The Emergence of Europe

Tonic:; in This Chapter The M erovingian Kingdom: Europe's Nucleus The Franks' Neighbors The Carolingian Era Retrenchment and Reorga nization The Culture of Euro pe's Dark Age The Emergence of Europe ' :i • • , : ;'1' l i' :. ~ . r, ',r ; ; ~ vr:p p :.,.. , tn , ~ .. '!; ':";; '.J!-',., c;.,'".." Lde (ITr:liill Imnagne O u e s t i o n How did Europe build on its legacies from the ancient world? The explanation Einhard (c 770- 840) gave for his decision to pen an account of the life of his king. Charlem agne. reveals how different his w orld w as from ours. In our abundantly documented age. It ISunthinkable that a man like Charlemag ne, who ruled mu ch of Europe, migh t be forgotte n Emhard. however. w as right to be concerned. He w as a member of Cila rleillagne's Inner Circle from 793 until the emperor's death in 814, but he had no infor mation about his subject's birth and youth. There we re no publi c record s, and no one w ho ' new CharlemaSjn (' as a hoy w as strll alive. Only a few years had passed, but already part oj the great n12I1l 's history w as lost. Unuel such CIrcumstances, even the me mo ry of extraor dinary events could fade qurcklv Tlus w orried Einbard, for he believed that his generation hitd w itnessed one of histo ry'Sturning pomts-i- the emergence of Europe as a world power. Although Emhard and hrscomemporanos had a very limited know ledge of history, the past was a potent force in their lives. No empero rs had reigned in the western half of the Roman Enl plre after the deposuion of Romulus Augustulus in 476, but on Christmas Day 800, the peo ple of Rome had ended a 324-year-long interregnum by reviving the imperial title and bestow ing It on Charlemagne. Charlemagne bore litt le resemb lance to Rome's previous emperors, and 208 210 Chapter 8 The Emergence of Europe 211 his lands w ere not coterminous w ith those of their empire. His domain extended from the Pyre Clovis and the Franks Clovis (c. 466-511) was about 10 years old when the last nees (the mountains between France and Spain) to the Oder River in eastern Germany and from the North Sea to Naples. Much of the territory that Rome had formerly governed, from western Roman emperor was deposed, and he was still in his teens when he succeeded his Spain in the w est across North Africa to Egypt and Syria in the east, had come under Muslim father as one of many Frankish tribal chiefs. His people lived near Tournai in Austrasia control. The Balkans, Greece, and Asia Minor w ere ruled from Constantinople, whose emper ("Eastern Lands"), a region between the Rhine and Somme rivers. Clovis's early campaigns ors' line of succession stretched back to the Roman Caesars. extended his power south beyond Paris to the Loire Valley. The Franks called this territory The Greeks coined the w ord Europe (perhaps from an Assyrian term meaning w est), Neustria ("New Lands"). Clovis pushed the Visigoths south to the Garonne River, elimi but they knew little about the region to wh ich it refer red. Much of the land that lay to the north and w est of Greece w as of peripheral importance to the civilized w orld even after the nated rival Frankish chiefs, brought much of Germany under ills control, and married to Romans added Gaul, Britain, and part of Germany to their empire. This changed following form an alliance with the Burgundians, whose kingdom lay on his southeastern border. the w estern empire's collapse. Rome's former northwestern provinces began to expand, Twodecades after Clovis'sdeath in 511, the Byzantine Emperor Justinian still dreamed coalesce, and develop a sense of identity. Their emerging self-awareness is reflected in the of regaining control of what had been the western Roman Empire . He succeeded in tem title that one of Einhard's colleagues , Alcuin (c. 737-804). bestowed on Charlemagne : Europae pater ("father of Europe"). porarily occupying Italy,but by then, much of western Europe was firmly established on Charlemagne believed that the great continental state he had created entitled him to the road to independence. This was thanks in large part to Clovis, who did more than con the prestige that the imperia l title conferred. His coronation was also meant to put the w orld quer territory. He helped unify a world that had been culturally fragmented by the events on notice that Europe w as emerging from the decline into w hich it had slipped in the fifth that brought down the western empire. Germans, such as Clovis's Pranks, constituted a century and w as asserting its claim to the civilization that w as Rome's legacy. Charle small minority of the population of the new lands their kings aspired to rule.Most ofGaul's magne's subjects we re culturally inferior to the