If one is to understand Western Civilization, one has to understand Christianity and the history of the Christian Church.  No single faith or institution has had a more profound impact on Western Civilization than Christianity.  However, many of its influences may not be so readily apparent because they are so deeply rooted in our past and therefore are harder to recognize. One example is the work ethic that traces its roots back to medieval Christian monasteries.  Other examples abound, but suffice it to say that the Christian heritage is a significant part of our culture today, whether or not we belong to the Christian faith.

During the Middle Ages, the influence of Christianity was much more obvious.  In fact, Christianity played such a dominant role in medieval life and culture that we still refer to the Middle Ages as the Age of Faith.  During that time, the art and architecture were primarily religious in nature.  The calendar was the Church calendar whose holidays (holy days) were those of the Christian faith.  The daily lives of the people, even their diets, were largely controlled by Christian dictates.  And politics were tightly interwoven with religion and the Church.  Christianity, which traces its beginnings all the way back to the time of the Roman Empire, is still thriving as one of the world's great religions.  Therefore, it is a major bridge linking the ancient world and its civilization to the medieval world and ultimately our own.

In its basic form, Christianity is a simple religion centering around the brief life of a humble Jew, Jesus Christ.  According to Christian dogma, Jesus was the Son of God, but miraculously born in human form to a virgin named Mary.  For several years he performed various miracles as proof of his divinity and preached a simple but profound doctrine of love and forgiveness, faith in God, and penitence for our sins.  At the age of 33, Jesus was brutally executed on a cross because of his teachings.  However, on the third day after his execution, he supposedly rose from the dead, seen as further proof of his divinity.  Forty days later, after appearing to other disciples and followers, he ascended into Heaven.  He said that sometime in the future he would return for a final judgment day whereby the dead would be resurrected and go either to Heaven or Hell according to their faith.

Christianity is a monotheistic religion (i.e.- believing in just one god) that is derived from Judaism.  The God of the Jews in the Old Testament is also the God of Christianity.  However, there is one aspect of Christian theology that has confused people down through the ages and led to untold controversy and even bloodshed.  That is the belief that the god of Christianity is a triune god or Trinity.  In other words, there are three aspects to God, but all are parts of one united god.  They are: God the Father and creator; Jesus Christ, his son who came to earth as a human in order to save us from our sins by giving up his life on the cross; and the Holy Spirit which inspires us with faith. Through the years, people have disagreed, at times violently, over the exact nature of each of these aspects and how they relate to one another.  The various points of view and arguments to support them are too subtle, involved, and oftentimes confusing to relate here, although they would emerge from time to time with tremendous impact.

Early history (c.30-3ll C.E.)

Christ's ministry left two things of vital importance to the later success of Christianity.  One was an appealing message of love, forgiveness, and eternal salvation for all people.  The other was the mission for Christ's apostles and all Christians to spread this new faith.  After Christ's departure, his followers started spreading his message in order to win new converts to the faith.  At first, preaching this message was confined to Jews, and the ruling Romans saw it as merely a sect or offshoot of the Jewish religion.  But a critical turning point in Christianity came with St. Paul of Tarsus, who saw Christianity as a religion for all peoples: Jews and Gentiles (non-Jews).  Therefore, he started spreading the word of Christ throughout the Roman world.

Thanks to its message and this preaching, the Christian religion grew in popularity slowly but steadily during its first century and a half (c.30-180).  Hollywood and popular imagination have romanticized and exaggerated the persecutions of the Christians during this period.  The truth is that Christianity during this time was still a relatively minor religion that drew little attention to itself from the Roman authorities.  There were occasional persecutions in these early years, not so much for the Christians' religious beliefs as their refusal to worship the Roman emperor and state gods.  Such worship was more like a pledge of allegiance than a religious act to most Romans, and refusal to do it was seen as an act of treason.  The Christians could have freely practiced their religion if they would only have paid the empire this worship.

However, unlike most other ancient religions where the religion was intimately tied up with the state and society as a whole, Christianity was a very personal religion that drew a sharp distinction between what one owed to the state on the one had and to God on the other.  Therefore, Christians refused to worship the state gods and that was where they got into trouble.  During the Pax Romana, the persecutions were few and intermittent, and most Christians could practice their religion with little or no interference.  Times were good and the authorities saw little harm coming from the odd habits of this minor sect.  In the third century all that changed.

The great persecutions

The third century was a time of intense anarchy.  Civil wars, barbarian invasions, and plague wracked the empire from end to end and threatened its very existence.  This seems to have affected Christianity in two very different ways that both worked ultimately toward one end.  First of all, the widespread troubles of the time caused many people to question the truth of their old pagan religions whose gods did not seem to be protecting Rome anymore.  Consequently, people started turning to new, more emotionally satisfying salvation religions to comfort them in such troubled times.  Christianity was just one such religion that gained converts during this turmoil.  Other cults worshipping the Persian Mithra, Asia Minor's earth goddess Cybele, and Egypt's Trinity of Isis, Horus, and Osiris also gained in popularity.

The second effect of the third century anarchy was more intense persecutions of Christians.  As long as the Empire was peaceful and prosperous, the refusal of the Christians to pay homage to the emperor and state gods was usually overlooked.  However, when things started falling apart, many Romans blamed the Christians for abandoning the old gods who in turn abandoned Rome.  The late third and early fourth centuries saw the most intense periods of persecutions, the worst coming under Diocletian and his successors from 303 to 3ll C.E.  Ironically, the persecutions helped the Christian Church, because they gave the Christians publicity that won them widespread sympathy and many new converts.  Consequently, right on the heels of its darkest hours of persecution came the Church's greatest victory: legalization and acceptance as the virtual state religion of the Roman Empire.

Constantine and triumph of the Church

The man who gave Christianity its big break was the emperor Constantine.  Legend has it that on the eve of a major battle against a rival for the throne, Constantine saw a vision of a cross in the sky with the words: "In this sign conquer".  Taking this as a message from God, Constantine placed a Christian emblem on his troops' shields and then won the battle.  However true this legend may be, the fact is that in 3ll, Constantine declared toleration for Christianity in the Western half of the Roman Empire.  When he took over the eastern half in 323, he also legalized it there.  From this point on, the Christian Church quickly became the dominant religion in the Roman Empire, largely from the favor bestowed upon it by Constantine and his successors.

The question arises as to why Christianity triumphed over other competing salvation religions.  Besides strong state support, there are five main reasons.  For one thing, it was exclusive.  Unlike most ancient religions which tolerated other faiths, the Christians said a person could belong to only one faith, Christianity, and be saved.  Such a belief naturally scared many people away from other competing faiths.  Second, Christianity actively sought converts.  Most other religions were there for other people to accept, but did not go out of their way to gain new members.  In sharp contrast to this, Christianity did seek new members, which gave it a decisive edge.  For another thing, Christianity was secretive and treasonous.  As seen above, this led to persecution, which led to publicity and popularity.  Fourth, from the reign of Constantine onward (with the brief exception of Julian’s reign), the Church received strong state support that put increasing pressure on pagans to convert until Theodosius I shut down all pagan temples in 393.  Finally, Christianity was well organized much along the lines of the Roman Empire.  As the faith spread across the empire, it especially caught on in cities.  Consequently, each city, which was already a center of Roman administration, became a Christian center as well under a bishop.  Each province, besides having a governor to rule it, also had an archbishop to rule the affairs of its bishops in the different cities.  Diocletian had divided the empire into four large districts called prefectures.  The Church, similar to this, had five main centers where Church patriarchs resided.  Four of these centers (Constantinople, Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria) were in the East, reflecting where Christianity's main strength was then.

The fifth patriarchal center, Rome, was destined to become the most influential for several reasons.  First of all, it was the capital of the empire, giving it a good deal of prestige.  Second, Peter, the most important of Christ's disciples, had started Rome's first Christian congregation, which also gave Rome prestige.  Finally, after 600 C.E., Rome was free from the control of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) emperors.  This made life more dangerous for Rome's popes (patriarchs), but it also gave them more freedom to expand their influence when more peaceful times came after 1000 C.E.

The favor Constantine and his successors showed the Christian Church increasingly made it the state religion of the empire until 393, when the emperor Theodosius ordered public worship in the pagan temples to be ended throughout the empire.  Christianity had triumphed, but success would also bring its problems.

