Chapter 8

The West in the Early Middle Ages

500-900
Dark ages

Petrarch regarded
the post-Roman
centuries as "dark"
compared to the
light of classical
antiquity.

1
 General Introduction
1. The Middle Ages
a. Time division: in European history,
the thousand-year period following the
fall of the Western Roman Empire in
the fifth century is called the Middle
Ages.
b. It is so called because it came
between ancient times and modern
times.
(ancient times→ The Middle Ages →modern times)
c. Age of faith
3
8.1 The making of the barbarian
kingdoms,
500-750
Italy : from Ostrogoths to Lombards
The Ostrogothic Kingdom was established by Theodoric the
Great in Italy and neighboring areas.
The Goths, an east Germanic people, two branches: the
Visigoths and Ostrogoths, played an important role in the fall of
the Western Roman Empire and emergence of Medieval
Europe.
Following Theodoric’s death in 526, internal conflict over the
succession paved the way for a devastating invasion by the
Byzantine Empire (under Justinian I), who destroyed not only
the Ostrogothic kingdom but also much of Roman Italy. 4
 Lombard conquest
the destruction of Italy paved the way for its conquest by the
Lombards, Germanic tribe
In the early 7th century, the Lombard kings and their followers
accepted orthodox Christianity, the unification of the society.
Gregory the Great 590-604,
organized the resistance to the Lombards, and laid the foundations
of the medieval papacy. （教皇权力）

5
Visigothic Spain: intolerance and
destruction
The Visigoths of Gaul and Spain sought to unify the indigenous
population of their kingdom through law and religion.
In 507,Roman aristocrats supported the Frankish king Clovis in
his successful conquest of the Visigothic kingdom of Toulouse
The persecution of the Jews grew through the 7th century.
In 711, Muslims invaded and conquered the Visigothic kingdom.

6
The Anglo-Saxons:
from Pagan conquerors to Christian Missionaries
The collection of Germanic warriors who came to Britain did
not coalesce into a united kingdom until almost 11th century.
 They eradicated the Roman traditions of administration,
taxation and culture.
 Central value: honor and glory.
 The conversion of England resulted from a two-part effort:
1) Ireland had survived little changed for Celtic traditions for
over 1000 years, and so had never developed the forms of
urban life and centralized, hierarchical government/religion.
2) Pope Gregory the Great sent the missionary Augustine to
convert the English.

7
 Two opposing forms of orthodox Christianity
Celtic, monastic( 修道院的 ) and decentralized( 分权化 );
Roman, episcopal ( 主教制 )and hierarchical( 教阶制 )
Oswy accepted the customs of the Roman Church, thus
allying the Anglo-Saxon England with the centralized,
hierarchical form of Christianity.

8
The Franks: an enduring legacy
In the 4th century, various small Germanic tribes along the
Rhine coalesced into a loose confederation.
In 486, leader of the Salian Franks and commander of the
Roman army, staged a successful coup, killing the last
Roman commander in the West.
The mix of Frankish warriors and Roman aristocrats spread
rapidly across western Europe. After Clovis’s death in 511,
his kingdom was divided among his four sons.

9
8.2 Living in the New Europe
◦The slaves and semifree peasants of Rome merged with
the Germanic warrior-peasants new kinds of social
groups and to practice new forms of agriculture.
◦Elite Roman landowners  Frankish conquerors a
single unified aristocracy.
◦Germanic and Roman traditions of governance united
between the 6th —8th centuries.

10
◦Creating the European Peasantry
◦3 fundamental changes transformed rural society:
1) Roman slavery virtually disappeared
2) the household emerged as the primary unit of social and
economic organization
3) Christianity spread throughout the rural world.

By 10th --11th centuries, peasant throughout much of

Europe were subject to the private justice of their landlords.
The peasantry had fused into a homogeneous unfree
population.