ancient empire's other heirs, the Byzantines residents were Romanized Celts, Catholic Christian descendants of the subjects of the old and Muslims, but history more than vindicated Charlemagne 's confidence in his people 's fu empire. Religion was especiallyimportant to them , for their leaders were their bishops. The ture. Rightly or w rongly, Europeans w ould one day regard themselves as the sole guardians of Western civilization. clergy had inherited responsibility for Rome's civitates (the city-states that composed the When the Roman Empire broke up, w hat had been a politically unified territory with a ve old empire) when the empire's secular government crumbled. Clovis's Gaul was a loose as neer of common culture split into regions with ever more diverging identities . As distinctions sociation of regions headed by Catholic bishops from powerful aristocratic families, and between east and w est- and north and south-increased, shared traditions diminished, and German kings, like Clovis, had to come to terms with these native magnates. memories of common origins faded. Initially, the inhabitants of the lands along the eastern and This could be difficult for severalreasons. Some Germans, Clovis and the Franks among southern shores of the Med iterranean, the Byzantines and Muslims, did the best job of pre serving and building on the foundat ions laid by the ancient w orld. But by the end of the Middle them, were pagans who worshiped ancient tribal gods. Others, such as the Visigoths and Ages, the peoples who lived north and west of the Mediterranean had taken the lead (thanks Burgundians with whom the Franks competed for control of Gaul, were heretics-Arian in no small measure to help they had received from their eastern and southern neighbors) and Christians. The Catholic clergy despised the Arian faith as a perversion of their religion, but w ere poised to spread the West's civilization around the globe. Much of the modern w orld, they viewed pagans more positively as candidates for conversion. Clovis, therefore, had a therefore, has experienced Western civilization in a form mediated by Europe. Because Eu slight advantage in negotiations. Like Constantine a century and a half earlier, he under rope's physical and cultural environments w ere different from those of the ancient Med iter stood the political advantages of conversion, and like Constantine, he justified abandoning ranean region, Europeans had both continued and diverged from the legacies of the ancient world to create a version of its Western civilization appropriate to their context. his ancestral gods by claiming that the Christian God gave him victory in a crucial battle. The church , which welcomed him as its defender and patron, had much to offer him. It sup ported him in his wars with the Arian kings and helped him create a more effectivemonar chy by utilizing what was left of the imperial tax and administrative systems. The Merovingian Kingdom: Europe's Nucleus Many of the German tribes remained aloof from the peoples whose lands they oc cupied, but not the Franks . The conversion of the Franks made it possible for them to When the Franks, for whom France is named, first appeared in history, they were a gaggle intermarry with the Romano-Celts and join them in developing a common culture. of German tribes inhabiting the eastern bank of the lower reaches of the Rhine River. Em This required compromises on both sides. The Christian religion and Roman practice peror Constantine's father, Constantius I, settled some of them (the Salian, or "Salt altered some German traditions-particularly those governing marriage, the status of water,"Franks) in the Netherlands to create a buffer between the empire and wilder folk to women, inheritance, and property rights. Frankish customary law influenced courts the north. Some ofthe Franks who remained in the Rhineland (the Ripuarian, or "River;' and enforcement ofjustice-theprosecution and punishment ofcrime becoming a pri Franks) also entered Rome's service. In 406, after Honorius (r. 395-423) recalled Rome's le vate matter rather than the duty of the state. Government's function was primarily to gions to Italy to fight the Visigoths, the Franks tried to hold the Rhine frontier for the em restrain the vendettas that threatened to break out among quarreling families . Accused pire. Franks were part of the army with which the Roman general Aetius blocked the Huns' persons could clear their names by undergoing physical ordeals or by compurgation advance into Gaul in 451. Thirty years later, a Frankish chief named Clovis united his peo (that is, finding a number of individuals who would swear to their innocence) .

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