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The most prominent socioeconomic characteristic of this time frame had its roots hundreds of years earlier and would continue hundreds of years after. That prominent characteristic is the long-term transformation process bridging between the Roman civilization of the second century AD and the Medieval European civilization of the twelfth century AD. Indeed, the grand civilization that has formed the context for our study so far will disintegrate, if not completely disappear, before our eyes in the time frame introduced here. Travel and communication across this world will become increasingly dangerous, difficult and intermittent. Its sophisticated economic support system will collapse, its phenomenal political and military power will dissolve into hostile fragments, and its cultural unity will be transformed into isolated, localized pockets alien and incomprehensible to one another.
This transformation is sometimes described as The Barbarization of Roman Europe, but that suggests that the end results owe more to the Barbarian than the Roman. That same distorted misconception is conveyed by the phrase, "the fall of Rome." What we need to understand is that both cultures, the more sophisticated and relatively unified Roman civilization on the one hand and the greatly diversified and marginally civilized Barbarian culture on the other make equally important contributions. In the end nothing remains pure and unchanged. Roman elements have become Barbarized. Barbarian elements have become Romanized.
The assimilation between older Roman peoples and the late coming barbarians was retarded by many circumstances, not the least of which was the distance and contrast between the cultural achievements of the two groups. As the higher Roman achievements faded for want of effective popular support in terms of time and money and in the face of the unrelenting demands for survival, a new common European cultural plateau was becoming apparent. This new average of cultural achievement was at a substantially lower and less sophisticated level than had existed four or even two centuries previously. Much of Rome's higher cultural knowledge was thus rejected or neglected as irrelevant.
The challenge for the student of Christian history in this period is first of all to understand how Christianity and Christian institutions reacted to these profound changes in the cultural environment. The student may then contemplate why particular actions were taken in place of other options obvious to present day observers. This understanding will provide students with a basis for recognizing and understanding the aspects of present day Christianity that represent the legacy of this disruptive period.
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The institutions of Christianity struggled to hold the world, East and West, as well as barbarian and Roman together. Any human institution built on tradition and continuity with the past is conservative by nature, sometimes blindly so, especially when confronted by chaotic changes. Hence, we should not be surprised when Christians who perceive that the traditional culture in which they have experienced and known Christianity is in danger, respond by institutionalizing and/or traditionalizing particular aspects of that secular culture. As a result aspects of secular culture become part of the traditional and institutional baggage of Christianity to be conserved and maintained without question in the future. This is a mixed blessing. In the short term it may give the Christians a very key role in the maintenance of civilization itself, as it did in western Europe in the period we are now surveying. In the long run, however, it may seriously distort the Christian tradition of a whole geographic region for perhaps millennia into the future.
The cultural role of Christian institutions, primarily churches and the clergy, was especially crucial in the early stages of this period in Western Europe. The Church there so defended and nurtured the accouterments of the Roman culture that when they had disappeared elsewhere they remained an integral part of Western Christianity. The great cultural role of monasteries in Europe gradually became more apparent as the period progressed.
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Economically during the early part of historical period covered here between the early sixth century and the beginning of the eighth the proportions of rural versus urban dwelling peoples in Western Europe shift noticeably in favor of the rural. Except for Italy where the urban dwelling farmers of Late Roman days could still be seen most of those employed in agricultural production and related crafts elsewhere in Europe already by the seventh century live scattered across the landscape in relatively small villages close to the cultivated fields. Such village demographics are not new. Such collective agricultural enterprises appeared in Western Europe before the rise and dominance of the urban-based civilization we call "Roman". Indeed, wherever civilization has developed such agricultural activities have served as its economic foundation. During the height of Roman civilized achievement the villages were certainly there economically supporting all that sophisticated urban superstructure.
