Download Germanic Kingdoms Unite Under Charlemagne

Germanic Kingdoms Unite Under
Charlemagne
Ch. 13.1
Essential Questions:
• What problems led to the eventual collapse of the
Roman Empire?
• What role did the Roman Catholic Church play in
providing stability to Europe after the fall of Rome?
• What role did Clovis, Charles Martel, Charlemagne and
Pope Gregory I play in helping to shape Middle Ages
Europe?
The Middle Ages
• Also known as the Dark Ages because this was when
Western Europe wasn’t the great learned place it was
under the Romans and wasn’t again until the
Renaissance.
• Also known as the medieval period.
• Also a period of great division among the powers and
kingdoms.
• Dates vary, but around 476-1453 (the fall of Rome to
the fall of Constantinople).
You’ll recall that when we last left the Roman
Empire, it was in decline, spurred largely by the
barbarian Germanic tribes that were invading
the empire.
• By the beginning of the sixth century, the damage was
pretty much done and the western Roman Empire was
no more.
• The invasions caused the following problems:
1. The Disruption of Trade
2. Downfall of Cities
3. Population Shifts
4. Decline of Learning
5. Loss of a Common Language
6. Decline of Infrastructure
1.Disruption of Trade
• Centralized Roman authority broke down and
with it went the protection of trade.
• Recall that during the Pax Romana, the
Empire was relatively safe. This enabled
widespread, and long-distance, trade and
commerce. Without that Roman power,
though, roads and trade routes were no
longer safe. Without trade and commerce,
the economy tanked.
2.Downfall of Cities
• Cities got a double-whammy. First, with the
trade disruption, cities were no longer the
vital economic centers they once were.
• Second, with the breakdown of central
Roman authority, cities were no longer
needed as centers of governmental
administration.
3.Population Shifts
• With the cities no longer the important
places they once were, people started
migrating into the country.
4.Decline of Learning
• The barbarians weren’t very good with the
fancy reading and writing.
• The Germanic languages started becoming
important, but they lacked a writing system.
• Important stuff was all in Latin, or more
likely, Greek. The science and philosophy of
the ancients started getting ignored. The
barbarians didn’t have much use for it
anyway.
5.Loss of a Common Language
• As the old Empire was divided up among the
different barbarian tribes, the Latin language
started evolving differently in the different
regions.
• The changes came partly from the
separation among the peoples as well as the
influence of the Germanic peoples living in
the particular areas.
• The dialects became the Romance
languages.
6.Decline of Infrastructure
• All the great public works fell into disrepair:
the aqueducts, the public baths, libraries,
arenas, etc.
• The barbarian overlords didn’t really destroy
them, they just didn’t see the need to
maintain them.
• In most cases, due to the lack of centralized
authority and tax collection abilities, they didn’t
have the means or money to maintain them
anyway.
• It didn’t help that these things were mainly
located in cities, which, as we have seen,
were largely abandoned.
The Church
• The Roman Catholic Church (remember the
split with the Greek/Eastern Orthodox Church)
was the one centralized institution that
remained from the Empire.
• It was also the only literate one.
• Since literacy was necessary for the practice
of the religion, the clergy was able to read.
• Provided some kind of stability in the chaos.
• Established monasteries
and convents where selfsacrificing monks and
nuns, respectively, lived.
• One monk, Benedict
wrote strict practical
rules of monasteries.
Such monasteries
became part of the
Benedictine order.
• The monks also
helped to maintain
ancient works in their
libraries and by
copying them.
The Beginnings of Feudalism (Ch.13.2)
• Without the centralized government, there was
no one entity responsible for taxing,
administering law and services, fielding a
military, etc.
• Instead, these responsibilities started falling to
local or regional nobles. They would give land
and/or titles to people (later known as knights)
who would in turn pledge their allegiance and
military skill to the noble.
• In turn, peasants worked the land, often as serfs
who were bound to the land.
• This replaced slavery which also largely
disappeared with the Empire.
Provide
money and
knights
Provide
protection and
military
service
King
Grants land
to
Nobles
Grants land
to
Knights
Grants land
to
Provide food
and services
Peasants
• So basically, feudalism was based
upon the rights and obligations that
one level had with another.
• With the lack of a centralized and
authoritative government and city or
town, the center of economic life in
the feudal system would become the
manor.
The Franks
• A confederation of various Germanic tribes that settled
in northern Gaul (France… Franks-France, see it?)
