Architecture
~Palatine Chaple, Aachen
-Capitularies
-Regardless, in the aftermath of his coronation, Charlemagne redoubled his reform efforts by encouraging education and the production of manuscripts containing authoritative versions of important religious and secular texts
~He hired educated theologians and scholars from across Europe and brought them to his court in order to oversee his reforms
-Perhaps the most famous of these individuals are Einhard (one of Charlemagne’s servants who wrote a biography of Charlemagne after his death) and Alcuin of York (a mathematician and theologian who helped lead Charlemagne’s reforms)
~Under their guidance, Charlemagne built new churches and monasteries across his realm and provided financing to ensure that his conception of proper Christian society would spread
*Medievialises usually refer to this period as the Carolingian Renaissance, a title that indicates the rebirth of scholarship that occurred during this time
-Perhaps the most significant element of this Renaissance is the sheer number of manuscripts that monks and other artisans produced
~Manuscripts are expensive and time-consuming to produce
The Carolingians used parchment as the main writing surface, but it’s very expensive to produce since a large manuscript might require the skin of a small herd of animals
**The skin of sheep or cows
**The monks spent their lives copying texts from one manuscript into another and illuminating the manuscripts by hand using expensive inks and gold leaf
**Despite this, thousands of Carolingian manuscripts survive today, and what we have is a small fragment of what was produced
-Charlemagne’s advisors and scribes reformed the handwriting of the day and created Carolingian Minuscule
~Even if one has never heard of Carolingian Minuscule before this moment
*If one looks at the manuscript, one will be able to see that the letterforms that were developed during this time are the letterforms that we still use today
-The Carolingian Renaissance extended to architecture as well
~The Merovingian kings and bishops had built churches and palaces, but under Charlemagne, there was a rebirth of Roman architectural styles
Undoubtedly, the most famous surviving Carolingian structure is the Palatine Chaple in Aachen
**The octagonal design, the rounded arches, and the columns are all a deliberate attempt to emulate the Roman architectural style
**In fact, the columns that one can see here were imported from Italy where they had previously been part of Roman structures but were repurposed into this structure to cement the connection with Rome
**The structures built during the reign of Charlemagne helped to lead to the rebirth of Romanesque architecture during later centuries
-In order to examine this period, a selection of Capitularies issued by Charlemagne
~Capitularies are law codes or lists of instructions that are divided into short chapters (the word for the chapter in Latin is capitula, which is where capitulary comes from)
This collection provides excerpts from a wide variety of capitularies that were issued throughout the region of Charlemagne
**They were probably oral in nature originally but were written down so that Charlemagne’s agent could easily refer back to them when making decisions
**They include instructions on how to govern the newly conquered Saxon territory, general instructions on the reform of the Church, instructions on how armies should be summoned and organized, and exhortations to encourage education
**The full scope of Charlemagne’s reform efforts in this collection

Question 20

Carolingian Decline

Answer 20

-Louis the Pious (r. 814-840 CE)
~Dibision of the Empire (843 CE)
-Sedulius Scottus, On Christian Rulers
-Invasions and Settlement
~Scandinavians
~Muslims
~Magyars
-Charlemagne died in 814, and he left his empire to his son, Louis the Pious
~An image here of Louis from a Byzantine manuscript
-Over the centuries Louis has gotten something of a bad rap
~According to his opponents, he committed a series of unforgivable mistakes
He ignored good government in favor of his personal piety, married the wrong woman, murdered various opponents (sometimes by accident), and drove three of his sons to rise up against him in multiple civil wars
**Things got so bad that he was forced to perform public penance in 883 when three of his sons rebelled and his army abandoned him
**After his death in 840, his empire split into three as his sons Charles the bald Lothair, and Louis the German divided it among themselves
-All of these rulers attempted to continue their grandfather Charlemagne’s policies and governing strategies, but they lack his authority
~One of the documents is Sedulius Scottus, On Christian Rulers
-Scottus was an Irish teacher who wrote a variety of works in the 840s and 50s
~On Christian Rulers describes how the ideal ruler should live and rule, and it was Scottus’ attempt to teach the heirs of Charlemagne how to end the chaos and conflict of the mid-800s
*Think about how he deals with the role of the ruler and the ruler’s relationship with God
**Does he advocate for a caesaropapist idea
-Despite the advice of individuals like Scottus, these states slowly collapsed
~Starting in the late 700s, Scandinavian raids from the north began to devastate the coastal areas of Northern Europe
IN the early 800s, Muslim pirate raids from North Africa began to plague Southern Italy and the Mediterranean, and in the late 800s Magyars (a nomadic group who are the ancestors of modern Hungarians) moved into Eastern Europe and launched raids into Germany and Northern Italy
**In the 900s, these raids turned into settlements as Scandinavians began to settle in England, Northern France, and Russia; Muslim rulers settled in southern France, Sicily, and Southern Italy; and, the Magyars settled in modern Hungary
**In the face of these new threats, society and states decentralized
-When the Carolingian system for summoning and deploying troops worked great if rulers had time to plan their campaigns and send out orders well in advance, it was not well suited for quickly defending territory
~Centeral governments were unable to respond to unexpected and sudden raids that could come out of nowhere

