The Empire of the Franks For the ancient world, the Mediterranean area was the center. Around the coasts of the Mediterranean - whether in , North Africa, Sicily, or Asia Minor - everywhere, people lived largely by the same political and social concepts. The Germanic tribes, who had moved into the western , didn't disturb this unity of the Greco-Roman culture. And when, in the seventh century, a completely new political power and culture appeared in the spread of Islam, the unity of the Greco-Roman culture was ended, but the Mediterranean remained the center. That changed when the Franks, under the leadership of Karl Martell, conquered the Arabs in 732 A.D. at Tours and in what is now western , and thereby laid the foundation for the rise of the Frankish Empire. Now there were three big political centers, and the tripartite division of the Mediterranean area was complete: along with the and the Islamic Empire appeared the new Frankish Empire. The center-point of the history of the world - which was, until the eighth century, the Mediterranean area - moved north, to central , the area north of the and east of the Rhein. But was that linked to a complete departure from the Roman and ancient heritage? What was new about this Frankish Empire, and back toward which traditions did its rulers reach? In order answer this question, we want to examine more closely the rise of the Frankish Empire, and above all the empire of its most significant ruler, Karl the Great. Karl the Great ruled over an area that had at least the expanse of the . All the Christian tribes of western and central Europe - with the exception of England and Ireland - were united in his empire. Karl the Great attempted, in his empire, to merge the cultural commonalities of Christianity and of Germanic-Frankish lifestyles with the ancient Roman traditions, so that finally a new culture arose: "the Christian Occident" as it would later be called. Architecture like the Palatinate in can still give us an impression today, that in the empire of Karl the Great, Christian tradition, Germanic lifestyles, and Roman heritage merged into a new culture. But also in the politics of Karl the Great, we can see that he had made no final break with ancient tradition, as is shown by this: that he - as already his father Pepin - entered into a close political alliance with the Papacy in , and took the old title of the western Roman " and Imperator". But the coronation in Rome in 800 A.D. meant more than The Franks, page 1 merely the renewal of the ancient empire: a new, Christian empire arose, in which the of the Franks had the task, as one coronated by , to unite and to protect the community of . But how should he fulfill this task? How could this empire be ruled and administered? We know that the Roman could rely upon a dense network of cities, many bureaucrats, a well-organized army, and other things as they administered the Roman Empire. In the Frankish Empire there weren't such things. There was no capital, no magistrate and senate, not even a standing army. And yet, Karl the Great left behind at his death in 814 A.D. an empire in which almost all the countries and territories of western and central Europe were united. In order to find an explanation for this, we must look more closely at the roles which the monks, abbots, and bishops in the Christian church played in the governing of the Frankish Empire, and how the rulers worked to gain the loyalty of the Frankish nobility. A New Center: The Frankish Empire The Development of the Frankish Empire Chlodowech (also called "Clovis" or "Clotilda of ") had built a powerful Frankish Empire and founded the Merovingian . The belief in a divine power which rested on the royal family, however, lead to this, that after the death of a king, all of his sons took over the leadership. Thus the empire was divided over and over again. Very often, the brothers lead against one another. By means of this commotion, the lost influence. The majordomo, the highest court official, on the other hand, became the most powerful man in the Frankish Empire. In 732 A.D., the Arabs, who at this time ruled Spain, invaded France over the Pyrenees. The Frankish majordomo, Karl Martell, defeated them in the battle at Tours and Poitiers. This victory decided that the Frankish Empire would become Christian, not Islamic. By means of this battle, the foundation was also laid for this, that, later, - despite all differences between the tribes and states - would form a unit: the Christian Occident. Bonifatius and the Frankish Church. At the time of Karl Martell, Christians were bitterly persecuted by the pagans in the Frankish Empire. Nominally, most of the residents were actually called Christians; but pagan lifestyles actually had more influence than Christian ways. Human sacrifice was still common, people were held as slaves, and women were bought and sold as property. The Irish and English