Outline of Lecture

I.  Introduction: the Challenges Faced by Those Creating the First Europe
II. Frame of Reference:  (400 - 900)

A. German Ascendancy in the West  (400 - 600)
B. Search for New Foundations (600 - 750)
C. The Carolingian Era (750 - 900)

III. Creating a New Social Fabric
IV. Keeping Alive the Classical - Christian Heritage
V.   Expressions of the New Outlook: The First Signs of the First Europe
VI. The First Europe as a Culture

The First Europe as a culture with distinctive beliefs, ideals, and values emerged in western Europe during the period 400-900. This era, traditionally called the "Dark Ages," was marked by conditions which, as men remembered the rich panoply of civilized life in the empire, did seem barbaric and barren. Yet, just when conditions were at their worst, vigorous leaders in the Church and the state turned things around. Popes and monks of the Church, allying themselves with the most creative and forceful of the Germanic rulers, the Carolingians, and the Frankish nobility willed into existence a new culture. Those living in the West became conscious of themselves as different, with new leadership, new institutions, pursuing their own destiny. Augustine would have recognized their outlook as essentially his own. Yet, the conditions in the Germanic kingdoms were different from those of the late empire. So while the First Europe was essentially Augustinian, it was also shaped by the efforts of popes, monks, and ruling German aristocrats to solve new problems and meet new needs.

Those who attempted to articulate a new outlook faced four major challenges:
 

(1) keeping alive the classical-Christian heritage;

(2) accommodating Germanic values, ideals and ideas without losing the core of the classical-Christian outlook;

(3) extending the classical-Christian outlook to Germanic peoples and particularly their leaders;

(4) fostering and sanctioning a new institutional framework to counteract the tendency toward disunity and disintegration which the Germanic kingdoms struggled unsuccessfully to overcome.
 

This is a good place to say that the formation and survival of Europe as a culture was not the work of cultural determinism or historical necessity. Europe was not destined to become a universal culture because of the intrinsic superiority of its ideas, ideals, or values. As we will see, the prospect for Europe was not at all promising if one stood at 400 looking forward.
 
 

Shortly after 400 Germanic peoples and their leaders held power in the West. We have not examined the origins of these peoples. Who were they? Archeological evidence suggests they came from Scandinavia and began migrating into mainland Europe about 1000 B.C. A variety of factors caused these movements: a search for food, living space, or plunder; the pressure of other peoples; perhaps simply nomadic restlessness. Unfortunately, we have no written record of their early history except that of the Roman historian, Tacitus (98 C. E.), who in his work Germania tended to idealize them in contrast to the Romans as virtuous and freedom-loving peoples. Other information, mainly archeological, still leaves their origins and early life obscure. In the first century B.C. the Goths, Vandals, Burgundians, and other German peoples reached the Roman frontiers on the Rhine and Danube. Others followed. During the ensuing centuries of prolonged contact some of these tribes became as civilized as the Roman provincials. They settled into agrarian societies and carried on commerce. Most converted to Arian Christianity. They aspired to enter the empire peacefully as allies and enjoy what Rome had to offer. Such were the Goths who settled in the Danube basin. On the other hand, some tribes were little affected by Roman civilization and truly barbarian in almost every sense of the term. Of these tribes the Franks were typical. When the Roman frontier in the West collapsed in the late fourth and fifth centuries all these tribes moved into and claimed different parts of the western empire as their own. The eastern empire survived because it was protected by Constantinople and sheltered from the invasions. By the end of the fifth century, the Ostrogoths controlled Italy; the Visigoths, Spain and part of Gaul; the Franks and Burgundians, the rest of Gaul; the Vandals, Africa; and the Angles and Saxons, Britain.

These invasions and migrations caused more disruption in some areas of the West than others. Here and there destruction and damage did occur. People died, cities were ravaged and looted, villas were destroyed, fields left untilled, flocks and herds carried off as spoils of conquest. Thus, organized life came to center on sites which could be defended--villas, existing walled cities and monasteries--until the invaders settled down and began to try to rule their new conquests. Until then economic activity was impeded, if not paralyzed. Trade and commerce, suffering in the late empire anyway, suffered still more. Urban life decayed. Some cities were abandoned by their terrified inhabitants. Others shrank in size but survived because they were strongly fortified, or were natural administrative centers for civil affairs or the Church. In agriculture there were less serious effects once the Germans settled down. The invaders simply imposed themselves on the system of large estates owned by the aristocrats and worked by tenant farmers who bound themselves to the land (coloni) in return for protection and food. Germans replaced Romans as landlords. They also began to superimpose on this system their own custom described by Tacitus by which members of a tribal war-band would swear an oath of loyalty to their chieftain. These two developments prefigured manorialism and feudalism.

Culturally, the Germans and their subject peoples had to do a lot of adjustment. The two had different origins, languages, religious beliefs, political and social institutions and stood on different cultural levels. But the Germans did not intend to destroy the civilized life they found. Most of them admired, respected or at least showed a tolerance for the way of life lived by their subjects. They did not impose their own ways, but rather sought to preserve as much as possible of the Roman civilization. One source of friction between the two peoples was religion. Most Germans subscribed to Arianism which had been condemned in the empire in 325. Those they ruled were orthodox Christians, so there was a gulf between the German rulers and their subjects. But the Franks under their king Clovis accepted orthodox Christianity at the end of the fifth century and other German rulers and their nobility did so in time.

In time the Germans took over more and more of the institutions and customs of their subject peoples. They adopted administrative practices and devices, the municipal system, taxes, Roman law and the courts, and Latin as the language for government and literary expression. They also sought a formal basis for their rule by accepting the imperial ideal at least nominally. Both the Frankish king Clovis in Gaul and the Ostrogoth king Theodoric in Italy took formal title to their lands from the emperors at Constantinople. Rome was still described as the Eternal City. Given new meaning in the role of the Church and later in the ideal of the Holy Roman Empire, the belief that Rome still endured was an important part of the Roman legacy handed down by the Germans.

Despite their willingness to accept much from the Roman tradition, the Germans faced immense problems in governing their new subjects. Only two of the German kingdoms founded in the fifth century showed any evidence of vigor--the Ostrogoth (or eastern Goth) kingdom in Italy and the Frankish kingdom in Gaul. Each was established on the force of a single personality and was unable to sustain early success. Their history illustrates why the Germanic rulers were not able to overcome the forces leading to political disintegration.

The founder of the Ostrogoth kingdom, Theodoric (489-526), perhaps the ablest German ruler before Charlemagne, bravely tried to reanimate the Roman machinery of government and to continue the imperial traditions of administration and law, with the assistance of Roman aristocrats and scholars such as Cassiodorus and Boethius. Educated at Constantinople in the classical tradition, Theodoric is reputed to have said, "An able Goth wants to be like a Roman. Only a poor Roman would want to be a Goth."⁽¹⁾ However, he was never able to synthesize German political traditions with those of Rome and create an enduring purpose for the Ostrogoth kingdom. His ambition for greater power and his Arianism made enemies of the Eastern Roman emperor and the Bishop of Rome, as well as the people of Italy, who were already alienated by his seizure of land for his troops. Combined, all these antagonisms weakened his rule even before his death in 526, after which his kingdom fell first to the Byzantine empire and then to another Germanic people, the Lombards.