Social status in the predominately rural culture is a factor of landholding. The family holding the largest share of the lands in a single village has a much higher status than the family in the same village with an average sized holding. The latter family also has a higher status than that of the landless village families. The great landed families form the aristocracy of rural society. In some communities these great landed families were called the seigneur (senior, signor) families. I use the term "seigneur" to apply to any family whose total land holdings is at least sufficient to free them (see explanation in following paragraph) from manual agricultural work. Some seigneur families acquired holdings through marriage and inheritance many times larger than the minimum size. In the sixth century these very wealthy seigneur families were known as the potentiores, "the more powerful".
The status of the seigneur families is reflected by several observable behavioral characteristics. While such families usually live on or near their personal real estate they only administer these lands they do not personally till them. They contract portions of their land to the landless families and to those with less than enough land in return for customary amounts of agricultural labor and produce. Hence these seigneur families were able to live off the produce of their land while at the same time being free to spend their time and energy on other affairs since they don't have to plow, plant and harvest crops with their own hands. Another characteristic of these landed families can be seen in their seeking to ally socially with other families of comparable status in other villages. It is also significant that it was generally the men of these seigneur families who served the state as soldiers and government agents or who entered the service of the church.
In the light of the point made in paragraph one, above, it should be remembered that the majority of barbarian families settled in western Roman regions before and during this period ranked among the seigneurs, a great many of them ranked with the potentiores. Intermarriage between native Roman and barbarian while prohibited by law among the lower classes seems to have begun first among the families of "the more powerful".
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Certainly the wealthiest institution anywhere in Western Europe was the church, evidenced by the large amount of land it had come to control. The Church generally administered its lands more efficiently than many of the secular seigneurs, but essentially in the same way a seigneur family administered its lands to meet the family's needs. The local bishop or abbot acting as the head of a seigneur family leases out portions of the church's lands for the going rates of labor and produce. The labor is worked out in the cultivation of the church's lands that were not leased out. The church has the produce from that land as well as a portion of the produce from each tract that was leased. Whenever one of these farmers dies the lease responsibility usually passes to his heirs. If he has no heirs then whoever needs the land can lease it. Remember also that in a society that is illiterate, public rituals and ceremonies take the place of the written documents and signatures we might expect in these transactions.
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Italy continued to have a higher level economy with more commercial transactions and coinage in circulation than in Europe beyond the Alps during the century and a half after 700. Consequently, urban population centers were much more numerous in Italy and during this period many of the Italian ports never lost contact with the economic activity in the Aegean. It is true, however, that trade based in Egypt and Syria in the East and extending to Italy and Southern France was terminated in this period due to the Muslim conquests and resulting Byzantine policy. The effects of the termination of this trans-Mediterranean commercial linkage whose history had begun over a thousand years before did contribute to the impoverishment and of Western Europe and accelerate its transformation. For example there is some rather vague evidence indicating that the cities along the French and Italian Riviera, including Marseilles, declined in population between 650 and 750. It is also noted that while eastern based merchants mentioned in western Europe in earlier centuries were usually called "Syrians", many of the merchants based in transalpine Europe that replaced the "Syrians" in the eighth century were Jews.
By 750 the largest commercially supported urban populations in transalpine Europe were along the slave trade routes that converged on the Rhone River and terminated at Marseilles. Some of these had been important urban centers in Roman times and some have grown in significance since the fifth century. Saracen (African Muslim) slave buyers purchased thousands of slaves brought to Marseilles by European slavers. Many were Slavs from the eastern frontiers of Frankish control. Many came from Britain's tribes and many were of south Scandinavian origin. Gold coinage had virtually disappeared in Western Europe by the eighth century but silver coinage did continue to be circulated in the commercial populations until the most turbulent years of the ninth and tenth century crisis when both the merchants and the money became very scarce. Viking activities in the North Sea disrupted slave trade and other commercial activity there beginning about 825. Norwegian and Dane raids on the European Continent began about 799. By 826 the Danes had established a strong settlement in Frisia. Hit-and-run raids designed to collect movable wealth and take it back to Scandinavia were directed all along the coast and inland along the rivers of northern Frankland. Duurstede and important trading city in the Rhine delta was first attacked in 834. Noirmoutier a town in the delta of the Loire was attacked in 835. Further south both Lisbon and Cadiz in Muslim Spain were hit in 840. It was just the beginning.
