4 history essays questions

The Format 12 new roman the rest of the requirements of these essays are on file attachment named “Essays Guideline”

MLA format and citation.

 

Essay Questions (4)

1.Read Einhard and supporting materials in Reiter 9.  Why is Charlemagne the symbol of a new Europe?

 The link to Einhard is here: http://www.fordham.edu/Halsall/basis/einhard.asp

2.
Read the Rule of Benedict. What makes this choice of devotion a challenge?  What about it is appealing?

 

Benedict http://rule.kansasmonks.org/ This is an excellent illustrated edition of the rule. It’s short. a “chapter” is a paragraph.

3.Read the “Fall” of the Roman Empire, and the accounts in Reiter 8.  What are the chief theories? Do you think it was a fall, a decline or a transition?

Look at attachments

4.Read the Res Gestae (Divine Accomplishments) of Augustus, as well as the account of Augustus’ career in the supporting sources, and the various opinions in Reiter 7 and Suetonius’ life of Augustus.  Remembering that he is a politician – and therefore prone to spinning events to his advantage – how does Augustus make his message convincing to his audience?

Res GestaeThe autobiography of Augustus: http://classics.mit.edu/Augustus/deeds.html

Suetonius Augustus The complete Life of Augustus: http://www.fordham.edu/Halsall/ancient/suetonius-augustus.asp

       

Chapter Nine: New Identities in the Wake of Collapse, 600-1000

The collapse of the Roman government in the West was the beginning of a time period we call the “Middle Ages”, after an early modern assumption that everything happening between the disappearance of Rome and the Renaissance was merely a bridge linking two periods of cultural achievement. Roman thought and structures were replaced by new philosophies from two religious systems in full emergence by 700, as well as new political identities that looked away from classical Mediterranean core. However, the period was more than just a transitional era. The end of antiquity was also the beginning of Europe. However, exactly what do we mean by “Europe”? Was there ever such an entity, or are we merely talking about several developing societies in a geographical region?

Compare these recent opinions from two of the top scholars in the field

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Europe was not born in the early Middle Ages. No common identity in 1000 linked Spain to Russia, Ireland to the Byzantine Empire… except the very weak sense of community that linked Christian polities together. There was no common European culture, and certainly not any Europe wide economy. There was no sign whatsoever that Europe would, in a still rather distant future, develop economically and militarily, so as to be able to dominate the world…

…a moralizing historiography dependent on the storyline of failure saw the centuries between 400/500 and 1000 as inferior. Whatever people’s explanations for the fall of the Roman empire in the fifth century… it seemed obvious that it was a Bad Thing, and that European and Mediterranean societies took centuries to recover from it; maybe by the time of Charlemagne (768-814), maybe not until the economic expansion and religious reformism of the eleventh century. The eastern empire’s survival as Byzantium was hardly stressed at all. The nationalist origin-myths were almost all the period had going for it; they survived longer than the image of the early Middle Ages as a failure, in fact.

Most of this is now, fortunately changed; the early Middle Ages is not the Cinderella period any more…

…All the same, identities did change. Fewer and fewer people in the West called themselves Romani; the others found new ethnic markers: Goths, Lombards, Bavarians, Alemans, Franks, different varieties of Angles and Saxons, Britons… And although of course the huge majority of the ancestors of all these peoples were men and women who would have called themselves Roman in 400, the Roman world had indeed gone, and Roman-ness with it. (Chris Wickham, The Inheritance of Rome Penguin Books: 2009, pp. 4, 6, 200)

The Question: Why does Wickham feel it is not possible to speak of a “Europe” at this time?

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Wickham, a medieval European scholar, sees too many disparate stories of identity, even if he, like many current scholars, dismisses the idea of a failed west following the disappearance of the Roman presence. Heather, a late antique historian whose views we have encountered in Chapter Eight, holds a different opinion:

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…Essentially, patterns of human organization were moving towards much greater homogeneity right across the European landmass. It was these new state and cultural structures which broke forever the ancient world order of Mediterranean domination. Barbarian Europe was barbarian no longer. The ancient world order had given way to cultural and political patterns that were more directly ancestral to those of modern Europe.

The overall significance of this massive shift of power shows up in just how many of the histories of modern European countries trace themselves back, if at a pinch, to a new political continuity which came into existence at some point in the mid- and later first millennium…. In a very profound sense, the political and cultural transformations of the first millennium really did witness the birth pains of modern Europe. For Europe is fundamentally not so much a geographic as a cultural, economic and political phenomenon. In geographical terms, it is just the western portion of the great Eurasian landmass. What gives Europe its real historical identity is the generation of societies that were all interacting with one another in political, economic and cultural terms on a large enough scale to have certain significant similarities in common, and the first emergence of real similarity was one direct consequence of the transformation of barbarian Europe in the first millennium …

…By the tenth century, networks of economic, political and cultural contact were stretching right across the territory between the Atlantic and the Volga, and from the Baltic to the Mediterranean. This turned what had previously been a highly fragmented landscape, marked by massive disparities of development and widespread non-connection at the birth of Christ, into a zone united by significant levels of interaction. Europe is a unit not of physical but of human geography, and by the year 1000 interaction between human populations all the way from the Atlantic to the Volga was for the first time sufficiently intense to give the term some real meaning… (Peter Heather, Empires and Barbarians: The Fall of Rome and the Birth of Europe Oxford University Press: 2010 pp. xv, 611-2)

The Question: How does Heather define a European identity? How does he differ from Wickham?

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The period from 600-1000 was one of the most transformative times in western civilization, and it is impossible to deal in detail with every political entity that formed as Roman influence receded. The development of a strong post-Roman vigor in northern Europe, for example, will be examined in another chapter. Instead this chapter will look at the various regional influences that played a major role in the shaping of a new construct of “Europe”. Section One will examine the continuity of a Mediterranean society, and its implications for the development of northern and eastern Europe. Section Two will ask how the Islamic revolution changed these relationships. The next section will ask if there is any connection between the rise of Islam and the new relationships being forged in the Mediterranean world. Finally, we will look at the most charismatic family of the early Middle Ages, the Carolingians, and their role in the definition of Europe.

Section One: Two Romes

In 589 sources reported great floods down the Tiber and Arnige Rivers, inundating the Italian cities of Verona and Rome. While by no means indicative in themselves of the sort of climate change long assumed for the early Middle Ages, the method by which they were reported does reflect the way the priorities of Rome itself had changed. By 600 Rome was to all appearances nothing more than another collapsed post-Empire city, with imperial architecture already being repurposed to more immediate needs, desecrated temples recycled into churches and the Forum for the most part abandoned. However, the city claimed to remain the first city – Urbs – of the Christian world by virtue of its connection to Peter.

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The “Italianization” of Italy in the seventh century had made the region ripe for a separatist movement, but it was the Greeks who forced the issue. Separation from Byzantium, however, was no so easy as it might seem, because lurking in the background were the Lombards, ever ready to pounce on a defenseless Italy…

…it was the papacy that defined the terms of the solution to the Italian crisis. The inhabitants of Rome, of the Ravennate, and of the Pentapolis, were the pope’s “flocks”. Together they lived in a Republic and St. Peter was its patron and eponymous hero. The appearance of the term respublica and its association with St. Peter establishes beyond a reasonable doubt that a new political entity was coming into being… “These western lands” or “this province of Italy” or “the republic” were inhabited by a “peculiar people” who were the pope’s “flocks” or else his “lost flocks” when the Lombards seized them. The Lombards took lands “from the right of the Church” and restored them “to the prince of the apostles, St. Peter.” What could be clearer than this? (Thomas F. X. Noble, The Republic of St. Peter. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984, p. 58)

The Question: How was Rome redefined in the early MiddleAges?

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Noble defends the idea that Rome, through the leadership of the papacy, had become its own entity once again by the eighth century, but had “Italianized” in a conscious strategy to rid itself of Byzantine influence. This, however, had nothing to do with any sort of Byzantine decline.

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We see in late antiquity a mass of experimentation, new ways being tried and new adjustments made. The process of myth-making and development of new identities inevitably implied the shaping of the past according to current preoccupations. Like the medieval west, Byzantium was also engaged in this process. Byzantine society has often been seen as static and unchanging, “theocratic” and without the possibility of dissent. But all recent research demonstrates that this was far from the case in practice: we have been taken in by the Byzantines themselves, who liked to emphasize their own traditionalism. Both east and west continued to engage in the reshaping of the past. The contemporary sense of the approaching end of the world lent itself to infinite procrastination and renegotiation as the projected day came closer. The early medieval west was characterized by diversity, not uniformity. The final collapse of iconoclasm gave rise in the east to a burst of artistic and cultural activity, from manuscript decoration to literary works. In both east and west, state and church, the two poles of authority, were in constant tension with each other. Conversion continued to be a main preoccupation in both east and west. Faced by a huge loss of territory, including Jerusalem and the Holy Land, Byzantium turned its attention to the peoples of the north, peoples like the Slavs and the Bulgars who were still pagan. The outcome of the struggle between church and state was as yet uncertain; and within the diminished empire of the 8th century the relation of the present to the past was still a topic of tension and struggle. During late antiquity the past had been remade, but it had been remade in many different ways, and the effort continued. (Averil Cameron “Remaking the Past” in G. Bowersock, ed., Late Antiquity: A Guide to the Postclassical World Harvard, 1999, p. 16)

The Question: How were the priorities of Constantinople redefined in the Early Middle Ages? Why would Cameron suggest that the past was being “remade”?

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As far as Constantinople was concerned, at least into the seventh century, Rome was by no means “fallen”. Power had merely shifted eastwards. For the Byzantine Greeks, civilization was to be found emanating from the imperial court and Byzantine Orthodoxy, and emulated in the numerous prosperous cities of the eastern Mediterranean. Western Europe was filled with barbarian states of little immediate interest, and the Church of Rome was somewhat deluded with self-importance and increasingly irrelevant. If one was to define a new Europe, one need look no further than the civilization glittering at the heart of Byzantium.

Justinian’s dream to reunite the Empire certainly had grandeur, but it had carried a huge price tag. Italians did not react well to his plans and brutal tactics were used to keep them in line. Meanwhile two new fronts had opened up. Chosroes I of Persia rather dramatically drove into Syria and occupied the great city of Antioch. By 614 the Persians controlled all of west Asia and Egypt, and had brutally destroyed the Christian presence in Jerusalem. To the north, Bulgars and Slavs had eastward into the Balkans. With the exception of a few territories in Italy, a near-bankrupt Byzantium withdrew from Africa and western Europe and fought a desperate holding action with demoralized and poorly paid troops.

The fiscal reversal came with Heraclius (610-41), who militarized the empire by replacing the civil administration in each region (called a “theme”) with a military commander, who now recruited soldiers and rewarded them with land within the theme rather than direct imperial salaries. He also reached an agreement with the Byzantine Church to use Church monies as an extension of the state, a move that would have long-term consequences for the relationship of church and state in the Byzantium. Finally, he managed through tough warfare to regain the holdings lost to the Persians and bring down Chosroes II, his somewhat high-handed Persian counterpart, in 6

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. Chosroes was noted for his brash style when addressing his opponents:
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I, Chrosroes the son of the great Hormisdas, the Most Noble of all the Gods, the King and Sovereign-Master over all the Earth, to Heraclius, my vile and brainless slave.

Refusing to submit yourself to my rule, you persist in calling yourself lord and sovereign. You pilfer and spend my treasure, you deceive my servants. You annoy me ceaselessly with your little gangs of brigands. Have I not brought you Greeks to your knees? You claim to trust in your God – but then why has your God not saved Caesarea, Jerusalem, and Alexandria from my wrath?… Could I not also destroy Constantinople itself, if I wished it? (Quoted in Clifford Backman, The Worlds of Medieval Europe Oxford University Press, 2003, p. 99

The Question: How does this language compare to the language used by Mesopotamian rulers millennia before? Why did Chosroes feel little need for diplomacy?

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Heraclius and his successors turned the attentions of the empire away from the west and towards its Asian and northern connections. Meanwhile, the split between Constantinople and the Roman Catholic church in Rome had continued to deepen. Rome’s continued assertion that Rome had primacy among all churches because it was by tradition founded by the apostle Peter was countered with a decision in Constantinople to grant the bishop (patriarch) of Constantinople a status equal to that of the highest “apostolic” church. The eastern churches also dealt with continued disagreements over the nature of Christ and the Trinity. Especially prominent were Nestorianism, the belief that Jesus’ nature was wholly human until his resurrection, and Monophysitism, which argued that Jesus’ nature was always and wholly divine. Although the west had fewer theological controversies, it depended on the individual ability of the pope for its unity at any given time.

In the seventh century Byzantine Constantinople had a population of 1 million. The largest towns in the West boasted no more than 20,000. The system was maintained by a complex bureaucratic imperial administration and army, and was so complicated that we still call such systems “Byzantine”. The Emperor, proclaimed by Senate or army, was holy and unapproachable. He was absolute in power and controlled the election of patriarchs. Through the patriarchs and councils he in effect ruled the church and directed the course of Byzantine religion, now called orthodoxy.

Roman civilization still survived around the Mediterranean as late as the seventh century. It looked forward to a resurgence of power after the defeat of Chosroes II. However, the consequent militarization of Byzantine society and the deepening rift between the European and Asian Byzantine worlds survived as long-term repercussions that impacted Byzantine thought and helped to shape western European ideas by the tenth century. Moreover, the Byzantine recovery of Asia and Africa proved temporary, as a religious revolution swept that territory.