• Clovis I
• First king of the Franks, starting in 481.
• Through war and diplomacy, he united all the
disparate Frankish tribes under his leadership.
• He also converted from paganism (one source says
he worshipped Roman gods) to Roman Catholicism.
• This was a big step.
• Most of the other Germanic kings, if they were Christian at
all, believed in Arian Christianity. Arians believed that
Jesus was divine, but was a created creature and not equal
to God the father. He was inferior. This was a heretical
view.
• The conversion also created a new bond
between the Franks and the Roman
Catholic Church.
• The Franks become the defenders and
protectors of the Church.
• Also helped the strengthen ties between the
German conquerors and their Roman subjects.
• Clovis then proceeded to conquer the rest of Gaul
and unite it under him.
• From Clovis, the names Louis and Ludwig are
derived.
Pope Gregory I
• Pope from 590 to 604.
• Was born into a wealthy Roman patrician family in 540,
but by 575 had converted his properties into
monasteries.
• In 579, he became Pope Pelagius’s representative in
Constantinople.
• While there, he argued with the Eastern Orthodox
patriarch. The patriarch claimed that the saved
would be resurrected as incorporeal (non-physical)
souls, whereas Gregory countered that the physical
bodies would be resurrected, citing Jesus as a case
study.
• As pope, Gregory greatly expands the
political power of the papacy.
• The Lombards were attacking Rome. The Byzantine
emperor’s representative in the west (this was
shortly after Justinian’s time when the west was
reconquered by the Byzantines) refused to
negotiate. So Gregory negotiated for peace on his
own, essentially poking the secular authorities in the
eye. This established him as independent.
• He also appoints governors, raises armies, and acts
as a temporal authority.
• Interestingly, though Gregory established the papacy
as the central political power in Italy (and expanded his
influence elsewhere in Europe), he believed in a strict
division of church and state.
• The emperor, he thought, was God’s
representative and choice to rule in
temporal, secular matters. The pope was
God’s representative in spiritual matters.
And the two should be kept as distinct as
possible.
• The last sentence was the problematic
one.
Gregory is one of only three
popes given the title ‘the
Great.’
• Leo I, the guy who turned
Attila the Hun away from
Rome is one other.
• Nicholas I is the third.
The Franks again
• As we saw, Clovis united all of modern-day France
under his leadership by the time of his death in 511.
• He began the Merovingian dynasty of Frankish
kings.
• By 700, though, the king served mainly a ceremonial
function and the real political power lay with the
major domo – the mayor of the palace.
• In 719, the major domo was Charles Martel, aka
Charles THE HAMMER.
Ok, while still a great name, he was more like this:
• Charles extended Frankish territory.
• His main accomplishment, though, was at the
Battle of Tours in 732.
• The Muslims were unable to break into eastern
Europe due to the Byzantines. So they went in
another way.
• At this point, Muslims held Spain and one Muslim
leader sent a raiding party across the Pyrenees and
into France.
• They weren’t out to conquer territory on this
mission, they were just pillaging and getting loot
from the Frankish countryside.
• By the time of the battle, the Muslims had already
accumulated significant booty which they had
already stashed and/or dispatched back to Spain.
• 80,000 Muslims (some modern historians claim it
was closer to 30,000) engage 30,000 Franks under
THE HAMMER.
• The Muslims relied on heavy cavalry charges, armed
with lances and scimitars.
• The Franks were mainly
infantry armed with axes,
swords, and javelins.
• The Franks establish a
defensive square and dare the
Muslims to attack – they do.
• Repeated attack waves by the
Muslims fail to break the
defensive square. But they
get cut down.
• Some Muslims break off the attack when word gets
out that the Franks are raiding their plunder (it was
a ruse by Charles), so they go to protect it. The
other Muslims see this, think it’s a retreat and so
they run too. (Many a battle has been lost because
soldiers were more concerned with loot than with
defeating the enemy.)
• The Muslim general is killed in the process.
• After Tours, the Muslims never again
make a serious incursion across the
Pyrenees. The battle is thus hailed as stopping
Muslim conquests in the west, saving Western
Europe (which likely would not have been able to
stop a full-scale invasion that almost certainly would
have occurred had Charles lost), and saving
Christianity.
• It was also for this victory that Charles got his
nickname: THE HAMMER!
Pepin the Short
• Actually Pepin the Younger… the Short is a bad
translation.
• Charles Martel’s son and becomes major domo in 741.