churches were then in a much better condition. The monks from the felt themselves obligated, therefore, to lead the Frankish church out of its problems. The Franks, page 2 In the seventh century, many Irish monks went around on the continent as itinerant preachers. They also founded cloisters there; St. Gallen goes back, for example, to the Irish itinerant monk Gallus. The monks of the continent took on some aspects of Irish life; among them was Pirmin, the founder of Murbach and Reichenau. In the eighth century, the influence of the English monks became stronger. In contrast to the Irish, they did missionary work "from above", i.e., they sought close collaboration with the Frankish nobility, king, and the in Rome. The most significant of these missionaries was Wynfreth. After early unsuccessful missionary attempts among the , he turned to the Pope and traveled to Rome. The Pope gave him the name Bonifatius and assigned him to spread the faith in the eastern Frankish Empire, which was not yet thoroughly Christianized. In over thirty years of missionary work, he went through Hessia, , , and . He founded cloisters, e.g., Fulda. He gave effort also to reforming the church's administration. While he was able to institute a new organization of bishops in , he was only able to remove a few anti-reform bishops in Franconia. The Frankish nobility and the Frankish church had no interest in changing the usual way of doing things. Bonifatius was murdered by Pagans in 754 A.D. during a missionary trip to Frisia. He has been honored since then as a martyr of the Christian faith; he was even called the "Apostle to the ". By means of his activity, he contributed to the various tribes in the Frankish Empire becoming "brothers and one nation by means of the Christian faith" even beyond the borders of Germany. Beyond the fame of Bonifatius, however, we must not forget that many Anglo-Saxon monks and nuns collaborated in the missionary and reform work at that time: e.g., Willibald and his sister Walpurg, who founded and lead the cloister at Heidenheim, or Lioba, a relative of Bonifatius, who was the abbess in Taubersbischofsheim. The Carolinians as . Bonifatius emphasized, in his missionary work, that he worked in the service, and with the support, of the Pope in Rome, the successor to the Apostle Peter. To this highest authority, therefore, the Frankish leaders turned in a politically very important question: could they assert themselves over the inherited rights of the Merovingian kings, who had long since become incompetent to govern, and make the majordomo, Pippin, the son of Karl Martell, king? When the Pope gave them notice, that one who exercises the power should be called king, they elevated Pippin in the year 751 A.D. to king.

The Franks, page 3 Because the Carolinians could not refer to any inherited right, they justified their royal status in a different way. They claimed to be called by God to royal rule. As a sign of this divine assignment, they allowed themselves, like the kings in the Tanakh, to be annointed and added to their names the phrase "dei gratia" = "by the grace of God". Karl the Great, the son of Pippin, is the most significant rule of the Frankish Empire. The dynasty is called "Carolinian" after him. He saw it his duty, as a rule assigned by God, to care for the spread of the Christian faith. The Saxon show especially clearly how Karl allowed his military to be of secondary importance to Christian missionary work. Already, soon after the conflict with the powerful and independent neighbors in the north-east began, reports were made of the first mass baptisms. The tough and effective resistence, however, hindered a lasting success for the many Frankish military maneuvers. Only twenty-five years later did Karl dare to institute bishoprics. After the complete pacification of the , and the baptism of their military leader, , he sent priests and monks into what had long been a pagan land. The Saxons were astounded that Karl, deviating from Pagan practice, didn't simply execute Widukind. The acceptance of Christianity made the defeated Saxons into members of the Frankish Empire, with fully equal rights, into "brothers". The Re-Creation of the Empire. The task of protecting God's church included also protecting the Pope in Rome. When the Langobards wanted to conquer Rome, Karl went to Italy. After he conquered them, he put on the Langobardian crown in Pavia, in order to preclude in the future any danger for the Pope. On Christmas day in the year 800, he was crowned emperor by the Pope. After that, he carried the following title: "Karl, the most gracious, sublime, great and peaceful emperor, crowned by God, who rules the Roman Empire and who is also, by God's mercy, king of the Franks and Langobards." Just as the title of the western Roman emperor came to be honored again after 300 years, so also the culture of late-classical antiquity was to be renewed in