Section Two: The Beginnings of Islam

By tradition, Heraclius and Chosroes II were both invited to share in a revolution that would change relationships in the Mediterranean permanently. While Chosroes’ reply left something to be said for his diplomatic skills, by tradition Heraclius considered the invitation but reconsidered when his people showed hostility. That Islam would help shape European relationships with the East is not under dispute, but how did such it effect so much change within a few generations of Mohammed’s lifetime? Why was the change perceived as adversarial? How did the formation and expansion of Islam impact the formation of European societies?

There are various explanations for the success of Islam:

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…Such is the traditional theory of the conquests: fired by religious fervour, the Bedouin neophytes of Islam rushed from their desert birthplace to convert other nations with the sword. Let us say straightaway that modern historiography has so completely dismissed this idea that it could even be tempting to try a partial reevaluation of it. Yet the concept of the dissemination of Islam by the sword must really be abandoned (that is, for the earliest era of the Arab diaspora), since a critical study of sources has shown that the victorious Arabs never presented the people they conquered with the choice between death and the acceptance of their faith…The alternative between Islam and death was only given to pagan idolaters, with whom the Arabs had dealings very rarely in that period of their activities outside Arabia. They sought rather to establish political hegemony, and to organize the payment of corresponding tribute money. The members of defeated nations who joined the faith of their conquerors in ever-increasing numbers were probably prompted by the sense of moral and material inferiority of a subject tribute-paying people…It seems we should not completely dismiss the old theory of the religious motive behind the early conquests but make the following modification to it: while realizing that the majority of Arab combatants had other more material and selfish motives, we should not forget that at least an elite among the first generation of Muslims as inspired by genuine religious ardour…the seed of universalism in Islam, though hardly touched on by the Prophet himself, must have been so firmly rooted in the mind of his second successor [Umar] that he could not remain indifferent to the propagation of the faith in the wake of the conquerors….

…We know little about the leaders of the opposing armies…but one can hardly suppose that they were either fools or cowards, and so the problem of explaining Arab military superiority remains unsolved. Recently Canard, one of the most competent students of the subject…had to conclude that the Arab conquests must still baffle the historian, thus apparently lending support to the two principal interpretations we have outlined – the one maintaining that the Arab success was the result of uncontrollable religious fervour, the other that the motive force was the irresistible goad of famine. Surely in practice the soldiers must have felt a confused mixture of both incentives at once. They must have confused the idea that they were the bearers of a new history, the champions of a young untamed race, with the equally inspiring belief that they were propagators of a new rule of life, a new faith they were to spread and reveal to the world….

The establishment of the Arab Empire was the work of a few short decades, an achievement made only possible by the courage and initiative of the Arabs, their lust for booty, their conviction that they were obeying a divine command, and their adaptability and capacity for compromise, together with the military and political skill of some of their leaders… (Francesco Gabrieli, Muhammad and the Conquests of Islam tr. Virginia Luling and Rosamund Linell. World University Library. New York: McGraw Hill, 1968. pp. 105-7, 113-15, 224 (256 pp))

The Question: What is the traditional explanation for early Islamic success in expansion? What are the problems with that interpretation?

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Gabrieli presents us with the classic observation that a genuine religious zeal had more to do with the rapid expansion of Islam than a superior army. However, others have asked whether there was a military explanation:

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With the rise of Islam…the long struggle between the tribe and the state would be resolved, for once, definitively, in favor of the state. It marked the one period of history when a state successfully brought all of Arabia – nomadic and sedentary peoples alike – firmly under its control, an episode unique in the history of Arabia until recent times. The fact that the state destined to subject tribal Arabia so completely was not one of the established states on the periphery of the peninsula but was, rather, a new state that would emerge from a sacred enclave within central Arabia itself was a development that no contemporary observer could have foreseen…

The many factors traditionally adduced to explain the military success of the Islamic conquest movement are generally quite plausible and can be accepted without much hesitation. The relative merits of the military organization of many contestants are difficult to assess since practically nothing is known about the tactical or strategic practices of any of them. It seems clear that the Muslims had no technological advantages over their opponents on the battlefield and were in fact inferior to their enemies in the use of cavalry. There can be little doubt, however, that the conquests were made easier by the exhaustion of the Byzantine and Sasanian Empires due to prolonged warfare,…the disaffection of many of the subjects of the two empires for religious or other reasons, the convenience of inner lines of communication that the Muslims enjoyed, and the like. But to these factors must be added one more that was perhaps the single most important one contributing to the success of the conquests: the remarkable degree to which a new Islamic state with an expansionist policy could harness for its purposes the rugged warriors of Arabia. The rise of the state made it possible to weld into an incredibly effective fighting force those tribesmen whose energies had hitherto been consumed by petty quarrels among themselves and whose political horizons had hitherto usually been limited to their own tribe and its affairs. The success of the conquests was, then, first and foremost the product of an organizational breakthrough of proportions unparalleled in the history of Arabian society until modern times. However important other factors may have been, it is difficult to believe that the conquests could have succeeded without the rise of a state with the capacity to integrate Arabia’s fragmented society and draw on it to attain well-defined political and military objectives. It is not even too rash, perhaps, to suggest that the Islamic conquest might have met with great success even had the Byzantine and Sasanian Empires not been reeling from their recent quarrels. The Muslims succeeded, then, primarily because they were able to organize an effective conquest movement, and in this context the impact of the new religion of Islam, which provided the theological underpinnings for this remarkable breakthrough in social organization, can be more fully appreciated….. (Fred McGraw Donner, The Early Islamic Conquests Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981, p. 49, 269. (489 pp))

The Question: What does Donner see as the key to Islamic success at this time?

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While Donner does not discount the element of timing and religious zeal, he suggests that the success may have originated in the energy of Arab warriors now united in an outward cause against currently weakened neighbors instead of each other. Pre-Islamic Arabia was tribal and divided. While the interior groups of late antique Arabia were nomadic and very conservative, there were merchant cities like Mecca that were well connected to the Mediterranean world, and home to several ethnicities and religions, including Judaism and Christianity. In Mecca, where Mohammed was born in 570, the chief object of worship was a large black meteorite housed in a sanctuary called the Ka’aba, but the Arabs were in general polytheistic.

Around 610 Mohammed underwent a series of revelations inspired by a single God (Allah in Arabic). Allah had been witnessed by Abraham, Moses and Jesus, but only Mohammed would receive the full recitation of Allah’s will, which would be written down as Qu’ran (or Koran).

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72. Certainly they disbelieve who say: Surely Allah, He is the Messiah, son of Marium; and the Messiah said: O Children of Israel! Serve Allah, my Lord and your Lord. Surely whoever associates (others) with Allah, then Allah has forbidden to him the garden, and his abode is the fire; and there shall be no helpers for the unjust.

73. Certainly they disbelieve who say: Surely Allah is the third (person) of the three; and there is no god but the one God, and if they desist not from what they say, a painful chastisement shall befall those among them who disbelieve.

75. The Messiah, son of Marium is but an apostle; apostles before him have indeed passed away; and his mother was a truthful woman; they both used to eat food. See how We make the communications clear to them, then behold, how they are turned away.

77. Say: O followers of the Book! Be not unduly immoderate in your religion, and do not follow the low desires of people who went astray before and led many astray and went astray from the right path.

78. Those who disbelieved from among the children of Israel were cursed by the tongue of Dawood and Isa, son of Marium; this was because they disobeyed and used to exceed the limit. (Koran 5th Surah)

The Question: How did Islam view the beliefs of Jews and Christians?

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Jews and Christians were People of the Book. They had received part of the prophecy, but Allah’s revelations to Mohammed were the full truth, not to be changed in any way. In part this may have been influenced by the number of Nestorians who had settled in the Arabian coastal cities. As Nestorians believed that Jesus (Isa) was human until after ascension, it is possible that this was taken as mainstream Christian belief. Man was to submit to the message of these revelations, chiefly that there was no God but Allah and that Mohammed was his Prophet (a statement of belief called the Shahada). The word for submission to Allah’s will was “Islam”.

The way of faith was simple in practice. Beyond a strict moral code (Shari’a), one observed five core practices or pillars: the Shahada, prayer five times daily, giving alms to the poor, observing the fast during the holy month of Ramadan and, if possible, making a pilgrimage (hajj) to Mecca once in one’s lifetime, thus earning the title hajji. There is, however, a revelation sometimes called the sixth pillar, which raised controversy inside and beyond the early Islamic world:

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In the name of God, the Mercy-giving, the Merciful!

…Whenever you encounter the ones who disbelieve [during war], seize them by their necks until once you have subdued them, then tie them up as prisoners, either in order to release them later on or also to ask for ransom, until war lays down her burdens. Thus shall you do-; yet if God so wished, He might defend Himself from them-in order that some of you may be tested by means of one another. The ones who have been killed in God’s way will never find their actions have been in vain; He will guide them and improve their attitude and admit them to the Garden He has acquainted them with.

You who believe, if you support God, He will support you and steady your footsteps, while the ones who disbelieve will feel wretched and their actions will miss the mark… That is because God is the Protector of those who believe, while disbelievers have no protector.

God will admit the ones who believe and perform honorable deeds into gardens through which rivers flow, while those who disbelieve will enjoy themselves and eat just as livestock eat, and the Fire will be a lodging for them. How many towns have We wiped out which were much stronger than your own town which has expelled you? They had no supporter. Is someone who holds on to evidence from his Lord like someone else whose evil action seems attractive, while they follow their own whims?

[Here] is what the parable of the Garden which the heedful have been promised will be like: it will have rivers of never stagnant water and rivers of milk whose flavor never changes, and rivers of wine so delicious for those who drink it, and rivers of clarified honey. They will have every [sort of] fruit in it, as well as forgiveness from their Lord. Are they like someone who will remain for ever in the Fire and they will be given scalding water to drink so it rips into their bowels? …(Koran 47, Eng. Interpretation T. B. Irving)

The Question: Why are the obligations of Koran 47 so controversial? How would this impact Islam’s relations with the Mediterranean world?

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The passage above puts an emphasis on action against the unbeliever, a concept termed jihad. The Jihad – striving for Allah – has been explained in various ways, and continues to be one of the greater challenges in interpretation, as it is difficult to define the situation under which Jihad should be exercised. Originally the concept may have been linked to simple tribal raiding. However, it seems to have escalated in meaning after Mohammed, forced out of Mecca by the local elites on September 24, 622 – henceforth point zero on the Moslem calendar – fled to Yathrib, a rival to Mecca all too eager to support Mohammed. Yathrib became known as Medina, City of the Prophet (Madinat al-Nabi).

Muhammed’s movement grew quickly after that, in part because Islam’s attractive notion of ummah, a greater community that centralized authority, transcended tribal rivalries and put the struggle against unbelievers ahead of local feuds. The local tribes rallied to Mohammed, initiating the start of the most rapidly accepted religious system in history. By 630 he controlled the Arabian peninsula. Jihad became part of a political-religious struggle to ensure Islamic dominance over large parts of the former Roman Mediterranean. While conversion was not coerced, the drive was still there to deal with opponents of the will of Allah.

For the Classical world, such a message was a direct threat to Roman society and ideas. Theophanes, a Byzantine chronicler, relates the Christian view:

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AM 6122 (CE 632) In this year died Muhammed, the leader and false prophet of the Saracens, after appointing his kinsman Abourbacharos [Abu Bakr] to his chieftainship. At the same time his repute was spread abroad and everyone was frightened. At the beginning of his advent the misguided Jews thought he was the Messiah who is awaited by them, so that some of their leaders joined him and accepted his religion while forsaking that of Moses, who saw God… But when they saw him eating camel meat, they realized that he was not the man that they had thought him to be, and were at a loss what to do; being afraid to abjure his religion, those wretched men taught him illicit things directed against us, Christians, and remained with him…

He taught his subjects that he who kills an enemy or is killed by an enemy goes to Paradise; and he said that this paradise was one of carnal eating and drinking and intercourse with women, and had a river of wine, honey, and milk, and that the women were not like the ones down here, but different ones, and that the intercourse was long lasting and the pleasure continuous; and other things of profligacy and stupidity; also that men should feel sympathy for one another and help those who are wronged. (Theophanes, Chronicle AM, 6122)

The Question: Why did the Byzantine Roman world see Islam and jihad as threats?

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From the Byzantine Roman point of view, Islam was dangerous to established power and to Christianity. Jihad inspired Muslims to war against the Persians and the Romans. Certainly Mohammed’s order to massacre thousands of Christians and Jews in Arabia did not allay fears.

The question of who would succeed Mohammed threatened to break the successful ‘ummah community apart. While most endorsed the election of ‘Abu Bakr, Muhammed’s father-in-law and a member of the venerable Qur’aysh tribe, to the leadership as caliph, a vocal minority (Shi’ite) preferred Mohammed’s son-in-law, ‘Ali, arguing that only the blood line of Ali had authority.. Those backing ‘Abu Bakr and a tradition of election became known as the Sunni, who continued the campaigns of conquest through the seventh and eighth centuries. By 642 Egypt, half of North Africa and Syria had been conquered, weakening the Byzantine world. By 644 the Sunni leadership had captured Jerusalem, supposedly the place to which Mohammed was spiritually taken to see the seven heavens, and Egypt, the great grain supplier to the Byzantine world. Persia also fell to Islam. By 711 the Arabs had taken control of southern Spain, Asia Minor, the French coast and the Greek Italian peninsulas were all that was left of the classical Mediterranean.

