Unit 1

The origins of the Middle Ages. From the disintegration of the Roman Empire to the establishment
of the Germanic kingdoms (ss.III-VIII)

1) The concept of the Middle Ages

The term Middle Ages refers to a period of history that covers approximately from the
disintegration of the Roman Empire after the crisis of the third century to the fifteenth century. This
long period, of almost a millennium, is subdivided into two stages: the High Middle Ages (ss.IX-
XIII) and the Late Middle Ages (ss.XIII-XV)

From the disintegration of the Roman Empire, three great political spaces emerged with their own
dynamics and characteristics: the Germanic kingdoms, the Byzantine Empire and Islam.

The Germanic peoples, who occupied the former Western Roman Empire, were divided into many
independent states. Most were rural societies and subjected to the power of the nobility and the
church. The Catholic religion controlled all aspects of men's lives, and from the artistic point of
view Romanesque and Gothic art developed. From these originally tribal and semi-nomadic nuclei
that slowly incorporated Roman elements, feudal monarchies will emerge in the following
centuries.
The Byzantines occupied the space that had corresponded to the Eastern Roman Empire. It had its
moment of maximum splendor in the sixth century. In religious matters they embraced Orthodox
Christianity and broke with the Church of Rome, causing the first great schism in Christianity. They
tried, in Justinian's time, to reunify the political space formerly occupied by the Roman Empire,
seeking to set themselves up as their heirs. However, internal instability, the impossibility of
consolidating the conquests and the expansion of Islam from the south, prevented the Byzantines
from achieving their goal.

Islam has its origins in nomadic and polytheistic tribes of the Arabian Peninsula, who after
embracing monotheism were unified and taking advantage of the weakness of the two great
neighboring empires, Persians and Byzantines, advanced on them. In this process, they assimilated
many of its political and cultural elements, giving rise to a unique civilization, the Islamic, which
spread between the Indus and the Iberian Peninsula during its period of maximum splendor.
 2) The crisis of the third century and the fall of the Roman Empire

The disintegration of the Roman Empire, a period that marks the transition from Antiquity to the
Middle Ages, is explained by multiple interrelated factors that we will study below

This economic, political and social crisis that from the third century eroded the foundations of the
Roman State and society has its origin in the exhaustion of the slave system, when the supply of
slaves was cut off due to the end of the conquests, and the successive waves of Germanic invasions
from the third century that intensified in the fifth century. These two internal and external factors,
combined, had very serious consequences.

On the one hand, taxes were drastically increased due to the need to raise the necessary revenue to
defend the border. This caused the mass exodus of the population to rural areas, fleeing the tax
collectors, and the slow decline of the Roman urban world. On the other hand, the lack of slaves
and the inefficiency of the slave system caused a progressive decline in agricultural productivity.
Thus, the lower the production, the more expensive basic products became and the more expensive
life was. We give the name of inflation to this process of sustained increase in prices. The feeling
that the emperor was incapable of dealing with this crisis caused in turn a deterioration of his
authority and with it a great political instability marked by frequent palace coups in which different
power groups deposed the emperor to replace him with another. close to their personal interests.
Despite the fact that different formulas were tried in order to alleviate the effects of the crisis and
restore imperial authority (among which we can mention the adoption of Christianity as the official
religion of the Empire), the problems only worsened.

That was how, given the untenable situation, Emperor Teodosius tried a drastic solution in the year
395: the division of the Empire into two halves, a Western one (with its capital in Rome and handed
over to his son Honorius) and an Eastern one (with capital in Constantinople and given to his son
Arcadius). From then on the destinies of both halves were unrelated. The Western part, weaker, fell
definitively in the year 476 with the dethronement of Romulus Augustulus by the barbarian king
Odoacer. The eastern part, richer and more populated, gave rise to the Byzantine Empire that
managed to survive another thousand years.
 3) The german peoples and the invasions of the fifth century

The term "barbarian" with which the Roman sources referred to the Germanic peoples, refers to all
those groups that lived outside the Roman political and cultural sphere. These towns had a nomadic
or semi-nomadic character and although they knew agriculture, the most important economic
activity was livestock. Their crafts were rudimentary and their commercial practice was limited to
bartering and local and proximity trade. Regarding its organization, it was structured on three
levels: the extended family (or sippe, organized around the authority figure of the father); the tribe
(which functioned from the union of several of these families in larger groups) and the town (or
gau, formed by several tribes with a common chief usually chosen by an assembly of warriors).
Socially, the role of the warrior aristocracy stands out, made up of the heads of each sippe, whose
power was sustained by a military clientele linked by personal ties. Regarding Law, the Germanic
peoples lacked a written norm, so their laws were transmitted orally and were of a customary nature
(that is, based on custom)

The penetration of these peoples across the borders of the Roman Empire did not always take place
violently, but in most cases it was peaceful. Either through the entry of large population groups that
included women and children, or through the signing of pacts (foedus) with which the Roman State
ceded a territory to a certain group in exchange for the latter taking charge of its defense against the
attacks of another more aggressive people, the contact between barbarians and Romans had many
facets. In one way or another, it is worth highlighting in this contact process between two very
different groups the so-called Romanization process, by means of which the barbarian peoples
acquired many of the Roman cultural characteristics that they include from the conversion to
Christianity (in most of cases following the Arian slope) to the codification of law.

