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In 410, the "eternal city" of Rome
was sacked. From 451 to 453 Italy
suffered the invasions of Attila the Hun who was known by all as the
"scourge of God." By the 5th century, power in Western
Europe had passed from the hands of the Roman emperors to those
of barbarian chieftains. In 476, the date usually assigned to the fall the Roman
Empire, the barbarian Odovacer
(c.434-493), deposed the western emperor Romulus Augustulus
and ruled in his place.
By the end of the 5th century the western Empire was split into various
Germanic kingdoms. The Ostrogoths settled in Italy, the Franks
in northern Gaul, the Burgundians in Provence,
the Visigoths
in southern Gaul and Spain, the Vandals
in Africa and the western Mediterranean, and the Angles and Saxons in
England. Barbarians were clearly the masters of western Europe, but they were
also willing to accommodate themselves to the people they conquered. (See map
of barbarian migration, Shockwave required.)
Despite the military defeat of the Roman Empire by
these various barbarian tribes, these victories did not lead to a cultural
defeat of the Roman Empire. To be sure, the barbarians
were militarily superior, but the Romans managed to maintain their cultural
strength. In other words, Roman language, law, and government continued to exist
alongside new Germanic institutions. Together with this accommodation, was
the fact that the Visigoths, the Ostrogoths and the
Vandals became a Christianized people. However,
their religious creed was considered heretical by the Church. They were Arian
Christians -- Christians who believed that Jesus Christ was not of one
identical substance with God. The Arian heresy was founded by a priest named Arius and was condemned in 325 by the Council of Nicaea (see "Arianism v. the Council of Nicaea").
Despite the fact that the Church was hostile to the Arian form of
Christianity, the Germans admired Roman culture. They never wanted to destroy
it. Just the same, the Germans were a rural people, and preferred the
countryside to urban life. By 500, the Franks were converted to the Orthodox
form of Christianity supported by the bishops at Rome.
As Roman Christians, the Franks eventually helped conquer and convert the
Goths and other barbarians in western Europe.
The period of history from roughly 500 to 1000 is called the early Middle
Ages. It is oftentimes called Late Antiquity as well (see the excellent
introduction, "A
Visual Tour Through late Antiquity"). While we will return to the Frankish
Kingdom in later lectures, it is
important to understand that during the period of the early Middle Ages, Europe
was born. This is a period of time in which a distinctive western European
culture began to emerge. Whether we look to geography, government, religion,
culture, or language, western Europe became a land distinct from both the
Byzantine world and the Muslim world .Although this period marks the decline
of the Roman world, it is also a time of recovery and experimentation with
new ideas and institutions.
The crucial feature of the early Middle Ages was a unique blending of
three distinct traditions: the Greco-Roman tradition, the Judeo-Christian
tradition, and Germanic custom.
As western Europe fell to the Germanic invasions, imperial power shifted
to the Byzantine Empire, that is, the eastern part of
the Roman Empire, with its capital at Constantinople.
The eastern provinces of the former Roman Empire had
always outnumbered those in the west. Its civilization was far older and it
had larger cities, which were also more numerous than in the west.
It was Constantine the
Great who began the rebuilding of Byzantium
in 324, renaming the city Constantinople and
dedicating it in 330. Constantinople became the sole
capital of the Empire and remained so until the late 8th century when
Charlemagne strengthened the Frankish
Kingdom. Although the Byzantine
Empire remained in existence until it was defeated by the Turks
in 1453, our focus shall be on the early period of Byzantine history up to
the year 632.
 The greatest of all the eastern emperors was clearly Justinian (c.482-565),
who reigned for thirty-eight years between 527 and 565. Justinian was
reformer in the fashion of Augustus Caesar. It was Justinian's desire to
restore the Empire -- both East and West -- to all of its former glory. In
fact, it has been said that his desire to restore the former Roman
Empire was an obsession. His greatest accomplishment toward this
end was the revision and codification of Roman law. Justinian understood that
a strong government could not exist without good laws. Although the Romans
prided themselves on their written laws, several centuries of written laws
had brought nothing but confusion. In Justinian's day, a man could have spent
a lifetime studying the laws without ever mastering them. The laws had grown
too numerous and too confusing. Justinian created a commission of sixteen men
to bring order out of all the laws. These men worked for six years and
studied more than 2000 texts. In 534, the commission produced the Corpus
Juris Civilis –
the Body of Civil Law. The Corpus, written in Latin, became the
standard legal work until the middle of the 19th century. As such, the Corpus
is one of the most sophisticated legal systems ever produced and symbolized
Justinian's efforts to create a reunited and well-governed Empire.
 Justinian was clearly a man who was driven by his
obsession. He was aided by his predecessors, who were able to fend off
Germanic invasions, something the western empire could not do until much
later. Justinian was also aided by his wife, Theodora (c.500-547), the
daughter of a bearkeeper at the Hippodrome, and no
less ambitious than her husband. Together, she and Justinian brought new
energy to an old, conservative regime.