[Illustration 9.1. Map of Arab conquests 636-751.

http://www.historyteacher.net/EuroCiv/Weblinks/Weblinks-3-MedievalWorld.htm

The Question: How would the Islamic conquest change political relationships in Europe? What areas would be most affected? Why

Jerusalem, Spain and Egypt supplied more than just grain. As the Arabs conquered the great eastern and Spanish cities that had once graced the Roman Empire, they were exposed to the sophisticated libraries of those cities. The prize was the great library of Alexandria. Huge by any standard in its heyday, its collection was probably much reduced in size by the time the Arabs arrived. Still, a portion of massive remains fairly large. Arab scholars were fascinated by the works on western science and philosophy, and preserved large quantities of any writings that did not contradict Islam. At a time when most of this knowledge had been lost in any form north of the Mediterranean, Arabs preserved and commented upon the discoveries of antiquity. Damascus, capital of the ‘Umayyads who ruled the huge Islamic state for a century after 661, became one of the great cultural centers of the Middle Ages.

The ‘Abbasid dynasty which overthrew the ‘Umayyads in 750 gave even more attention to an intellectual base that combined western scientific traditions with Persian and Arabic art and literature. While not noted for gentleness in maintaining power – the first ‘Abbasid ruler was nicknamed “the Butcher” – the new dynasty encouraged and patronized the arts and learning, resulting in magnificent palaces at Damascus, Cordoba and Baghdad that color the western perception of Islamic life in many a Hollywood film.

Despite the ‘Abbasid claim to inclusivism, non-Arabs and Shi’ites that had enjoyed tolerance under the ‘Umayyads found themselves marginalized in an increasingly strict theocracy. In Spain and North Africa, states fell away from Baghdad to form separate caliphates, establishing their resource base by creative raiding and occasional bloody attacks in Mediterranean Europe. When possible, Europeans returned the favor, but in general Islam controlled the ninth century Mediterranean.

Within eighty years of Mohammed’s death, Islam was the official religion of Mediterranean Africa, Spain, Arabia, and west Asia excluding Anatolia. It had taken Christianity 280 years to gain official acceptance. Two things saved Europe for the time being. The Byzantines repelled an attack on Constantinople in 717/18, destroying Moslem chances of taking eastern Europe and securing Anatolia. A few years later, in 732, a Moslem army that had penetrated into Frankish territory was defeated by the Frankish commander Charles Martel (“the Hammer”).

Islam introduced new ideas into Mediterranean Europe, altering that region permanently. It severed European ties to Africa and Asia, former Roman and Byzantine territories and defined even further a distinction between south and north. Scholars have probed the consequences of Islamic forays into Spain and the blows it gave Byzantine Greece. In changing the dynamic of Mediterranean Europe did Islam contribute to the dynamic that would shape western Europe?

Section Three: The Post-Roman West

Much has been written about the subsequent history of the collapsed west. In retrospect we tend to concentrate much of our attention there, defining events in “medieval Europe” by the histories of the France, the Germanies and England, and relegating the remainder of Europe to a peripheral existence. Despite the increased archaeological evidence of a thriving northern European economy and more attention paid to eastern European histories, several factors help perpetuate this attention, not the least of these being a long-standing bias towards written French, German and English histories.

Ironically, no one in 600 would have identified the world beyond Byzantium and Italy as a cradle of European society. In general the barbarian kingdoms that succeeded the Roman Empire had preserved some elements of Romanity. The elites had adopted Roman customs where it suited, and welcomed Romans into court as priests and scholars. However, within a few generations Romanity disappeared, in part because of the very different social and cultural expectations many of the barbarians brought with them, especially in government and law.

Stability varied from place to place. The Visigothic kingdom of Spain seemed to be the strongest, with a conservative Catholic kingdom and Roman-style system still visible in 711. In Britain, the Angles, Saxons, Jutes and pre-Roman groups like the Picts and the Scots carved the island into several small kingdoms, the most powerful lying to the north. The island would slowly move towards consolidation of the smaller kingdoms, but any sort of unity would not come until the ninth century.

However, most of the debate returns to the history of the Franks, who had expanded from the northwest into the Roman province of Gaul, and their role in the creation of a“Europe” that involved the entire continent. The fifth century Frankish king Childeric was one of several barbarian leaders to have been granted a generalship in the Roman army to protect the region. He was succeeded by his shrewd son Clovis, who later claimed to have had a vision that inspired a conversion into Roman Catholicism. He seems to have realized very early that the powerful Catholic bishops of Gaul could be allies in his drive to consolidate the Franks under his rule. His dynasty, called the Merovingians after one of his ancestors, would have thus feet in the Roman and Germanic worlds. After Clovis’ death, his sons carved Gaul into four quarrelsome kingdoms known for intrigue and assassinations. Merovingian rules were short and uncertain, as the descendants of Clovis warred against each other. The Merovingian kings became figureheads controlled by the Frankish-Roman nobles who took charge of royal affairs. In their perennial distrust and resort to treachery, the Merovingians declined in power after ca.638.

One powerful aristocratic family rose to control the office of major domo (master of the house or chief of staff) of the kingdom of Austrasia. As major domo, Charles Martel led the army that defeated Islamic forces at the battle of Tours in 732. However, while he controlled most of the Frankish world by his death in 741, he could not take the royal title because he was not of Merovingian blood.

The shift in power from the Merovingians to the family of Charles, the “Carolingians”, forms the core of one of the more intriguing arguments about this period. In the early 1930’s Henri Pirenne proposed a new way of looking at the end of antiquity:

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…[the Germanic invasions] did not put an end to the economic unity of antiquity…Despite the transformations which it had undergone, the new world had not lost the Mediterranean character of the old… At the beginning of the seventh century, anyone who sought to look into the future would have been unable to discern any reason for not believing in the continuance of the old tradition.

Yet what was then natural and reasonable to predict was not to be realized. The world-order which had survived the Germanic invasions was not to survive the invasion of Islam.

It is thrown across the path of history with the elemental force of a cosmic cataclysm… The resistless advance was not to slow down until the start of the eighth century, when the walls of Constantinople on the one side 9713) and the soldiers of Charles Martel on the other (732) broke that great enveloping offensive against the two flanks of Christianity.

But if its force of expansion was exhausted, it had none the less changed the face of the world. Its sudden thrust had destroyed ancient Europe. It had put an end to the Mediterranean commonwealth in which it had gathered its strength.

The familiar and almost ‘family’ sea which once united all the parts of this commonwealth was to become a barrier between them. On all its shores, for centuries, social life…had been the same…The invasion of the barbarians from the North had modified nothing essential in that situation.

But now, all of a sudden, the very lands where civilization had been born were torn away; the cult of the Prophet was substituted for the Christian Faith, Moslem law for Roman law, the Arab tongue for the Greek and the Latin tongue.

The Mediterranean had been a Roman lake; it now became, for the most part, a Moslem lake. From this time on it separated, instead of uniting, the East and west of Europe. The tie which was still binding the Byzantine Empire to the Germanic kingdoms of the West was broken…

Out of it arose a new and unparalleled situation…Western Europe had always received the cultural stamp of the East. It had lived, as it were, by virtue of the Mediterranean; now for the first time it was forced to live by its own resources. The center of gravity, heretofore on the shore of the Mediterranean, was shifted to the north. As a result the Frankish Empire…was to become the arbiter of Europe’s destinies.

…The Frankish Empire was fated to lay the foundations of the Europe of the Middle Ages. But the mission which it fulfilled has as an essential prior condition the overthrow of the traditional world-order. The Carolingians would never have been called upon to play the part they did if historical evolution had not been turned aside from its course… Without Islam, the Frankish Empire would probably never have existed and Charlemagne, without Mahomet [Mohammed], would be inconceivable. (Henri Pirenne, Medieval Cities, 1952, tr. Frank Halsey, 1969, pp. 15-18)

The Question: What does Pirenne mean when he says that Charlemagne without Mohammed would be inconceivable?

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Pirenne kicked the can down the road as it were concerning the date for the end of the ancient world. For Pirenne, the Mediterranean world showed remarkable continuity of Roman style life well into the mid-seventh century. In his opinion, the true break came when those lands that had been Roman became Islamic, thus disrupting sea trade, dealing a blow to the cultures like the Merovingians that depended on those networks, and allowing the Carolingians, whose farmlands were east and north of the Merovingians, to take advantage of the disruptions. Had Islam not killed the underpinnings of ancient society and economics, a Carolingian-controlled kingdom could never have gained strength to dominate European affairs.

The theory has been challenged on several grounds ever since, and archaeological evidence not available to Pirenne has suggested that Mediterranean trade had been badly disrupted well before the Islamic conquests. Still, Pirenne challenged a fossilized view that the fall of the western empire doomed Europe to a dark age. Bolin, while disagreeing with Pirenne, used the hypothesis to ask questions about Islam and northern Europe:

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Let us return at this point to Pirenne’s epigram on Mohammed and Charlemagne. The facts…certainly speak for the existence of a bond uniting the two, but not in the sense intended by Pirenne. His view was that the Arab conquests led to a break-up of the world culture as it was known until then and to an end of trade across the Mediterranean.

Instead we may summarize the position as follows: through the wars of conquest begun by Mohammed the unity of world was shattered and civilization was divided into separate spheres; but it was also enlarged, for, fart to the east, new countries, the lands of Khurâsân and Transoxiana, both rich in silver, were brought into the Mohammedan orbit. Silver production increased to very large proportions. So began a new era, the age of oriental silver. From this newly-won territory there issued a mighty flood of silver over the whole world fructifying trade and economic life…The flood did not stop at the boundaries of the Caliphate but penetrated into western Europe, where also it led to changes in economic life…Commercial life flourished within the Frankish empire as well as internationally.

In other words, the Carolingian renaissance had not merely its intellectual but also its material pre-requisites in the caliphate. In this sense one may reiterate Pirenne’s paradox, without Mohamed, no Charlemagne, but in disagreement, not in accord, with his views…

…the Frankish empire was a country of transit between the fur- and slave-producing territory in northern, central and eastern Europe and the Mohammedan world…Ancient trading routes linked the east with the Frankish empire as well as the Frankish empire with the North and the Baltic lands. When the supply of silver greatly increased in the Caliphate, slaves and furs were imported in increasing quantities…

…The livelier trade on the North Sea and the commercial prosperity of the Mohammedan world were not isolated phenomena. They were intimately connected and both symptomatic of the world-wide economic boom during the age of oriental silver.

(Sture Bolin, “Mohammed, Charlemagne and Ruric” Scandinavian Economic History Review 1, 1952, pp. 24-5, 27)

The Question: How does Bolin rephrase the “Pirenne Thesis”?

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For Bolin, Pirenne had raised an important question about whether Islam and Europe were in fact economically linked, but he suggested that it was rather the increased trade to the north for Baltic commodities that gave the Carolingians an advantage, in the form of huge silver reserves. When Bolin wrote in the 1930’s, economic history was still a somewhat new concept, and he made several mistakes, but he directed attention to role of the northern trade routes, and even suggested that the Viking trade networks were directly connected to the Islamic world. Today, excavations in the Baltic, especially at the trade center of Dorestad, help reinforce Bolin’s hypothesis, and suggest that the local kings controlled a great deal of wealth to invest on creating a local aristocracy. There is also an archaeological perspective:

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By removing the critical role of Islam in the Mediterranean in the formation of early medieval Europe we have demolished one of the planks with which Pirenne constructed his historical model. As a result one might be tempted to dismiss Pirenne’s thesis as a piece of interesting historiography. But we have little sympathy with the consensus view espoused by some historians, which deliberately under-emphasizes the changes that came about in the period 400-850. The modern perspective is to place faith in gradual change rather than to identify the significant steps and processes involved in the emergence of medieval Europe… Archaeology provides a scale for these developments and makes us respect Pirenne’s bold treatise.

We might therefore conclude that both Mohammed and Charlemagne were products of the collapse of Rome. That Islam was interested in the Roman world was improbable, but Charlemagne and his court were transfixed by the world of antiquity. We might, therefore, regard the creation and subsequent collapse of Charlemagne’s empire as a vital force in the making of the Middle Ages…In the shadow of Charlemagne the towns and villages of medieval Europe were founded and a new economic strategy was launched. (Richard Hodges and Thomas Whitehouse, Mohammed, Charlemagne and the Origins of Europe 1983, pp. 175-6).

The Question: What is the value of the Pirenne Thesis in understanding the origins of Europe and the Middle Ages?

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Hodges and Whitehouse take Pirenne even further. While tearing down his idea of Carolingian fortune being linked to a Moslem disruption of the Mediterranean, they suggest that he forced historians and archaeologists to look beyond classical explanations of a breakdown of Romanity after the Germanic invasions, to ask how and when the ancient world became the medieval world, and what role Islam played in the process. Barbero has the (current) final word:

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We are …indebted to Pirenne for the other interpretation that perceives the continent united by the Franks as a profoundly different reality from that of the Roman Empire. Its main proponents, archaeologists and economic historians, adopt perhaps the most persuasive images in Mohammed and Charlemagne, of a Carolingian Europe isolated by the Mediterranean and deprived of its relationship with Africa and the East that had been so crucial to antiquity. Even if we accept that the Roman world did not contain those advanced features of capitalism that were once attributed to it and that its economy was in reality dominated or even crushed by state intervention, it is still very clear that the Rhine-based Europe of Charlemagne had very little in common with the Mediterranean-based Europe of Diocletian and Constantine…

…Whatever the inherent weaknesses of Pirenne’s theory, there can be no doubt that the ancient Roman Empire was a Mediterranean reality extending its dominion over the European, African, and Asian shores of mare nostrum, whereas Charles’s empire was a continental reality, whose center of gravity was the Rhine Valley. It was already taking on the national and regional profiles that were to shape Europe in the second millennium….