Clovis (481-511) proclaimed no lofty pretensions to recreate Roman authority when he established the Merovingian kingdom of the Franks in Gaul. Unlike Theodoric, he gloried in the traditions of his own people, who adopted none of the civilized practices of their Roman subjects and who occupied and farmed the lands they acquired rather than settling down alongside the native population. Under Clovis, the Franks expanded in the late fifth century from their earliest settlement in the north of Gaul to subdue the central and southern parts as well, including those parts which had been occupied by other German peoples. During the course of those campaigns, however, Clovis shrewdly saw that conquest by itself would not enable him to rule; if he wanted legitimacy, he had to obtain the approval of the church leadership. His decision to accept orthodox Christianity in 496 and to undergo baptism along with several thousand of his soldiers gave him an aura of divine approval and the support of church bishops such as Gregory of Tours, author of the History of the Franks, who depicted Clovis as a second Constantine. Eventually, Clovis also consented to a diplomatic alliance with the eastern emperor and accepted the titles of consul and Augustus. Although the Roman tradition meant nothing to him personally, it gave him additional authority for ruling. Despite promising beginnings, however, the Frankish kingdom during this period still did not become an instrument for effective rule.

The Church played a major role in bringing the new rulers into the classical-Christian tradition. It was the only organized group with a continuous life which had the vigor and purpose to do it, to adapt to the new situation, to exercise what was often the only effective political authority, and to temper and civilize the coarse behavior of the barbarians. Learning and the arts suffered in the period 400-600, but did not die out. The Church exerted most of the effort to preserve the intellectual and artistic heritage of the late empire, but here and there German kings also gave their support to the effort.

Several figures display the abiding influence of the classical tradition: Boethius (c. 480-c. 524),and Cassiodorus (c.490-c.575) under the Ostrogoths, Isidore of Seville (early 7^th century), encyclopedist under the Visigoths, and Gregory of Tours (c. 538-594), historian of the Franks. The work of these figures and other nameless scholars and copyists known as the "Latin Transmitters" kept learning from dying out and passed on the heritage of the classical-Christian tradition. Learning and the arts faltered but did not die out completely.

By 600 the West had changed considerably. The empire was split and the West had been transformed into several Germanic kingdoms which struggled to govern and struggled against each other for dominance. The only common institution in the West resisting the tendency toward disintegration was the Church. It alone gave men a single source of faith and devotion. Through the Church and the German states the institutional and intellectual heritage of the ancient world was passed on to succeeding generations.
 
 

Despite preserving some of the Roman administrative system and practices the Germanic kingdoms failed to measure up to the standard of Roman efficiency. Germanic kings had immense problems in governing, beginning with the fact that they were a conquering minority and as usurpers lacked the moral authority to govern. They ruled against the backdrop of imperial order and efficiency and suffered by the comparison. They persistently fought each other and were threatened by the Arabs and Slavs. Most rulers wanted to organize and operate on the Roman model but failed to bring it off.

Illustrative of the problems these kingdoms had is the case of the Frankish kingdom under the Merovingian line. The vigor of that dynasty played out after its founder, Clovis. His successors, while styling themselves as all-powerful rulers, steadily lost power so that by 750 they were derisively referred to as "do-nothing" kings. Part of the problem was the habit of using violence and brutality to achieve political ends, a tradition among German rulers. Another was the barbarian custom of treating the kingdom as private property to be divided up when the king died; the resulting civil war in which heir fought heir until all but one survived left the state weakened after each succession. If a ruler attempted to try something constructive, he faced a complex array of different laws, customs, and languages which kept him from achieving a consistent policy. Failing to establish and maintain peace and order, the Merovingians helped foster lawlessness within which the new institutions of the West were to germinate. These conditions forced them to share power with their great nobles. Feudalism and feudal government began out of this decentralization of power.

Trade and commerce continued to fall off until by 750 they were practically nonexistent. Cities struggled to exist and even those which remained shrank. The old Roman structures either fell down by themselves or were mined for other projects. Observers in the 7^th century complained of grass growing in the streets. Traders and artisans who had flourished in urban centers virtually disappeared, taking with them technical competence and knowledge. Money still existed but did not circulate widely. Land became the only source of wealth; farming the only livelihood. These conditions led to far-reaching changes in the nature of social life which centered increasingly on large self-sufficient estates. German landowners who had by 600 replaced the Roman aristocracy spent most of their time on their lands. To these estates fled small farmers seeking a livelihood and refugees seeking protection. Once there they found they could not leave. They were bound by law or custom to the land and its owners for good. They became a new class, workers with a new social and legal status, the condition of servitude the Middle Ages would know as serfdom. Perhaps the most subtle change resulting from the disappearance of trade and commerce was a change in outlook. As life became almost totally agrarian and isolated, provincialism became the order of the day.

While the Germanic kingdoms were attempting to construct a new foundation for society, the Church tried to adjust to the political conditions in the West. Lacking a strong government as the eastern empire had, the Church found its own unity threatened by the political disunity in the West. Although Germanic rulers tended to support the Church, they also tended to promote "national" churches within their kingdoms which endangered the unity of the Church in the West. The Church also found that its wealth and power forced it to conform to prevailing political and economic conditions. The Church itself became barbarized as candidates vied for church offices and became enmeshed in the power structure.

How did the Church overcome these problems and deal with the conditions of the period? Despite its own internal problems, the Church persisted in its original mission of social responsibility. Indeed, the Church was the only institution in a decentralized, inefficient society which did carry out charitable activities. Also, the Church expanded into new areas, extending a common religion and values to peoples with diverse cultures and religions. Although many Germans had converted by 600, new peoples outside the old boundaries of the empire had not. As converts were won, in the main by Anglo-Saxon and Irish missionaries at the leading of the Pope, the Church set up a parish structure under new bishops and clergy who reported to Rome. Thirdly, the Church greatly expanded the power of the papacy, particularly during the pontificate of Gregory the Great (590-604). Gregory sought to make the papacy economically and politically independent and at the same time to strengthen its spiritual leadership. He aimed to create a Roman, western brand of spirituality in his writings and to establish a Roman liturgy and standard usage. His successors followed his lead, and by 750 it is correct to describe the faith spreading throughout the West as "Roman" Christianity. Finally, the Church responded to its problems by encouraging the spread of monasticism. Benedictine monasteries, following the rule of St. Benedict of Nursia (480-543), sprang up throughout the West in this period. The work of the monks in a barbarian age had an incalculable effect on society. They set an example by their own piety and moral excellence, taught the basic elements of the faith, implemented the standard Roman liturgy, and provided charitable services government no longer provided. They also provided a store of technical knowledge and competence which was invaluable to society, as in farming techniques at which they excelled. Most important of all was their work in the preservation of learning. Taking seriously St. Benedict's order to study, they copied classical and Christian texts for their own libraries. Needing literacy in Latin, they made texts and established schools to teach not only their own members but the children of the aristocracy as well. As they selected texts for preservation and study, they gave a clerical, Christian stamp to scholarship which endured for centuries.

By 750 conditions in the West had reached a critical juncture. Germanic kingdoms were trying without success to come up to the level of imperial efficiency and order. Trade and commerce (and the civilized life of the cities based on that economy) were disappearing and were being replaced by local economies and isolated villages. Intellectual and artistic life too were at a low ebb. Political chaos and economic decline bore so heavily on society that the heritage of the classical-Christian tradition was in danger of extinction. Yet, in the midst of chaos and barbarism vigorous leaders in the Church and the Frankish kingdom found new foundations for renewing the West. They groped toward new and lasting ways to organize society and govern using the Germanic tradition of personal loyalty as a political and military bond. They found that the village-based, moneyless economy was an adequate base for supporting political, military, and social life. And they discovered in the Church, even with its own immense problems, the leadership for keeping learning and the arts alive, civilizing society, and in fostering a new outlook. Finally, in the Carolingians, the West found a ruling family which could provide new distinctive leadership. Together, churchmen and Frankish nobles willed into existence the First Europe which emerged during the Carolingian era.
 