Question 21

Decentralization

Answer 21

-Local Lords
~Oaths and Vassals
~Gifts
-Poor Farmers
-“Feudalism”
-Because centralized governments could not respond to the situation, local lords began to take responsibility for the protection of their people
~Across Western Europe, but particularly in France, local authorities began to take control of society
*These individuals ranged from dukes and counts who controlled castles and vast estates to local landlords who controlled a fortified tower
**They began to collect taxes, act as judges, and settle disputes
-Using military force, they demanded that individuals swear oaths of loyalty similar to those Charlemagne had demanded
~In return for individuals becoming vassals, lords would give grants of land, cash, or the rights over something (a particular bridge or road for example) where an individual could charge people a fee in return for the use
The exact nature of these gifts varied widely (sometimes they were hereditary, sometimes not), and the exact amount of control lords exercised over their territory and vassals varied widely
**In addition, individuals could become both a local lord with vassals while acting as a vassal for multiple other individuals
**This led to complicated webs of loyalty and oaths that were not nicely linear but often interwoven between various levels of society and across geographical and political boundaries
-The image of the Bayeux Tapestry, which was made in the 1070s
~In it, one can see one of the oaths
*William the Bastard, the Duke of Normandy, is seated while Harold Godwinson, who was from England, stands between two reliquaries swearing an oath
**This is actually a great example of medieval propaganda
-According to William, Harol traveled from England to Normandy in the early 1060s to swear an oath supporting William’s claim to the English crown
~However, in 1066 Harold claimed the crown for himself
*William then used Harold’s previous oath to support his invasion and eventual conquest of England, which is why he is more often known today as William the Conqueror
**While historians agree that Harold traveled to Normandy, the oath seems to be a later invention used to justify the invasion
-At the bottom level of society, poor farmers were gradually bound to the land vis oaths, laws, and other agreements that kept them dependent on lords
~While historians often use the term Feudalism to describe this system, it’s important to note that it was never as tidy and easily explained as the normal pyramid diagrams of feudal society would indicate
*The exact nature of the ties that bound people together varied from place to place, from lord to lord, and from year to year
**In essence, society got very complicated as warriors used military force to subjugate people and force them into dependency as serfs and tried to become independent of elites

Question 22

State building in Germany

Answer 22

-East Francia (Germany)
~Duchies
~Henry Fowler (Henry I) (r. 919-936 CE)
~Otto I the Great (r. 936-973 CE)
-Problems
~Magyars
~Dukes
-Some places, like France, witnessed an almost complete breakdown of centralized authority
~While there was a King of France ruling in Paris, in the late 900s, he only controlled the city itself
-Kings and monarchs were able to assert their authority in some places and during some times
~In England, Alfred the Great was able to create a strong state in the late 800s that was able to defeat and even push back against the Scandinavian invaders
*That state declined after his death, as his heirs were unable to maintain his authority
**However, probably the most important attempt to stabilize and centralize authority occurred in East Francia, or what we know today as Germany
-In the 911, the last Carolingian monarch of East Francia, Louis the Child, died
~At this point like the kingdom was going to break up into five main duchies
*Saxony, Franconia, Swabia, Thuringia, and Bavaria
-However, in the face of outside invasions, the dukes realized that they needed some sort of centralized authority to help organize and defend their states
~As a result, they gathered and elected the Duke of Franconia, Conrad I, to be the King of Germany
When Conrad died in 918, the dukes decide to elect the Duke of Saxon, Henry Fowler as king
**Known as Henery I, he was able to organize an effective defense against the Magyars, and while he was unable to actually defeat them decisively, he was able to arrange for a truce that gave the dukes time to rearm and rebuild from the previous riad
**Upon Henry’s death in 936, his son Otto came to the throne
-Otto I was faced with a variety of issues that had also plagued his father
~In addition to raids from the Magyars, Henry and Otto were the Kings of Germany, but they did not have any practical authority or power outside of Saxony
They could not install government officials in the courts of the other duchies, they did not collect taxes in the other duchies, they could not give people land in other duchies and while they could ask for support from the other dukes those dukes were not necessarily always willing to follow orders
**This posed a variety od issues
**After all, one of the main ways for lords to secure the loyalty of their vassals was through a grant of land or other gifts
**Saxony had silver mines that provided some cash, but they did not have enough land to enable them to buy loyalty