(Alessandro Barbero: Charlemagne: Father of a Continent tr. Allen Cameron Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004, p.111)

The Question: What does the Pirenne Thesis suggest about the Carolingian contribution to the concept of “Europe”?

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With the Pirenne thesis we return to the original question of this chapter, how and where did a European identity form?

Section Four: Charlemagne and a New Europe

So then how did Western Europe rise to the center stage in the formation of Europe? On occasion, despite all the explanations, history can hinge on a single individual of such charisma and presence that the era cannot help but be defined by that presence. Such is the case with Charles the Great, Charles Martel’s grandson.

By the later eighth century the powers of Europe seemed concentrated in the Mediterranean. Constantinople had re-established its dominance, while the courts of Islamic Spain had gained a reputation for intellectual sophistication. The dominant forces in Italy were the Byzantines, who controlled south Italy and Ravenna, and the Lombards. Both groups believed that they controlled the city of Rome, by now just another Italian town with a lot of moldering ruins and a Pope determined to uphold Rome’s primacy. However, his power had been much diminished in recent years in the wake of unanswered aggression from Lombards and Constantinople. At one point the Iconoclast Byzantine emperor Leo I tried to take down the images of saints found in the churches of Rome. Iconoclasts believed that images and icons allowed people to worship images under the pretense of Christianity, and sought to destroy them wherever possible. The Roman church, which believed images played an important role in teaching, was powerless to interfere, and only a change in regime saved the images. The message was driven home that the Church needed an earthly protector.

When his king died in 737 Charles Martel had not bothered to find a Merovingian to put on the throne, and ruled as king in all but name. Anxious to strike an alliance with the Lombards he turned down a Papal request for help. Pepin “the Short”, Charles’ son, was uncomfortable with the legalities of the halfway status, although he did locate a Merovingian to sit on the throne. He also sensed an opportunity with an increasingly desperate Papacy. In 751 he sent a delegation to Pope Zachary, asking if it was proper for one man to rule, but for another to be called king.

Zachary was no fool. Not only did he return the desired answer that the man who ruled should be king, he sent his emissary to anoint Pepin, an ancient custom that sealed kings to a religious contract with God. In doing so the Church voided the ancient divine blood carried by the Merovingians and tied the Frankish throne to Church endorsement. Pepin in return became the Pope’s champion, winning land from the Lombards and securing central Italy as the papal estates or Papal States. This land would become the foundation for the Republic of Saint Peter, ensured by the new Franco-Papal alliance. Pepin’s son Charles, later called Charles the Great or Charlemagne, would be the most distinguished member of that line, and would change the direction of European affairs.

The figure of Charlemagne has been well studied. The French see his reign as the beginning of a new Europe. Others see Charlemagne as an anomaly in a world still ruled by barbarian institutions. Fichtenau, in the classic discussion, was dismissive of Charlemagne’s lasting impact on Europe:

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Charles’s power and his aims pointed towards a new conception, or rather towards the revival of an ancient conception which still had a shadowy existence: the universal empire of the West. But history never repeats itself; and when the Frankish king finally became emperor, the dominion of the Franks proved to be very different from the Roman empire. It was a continental state without the Mediterranean. It was a vast, thinly-populated area, not a flourishing, highly-civilized land filled w/commercial cities. It was a clumsy body-politic, which held together for a few generations only, and, in the end, dissolved almost without pressure from external forces…

…there is little difference between the picture we form of Charles’s surroundings and the one we have of his ancestors and of other princes of the period. The only difference was that the imperial household…was greater, more splendid and therefore also more exposed to danger. As long as its power and splendour were increasing, the cracks in the structure remained concealed. It was the achievement of Charles’s own powerful personality to have brought about this rise which, without him, might have taken generations to reach its zenith. His efforts were crowned w/success because his whole personality was in tune w/the progressive forces active among his people. Of this had not been the case, no amount of power concentrated in the hands of the king would have sufficed to stamp his countenance upon the age…

…Just as Byzantium, whenever possible, remained proudly aloof from the Franks, so the western empire of Charles withdrew under his successors into itself and tried to forget what was going on outside its borders. In practice, therefore, this ‘empire’ shrank into the ‘Occident’.. At the price of this separation, Europe found itself and was able to rise, a spiritual unit, from the ruins of the Carolingian empire…

…The epoch of Charles’s rule was characterized in many spheres by the co-existence of diverging tendencies without apparent signs of conflict. Charles’s own happy nature and powerful personality knew how to combine incompatible traits. Everything was attuned to the working of his personality. But when it as removed, people went their own ways. The heritage which Charles the Great left to his successors was a bitter one.

(Heinrich Fichtenau, The Carolingian Empire, tr. Peter Munz New York, Harper and Rowe, 1957, pp. 23, 46, 77, 78)

The Question: In Fichtenau’s view, what are the limitations of crediting Charlemagne with creating a new political entity?

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Fichtenau saw Charlemagne as an anomaly in a society that was still too disorganized to anything more than briefly mimic Rome. It was Charlemagne’s personality that held the concept of Europe together. Einhard, an early biographer, is far more flattering:

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15.

Such are the wars, most skillfully planned and successfully fought, which this most powerful king waged during the forty-seven years of his reign. He so largely increased the Frank kingdom, which was already great and strong when he received it at his father’s hands, that more than double its former territory was added to it. The authority of the Franks was formerly confined to that part of Gaul included between the Rhine and the Loire, the Ocean and the Balearic Sea; to that part of Germany which is inhabited by the so-called Eastern Franks, and is bounded by Saxony and the Danube, the Rhine and the Saale…. By the wars above mentioned he first made tributary Aquitania, Gascony, and the whole of the region of the Pyrenees as far as the River Ebro… He next reduced and made tributary all Italy from Aosta to Lower Calabria… a territory more than a thousand miles” long; then Saxony…, both Pannonias, Dacia beyond the Danube, and Istria, Liburnia, and Dalmatia, except the cities on the coast, which he left to the Greek Emperor for friendship’s sake, and because of the treaty that he had made with him. In fine, he vanquished and made tributary all the wild and barbarous tribes dwelling in Germany between the Rhine and the Vistula, the Ocean and the Danube…

16.

He added to the glory of his reign by gaining the good will of several kings and nations; so close, indeed, was the alliance that he contracted with Alfonso [II 791-842] King of Galicia and Asturias, that the latter, when sending letters or ambassadors to Charles, invariably styled himself his man. His munificence won the kings of the Scots also to pay such deference to his wishes that they never gave him any other title than lord or themselves than subjects and slaves:… His relations with Aaron [i.e. the ‘Abbasid caliph Harun Al-Rashid, 786-809], King of the Persians, who ruled over almost the whole of the East, India excepted, were so friendly that this prince preferred his favor to that of all the kings and potentates of the earth, and considered that to him alone marks of honor and munificence were due…A few years before this, Charles had asked him for an elephant, and he sent the only one that he had. The Emperors of Constantinople…made advances to Charles, and sought friendship and alliance with him by several embassies; and even when the Greeks suspected him of designing to wrest the empire from them, because of his assumption of the title Emperor, they made a close alliance with him, that he might have no cause of offense. In fact, the power of the Franks was always viewed by the Greeks and Romans with a jealous eye, whence the Greek proverb “Have the Frank for your friend, but not for your neighbor.” (Einhard, Life of Charlemagne, tr Samuel Epes Turner)

The Question: In Einhard’s perspective, what made Charlemagne “great”? Is this simply flattery?

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Charlemagne, who came to the throne in 768, is credited with some remarkable achievements, in conquest, administration and cultural reform. By 791 he had added the regions of Aquitaine (southwest France), north Italy, northern Germany and even parts of Austria to his kingdom, creating the greatest single realm the west had seen in almost 400 years. However, Charlemagne was not simply a warrior out to forcibly annex regions and convert the populations. To govern effectively, he established a central capital at Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle) for legal archives and tax records. Previously, the capital was an abstract and fluid concept, defined as the place where the king resided at that moment. By designating a central place, Charlemagne allowed bureaucracy a stable environment from which to regulate his empire.

[Illustration 9.2 Map of the Carolingian Empire.

Commons@wikimedia.org

]

However, a reliable staff and legal structure were needed for this to work. Charlemagne worked to codify and organize the laws, adding royal decrees called capitularies to fill in the gaps. He tried to appoint capable administrators and direct lines of communication, although the inertia of the old system sometimes overwhelmed the effort. Nonetheless, Charlemagne’s efforts underlay the creation of stable administrative centers.

In 799 Pope Leo was ousted from Rome during a dispute with the Lombard king. He appealed to Charlemagne, who defeated the Lombards and restored Leo to Rome. On Christmas Day, 800, immediately after the mass, Leo crowned Charlemagne Roman Emperor but with a twist. Unlike the emperors of old Rome, Charlemagne’s Empire was Holy Roman Empire. The title would be carried by any Frankish king strong enough to claim it through the following centuries.

[Illustration 9.3. Mosaic from the Church of St. John Lateran, Rome, 9th Century, Peter, Pope Leo III and Charlemagne]

The Question: The caption reads “St. Peter gives life to Pope Leo

and victory to King Charlemagne”. What assumptions are made by the Church about its relationship to the state?

The coronation of Charlemagne as emperor stands as one of the most decisive moments in European history. What did it mean to the concept of Europe? Einhard tells us succinctly the circumstances:

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27 … He cherished the Church of St. Peter the Apostle at Rome above all other holy and sacred places, and heaped its treasury with a vast wealth of gold, silver, and precious stones. He sent great and countless gifts to the popes; and throughout his whole reign the wish that he had nearest at heart was to re-establish the ancient authority of the city of Rome under his care and by his influence, and to defend and protect the Church of St. Peter, and to beautify and enrich it out of his own store above all other churches. Although he held it in such veneration, he only repaired to Rome to pay his vows and make his supplications four times during the whole forty-seven years that he reigned.

28. The Romans [the Byzantines] had inflicted many injuries upon the Pontiff Leo, tearing out his eyes and cutting out his tongue, so that he had been comp lied to call upon the King for help. Charles accordingly went to Rome, to set in order the affairs of the Church, which were in great confusion, and passed the whole winter there. It was then that he received the titles of Emperor and Augustus, to which he at first had such an aversion that he declared that he would not have set foot in the Church the day that they were conferred, although it was a great feast-day, if he could have foreseen the design of the Pope. He bore very patiently with the jealousy which the Roman emperors showed upon his assuming these titles, for they took this step very ill; and by dint of frequent embassies and letters, in which he addressed them as brothers, he made their haughtiness yield to his magnanimity, a quality in which he was unquestionably much their superior. (Einhard, Life of Charlemagne, S. E. Turner, trans. (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1880), pp. 64-66.

Compare this to the account of Notker the Stammerer a few decades later:

26. Now since envy always rages among the envious so it is customary and regular with the Romans [the Byzantines] to oppose or rather to fight against all strong Popes, who are from time to time raised to the apostolic see. Whence it came to pass that certain of the Romans, themselves blinded with envy, charged the above-mentioned Pope Leo of holy memory with a deadly crime and tried to blind him. But they were frightened and held back by some divine impulse, and after trying in vain to gouge out his eyes, they slashed them across the middle with knives. The Pope had news of this carried secretly by his servants to Michael, Emperor of Constantinople; but he refused all assistance saying: “The Pope has an independent kingdom and one higher than mine; so he must act his own revenge upon his enemies.” Thereupon the holy Leo invited the unconquered Charles to come to Rome; following in this the ordinance of God, that, as Charles was already in very deed ruler and emperor over many nations, so also by the authority of the apostolic see he might have now the name of Emperor, Caesar and Augustus. Now Charles, being always ready to march and in warlike array, though he knew nothing at all of the cause of the summons, came at once with his attendants and his vassals; himself the head of the world he came to the city that had once been the head of the world… Then the undaunted Father Leo took the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ and held it over his head, and then in the presence of Charles and his knights, in presence also of his persecutors, he swore in the following words: — “So on the day of the great judgment may I partake in the promises, as I am innocent of the charge that is falsely laid against me.” …

As Charles stayed in Rome for a few days, the bishop of the apostolic see called together all who would come from the neighbouring districts and then, in their presence and in the presence of all the knights of the unconquered Charles, he declared him to be Emperor and Defender of the Roman Church. Now Charles had no guess of what was coming; and, though he could not refuse what seemed to have been divinely preordained for him, nevertheless he received his new title with no show of thankfulness. For first he thought that the Greeks would be fired by greater envy than ever and would plan some harm against the kingdom of the Franks; or at least would take greater precautions against a possible sudden attack of Charles to subdue their kingdom, and add it to his own empire. … (A.J. Grant, ed. and trans. Early Lives of Charlemagne by Einhard and the Monk of St. Gall, (London: Chatto & Windus, London, 1926)

The Question: Why would Charlemagne have been upset about the coronation? Do the two accounts differ?