The root of the Church's problems lay largely in the heavy persecutions of the third century that did two things.  For one thing, they created a more decentralized Church by driving into hiding Christians who had lost contact with one another.  On the other hand, the persecutions also helped lead to the triumph of Christianity as the virtual state religion by giving it publicity that attracted converts.  In addition, as Christianity gained popularity, formerly pagan intellectuals joined the Church in greater numbers and started grafting pagan, especially Greek, philosophies onto Christianity.  These factors would contribute to two very different lines of development in the history of the Church: the spread of religious disputes and heresies and the rise of monasteries.

Religious disputes and heresies

One of the more confusing aspects of Christianity was the nature of the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and the relation of the three parts to one another. During the persecutions, communities of Christians isolated from one another had developed different ideas on the Trinity.  Christianity's legalization meant these different congregations which persecution had forced underground (literally in some cases) now could come out into the open to find they had very different ideas on this point.  Added to this was the growing number of intellectuals joining the Church who, instead of just accepting Christianity as a simple religion, saw various subtle interpretations of the concept of a triune god.  Confounding the confusion was the vague wording of the Bible itself, which also led to different points of view.

The most serious of these disputes centered on the relationship of the divine and human natures of Christ.  The first of these, the Arian dispute, flared up soon after Constantine had legalized Christianity.  The issue was whether Christ, being the begotten son of God the Father, was co-eternal with the Father, and thus fully divine.  An Egyptian priest, Arius, said he was not co-eternal with the Father.  The Arian view, as it was called, spread widely throughout the Roman world, causing heated arguments and even violence.  Therefore, instead of creating a unifying factor for his empire by legalizing and favoring Christianity, Constantine had unleashed a wholly new type of controversy that threatened to tear the empire apart.  Given the Church's close relationship now with the Church, Constantine and later emperors felt they could not tolerate religious disputes and heresies.

There was a general and unfortunate pattern to these religious disputes that made a correct solution to them practically impossible to achieve.  A new interpretation of Christianity would pop up and gain converts.  This would lead to arguments and at times bloodshed.  A church council, backed by the emperor, would denounce the new belief as a heresy (wrong belief) and either exile the heretics or persecute them within Rome's borders in order to preserve the public peace.  Unfortunately, dealing with heresies in this manner usually backfired much as imperial persecution of Christianity had backfired a century earlier.

Today, many people may wonder why people and governments got so emotionally involved in these disputes.  The answer revolves largely around Christianity's exclusiveness.  It was seen as the only true religion and path to salvation.  Along those same lines, one had to have exactly the right belief in order to be saved.  Just the slightest deviation from that belief could mean eternal agony in Hell.  The Roman government also believed in supporting the exact right belief in order to ensure God's favor and protection.  Tolerating heresies could lead to God's disfavor, and any military defeats or natural disasters were interpreted in that light.  Also, since the Roman Empire had tied its fortunes securely to the Christian Church, its religious and political policies were tightly interwoven.  Tolerating religious heresies was seen as the same as tolerating treason.  Therefore, from the later Roman Empire to the early modern era (c.300-1700), religion and politics went hand in hand, and a decision in one realm generally had serious implications in the other realm as well.  The history of two of these heresies, the Arians and Monophysites, especially shows this mentality & its results in action.

In the case of Arius, Constantine called a council of Christian bishops together at Nicaea in Asia Minor in 325.  Arius was logically shown to be wrong, his beliefs were declared a heresy, and he himself was exiled.  Arius then went to the northern tribes whom he converted to his brand of Christianity.  A century later, when these tribes conquered the Western Roman Empire, they did it as Arian Christians.  Now it was the Catholic Christians, who made up most of the Roman population, which were often persecuted.

Another heresy, that of the Monophysites, was suppressed in Egypt, Syria, and Palestine, which led to strong undercurrents of resentment and even rebelliousness against the Roman government.  When the more tolerant Arab Muslims invaded these provinces in the 600's, instead of meeting stiff Christian resistance, they found the populace oftentimes welcoming them against Roman oppression.

Poverty, chastity, and obedience: the rise of monasteries

The success and favored status of Christianity also brought other problems.  When Christianity was an outlawed religion, the motives and sincerity of its members were rarely in doubt since there was nothing to gain and plenty to lose by joining the Church.  When Christianity became the favored religion of the Roman Empire, all that changed.  There was an influx of new members joining for reasons of social, political, or material advancement.  Also, the influx of intellectuals who grafted pagan philosophies upon the Christian faith was complicating the religion almost beyond recognition.  The purity of the Church's membership was becoming seriously diluted.

This upset many of the more devout members of the Church, and they wanted to purge it of such worldliness.  Since they could not drive the new members from the Church, they retreated into the desert to live pure Christian lives away from worldly temptations.  In order to cleanse themselves of their sins, some of these men performed incredible feats of endurance nearly to the point of self-destruction.  One such feat was to sit on the top of a pillar for years at a time.  Another was abstinence from food almost to the point of starvation. As word of these "super-hermits" spread, other devout Christians moved out to the desert to be near them and share in their holiness.  Soon the desert was so crowded with these people that they had to be organized into communities called monasteries.  In the East, St. Basil was the man who established the first monastic rule.

In the West, it was St. Benedict. After a fairly sinful and dissolute youth, this man launched a career of violently trying to purge himself of his sins.  At last, he arrived at a more moderate concept of Christianity and formed a monastic order known as the Benedictine Rule.  The Benedictine Rule reflected its founder's more moderate views, though it was still strict by modern standards.  A new monk took three vows: poverty (no material possessions), chastity (clean living), and obedience (to God and the superiors in the monastery).  The day was divided into roughly equal parts of prayer, work, and rest.  Incredible acts of self-torture or self-denial were not expected.  Instead the monk worked around the monastery and in the fields, the belief being that idle hands are the devil's playground.  Our own modern work ethic is directly descended from this idea.

The moderate expectations of the Benedictine Rule led to the spread of their monasteries all over Western Europe.  As the orderliness of the Roman Empire gave way to the anarchy of barbarian rule, monasteries and monks would provide the one shining light of civilization in the West.  These quiet and vigilant men bravely spread the word of their religion beyond the frontiers of the old Roman Empire, thus spreading civilization to new areas as well as preserving it in old ones.  Monasteries were also the main centers for any kind of social and economic relief in the Dark Ages.  The poor and destitute looked to them for food, shelter, and protection.  The sick looked to them for hospital care.  And travelers looked to them for safe havens on their journeys.

Another important and somewhat ironic aspect of monasteries was that many of the pagan intellectuals whom the hermits had originally tried to avoid were now showing up in the monasteries in an effort to flee the growing anarchy as the Roman Empire fell.  These men, who had received a pagan classical training brought their love of that pagan culture with them and devoted much of their time to copying pagan works of literature.  Thus ironically, monasteries, which started as a somewhat anti-intellectual movement, were the primary agents for preserving ancient pagan culture during the Middle Ages by carrying on this tradition of book copying.

Throughout the Middle Ages, the contributions and monasteries and of the Church overall were immensely important to our culture.  The early Church was very much a part of Roman Civilization and absorbed a good deal of it into its own theology and ritual as shown by keeping the mass in Latin until very recently.  As the Roman Empire faded from history, the Christian Church survived to carry on the Roman heritage along with its own unique contributions to Western Civilization.

Introduction: the “Dark Ages”

The disintegration of the Roman Empire in the West left in its wake a patchwork of Germanic kingdoms founded on its ruins.  The Germanic general, Odovacer, ruled Italy.  The Visigoths held Spain and southern Gaul.  North Africa was the realm of the Vandals.  Britain was divided between the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, known to us simply as the Anglo Saxons.  And the rest of Gaul was starting to fall under the sway of what would eventually become the most successful of these tribes, the Franks.  In addition, there were various minor tribes scattered throughout the West trying to carry on an independent existence: Burgundians, Lombards, Heruls, Gepids, Alans, Sueves, and so on.

Traditionally historians have described the centuries following Rome’s fall as a barbaric and chaotic period known as the Dark Ages.  However, recent historical research shows a much more gradual transition to the Middle Ages, especially in the Western Mediterranean where Roman influence was more deeply rooted and contact continued with the Eastern Roman (AKA Byzantine) Empire.

