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CENTURIES of CHRISTENDOM 500–1500 AD (Also Called Middle Ages) Centuries of Christendom

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CENTURIES of CHRISTENDOM 500–1500 AD (Also Called Middle Ages) Centuries of Christendom CENTURIES OF CHRISTENDOM 500–1500 AD (also called Middle Ages) Centuries of Christendom These centuries are called The Centuries of Christendom because this was when Christianity spread throughout Europe and came into its full flowering. EARLY CENTURIES OF CHRISTENDOM (500-1000 AD) The Roman Empire collapsed due to invasions by Germanic tribal peoples. Some of these peoples were: Goths who invaded Italy, Visigoths who invaded Spain, Angles and Saxons who invaded England. Zones of Cultural Expansion, 500-1500 AD One of our Eras of World History is called Era of Zones of Cultural Expansion. In Europe we can see how the zones worked. Roman culture spread out to Europe. Byzantine culture spread out to Russia, and Islamic culture spread to Spain, Sicily and Italy and all through the Middle East between 500 and 1500 AD. The actual fall of Rome itself occurred in 476 AD when Odoacer, a Germanic/Gothic general, invaded and deposed the last official Roman Emperor, Romulus Augustus. So this means, at that time, Germanic/Goths took over and assumed rule of Italy. When Odoacer took command of Rome in A.D. 476, he removed the powerless emperor Romulus Augustus. The Western Roman Empire lay like a skeleton fallen in its own useless armor. To Romans, it seemed the end of the world. All around the empire, there was war. Orientus, a Roman poet in the 400s AD, wrote: “See how swiftly death comes upon the world, and how many people the violence of war has stricken. Some lay as food for dogs; others were killed by the flames that licked their homes. In the villages and country houses, in the fields and in the countryside, on every road- death, sorrow, slaughter, fires, and lamentation.” Thus began a whole new pattern of life in Europe. The pattern of life consisted of Romanization of Germanic tribal peoples and a synthesis of Roman and Germanic cultures. This synthesis occurred in: Language Political Structure Religion Jurisprudence Architecture LANGUAGE LANGUAGE The Germanic peoples adopted many words from the Roman’s language which was Latin. They had never seen oranges, lemons, limes, and figs so they had no words for these Mediterranean fruits. So they adopted the Latin words directly into their languages. The Germanic peoples also took military words from Roman military organization and technical engineering vocabulary from Latin because Romans had been so involved building roads, aqueducts, and basilica. They took Latin poetry and epics and Roman literature became models for writers in what later became French, Italian, Spanish, German, and English. POLITICAL STRUCTURES MERGED The political structure which developed in the Early Centuries of Christendom was called Feudalism. Feudalism was a synthesis between Germanic peoples’ rural way of life in forests and mountains and Romans’ way of life on the latifundia. Germanic peoples didn’t build cities; they preferred smaller settlements in hamlets and villages. When Roman cities were destroyed due to barbarian invasions, all that was left of the Roman empire were latifundia, the large, self-sufficient plantations Romans had built. So the combination of the Germans rural way of life and the Roman latifundia gave rise to a new decentralized political structure which was called Feudalism. Feudalism lasted for hundreds of years. RELIGIONS COMBINED Christian missionaries from the Roman Empire sought to convert Germanic peoples they called “pagans”. They wanted broad-based support from them so they tried to fuse their beliefs with pagan practices. Christian shrines were built on Gothic and Celtic sacred places, mountains, rivers, and forests. The festival of Christmas celebrating the birth of Jesus on December 25th was originally a festival celebrating the birthday of the Sun God of the Cult of Mithras. This cult had a meal at midnight and Christians continued this practice calling it Midnight Mass. Christian missionaries like Ulfilas and Boniface went out to convert Germans. One of their strategies was to make Christian saints coincide with pagan heroes and gods make worship rituals and ceremonies blend the best elements of both cultures. They often build Christian churches on the same mountains and in the same forests where pagans had constructed shrines to their gods. When St. Patrick went to convert the Irish he built on spirits Irish people already believed in. St. Bridget had originally been a fertility goddess who tended an eternal flame and finally she ended up a Christian saint. These conversions show people overcame linguistic, cultural, and political differences in the interests of cross- cultural interaction. Not all conversions were easy. Some pagan tribes “not yet cleansed” resisted attempts to convert to Christianity. In one famous incident, Boniface encountered resistance among German pagans. So he felled one of their sacred oaks to show he was serious. He then used wood from that oak to build