 

The Carolingian era was so named after a noble family called the Carolingians (i.e., "from the line of Charles") under whose leadership the Frankish kingdom dominated mainland Europe during the eighth and ninth centuries. The family came to the fore at a critical time in Frankish and European history. By the end of the seventh century Clovis's line, the Merovingians, had played out in a series of weak and pathetic figures who ruled a divided kingdom in name only. Real power rested in the hands of officials in the various provinces known by the title of mayor of the palace (maior domus). In 712 the Arabs destroyed the Germanic kingdom of Spain and soon began to threaten the Franks. At this point, things turned around politically and culturally under three generations of Carolingians with whose vigorous leadership western Europe attained a measure of order and began to articulate a new outlook.

What explains the success of the Carolingians? Their own abilities sustained over three generations certainly was a factor. But perhaps even more important was the work of the papacy and the monastic orders in preparing a church which by Charlemagne's accession could support the family's bid for supremacy in the West. As the most important source of ideas and principles, the papacy and monks helped give expression to Carolingian aims of using power for the public good and pacifying and christianizing society.

The first major Carolingian, Charles (surnamed Martel, "the Hammer", 714-741), subjugated the independent nobility to royal authority by making the landed aristocracy swear personal oaths of loyalty to him and the king in return for grants of land much of which came from the Church. This arrangement prefigured the feudal pattern: the swearing of an oath of loyalty, the gift of the use of something of value (the fief, usually land) in return for service (primarily military). Using this practice Charles created a new fighting force, mounted and armored, with which he subdued unruly Frankish nobles and strengthened the monarchy. With this force he also met and stopped the expansion of Islam into western Europe. The victory of the Franks (called "Europeans" for the first time) at Tours in 732 ended the westernmost penetration of Moslem Arab forces just at the point that the Islamic empire was about to break up internally. This victory which won favor for the family also meant that Europe as a region with a distinct culture would have a chance to develop independently.

The second major figure, Charles' son, Pepin III (741-768), secured the royal title for the family. The manner in which this occurred signified that the Carolingians had the support of all the leadership in the West--the papacy, the Frankish aristocracy, and the monastic orders. Pepin first asked the Pope whether the man who held the power or the man who wore the crown should be king. When the Pope replied that the man who held the power should be king, Pepin called together the Frankish nobility who proclaimed him king. Then he called on the leading figure in the Benedictine order, Boniface, to solemnize his coronation. Boniface, as papal legate, anointed Pepin in a ceremony copied from the Old Testament consecration of the Hebrew monarchs. In 754 the Pope himself traveled to the Frankish kingdom to bless Pepin and his family. By these skillfully chosen symbolic acts the Carolingians achieved a new status as kings by grace of God and also secured legitimacy for the new role they were about to play as leaders of the West.

They assumed that role under the third and greatest of the line, Charles the Great, or as he is best known, Charlemagne (768-814). His achievements depended partly on the support of the church and the aristocracy, but also on the force of his own personality. Power in this period was not an abstract force depending on the majesty of the state, but an extension of the personal qualities of the ruler. Those with charisma were strong and successful rulers; those without were usually ineffective, and short-lived. A vigorous, powerful and attractive man, Charlemagne not only exerted natural leadership over his nobility, but captured the imaginations of men for centuries afterwards as the ideal ruler. In many ways he consummated the work of his predecessors, but he also struck out in new directions.

The first of his achievements was the expansion of the Frankish kingdom until it comprised most of western Europe. Every spring Charlemagne in Germanic fashion assembled the leading nobles to hear and advise him on political and military matters and then to join him in a campaign against one of the neighboring peoples. He conquered the Lombards and made himself their king. He ruthlessly fought the Saxons, his most persistent foes, once slaughtering 4,500 captives to awe the rest into submission. He defeated the Avars who were threatening the eastern borders of his kingdom. He also pushed the Moslems back in northern Spain, after an initial defeat and the loss of a rearguard in an action which inspired the feudal epic, the Song of Roland.

Conquest alone, however, was not Charlemagne's goal. Unlike earlier German rulers, he sought enduring ties to bind together his subjects: a common faith; the continuation of traditional laws and access to courts; the improvement of government and administration; and the promotion of learning as one of the purposes of his rule. In governing Charlemagne was able to rise above his Germanic past and conceive of his rule as a means for good rather than personal advantage, a way of achieving his own vision of the Carolingian kingdom as one realm and one faith, imperium Christianum, the City of God on earth. Toward this goal he sought to advance by a wide range of actions. To defend the Pope, for instance, he defeated and absorbed the Lombards who were threatening papal independence. He forcibly converted the unorthodox and pagan after defeating them on the battlefield, often supervising their baptism himself, and set up church organizations in the conquered territories. Even while busy with wars and administration, he found time to issue orders called capitularies to enforce religious reform and piety.

Charlemagne's own piety is not an easy thing to explain. He was a pious man in the sense that he believed it crucial to follow the right religious practices so that when the time for judgment came it would be clear that he had been on God's side. He attended mass daily; he loved to participate in theological discussions with his advisors and church councils. But in matters of personal behavior he was more pagan than Christian. When churchmen lauded him as the "strong right arm of God" and the "most Christian king", they were thinking of his zeal for the propagation and defense of the faith, not his numerous marriages and mistresses or his easygoing sexual mores. Whatever one might say about his true piety, it is clear that Charlemagne's interest in religious reform was also practical: he gained from a reformed church which supported his monarchy and strengthened his authority.

Charlemagne left undisturbed the traditional laws and judicial practices of his peoples and made efforts to insure that his subjects had access to courts. He also sought improvements in the ways government operated. The basis for his government, as for his army, was the personal relationship: he made the counts and dukes he appointed as his local representatives swear personal loyalty to him in return for their positions and lands. But he did not stop there. To define what these officials would do and how they would do it he sent them a steady stream of capitularies. He sent roving inspectors, missi dominici, to see that officials followed his instructions. And he checked on them himself. Inadequate as it may seem by modern standards, Charlemagne's government imposed order and authority in a way not seen since the time of Rome. It also reestablished the principle, ignored by earlier German rulers, that the purpose of government was the public good rather than the personal interest of the ruler.

The goal of improving the public welfare and promoting a more religious society gave rise to another of Charlemagne's achievements, a program to encourage learning and scholarship and make it a basis for more effective government. Charlemagne himself prized learning and could speak and read Latin, although he never mastered writing. He enjoyed reading the Bible, the City of God and some of the classics. He also appreciated the German sagas and ordered that they be written; unfortunately, these works did not survive, perhaps because they were suppressed by churchmen as not harmonizing with the faith. He regarded education as necessary for those intended for royal service or high church office and set up schools including one at his court in Aachen to insure that the sons of his nobility were literate. In these centers a new simple script, the minuscule, was created which formed the basis for modern small letters. To head this school he brought the best minds he could find in the West: Alcuin, the head, came from England; the historian, Paul the Deacon, and the poet, Peter of Pisa, from Italy; the classical scholar, Theodulf, from Spain; Einhard, his biographer, from the Frankish lands. These men not only taught, but advised Charlemagne as well; they helped define and express the aims which he sought to achieve during his reign.