Converging interests

To a large extent the fall of the Western Empire saw the interests of the Germanic rulers in the West and Byzantine emperors in Constantinople largely converging. This was largely because of the attitudes that the Germanic tribes and emperors in the Eastern Roman Empire had toward the situation and each other.

From many of the barbarians’ point of view, rather than coming to destroy the empire, they had been looking for new lands within the empire and Roman titles to go along with those lands.  For example, the Visigoths originally entered the empire as allies of Rome.  Throughout their wanderings, they continued to see themselves as such allies, and occasionally acted accordingly.  They settled in Gaul and Spain as part of a deal with Rome where they would clear other tribes out of those provinces for the empire.  They also fought at Rome's side against a much more deadly common enemy, the Huns.  When dividing their new lands between themselves and their Romans subjects, the invaders even tried to follow an old Roman custom known as hospitalitas, where the conquerors would take one-third of any conquered lands and leave the other two-thirds for the natives.

Therefore, the Germanic kings wanted Roman titles for two basic reasons.  First of all, they had sincere respect for the accomplishments of Rome with its vast empire, network of roads and incredible system of aqueducts.  Even if they had contempt for the unwarlike inhabitants, they still stood in awe of the Roman achievement and wanted to carry it on, although ultimately they failed.  Secondly, holding Roman titles made the Germanic rulers look more like legitimate rulers to the Roman natives under them.  This was especially important since most of these tribes were Arian Christians facing the hostility of their Roman Catholic subjects.

On the other hand, the emperors in Constantinople still felt the lands in the West were rightfully theirs and wanted to keep their legal claim to those lands alive until they were strong enough to take them back.  Therefore, they granted Roman titles to the Germanic rulers in the West to maintain the legal fiction that the Empire was still alive in the West and owed allegiance to the one emperor in Constantinople.  This way, they could bide their time until the Eastern Empire was strong enough to reclaim the West in reality as well.  Until that time came they would have to follow other strategies.

One such strategy was to play different tribes off against one another.  This was especially tempting in the case of the Ostrogoths (cousins of the Visigoths) who were troubling the Eastern Empire.  The Byzantines decided to kill two birds with one stone by diverting the Ostrogoths into Italy, giving them the legal right to settle there.  This way, they would be rid of the Ostrogoths while weakening them and Odovacer in the fight for Italy, hopefully, opening the way for eventual reconquest by the Byzantines.  Therefore, in 487, the Ostrogothic king, Theoderic, led his people into Italy, which they soon conquered.

Theoderic's rule in Italy is a perfect example of how well some of the Germanic tribes had absorbed Roman culture during the last 200 years.  While the army consisted solely of Ostrogothic warriors, Theoderic was smart enough to keep the Roman civil servants in charge of day-to-day government operations.  Although the Ostrogoths were Arian Christians, Theoderic showed tolerance for his Roman Catholic subjects who formed the majority of the population.  He also had swamps drained, harbors dredged, and aqueducts repaired.  As a result of this enlightened rule, Italy, which had been a parasite on the rest of the empire for centuries, was self-sufficient for the first time in 500 years.  However, trouble was looming on the horizon.

Justinian and the reconquest of Italy

In 527, Justinian I became emperor in Constantinople.  He has been called the last of the Roman emperors, since he spoke Latin and was clean-shaven.  After him, the emperors spoke Greek, wore beards, and are generally called Byzantines rather than Romans.  Justinian also saw things from a Roman point of view and worked to restore the old boundaries of the empire.  Therefore, he turned the Eastern Roman Empire's resources toward reconquering the West.

His first campaign against the Vandals in North Africa was a quick and resounding success.  Easy living had sapped the Vandals' vitality, and the Catholic population hated these Arian Christian rulers.  From North Africa, the Byzantine forces moved north against the Ostrogoths.  Sicily and Southern Italy fell almost without a fight, and it seemed Justinian's dream of a reunited Roman Empire might come true.  Then trouble hit as the Ostrogoths regrouped and counterattacked.  What ensued were twenty years of warfare raging up and down Italy.  Rome was besieged three times and, for a while, became a virtual ghost town.

In the end, Justinian conquered Italy, but it was a costly victory for both the Eastern Empire and Italy.  The cost of his wars in the West, tribute to keep the Persians to the east quiet, and a devastating epidemic (probably Bubonic Plague) left the Eastern Empire exhausted.  This opened it up to 200 years of invasions from all directions, which nearly destroyed it.

As far as Italy was concerned, three years after Justinian's death in 565, the Lombards invaded from the north and conquered about half of the peninsula.  When Rome was threatened, pope Gregory I had to lead its defense since the Byzantines were unable to defend it any longer. Rome had passed from the city of the Caesars to the city of the Popes. Italy would remain fragmented into a number of warring states for 1300 years until its final reunification in 1871.

A gradual transition

As stated above, historians have revised their traditional view of a sudden collapse of civilization in Western Europe during the early Middle Ages, seeing instead a gradual transition to medieval civilization.  This was especially true for the areas surrounding the Mediterranean that were reclaimed by the Byzantines or were ruled by tribes strongly influenced by extended contact with Rome before taking over.  However, this period was a mixed bag, showing signs of continuity with the Roman Empire in some ways, but decline or change in others.

There were several areas of continuity and even revival.  For one thing, both the Byzantines and Germanic rulers maintained Roman law codes for their Roman subjects.  Justinian’s codification of Roman law reinforced this trend in areas of Byzantine rule (N. Africa, Italy, and S. Spain).  The Church, which maintained its own courts, also used Roman law, spreading its influence among the Frankish, Lombard, Visigothic and Celtic realms.

The social structure of the old Roman lands largely continued as before. Although the old Roman nobility had been expelled by the Vandals and Lombards in North Africa and parts of Italy, they remained influential in Spain, Southern Gaul, and Central Italy, having fled to their country estates to avoid religious persecution and tax collectors in the cities. Over time, many of these nobles would intermarry with the ruling Germanic nobles, blending into a new ruling class that by 700 had even replaced their tripartite Roman names (e.g., Gaius Julius Caesar) with Germanic forms.  By the same token, the late imperial trend continued where peasants sought protection from nobles protection in return for their freedom.

After the turmoil of the invasions subsided, agriculture revived somewhat as peasants abandoned marginally productive lands in favor of more fertile ones.  This involved dispersal of the population from the safety of the estates to more rural areas where some peasants could maintain or reclaim their freedom from nobles. An abundance of coin hoards indicate trade also continued to thrive across the Mediterranean as Byzantine silks, Egyptian papyrus & natron (for making glass), and Chinese and Indian spices were traded in return for Western products such as grain, pitch, pottery, and slaves.  Likewise, Germanic kings and a large number of local mints issued gold, but not silver or bronze, coins according to Byzantine standards.  However, the huge purchasing power of gold made trade on a small scale difficult, leading to a gradual deterioration of the gold coinage to conform to real trade conditions.  It remains a mystery why the Germanic rulers failed to issue silver and bronze coins.

However, there were areas of decline and change existing alongside those of continuity and revival.  One unfortunate policy of continuity at first was the oppressive tax system of the late empire and the self-perpetuating bureaucracy needed to run it.  However, as rulers tried to squeeze as much as they could from the economy, their subjects often revolted or fled the tax collectors, letting themselves become nobles’ serfs in return for protection from the government.  As a result, tax revenues diminished, causing gradual break down of the old Roman administration.

Cities overall in the Western Mediterranean went into decline, ceasing to function either as centers of production and consumption or centralized administration (as Roman central government broke down).  Wars seriously damaged some cities, such as Milan, Trier, and Arles.  Rome especially suffered, with its population declining from an estimated 800,000 in the 300s to 25,000 after the turmoil of the Byzantine re-conquest.  However, other cities, such as Pavia and Ravenna in Italy, Toulouse and Paris in France, and Toledo and Barcelona in Spain, revived as centers of local government, trade, or church administration. Such cities were always walled and, if the seat of royal government, mimicked Roman imperial cities with palaces, palace staff, and royal retinues.  More often were centers of trade and local administration with a count (from the late imperial comes) and/or a bishop over-seeing local administration, justice, and commerce.  Bishops were an especially new factor, since they ran their own courts, hospitals, and hostels for travelers. As agriculture (and church revenues from its lands) revived, bishops became the primary patrons of new buildings.  Thus the landscape of early medieval cities saw Roman secular monuments give way to more religious buildings such as churches and bell towers.