Staple markets brought together the traveling merchants with their "outlandish goods" and the surpluses of the local agricultural production. Staple markets flourished in this period along the merchants' routes and in the hinterlands of the truly urban settlements, but they were declining in activity in those areas where the agricultural population was less dependent on long distance commerce. Many of the more prosperous agricultural communities supported some type of local craft production of fibers, glass or metal, some of which were exported over great distances. Most of the slaves working in western Europe at this time were employed as skilled craftsmen whose products paid for their keep and brought a respectable return on the slave owner's investment.
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Much can be, and has been, read into the scant evidence we have reflecting the status of less well-to-do farmers in this period beginning in the sixth century, but everything I see points to the free status of the great majority of European farmers. While there is some evidence that may be taken as indicating the continued enforcement of impediments to the freedom of the lower class farmers still in the eighth century, increasing amounts of evidence to the contrary appears.
Moreover, agricultural innovation swept across Europe north of the Alps in the eighth and ninth centuries with the adoption of three-field rotation and of the wheel-supported, moldboard equipped plow. The same number of farmers could now handle 12.5% more land and enjoy a 50% increase in productivity with the three-field system of rotation in place of the traditional two-field rotation system. Yet, the two-field system continued to prevail where the soil conditions and climate mandated it as in the southern European regions.
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The bishops of Rome in the years after Justinian remained solidly under the thumb of the Emperor at Constantinople and after Emperor Maurice, under the watchful eye of the Exarch of Ravenna. The most powerful and important office in the grand old city of Rome was that of the Christian bishop. There is no doubt that the reputation of that office was considerably elevated by the career of Bishop Gregory I (590-604).
Gregory is recognized as an outstanding example of the power and influence of the office of Roman bishop. Gregory was not only the first monk to become bishop of Rome, many scholars consider him the founding father of the "Roman Catholic" Church. While it is anachronistic to assume that Gregory was ever addressed by his contemporaries as "pope", he was nevertheless able by his energetic activity to establish precedents that few of his successors could emulate. In fairness it should be noted that his career came at a time when the Imperial throne at Constantinople descended to its lowest mark of effective power with the complete collapse of the Roman military in the face to two formidable foes, the Persians and the Avars.
Gregory was the son of a high ranking Roman family trained for a career in governmental service, which began with his appointment as prefect of Rome in 573. He resigned that post when he inherited his family's legacy a short time later. Using his family land and resources he organized and endowed seven monasteries. He then promptly entered monastic life himself in the monastery he had established in his family's home in Rome. Some months later in 579 the Roman Bishop, Pelagius II selected him, to serve as deacon and to journey to Constantinople as his apocrisiary, or ambassador, at the court of Emperor. He arrived in Constantinople during the reign of Tiberius II Constantine and remained over 6 years, until the fourth year of Emperor Maurice. In 586 he was called home to become Abbot at St. Andrew's, the monastery in his boyhood home.
Gregory was elected bishop on September 3, 590, and Emperor Maurice promptly confirmed his election. At least two of his father's ancestors had previously served in this office (Felix III, 483-492; and Agapetus I, 535-536). As an administrator Gregory was a rigorous disciplinarian and businessman, but he was not without mercy and patience for those less dedicated than himself. Gregory did not hesitate to use the income of the bishop's patrimony to meet various financial crises in Rome. City walls were strengthened, public buildings repaired, and the food distribution for the poor was continued with the Church's funds. When the Lombards threatened to cut off the city, Gregory organized the resistance and paid the imperial troops defending the city when the Exarch's funds were insufficient. Gregory dealt with Frankish, Anglo-Saxon, Visigothic and Lombard rulers, addressing them as "son" and giving them orders as though he was the governor over them. The Lombards perceived that he was the real governor of Italy instead of the Exarch.