The symbolic high point of the Carolingian era was Charlemagne's coronation as Holy Roman Emperor in 800. Historians have disputed the significance of the act, since Charlemagne did not use the title and continued to rule according to Frankish traditions. Yet it is clear that he, and his advisers, intended something new by the coronation. What was the symbolic importance of the act? The title of "August Charles...great and pacific emperor of the Romans" gave Charlemagne a new basis for his conquests and made him and his successors legitimate in a way which united his Germanic tradition with the Christianized-Roman one. He became a "New Constantine" holding both political and religious authority. God had willed it because of Charlemagne's service, said Alcuin in a letter in 799, referring to the "royal dignity which our Lord Jesus Christ has reserved to you so that you might govern the Christian people....It is now on you alone that rests the support of the churches of Christ, on you alone that depends their safety; on you, avenger of crimes, guide to those who err, consoler of the afflicted, exalter of the good"⁽²⁾ The Carolingian kingdom was a means to a higher end, a striving to create the City of God on earth. Such a worthy effort required and justified an exalted status.

Under Louis the Pious (814-840), Charlemagne's son and successor, there was an intensification of the religious meaning to Carolingian rule. Louis' interests were unambiguously religious, as his name suggests; he saw his responsibility as that of promoting personal piety and serving as God's agent in creating a truly Christian empire--imperium Christianum--headed by a king-priest. Louis, however, lacked Charlemagne's ability and charisma; unable to lead the Frankish army, he had difficulty controlling his great nobles. Carolingian rule slipped notably. After Louis the Germanic custom of dividing the inheritance among all the heirs fractured the Frankish kingdom.

From 840 on into the tenth century the Carolingian achievement began to fade as the later Carolingians fought each other and lost power to their nobility. By the tenth century the Carolingian empire was fractured into kingdoms of France, Germany, Italy, Burgundy and Provence whose kings could command only in name. The functions of government were performed by great royal vassals who made their offices and lands hereditary and created their own vassals. At this juncture came the Vikings and the Magyars whose devastating raids the kings were unable to resist. Thus, the raids hastened the decline of monarchies and confirmed the growth and expansion of the feudal relationship and the more limited political structures based on that relationship. By the tenth century the lords and vassals of the feudal relationship were the effective leaders of western Europe.
 
 

Could the Germanic rulers govern the lands they had wrested from the empire and reverse the political disintegration that their peoples had helped cause? They tried, but failed. By the sixth century the structure that had collected taxes, maintained order and sustained the features of civilized life in the empire--roads, law, civic beautification, education, welfare for the helpless--had disappeared. The German leaders did not want this to happen, but simply could not prevent it. They were vexed by a host of problems, the most important of which were inadequate resources and their own barbarian origins and traditions which made any sustainable government almost impossible.

The problems of Clovis and his Merovingian successors are illustrative of the difficulties faced by Germanic rulers. Too ready to use violence and brutality as the ordinary way of ruling, the Merovingians grasped no larger purpose to ruling, no concept of a higher public good to be served. The kingdom belonged to the ruler. When he died the realm was divided up among all the male heirs like ordinary property, thus squandering any gains made and causing the heirs to fight each other until the most vicious emerged the winner. Finally, Clovis' successors in the sixth and seventh centuries were, in the contemporary phrase, "unthrone-worthy" (i.e., lacking the personal ability to rule), so that power slipped out of their hands into the hands of local lords.

The failures of Clovis' successors, however, led to new beginnings. Without the power or the financial resources to provide the necessary services of government, the Merovingian rulers were forced to obtain these services from the aristocracy by granting them land and certain rights over it. In these new relationships between the aristocracy and the Merovingian rulers lay the beginnings of the so-called feudal system. The context for the development of these relationships was the German tradition that relationships are always personal and based on ties of kinship, that the whole folk or people is the ultimate authority for what was lawful and right. Even the rudimentary beginnings of political and military obligations which blossomed into feudalism and manorialism, for example, included the understanding that parties had to relate to each other on the basis of personal loyalty, and that one party alone could not arbitrarily end or change those relationships without the assent of all concerned.

An earlier section pointed out the Germanic origins of these nascent feudal relationships in the comitatus which swore absolute obedience to the war-leader or chieftain in return for weapons, food, clothing and a share in plunder. The Romans had a similar institution, the clientela, a practice by which freed slaves and poor freemen might become "clients" of a powerful Roman official to secure protection. In the late empire and the early phase of the Germanic kingdoms, the clientela and the comitatus merged with another practice, the hiring of bodyguards called bucellarii to form the prototype of the feudal relationship. The use of land to cement these relationships also appears to have had an antecedent in the late empire in a form of landownership called the beneficium. This was the use of land for a fixed term, perhaps life, to secure men's services. The combination of the warband-client-bodyguard relationship and the gift of land for service prefigures the feudal relationship. So does the requirement that person whose service was being secured swear an oath of allegiance to insure that the required services were performed loyally. Such oath-giving was called "commendation" and prefigured the later feudal vassal's oath of fealty to his lord. The Carolingians added one other feature to this relationship. Charles Martel raised an armored, mounted force to use against rebellious Frankish nobles and foreign foes by giving these warriors "benefices" (land and the labor to work it) and calling them vassi dominici or "vassals of the lord". The practice worked well and was extended by the Carolingians who usually gave "benefices" in conquered territories to their "vassi" or vassals. These vassals, if great nobles, provided military service, kept order and administered justice in return for land and the right to govern it. They made vassals of their own followers so that even as early as the 9th century these relationships were prevalent enough to require regulation.

The emerging feudal relationships were superimposed on another set of relationships developing between aristocratic landowners and their workers on large estates. We have already described the conditions producing an economy centering on large self-sufficient country estates or villas which became the basis for an almost totally agrarian economy by the eighth century. Aristocrats had begun the abandonment of cities in late imperial times when they withdrew to their country estates or villas to escape responsibility and to maintain the old civilized way of life. Gradually they were replaced by, or intermarried with, Germans. To the villas also came refugees from the dying cities. There they joined those whose ancestors had earlier fled from imperial agents and tax-collectors to become coloni or semi-free tenants and accept a condition of servitude in return for the use of small plots of land and protection. These coloni were the predecessors of medieval serfs, as the estates they worked were the forerunners of medieval manors. Thus, out of this period of economic and urban decline also came the foundations for a new beginning. For the next thousand years, the pattern of activity and relationships which grew up on these village estates remained the basis for social and economic life in western Europe.

The most dynamic element of the new social fabric being created in this period was the Church. The Church had stepped into the vacuum created by the collapse of the empire in the West and the failure of the Germanic kingdoms to govern effectively. Bishops exercised more and more civil functions as cities declined in wealth and size. The Church tried to meet the needs of the poor, maintained hospitals and orphanages, and provided the only education available as the imperial government and municipalities ceased doing so. The Church, however, was also affected by the violence and barbarism of the period. Often, bishops as holders of powerful positions and lands were worldly and bellicose and their clergy tended to be uneducated, ignorant about doctrine and liturgy and morally remiss. But the church overcame its problems more successfully than the German rulers and brought a measure of stability to a chaotic society because of two vital elements: the papacy and the monastic orders.

