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CHAPTER 9
The Kingdoms of Western Europe, 500–1000
CHAPTER OUTLINE
I.
II.
Regional Rule, Local Views, 500–750
A. Kingship and Rule in Merovingian Gaul
1. Frankish kings were not interested in ruling or overseeing the welfare of ordinary
people; they sought only to increase their land and wealth.
2. The ensuing chaos and instability suited the rulers because becoming a powerful
warlord depended on the absence of order.
3. The kingdom was the family estate, so the Merovingian kings conducted war against
family members; every time a king died, his sons fought each other for the wealth and
power their father had possessed.
B. The Iberian and Italian Peninsulas
1. There were conflicts between secular rulers and bishops in the Iberian and Italian
peninsulas.
2. In Iberia, Visigoth kings converted from heretical Arian Christianity to Roman
Christianity to placate the local bishops, but Muslims conquered both by 718.
3. Arian Christian Lombard rulers in Italy competed for civic authority with bishops,
especially the pope, who controlled central Italy. The Frankish kings in Gaul put an
end to the Lombard kingdom in Italy at the end of the eighth century.
C. The Decline of Trade
1. Merovingian warfare and political instability contributed to a decline in trade.
2. The commercial contact between East and West dwindled, and Muslim raiders in the
Mediterranean made travel and trade dangerous.
3. Long-distance trade routes from northwestern Europe shifted from Constantinople
(southeast) to the shore of the Mediterranean (north-south).
4. There were three effects of shifting trade patterns on western Europe: a decrease in the
quantity of luxury goods, a change from gold to silver coins, and a heightened selfsufficiency.
5. People produced most of their own food and clothing.
D. The Decline of Cities
1. The decline in trade resulted in a decline in the number and size of cities in western
Europe from the fifth to the tenth centuries.
2. City dwellers dispersed into the countryside, where their quality of life diminished, but
they could avoid marauding armies and grow their own food.
3. The rude living conditions, limited diet, and lack of personal hygiene in the West were
in strong contrast to the urban centers of Islam.
4. Urban life in the West began to revive, but at different times in different places.
The Western Church, 500–800
A. The Christianization of Northern Europe
1. Northern Europe became Christianized by sixth-century monks who walked tirelessly
across the land.
2. These monks received powerful support from royal women such as Bertha, the
Frankish wife of King Aethelbert of Kent.
3.
Boniface, a monk from the British Isles whom Pope Gregory II promoted to bishop,
converted Frisians, Hessians, and Thuringians in northern Germany, making it easier to
integrate them into the Christian Frankish kingdom.
B. The Bishops
1. In northern Europe, bishops resembled missionaries more than they did ecclesiastical
administrators.
2. In Gaul, Spain, and Italian cities, bishops were the caretakers of the medieval church
and also of early medieval society.
3. Powerful and wealthy bishops served in cities as key administrators and judges.
4. A bishopric or diocese, usually centered on a city with a cathedral that contained
sacred relics, had smaller administrative units called parishes that priests ministered.
5. Bishops grew rich through donations of land, tithes, and donations for commemorative
masses on behalf of dead family members.
6. Frankish kings felt they had the right to appoint bishops, which raised the question of
loyalty: did a bishop owe his loyalty to the church or to the layman who appointed him
to his office?
C. The Bishop of Rome
1. The bishop of Rome developed the papacy, or the pope’s court and staff, an
authoritative court of appeals.
2. Although Christians of the West viewed the pope as Saint Peter himself, Christians of
the East disputed his authority because Constantinople’s patriarch claimed at least
equality.
3. The archbishops of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem also had claims to apostolic
authority by virtue of the Apostles who worked and died in those cities.
4. The ambitious popes based their authority in the West on a forged document, the
Donation of Constantine. In this document, Constantine the Great, before leaving for
Constantinople, supposedly transferred authority over the church, central Italy, and the
secular rulers of the West to Silvester, the bishop of Rome.
D. Monasticism and Learning
1. In 525, to minimize conflict within monastic communities, Benedict of Nursia at
Monte Cassino developed the Rule of St. Benedict, emphasizing poverty, chastity, and
obedience; establishing a schedule of prayers, meals, and sleep; and calling for the
Divine Office that ensured the monks would recite the entire Bible at least once over
the course of a year.
2. Monks engaged in manual labor to support themselves, but by 1000, monasteries were
self-sufficient, wealthy corporations engaged in agriculture, milling, mining, and
animal husbandry.
3. Monasticism provided many opportunities for men and women, including learning by
copying ancient works by Christian and non-Christian writers.
4. Monasteries provided sanctuary for widowed women and opportunities for spiritual
and intellectual growth not easily available in the lay world, although such a choice
could be involuntary: to avoid the high cost of providing a dowry, noble families often
compelled their daughters to become nuns.