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To be crowned by the Pope was to acknowledge the Pope’s right to make such choices. On the other hand, whether Charlemagne was aware of Leo’s plans or the title itself, there were advantages on both sides. The Pope needed a legitimate imperial protector against the Lombards and Constantinople. Charlemagne also wanted legitimacy in Byzantine eyes. Using his new imperial title, he attacked neighboring Greek territories until the Byzantine emperor, Michael I, reluctantly recognized him as an emperor after a decade had gone by. However, how did the Church view its role in choosing the King of the Franks? In Charlemagne’s view, the Pope was a model of behavior, but had no authority to rule Christendom. Charlemagne may have sensed that the state was expected to be grateful – and beholden – to the Church, establishing a dangerous relationship.

Becher suggests it was an important moment for the Franks:

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The events of Christmas Day 800 were spectacular and were to have far-reaching consequences…Contemporaries were certainly aware of the importance of this act. Charlemagne challenged the Byzantine Empire, which considered itself to be continuing the old Imperium Romanum without interruption. Up to this point, the east Roman emperor residing in Constantinople had also been recognized in western Europe as the holder of the highest secular office…Without the imperial title, Charlemagne remained in the second rank, despite all his actual power…

…the imperial dignity served as a symbolic bond for his enormous empire, which he expanded through numerous wars into the largest empire in western Europe since the days of the Imperium Romanum…Whatever its circumstances, however, the imperial coronation of Christmas Day in the year 800 symbolizes the high point not only of his reign, but also of the entire course of Frankish history.

(Matthias Becher Charlemagne tr. David Bachrach New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003, pp. 7-8, 17)

The Question: How did Charlemagne’s coronation challenge the status quo of Europe and Byzantium?

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Barbero goes even further, suggesting the coronation was crucial in recognizing the concept of a post-Roman Europe:

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Now that the peoples of our continent have found a way out from the dead end into which they had been driven by nationalist ideologies and seem to be moving toward an integrated and supranational Europe, the image conjured up by the Paderborn poet appears surprisingly topical. After all, it was Charlemagne who first created a single political structure in Europe that stretched from Hamburg to Benevento, and from Vienna to Barcelona…It was profoundly different from the Roman Empire, which had been centered on the Mediterranean, and whose richest and most civilized regions had been in the Middle East…

Of course, every generation of historians constructs its own image of the past…A quarter of a century ago an important conference in Spoleto…posed the question in its title: “The Birth of Europe and Carolingian Europe: A Link Yet to Be Demonstrated.” Opinions differed a great deal…but on the whole the case for Charlemagne as the father of Europe emerged somewhat the worse for wear…

Today the pendulum has swung back in the other direction. Until a few years ago the military victories achieved on all horizons and the program of cultural renewal promoted by Charlemagne seemed like the glittering surface of a profoundly backward society and a stagnant economy. Today a wide variety of indicators lead us to perceive the Carolingian age as the basis for the demographic and economic recovery that became clear around 1000 AD and from which modern Europe was born with all its overwhelming vitality. The current state of academic research, irrespective of the superficial enthusiasm for everything European in the year 2000, allows us to revive the term used twelve centuries ago by the anonymous poet and speak of Charlemagne as the father of Europe….

…But could the Europe we know today have been prefigured by a political construct whose attitudes were so determinedly preoccupied with the past and whose model was an empire that had flourished half a millennium beforehand? Since the nineteenth century historians have not ceased to pose this question, one that has taken on different significance according to the prevailing cultural climate. During the period of nationalism…the problem appeared to be one of identifying the Latin or Germanic roots of the resurrected empire, and therefore by extension, of the modern European civilization. No one could fail to understand the political implications of such historiographic debate…

Charlemagne’s imperial coronation consecrated the birth of a new political space, which at the distance of over a thousand years still appears familiar. This is a Europe in which France and Germany are the principal partners, northern Italy is more integrated than southern Italy, Catalonia more than the rest of Spain, and from which Great Britain is in some way removed. This Nordic and continental Europe, which is Latino-Germanic in its culture, diffident toward the Mediterranean regions, and almost entirely ignores the Greeks and Slavs of the East, is a legacy of Charlemagne…

(Alessandro Barbero: Charlemagne: Father of a Continent tr. Allen Cameron Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004, pp. 3-4, 102, 114)

The question: Why does Barbero see the coronation as relevant to contemporary discussions concerning the identity of Europe?

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Whether Europe is simply a land mass or has some sort of historic unity is a question that has led to both wars and alliances. The coronation of Charlemagne as emperor of a European empire rather than a Mediterranean empire may be the catalyst for later medieval and modern conceptions of the idea of “Europe”. Certainly Charlemagne’s realm was better organized than those of the Merovingians. Later French historians gave little attention to the Merovingian episode, seeing that dynasty as weak compared to the court of Charlemagne. The Carolingian line that had wrestled control of the Franks from the Merovingians had a solid foundation in agricultural estates and Italian trade.

Charlemagne ruled with an assurance that supports the idea that he envisioned a new empire. The wars he waged and his actions towards his subjects were mission-oriented and genuinely tinged with his strong faith in a divine mandate to spread Christianity. As emperor he expected to hold the reins over both a realm staffed with officials directly loyal to him, as well as over the direction of the Frankish Church. His summonses were not to be ignored by noble or churchman. Charlemagne interceded regularly on religious controversy ranging from the nature of the Trinity to the use of icons (pictures of sacred figures). At one point he even pursued marriage arrangements with the current Empress of Byzantium, Irene. Her subjects nipped that one in the bud by forcing Irene to abdicate and join a convent, which led to a brief alliance between an angry Charlemagne and the powerful Harun ‘al-Rashid against Byzantine interests.

Charlemagne was also responsible for initiating a period of court patronage called the Carolingian Renaissance. Not so much a period of original thought as a time of ancient text retrieval and preservation, the Renaissance is nonetheless important to us for the sheer amount of material that would have otherwise been lost to us today. The period was also noted for energetic attempts to standardize and reform church procedures, liturgy and clerical literacy. The latter was entrusted to the English monk Alcuin, whose efforts helped create and disseminate a new script, Caroline miniscule, much easier to read and write than the older Latin script, and the ancestor of modern longhand. It may not actually merit the title “Renaissance”, but it was one of the most centralized moves towards intellectual activity that the West had seen since the fifth century.

By 843 Louis’ sons Charles the Bald, Louis the German and Lothar (who somehow missed out on a nickname) had divided their grandfather’s empire after contesting ownership. Their agreement, the Treaty of Verdun, would be one of the most important documents in European history.

[Illustration 9.3: Map of Treaty of Verdun

http://wps.ablongman.com

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The Question: Why would the Treaty of Verdun be so important in the definition of Europe?

By the Treaty, Charles took the old Gallic territories, the Kingdom of the West Franks. Louis received the German borderlands, the Kingdom of the east Franks. By all rights Lothar received the best portion, a swathe of land extending from the family estates around Aachen down to north Italy. However, politics did not mesh with geography. Lothar’s realm proved too difficult to hold together, and the Middle Kingdom split into smaller kingdoms within two generations. This region, eventually split among the modern states of France, Italy and Germany is still distinguished by contested territories to this day, the most famous being the last section of Lotharingia surviving as Lorraine.

Conclusion

The political disintegration of the Carolingian Empire had repercussions well beyond the Frankish throne. As we shall see in the following chapter, the movement of peoples had not ended with late antiquity. The presence of new Slavic and Magyar groups in eastern Europe helped destabilize Byzantine and Carolingian forays into eastern Europe. To the north Scandinavians known as the Rus pressed past the Baltic Sea, establishing trading posts that would further connect the Baltic world with the Islamic and allow the development of cities like Novgorod and Kiev. Other Scandinavians became known as Vikings, for reasons to be explored in a later chapter, and made their fortunes along the coast of Western Europe, Britain and Ireland. Although eventually Viking groups settled in Britain, Ireland and coastal France, their original raiding expeditions were devastating for western European communities.

Nonetheless, with Charlemagne we are squarely in a medieval Europe, despite the Roman imperial title. Rome was now a memory, and its institutions barely recognizable in the court of Charlemagne. The Church had also gained from the Carolingian experience, while the Franco-Papal alliance altered the relationship between church and state, but was the dynamic Roman or European? There is also continued dispute over whether there was continuity of social and military relationships helping to shape medieval European societies. That will be explored in the next chapter.

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Chapter Seven: The Roman Empire

Although Rome was in possession of an empire by the Punic Wars, historians in general assign the name ‘Roman Empire’ to the period following Caesar’s assassination, when his heir, Octavian, made himself master of the Roman world. The Empire survived for centuries until it eventually collapsed in ways that will be discussed in Chapter Eight. The question to be addressed here deals not so much with as sociopolitics as culture. How do we understand the transformation from Republic to Empire in the period following Caesar? How did Roman and provincial perceive the meaning of Empire in their lives and society? Was there a conscious effort by the Empire to ‘Romanize’ the Empire? In short, did some sort of “grand strategy” exist to rationalize and promote the imperial presence?

Luttwak, a military analyst, has argued that the Romans did indeed have a vision of empire:

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From the beginning of the nineteenth century until Hiroshima, strategic thought was dominated by post-Napoleonic, “Clausewitzian” notions, and these notions have pervaded the thinking of many whose primary interests are far removed from military matters. In their crude, popularized form, these ideas stress a particular form of war, conflict between nationalities; they stress the primacy and desirability of offensive warfare in pursuit of decisive results (thus inspiring an aversion to defensive strategies); and they imply a sharp distinction between the state of peace and the state of war. Finally, these ideas accord primacy to the active use of military force… for the purposes of diplomatic coercion.

Only since 1945 has the emergence of new technologies of mass destruction invalidated the fundamental assumptions of the Clausewitzian approach to grand strategy. We, like the Romans, face the prospect not of decisive conflict, but of a permanent state of war… We, like the Romans, must actively protect an advanced society against a variety of threats rather than concentrate on destroying the forces of our enemies in battle…

The superiority of the empire… derived from the whole complex of ideas and traditions that informed the organization of Roman military power and harnessed the armed power of the empire to political purpose. The firm subordination of tactical priorities, martial ideals, and warlike instincts to political goals was the essential condition of the strategic success of the empire. With rare exceptions, the misuse of force in pursuit of purely tactical goals, or for the psychic rewards of purposeless victories, was avoided by those who controlled the destinies of Rome… military force was clearly recognized for what it was, an essentially limited instrument of power, costly and brittle…

Just as the Romans had apparently no need of a Clausewitz to subject their military energies to the discipline of political goals, it seems that they had no need of modern analytical techniques either… the Romans nevertheless designed and built large and complex security systems that successfully integrated troop deployments, fixed defenses, road networks, and signaling links in a coherent whole. In the more abstract spheres of strategy it is evident that, whether by intellect or traditional intuition, the Romans understood all the subtleties of deterrence, and also its limitations. Above all, the Romans clearly realized that the dominant dimension of power was not physical but psychological – the product of others’ perceptions of Roman strength rather than the use of this strength. And this realization alone can explain the sophistication of Roman strategy at its best… (Edward N. Luttwak, The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire: From the First Century A.D. to the Third. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1976 pp. xi-xii, 2-3) [272 pp total, 417 words]

The Question: How does Luttwak defend the idea that the Romans had a ‘grand strategy” of empire?

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Millett disagrees with Luttwak’s assessment that there was some sort of continued plan for empire:

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It is essential from the outset to realize that Romanization was a two-way process of acculturation: it was the interaction of two cultures, such that information and traits passed between them… As such its products were not simply the result of change initiated by the Romans. It is also important to understand that in her expansion, Rome dealt with peoples, not territories. The processes of cultural change which we call Romanization reflect the influences brought to bear by the Roman elite on the different native peoples with whom they were dealing. Thus to understand Romanization we need to have a view of the protagonists and the systems within which each operated…

Roman imperialism had much more to do with personal power struggles within the oligarchy at the core and this has major ramifications for the structure which comprises the Empire. Its system was far less centralized in administration than is often supposed… and in essence relied on circumscribed local autonomy with the cities as the fundamental unit. This worked in the interests of the Roman elite, who were not burdened with the expense of directly administering the lands which they controlled… This system meant that Rome governed through the established local elites, whether formerly magistrates or tribal aristocrats, who consequently identified their interests with those of Rome.

The net effect of this was an early imperial system of loosely decentralized administration which allowed overall control by Rome while leaving the low-level administration in the hands of the traditional aristocracies. This enabled most areas brought under Roman control to be run without a significant military presence and with a light burden on the conquerors. The corollary of this low input was that the material gain to Rome was negligible by the standards of modern imperialism. Rome’s Empire was thus an empire of individual and collective political prestige for the conquerors rather than one of continuing economic benefit. Furthermore, its character was that of a federation of diverse peoples under Rome, rather than a monolithic and uniformly centralized block.

We can draw these strands together to see Roman imperialism as an extension of the competitive structure of the elite in Rome itself. Expansion was not planned in relation to any grand strategy, and was executed piecemeal. Similarly, the advantages accruing from this expansion were not systematically organized and their exploitation was circumscribed because of the moral and ethical constraints of Roman society. These constraints did break down in the late Republic, but the Augustan administrative system deflected any emergence of systematic economic imperialism. This was an indirect result of the formalization of a system of provincial administration which left power in the hands of the local peoples through their municipalities… This administrative structure defused any tendency towards a centralized imperial economy… (Martin Millett, The Romanization of Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992 p. 2, 7-8) [272 pp total, 459 words]

The Question: Why does Millett discount any idea of a “grand strategy”?