The armies of these new states differed greatly from the professional Roman armies of old.  For one thing, Germanic rulers usually used only their own people for military service, excluding the Roman population.  Also, as government funds declined, soldiers were typically paid with land instead of money.  In partial compensation, kings, nobles, and even bishops typically kept their own private armies of retainers, known then as bucellarii (Latin for “biscuit eaters”).  Thus we see the beginnings of the more private feudal armies of a later age.

Much of Europe's destiny would be tied in with a new Germanic power, the Franks. This tribe had played a minor role in the breakup of the Roman Empire. In fact they had occasionally served as loyal allies, defending Rome's Rhine frontier against the invasions of the Vandals in 406 and the Huns in 451. However, after 451 when the Western Empire was coming totally unraveled, the Franks made their move and started taking northern Gaul. It was at this time that the first of their great kings, Clovis, emerged.

Clovis was only fifteen when he came to the throne in 48l. Despite his youth, he was an ambitious and capable ruler, who made a shrewd and far-reaching move of converting to Catholic Christianity. The story goes that in a desperate move to influence the course of a battle against another tribe, the Alemanni, he prayed to the god of the Christians to give him victory in return for his conversion. For whatever reason, the Franks prevailed, and Clovis kept his promise and became a Catholic Christian like his Roman subjects. While the other Germanic tribes were Arian Christians often persecuting and alienating their Roman Catholic subjects, the Franks could count on more loyal support from their Catholic subjects. As a result, the Franks under Clovis and his immediate successors expanded rapidly at the expense of the Arian Christian kingdoms around them. By 600 C.E., this factor of Frankish rulers and Roman subjects united by the Catholic faith made the Frankish kingdom the largest and most powerful of the Germanic states to succeed the Roman Empire in the West

Unfortunately, the Frankish kings shared the other Germanic tribes' concept of the state as the king's property and, as a result, split the kingdom between their sons. Because of this, civil wars and turmoil plagued the Frankish kingdom from the death of Clovis to the early 700's. As a result, the Franks were split into three kingdoms: Austrasia, Neustria, and Burgundy. All were ruled by weak "do nothing kings" that let their kingdoms degenerate into further turmoil.

Luckily, new officials, called mayors of the palace, emerged to rebuild the Frankish state. One of these mayors of the palace, Pepin of Heristal, reunited the Frankish kingdom and laid the foundations for one of the greatest dynasties of the Middle Ages, the Carolingians. Several factors helped in the resurgence of the Franks under the Carolingians. One factor was the decline of the neighboring Germanic kingdoms because of the anarchy and decay generated by their poor understanding of the Roman state they had inherited.

Another factor was the Frankish adoption of the stirrup for warfare. While the Frankish kingdom had been wrecking itself in civil wars and palace intrigues, a dynamic new power had been rising in the East: the Muslim Arabs. United and inspired by their new religion, Islam, the Arabs had swept both to the east and west with incredible speed. A century after the death of the prophet, Mohammed, Muslim armies had conquered North Africa and Spain and were raiding into southern Gaul. In 733, the Frankish mayor of the palace, Charles Martel, turned back an invading Muslim force at the Battle of Tours.

Historians have argued whether this was the defeat of a major invasion or just a large raid. Either way, it apparently saw the dramatic introduction of the use of the stirrup in battle and the rise of mounted knights as shock cavalry that would rule the battlefields of Western Europe for centuries. Since the Franks were the first to adapt the stirrup for this purpose, they gained a decisive military edge over their enemies and a reputation as the fiercest fighters in Western Europe. Writers of the period would typically refer to any warriors from that region as Franks because of that reputation.

The third factor helping the Franks was the natural alliance of kings with the Church which often needed each other's help. This especially held true for the Franks and the pope. Charles Martel and his son, Pepin the Short, continued to rebuild the Frankish state to its previous status as a great power. However, they did this as mayors of the palace, while the "do nothing" Merovingian kings they served did nothing useful except ride around in a cart from estate to estate. Pepin wanted the crown as well as the power and authority, and in 752 he got it. Meanwhile, the Lombards who had invaded Italy soon after Justinian’s reconquest were hard pressing the popes. Pepin helped the pope against these enemies in return for his blessing to take the Frankish crown for himself. Soon afterwards, Pepin shaved the king's long hair (the symbol of royalty), packed him off to a monastery, and had himself declared the new king, thus officially establishing the Carolingian dynasty as the ruling family of the Franks.

Archaeological evidence points to a fourth factor helping the Franks: money. Although the Germanic kingdoms were not producing much silver coinage at the time, the Arab Muslim caliphs to the east were. Much of this money was making its way through Russia and the Baltic Sea to the Franks in return for such things as furs and slaves. This increased silver supply gave the Franks the means to expand and consolidate their power and helped pave the way for the greatest ruler of early medieval Europe: Charlemagne.

Charlemagne (768-8l4)

Possibly the most legendary figure in the medieval period was Pepin the Short's son, Charles, known to us as Charles the Great or Charlemagne. As is true of any legend, there was some factual basis for certain stories surrounding this remarkable man, but there was also a good deal of fantasy. Physically he was a big man, which in the simple world of the eighth century helped him assert his authority among those around him. He was also a strong willed man, which was necessary for holding together an empire under such primitive conditions as existed then. There were three aspects of Charlemagne's reign that were especially important: his conquests, his attempts to revive Roman culture in what is known as the Carolingian Renaissance, and the revival of the Roman imperial title.

Charlemagne was an extremely energetic king who spent a large part of his reign campaigning on his empire's ever widening frontiers: in Italy against the Lombards, in Spain against the Muslims, in the east against the Avars, and in Germany against the Saxons whom he forcibly converted to Christianity at the point of the sword. By the end of his reign, Charlemagne's empire contained most of Western Europe: France, Germany, Austria, half of Italy, the Low Countries, and Denmark. The size of his empire was the primary basis for his later legend.

Charlemagne did his best to rule his empire efficiently, but there were too few trained officials with which to rule and too many lands for them to administer effectively. As a result, he also had to delegate a good deal of power to local nobles who ruled in his name. The king's officials would travel around and periodically check up on the nobles. And Charles himself was a strong enough king to inspire most men to keep in line. However, he failed to set up a lasting government that could function under less exceptional kings. As a result, when he was gone, his empire fell apart.

People have argued over whether Charles was a barbarizing or civilizing influence on Europe. On the one hand, he did spend a lot of his reign fighting, and occasionally used some brutal methods, especially in converting the Saxons to Christianity. On the other hand, he patronized culture and the arts in what came to be called the Carolingian Renaissance. This was a self-conscious revival of Roman culture, which people then looked back upon as a golden age and the pinnacle of civilization. There was very little that was original in this revival, but it did manage to copy a large number of Roman books. As a result, 90% of to oldest versions of Roman texts we have come from the Carolingian Renaissance.

The most celebrated event of Charles' reign was his being crowned Roman emperor by the pope on Christmas day, 800 AD. There has been endless debate about the motives of Charles and the pope and just exactly what this revived title meant three centuries after the end of the Roman Empire in the West. The revival of such a title does show how much of a grip the memory of the golden age of Rome had on the medieval imagination. The real importance of this revived title would fade somewhat after Charlemagne's death and not regain its luster until 961 when the ruler of Germany, Otto I, was crowned emperor by the pope. For some 850 years, Germany will be known as the Empire, or the Holy Roman Empire. Despite the glory it invoked, this title would ultimately be a source of tremendous problems for Germany. In later years, it was said that it was neither holy, nor Roman, nor empire, but we can see that it represented a powerful idea.