III. Charlemagne and the Revival of Empire in the West, 700–900
A. From Mayor to King
1. Charles Martel and Pepin founded the Carolingian dynasty by displacing the weak
Merovingian kings.
2. Charles Martel used his position as the major domus (mayor of the palace, a powerful
Merovingian court official), to gain control over the three Frankish provinces of
Neustria, Austrasia, and Burgundy, and territory east of the Rhine River.
3.
In 750, Pepin wrote to Pope Zacharias, who had Frankish bishops consecrate Pepin as
king in place of the Merovingian king. Pepin retired the Merovingian king to a
monastery.
B. From King to Emperor
1. After gaining his brother Carloman’s half of the Carolingian lands, Charlemagne
removed the Lombard ruler in northern Italy and proclaimed himself king of the
Lombards in 774.
2. Three factors created this imperial possibility
a) Pepin’s taking of the title of king from the Merovingian family, which created a
different understanding of kingship as transferable.
b) The diminished eastern empire, including its rule by the woman Irene, opened the
idea of restoring the western emperor.
c) A relationship of mutual support between the Carolingian kings and the pope.
3. In 800, Charlemagne restored Pope Leo III and the pope crowned him as emperor.
C. Imperial Rule in the West
1. Charlemagne’s imperial rule established ministerial kingship: the ruler ministering to
Christian society by defending the church, bringing justice, and gaining the loyalty of
his subjects.
2. Charlemagne delegated his authority to royal officials or counts, rewarded through
land, although the missi dominici (royal emissaries) were hard pressed to keep power
from slipping away to local rulers.
3. Charlemagne was committed to intellectual and religious studies.
a) He worked to improve the standard of literacy among the clergy and laypeople of
high social status.
b) He sponsored the establishment of schools, including his palace school, directed
by Alcuin of York, who revived the study of seven liberal arts (grammar, logic,
rhetoric, arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy).
c) He developed a program for copying manuscripts, which included a reform in
script that increased legibility.
D. The Partition of Charlemagne’s Empire
1. Charlemagne’s empire fell to subdivisions among his descendents, including his son
Louis, who foolishly allowed Pope Stephen V to crown him in Rheims in 816,
establishing the precedent of papal coronation of western emperors.
2. In the Treaty of Verdun on 843, his sons agreed to partition the empire into three
segments.
a) Charles claimed the western portion, corresponding roughly to modern France.
b) Lothar claimed the central portion, which included the Low Countries (today
Belgium and the Netherlands), the French provinces of Burgundy and Provence,
and Italy.
c) Louis claimed the eastern portion, which was the basis of the Holy Roman
Empire and Germany.
3. The treaty did not prevent warfare for greater territory and wealth.
IV. Order and Disorder in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries
A. Lords and Vassals
1. Feudalism involved a fief (grant of property) from a lord to a vassal in exchange for an
oath of fealty obligating him to provide military support to the lord for forty days a
year.
2. Subinfeudation (secondary grant of fiefs) led to complications for nobles who swore an
oath of fealty to multiple lords if they went to war against each other.
3. Feudal armies were unreliable, and they often made cash payments instead of
performing their military service.
4.
B.
C.
D.
In the ninth century, when the power of the kings dwindled, nobles dispensed justice,
kept tax money, and had militia armies in their fiefdoms.
Peasants and the Manor
1. The population of western Europe was 98 to 99 percent peasants.
2. The peasants worked certain fields whose harvest the lord retained entirely, called
desmesne.
3. In addition, peasants who lived on the manor were required to turn over a portion of
what they grew for themselves to the lord and a portion to the church.
4. Some peasants were serfs, who were not considered to be free, and they belonged to
the manor, not to the lord.
5. The bailiff stood at the top of the peasant society, overseeing the work of the peasants
and serfs.
Saracens, Vikings, and Magyars
1. Saracens, Vikings, and Magyars threatened western Europe with ferocious raids.
2. Eventually, the Vikings began to settle near the places they regularly raided in
England, Normandy, and Kiev (the Rus).
3. Magyars raided northern Italy and then settled in the Danube Valley and Ukraine.
The Empire Under Otto
1. When Otto I, king of the eastern Franks, defeated the Magyars in 955, he became
Emperor Otto the Great.
2. In 962, Pope John XII crowned Otto emperor in Rome.
3. Otto convened church councils and synods and appointed bishops, abbots, and
archbishops in his lands.
4. His empire consisted of provinces ruled by dukes, who made oaths of fealty to the
emperor. When dukes died, Otto often replaced them with bishops.
5. Rebellious dukes remained a problem for Otto I, his son Otto II, and his grandson Otto
III.