the Carolinian empire. The respect of the new emperor should not only be based on weapons, but rather also on education, natural and social sciences, and the arts in his empire. Karl encouraged, therefore, culture more than any other Frankish king before him. Kings, bishops, and abbots had monumental stone structures built. The king's court and the cloisters became centers of poetry and literature, music, and artistic skills. The laws and the schools were reformed. In the publishing rooms, books from the ancient times were copied, and illustrated with precious paintings. Intellectuals like Alkuin and Einhard were in regular correspondence. The East Frankish Empire. During the reign of Karl the Great, the The Franks, page 4 empire and the church were strong enough, to hold together the very different tribes and nations of the empire. His son, Ludwig the Pious, could likewise maintain the unity of the empire. Ludwig's three sons, however, divided the empire among themselves, in 843 A.D., in . Thus arose the Western Frankish Empire, the Eastern Frankish Empire, and the Middle Empire with the two imperial cities, Aachen and Rome, which the oldest brother Lothar obtained. In the Eastern Frankish Empire lived the Saxons, the , the Swabians, and the portion of the Franks who lived east of the Maas and Rhein rivers. This was the heartland of European culture. In contrast to the romanized western Franks, they spoke , but, however, didn't have any feeling of belonging together. When the last eastern Frankish Carolinian king died in 911 A.D., the eastern Franks chose their own king, who did not come from the Carolinian royal family. He was Konrad I, from eastern Franconia. Because he had no sons, the next king was the Saxon Heinrich. The Eastern Frankish Empire was not, from this time forward, divided again. The duchies of the Franks, Saxons, Swabians, Bavarians, and Lothringians (the latter belonged since 880 A.D. to the eastern Frankish Empire) remained united in one empire. This empire was only much later called the "German Empire". At that time, it was center of all European culture. The Role of the King, the Nobility, and the Church How an "Itinerant King" Ruled. The king ruled as he moved from palace to palace. Palaces were large, often richly decorated royal courts located in royal territories. Along with many hundreds of clergy, and worldly rules, the chaplains of the royal chapel belonged to the touring group. Their name is derived from the "cappa", the cloak worn by St. Martin, which he shared with a beggar. The Frankish kings always brought along one piece of this cloak as a "national treasure" under the care of the chaplains. The chaplains were also responsible for the entire correspondence of the king. During his trips through the empire, the king decided all the legal disputes which were placed before him; for each citizen could turn to him as the highest judge. To issue verdicts was the most prominent ruling responsibility of the king. Wherever in the empire the king did not happen to be present, he was represented by . They issued verdicts in the name of the king, lead the required military troops in their districts, and collected the payments which were due to the king. It was common that the king chose the counts from among the nobility of the area in which they were to complete these duties. That created big problems: from these leaders, one could hardly expect that they would assert the will of the ruler The Franks, page 5 against their peers, the other nobles, and in the case of some of them, the own self-interest outweighed their obedience to their distant king. The complaints about unjust settlements grew louder and louder. Karl the Great therefore changed to a system in which bishops, abbots, and counts whom he trusted were sent into the individual parts of the empire as "royal ambassadors". They were not only supposed to oversee the legal verdicts rendered by the counts, but also to see to it that the emperor's instructions to the nobles, the bishops, and the cloisters were properly carried out. Nobility and . In the Carolinian era, people lived in various ways, depending upon their legal status and property ownership. There were various forms of freedom and lack of freedom, from royalty to peasantry; in practice, the most important dividing line ran between the nobility and the rest of the population. Outstanding service in the and in the imperial administration had helped a very small number of families to high positions. Aside from the church, only the noble lords could afford to obtain luxury goods like silk and spices from importers. They alone could be customers for the few specialized craftsmen like stonemasons and goldsmiths. Their economic superiority rested, however, primarily upon the ownership of land, and the seignorialism bound to it. It was not simple for the king to retain superiority over the self-confident nobles who were