A series of strong bishops of Rome in the fifth and early sixth centuries made the papacy the dominant power in the Church. Leo I (440-461) forcefully proclaimed the Petrine Theory which justified the preeminence of the bishop of Rome among other bishops. Gelasius (492-496) contended that the church was superior to the state. But Gregory the Great (590-604) really defined papal leadership in several important ways. He defined the task of the Pope to be the Vicar of Christ on earth, to become the "servant of the servants of God," to minister to clergy many of whom were worldly and spiritually lax. Gregory wrote sermons, scriptural commentaries, hymns, and pastoral instructions. He also worked to refine the liturgy and standardize its usage. His work is this regard was not only definitive in spiritual matters, but, since it dealt with the specific conditions and problems of the church in the West, also contributed to the shaping of the church along "Roman" or westernized lines. In so doing, he put his own stamp on the Augustinian tradition which dominated the outlook of the Church. After Gregory, that tradition was Gregorian-Augustinian. It was, as we shall see, the heart of the First Europe.

Gregory also secured economic and political independence by building up and managing the estates and property of the papacy and by playing off against each other the Byzantine emperors and the Germanic rulers of the west. He foresaw the growing strength of the Frankish kingdom and sought to ally the papacy with that Germanic state which had the best chance for leadership in the west. Finally, Gregory supported the Benedictine monks and their missionary work. He himself had been a monk and was convinced that their work was necessary to strengthen the church and to christianize and civilize a chaotic and barbaric society.

Monasticism began as an eremitic way of life, but was soon channeled into communal living and governed by rules. Benedict of Nursia (480-543) drew up his Rule for monks when he left public life to found a monastery at Monte Cassino in Italy. According to the Rule, those who joined the community had to promise to forsake material wealth, to remain chaste, and to submit to the authority of the head of the monastic house or abbot (from abbas, father), i.e., they took the famous vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. The Rule provided for an orderly life of prayer, physical labor and study, the proper balance among which kept the monks from going off into the excesses of early monasticism. Adopted in most of the monastic communities founded in the sixth, seventh and eighth centuries in the West, the Rule had an effect both on the church and society as well, even beyond that intended by Benedict himself who saw the monastery as a refuge from society. In the centuries afterwards Benedictine monks set the standard for spirituality and moral purity. They became leaders in the reform of the liturgy and its usage according to the Roman standard. They established schools, libraries and scriptoria (or writing rooms) in which occurred their most important contribution to the reviving of learning: the preservation and copying of ancient classical Latin texts. They founded hospitals, orphanages and other charitable activities. They passed on technical skills to others, their farms being models of efficiency in the best farming practices. The ablest of them became bishops and popes; others served kings and nobles as ministers and clerks (from clericus, clergy). Monasticism extended the authority and deepened the spirituality of the church as it tried to overcome the chaos and barbarism of this period and to support the reestablishment of peace and order. When the Carolingians began to revive the Frankish kingdom, their most ardent supporters were the popes and monks.

The role of popes and monks in preparing the way for the Carolingian era is best illustrated by the career of Wynfrid or as he is better known, St. Boniface of Crediton (c.680-754), the Anglo-Saxon monk called the "Apostle to the Germans." Boniface in the late seventh century joined other Anglo-Saxon missionaries working to convert Germanic peoples on the continent. In the time of Charles Martel, however, Boniface concentrated his efforts in the Frankish lands east of the Rhine. With the support of the papacy and the Carolingians, he started churches and parishes among his new converts and set up the hierarchical structure which he came to head as Archbishop of Mainz. He also founded the monastery of Fulda which became a center of learning and a seminary to train personnel for the other houses, parishes and episcopacies he established. From these monasteries came not only people, but books, art and ideas. Some of the most beautiful illustrated manuscripts of the Carolingian period, for example, came from Fulda. From there also came such ideas as the conviction that the Carolingians' work was allied with that of God. As Boniface said in one of his letters, "Without the protection of the prince of the Franks, I can neither rule the people of the church nor defend the priests and clerks, monks and nuns; nor can I prevent the practice of pagan rites and sacrilegious worship of idols without his mandate and the awe inspired by his name." In 739 Boniface turned to the reform of the Frankish church and the establishment of the Benedictine Rule in the Frankish monasteries. He died in 754, after having resigned his papal commission and offices and having resumed his missionary work, at the hands of people he was trying to convert. He left an important legacy in preparing the way for the Carolingians to revivify the Frankish kingdom and assume the monarchy.

Popes and monks also led in the effort to keep alive the artistic and literary heritage of the ancient world. The intellectual and artistic tradition of the ancient world, adopted and shaped by the influence of Christianity, was facing almost certain extinction because of the violence and barbarism of the period. Literacy became so uncommon that few cared about or knew enough about these works to save them. And yet literacy and learning did not disappear, mainly because of scholars called the "Latin transmitters" and numerous anonymous copyists in the monastic houses. The transmitters were so called because for the most part they handed on the core of the classical-Christian heritage, instead of creating original works, and because they focused on the Latin rather than the Greek heritage. Thus as they transmitted this heritage, they also shaped it into a distinctive Latin Western form which would not be changed until the original sources were recovered centuries later. They focused on saving Scripture, the writings of Augustine and other great Church Fathers and those classical works they believed to be in harmony with Christian theology. Sometimes, fortunately, intrinsic literary merit and stylistic excellence seem to have won out over any purely theological considerations. Such was the case, for example, with Ovid's works which could have been harmonized with theology only in the broadest allegorical sense. Most of these transmitters were anonymous, but we know the names of the major ones: Martianus Capella, Isidore of Seville, Boethius and Cassiodorus. The problem faced by these men comes sharply into focus when one considers Boethius (c. 480-c. 524) and Cassiodorus (c. 490-c. 575), Roman aristocrats who rose to high positions under Theodoric, king of Italy. They shared Theodoric's aim of restoring Roman government and preserving the classical heritage. They also illustrate the dilemma of the preservers who saw themselves in the twilight of civilization desperately trying to save the basic works of the ancient world.

Boethius set himself the prodigious task of translating into Latin with commentaries the complete works of Plato and Aristotle, so few readers in the West being able to read Greek. His official duties and untimely death allowed only the completion of two of Aristotle's works in logic. But these works, as well as the translation of mathematical works of Euclid and Ptolemy, represented the bulk of what scholars in the West knew of logic and mathematics for the next seven hundred years. Together with his treatises on education and philosophic methods, Boethius' translations and commentaries had a profound influence in shaping scholasticism, the dominant method of studying philosophy and theology from 1050 to 1350. Boethius' most enduring work, however, was not his projected series of translation and commentaries, but the Consolation of Philosophy written in prison under the shadow of the executioner. Not profoundly original when compared to any of the works of the greatest classical writers or Augustine, the Consolation, nonetheless, was a masterful synthesis of classical philosophy tinged with Christianity. Its essential theme was the prevalence of divine providence and the wisdom of calmly accepting the vagaries of life when faced with death. Some of this can be traced to Christianity--the emphasis on a personal God as creator and governor of creation--but much more came from classical philosophy, particularly Plato and the Stoics. One of the few works from this period which can still appeal to the contemporary reader as a meditation on the insubstantiality of fame, it also appealed to readers of the next thousand years as a summation of classical learning.

