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Questions: Answer questions in your notebook.
The Middle Ages refers to the period in Europe dating from the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West, around the 5th century, to about the 15th century, or the beginning of the Renaissance. The term "Middle Ages" seems to have been first used during the Renaissance and implied a suspension of time--really--a suspension of progress between the glory of classical Greece and Rome and the "rebirth" of that glory at the beginnings of the Renaissance. It implied a period of cultural stagnation, and the Middle ages was once referred to as the Dark Ages, which, if used at all by historians, now only refers to the Early Middle Ages. Modern scholars generally divide the Middle Ages into three stages--the Early, High, and Late Middle Ages-- and, rather than comparing it critically with other historical periods, modern historians are much more concerned with the diversity and unique cultural characteristics within each period.
The Early Middle Ages (about AD 500 - 1000) . The traditional event marking the beginning of the Early Middle Ages is the "fall" of the Roman Empire in the West in 476. Modern historians interpret the beginning the of the Early Middle Ages not as a culmination of one dramatic event (476) but of several long-term trends, including the severe economic decline of the later Roman Empire and the invasions and settlement of Germanic peoples within the borders of the Western Empire. For the next 500 years, Western Europe remained essentially a primitive culture, but the complex, elaborate culture of the Roman Empire was never entirely lost or forgotten.
Impact of Germanic Invaders. . In the Early Middle Ages (A.D. 500-1000) the Ger- manic tribes founded kingdoms in Italy, Gaul (France), Spain, and Britain. These king- doms were quite different from the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire had been a world of cities where many peoples and cultures came together. The Germanic tribes were unfamiliar with cities. Nomadic peoples, they were migrants and warriors. The Germanic tribes did not revive the dying cities of the Roman world or preserve the humanism of Greco-Roman civilization. They had a rich oral tradition but no books.
Roman law was written law that applied to each citizen regardless of nationality or background. The Germanic peoples had no single law that applied to all the tribes. Among them, the law consisted of unwritten tribal customs. Each tribe had its own laws by which members were judged. Roman judges had investigated evidence and demanded proof. Germanic courts relied on trial by ordeal. In a typical ordeal, a bound defendant was thrown into a river. A defendant who sank was c0nsidered innocent; floating was interpreted as divine proof of guilt.
The idea of the state—a central feature of Roman civilization—was foreign to the Germanic tribes. Each tribe was loyal to its own chieftain, not to a government that represented citizens of many nationalities. Each Germanic kingdom was viewed as the personal property of its ruler. Germanic kings divided their lands among heirs, leading to the formation of many small, rival kingdoms. There was no central government strong enough to bring the kingdoms together. Large kingdoms were virtually nonexistent, and there was nothing like the unified, centralized Empire of Rome. One exception to this rule was the remarkable kingdom put together by the Franks, the Germanic peoples that settled in the area of Roman Gaul (France). This kingdom reached its height around 800 under the powerful early medieval king, the remarkable Charles the Great, or Charlemagne. Crowned "Emperor of the Romans" by the Pope on Christmas Day, 800, he ruled over a kingdom that included most of modern-day France, Germany, and northern Italy. His kingdom did not long survive his death, however. The forces of fragmentation, so powerful in the Early Middle Ages took their toll. Within two generations after Charlemagne's death, his grandsons divided his empire into three smaller kingdoms under an agreement ratified in 843 called the Treaty of Verdun. And new invasions brought new stresses.
In the last two centuries of the early Middle Ages, new migrations and invasions—the Vikings from the north, the Magyars from the Asia, and Islamic invaders (the "Moors") from North Africa —weakened the authority of monarchs. The resulting violence and dislocation caused lands to be withdrawn from cultivation, population to decline, and kings and their kingdoms to decline. Political and economic development was local in nature not broad-based. Long-distance trade had ceased almost entirely. In a chaotic world, people became bound to the land and dependent on landed nobles or lords for their living, for their protection, and for the crude administration of justice. Powerful lords had their own armies and courts of law. By surrounding themselves with loyal warriors, they added to their power. Monarchs found it increasingly difficult to control these lords. This new world bound people together in small units: your world was the world of the lord's manor or estate. Such a system transformed Western Europe into a society of tens of thousands of tiny feudal "kingdoms" ruled by powerful lords at the end of the Early Middle Ages.
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Compared to the days of the Roman Empire, the level of civilization in the Early Middle Ages declined strikingly. Cities emptied, the old Roman schools disappeared, most people could not read or write. In earlier generations, historians used to use the term “Dark Ages” to describe this period of decline. Yet the lamp of learning did not go out altogether. Recent historians have emphasized the efforts to preserve civilization and the emergence of a new medieval synthesis—a culture that combined Roman, Germanic, and Christian elements. An illiterate German warrior class replaced an educated Roman aristocracy and Christian theology replaced Greek philosophy, changing the intellectual life of Europe.
A vigorous oral literature, now largely lost, was sung or changed in the halls of Europe’s new Germanic rulers. Little of this was written down in a society where few could read. From Britain, however, came one Anglo-Saxon epic at least, the tale of Beowulf dating from the seventh or eighth century. Almost everything about the poem is debated by scholars, but the story itself, of the hero Beowulf’s killing of the monster Grendel and then of Grendel’s even more ferocious mother, suggests something of the primitive violence of early medieval society.