Succeeding generations would look upon Charlemagne's reign as a golden age. It did encompass most of Western Europe in a larger and relatively peaceful empire. It did try to revive the grandeur of Rome's empire and culture. And a powerful energetic king did rule over it. Although his empire collapsed soon after his death, Charles' reign did have lasting and profound effects. Frankish political institutions, in particular feudalism, and military tactics (the mounted knight) would dominate Western Europe for centuries. In fact, the predominance of Frankish culture and customs was so overwhelming in Western Europe that the Byzantines and Muslims typically referred to anyone from Western Europe as a Frank.

Possibly the most significant sign that Charlemagne's reign was a turning point in history was the fact that for the first time scholars referred to a unified culture and realm known as Europe. After Charlemagne, Western European culture would no longer be a cheap imitation of Roman culture. Rather, from now on, it would define its own institutions and culture in its own terms. Western Civilization was being born.

The disintegration of the Carolingian order (8l4-c.1000)

Charlemagne's' death seemed to be the signal for every thing to go wrong at once. Indeed, a number of factors did combine to send Western Europe into some of its darkest centuries ever. First of all, the money coming from the Arab Muslims that helped make possible the palace and cathedral that Charles had built in his capital at Aachen dried up as the caliphs in Baghdad lavishly spent themselves into bankruptcy. This led to a decline of trade that caused a reversion to a land-based economy and a weaker government. This in turn hurt the Vikings in the north and Arabs in the south who had relied on Arab silver and trade. As a result, they turned to raiding and piracy, which further weakened the Frankish economy and state, causing more raids, and so on.

Along these same lines, the growing dependence on mounted knights for defense also meant a growing dependence on nobles to provide those knights. Since there was no money to pay these nobles, the king had to give them land. As we have seen, land regenerated wealth in the form of crops and made the nobles independent of the king's authority and therefore more rebellious. These rebellions also invited invasions, which encouraged more revolts, etc.

Finally, there were problems within the ruling family. Charlemagne's successor, Louis the Pious, was a weak king who let matters get out of control. He also followed the old Germanic custom of dividing the state among his three sons as if it were personal property rather than a responsibility. This division led to civil wars that ended with splitting the Frankish realm into three states: West Frankland (modern France), East Frankland (modern Germany), and Lotharingia, (modern Lorraine) in the middle. Because of its position between France and Germany, Lorraine remained a source of conflict between its neighbors into the twentieth century. Civil wars also forced the kings to give away more and more royal lands for military support. Soon those lands were parts of virtually independent states. And, as with the independent nobles and weakened economy, turmoil at court also invited invasions.

These invasions came from three directions. From the south came the Muslims who devastated parts of Italy and southern France with their raids. From the east came the Magyars, nomadic horsemen related to the Huns. Eventually they would be defeated and would settle down to found the kingdom of Hungary. Worst of all, from the north came the Vikings whose raids and invasions tore a good part of the Frankish state to pieces and nearly overwhelmed England. In 9ll C.E., the Viking chief Rollo gained recognition from the French king to rule what came to be called Normandy in return for military service to the crown. Of course, the Vikings, or Normans, were their own men and lived under the king's rule in name only. By 1000 C.E., France was a hopeless patchwork of some 55 virtually independent principalities. The king was the nominal ruler of all this, but in reality just the head of one of these many states. As a result, a new political order would emerge: Feudalism.

For nearly two centuries there was hardly a church in northern Europe that did not echo with the prayer: "Deliver us O Lord from the wrath of the Northmen".  While other peoples, notably the Arabs from the south and the nomadic Magyars (Hungarians) from the east, also raided and plundered Europe, it was the Vikings who wreaked the most havoc in the short run, but probably had the most positive long term effects on Europe.

Various forces launched the Vikings in their raids and voyages of exploration.  Two of these factors we have already seen: the decline of the Frankish Empire after Charlemagne's death which invited raids, and the overspending by the Arab caliphs which wrecked trade in the Baltic Sea and forced the Vikings to seek their fortunes through more violent means.  Another factor was a growing population of landless younger sons looking for fortune and adventure caused by a good climate (allowing more children to survive), and the Viking customs of polygamy (having more than one wife) and primogeniture (leaving the entire inheritance to the oldest son).

Two other remarkable factors were the Vikings' ships and their navigation techniques.  There were various classes of Viking ships ranging from the typical longship and the larger dragonships ( drakkar) to the stouter oceangoing hafskips (half ships).  However, they shared certain common characteristics that made them quite versatile.  They could hold up to 200 men in some cases, yet be sailed by as few as 15 sailors.  They were strong enough to handle rough seas, but were also light enough to sail up inland rivers and even be carried around river defenses.  Likewise, Viking navigation techniques, which were basically the product of a centuries' long oral tradition of sailors' lore, got them safely across open waters that other peoples of the time would never dream of sailing.  In our eyes, the Vikings were remarkable and fearless sailors.  In the eyes of many of their contemporaries, they were downright mad for making the voyages they did, which only added to their mystique.

Starting around 800 A.D., wave after wave of Vikings set out from Scandinavia either to raid their neighbors or explore new and more distant lands for the purpose of trading and settling there.  Viking raids created a feedback cycle by weakening their victims while also winning plunder and status, which encouraged more and larger raids, and so on.  As raiding parties increased in size, the Vikings would grow bolder and strike further inland by sailing up inland rivers or even seizing local horses to carry them and their plunder.  As repeated successes further increased the size of the raiding parties, the Vikings would establish winter bases rather than return home to Scandinavia for the winter.  Eventually these winter bases might become permanent settlements and the basis for the eventual conquest of the region.

Viking raids and conquests were accompanied by a good number of atrocities that reflected the Vikings' rough character, but were also designed to intimidate their victims.  The Vikings showed no special respect for Christian churches and monasteries.  In fact, those were generally their first targets, since the Church owned so much of the wealth in Western Europe at the time.  However, the Vikings were also great traders, not seeing trade and plunder as mutually exclusive, and combining these activities according to what the situation dictated or allowed.  As a result, they opened up trade routes, which helped start a revival of Europe's economy.

Ironically, considering all the chaos and destruction the Vikings brought with them, they founded some of the best-organized and most dynamic states in Western Europe.  In 911 A.D. they founded Normandy as a virtually independent state in western France.  Having established a well-run government there, they spread out to conquer England in 1066, laying the foundations for that modern nation.  They also gradually conquered Southern Italy and Sicily in the eleventh and twelfth centuries and set up strong state there just as they had in Normandy and England.  Some of these Normans later joined the First Crusade and conquered Antioch in Syria, holding it for nearly two centuries.

Other Vikings (known as the Rus) struck eastward and founded the first Russian state centered around Kiev.  From there, they raided the Byzantine Empire.  Later, Byzantine missionaries followed them back to Russia, bringing with them Christianity, Byzantine architecture and the Cyrillic alphabet, all of which became vital elements of Russian culture.

The Vikings were also fearless explorers.  To the west, they founded a state in Iceland, continued across the Atlantic and discovered Greenland and North America.  However, Greenland's climate proved to be too harsh to support even the Vikings, while attacks by Native Americans called "Skraelings" (screechers) made settlements there also short-lived.  However, the rest of Europe was not ready to absorb these new discoveries, and they were forgotten for nearly 500 years.

England followed a somewhat different course of development from the countries on the continent.  Being separated from the rest of Europe by the English Channel certainly made it harder to keep in touch with the continent, especially during the Dark Ages.  By the same token, the Channel generally has also made it harder to invade England, although that did not seem to be the case against Viking raids and invasions.

After the departure of the Roman legions in the early 400's, the Romano-British population probably carried out resistance against the invading Angles, Saxons, and Jutes (known collectively as the Anglo-Saxons).  This resistance is very likely reflected in the legend of King Arthur.  However, the Anglo Saxons eventually conquered Britain in the 400's and split it into 7 competing kingdoms known as the Heptarchy.  For a brief time, one kingdom or the other might have the upper hand in trying to unite Britain, but the other kingdoms would gang up on that kingdom and restore the balance of power.  By 700, the Anglo-Saxons had been converted to Catholic Christianity, and English scholars, led by such men as the Venerable Bede, were in the forefront of European scholarship.  However, the advent of Viking raids in the ninth century would radically alter all that.