Cassiodorus produced no work of similar magnitude. There was nothing original in any of his writings. But his contribution to the preservation and transmission of the classical heritage was not less significant than that of Boethius. After thirty years of service to Ostrogoth kings, Cassiodorus retired to his estates in southern Italy where he founded a monastery and inaugurated a program of study for the monks based on his own syllabus of knowledge and bibliography of readings. Since his monks had to have texts, he set them to copying and translating manuscripts. Thus began the curriculum which was followed for centuries by monastic schools and an activity which saved classical and Christian texts which otherwise probably would not have survived. Perhaps the most important single work prepared by Cassiodorus and his monks was an authoritative version of the Latin Bible. Based on Jerome's Vulgate, but also drawing from other variant texts, the Codex Grandior (or "Great Book") became the model text for later Latin Bibles. In a story which perfectly illustrates the rescue of learning, the Codex was apparently taken by monks to distant Northumberland Britain to the monastery of Jarrow where it was used to make another Bible, the Codex Amiatinus which still exists. Thence it passed by the hands of faithful monks to other monasteries in Northumberland, to mainland Europe and possibly back to Italy, finally disappearing after it had given life to the Lindisfarne Gospels, the Book of Durrow and, most beautiful of all, the Book of Kells. Because of the efforts of the transmitters and others, enough of the intellectual and artistic heritage survived to serve as a basis for further advance.

Less urgent than the rescue of learning, but no less important, was the task of restating the Christian outlook to meet the conditions of the Germanic kingdoms, extending it to the general population, and preserving that outlook from the effects of barbarism, paganism and heresy. The Church faced immense problems in holding on to any of its original affirmations. In the late empire the official status of Christianity had already caused it to modify its original beliefs and to lose its character as a counter-culture with radically different moral values and beliefs. For example, observance of the sacraments had tended to become more important than observance of moral standards. If the sacrament, as the Church taught, was "an outward sign of an inward grace" to convey something to believers not otherwise obtainable, it was difficult to keep the emphasis on the inward experience rather than the outward sign. Baptism, for instance, was thought to wipe away the stain of a life of sins; believers waited for that reason until their death-beds to repent of their sins and be baptized. Through the Mass one received the body of Christ himself by consuming the wine and bread of the sacrament. In the rite of extreme unction, or anointing at the point of death, one obtained God's grace and salvation as one's last earthly act. Thus, ceremony had begun to loom larger than moral living as a means of satisfying God even Before 400.

In the Germans, the church confronted a new challenge. How could it convey the Gospel to those whose traditions glorified battle, looting and dying heroically as a way of life? Although predominantly Arian Christians by 400, the Germans had not given up the values and ideals of a pagan warrior class. Even when most German rulers became orthodox, they hurt the Church more than they helped by their vicious methods, their failure to keep order, and their tendency to treat the churches in their kingdoms as "national" entities. In the countryside pagan beliefs and rites were deeply imbedded in everyday life and most peasants remained untouched by the moral teachings of the Church.

How far could the Church go in accommodating the barbarism and paganism of the day without losing the core of its teachings? On the other hand, would the Church survive if it did not seek to incorporate and then christianize the peoples and practices so alien to its basic teachings? Following Gregory the Great the Church decided it could not survive without accommodation. Gregory's instructions to missionaries sent to convert the Anglo-Saxons, are an early example of what became a common practice. Leave the pagan temples standing, he said, and rededicate them in order that people "may have recourse with the more familiarity to the places they have been accustomed to...." Allow even pagan sacrifices to continue if these are consecrated to God, so that people may still have "some solemnity of this kind in a changed form" and "be able the more easily to incline their minds to inward joys."⁽³⁾. Thus the Church attempted to accommodate and absorb the ruling warrior class by speaking of God not as a loving Father but an irascible, jealous tribal chieftain. One approached this Lord like a tribal chieftain with deference and constant attention, offering prayer and rituals rather than moral behavior. The ruler or warrior himself did not perform these prayers and rituals. For that he depended on the priest who worked the magic of constant prayer and the celebration of the sacraments to ward off disaster and guarantee success. The warrior himself served God by living out the code which extolled killing, looting and dying heroically. The warrior's enemies were God's enemies--pagans and heretics--who were to be won over by might rather than love. Even if the warrior's enemies were as orthodox as he was, God was still to be invoked. The Church was willing to grant its approval of conquest where its own political interests were to be served. Thus the Church began to define a new view of God and a new code of conduct for men which, unlike the Gospel, made ritual rather than moral demands.

The Church also attempted to temper and absorb the warrior outlook by incorporating the Germanic cult of the dead. In the Germanic tradition heroes were believed to have numinous powers after death and to be able from their tombs to confer fertility and prevent calamities. By the fifth century the Church had attributed similar powers to Christian saints and martyrs (who often came to be identified with these dead pagan heroes). From this belief eventually came pilgrimages and the Crusades. The holy sites of the faith--tombs, repositories of relics, and most important of all the Holy Land itself--drew believers who wanted to be touched by the special power of the dead. From the same outlook sprang the cult of relics. Anything having to do with Christ, the Apostles, saints and martyrs--pieces of the wood and nails of the Cross, bones and fragments of garments--became holy objects eagerly sought after because of the power they bestowed on those who got near to them. Finally, as the ultimate means of taming the ruling warrior class, the Church invoked the twin images of the afterlife, the delights of heaven and the torments of hell. Those who received the sacraments, particularly the mass and extreme unction, after the cleansing of purgatory, entered into the eternal joys of heaven. Those without the benefit of sacraments suffered the everlasting torments of hell. By embracing and sanctifying the warrior code, the Church sought to obtain some hold on a violent, rambunctious ruling elite. At the same time, however, Christianity did not forget its earliest heritage. Though contaminated by the pagan, warrior values of the ruling class, the Church kept this heroic martial code from eradicating the earliest Christian message which it preserved for later generations to discover afresh.

While absorbing the Germanic peoples, the Church was also converting the peasants of the countryside in the face of native religious beliefs and, except for the Lombards, was completing the conversion of Arian Christians. To make the task of converting the peasants easier, the Church, guided by Gregory the Great's instructions, assimilated many of the native pagan rituals and deities. Saints and martyrs replaced local deities. Traditional ceremonies survived in Christian guise. The cult of the Virgin Mary filled the place of fertility cults. Jesus became the dying and resurrected god of vegetation. Sometimes the Church balked at certain practices and condemned them as devil-worship; often the line was blurred between what was permitted and what was not. But as in the case of the warrior code, the Church, while allowing local pagan practices to obscure essential truths, did not forget its fundamentals. They remained at the heart of its tradition and theology for later centuries, less barbaric and violent, to rediscover. As for Arian Christians, the Church by the seventh century had won over or driven underground all but the Lombards. In winning it made no concessions to Arian beliefs, heresy being less a threat by the seventh century than paganism. Part of the Church's success was due again to the efforts of missionaries who preached not only to pagans but also to heretics. Part was also owing to the fact that the Church by allying itself to the Germanic rulers kept Arians from getting the church offices they needed to perpetuate their beliefs.