• He thought he should be king so asked the pope to
decide who should be king: the guy with the title or the
guy with the power (de jure vs. de facto).
• Since the pope depended on the Franks for defense,
especially against the Lombards, he sided with Pepin
and declared him king. The Frankish nobles make it
official by electing him king (and to avoid the many
soldiers Pepin had on hand if they thought
differently).
• He becomes the first of the Carolingian dynasty.
Pepin. Not Short.
Charlemagne
• Pepin’s son Charles (henceforth known as
Charlemagne: Charles the Great) becomes king in 771.
• His contemporary biographer described him thus:
• Charles was large and strong, and of lofty stature, though not
disproportionately tall (his height is well known to have been seven
times the length of his foot); the upper part of his head was round,
his eyes very large and animated, nose a little long, hair fair, and face
laughing and merry. Thus his appearance was always stately and
dignified, whether he was standing or sitting; although his neck was
thick and somewhat short, and his belly rather prominent; but the
symmetry of the rest of his body concealed these defects. His gait
was firm, his whole carriage manly, and his voice clear, but not so
strong as his size led one to expect.
Prominent belly.
Short neck.
Yet pleasantly symmetrical.
• Charlemagne proceeds to conquer to the
east and south, taking on Germanic
tribes and Muslim forces, and greatly
expanding his territory.
• Also comes to the aid of Pope Hadrian by
conquering the Lombards in Italy who
were threatening papal lands in 773.
• Really comes to aid of Pope Leo III in
800.
• Leo III was from a commoner background
which annoyed Rome’s nobility who thought
only nobles should be pope. They accused
him of various crimes
• So a mob seized him and nearly put out his
eyes and cut off his tongue. They wind up
deposing him and imprisoning him in a
monastery.
• Pope Leo III manages to escape to
Charlemagne.
• Charlemagne doesn’t recognize the
deposition. He thinks no earthly power
can judge the pope, marches him back
to Rome, makes him swear an oath of
innocence of the crimes of which he
was accused, and then reinstates him.
• Shortly afterward, on Christmas day, Charlemagne
goes to St. Peter’s Basilica to celebrate mass. As he’s
praying, he raises his head to find Leo III placing a
crown on his head and repeating three times, “Hail to
Charles the Augustus, crowned by God the great and
peace-bringing Emperor of the Romans.”
• Leo III thus makes Charlemagne an
emperor, ostensibly the Roman emperor.
• That Leo III crowned Charlemagne is
significant. It indicated that the pope had
the power to dictate who would be ruler.
• Charlemagne seemed to want something like this,
but on his own terms and not by Leo. His
biographer says that had Charlemagne known what
Leo was going to pull, he wouldn’t have gone into
St. Peter’s to pray.
• Goes along with it anyway.
• For his part, this was Leo’s way of asserting
authority over Charlemagne, no matter how
powerful he was (he may also have been put out by
the humiliating public oath he was forced to swear
and so was sticking it to Charlemagne).
• At any rate, this precedent has far-reaching
consequences in European politics and royalty.
• The crown used continued to be used
in French coronation ceremonies up
until the late 1700’s when it was
destroyed during the French
Revolution.
• Interestingly, when Napoleon
became emperor of the French in
1804, he specifically crowned
himself, instead of the pope doing it,
in order to demonstrate the pope
was not his overlord.
• The act also creates conflict with Constantinople.
• At the time, the Byzantine ruler was an empress:
Irene. She took power when her husband died
and their son was too young to rule (she
eventually has his eyes put out when he attempts
a coup).
• Since there was no male occupant of the throne
in Constantinople, Leo III considered it vacant
and could therefore appoint Charlemagne to it.
• The Byzantines were outraged and thought
Charlemagne makes overtures to taking the
Byzantine throne, it goes nowhere and he
abandons the effort. The Byzantines continue
with their own emperors.
• This was also an outrage to the Byzantines
because under their system, the patriarch was
• Charlemagne makes a number of other
reforms. He consolidates power in
himself and away from the nobles. He
also spurs a new era of learning in
France.
• He dies in 814 and is buried in a cathedral in northern
France.
• According to the stories, when the vault was opened
in 1000, Charlemagne’s body was found seated on a
marble throne, crown on his head, scepter in hand,
dressed in his royal robes, and with the Gospels
opened on his lap.
• His body was moved a couple of times, but the remains
now reside in this casket.
The marble throne on which he was seated.
• In the 1700’s, they measured his
bones and found that he was about
6’4”.