Among the many peoples who settled in the western part of the Empire (either violently or
peacefully) we can highlight the Franks (in Gaul); Ostrogoths and Lombards (in Italy); Angles and
Saxons (in Britain); Vandals (in North Africa) and Visigoths and Swabians (in Hispania). With the
collapse of the Western Roman Empire, these peoples took effective control of the different
territories in which they settled. Said control was based on the domain of a minority over a majority
of the Roman population. Initially, this situation was resolved by prohibiting both peoples from
mixing and maintaining differentiated legal codes, but over time and due to the process of
Romanization, these differences were diluted.
 4) The german kingdoms

Many and very diverse were the Germanic peoples who penetrated the limes and settled in the
Western part of the Empire. Although all of them tried to establish their control over the territory in
a more or less stable way, few of them succeeded in an effective way. Next, we will analyze the
evolution of some of these peoples, whose kingdoms combined purely Germanic elements with
others of Roman origin, giving rise to unique political entities.

 Visigoths: coming from Eastern Europe, they crossed the Danube pressured by the Huns.
They settled in the Balkans and signed a foedus in 376, failure to comply with it led to their
rebellion and defeat of Emperor Valens at the Battle of Adrianople.
Subsequently, the signing of a new pact led them to settle in southern Gaul, founding the
kingdom of Tolosa, from where they supported the Romans in the fight against the Suevi
and Vandals who had penetrated the Iberian Peninsula.
After being defeated by the Franks at Vouillé (507), the Visigoths entered Hispania where
they founded a new kingdom with a center in Toledo. From there they governed a vast
territory inhabited mostly by the Roman population. Upon arrival, the Iberian Peninsula was
also occupied by peoples such as the Swabians (who had their own kingdom in what is now
Galicia), the Cantabrians (who from very remote times occupied the Cantabrian coast
without anyone being able to expel them from there), the Vandals and Alans (who went to
North Africa where they founded a new kingdom with its capital in Carthage) and the
Byzantines (who occupied the southeast of the peninsula and were expelled by the Visigoths
after a series of campaigns at the end of the 6th century). Both Visigoths and Hispano-
Romans maintained their own legal codes until the promulgation of the Code of Leovigild,
which among other things allowed mixed marriages between the two groups. The process of
unity between Visigoths and Hispano-Romans was sealed with Recaredo's conversion to
Catholicism, after abandoning Arianism.
However, the Visigoths had to face numerous internal problems, derived mainly from the
difficulties that the kings had in asserting their authority among the members of an
increasingly powerful nobility. The elective nature of the Visigothic monarchy gave, in
practice, great power to the nobility to the detriment of the monarch's authority. This factor,
added to the discontent among different sectors of the population due to the economic
situation and the persecution of religious minorities, facilitated the collapse of the
Visigotkingdom of Toledo after the entry of Muslims from Northern Africa in 711.
 Ostrogoths: coming from a branch that separated from the original Gothic trunk, they settled
in the north of the Balkans where they were subjected to the Huns. Some time later, after the
defeat of the Huns in the Battle of the Catalaunian Fields, they signed a foedus with Rome.
However, taking advantage of the collapse of the Western empire, the Ostrogoths led by
Theodoric entered the Italian peninsula and expelled the Heruli of Odoacer in 493.
Despite this victory, the Ostrogoths had serious difficulties in consolidating their rule over
the peninsula, finally being expelled by the Byzantine armies led by General Belisarius,
within the framework of the Emperor Justinian's campaigns that sought to restore the unity
of the Empire. Byzantine rule in Italy lasted until the arrival of the Lombards at the end of
the 6th century, who established their own kingdom in the north of the peninsula.

 Franks: Of all the Germanic peoples settled in the western part of the Empire, the Franks
were the only ones who managed to create lasting institutional structures. Led by Clovis, the
Franks took control of northern Gaul during the 6th century, expelling the Visigoths,
Alemanni, and Burgundians. Installed in that region, where the Roman presence was less
than in the south, the Franks established an elective monarchy under the government of the
Merovingian kings. These kings, however, exercised their power in a merely theoretical
way, with real power falling to the main representatives of the Frankish aristocracy,
particularly the mayordomos of the palace. This fact explains the enormous internal
convulsions that affected the Frankish kingdom during a good part of the 6th and 7th
centuries.
It was with Pepin II, steward of the Merovingians, when the internal situation managed to
stabilize, establishing a new dynasty in power, that of the Carolingians. His successor,
Carlos Martel, consolidated the power of this family by subduing a good part of the
rebellious nobility and acquiring great legitimacy after stopping the Muslims, who had
spread throughout the Iberian Peninsula, in the Battle of Poitiers (732).
This strengthening of royal power around the descendants of Pepin II allowed, in the 9th
century, the consolidation of the Carolingian dynasty in the figure of Charlemagne who, as
king of the Franks, was crowned Emperor by the pope, after coming to his aid and expel the
Lombards from Italy.