Expressions of the new outlook were not just manifest in written and visual form, but in less obvious and less dramatic forms as well. The Germanic and pagan combined with classical-Christian elements to form something new. One example was the way space and time were Christianized. As mentioned Before, pagan tombs and holy sites were appropriated for Christian use in keeping with Gregory the Great's dictum that converts would more easily accept the faith if familiar places, rituals, and persons were incorporated in Christian teaching. Sometimes there was confrontation: Boniface boldly cut down a sacred tree at Geismar in the early 8^th century to use the lumber in a church. More often, missionaries seeking to convert pagans simply named the place, person, or ritual as Christian. The same accommodation was evident in the Christianization of the calendar: gradual replacement in the case of the dating of years, blending of pagan and Roman names in the matter of naming months and days. Because of the influence of St. Bede, whose Ecclesiastical History was immensely popular, in 8^th and 9^th century "A.D." or "Anno Domini" began to be used to replace the Roman methods of counting time. Most churchmen did not want to use January 1 as the beginning of the year because that date marked the Roman holiday of Kalends and the festivities that went with it. Some wanted to use March 25, the date of the Feast of the Annunciation or December 25, the date of the Nativity. Eventually January 1 was adopted by default. In the case of choosing names for months and days, a curious practice occurred. In most lands Roman names were adopted for months because pagan German names for months were objectionable. For example, Bede thought the pagan Anglo-Saxon name for November, "Blood month", was abhorrent because the month was celebrated in England with the slaughter of animals in sacrifices to gods. Yet pagan names survived for some days of the week depending on the language spoken. In the Germanic languages pagan deities' names survived for four days: Tiw's day; Woden's day; Thunor's day; Frig's day. In Romance languages Roman deities' names survived: e.g., Mercury for Monday, mercredi.

In some ways the new outlook called for a more decisive break with the past, as in matters affecting daily life and death. Even the simplest event, baptism, called for the convert to renounce the pagan gods by name, one by one, as the Saxon Baptismal Vow of the eighth century illustrates. Baptism had to be administered in Latin, not the vernacular. The changes in funerary practices were not so sudden, but the trend was unmistakably running against pagan practices. Interment began to replace cremation, a Germanic tradition; Charlemagne forbad cremation in 785. Furnished graves, another survival of pagan practice, had given way to unfurnished graves by the mid 8^th century. Aristocrats were buried in special places, near saints. But all believers began to be buried in consecrated ground near churches.

The commitment of wealth to church and monastery-building marked the new outlook. Benedict Biscop, founder and abbot of the English monasteries of Wearmouth and Jarrow (c. 660), devoted a fortune to his foundations. He made numerous trips to Italy to purchase vestments, pictures and books, to bring back workmen, even a choir master to teach the proper singing of the mass. Other wealthy churchmen and secular aristocrats did the same.

If we would see more clear examples of the appearance of the new outlook, we need to examine written and visual forms in which it was expressed. Some of the writings are works of literature; some are better called missionary texts. In the latter group are works written to be used in conversion: e.g., the Weissenburg Catechism - c. 800, which contains German texts of the Lord's Prayer, with commentary, a list of deadly sins, the Apostle's and Athanasian Creeds, and the Gloria in Excelsis. Written in the vernacular, these works make German words and their meanings convey new truths.

There is also a series of vernacular poems in Old English and Old German which show the attempt to convey Christian truths to Germanic believers or to rework pagan folk-tales and myths to teach Christian truths. There may have been more which did not survive. Clergy may have recoiled in horror from the pagan values and ideals which formed the foundation of vernacular writing and destroyed it. Also, Latin tended to extinguish vernacular writing during this period because it was the formal language of literature and business. One of the surviving pieces was the Dream of the Rood - a poem on the cross in the form popular later in the medieval period, the dream vision. Another was the Heliand ("Savior") written between 825-850 in Old High German. Copied in a Saxon monastery in the 9^th and in England (Winchester) in 10^th century, the poem purported to tell the life of Christ in imagery calculated to appeal to German peoples. In the work Jesus lives the life of a Germanic liege lord, decked out at birth in jewels and served by disciples who are young members of a comitatus, retainers worthy of a noble chieftain. The marriage feast at Cana is a gargantuan feast. The request to teach us to pray is "teach us the runes" (secrets). John the Baptist baptizes in great mass baptisms like those Germans would have been familiar with. But the faith is presented as mild and peaceful--in contrast to the forced conversions which Saxons had undergone (an attempt to avoid reopening old wounds).

The greatest of these vernacular pieces, however, was Beowulf, a long verse poem composed for early medieval German warrior-aristocrats. Written by an educated man, probably a monk or priest, the poem used elements from the Germanic past--myth, folktale, heroic legend, and history--to speak to his audience about how Christian values can refine and humanize Germanic warrior code. Christianity, that is, is superimposed on a layer of older material and given new meaning. The only surviving manuscript dates from 1000; composition probably occurred about 750.

The story would have been familiar to those who heard it. It focused on the deeds of Beowulf, a young man in the kingdom of the Geats (Goths?) whose life epitomized the heroic warrior ideal. Beowulf went to the aid of an aging famous king of the Danes, Hrothgar, who could not prevent a monster Grendel from invading his royal hall Herot. In single combat, by brute force, Beowulf tore the arm off Grendel who retreated to his watery abode and died. The next night Grendel's mother, avenging her son, attacked the hall the next night while Beowulf was sleeping somewhere else. Beowulf pursued her to her lair, killed her, cut off Grendel's head and returned to Hrothgar who rewarded him richly. Fifty years later Beowulf, who had become King of the Geats faced another mortal foe, a dragon who threatened the Geats. He killed this dragon with the help of a companion, Wiglaf, but was himself mortally wounded. The tales were familiar, but the use to which the storyteller-composer put these materials was new: a refined and humanized version of how the warrior-aristocrat ought to live. Fighting and dying were still ultimate values, but the purpose of these was not the old heroic ideal of glorious death as an end in itself. Now the warrior fought for others, friends, subjects. If he died it was to go to "meet the Lord and seek peace in the Father's bosom". The writer warned about the futility of pagan worship to ward off Grendel's attacks. Those who sought aid there had "the hope of the heathen: their hearts were mindful of hell, but of the Creator they knew nothing, the judge of deeds; they had no knowledge of the Lord God; nor, truly, knew how to praise the Heaven's protector, the ruler of glory". The poet goes on, "woe shall it be for him who for dire enmity shall thrust his soul down into the fire's embrace, expect no comfort, in any way to change. Well shall it be for him who after his deathday may meet with the Lord and seek peace in the Father's bosom." Beowulf is the ideal warrior-leader, but his virtues are Christianized heroic virtues. "Of all the kings of the world he was the mildest and gentlest of men, the kindest to his people, and the most eager for good report."

The First Europe is also visible in art and architecture, especially in the blending of styles from the Germanic and classical-Christian traditions. German art was decorative not pictorial. Surviving examples consist mainly of designs on brooches, bowls, sword handles, and other implements. When animal and plant shapes are used they are not representational but parts of the designs. Overall, this art was dynamic with lines moving from the center out in complex patterns suggesting motion, restlessness, and disharmony. It suggests a need to struggle against a hostile world. This spirit prevails in early medieval art and even shows up later in Gothic architecture and art. Artists and craftsmen drew from Germanic and Celtic traditions as they sought to make objects embodying a new outlook. Carved stone crosses such as the Ruthwell Cross, for example, are decorated with plaitwork, knots, and interwoven straps. The same blending of styles is evident in Irish manuscripts such as the Book of Durrow (7^th century) and the Book of Kells (8^th - 9th centuries). The works are written in Roman script modified by Celtic style. Elaborate ornamentation, endless curves, spirals, interlaced scrolls, interwoven straps, knots, animal and plant forms are used to set off the Gospel texts. Human figures are elongated spiritual types not real human figures. Another example is the Franks Casket (British Museum, Sir A. Franks) dating from about 700. Measuring about 9 in long by 7 in wide by 4 in high, the box is carved in whalebone and decorated with scenes carved in relief from Germanic, Christian and classical history or mythology. Scenes are accompanied by runic and Roman writing (Latin or Old English). The left front scene is from an Anglo-Saxon myth about murder and rape. (Tale of Weland the Smith: lamed by King Nithand, Weland in vengeance kills Nithand's son, making his skull a cup, and rapes Nithand's daughter. He tries to escape by using bird's feathers to fly away.) Carved next to this gruesome scene is a second, depicting the Adoration of Magi with the Magi in Germanic costume. The Frankish Casket is a Christian working of Germanic themes, even the gory ones of murder and rape. The Adoration of Magi is a frequent conversion theme.