Question 23

Otto I’s solutions

Answer 23

-Coronation as King of Germany (963 CE)
~Charlemagne
-Dukes
-Emperor (962 CE)
-Church
~Invertiture
-Otto i started to solve these issues at his coronation in 936, which he held in Charlemagne’s Palatine Chaple, and which ended with him sitting on Charlemagne’s thrown
~Thus, from the first days of his rule, he declared his intention to follow Charlemagne’s example
*When the other dukes did not greet this statement of centralized authority well, Otto I simply deposed those that he could (replacing them with family members who were loyal to him), defeated others in the field, and then let them retain power at his whim, and arranged for marriage alliances with the rest
-In 955, he was to cement his authority further by decisively defeating the Magyars at the battle of Lechfeld, a victory that ended the century of Magyar raids that had devastated Germany
~He also began to intervene in the tumultuous politics of Northern Italy, at least in part at the request of popes who felt threatened by the lords of the region who lustfully eyed the territory Pippin III and Charlemagne had given them
*After a series of military expeditions, he was able to force the kings and other rulers of the region to submit, which made him the King of Italy, and in 962, Pope Jone XII crowned him emperor in Rome
**This coronation cemented his connection not only to Charlemagne, but also to the Roman Emperors and to the emperors in Constantinople, and it elevated him another step above the dukes and other rulers who owned him their loyalty
-Otto I probably used the two pieces on this side in his coronation as Emperor, and Emperors continued to use them until the 1800s
~The top image is the imperial crown
*The cross and the loop on the top are later additions, but the bottom part, which is eight plates held by pins in the shape of an octagon, is characteristic of Byzantine crowns used during the same time
**The bottom piece is, according to legend, the holy lance that pierced the side of Christ as he was on the cross
-However, the most important tool that Otto I used to cement his control over the duchies of Germany was his use of investiture and the control it granted him over the Church
~Investiture is the process by which an authority, either a religious or secular authority, is ceremoniously given their power
*In the case of bishops, they were given a ring and staff that were the symbols of their spiritual authority
-Otto I followed in the footsteps of Charlemagne by arguing that he had the authority to reform and lead the church, and as a part of this, he could appoint bishops, abbots, and abbesses and invest them with their spiritual authority
~This extended across Germany and Italy, and it allowed him to place his friends and allies in major positions across the realm
*These religious authorities could then provide the tax money they had collected to help Otto I, preach about the divine authority of the Emperor, and raise troops from their realms to support Otto I in times of war
**In short, this allowed him to create a bureaucracy that extended down to the local levels of society

Question 24

Otto II (r. 973-983 CE)

Answer 24

-Otto I’s successors (Otto I, Otto II, and Henry II who are the Ottonian Dynasty) continued this tradition of centralized government, and they relied upon investiture and their semi-divine nature as Emperors to unify the various factions that made up their realm
~We can actually see their effects to develop authority in the art that was produced during and after their reign
The image is of Otto II
**One can see him here on his throne holding a staff in one hand and an orb with a cross in it in the other
**That orb and cross is the globus cruciger
-The globe is a standard symbol of the earth and world authority, while the cross represents Christian authority
~On either side of Otto II, one can see four women, each holding a globe
*Feman figures like this usually represent territories or countries, so here they seem to be the territories that Otto II claimed
**Believed to represent Scandinavia, Rome, Gaul, and Germany

Question 25

Otto III (r. 983-1002 CE)

Answer 25

-Otto III that is contained in the Gospel of Otto III
~One can see Otto III crowned holding the staff and the globus cruciger
*The color of his robes; that purple is a color associated with emperors and the imperial family, and it’s an important signifier of his status as Emperor
**The other side is his troops, representing his worldly, military authority, while on the other side one can see two members of the clergy, representing his authority over the Church
-The same figure as before, although in more detail, and their names are inscribed about their heads
~This is a clear message about his control over church and state
-Another image is of Otto III (the Gospels of Otto III), one can see him in the center holding the globus cruciger with his arms outspread
~At the bottom, one can see the representations of the Church and his military authority, but why is he hovering in the air like that, and what’s that white thing
Well, the white thing in the center is the veil that separates heaven and earth
**In the image, representations of the four authors of the gospels (the winged lion, is the figure associated with Mark) are supporting the veil, while Otto III is being supported and pushed through it by a representation of the earth
**The hand coming down to bless him
**That’s the hand of God the father
-Otto III, based on this image, is so holy, so inspired that he has surpassed normal human perception, has breached the veil of heaven to be blessed by God himself, and he is in fact so holy that one can see he has a full body halo surrounding him
~This image, like the last one, was probably inspired by Byzantine images (Otto’s III mother was a Byzantine princess) that were used to reinforce the Byzantine Emperor’s divine authority
*Here those models have simply been repurposed for Otto III