Gregory introduced a new title for the Patriarchal Bishop of Rome: servos servorum dei, Servant of the Servants of God. In this he was not really retreating from the claims of superiority his office had repeatedly asserted since the third century, he was asserting still another area of primacy or leadership. At the same time he denounced the title "Ecumenical" which the Patriarchal Bishop of Constantinople had used for over a century. In his separate letters to Emperor Maurice and Empress Constantina Gregory argued that all bishops, as bishops, are absolutely equal in power and authority! Gregory urged Maurice to prevail on the patriarch to drop this pretentious title because it disturbs "the peace of the whole church." Maurice was not convinced, moreover, he might have taken offense at being lectured by the Bishop of Rome.
Ecumene means "general" or "universal" but was a common synonym for "Empire". "Ecumenical Bishop" suggests an office of imperial stature ranking above all the localized bishops of the Empire. Gregory's "supremacy of servitude" would not be limited, however, just to the Servants of God within the Roman Empire.
Gregory's reputation survived him and insured that his writings would be copied and preserved. The Registry containing the full text of over 800 letters and documents, most from his pen, survives from his reign. His handbook for bishops and rectors entitled Liber pastoralis and outlining administrative tactics was widely influential for centuries. His Dialogi de vita et miraculis patrium Italicorum, consists of a collection of biographical accounts of Italian saints such as Benedict of Nursia and including accounts of miracles attributed to these saints. While the miracle accounts might be characterized by a modern commentator as "differing only in the degree of absurdity", they do emphasize the importance of the church and its sacraments. He considered his commentary on the moral lessons in The Book of Job, Moralia in Iob, to be his greatest work. Moral theology was his strength.
Gregory's Latin was substantially different from the Latin utilized by Augustine of Hippo--Gregory's favorite author--and even further removed from the Classical Latin of Caesar and Cicero. Gregory attempted to distill Augustine's theology for the less intellectual generation in which he lived. Yet Gregory himself was unable to grasp Augustine's thought except at the most superficial levels.
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By the middle of the seventh century many refugees from the turmoil in the East could be found in Rome and other Italian cities, especially in southern Italy. Ravenna and Rome, but especially the port cities of the south like Bari, Naples, and Amalfi reflected the predominance of eastern art, architecture, styles of dress and manners of life. Eastern rituals were common in the churches and eastern saints were highly venerated. Already by 650 there were monasteries in Rome totally occupied by eastern-born monks who had fled from the Persian or Muslim threat.
Because of the large numbers of Greek speaking Christians who migrated to the Italian cities during the seventh century, it is not surprising that many of the Roman bishops of this period spoke Greek as their native tongue. There were four Greeks, four Syrians and one Thracian among the nineteen bishops between 642 and 752. Neither is it surprising that it was in this century that the Greek, papas, "father", became the customary address for the Bishop of Rome. The English terms "pope", "papal" and "papacy" are all derived from the above Greek usage. From the seventh century then we can be historically accurate in referring to the Roman Bishop as the Pope.
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During the last phases of the Monophysite/Monothelite Controversy Pope Martin I (649-655) of Rome assumed his office without waiting for the customary imperial confirmation of his election. Perhaps he and his clergy thought it would be wrong to seek confirmation from a heretic--but no council ever officially condemned Constans II as a heretic. Pope Martin I called a council of Italian churchmen in 649 (October) to meet at St. John's Lateran where they condemned both Monothelite doctrine and the typos.
Olympius, the Exarch of Ravenna, imperial governor of Italy, first attempted to follow Constans II's orders to arrest Pope Martin I, but changed his mind, defied the Emperor and made peace with the bishop. Olympius declared himself Emperor, but lost his life in 652 repulsing an Arab invasion of Sicily.
The new Exarch of Ravenna, Theodore Calliopus, arrested Pope Martin and other ringleaders of the rebellion of Olympius and sent them in chains to Constantinople. Martin I was convicted of treason, but his sentence was commuted from death to banishment because of the impassioned plea of Bishop Paul of Constantinople. Pope Martin I ended his days at Cherson, on the north coast of the Black Sea. Martin's successors at Rome were careful to remain on good terms with Emperor Constans II.