Architecture of this era also shows the blending of traditions. In Charlemagne's tomb chapel at Aachen (the chapel by the waters), the Byzantine or Eastern Roman style predominates in the design and plan which were copied from Ravenna, last capital of the Western Empire. The exterior, however, is fortress-like in its Germanic massiveness, forecasting the Romanesque style. Churches built in this period show the influence of this borrowed style. They are larger for crowds; with larger choirs, chapels around the apse, and a crypt for relics. The walls are decorated with Byzantine frescoes, painted panels, stained glass, and mosaics of biblical events and lives of the saints.
 
 

By 900 Europe constituted a new culture with distinctive ideas, a new leadership, and an awareness of its own uniqueness and destiny. Alcuin a hundred years earlier made frequent references to a "Christian Empire" and "Europa" as an area comprised by the Roman Church and led by Charlemagne. What was the first phase of Europe, the "First Europe," which the Carolingians and the monks and leaders of the church had willed into existence? The heart of it was the Greco-Roman-Christian synthesis, tempered by Germanic traditions. The outlook was essentially Augustinian, filtered and colored by Gregory the Great.

Human nature, according to this outlook, was depraved--lustful, greedy, selfish--and deserving of eternal damnation. But man still possessed inestimable value as an eternal soul whose salvation was the chief end of this life. Despite the aristocratic domination of society, all men, regardless of status, could enjoy salvation in the life to come. By itself earthly existence was of little importance; life was a "vale of tears". Yet, through prayer and the sacraments of the church man could prepare himself for the life to come. This opportunity gave life its significance. Man gained his greatest understanding through faith, the will to believe in dogmas proclaimed by the church; reason played a very minor role until the Scholastic tradition began in the 11^th century. Too, the earliest Christian emphasis on inner purity was less important by 900 than correct behavior--so long as one partook of the sacraments he was purified of the vilest sins. Importance in this world depended on one's place in a hierarchical society which was divinely ordained. Between the aristocrats and peasants in this life there was a great gulf. Yet prayer and the sacraments saved peasants as well as aristocrats. Rank did not matter in heaven.

God was essentially the Triune God of the Augustinian-Gregorian tradition, an imperial God of Judgment who rewarded and punished in this world and the next. Perhaps because of the Germanic tradition, he was thought to be like an irascible tribal chieftain whom one impressed not by ethical but respectful behavior--the correct performance of prayers and rituals. God the Son was understood less as a sacrifice signifying God's suffering love for mankind than as the avenging arm of the Trinity. True, he had suffered and died because of man's depravity and need for salvation, but he had ascended to the right hand of God the Father and waited to reappear at the Last Judgment as the punisher of sinners and the destroyer of the world. God the Holy Spirit was embodied and represented in the church. Through the church God as Spirit acted on human hearts which meant that resisting or flouting the authority of the church was the gravest of sins.

The view of the world was also essentially Augustinian-Gregorian. Faith revealed the world as God's creation. In understanding this world reason offered less than faith. When viewed through the eyes of faith, however, the world revealed the truth of dogma, that God created and sustained all things. To understand one looked to God himself as the divine, normative standard. Pervading the thinking of the thoughtful was the Neo-Platonic view that all reality was one, governed by the same laws. All visible things were manifestations of divine truth, thus one should focus on the Creator and not on creation. The world was full of analogies and allegories pointing beyond creation which was not worthwhile in its own right. Revealed truth was what was ultimately real. All creation centered on the truth of the Holy Eucharist in which Christ was sacrificed anew for believers to absorb the divine mystery and obtain the "medicine of immortality." If analogy and allegory served to explain the world for the educated, the magical belief in the power of relics and of practices and rituals surviving from paganism sufficed for the popular mind.

What was the purpose of social institutions? The Augustinian-Gregorian tradition shaped thinking in this area too. Augustine took the view that the state was a means to an end, not an end in itself. The end was God's purpose accomplished with the Last Judgment and the end of history. Thus the state was an instrument with a limited purpose: to keep order so that the work of the church in saving men's souls might go on. So long as the ruler did not interfere with the church, the church should take no political stand. In the chaotic conditions from 500-700, the church did look for support among rulers who were sympathetic to the church and threw its authority behind the Carolingians, particularly Pepin and Charlemagne. The highlight of this effort was the crowning of Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor by Leo III in 800. But that effort never resulted in a change in dogma. The coronation at papal hands seemed to place the church in a preeminent position: was the Christian ruler himself responsible to the papacy and the church or directly responsible to God? Should there be a single ruler in the Carolingian tradition? What about the feudal aristocracy which held real power in the aftermath of the Carolingian decline? Those questions had not received by 900 and for the rest of the medieval period never got unanimous answers. This left the Augustinian-Gregorian tradition intact. Men did not give up the ideal of a Christian ruler heading up a Christian society after the demise of the Carolingian hegemony. That ideal continued in the form of the Germanic monarchy's attempt to maintain the Holy Roman Empire. It inspired a countervailing theory of a papal suzerainty in the 12th century. But the reality of politics after 900 was a feudal aristocracy whose power would become the basis for feudal states--counties, duchies and monarchies. The church and feudal state interpenetrated each other, setting up a dynamic tension between opposites--power and spirit, material and spiritual, this world and the next--which characterized the First Europe. In the working out of the details of the feudal relationship which held society together the Germanic tradition contributed a great deal. The emphasis on consultation between ruler and the ruled, as well as the limited nature of the feudal relationship, reinforced the Augustinian-Gregorian view of the functional or instrumental nature of the state and laid the groundwork for limited, constitutional government later.

History is a Christian story of progress which ends with the triumph of the City of God over the City of Man. Again, this view was Augustinian amended by Gregory the Great. Both Augustine and Gregory firmly rejected the Greco-Roman theory of endless cycles of history. Since Christ could only be sacrificed one time, and there could be only one Last Judgment, history was a unique process including all people for all time. This made the individual life eternally significant. Augustine and Gregory, however, parted at this point. For Augustine, the church could never be triumphant in this world. Until the Last Judgment, the City of God and the City of Man would remain separate. Then mankind would be divided according to their inner merit: the spiritual to eternal salvation; the carnal to hell and damnation. Gregory took another tack. The church for him became the visible embodiment of the City of God on earth. While salvation was by grace, Gregory took the view that the individual who did good works prescribed by the church proved that he merited grace, thus making the church central to salvation. For Gregory this was essential: if the church could not promise salvation through moral conduct, why should anyone bother? Through the church God achieved his purpose in this world until the final judgment. And history was a story of progress ending in the next world for those in whom the spiritual triumphed.

Before turning to the development of the First Europe in the centuries from 900 to 1350, we need to look closely at the appearance of a new culture which swept through most of the lands around the Mediterranean and grew to challenge the First Europe: Islam.

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1. Quoted in Michael Grant, The Dawn of the Middle Ages (New York: McGraw Hill, 1981), p. 98.

2. Alcuin, Epistle #174, translated in Richard Sullivan, Heirs of the Roman Empire (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1960), p. 82.

3. J. N. Hillgarth, ed., The Conversion of Western Europe, 350-750 (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1969), pp. 113-114.