11
◦Creating the European Aristocracy
Aristocracy evolved out of the mix of Germanic and Roman traditions.
◦Aristocratic lifestyle: feasting & fighting
◦The combination of the extremes of centralized Roman power and
fragmented barbarian organization produced a wide variety of
governmental systems. (politically fragmented Celtic societies;
Frankish kingdoms)

12
8.3 The Carolingian achievement( 加洛林王朝 )
By the end of the 7th century, the kings had become little more than
symbolic figures in the Frankish kingdoms. The real power was held by
regional strongmen (dukes 公爵 ).
Charles Martel:
1) He molded the Frankish cavalry into the most effective military
force of the time
2) He supported hierarchical style of Christianity; missionaries and
Frankish armies worked together to consolidate Carolingian rule.
Pippin III: in 751, king of the Franks.
The alliance between the new dynasty and the papacy marked the first
union of royal legitimacy and ecclesiastical sanction in European
history.

13
◦Charlemagne & the Carolingian Renaissance:
1) creating a reformed, educated clergy.
2) educational program: the reformers laid the necessary foundation
for the Carolingian Renaissance. Their successors in the 9th century
made creative contributions in theology, philosophy, and literature.
3) reform of ecclesiastical institutions
4)Carolingian government: no modern bureaucracy or state system;
the system of counts ( 伯爵 )and missi ( 巡按使 )provided the most
effective system of government before the 13th century.
5)Charlemagne’s imperial coronation in 800.

14
 What is Carolingian Renaissance?
什么是“卡洛琳复兴”？

Charlemagne encouraged learning by setting up monastery

schools, giving support to scholars and setting scribes to work
copying various ancient books. Because the scribes performed their
task well, few of the ancient classics that had survived until that
time were ever lost. The result of his efforts is usually called the
“Carolingian Renaissance”. The most interesting fact of this minor
renaissance is the spectacle of Frankish or Germanic state reaching
out to assimilate the riches of the Roman Classical and the
Christianized Hebraic culture.

查理曼建造寺院学校，鼓励、支持学者做学问，并让抄写员抄录各种古籍书刊。由于抄写员们
工作非常努力，因此，当时的古典书籍几乎都被保存了下来。他所做出的这些贡献被称之为“卡洛琳复
兴”。在这一小规模的复兴—卡洛琳复兴中，法兰克或日尔曼国家吸收了罗马古典文化和希伯来基督文
化的财富。
16
After the Carolingians: from empire to lordships
In the late 9th and 10th centuries, the Frankish kingdom collapsed.

The disintegration of the empire meant much more than its division
among Charlemagne’s heirs (Louis’s three sons divided the empire).
The aristocrats were able to transform the offices of count and bishop
into inherited familial positions, and they also determined who would
rule in their kingdoms.
During the late 9th ---10th century, public powers, judicial courts, and
military authority at the local level in much of Europe became the
private possession of wealthy families.

17
Causes of the collapse of the Carolingian synthesis ？
Internal dynamics of the Frankish world and its unresolved
social and political tensions were the essential causes.
raids from outside
The Carolingian synthesis left a powerful and enduring legacy:
the Franks found a lasting means of integrating Roman and
Germanic societies. The key elements of this synthesis were
 Orthodox Christianity
 Roman administration
 Frankish military kingship

18
Emergence of France and Germany
After the ascension of Hugh Capet (the family of the counts of
Paris) in 987, they entirely replaced the Carolingians.
In 919, the dukes of the eastern German kingdom(five great
duchies) elected as their king Duke Henry of Saxony.
Otto the Great was crowned emperor in 962, reviving the empire of
Charlemagne.(only in its eastern half)
After the demise of the Carolingian empire, the West began to find
stability at a more local and more permanent level. The local
nature of Western society did not mean that the Roman and
Carolingian traditions were forgotten.
Cluny: the center of an extraordinary expansion of Benedictine
monasticism throughout the West.