In 532, mob violence erupted in Constantinople.
These riots were called the Nika Riots ("Nika"= "Victory!"), and grew from
political unrest over the government's fiscal measures. Rival factions of
Blues and Greens (admirers of rival chariot-racing teams) fought in the
streets. Justinian wanted to leave the city during the riots, but two of his
generals (Belisarius and Narses)
and his wife Theodora, persuaded him to stay. Theodora took it upon herself
to raise a personal army, an army that eventually killed 35,000 people in a
single day.
Following Justinian's victory -- actually Theodora's -- Justinian sent his
armies to recapture parts of the former western Empire. In 533, he sent his
armies to North Africa to destroy the Vandal
Kingdom. The same year his generals
took Sicily and Rome.
However, victory was only temporary. By 565, Roman Italy was invaded and
overtaken by the Lombards.
Back at Constantinople, Justinian tried to rebuild
the city. He built aqueducts to supply the city with water. Overseeing all
sorts of government buildings, he was responsible for the construction of at
least twenty-five churches, the Hagia
Sophia being the most well-known. The Hagia
Sophia (Church of the Holy Wisdom) was initially constructed under Constantine
and reconstructed around 400. Justinian commissioned two Greek architects (Isidoros and Anthemios) to
build a new kind of church with a great dome at the center. The dome rises
180 feet and the church itself covers 25,000 square feet. The interior was
light and airy and covered with mosaics.
Religion as well as law served Justinian's efforts to centralize the
imperial office. Since the 5th century the patriarch of Constantinople
had crowned emperors in Constantinople, a practice
which reflected the close ties between secular and religious leaders. In 380,
Christianity had been proclaimed the official religion of the eastern Empire.
All other religions and sects were denounced as "demented and
insane." Orthodox Christianity was not, however, the only religion
within the Empire with a significant number of followers. Nor did the rulers
view religion as merely a political tool. At one time or another the
Christian heresies of Arianism (the belief that Jesus was not of one
substance with God), Monophysitism (Jesus has one nature – a composite
divine/human one, not a fully divine and fully human), and Iconoclasm (the attempt
to abolish the use of icons/images in church services) also received imperial
support. Persecution and absorption into popular Christianity served to cut
short many pagan religious practices.
There were also a large number of Jews living in the Byzantine world.
However, the Romans had considered the Jews in comparison to Christians to be
narrow, dogmatic, and intolerant people, and had little love for them. Under
Roman law Jews had legal protection as long as they did not proselytize among
Christians, build new synagogues, or attempt to enter public office. Whereas
Justinian adopted a policy of voluntary Jewish conversion, the later emperors
ordered all Jews to be baptized, and granted tax breaks to those who
voluntarily complied. Neither effort was successful in converting the Jews of
the Empire.
During the reign of Justinian, the Empire's strength was in its more than
1500 cities. The largest, with perhaps 350,000 inhabitants, was Constantinople,
the cultural crossroads of east and west, north and south. Councils composed
of around 200 local wealthy landowners governed the cities. Known as decurions, they made up the intellectual and
economic elite of the Empire. A 5th century record gives us some sense of the
size and splendor of Constantinople. According to the
record, there were five imperial and nine princely palaces; eight public and
153 private baths; five granaries; two theaters; a hippodrome; 322 streets;
4388 substantial houses; 52 porticoes; 20 public and 120 private bakers; and
14 churches. The most popular entertainments were the theater, frequently
denounced by the clergy for nudity and immorality, and the races at the
hippodrome. Numerous public taverns and baths also existed.
During the reign of Heraclius (610-641), the Empire took a decidedly
eastern, as opposed to Roman, direction. Heraclius
spoke Greek, not Latin and his entire reign was preoccupied with resisting
Persian and Islamic invasions. Islamic armies overran the Empire after 632,
directly attacking Constantinople for the first time
in 677. Not until the reign of Leo III in the early 8th century were the
Islamic armies defeated and most of Asia Minor
retained by the Byzantines.
 Leo, however, offended western Christians when he forbade
the use of images in eastern churches and tried to enforce the ban in the
west. This became a source of conflict to western Christians, who had
carefully nurtured the adoration of Jesus, Mary, and the saints in images and
icons. The banning of images became a major expression of eastern imperial
involvement in church dogma and practice that the western church had always
resisted. In addition to creating a new division within Christendom, the new
ban on images brought about the destruction of much religious art.
Throughout the period of the early Middle Ages the Byzantine
Empire served as a protective barrier between western Europe and
the Persian, Arab, and Turkish armies. The Byzantines were also a major
conduit of classical learning and science into the west down to the
Renaissance. Throughout the centuries and while western Europeans were
fumbling to create a new culture of their own, the cities of the Byzantine
Empire provided them an outstanding model of a civilized
society.
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