The Emperor Constans II visited Rome personally in 664 and was the guest of Bishop Vitalian (657-672). This was an outstanding event, the first Emperor to visit Rome in a very long time; and, it would be 800 years or so before another Emperor of Constantinople would visit the ancient capital. Constans II's visit was not a happy memory. Constans, who had come to the west to stop the threatened advances of the Arabs across North Africa came briefly to Rome for the purpose of confiscating metal supplies and war materials. He even had the bronze tiles ripped from the roof of the ancient monumental structure housing the Church of St. Mary (the main building had been erected by Emperor Hadrian over 500 years earlier and called the Pantheon). Almost equally difficult for Roman pride to bear was his hasty departure with intentions to establish a new western imperial capital in Sicily. Not many Italo-Romans mourned Constans II in 668 when he died the result of a mysterious accident(?) involving a soap pot while taking a bath. Nothing came of the Sicilian capital idea.
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The Exarch's policies were not always pleasing to the Italo-Romans and sometimes they expressed their displeasure by aiding the Lombards in their struggle against the Exarch. At first the various Lombard dukes and their tribes acted independently of each other, frequently warring among themselves. Lombard kings were slow in gaining power over the regional Dukes, but by about 675 the internal cohesion of the Lombard state was sufficient for king Perctarit to represent the Lombard Nation in negotiations with the Exarch. By this time imperial control had been reduced to southern Italy's coastal cities as far north as the vicinity of Rome together with a narrow inland corridor stretching northward from Rome to Ravenna.
It was about 675 when aristocratic Lombards began to intermarry with Italo-Roman aristocrats, but the amalgamation of the two races was by no means complete by 750. Lombard Italy by 725 was using primarily Italo-Roman dialects of Latin. Most urban centers in the Lombard region were ruled by Lombard rulers but some of the smaller places where only a few Lombards lived were ruled by the local Arian or Orthodox Bishop who was held responsible by the local Lombard leader. In the rural area the orthodox Italo-Roman population lived under the rule of the local Lombard Dukes and their warriors who exercised landlord rights usurping up to 1/3 of every wealthy land owner's estate.
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The initial Christian impact on the barbarians was discussed in the previous unit. In 466 the Romans insisted the Visigoths return to their former region in southwestern France. However fifty years later in 507-510 the advancing Franks drove them out of France. Thereafter they gradually claimed hospitality throughout most of Spain except the extreme northwest which was claimed by other barbarian immigrants, the Suevians.
In their Spanish realm the Visigothic and the Ibero-Roman populations continued to be ruled by separate sets of laws. But the Visigoths were ahead of some other barbarians in having had their own laws published in writing already in the fifth century. By the beginning of the sixth century a special simplified selection of Roman laws for the Roman population under Visigothic rule was published by king Alaric II (484-507). It should be noted however that the Visigoths enforced the prohibition of intermarriage between Roman and barbarian until after the middle of the sixth century.
Barcelona was the Visigothic capital until 549, then Merida until 554, and Toledo thereafter. Emperor Justinian's war to reclaim the West from the heretic Arians led to the invasion of southern Spain c. 550 and the conquest of Cordoba. The Arian Visigoths defended their kingdom successfully; King Leovigilt (568-585) reconquered most of what Justinian's army had conquered, but it was not until 621 that the last foothold of the Empire's forces was dislodged. Meanwhile the Visigoths entertained justifiable suspicions regarding the loyalty of the orthodox catholic Christians in their kingdom. King Leovigilt was converted to orthodox Catholicism in 579 as a result of the witness of his Frankish wife. His stepbrother had him beheaded as a traitor in 585. Nevertheless, King Recered I (586-601) publicly declared himself a Catholic and Arianism was soon eliminated. The Muslim expansion from northwest Africa over-ran the Visigothic kingdom beginning in 711 and soon took control of most of Spain.
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