a chapel for a monastery on that site. In some areas harsh measures were used to convert and pagans were told if they did not agree to be baptized, bury dead in the ground, give up meat during Lent, and renounce their pagan rituals, they would be hanged, beheaded, drowned, or burned at the stake. In the 700’s AD Saxons were converted “partly by wars, partly by persuasion and partly by gifts.” “The fierce necks of the Saxons finally bowed to the light yoke of Christ, although coerced.” Jurisprudence (Law) Jurisprudence in Europe was more influenced by Roman culture than German culture. When Christians began converting pagans they used Roman language (Latin), Roman law, and Roman administration to set up a structure. This structure consisted of an administrative hierarchy with the Pope in Rome as its head and bishoprics, dioceses, and village priests as elements of the hierarchy. The Roman Catholic Church also had its own courts called curia and its own laws called canon law. The Eastern Roman Empire came to be the The Byzantine Empire It was when Emperor Constantine created a second capital of the Roman Empire in 330 AD that the Byzantine Empire really began. The large, cosmopolitan city which used to be called Byzantium was renamed Constantinople. Ethnographically, the Roman empire had never been a single unit. There were Greeks, Bulgars, Dacians, Slavs, Armenians, Egyptians, etc. Although the Western Empire collapsed in 476 AD, the Eastern empire survived and endured for about another thousand years with its capital at Constantinople. From 450 AD onward, rulers of the Eastern Empire in Constantinople were patriarchs, crowned by the Eastern Orthodox Church. The Roman Catholic Church had begun to split into two sects due to decisions by Church councils and use of Greek in Eastern churches and Latin in Western Churches. By 1054, the two sects officially split. The two sects differed in Authority Figure (Pope in Rome, Patriarch in Constantinople and in each state), Rites (Eastern had more ceremonies and worshipped icons as symbols of the divine), and Teachings (Eastern believed in clerical marriage, didn’t believe there would be a fire in Purgatory, didn’t believe Mary remained a virgin when she gave birth to Jesus, and didn’t believe Mary ascended into Heaven.) Emperor Justinian of Eastern Roman Empire, called Byzantine Empire 527-565 AD Theodora, Justinian’s wife Holy Sophia Eastern Orthodox Cathedral Some Eastern Orthodox faithful were iconolaters while others were iconoclasts. Life on Medieval Manors in Western Europe Social Classes • Kings (crowned and anointed “by the grace of God”) • Nobles (loyal to king, but dominant on fiefs) • Vassals (loyal to nobleman on manor) • Serfs A feudal ladder was formed, with a set of relationships from serfs to king with contractual, loyal relationships. This social structure became the basis for social hierarchies in Europe which became entrenched and acquired the prestige of tradition. Endemic Warfare • Warfare occurred between kingdoms and between nobles across the various regions • Knights swore to defend the king (or lord) only 40 days a year, so warfare was part-time. Hierarchy and unity of command, seen in many armies, did not exist. Warfare often consisted of single battles, no clear strategies, and a lack of discipline. • The knights’ military values of defending personal honor and displaying courage in battle were linked to Christian values of truthfulness, mercy, and loyalty. These values, taken together, came to be known as the code of chivalry. Because this code was connected with Christianity, it was taken seriously. Knights were supposed to defend the weak and be generous to the poor. In this code lay the roots of international law as church clergy tried to enforce it. • Over the centuries medieval warfare has been romanticized, glamorized, and stereotypes hardened into fact. In Medieval Warfare • Violence and carnage were commonplace. • After battles, villagers looted corpses and ate horses • Injured knights were left to die of infections • Falls from mounts resulting in back injuries were often fatal • Combatants, left on fields, bled to death or died from shock and overexposure. • The victor sometimes mercifully returned to the battlefield to kill those injured, but still alive. Peacemaking • It could be that the Middle Ages, more than any other period, shaped modern peace principles and practices. • The fusion of Roman and Germanic peace traditions brought compromises: Romans offered Germanic peoples land and citizenship in exchange for taxes, military service, and non- aggression pacts. During Germanic festivals, Edward Gibbon in his famous book The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire said: “The sound of war was hushed, quarrels suspended, arms laid aside, and the restless Germans had the opportunity to taste the blessings of peace.” • The conversion of the Germanic peoples to Christianity was a unifying force. Christian kingdoms had reciprocal obligations, mutual recognition, and investiture by popes and bishops which gave the people much in common and brought stability and order.
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