Germanic tribes:

The Germanic peoples were a tribal folk who followed a migratory existence. Dependent on their flocks
and herds, they lived in pre-urban village communities throughout Asia and frequently raided and
plundered nearby lands for material gain, yet they settled no territorial state. As early as the first
century B.C.E., a loose confederacy of Germanic tribes began to threaten Roman territories, but it was
not until the fourth century C.E. that these tribes, driven westward by the fierce Central Asian nomads
known as Huns, pressed into the Roman Empire. Lacking the hallmarks of civilization—urban
settlements, monumental architecture, and the art of writing—the Germanic tribes struck the Romans
as inferiors, as outsiders, hence, as “barbarians.

An uneasy alliance was forged: the Romans allowed the barbarians to settle on the borders of the
Empire, but in exchange the Germanic warriors were obliged to protect Rome against other invaders.
Antagonism between Rome and the West Goths led to a military showdown. At the Battle of Adrianople
(130 miles northwest of Constantinople, near modern Edirne in Turkey) in 378, the Visigoths defeated
the “invincible” Roman army, killing the East Roman emperor Valens and dispersing his army. Almost
immediately thereafter, the Visigoths swept across the Roman border, raiding the cities of the declining
West, including Rome itself in 410.

Empire fell prey to the assaults of many Germanic tribes, including the Vandals, whose willful, malicious
destruction of Rome in 455 produced the English word “vandalize.”

Ostrogoths embraced Christianity and sponsored literary and architectural enterprises modeled on
those of Rome and Byzantium, while the Franks and the Burgundians chose to commit their legal
traditions to writing.

Germanic culture differed dramatically from that of Rome: in the agrarian and essentially self-sufficient
communities of these nomadic peoples, fighting was a way of life and a highly respected skill. Armed
with javelins and shields, Germanic warriors fought fiercely on foot and on horseback. Superb
horsemen, the Germanic cavalry would come to borrow from the Mongols spurs and foot stirrups—
devices (originating in China) that firmly secured the rider in his saddle and improved his driving force. In
addition to introducing to the West superior methods of fighting on horseback, the Germanic tribes
imposed their own longstanding traditions on medieval Europe.

The bond of fealty, or loyalty, between the Germanic warrior and his chieftain and the practice of
rewarding the warrior would become fundamental to the medieval practice of feudalism.

The Germanic laws

The Germanic dependence on custom would have a lasting influence on the development of law, and
especially common law, in parts of the West. Among the Germanic peoples, tribal chiefs were
responsible for governing, but general assembly’s met to make important decisions: fully armed.

Since warlike behavior was commonplace, tribal law was severe, uncompromising, and directed toward
publicly shaming the guilty.

As in most ancient societies—Hammurabi’s Babylon, for instance—penalties for crimes varied according
to the social standing of the guilty party.

Germanic Literature

Germanic traditions, including those of personal valor and heroism associated with a warring culture.
Deeds of warrior-heroes, these three epic poems have much in common with the Iliad, the
Mahabharata, and other orally transmitted adventure poems. The 3000-line epic known as Beowulf is
the first monumental literary composition in a European vernacular language.

Germanic Art

The high quality of so-called “barbarian” art, as evidenced at Sutton Hoo and elsewhere, shows that
technical sophistication and artistic originality were by no means the monopoly of “civilized” societies.

Charlemagne and the Carolingian Renaissance

Charles the Great (in French, “Charlemagne”) pursued the dream of restoring the Roman Empire under
Christian leadership. A great warrior and an able administrator, the fair-haired heir to the Frankish
kingdom conquered vast areas of land (Map 11.2). His holy wars resulted in the forcible conversion of
the Saxons east of the Rhine River, the Lombards of northern Italy, and the Slavic peoples along the
Danube.

In the year 800, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne “Emperor of the Romans,” thus establishing a firm
relationship between Church and state.

Charlemagne’s imperial mission was animated by a passionate interest in education and the arts. Having
visited San Vitale in Ravenna (see Figures 9.15, 9.16), he had its architectural plan and decorative
program imitated in the Palatine Chapel at Aachen (Figure 11.7). The topmost tier, crowned by a mosaic
dome, represented Heaven and the bottom tier the earth, where priest and congregation met for
worship; enthroned in the gallery between, which was connected by a passageway to the royal palace.
To initiate this renaissance or “rebirth,” Charlemagne invited to his court missionaries and scholars from
all over Europe. He established schools at Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle), in town centers throughout the
Empire, and in Benedictine monasteries such as that at Saint-Gall in Switzerland (see Figure 11.12). In
Carolingian scriptoria (monastic writing rooms), monks and nuns copied

religious manuscripts, along with texts on medicine, drama, and other secular subjects. The scale of the
Carolingian renaissance is evident in that eighty percent of the oldest surviving Classical Latin
manuscripts exist in Carolingian copies.