England especially suffered from the Vikings.  Being divided into seven independent kingdoms made it an irresistible target, and Viking raids on England were merciless.  Six of the seven Anglo-Saxon kingdoms were overrun, with only Wessex in the south, led by Alfred the Great (871-99), holding on grimly against the Northmen.  Alfred did three things to defend his realm against the Vikings.  First of all, he kept a standing army, with half of its soldiers on guard at any given time while the other half could tend their crops.  Second, he kept a navy to head off Viking invasions and raids before they could even reach English shores.  Finally, Alfred established fortified centers, known as burhs, to protect his people and their property from the Vikings.

These measures saved Wessex from Viking conquest, and Alfred and his successors were gradually able to take the offensive and reclaim a good part of England.  In a sense, the Viking raids were good for Anglo-Saxon England in two ways.  For one thing, they forced the Anglo-Saxons to build a strong state in self-defense.  For another thing, the Vikings eliminated the six Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms Wessex had been competing with before.  As a result, as Wessex retook one part of Britain after another, a single strong united kingdom replaced seven separate ones.  Also, it could more easily impose its own laws and customs on other Saxons, since the Vikings had eliminated the other Saxon kingdoms' laws and customs.  Probably reinforcing that trend was the Saxons' fear of the Vikings returning, thus making them more likely to submit to the rule of a strong king.  Therefore, the Saxon kings of Wessex could establish a much stronger state than would previously have been possible.

Besides their defense measures, Alfred and his successors did three other things to build a strong English state.  First of all, they set up royal officials, known as thegns and reeves, to administer the king's justice throughout his realm.  The second thing was to extract a loyalty oath from all Saxon freedmen under their rule.  In an age when oaths were taken especially seriously, this was important, since it made loyalty to the king more important than loyalty to any other lord or official.  Finally, the Saxon kings collected a permanent tax known as Danegeld.  This was originally tribute paid to the Vikings to keep them from raiding.  Later, it was used as a defense tax to support the army and navy, thus keeping England safe from attack.

In 973 C.E., a century after Alfred came to the throne, the Church anointed his descendant, Edgar, with oil as God's chosen king of all England.  Although the Vikings still controlled much of England under what was known as the Danelaw, this act showed the progress Wessex had made and the ambitions it had toward uniting all of England.  Also, by anointing the king as God's chosen, it marked the king as someone special in society and laid the foundations for the later doctrine of Divine Right of Kings.

These measures kept the Saxon state strong until Ethelred "the Unready"  (literally "No plan") came to the throne at the age of ten.  This triggered renewed Viking raids until the Danish king, Knut, conquered all of England.  As luck would have it, when Knut died, his sons fought for the throne, which allowed the Saxons to regain their independence and give the crown to another Saxon king, Edward the Confessor.

However, England was never far from some sort of Viking intervention.  In this case, it was the Norman duke, William, who, as a cousin of the childless Edward the Confessor, claimed the English throne when the Saxon king died.  When the Saxons chose another Saxon, Harold of Wessex, to succeed Edward, William gathered an army, crossed the channel, and crushed Harold's forces at the Battle of Hastings in 1066 in what would prove to be the last successful invasion of Britain.  Despite this, the Anglo-Saxon heritage would continue as the Normans would adopt many of the policies and institutions the Saxons had used to build their state in times of crisis.

Introduction: the "Second Rome"

When we study the Middle Ages, we tend to focus on Western Europe since it is the homeland of Western Civilization.  However, this gives us a distorted view of medieval history, for Western Europe was little more than a backwoods frontier compared to the real centers of civilization further east.  It is here that we are concerned with one of those eastern cultures, Byzantium, and its contributions to civilization. Cities provide the central focus of civilization, and no civilization seemed to center on a city more than Byzantine civilization did on Byzantium, or Constantinople as it was known after its refounding by Constantine in 330 C.E.

Constantinople's location at the narrow juncture between the Aegean and Black Seas was ideal for controlling trade between those two bodies of water as well as the trade routes that converged there to link Asia and Europe.  The city itself was blessed by nature, with water bordering two of its three sides.  This provided it with easy defense and an excellent harbor known as the Golden Horn.  The natural advantages of the city were further enhanced by human ingenuity.  The harbor was protected from invasion by a massive chain stretched across its entrance.  The landward side had a huge triple set of walls to protect it.  Down through the centuries, when all else failed, that chain and set of walls kept Constantinople safe from invasions.  Many times all that seemed to remain of the empire was Constantinople itself.  But as long as the city survived, the empire also survived to bounce back and recover its old territories.

Inside its walls, Constantinople contained some of the most marvelous sights in the civilized world.  Many of these reflected the Roman heritage that the Byzantines were carrying on: aqueducts, sewers, public baths, and street planning.  Other sights, in particular some 100 churches, reminded one that Constantinople was a very Christian city.  Still other sights reflected oriental influences: the bustling markets offering goods from all over the civilized world, the palace complex of the Boucoleon with its reception halls, mechanically levitating thrones, imperial gardens, and silk factories.  Much of the Byzantines' success in dealing with their less sophisticated neighbors was due to their ability to dazzle visitors with such wonders.

Turmoil, crisis, and the transition from Roman to Byzantine Empire (527-7l7 C.E.)

While we refer to the Byzantine Empire, people in the Middle Ages never lost sight of the fact that this was the eastern half of the Roman Empire that had survived the barbarian invasions of the fifth century C.E.  As a result, they called them "Romans".  Both the terms Byzantine and Roman have some truth to them.  They were the direct heirs of the Roman Empire and did carry on the remains of that empire for some 1000 years after the fall of the western half of the Empire.  However, for all intents and purposes, it became a predominantly Greek empire and culture as the Middle Ages progressed.  Its subjects spoke Greek, worshipped in what came to be the Greek Orthodox Church, and wore beards in the Greek fashion.  They even argued and fought over religion in much the same way the ancient Greeks had argued and fought over politics.

The turning point in this transition from Roman to Byzantine civilization came in the reign of Justinian I (527-565).  We have seen how this "last of the Roman emperors" tried to reclaim the Western empire.  In the process, he virtually wrecked the eastern empire with the high cost in money and manpower for his wars and tribute to keep the Persians quiet in the east.  Two other factors merely added to the damage: persecution of Monophysite heretics in Syria, Palestine and Egypt which alienated much of the population against the central government and bad luck in the form of a devastating plague which decimated the population.  When Justinian died, the empire may have looked strong on the map, but in reality it was exhausted and in desperate need of a rest. Unfortunately, rest was the last thing the empire would get.

The next two centuries would see the Byzantines constantly beset by waves of invaders coming from the north, the east, and the west.  The very fact that the Empire survived at all seems a miracle considering the troubles it endured.  In the West, the first wave of invaders, the Lombards poured into Italy in 568, only three years after Justinian's death, and set off centuries of fighting between themselves, Byzantines, Franks, and even Arabs.  The Byzantines did manage to hold onto Ravenna and Venice in the north and southern Italy and Sicily to the south.  However, except for those outposts, the Roman Empire in the West was gone.

A more serious threat to the empire's existence came from the east.  Around 600 C.E., the chronic hostility between Byzantines and Persians erupted into a titanic life and death struggle that would last a quarter of a century.  The Persians overran Syria, Palestine, and Egypt while the nomadic Avars in the north were rampaging through Greece and the rest of the Balkan Peninsula.  At the low point of the war, Constantinople was virtually all that remained of the empire in the east, and it had to withstand a siege by the combined Persian and Avar armies.  Fortunately, the stout walls of Constantinople held fast against the enemy assaults, and a new hero, the emperor Heraclius, emerged to save the empire.  Leaving Constantinople to defend itself, he struck deep into Persia to draw its armies away from his capital.  In a series of resounding victories, the Persians were crushed and the Byzantine Empire saved.  However, in the process, both empires had been thoroughly exhausted.

Unfortunately, right on the tail of this war a much more serious threat suddenly appeared.  The Arabs, united and inspired by their new religion, Islam, swept in like a desert storm, toppling Persian and Byzantine resistance like a house of cards.  The Persian Empire was subjugated in its entirety.  Meanwhile, the Byzantines watched as Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and North Africa all fell to the Arabs.  Not content with these conquests, the Arabs pressed on through Asia Minor toward the coveted prize of Constantinople itself.  Once again, the city's fortifications held out, and after a four-year siege, the invaders were driven back.  One reason for this victory was the use of a new secret weapon, Greek Fire, which sent the Arab ships into wild uncontrollable flames.  This chemical would be a mainstay of the Byzantine defense and a highly guarded state secret for centuries to come.  We still do not know exactly what was in it, although it was probably some sort of petroleum compound.