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These two opinions suggest that a key to the question lies in continuity in Roman administration and whether there were core intentions to “Romanize”, a concept that sets some historians’ teeth on edge. The question requires a brief discussion of what rulership of the Empire meant for the first three hundred years. As in Chapter Six, no attempt will be made to present a thorough political history of the three hundred years under consideration. Section One will ask how Rome went from a Republican government to one-man rule in the fifty years following Caesar’s death. Section Two will look at the concept of “Romanization”. Section Three will examine the Romanity of new religious thought, especially Christianity.

Section One: The Principate

There are few agents in Roman history as pivotal as Octavian Caesar Augustus. His actions would put a permanent end to the Republic and establish the foundations of true imperial rule. While there seems to be no question that he was a ruthless opportunist in a world where ambition was a virtue, did his motives and goals justify the way by which he achieved them? What were those motives and goals in the greater frame of the identity of the Empire?

The classic description of Augustus came from Syme:

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…It was the end of a century of anarchy, culminating in twenty years of civil war and tyranny. If despotism was the price, it was not too high; to a patriotic Roman of Republican sentiments even submission to absolute rule was a lesser evil than war between citizens. Liberty was gone, but only a minority at Rome had ever enjoyed it. The survivors of the old governing class, shattered in spirit, gave up the contest…

The rule of Augustus brought manifold blessings to Rome, Italy and the provinces. Yet the new dispensation… was the work of fraud and bloodshed, based upon the seizure of property and redistribution of power by a revolutionary leader. The happy outcome of the Principate might be held to justify, or at last to palliate, the horrors of the Roman Revolution; hence the danger of an indulgent estimate of the person and acts of Augustus.

It was the avowed purpose of that statesman to suggest and demonstrate a sharp line of division in his career between two periods, the first of deplorable but necessary illegalities, the second of constitutional government. So well did he succeed that in later days, confronted with the separate persons of Octavianus the Triumvir, author of the proscriptions, and Augustus the Princeps, the beneficent magistrate, men have been at a loss to account for the transmutation… The problem does not exist: Julian [the Apostate] was closer to the point when he classified Augustus as a chameleon. Colour changed, but not substance… (Ronald Syme, The Roman Revolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1939 p. 2) [592pp total, 249 words]

What point is Syme trying to make about the rule of Octavian Augustus?

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Historians are products of their times. Syme’s masterpiece The Roman Revolution was written during the rise of another charismatic and ruthless leader, Adolf Hitler. Syme asks if the admittedly remarkable outcome of stable empire can excuse the way in which it was obtained. More sympathetic is Everett in a recent reappraisal:

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…The story of his career shows that Augustus was indeed ruthless, cruel, and ambitious for himself. This was only in part a personal trait, for upper class Romans were educated to compete with one another and to excel. However, he combined an overriding concern for his personal interests with a deep-seated patriotism, based on a nostalgic idea of Rome’s antique virtues. In his capacity as princes, selfishness and selflessness were elided in his mind.

While fighting for dominance, he paid little attention to legality or to the normal civilities of political life. He was devious, untrustworthy, and bloodthirsty. But once he had established his authority, he governed efficiently and justly, generally allowed some freedom of speech, and promoted the rule of law. He was immensely hardworking and tried as hard as any democratic parliamentarian to treat his senatorial colleagues with respect and sensitivity. He suffered from no delusions of grandeur.

Augustus lacked the flair of his adoptive father… but he possessed one valuable quality to which Caesar could not lay claim: patience… He made haste slowly, seeking permanent solutions rather than easy answers. He did not revel in power; he sought to understand it…

Perhaps the most instructive aspect of Augustus’ approach to politics was his twin recognition that in the long run power was unsustainable without consent, and that consent could best be won by associating radical constitutional change with a traditional and moralizing ideology. (Anthony Everett, Augustus. New York: Random House, 2006 pp. 324-5) [432p, 236 words]

The Question: How does Everett differ in his opinion from that of Syme?

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These two quotes ask the same question: Can the end justify the means? Compare these modern analyses with that made by the historian Tacitus one hundred years after Augustus:

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…Augustus won over the soldiers with gifts, the populace with cheap corn, and all men with the sweets of repose, and so grew greater by degrees, while he concentrated in himself the functions of the Senate, the magistrates, and the laws. He was wholly unopposed, for the boldest spirits had fallen in battle, or in the proscription, while the remaining nobles, the readier they were to be slaves, were raised the higher by wealth and promotion, so that, aggrandised by revolution, they preferred the safety of the present to the dangerous past. Nor did the provinces dislike that condition of affairs, for they distrusted the government of the Senate and the people, because of the rivalries between the leading men and the rapacity of the officials, while the protection of the laws was unavailing, as they were continually deranged by violence, intrigue, and finally by corruption…

Sensible men… spoke variously of his life with praise and censure. Some said “that dutiful feeling towards a father, and the necessities of the State in which laws had then no place, drove him into civil war, which can neither be planned nor conducted on any right principles. He had often yielded to Antonius, while he was taking vengeance on his father’s murderers, often also to Lepidus. When the latter sank into feeble dotage and the former had been ruined by his profligacy, the only remedy for his distracted country was the rule of a single man. Yet the State had been organized under the name neither of a kingdom nor a dictatorship, but under that of a prince. The ocean and remote rivers were the boundaries of the empire; the legions, provinces, fleets, all things were linked together; there was law for the citizens; there was respect shown to the allies. The capital had been embellished on a grand scale; only in a few instances had he resorted to force, simply to secure general tranquillity.”

It was said, on the other hand, “that filial duty and State necessity were merely assumed as a mask. … Pompeius had been deluded by the phantom of peace, and Lepidus by the mask of friendship. Subsequently, Antonius had been lured on by the treaties of Tarentum and Brundisium… No doubt, there was peace after all this, but it was a peace stained with blood…” (Tacitus Annals 1)[Fordham Internet Ancient History Sourcebook 902 kb total 387 words]

The Question: How did the Romans themselves evaluate the career of Augustus?

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Caesar had formally and posthumously adopted his nineteen year old grand nephew, Gaius Octavius, whose subsequent career suggests a keen awareness of political message wrapped in the public perception of a shiny Roman resurgence. Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus (Octavian) spent lavishly on the people in Caesar’s name and courted the legions. He was aided by Cicero, who turned his significant oratorical powers against Marcus Antonius in a series of speeches that portrayed the luxury-loving Antonius as a man who would be king. However, once Octavian finally confronted Antonius successfully at Mutina, the Senate snubbed Caesar’s heir. Octavian then allied with Antonius and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, another of Caesar’s close lieutenants in a “Second Triumvirate”, three men pooling their power to take over Rome. Their victims included Cicero, whose hand and head, his “weapons”, were displayed in the Forum.

The united armies then took down the armies of Caesar’s assassins, and confiscated huge amounts of land for veterans from Italian communities, causing economic hardship and outright violence. While Octavian dealt with the anger against him on both sides in a land cut once again by civil war, Antonius went east, to carry out a campaign against the Parthians to recover the eagle standards lost by Crassus. However, his focus changed when he met Cleopatra and diverted to Alexandria.

Julius Caesar’s affair with Cleopatra may have been more of a conquest by a man known to have had an eye for the ladies as well as a political coup for her. On the other hand, the evidence suggests Antonius was genuinely smitten by the intelligent and self-confident queen. It did not take long for word about the couple to get back to Rome. For Octavian the situation was wrong on so many levels. First of all, Antonius was his brother-in-law, married to the impeccable and long-suffering Octavia, who was well aware that her husband was flaunting the sexual double standard. Secondly, Antonius behaved as a man seduced, and thus weakened, by a foreign queen. Finally, Antonius seemed to be giving too much power to Cleopatra. Breaking a few rules, Octavian read in public what was purported to be Antonius’ will, pointing out Antonius’ wish to put Alexandria on the same footing as Rome. No matter the illegality of Octavian’s actions, the Senate was moved to deal with the situation.

In 31 Octavian’s fleet met the Egyptian fleet in an exhausting battle off the Greek coast at Actium. He pursued the couple to Egypt, where both died in captivity, Cleopatra by suicide. Octavian was now master of the entire Mediterranean by 30 BCE.

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In my twentieth year [44 B.C.], acting on my own initiative and at my own charges, I raised an army wherewith I brought again liberty to the Republic oppressed by the dominance of a faction. Therefore did the Senate admit me to its own order by honorary decrees, in the consulship of Gaius Pansa and Aulus Hirtius. At the same time they gave unto me rank among the consulars in the expressing of my opinion [in the Senate]; and they gave unto me the imperium. It also voted that I, as propraetor, together with the consuls, should “see to it that the state suffered no harm.” In the same year, too, when both consuls had fallen in battle, the people made me consul and triumvir for the re-establishing of the Republic. The men who killed my father I drove into exile by strictly judicial process, and then, when they took up arms against the Republic, twice I overcame them in battle.

I undertook civil and foreign wars both by land and by sea; as victor therein I showed mercy to all surviving [Roman] citizens. Foreign nations, that I could safely pardon, I preferred to spare rather than to destroy. About 500,000 Roman citizens took the military oath of allegiance to me…

Twice have I had the lesser triumph [i.e., the ovation]; thrice the [full] curule triumph; twenty-one times have I been saluted as “Imperator.” After that, when the Senate voted me many triumphs, I declined them. Also I often deposited the laurels in the Capitol, fulfilling the vows which I had made in battle. On account of the enterprises brought to a happy issue on land and sea by me, or by my legates, under my auspices, fifty-five times has the Senate decreed a thanksgiving unto the Immortal Gods… Nine kings, or children of kings, have been led before my car in my triumphs…

The dictatorship which was offered me by the People and by the Senate, both when I was present and when I was absent, I did not accept…

[The temple of] Janus Quirinus, which it was the purpose of our fathers to close when there was a victorious peace throughout the whole Roman Empire—by land and sea—and which—before my birth—had been alleged to have been closed only twice at all, since Rome was founded: thrice did the Senate order it closed while I was princeps…

In my sixth and seventh consulships [28 and 27 B.C.] when I had put an end to the civil wars, after having obtained complete control of the government, by universal consent I transferred the Republic from my own dominion back to the authority of the Senate and Roman People. In return for this favor by me, I received by decree of the Senate the title Augustus….. in the Julian Curia [Senate-house] was set a golden shield, which by its inscription bore witness that it was bestowed on me, by the Senate and Roman People, on account of my valor, clemency, justice, and piety. After that time I excelled all others in dignity, but of power I held no more than those who were my colleagues in any magistracy. (Selections from Augustus, Res Gestae From William Stearns Davis, ed., Readings in Ancient History: Illustrative Extracts from the Sources. 2 Vols. (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1912-13), Vol. II: Rome and the West, pp. 166-172.) [Fordham Internet Ancient History Sourcebook 22k total, 532 words]

The Question: How did Augustus himself ‘spin’ his achievements?

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“Augustus” is derived from auctoritas – authority – and he was obviously proud of the (possibly staged) moment that gave him his new name. He retained control of provinces with standing armies, tribune powers for life, and the right to approve political candidates. He would be Princeps, a Republican term for the most respected member of the Senate. Of course, in reality Augustus was an emperor – imperator – in full control of the Roman state, but he was too subtle to use words of command and military power to hammer home the death of the Republic.

After Augustus

Augustus (30 BCE -14 CE) presided over a period of relative peace after the long civil war. He invested heavily in both new building and renovations, especially of temples, in imposing building materials, supposedly boasting that he found Rome a city of brick and left it a city of marble. The effect of this building program and social reforms not only employed Romans but gave Rome the grandeur and prosperity of an imperial capital. Augustus also oversaw expansion into Germany, with mixed results. While there were a few plots against his life, Augustus in general was hailed by the population and literary circle as the bringer of peace. Horace wrote of the idyllic peace and prosperity brought by Augustus. Aeneas is introduced to the spirit of Augustus, the greatness to come, in Virgil’s Aeneid. In general most poets emphasized a return to Republican family morality, one of Augustus’ programs of reform.

[Picture 7.1: Prima Porta Augustus, early first century CE. Livius.org]

The Question: What messages about Augustus are sent in this portrayal? How is Augustus equated with “Rome”?

Augustus did not, however, successfully address the problem of what would happen to the Republic after his death, as he outlived most of his potential heirs. While his stepson Tiberius would assume Augustus’ powers, the problem continued throughout the next two centuries. Just what did it mean to be Princeps and how would that honor be bestowed?

With few exceptions, succeeding emperors assumed the title of princeps, even though by virtue of imperial and military command they were really emperors. We know somewhat more about Augustus’ immediate successors thanks to the works of Tacitus and Suetonius in particular. Their subjects include the possibly deranged Gaius Caligula, the bookish and physically-challenged Claudius and the over-the-top Nero. These accounts of political ruthlessness and at times megalomania generally come from writers of the senatorial class, which was often hostile to the emperors Despite their colorful personalities, the empire they ruled continued to expand and in general prosper.

After Nero’s suicide in 68, four military governors tried for the throne. Tacitus put it succinctly:

…for now had been divulged that secret of the empire, that emperors could be made elsewhere than at Rome. (Histories 1.4)

Flavius Vespasianus a tax collector’s son and pragmatic victor of the recent Jewish Wars, won the throne for his family, the Flavians (69-96). This capable and hard-headed general came from a family only recently ennobled. By tradition, he introduced the public pay latrine to collect taxes on a universal need. When his son Titus complained that this was an undignified form of tax, Vespasian waved a coin under his nose and reminded him that money did not smell. Supposedly, knowing that he would be deified just as every other emperor before him, the dying Vespasian said, “Dear me, I think I am becoming a god.”