concerned about their independence. The king had to bind them to himself. One way to do this was feudalism, the beginnings of which went back into the Merovingian era. Earlier, the defense of the Frankish Empire had posed a difficult problem for Karl Martell: the Arabs had advanced with their cavalry from Spain a long way toward . Against this enemy, the Frankish army of peasants could do little. It was clumsy, untrained, and poorly-armed. Aside from that, the soldiers, who were really peasants, couldn't leave their fields for a very long time. They had to tend the crops and bring in the harvest, so that they could provide for their families, and give a percentage to their masters. Therefore, there was a need for soldiers who could ride into battle, mounted on horseback, and were not needed for agricultural work. Therefore, Karl Martell obliged men for military service, and paid them with a piece of land as a loan (a "fief" or "fee"). These soldiers could then live off of the work and percentages of the peasants who lived on their land. They became - as it was called in the language of the time - vassals of the king, and he became their feudal lord. Thus, since the eighth century, a new class of territorial masters joined those nobles who had inherited land. Their estates did, indeed, still belong to the king, but they exercised over their estates all the rights of a territorial master. Above all, Karl the Great desired that not only the royal soldiers be his vassals, but that all the The Franks, page 6 influential people in his empire should become his feudal tenants. He recognized that feudalism was a good way to bind to himself the high- handed nobles with their territorial powers. He gave them fiefs, therefore, in addition to their aristocratic property, and bound them to himself by means of an oath of loyalty. The oath of loyalty, which the feudal lord and the feudal tenants swore to each other, obliged both of them to reciprocal help in word and deed. But not only the important people in his empire should become his vassals. The vassals of the king, in turn, should also bind to themselves other, less propertied, men as feudal tenants in mutual loyalty. The until- then local divisions into manors (hence the word, "manorialism") could thus be overcome by a chain of feudal allegiances. Each person was supposed to have a feudal lord, to whom he was bound. At the head of this feudal system stood the king as the ultimate feudal lord. Churches and Cloisters. The bishops and abbots themselves mostly came from the noble classes. They administered large land properties, and thus supported, from the percentages and services of the dependent peasants, the churches, themselves, and the clergy who worked for them. In addition, they also received "the tithe", a type of donation to the church. This large income was used for two main purposes: first, the maintenance of educational facilities, libraries, and the copying of books; second, the support given to the poor as a sort of "welfare" system. The church with its clergy was different from the worldly class-system in one way: Christianity and the church were strongly influenced by the ancient world. They retained the learning in science and literature which the and Romans had cultivated; they also retained insights into Hebraic and Semitic thought. Because the Bible, the church fathers, and the documents of the great ancient ecumenical councils were the foundations of the faith, the clergy had to be able to read and write, and know , Greek, and Hebrew. Although the king bound the worldly leaders to himself by means of feudalism, bishops and abbot remained the main foundations for his rule. They were independent of him, and he was dependent upon them. They were a foundation not only because of the large land properties of the church - they supplied far more soldiers for the army than the worldly leaders - , they were an important foundation also because of their duty, to explain to the ruler, out of the Holy Scripture, the will of God. From it they understood, that God had given a set orderliness to the world, in which the kings, the worldly and spiritual leaders, peasants, and beggars all had a place. This was different than the old pagan world- view, which had dominated Europe several centuries earlier, in which the poor and physically disabled had no place in the world, and were The Franks, page 7 regarded as expendable. The king, who had been entrusted with leadership by God, had to obey this order, and protect it against all attacks. The king would be held accountable if he did not do his job fairly and justly. Without knowledge of the Holy Scripture, without the help of the clergy, he could not fulfill this task. A difference between the church and the state could not, for this reason, exist. The king the job of leading "" on the path indicated by faith.

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