In 7l7 C.E., a new emperor, Leo III, from Isauria in southern Asia Minor, came to the throne.  The empire's situation at the time was not very hopeful, for another huge Arab army was descending on Constantinople.  As in times past, Byzantine fortifications and Greek Fire took their toll.  By the following spring, the Arabs were in full retreat.  This was the last time the Arabs would besiege Constantinople, and the end of this siege symbolized the beginning of a period of stabilization for the empire's frontiers and internal development.  Fighting would continue with the Arabs, but mainly in the form of sporadic border raids rather than massive invasions.

The Byzantines also faced serious threats in the north from both Asiatic nomads and their Slavic subjects whom they drove in front of them.  Two of these nomadic tribes, first the Avars, and later the Bulgars, waged relentless warfare on the Byzantines, mercilessly devastating the Balkan Peninsula in their raids.  The Balkans virtually dropped out of Byzantine control and the light of history for nearly two centuries as they were inundated with Slavic invaders.  To the north, a powerful Bulgar kingdom proved to be nearly as serious a threat as the Arabs for the next 350 years.  Eventually, the Bulgars would settle down, adopt Christianity, and even briefly be conquered by the Byzantines.  But for now, they were one more major problem to be overcome.

By 750 C.E., thanks to some astute diplomacy that turned their enemies against one another, perseverance in the face of disaster, and the fortifications of Constantinople, the Byzantines had survived, often against incredible odds, both foreign invasions and internal religious strive.  However, they had been stripped of all their lands except for Asia Minor, part of Thrace around Constantinople, Sicily, and parts of Italy.  And they were still surrounded by very aggressive neighbors.  No longer was it a Roman Empire in anything but name and a few Italian holdings.  From this point on, it was truly a Byzantine Empire.

Unfortunately, just as outside pressures from the Arabs were starting to ease, a cloud of religious controversy descended upon the empire.  The new issue, Iconoclasm, concerned the icons (religious images) the Church used to depict Christ and the saints.  The iconoclasts thought that the use and veneration of these images was idolatry.  The iconodules said icons were needed to instruct the illiterate masses in the teachings of Christianity.  Leo III and several of his successors were iconoclasts and moved to abolish this form of idolatry by seizing the icons and destroying them.

As one might expect in an era when religion was such a vital issue to both the individual and the state, Iconoclasm touched off some violent reactions from people attached to the icons.  Riots swept through the cities of the empire.  Relations were strained with the Church in Western Europe, which also defended the icons.  Palace intrigues and murders centered largely on the icon issue.  When an iconodule empress, Irene came to the throne (blinding her own son in order to seize power), she disbanded several of the best regiments of the army since their troops were mainly iconoclasts.  This, of course, damaged the empire's ability to defend itself and invited raids from its neighbors.  After over a century of this turmoil (726-843), the images were restored and the empire could pursue a more stable course undisturbed by major religious controversies.

The imperial centuries (c.750-1025)

The disturbances of the seventh and eighth centuries left a very different empire from the one that Justinian had ruled.  The most noticeable difference was that the empire was much smaller, having been stripped of Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and North Africa.  While this deprived the Byzantine government of valuable revenues, it also made the empire much more compact and easier to defend since it was now confined mainly to Asia Minor and the Balkan Peninsula.

The recent turmoil also made the Byzantine Empire a more ethnically, culturally, and religiously united realm.  The largely Aramaic speaking peoples and Monophysite "heretics" of Syria, Palestine, and Egypt were now under Muslim control.  This left a predominantly Greek speaking populace more or less united by the same religious views once the Iconoclasm struggle had settled down.  The empire may have been smaller, but it was also more cohesive.

The upheavals caused by two centuries of foreign invasions forced the Byzantines to adapt their society, government, and defenses to what seemed to be a continuous state of crisis.  There were five main factors that helped the empire revive.  First of all, after 750 C.E., the pressure from invasions let up somewhat, although it was still an ever-present menace.  Second, the Byzantines pursued an active policy of repopulating Asia Minor that had been devastated by the wars of the previous centuries.  The main policy they followed to this end was to take hundreds of thousands of the Slavic people who had overrun the Balkans and resettle them on the empty lands in Asia Minor.  These people were hard working industrious folk who became loyal subjects and excellent soldiers for the Byzantine state.  No single policy probably did more to revive the fortunes of the Byzantine Empire than this resettlement policy.

A third factor aiding Byzantine revival had to do with the administration and defense of the empire, which needed serious overhauling.  Back in the third century, Diocletian had created separate civil and military officials in his provinces to cut down on the possibility of revolt.  However, the constant threat of invasions faced by the Byzantines forced them to abandon Diocletian's system and create military provinces called themes run by military governors ( strategoi).  The emperors did cut down on the possibility of revolt somewhat by having the tax collectors answer directly to them.  This still left the governors enough power and freedom to defend their provinces.  The governors needed professional help in running the provinces, which was provided by an excellent civil service, possibly the best of any medieval state.

Given the high priority that defense should be given, it should come as no surprise that the Byzantine army also carried on the ancient Roman tradition of excellence.  However, the nature of the warfare the Byzantines faced, (usually quick hit and run border raids), differed considerably from the Roman style of warfare. As a result, the army's core consisted of highly mobile and versatile regiments of cavalry known as cataphracts.  The cataphract was heavily armed and could rely on shock tactics similar to those of western knights to drive back the enemy.  But he was also armed with a bow and could function as a horse archer when necessary.  The Byzantines also fielded light cavalry plus heavy and light infantry who were useful in different types of terrain, especially hills and mountains.  Recruitment was done according to village, each village being responsible for supplying a quota of peasants armed and ready for service.  This system was superior to that of Western Europe where the more troublesome and ambitious nobles were responsible for and in control of defense.

Another important aspect of Byzantine defense was the navy, since the empire contained so much coastline.  At its height, the Byzantine navy consisted of some 200 ships of the line called dromons.  These were galleys armed with rams as well as catapults or siphons for launching the deadly Greek Fire.  Unfortunately, the high expense of maintaining a fleet and the rebellious nature of the sailors caused the Byzantine government to neglect the navy from time to time.  Such periods of a weak navy allowed the resurgence of piracy and enemy navies, in particular those of the Arabs.

The fourth factor helping the Byzantines was their diplomacy and the fact that they were the only people of the Middle Ages who made a systematic study of their enemies and how they fought.  They produced several military manuals detailing precisely what formations, maneuvers, and tactics to use against the heavy knights of Western Europe as opposed to the mobile light cavalry used by their enemies to the north and east.  The Byzantines had to be more scientific about these matters because they were usually outnumbered by their enemies and had to rely on every trick or stratagem possible.

The first goal they generally pursued was to avoid a war if at all possible.  As a result, the Byzantines were very skillful in diplomacy, especially against the less sophisticated cultures to the west and north.  The first principle of Byzantine diplomacy was to turn two neighbors against each other and let them fight for Byzantine interests even though they might not realize they were doing just that.  Naturally the neighbors who were duped into this kind of behavior would be somewhat bitter about it.  Byzantium's neighbors, especially those in Western Europe, denounced the Byzantines as cowards for their strategies.  Even today the word "byzantine" is used to denote vicious intrigue.  However, looking at the Byzantines' situation, we can understand why their behavior and concepts of war and heroism differed so much from those of Western Europe.  When they had to fight, they did so very well.  But they were masters of conserving their meager human resources and relying on other methods to attain their goals.

Finally, such a well-run empire with a highly trained civil service, army, and navy, required a healthy economy to support it.  The invasions of the seventh and eighth centuries severely damaged the Byzantine economy. Most of its cities were reduced to little more than fortified strongholds to protect the surrounding peasants.  In spite of this, Byzantine wealth was legendary, especially to the relatively simple peoples surrounding the empire.  Such contemporary writers as Liutprand of Cremona tell of being thoroughly dazzled by the wealth and splendor of Constantinople.  The capital city was the crossroads of much of the trade of the civilized world at that time.