In this new order, who ruled? Millar explains why the Empire was so different from the Republic:

The imperial regime was the product of a society where decisions were reached, and authority exercised, by the unaided judgment of members of the ruling class. When one member of that class was elevated above the rest, the res publica gave him at first no assistants beyond the lictors and soldiers from the praetorian guard. He dealt directly, in person or by letter, with individuals of all classes and with the communities of the Empire. It took a long time for
onsular to form round him— and thus, so to speak, to reduce his political ‘‘exposure.’’ The gradual seclusion of the emperor had entirely intelligible causes. Until that happened, his personal employees performed functions which were in themselves relatively humble: they kept accounts, arranged and kept documents, called litigants into the audience hall, and either wrote letters to dictation or expressed a reply or decision in correct language…

The letters which Pliny sent to Trajan from Pontus and Bithynia, and Trajan’s replies, have always attracted interest. But I suggest that if we see them in perspective, against a wider background, they actually become not less but more interesting…. A more important sense of ‘‘background’’ is that of the vast spaces of the Roman Empire, across which messengers and ambassadors had to travel, if words intended for the Emperor were ever to reach him. Those distances themselves imposed delays in time which it is genuinely hard now to comprehend, and to take into account. It is not easy for us to grasp the constant flow of messages, complaints, and documents involving complex local issues emanating from the provinces, and of replies embodying the ideology, the propaganda, the values, and the preferences of the imperial will, or the fact that these had to be carried slowly either by ambassadors or by couriers on horseback using wagons…, and travelling backwards and forwards across literally thousands of kilometres, between the provinces and wherever the Emperor was, whether in Rome or in another province, or (on occasion) beyond the frontiers of the Empire. But they were so carried, and there is a real sense in which it was the writing and transmission of these letters which made the Roman Empire what it was…

The Roman Empire had no government. That is to say there was no body of persons formally elected or appointed who had the responsibility for effective decisions. Nor was there any representative body, duly elected, to which the ‘Government’ might have been responsible, nor any sovereign assembly or list of voters… The Roman Senate, filled by hereditary entry supplemented by Imperial patronage, represented neither the people of Rome, nor, when its sources of entry spread through the provinces, the local communities; for although a senator did in fact further the interests of his local community, he was neither elected by nor responsible to them. Nor could the Senate, in spite of its very important role vis-à-vis the Emperors, and in spite of the fact that it did deal with a variety of legislative and administrative business, be described as the governing assembly of the Empire.

The Empire was in fact ruled by the Emperor, assisted by his ‘friends’… (Fergus Millar, Rome, the Greek World, and the East, Volume 2 : Government, Society, and Culture in the Roman Empire. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. P 20-1, 41, 52) [504 pp total, 513 words]

The Question: What makes Millar’s assertions about the way Rome was governed so surprising?

It is difficult for us to envision a world where one man kept the Empire together by answering letters, but Millar reminds us that the normal structures of government had ended with Augustus. Who were these friends? Gelzer suggests that the problem is complicated by asking who now comprised the ruling class in general.

Wherever we look, we always find the view that nobility under the principate was based on descent from
onsular of the free republic. Neither the holding of the consulship nor adlection to the patriciate could create new nobility… On the surface the surviving members of the nobility made their peace with the principate, but with strict exclusiveness they preserved their aristocratic station from the influence of monarchy or court. Now as before, the nobility formed the upper stratum of society; the princes might belong to it, but he did not stand above it. The fact that this point of view prevailed is the strongest proof of the social and political importance of the men who upheld it…

Gradually and quietly, in the course of the second century, the nobility disappeared from history. Not a few branches of the republican aristocracy fell to the will of emperors. However… it was not a deliberate extermination. Nor must we confuse with the nobility the Stoic republican opposition, which in our sources at least has an air of importance and against which the emperors often had to take strong measures. Their heroes and martyrs… bore names of little distinction… The nobility which flocked to join Pompeius against Caesar was not fighting for a few philosophical principles, but for the foundations of its social and political position, for the mastery of the Roman empire. That Augustus eventually took over Caesar’s position was an advantage for them, in that… this preserved their social pre-eminence. But the following period proved this pre-eminence could not in the long run be maintained without the enjoyment of political power… (Mathias Gelzer, The Roman Nobility. Tr. Robin Seager Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1969 pp. 154, 157-8) [184 pp total, 269 words]

The Question: How would the fossilization of the nobility change the role of the traditional elites in Roman governance?

While by this time the Senate had become more of an exclusive social club, senators still had a good deal of influence in the running of the provinces. The wealthy continued to finance their activities through their country villas, scattered throughout the empire. However, few of the senators of the second century could now claim elite Republican ancestors with any confidence.

The so-called “Five Good Emperors” who ruled between 96-180 did not descend from the Republican elite families and were in general formally adopted by the preceding emperor to provide continuity. We must be careful of this label, but as we lack the rich documentation of Julio-Claudian and Flavian Rome these men seem “good” in comparison with the ruthless emperors of the first century. The second century empire reached its greatest geographical extent under Trajan, stretching from Britain to Mesopotamia. Rome had become a consumer city with so much grain that bread was free to Romans and social programs provided relief to the needy. We are told that the Empire was so stable that Hadrian decided to stop expansion and Antoninus Pious never had to leave Italy.

However, by the reign of Marcus Aurelius (161-80), the silver mines that supplied the currency had been depleted, feeding a silver shortage, even as there were new movements on the frontiers, a resurgence of the Persians, and some sort of epidemic that swept across the eastern half of the empire. Available silver and grain there went to the army first, causing a shortage in a population accustomed to free grain and low taxes. Military pay left the Empire on a regular basis as soldiers spent freely on the frontier. As the army had to be paid in silver to prevent insurrection, provinces were required to pay increasing taxes in good silver but accept debased bronze coins in return. An inflationary spiral set in. By 196 the empire was claimed by Septimius Severus, who freely used the army as an imperial tool against sedition and to maintain political power. An unhappy army was an invitation to riot and usurpation by men who knew how to use weapons. Supposedly at his death in 212 he told his sons to respect each other, pay off the army and ignore everybody else.

[Picture 7.2: The Roman Empire 117 CE]

The question: What do you see as problems in enforcing Roman rule and Romanity in the Empire by the later second century?

At the heart of the problem was the sheer size of the empire. After 235, powerful men struggled for a title open to whoever could hold it. Historians call the period from 235 to 284 the Crisis of the Third Century, a period when most emperors rose from frontier commands to short-lived imperial careers through the use of the military, and adversely affected Roman society as a whole. Moreover, not all these emperors sat in Rome. Tired of imperial attentions towards the Danube, Gaul and Palmyra seceded for a time as separate entities before Rome finally managed to force them back into the fold.

The economy likewise suffered. To increase the number of taxpayers, Caracalla (209-17) issued an edict in the early third century extending almost universal citizenship. In the first century Roman citizenship had carried legal and social privileges no matter what one’s economic status. Now that everyone was a citizen, rights were apportioned out by rank, creating an underclass of inferiores. In 284 Diocletian, believing that the empire’s size was a major source of economic and political contention, divided the provinces into units so small that no one governor would have the military or political resources to launch another coup. Second, he divided the Empire into four administrative regions, called a tetarchy (Greek for “four rules”), for more efficient collection of revenues and general stability. Diocletian himself, the senior emperor, ruled in the East, where the bulk of troops and wealth was located. Rome and the west was rapidly becoming an irrelevance.

Diocletian also attempted to reform the tax structure and coinage system, fix commodity prices and make occupations hereditary, all in order to maintain military needs. However, such reforms would make social mobility, a necessary element for a strong middle class, much harder to maintain. In general, Diocletian ruled a military Dominate, a court where he was Dominus, lord. The emperor had to be reached through layers of protective court officials, whose power and corruption were notorious.

Diocletian’s plan to have the junior administrators eventually succeed to the top and perpetuate the system never worked, as he neglected to factor in the ambitions of his co-rulers and their families. From 305-312 the thrones were in constant flux as the contenders battled for control, until Constantine won the western half of the empire through the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312.

Section Two: Romanization

Traditional Roman history looks to the action of emperors to drive events and assumes a standard that we can call “Roman”. However, the Roman Empire was a vast territory, and most of its residents would never see Rome itself. What exactly do we mean when we speak of an Empire? Did the Roman provincial government deliberately “Romanize” elements of society in the provinces, or was that less a policy than encouragement? Was Romanization different according to social level? What were the benefits to empire and province? In other words, what did “being Roman” mean to ruler and ruled?

A popular satirical film from the 1970s asked the question in its own special way. John Cleese’s “Reg”, the leader of fictional Jewish liberation radicals in first century Jerusalem, puts it succinctly:

 

Reg: All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
Attendee: Brought peace?
Reg: Oh, peace – shut up! (Life of Brian. 1979) [14, 611 words total, 39 words]

The exchange highlights the problem of studying the benefits of empire to ruler and ruled. At its height the Roman Empire stretched from Britannia to the Black Sea. Such frontiers of the outer provinces were never physically fixed, despite Hadrian’s intentions. It remained more an idea of where control ended and interaction began, rather than a fixed boundary. Forts, watchtowers and guarded roads marked the frontier, although in England an actual wall gave the boundary some physicality after Hadrian. The “barbarians” were defined as being beyond the frontier, but whenever Rome expanded, the former barbarians now became provincials. The thousands of troops on the border often retired in the area, bringing a strong Roman cultural presence. It is even possible to talk of Romanization beyond the frontier, as the fluidity of the boundaries meant there was a lot of trade between the army and locals. However, a Roman brooch does not necessarily indicate a Roman lifestyle or acceptance of Rome.

Imperialism itself is a difficult status to maintain. At its heart empire allows exploitation of multiple resources for the benefit of the core. Certainly provinces were responsible for taxes which were channeled to the center (and often right out again to the borders) to maintain the Empire. Taxes required a strong economy, which in turn supported active trade across the Empire. The nature and model of that trade continues to raise questions, but the massive quantity of broken ceramic transport pottery and coinage in every Roman city suggests a vigorous commerce and monetized economy in the Principate. Rome was one of the biggest importers, and a consumer city by the time of Trajan. Some argue that the benefits reaped by the provinces in general enhanced compliance, acceptance and even emulation with the Roman presence. At the core is the ideal of Romanization, the transference and acceptance of Roman ideas.

How was Roman domination received? Certainly there were early rebellions for freedom, but how were the benefits assessed? The speech given by Aelius Aristides in the later second century gives one view:

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Vast as it is, your empire is more remarkable for its thoroughness than its scope: there are no dissident or rebellious enclaves. . . . The whole world prays in unison that your empire may endure forever…
But the most marvelous and admirable achievement of all, and the one deserving our fullest gratitude, is this. . . . You alone of the imperial powers of history rule over men who are free. You have not assigned this or that region to this nabob or that mogul; no people has been turned over as a domestic and bound holding — to a man not himself free. But just as citizens in an individual city might designate magistrates, so you, whose city is the whole world, appoint governors to protect and provide for the governed, as if they were elective, not to lord it over their charges. As a result, so far from disputing the office as if it were their own, governors make way for their successors readily when their term is up, and may not even await their coming. Appeals to a higher jurisdiction are as easy as appeals from parish to county. . . .
But the most notable and praiseworthy feature of all, a thing unparalleled, is your magnanimous conception of citizenship. All of your subjects (and this implies the whole world) you have divided into two parts: the better endowed and more virile, wherever they may be, you have granted citizenship and even kinship; the rest you govern as obedient subjects. Neither the seas nor expanse of land bars citizenship; Asia and Europe are not differentiated. Careers are open to talent. . . . Rich and poor find contentment and profit in your system; there is no other way of life. Your polity is a single and all-embracing harmony. . . .
You alone are, so to speak, natural rulers. Your predecessors were masters and slaves in turn; as rulers they were counterfeits, and reversed their positions like players in a ball game. . . . You have measured out the world, bridged rivers, cut roads through mountains, filled the wastes with posting stations, introduced orderly and refined modes of life. . . . (Aelius Aristides, ‘Roman Oration” XXVI 22ff from Moses Hadas, A History of Rome. 1956). [http://www.h-net.org/~fisher/hst205/readings/RomanOration.html 364 words].

The Question: What elements of Roman rule does Aristides single out to praise? What does it suggest about benefits of empire?

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Given that Aristides may lay on the praise too thickly, he still makes interesting points about “freedom”. Compare this with Tacitus, who puts the following into the mouth of Calgacus, first century rebel leader against the Roman general Agricola in north Britain:

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Whenever I consider the origin of this war and the necessities of our position, I have a sure confidence that this day, and this union of yours, will be the beginning of freedom to the whole of Britain. To all of us slavery is a thing unknown; there are no lands beyond us, and even the sea is not safe, menaced as we are by a Roman fleet. And thus in war and battle, in which the brave find glory, even the coward will find safety. Former contests, in which, with varying fortune, the Romans were resisted, still left in us a last hope of succour, inasmuch as being the most renowned nation of Britain, dwelling in the very heart of the country, and out of sight of the shores of the conquered, we could keep even our eyes unpolluted by the contagion of slavery. To us who dwell on the uttermost confines of the earth and of freedom, this remote sanctuary of Britain’s glory has up to this time been a defence. Now, however, the furthest limits of Britain are thrown open, and the unknown always passes for the marvellous. But there are no tribes beyond us, nothing indeed but waves and rocks, and the yet more terrible Romans, from whose oppression escape is vainly sought by obedience and submission. Robbers of the world, having by their universal plunder exhausted the land, they rifle the deep. If the enemy be rich, they are rapacious; if he be poor, they lust for dominion; neither the east nor the west has been able to satisfy them. Alone among men they covet with equal eagerness poverty and riches. To robbery, slaughter, plunder, they give the lying name of empire; they make a solitude and call it peace (ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant). (Tacitus Agricola 29-30) [http://www.fordham.edu/Halsall/ancient/tacitus-agricola.html 300 words]

The Question: Remembering that this speech was actually written by a Roman in Rome, how did the Romans perceive the opinions of barbarians towards empire?

