Download The Middle Ages

• Historical Situation…
• Your Task: Today you will complete four
tasks in order to help you create a new
kingdom. As you finish each task, bring
them to me to get your next task…
• What do you think this activity simulated?
– Why do you think my grammar became
progressively worse?
– Why do you think the emphasis was
continually placed on safety & security?
• Constituted by the years between Classical
Antiquity and the Modern Era
– End of antiquity = collapse of Roman Empire
– The Renaissance ushered in the Modern Era.
– Roughly 500 until 1500 AD
– Also known as the Medieval Times
• Also known as Dark Ages (500-1000AD)
• Scholars named this as a time when the
forces of darkness (barbarians)
overwhelmed the forces of light (Romans)
• After the fall of Rome, Western Europe
was left with a
• power vacuum
 a condition that exists when someone
has lost control of something and no one
has replaced it
• Government- No single power of authority
– Several Germanic tribes formed a patchwork of
small kingdoms that are governed by kings
– Difficult for the kings to maintain control
– Rise in power of the Catholic Church
• Economy- Breakdown in trade
-- Led to bartering
-- Cities no longer centers for markets
-- Money is scarce
• Cultural Aspects– Germanic societies dominated
• Germanic customs followed
• Illiterate society
– Population Declines
• Decline by about 20%
• Increase in people moving from cities to rural areas
– Reading, writing, and art begin to disappear
• Latin changes
• Local vernaculars with German elements develop
•The Franks came into Gaul fighting some
of the other Barbarians
•They pushed the other Barbarians out and
divided into many tribes of Franks, each
with their own king
•Merovich was one of the leaders of the
tribes of Franks and began his kingdom
• Clovis becomes the
most important ruler
of the Merovingian
Dynasty
• Considered to be the
founder of the French
state
• Ruthless ruler
– Murdered any relative that
might have claim to the
throne
• Converts to
Christianity to help
unify his kingdom
– Clotilda, his wife, was a
convert
• Clovis died in 511
• Kingdom was divided among his four
sons
– Causes weakness
– Not able to establish control
• Clovis’ sons were mainly ineffective
– All the kings after them too
• The Merovingian kings became known as
the Do- Nothing Kings
• After a series of ineffective “do-nothing
kings”, a new position takes charge
• Mayors of the Palace
– Been the power behind the throne for many
years
– Job was to keep the Merovingian king on the
throne
– This position was passed from father to son
• Charles Martel (a.k.a. Charles the Hammer)
becomes Mayor of the Palace in 714 C.E.
– Consolidated military control over regions of the
kingdom
– Gave land acquired to the Church and established the
close relationship between the church and the state that
continued into the 20th century
– Defeated the Muslim invasion force in 732 at the
Battle of Tours
• Battle of Tours
– Significant victory for
Christianity because it
stopped Islamic invasion
from spreading any further
than Spain
– Charles used this victory
to help him establish his
sons to be the first
Carolingian king of the
Franks
• Was the son of Charles Martel
• Sought pope’s approval to
take the throne from the
incompetent Merovingian king
– Pope granted this
– Pepin unites all of Gaul under one
• When Pepin died, he
divided his kingdom
between his two sons
– Carolus (Charlemagne) &
Carolman
• In 768, at age 26, Charlemagne (a.k.a. Charles the
Great) and his brother Carloman inherited kingdom
of the Franks
• In 771 Carloman died, and Charlemagne became
sole ruler of the kingdom
– Franks falling back into barbarian ways, neglecting
education & religion
– North: Saxons were still pagans
– South: Roman Catholic Church fighting to recover land
confiscated by barbarian Lombard kingdom in central Italy
• Europe was in turmoil!
• 772 he launched a 30-year military campaign to
reunite Europe and bring order
–
–
–
–
Defeated Lombards (in present-day northern Italy)
The Avars (in modern-day Austria and Hungary)
Conquered Bavaria and the Slavs (Germany)
782 (Massacre of Verden) Charlemagne slaughtered
some 4,500 Saxons
• Forced Saxons to convert to Christianity, declared that
anyone who didn’t get baptized or follow other Christian
traditions be put to death
• HARSH!
• For his help defeating
the Lombards and
driving them out of
papal lands, Pope Leo
III crowned
Charlemagne “ Holy
Roman Emperor on
Christmas Day in 800
in Rome .
• 800 Charlemagne
undisputed ruler of
Western Europe
• Established central
government over
Western Europe,
thereby restoring unity
of the old Roman
Empire and paving
the way for the
development of
modern Europe
Pope Leo III crowned
Charlemagne emperor of the
Romans on December 25, 800,
at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.
“It was at the time he
received the title of
emperor and Augustus,
to which at first he was
so averse that he
remarked that had he
known the intention of
the pope, he would not
have entered the church
on that day.”
—Einhard
Yes, I know I am
GRRREAT! Look at
this crown on my head!
He’s GRRREATT!
• Changed Europe then and for hundreds of
years after
– Conquests
– Relationship with the Church
– Government
– Cultural Developments (Carolingian
Renaissance)
• Controlled more land than other Frankish
king.
– Realm encompassed France, Switzerland, Belgium, &
Netherlands
– Included half of present-day Italy and Germany, & parts
of Austria, Spain.
• The land he acquired affected European
politics throughout the medieval years and
into modern era
• Gave him prestige
• When Pope Leo crowned Charlemagne, it sealed
the deal that papacy approval was needed for
kings for hundreds of years
• Marks the arrival of a new inheritor of Rome and
a competitor to the Byzantines
– The inheritor would be the Holy Roman Empire
• Marks the emergence of Western Christian
society
• Created new offices or adapted old positions
to maintain his kingdom.
– Counts
– Dukes
– Missi Dominici (servants of the lord) -like government spies
• Created books of law that were published
and enforced
• Recognized that learning in his day was in
disrepair, and he deliberately gathered the
leading intellectual lights of his age at his
court
– Many of the intellectuals came from monasteries
– Kept learning alive by copying books
– Almost 90% of the works of ancient Rome that we
possess exist in their earliest form in a Carolingian
manuscript, and almost nothing that survived up to
800 has subsequently been lost
• Three grandsons proceed to fight and
weaken the empire
• Invading Vikings demolish the efforts of
Charlemagne
– Vikings: skilled sailors and tough warriors who
came from Scandinavia