When Charlemagne died in the year 814, the short-lived unity he had brought to Western Europe died
with him. Although he had turned the Frankish kingdom into an empire, he failed to establish any legal
and administrative machinery comparable with that of imperial Rome. There was no standing army, no
system of taxation, and no single code of law to unify the widely diverse population. Following his death,
the fragile stability of the Carolingian Empire was shattered by Scandinavian seafarers known as Vikings.

Charlemagne’s sons and grandsons could not repel the raids of these fierce invaders, who ravaged the
northern coasts of the Empire; at the same time, neither were his heirs able to arrest the repeated
forays of the Muslims along the Mediterranean coast. Lacking effective leadership, the Carolingian
Empire disintegrated. In the mid-ninth century, Charlemagne’s three grandsons divided the Empire
among themselves, separating French- from German-speaking territories. Increasingly, however,
administration and protection fell to members of the local ruling aristocracy—heirs of the counts and
dukes whom Charlemagne had appointed to administer portions of the realm, or simply those who had
taken land by force.

The fragmentation of the Empire and the insecurity generated by the Viking invasions caused people at
all social levels.

These circumstances enhanced the growth of a unique system of political and military organization
known as feudalism

feudalism involved the exchange of land for military service. In return for the grant of land, known as a
fief or feudum (the Germanic word for “property”), a vassal owed his lord a certain number of fighting
days (usually forty) per year. The contract between lord and vassal also involved a number of other
obligations, including the lord’s provision of a court of justice, the vassal’s contribution of ransom if his
lord were captured, and the reciprocation of hospitality between the two.

The medieval knight was a cavalry warrior equipped with stirrups, protected by chain mail (flexible
armor made of interlinked metal rings), and armed with such weapons as broadsword and shield. The
knight’s conduct and manners in all aspects of life were guided by a strict code of behavior called
chivalry.

Church. For instance, a vassal received his fief by an elaborate procedure known as investiture, in which
oaths of fealty were formally exchanged

The Lives of Medieval Serfs

 Although the feudal class monopolized land and power within medieval society, this elite group
represented only a tiny percentage of the total population. The majority of people—more than 90
percent—were unfree peasants or serfs who, along with freemen, farmed the soil. Medieval serfs lived
quite differently from their landlords. Bound to large farms or manors they, like the farmers of the old
Roman latifundia (see chapter 6), provided food in exchange for military protection furnished by the
nobility. They owned no property. They were forbidden to leave the land, though, on the positive side,
they could not be evicted

Their bondage to the soil assured them the protection of feudal lords who, in an age lacking effective
central authority, were the sole sources of political authority. During the Middle Ages, the reciprocal
obligations of serfs and lords and the serf’s continuing tenure on the land became firmly fixed. At least
until the eleventh century, the interdependence between the two classes was generally beneficial to
both; serfs needed protection, and feudal lords, whose position as gentlemen-warriors excluded them
from menial toil, needed food. For upper and lower classes alike, the individual’s place in medieval
society was inherited and bound by tradition. A medieval fief usually included one or more manors. The
average manor community comprised fifteen to twenty families, while a large manor of 5000 acres
might contain some fifty families. The lord usually appointed the local priest, provided a court of justice,
and governed the manor from a fortified residence or castle. Between the eighth and tenth centuries,
such residences were simple wooden structures but, by the twelfth century, elaborate stone manor
houses with crenellated walls and towers became commonplace. On long winter nights, the lord’s castle
might be the scene of reveling and entertainment by jongleurs singing epic tales like the Song of Roland
(see Reading 11.2).

Medieval serfs were subject to perennial toil and constant privations, including those of famine and
disease. Most could neither read nor write. Unfortunately, art and literature leave us little insight into
the lives and values of the lower classes of medieval society. Occasionally, however, in the sculptures.