A ten per cent toll on all imported goods from this trade raised sizable revenues.  The government also kept monopolies on such goods as silk, grain, and weapons.  Furthermore, it kept tight control on all the craft guilds, strictly regulating their quality of workmanship, wages, prices, and competition.  As stifling to their economy as these measures may seem, they did protect the somewhat fragile industries and trade in the unstable period of the early Middle Ages.  As a result of this protection, Byzantine industries flourished and its goods were among the most highly prized and sought after in the Mediterranean.  Later, when trade and industry revived elsewhere, strict Byzantine controls would work against its people in more competitive markets.

The firm foundations of administration, defense, and economy laid by the Isaurian and Amorian dynasties (7l7-867) bore fruit under the Macedonian dynasty, which took the Byzantine Empire to the height of its power.  The century and a half from 867 to 1025 saw a succession of generally excellent emperors who maintained the stability of the empire internally while expanding its borders.  In 863, a major Arab invasion was annihilated at Poson, which set the stage for the steady advance of Byzantine armies against the Muslims.  Even Antioch, one of the five original patriarchates of the Church lost to the Muslims in the 600's, was recovered.  The Byzantines even had their eyes set on retaking the Holy Land and Jerusalem.  In the north, the emperor Basil II waged relentless warfare against the Bulgarians, eliminating their kingdom entirely, and earning the title "Bulgar slayer".  By Basil's death in 1025, the Byzantine Empire's borders extended all the way to the Danube River in the north and the borders of Palestine in the south.  The Byzantines were definitely the super power of the Near East, but after Basil II's death everything started going wrong.

Our debt to the Byzantines

Byzantine civilization created little that was new or unique, being largely absorbed in religious matters or copying the literary forms of ancient Greece.  However, in such an age of violence and confusion, the Byzantines did make invaluable contributions to civilization.  First of all, Byzantine missionaries spread Greek Orthodox Christianity and civilization northward. Eastern Europe, especially Russia, was heavily influenced by Byzantine architecture, religion, and the Cyrillic alphabet.  For example, the "onion domes" atop many Russian Churches testify to Byzantine influence.  Orthodox Christianity has also had a profound and lasting impact on the Russian people down through the centuries to the present day, even surviving and outlasting official discouragement from the communist regime that held sway for nearly 75 years.

Second, the Byzantines passed Greek civilization, in particular its math and science, on to the Muslim Arabs.  They in turn took the Greek heritage, added their own ingenious touches (such as the invention of algebra), and passed it on to Western Europe by way of Muslim Spain.  This helped lay the foundations of our own scientific tradition.

Finally, the Byzantines directly passed much of ancient Greek culture to Western Europe during the Renaissance.  Also, the Byzantines, just by holding back so many nomadic invaders from the East through the centuries, allowed Western Europe’s culture survive and develop in relative peace. Many writers from the West, hostile to the Byzantines for historical reasons discussed above, have downplayed and criticized the role the Byzantines have played in the history of our civilization.  This is unfortunate, since, during the Early Middle Ages in particular, the Byzantines did more than their share in the preservation and advance of civilization

The Byzantine Empire, much like the Roman Empire, faced a formidable array of external enemies.  However, it was largely internal decay which destroyed both empires.  The political and economic stability of the empire by 1000 A.D. led to two lines of development which combined to trigger a pair of interlocking feedback cycles that, in turn, eventually wrecked the empire.  First of all, there was the free peasantry upon which the government depended for taxes and recruits.  When the empire had been under constant attack, land had been a poor investment.  But once stability started to return in the eighth century, many nobles looked greedily upon the farmlands controlled by the free peasantry.  There was a constant battle as the nobles tried to get these lands and enserf the peasants.  The government, seeing the free peasantry as the backbone of its economy and defence, did what it could to defend them.  Basil II in particular fought long and hard to defend the peasants, but even he was unable to break the power of the nobles.

Secondly, and unfortunately for the peasants, not all emperors were strong or even concerned enough to defend the peasants.  This was especially true after Basil II's death in 1025 when the empire was at its height and a strong military seemed less necessary.  Therefore, a series of weak rulers with little military experience succeeded Basil.  During hard times, such as famine, nobles would take the chance to dispossess the peasants.  This wouild lead to the decline of the free peasantry and army, which in turn forced the state to rely more and more on expensive foreign mercenaries. This further increased the tax burden on the peasants, which caused more of them to lose their lands, leading to more reliance on mercenaries and so on.

This vicious cycle weakened the economy and tax base to the point where the Byzantines could not even afford to maintain their navy.  Therefore, they asked such rising Italian city-states as Venice and Genoa to fight their naval battles for them.  The price they paid was to lower and eventually eliminate the 10% import toll the Venetians and Genoese would normally pay.  This allowed them to undersell Byzantine goods, which lowered government revenues from trade as well as ruining the tightly run guilds of Byzantine artisans and craftsmen.  The even lower revenues forced the Byzantines to rely even more on the Italians, who then got an even tighter stranglehold on the Byzantine economy, thus repeating the cycle.

This also fed back into the first feedback cycle as the loss of money from lower tolls forced the government to raise taxes further and create an even greater burden for the peasants.  The combined effects of these cycles led to growing internal decay within the empire and growing tensions with the Italian city-states who were taking over more of the empire's trade.

Along with these processes, events elsewhere were closing in on the Byzantines in the tenth and eleventh centuries.  By 1070, a new and more aggressive enemy, the Seljuk Turks, had replaced the Arabs as the main Muslim threat to the Byzantines.  In 107l, at the battle of Manzikert, the Byzantines found out that, besides being expensive, mercenaries can also be unreliable.  The result was a disastrous defeat when their Norman and Turkish mercenaries abandoned them without even fighting, leading to the loss of part of the Balkans and most of Asia Minor, the very heart of the empire.  This, along with the declining economy described above, generated steady internal decay for the empire.

Desperate for help, the new emperor, Alexius I, made a plea to Western Europe for mercenaries.  What he got instead was the First Crusade, a religious war with the goal of taking Palestine and Jerusalem from the Seljuk Turks.  Alexius skilfully handled this wave of half civilized Westerners as they passed through his empire on the way to Palestine.  He even managed to use them to recover part of Asia Minor.  Alexius and his successors, John I and Manuel I did manage to stabilize the empire's frontiers and recover some ground.  Unfortunately, in 1176, Manuel and his army were ambushed and severely defeated by the Turks at the battle of Myriocephalum. The lands regained over the last century were lost once again, showing how hollow the Byzantine recovery actually was.

Meanwhile, in addition to the Italian stranglehold on the Byzantine economy, growing cultural and religious differences led to rising tensions between the Byzantine East and Latin West.  These tensions and the West's growing involvement in Byzantine affairs also helped lead to the First Crusade.

All the while, contact with the West kept growing, and with it friction between the two cultures.  As the Italian city-states' stranglehold on the Byzantine Empire's trade grew, so did hostility against Italian merchants, who numbered some 60,000 in Constantinople alone.  Cultural differences, such as how the two cultures carried on war and diplomacy, and a religious schism which split the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox Churches permanently in 1054, just added to the mutual animosity.  In the late ll00's riots broke out in various Byzantine cities, causing the massacre of numerous Italian merchants.

A major backlash came from Western Europe in 1204 when Venice directed the soldiers of the Fourth Crusade to Constantinople, which they stormed and brutally sacked.  A short lived Crusader state was set up but the Byzantines recaptured Constantinople in 126l.  However, irreparable damage had been done.  The Venetians still held strategic Aegean islands, and the Crusaders still controlled parts of Greece.  Furthermore, much of the wealth and splendor of Constantinople had been hauled off to Venice and Western Europe.

The energy and resources the Byzantines used in recovering from this blow would have been better spent in meeting a potent new threat from the East: the Ottoman Turks.  From 1300 onwards, the Ottomans steadily encroached on Byzantine lands in Asia Minor. In 1345 they crossed into Europe never to leave.  The Byzantine state crumbled piece by piece into a pathetic remnant of itself.  Finally in 1453, Constantinople, the last remnant of the old Roman Empire, fell to the Turks after a desperate and heroic siege.  With that siege went the last remnants of the Roman Empire.