19
Chapter 9 The high Middle
Ages,900-1300
9.1 The countryside
Population doubled between the years 1000---1300 ？
less warfare and raiding;
decline of slavery;
gradually improving agricultural techniques and equipment;
slowly improving climate

20
The peasantry: serfs and freemen
In much of northwestern Europe in the 11th century, the peasantry
formed a homogeneous social category as serfs.
Serf: a person who is bound to the land and owned by the feudal lord,
could not leave without permission; degraded status, limited or
nonexistent access to public courts of law, enormous dependency on
their lords.
◦ Agricultural innovation: changed the ways peasants worked their
land and the amount of food
(heavier plow; new system of crop rotation)
◦ Negotiating freedom:
From the beginning of the 12th century, peasant villages acquired the
privilege to deal with their lord collectively rather than individually.
Villages purchased the right to control petty courts and to limit fines
imposed by the lord. Peasants acquired protection from arbitrary
demands for labor and extraordinary taxes. 21
Negotiating freedom:
By the 14th century, serfs were a rarity in much of western Europe.
• Free peasantry benefited the emerging states of western Europe,
since kings and towns could extend their legal and fiscal
jurisdictions over these persons and their lands at the expense of
the nobility.
• However, peasants in much of eastern Europe and Spain were
losing their freedom. The decline of the free peasantry
accompanied the decline of public authority to the benefit of
independent nobles.

22
The aristocracy: Warriors and Heiresses

Knight: certain powerful free persons who belonged neither to the old
aristocracy nor to the peasantry; associated with the ideals of chivalry,
the set of rules and way of behaving which knights were expected to
follow, courtesy towards women; essence of this lifestyle was fighting.
Feudalism: knights became vassals( 附庸 ) of lay/ ecclesiastical
magnates, swearing loyalty to the lord and promising to defend him.
In return, the lord swore to protect his vassal and granted him a means
of support(fief) . Theses structures of lords and vassals constituted
systems of hierarchical government. These bonds(feudalism)
constituted one more element of a social system tied together by
kinship, regional alliances, personal bonds of loyalty and the surviving
elements of Carolingian administration.

23
the church: saints and monks
 A saint is someone who has died and been officially recognized and
honored by the Christian church because his or her life was a perfect
example of the way Christians should live.

Monastic culture （修道院文化） : supported by peasants and nobles,

Benedictine monasteries reached their height in the 11 th –12th
century.
The essence of Benedictine monasteries was the passionate pursuit
of God, and its goal was not simply salvation but perfection, and it
required discipline of the body through a life of voluntary chastity
and poverty and discipline of the spirit through obedience and
learning.
(monastery of Cluny)
Monastic reform: Reasons?
Cistercians( 西多会 ) 24
◦Crusaders: soldiers of God
During the 11th century, the goals of warfare were shifted
to the defense of Christian society. This produced the
Crusades, religious wars of conquest authorized by popes
and directed against Europe’s non-Christian neighbors.

Between 1096—1272, European Christians set out to do

battle with the Muslims. 8 main crusades were launched.
Reasons for military failures?

25
9.2 Medieval Towns
From the later part of the 12th century: growing cities and towns of
Europe; newer rhythms of commerce and manufacture.
Italian cities :
Urban life since antiquity
Venice’s fleet in the 11th century.
The culmination of the relationship between northern crusaders and
Italians was the Fourth Crusade, sidetracked by Venetians into
capturing Constantinople.
Italian merchants’ response to international commercial operations:
Double-entry bookkeeping, limited-liability partnership, commercial
insurance, international letters of exchange.

26
A basic change underlying the commercial
development:
◦A new mentality that considered commerce an honorable occupation.
◦By the 12th century, wealthy citizens whether descended from
merchants or landed aristocrats were termed magnates( 权贵 ).
(populars( 平民 ); economic difference)
◦Communal government （公社统治） : in the 11th and early 12th
centuries, magnates and populars in Italian towns create their own
governing institutions/ communes( 公社 ). Sovereignty lay with the
arengo/ assembly( 城市大会 ) (all adult male citizens)

27
Northern towns
Scandinavian fish/timber, Baltic grain, English wool, Flemish cloth……
Concentration of capital, specialization of labor, and increase of urban
population created cities (composed of 3 social orders):
Wealthy patricians, merchant-drapiers: control of raw materials,
equipment, capital and distribution of cloth trade.(guilds)
skilled craftsmen
Blue nails, unskilled and semiskilled artisans
The fairs of Champagne
Cloth, spices, leather from Spain, iron from Germany, copper from
Bohemia, salted fish and furs from Scandinavia

28
The University of Bologna, Italy. 1088. the first university in the
world.
first used the term universitas, guild of students.

29