Question 26

Henry II (r. 1002-1024 CE)

Answer 26

-An image of Henry II (From the Sacramentary of Henry II)
~One can see him in the center crowned directly by Jesus
*Two saints support him on either side, while above him two angels deliver him a lance and sword, symbols of his imperial authority
**One can see that ideal of the Emperor as God’s agent on earth

Question 27

Church Reform and the Salian Dynasty

Answer 27

-Church Reforms in the 900s
~Celibacy and Simony
-Reform Popes
~Nicholas II (r. 1059-61 CE)
~Alexander II (r. 1061-73 CE)
~Gregory VII (r. 1073-85 CE)
-Dictatus Papae
-Henry II had no heirs, and as a result, the crown of Germany, as well as the title of Emperor, passed to the Duke of Franconia who founded the Salian Dynasty
~The first three emperors of the Salian Dynasty (Conrad II, Henry II, and Henry IV) continued the policies established by Otto I and his successors
*However, Henry IV ran into trouble that was, at least in part, the fault of the emperors themselves
-Starting in the early 900s, reform movements began to develop within the church that emphasized the need for the Church to become independent of secular authorities
~Reformer began to advocate for strictly enforcing clerical celibacy, which was only minimally monitored at best, and for ending simony, or the buying of clerical offices by elites
Inspired by the example of Charlemagne, the Ottonian and Salian emperors pushed for these reforms
**In particular, they endeavored to reform the papacy, which in the 800s and early 900s had become something of a corrupt joke
**As a result, in order to install reform-minded individuals who would support him (at least in theory); Otto III simply installed two of his clerical supporters as popes
**Similarly, Henry III installed three different popes, all of whom pushed for reforms
-During the min-1000s, this tradition of reform started to take on new dimensions as these popes started to argue that they needed to separate themselves from all aspects of secular authority
~Rather than emperors interfering in papal elections, the popes needed to be completely independent
*Under the reign of Pope Nicholas II (1059-61), the popes instituted new rulers regarding the composition of the College of Cardinals and the election of popes in an attempt to limit the ability of the emperors to intervene
**In the region of Pope Alexander II (1061-73), Alexander provided official sanction to William the Bastard’s conquest of England in 1066, and he sent a papal banner to accompany the invasion
-These reforms reached their peak with the reign of Pope Gregory VII (1073-1085)
~Gregory VII started as a German monk who had been a part of the papal reform movement since the 1040s
*He was staunchly opposed to the idea of the emperors having any authority within the Church, and argued that the papacy needed to be arguing that the popes, as God’s sole representative on Earth, needed to have a large role within the government of states in order to ensure that all souls could be led to live good, Christian lives
-In 1075, Gregory VII outline his main power in the Dictatus Papae, a collection of brief statements that provided a brief summary of his main points
~Here he argued that he had the power to raise and depose emperors, that he had the sole right to investiture, that he could free vassals of their oath, and other similar statements that outlined the fact the Gregory VII saw himself as being the sole legitimate authority in Western Europe

Question 28

The Investiture Controversy (1075-1122 CE)

Answer 28

-Emperor Henry IV versus Gregory VII
-This was problematic from the perspective of Emperor Henry IV
~Henry IV was already facing rebellions and other problems within Germany, and his control over investiture was one of the few things that helped counterbalance all of the problems that he faced with the rebellious Germans
*Directly aimed at the ability of the emperors to rule, the claims of Gregory VII resulted in the eruption of Investiture Controversy, as Henry IV and Gregory VII argued over who could be the main authority in the west
-Henry IV came out on top
~Even though Gregory VII encouraged rebellions in Germany, forcing Henry IV to temporarily submit to Gregory VII’s authority, by 1080, Henry IV was able to defeat the rebels, establish his own pope in Germany, invade Italy, and drive Gregory VII from Rome
*This conflict between the emperors and the popes did not end with Gregory VII’d death
**Instead, the conflict got wrapped up in the Crusades, and it continued into the late Middle Ages