High medieval culture

The Christian crusades

During the eleventh century, numerous circumstances contributed to a change in the character of
medieval life. The Normans effectively pushed the Muslims out of the Mediterranean Sea and, as the
Normans and other marauders began to settle down, Europeans enjoyed a greater degree of security. At
the same time, rising agricultural productivity and surplus encouraged trade and travel. The Crusades of
the eleventh to thirteenth centuries.

were a symptom of the increased freedom and new mobility of Western Europeans during the High
Middle Ages. They were also the product of idealism and religious zeal. The Byzantine emperor had
pressed the Catholic Church to aid in delivering the East from the Muslim Turks, who were threatening
the Byzantine Empire and denying Christian pilgrims access to the Holy Land. In 1095, Pope Urban II
preached a fiery sermon that called on Christians to rescue Jerusalem from the “accursed race” who had
invaded Christian lands. Thousands of laymen and clergy “took up the Cross” and marched across
Europe to the Byzantine East.
It soon became apparent that the material benefits of the Crusades outweighed the spiritual ones,
especially in that the campaigns provided economic and military advantages for the younger sons of the
nobility. While the eldest son of an upper-class family inherited his father’s fief under the principle of
primogeniture, his younger brothers were left to seek their own fortunes. The Crusades stirred the
ambitions of these disenfranchised young men who had been schooled in warfare. Equally ambitious
were the Italian citystates, Genoa, Pisa, and Venice. Eager to expand their commercial activities, they
encouraged the Crusaders to become middlemen in trade between Italy and the East. In the course of
the Fourth Crusade, when the Crusaders could not pay the Venetians for the fleet of ships that was
contracted to carry them east, profit-seekers persuaded them to take over (on behalf of Venice) trading
ports in the Aegean

Aside from such economic advantages as those enjoyed by individual Crusaders and the Italian city-
states, the gains made by the seven major Crusades were slight. By 1291, all recaptured lands, including
the city of Jerusalem, were lost again to the Muslims. Indeed, in over 200 years of fighting and seven
major Crusades, the Crusaders did not secure any territory permanently, nor did they stop the westward
advance of the Turks. Constantinople finally fell in 1453 to a later wave of Muslim Turks. Despite their
failure as religious ventures, the Crusades had enormous consequences for the West: the revival of
trade between East and West enhanced European

commercial life, encouraging the rise of towns and bringing great wealth to the Italian cities of Venice,
Genoa, and Pisa. Then, too, in the absence or at the death of crusading noblemen, feudal lords
(including emperors and kings) seized every opportunity to establish greater authority over the lands
within their domains, thus consolidating and centralizing political power in the embryonic nation-states
of England and France. Finally, renewed contact with Byzantium promoted an atmosphere of
commercial and cultural exchange that had not existed since Roman times. Luxury goods, such as
saffron, citrus, silks, and damasks, entered Western Europe, as did sacred relics associated with the lives
of Jesus, Mary, and the Christian saints. And, to the delight of the literate, Arabic translations of Greek
manuscripts poured into France, along with all genres of Islamic literature.

The origins of constitutional monarchy

forced the English king John (1167–1216) to sign the landmark document known as the Magna Carta
(“great charter”). The document forbade the king to levy additional feudal taxes without the consent of
his royal council. It also guaranteed other privileges, such as trial by jury. Although it was essentially a
feudal agreement between English noblemen and their king, it became one of the most significant
documents in the history of political freedom: by asserting the primacy of the law over the will of the
ruler, the Magna Carta established the principle that paved the way for the development of
constitutional monarchy. Some fifty years after the signing of the Magna Carta, the English nobility,
demanding equal authority in ruling England, imprisoned King Henry III (1207–1272) and invited
representatives of a new class of people “midway” between serfs and lords—the middle class—to
participate in the actions of the Great Council (Parliament). The Council was the first example of
representative government among the rising nation-states of the West.

The Rise of Medieval Towns

Medieval kings looked for financial support from the middle class, and especially from the taxes
provided by commercial activity. Increased agricultural production and the reopening of trade routes
encouraged urban development, a process that usually began with the establishment of the local
market. By the end of the eleventh century, merchants—often the disenfranchised younger sons of the
nobility—were engaging in commercial enterprises that required local trade markets. Usually located
near highways or rivers, outside the walls of a fortified castle (bourg in French, burg in German, borough
in English), the market (faubourg) became part of manorial life profit from commercial exchange.
Merchants and craftspeople in like occupations formed guilds for the mutual protection of buyers and
sellers. The guilds regulated prices, fixed wages, established standards of quality in the production of
goods, and provided training for newcomers in each profession.

and regulate their own economic activities. Such commercial centers as Milan, Florence, and Venice
became completely self-governing city-states similar to those of ancient Greece and Rome

Although by the twelfth century town dwellers constituted less than 15 percent of the total European
population, the middle class continued to expand and ultimately it came to dominate Western society.
Middle-class values differed considerably from those of the feudal nobility.