Most of the people who could read and write where now in the Church, many of them monks, and they tended to produce works of a religious nature. Even books on subjects that would have once been thoroughly secular showed strong religious influences. Early medieval histories such as the History of the Franks by Gregory of Tours (d. 594) and the History of the English Church and People by St. Bede both reveal the historian’s concern for evidence and accuracy, yet both accept miracles in large numbers as a matter of course. Bede became the first scholar to use the birth of Christ as a dating system in a major work. History was no longer a secular subject, but part of the great medieval crusade to glorify God in the “age of faith.” What is of real importance is that despite their flaws, these histories were an important part of early medieval efforts to preserve and pass on knowledge. Toward the end of the Early Middle Ages, a group of monks in England began to put together fragmentary records of life in England into a remarkable work called The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. For two centuries, from the late 800s to 1100, generations of monks added to this record of knowledge, giving scholars a remarkably rich picture of life in England. (See p. 76 in your English textbook.)
Also fortunate for the future were the efforts of the Church to preserve classical knowledge. Since Latin was the language of the Church, preversing works in Latin was a way to instruct religious in the basics of the language. Some important figures in this effort were Boethius and Cassiodorus, both scholar-administrators in one of the early Germanic kingdoms of Italy in the 6th century. Beothius compiled large collections of classical learning, ranging from the sciences and philosophy to literature. His most famous work, The Consolation of Philosophy shows that the ideas and influence of the ancient philosophers was still alive. Cassiodorus wrote an Introduction to Divine and Human Studies, which described the major works of classical literature and philosophy and explained how a study of these works could be used to understand sacred Christina texts. Cassiodorus founded a monastery and taught his monks Greek and Latin.
One of the most important centers of early medieval learning was located on the edge of Europe in Ireland. The Irish Celts have remained largely untouched by the invading Germanic peoples throughout most of the early Middle Ages. One element of the large European culture that did reach Ireland was Christianity. Irish monasteries became supremely important centers of learning. Irish missionaries carried the faith and learning to other places in Europe. Irish decorative arts, too, reached their peak and a unique literary tradition developed. Celtic decorative artists specialized in the production of illuminated manuscripts—elaborated decorated, hand-written copies of the Scriptures. Perhaps the most famous example is the eighth century the Book of Kells, a version of the Latin Gospels with gorgeously decorated capital letters and illustrations for each chapter.
Perhaps the place where one sees most clearly a large-scale attempt by an early medieval kingdom to preserve literature and learning is the kingdom of the Franks under Charlemagne. Scholars have come to call his sponsorship of the arts and learning the “Carolingian Renaissance.” Charlemagne saw himself as a kind of Christian Augustus Caesar and he took his patronage of culture seriously. He also understood the practical value of education for officials of both the state and the Church. He important scholars from all around Europe and sponsored the copying of manuscripts and the establishment of schools.
The emperor’s chief cultural mentor was the famous English scholar and churchman Alcuin of York. Alcuin headed the Palace school at the capital city of Aachen and guided the preparation of new editions St. Jeromes’s Latin Bible and of St. Benedict’s Rule. These editions became the standards versions of these important texts.
Charlemagne sponsored the establishment of monastery schools, encouraged the standardization of church Latin, which helped to preserve the language and gave Europe an international language in the era when Europe was becoming increasing divided linguistically as separate national languages emerged. The other surprisingly valuable accomplishment of this scholarly revival was the development of a new standard script for books that added lower-case letter to the Roman capitals used up to that time. These Carolingian minuscules became the model for the lower-case alphabet still in use today.
While the accomplishments of Charlemagne’s empire were limited, they indicated that a common medieval civilization was emerging in Europe. It would take centuries for this civilization to reach its height, the the Early Middle Ages, and its effort to preserve knowledge served as a crucial link between the classical civilization of the Greco-Roman world and the new Christian civilization of Europe that will flower in the High Middle Ages.
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Directions:
Opening lines of Beowulf in Old English:
Hwæt! We
Gardena in geardagum,
þeodcyninga,
þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas
ellen fremedon.
Oft Scyld Scefing
sceaþena þreatum,
5
monegum mægþum,
meodosetla ofteah,
egsode eorlas.
Syððan ærest wearð
feasceaft funden,
he þæs frofre gebad,
weox under wolcnum,
weorðmyndum þah,
oðþæt him æghwylc
þara ymbsittendra
10
ofer hronrade
hyran scolde,
gomban gyldan. þæt wæs
god cyning!
Ðæm eafera wæs æfter
cenned,
geong in geardum, þone god
sende
folce to frofre; fyrenðearfe
ongeat
15
þe hie ær drugon
aldorlease
lange hwile. Him þæs
liffrea,
wuldres wealdend, woroldare
forgeaf;
Beowulf wæs breme (blæd
wide sprang),
Scyldes eafera Scedelandum
in.
20
Swa sceal geong guma
gode gewyrcean,
fromum feohgiftum on fæder
bearme,
þæt hine on ylde eft
gewunigen
wilgesiþas, þonne wig cume,
leode gelæsten; lofdædum
sceal
25
in mægþa gehwære
man geþeon.
Him ða Scyld gewat to gescæphwile
felahror feran on frean wære.
Hi hyne þa ætbæron to
brimes faroðe,
swæse gesiþas, swa he
selfa bæd,