Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages: Creating a New
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KAGAMC06_170-201-hr 4-03-2009 17:25 Page 170 This illustration from a fourteenth-century “Life of the Prophet” shows Muhammad’s fami- ly: his daughter Fatima, her husband Ali, and Muhammad’s father-in-law Abu Bakr travel- ing together. Muhammad himself is not shown because like God he cannot be portrayed in Islamic art. Hence, whenever Muslims travel, Muhammad is in their midst but cannot be seen with the naked eye. The New York Public Library/Art Resource, NY 6 Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages: Creating a New European Society and KEY TOPICS • The collapse of the Western Roman Empire and the Culture (476–1000) resulting fusion of Roman and Germanic culture ▼ On the Eve of the Frankish Ascendancy • The Byzantine and Islamic Germanic Migrations • New Western Masters empires and their impact on the West ▼ The Byzantine Empire The Reign of Justinian • The Spread of Byzantine Christianity • Persians and Muslims • The role of the church in ▼ Islam and the Islamic World Western society during the early Middle Ages Muhammad’s Religion • Islamic Diversity • Islamic Empires • The Western Debt to Islam ▼ Western Society and the Developing Christian Church • The political and economic features of Europe under Monastic Culture • The Doctrine of Papal Primacy • The Religious Division of Christendom the Franks ▼ The Kingdom of the Franks: From Clovis to Charlemagne Governing the Franks • The Reign of Charlemagne (768–814) • Breakup of the Carolingian Kingdom • The characteristics of feudal society ▼ Feudal Society Origins • Vassalage and the Fief • Daily Life and Religion • Fragmentation and Divided Loyalty ▼ In Perspective 170 KAGAMC06_170-201-hr 4-03-2009 17:25 Page 171 CHAPTER 6 ■ LATE ANTIQUITY AND THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES 171 CHOLARS INCREASINGLY VIEW the six centuries cestors among the ancient Trojans of Greek myth and Sbetween 250 C.E. and 800 C.E. as a single world Homer’s Iliad. (See Chapter 2.) bounded by the Roman and Sassanian (Persian) empires, In Late Antiquity, these various peoples and their re- spreading from Rome to Baghdad. Embracing Late An- ligions borrowed from and bumped into each other for tiquity and the early Middle Ages, this epoch saw the several centuries, as the ancient world evolved into the Western and Eastern (Byzantine) Empires of Rome alter- medieval. In government, religion, and language, as well nately decline and recover, separate and mingle, while as geography, the Christian West ultimately grew apart never succumbing culturally to barbarian and Muslim from the Byzantine East and the Islamic Arab world. Al- invaders. In the East, Rome’s provinces were deeply though divided by states and cultures that became in- penetrated by an enduring Iranian dynasty, the Sassa- creasingly rigid and competitive over time, the world nians, who came to power in Persia and Mesopotamia these peoples inhabited between 250 C.E. and 800 C.E. in the third century C.E., overthrowing the Parthians was also a cohesive one, a world together as well as a and creating a powerful empire. In doing so, they laid a world moving apart. sure foundation for a later Muslim empire in the Mid- dle East. During the reign of the Sassanid king Khosro I Anushirvan (r. 530–579), a contemporary of the Byzan- tine emperor Justinian (r. 527–565), this new Persian ▼ Empire, like its Byzantine counterpart, attained its cul- On the Eve of the tural and military peak. But decades of warfare ex- Frankish Ascendancy hausted both empires, and by the mid-eighth century, the Arab conquests had extended Muslim influence As we have already seen, by the late third century, the across the Middle East and North Africa into Europe Roman Empire had become too large for a single emper- and eventually as far as northern Spain. or to govern and was beginning to fail. (See Chapter 5.) Meanwhile, in Western Europe, the Merovingian The emperor Diocletian (r. 284–305) tried to strengthen and Carolingian Franks were weaving their own Ger- the empire by dividing it between himself and a co- manic barbarian heritage together with Judeo-Christian emperor. The result was a dual empire with an eastern religion, Roman language and law, and Greco-Byzantine and a western half, each with its own emperor and, even- administration and culture to create a Western civiliza- tually, imperial bureaucracy and army. A critical shift of tion of their own. The reign of Charlemagne (r. 768–814) the empire’s resources and orientation to the eastern half saw a modest renaissance of classical antiquity. The pe- accompanied these changes. In 284, Diocletian moved culiar Western social and political forms that emerged to Nicomedia (in modern Turkey), where he remained at this time—the manor and feudalism—not only coped until the last two years of his reign. As imperial rule with unprecedented chaos, but proved also to be fertile weakened in the West and strengthened in the East, it seedbeds from which distinctive Western political insti- also became increasingly autocratic. tutions were in time to grow. Diocletian’s reign was followed by factional strife. His eventual successor, Constantine the Great (r. Late Antiquity The centuries before and after the 306–337), briefly reunited the empire by conquest (his fall of Rome (476) were thus a vibrant period of self-dis- three sons and their successors would divide it again) covery and self-definition for all of the above peoples. and ruled as sole emperor of the eastern and western Many scholars have called this period—between the halves after 324. In that year, he moved the capital of end of the ancient world and the birth of the Middle the empire from Rome to Byzantium, an ancient Ages—Late Antiquity (250–800 C.E.). It witnessed a Greek city that stood at the crossroads of the major new appropriation of ancient history by Jews, Chris- sea and land routes between Europe and Asia Minor. tians, Muslims, and pagan Germanic and eastern Here, Constantine built the new city of Constantino- tribes, each of which competed for their roots in the ple, which he dedicated in 330. As the imperial resi- past (from which they drew authority) and their place dence and the new administrative center of the in the future (where they would exercise power). In the empire, Constantinople gradually became a “new process, each appropriated the best features of the Rome.” The “old” Rome, suffering from internal po- other. The Jews had long adopted the attractive myths litical and religious quarrels and geographically dis- of the ancient Mesopotamians and the Christians the tant from the crucial military fronts in Syria and along biblical prophecies of the Jews, while the Muslims sub- the Danube River, declined in importance. The city of ordinated both the Jewish and Christian scriptures to Rome and the Western empire were already in decline God’s final, seventh-century revelations to Muham- in the late third and fourth centuries, well before the mad, the last of the prophets. The Christian Franks, barbarian invasions in the West began. Milan in north- the most eclectic and enterprising of all, claimed an- ern Italy had replaced Rome as the imperial residence KAGAMC06_170-201-hr 4-03-2009 17:25 Page 172 172 PART 2 ■ THE MIDDLE AGES, 476 C.E.–1300 C.E. in 286. In 402, the seat of Western government would fourth century, Roman frontiers had become too vast to be moved to another northern Italian city, Ravenna, a manage. Efforts to do so by “barbarizing” the Roman seaport on the Adriatic that was protected on the land- army, that is, by recruiting many peasants into it and ward side by impenetrable marshes. When the barbar- by making the Germanic tribes key Roman allies, only ian invasions of non-Roman Germanic and eastern weakened it further. The Eastern empire retained peoples began in the late fourth century, the West was enough wealth and vitality to field new armies or to in political and economic disarray, and imperial power buy off the invaders. The Western empire, in contrast, and prestige had shifted decisively to Constantinople succumbed not only because of moral decay and mate- and the East. rialism, but also because of a combination of military rivalry, political mismanagement, disease, and sheer poverty. Germanic Migrations The German tribes did not burst in on the West all of a sudden. They were at first a token and benign presence New Western Masters on the fringes of the empire and even within it. Before In the early fifth century, Italy and the “eternal city” of the massive migrations from the north and the east, Rome suffered devastating blows. In 410 the Visigoths, Roman and Germanic cultures had commingled peace- under Alaric (ca. 370–410), sacked Rome. In 452 the fully for centuries. The Romans had “imported” barbar- Huns, led by Attila—the “scourge of God”—invaded ians as servants, slaves, and soldiers. Barbarian soldiers Italy. Rome was sacked still again, in 455—this time by commanded Roman legions. the Vandals. Beginning in 376 with a great influx of Visigoths, or By the mid-fifth century, power in Western Europe “west Goths,” into the empire, this peaceful coexis- had passed decisively from the hands of the Roman em- tence ended. The Visigoths, accomplished horsemen perors to those of barbarian chieftains. In 476, the tradi- and fierce warriors, were themselves pushed into the tional date historians give for the fall of the Roman empire by the emergence of a notoriously violent peo- Empire, the barbarian Odovacer (ca. 434–493) deposed the ple, the Huns, from what is now Mongolia. The Visig- last Western emperor Romulus Augustulus. The Eastern oths ultimately reached southern Gaul and Spain.