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Tacitus’ statement has elicited a great deal of conversation about the benefits of Romanization to provincials. Tacitus, through the mouth of Calgacus, might argue that no such freedom as Aristides praised actually existed, but Brunt suggests that the empire was better received at the lowest level than among Calgacus’ elite warriors:

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Scholars were for so long prone to idealize Roman rule that it is a welcome reaction when they draw attention to the persistence of exploitation and the misery of the masses. But there was no novelty in these conditions. Most of Rome’s subjects must have lived wretchedly before they were conquered, and probably more wretchedly; the Roman peace must have brought some benefits to all. Nor is it likely that in general they were consciously hostile to their conquerors (the Jews are of course exceptional); rather, they acquiesced in their fate… Perhaps nothing can be properly inferred from their silence: the illiterate cannot speak to us. But there is a more decisive reason for affirming that they gave a measure of consent to Roman rule. As early as the first century A.D., and to an increased extent thereafter, the frontiers were defended by subjects, mostly recruited from the rural lower class in the provinces nearest to the army camps. And yet it was in these provinces that the people were relatively warlike. Here, if anywhere, revolts could be dangerous, and permanent and universal disarmament would be easiest to comprehend. Still, it would be an odd view that Rome sought to disarm the peoples from which her soldiers were enlisted…

When Roman conquest deprived a people of ‘liberty,’ the loss affected not so much the masses as the old ruling class… Whatever political loss they did sustain was compensated from the first by the blessings of peace and by Rome’s readiness to uphold their local dominance, and in course of time by an increasing share in the imperial government. The notables were in the best position to discern the difficulty or impossibility of successful revolt, and to enjoy the benefits of order, civilization and actual participation in Roman power… Without the leadership they alone could give, resistance to Rome could not be effectively organized… It was by winning over the magnates and not by disarming the masses that the Roman government secured submission and internal peace… (P. A. Brunt, “Did Imperial Rome Disarm her Subjects?” Phoenix 29 (1975) reprinted in Roman Imperial Themes. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990 pp. 264-6) [560pp total, 344 words]

The Question: What did Empire bring to most provincials? What is our evidence?

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There are several levels to an acceptance of Rome. The simplest is an acknowledgement that the Empire was in control, and required payment of taxes, which might be all that many rural residents of the Empire ever experienced. For town dwellers, there was a more obvious Roman administrative and perhaps physical presence. Latin was spoken, although not necessarily beyond the official and funerary needs, and is not a certain indicator of Romanization on the social level. We must be careful of seeing Romanization in physical remains, as the presence of a Roman-style item does not indicate adoption of a Roman style. Such items were often desirable trade goods, but the “meaning” of that piece in Roman culture did not necessarily travel with the item. Without a transmission of meaning, a physical item cannot in itself represent ‘Romanization” any more than wearing a cowboy hat, for example, demonstrates “Americanization”. If instead it was a Roman style item manufactured locally, then we need to ask if it kept its Roman meaning or only its Roman appearance. In other cases, such as the donning of a toga – a very uncomfortable garment for formal and business occasions which requires skill to wear – it is difficult to believe that such an item could be transmitted without Roman meaning invested in it.

The context in which physical items are used in relationship to each other may give a better picture. In the provincial city there is evidence that local and imperial administrations encouraged building and town planning in Roman style. By the mid-second century, several towns boasted Roman –style public buildings, erected by local magistrates and elites hoping to gain political and civic prestige. The question is whether the Empire had a policy of encouraging this building activity, or whether the initiatives were local. Even more telling are private dwellings. Archaeologists have excavated townhouses, villas and working plantations as far away as Wales demonstrating Roman features and artwork. Are the residents of such homes “Romanized”?

Romanity in Art and Architecture

Roman architecture carried messages of acceptance of Rome’s power and values. Unlike Greek public works, Roman architecture enclosed rather than displayed. Roman houses, for example, generally presented a simple drab exterior, but open interiors for those who belonged to the family. Public architecture also was meant to be seen from within. What we call the Coliseum was the most massive undertaking anywhere in the Roman world at that time, built by the Flavians to house over 70,000 spectators for everything from gladiatorial exhibitions to mock naval battles. Hadrian renovated the Pantheon, an old temple dedicated to all the gods (pan theoi), using dome architecture to create a huge interior space filled with light that still holds the attention of turisti today.

[Picture 7.3: Amphitheater, Nîmes, France, ca. second century]

The Question: What are the problems in using Roman monumental architecture to demonstrate “Romanization”?

The point of these elaborate buildings was clear to the viewer. It might be finely constructed and faced on the outside, but one had to go inside to see the enclosure of space through vaulted arch, arena or dome. Like the Empire, it was what was within that mattered. MacDonald suggests that official architecture was an agent of Romanization in the provinces beyond Italy:

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The vaulted style was infused with the same hortatory quality found in official statuary and reliefs, upon coins, and in the panegyrical literature. This insistent rhetoric of Roman state art reflects the sharp paternalism upon which the coherence and preservation of society was brought to depend… the vaulted style was a mimesis of the state, a metaphor in tangible form upon its traditions and its claims to all-embracing sovereignty. Naturally it arose in Rome, the center of these traditions and claims…

All of the great vaulted buildings were charged with the property of expressing unity. Encouragement to individualism was missing because choice was missing. Vaulted architecture was no more permissive than the state itself. Axis, symmetry, and the terminal shape or volume kept everyone [in line]… in fact or in mind with the focal, symbolic shape; there were no true alternatives. Roman architecture might be defined as a body of law in masonry, governing human responses by didactic forms whose expressive force was intended to be recognized or apprehended immediately by the sensory faculties. Grace and elegance were sacrificed to this drive to persuade one and all to conform…

That the emperors and their governments used the vaulted style as an instrument of propaganda can hardly be doubted. All official architecture was used this way. The proliferation in the provinces of large baths based on first- and early second-century designs in Rome is the most obvious case, but many other vaulted building types were used in the provinces, such as markets, warehouses, amphitheatres, and municipal nymphaea. Districts and towns in Italy were embellished with an apparent generosity that the emperors surely regarded as a sound investment in the future of the state. Though the financial resources of the Empire were primitively managed there was always money for building after the armies and the supply of Rome had been provided for. The doors of the treasuries were open to provincial governments as well. Astute provincial officials and citizens knew how to take advantage of the government’s predisposition to build. The pax romana kept communications open, allowing the style to spread and change as it was conditioned… by non-Latin concepts… (William L. MacDonald, The Architecture of the Roman Empire I: An Introductory Study. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982 pp. 181-2) [320 pp total, 358 words]

The Question: How could Roman architecture be an agent of Romanization?

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MacDonald suggests that Roman architecture carries a message, in this case the inevitability of the Roman way that provincial elites were all to happy to emulate. However we must be careful to understand that Romanization carried different meanings at different levels of society. When looking at the Pantheon we tend to see the Roman world as a society of monuments with an imperial agenda, but such architecture was directed towards an official message directed by the values of the elites. For most everyday dwellers of Empire – provincial or Italian – ‘being Roman” carried an entirely different set of values. Clarke describes the Mural of the Seven Sages found in a caupona – tavern – in Ostia, near Rome, in which the great Greek philosophers exchange wisdom about body functions with men sitting on latrines:

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The humor escalated when someone read these texts. The images of the Sages serve their comedic purpose by looking as much as possible like the traditional statues and paintings of the Seven Sages that the second-century Ostian might have seen… They are images from elite culture, of statues adorning gardens, lecture halls, libraries and the villas of the rich. Our tavern-goers would have known them from grand public spaces at Ostia, Rome, or any large city. Their presence in the tavern sets them up for ridicule…

The public latrines at Ostia, rather than being dark, stinking and hidden, were bright and welcoming places where people met and perhaps tarried to converse. Seen in this light, the latrine is a social space like the caupona… Just as men sat around the latrine’s perimeter and talked, so they sat on stools conversing in the caupona. But what’s funny is the fact that the artist has transported the men – and their conversation – from one social space to another; the artist has depicted the men sitting around the three walls of the Caupona of the Seven Sages as though it were a latrine, talking about and philosophizing about shitting. The tavern is a place where you ingest food – not a place where you evacuate it. What the paintings and texts overturn are expectations of what the Sages should do. Sages imparting wisdom would be an appropriate representation for cultured men eating and drinking… Here the artist sets the Sages against men in a latrine – he has dirtied them visually – and has given them dirty wisdom…

What of the clientele of the Caupona? The only class one can rule out is the elite, who would have entertained and been entertained in domestic settings. The many free citizens and freedmen who made up the bulk of Ostia’s population could have frequented the Caupona of the Seven Sages…

Were the customers literate? The answer must be a resounding “yes,” if we take into account the sheer amount of writing on the walls (about five times the amount actually preserved), and the fact that the only way to enjoy the humor was to read the writing. Of course, there are degrees of literacy… Someone who could recognize the scatological words and phrases would be able to make sense of the whole – as long as he understood who the Sages were and how they figured in elite cultural pretensions. One can imagine clients reading both the maxims of the Sages and the pithy comments of the defecating men. Here was the stuff of stories about the end product of digestion even while people were having their fill of food and wine. And this kind of humor – the kind that dirtied elite pretensions – was an assertion of power over the elite. It turned the world of high-minded philosophy upside down, soiling what the powerful hold dear. (John R. Clarke, Art in the Lives of Ordinary Romans. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003 pp. 174, 176-7) 396pp total, 476 words]

The Question: Why is it dangerous to define “Romanization” and “Roman” from the official art and architecture?

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Clarke points out the world of everyday Roman art that rarely gets noticed by serious art historians. The plebeian working class that had rioted in the Republican streets in the late Empire had always had different cultural and social values than did the elites, but were no less “Roman” for it. However, even among the plebeians there was no strong and fast determination of who was “Roman”. Juvenal, a second century satirist, voices the concern that Rome itself was no longer recognizable:

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58 “And now let me speak at once of the race which is most dear to our rich men, and which I avoid above all others; no shyness shall stand in my way. I cannot abide… a Rome of Greeks; and yet what fraction of our dregs comes from Greece? The Syrian Orontes [River] has long since poured into the Tiber, bringing with it its lingo and its manners, its flutes and its slanting harp-strings; bringing too the timbrels of the breed, and the trulls who are bidden ply their trade at the Circus. Out upon you, all ye that delight in foreign strumpets with painted headdresses! Your country clown, Quirinus, now trips to dinner in Greek-fangled slippers… One comes from lofty Sicyon, another from Amydon or Andros, others from Samos, Tralles or Alabanda; all making for the Esquiline, or for the hill that takes its name from osier-beds; all ready to worm their way into the houses of the great and become their masters. Quick of wit and of unbounded impudence, they are as ready of speech as Isaeus, and more torrential. Say, what do you think that fellow there to be? He has brought with him any character you please; grammarian, orator, geometrician; painter, trainer, or rope-dancer; augur, doctor or astrologer…

“Must I not make my escape from purple-clad gentry like these? Is a man to sign his name before me, and recline upon a couch better than mine, who has been wafted to Rome by the wind which brings us our damsons and our figs? Is it to go so utterly for nothing that as a babe I drank in the air of the Aventine, and was nurtured on the Sabine berry? (Juvenal 3. 58-81) [http://www.fordham.edu/Halsall/ancient/juv-sat3eng.html 284 words]

The Question: How and why had the population of Rome changed? How does this affect the idea of “Roman”?

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Juvenal’s very long rant against foreigners joins his criticisms against homosexuals, upper class decadence and shameless women (the majority, in his opinion). However, he pens a portrait of a Rome populated by ethnicities from across the empire speaking every known tongue and worshipping a host of deities. He saw this as the end of Rome as he knew it, but he and other writers of the period bring home to us that Rome had become a cosmopolitan city of immigrants, freedmen and foreign merchants as well as native Romans, rewriting the description of “Roman” all the time.

The level of Romanity varies from province to province and one can see all degrees within each province. The evidence, however, strongly suggests that, despite occasional rebellion in the west in the first century CE, provincials recognized some level of benefit in accepting Roman rule and adopting Roman customs, at least outwardly. The benefits to the Romans themselves can be seen in the wealth and stability of the core through the first 250 years of the Empire. Life was good, stable and economically prosperous in the provinces as well. Preserved graffiti suggest that even the lower classes were functionally literate and active observers. Ports have yielded massive quantities of pottery fragments, testifying to a high volume of commerce across the empire. Cities thrived, with ample evidence of local political, philanthropic and religious activity.

By the mid-second century many of the provinces boasted Roman style towns administered by local elites vested into the Roman structure, and paying reasonable taxes. Provincial culture shows a blending of Roman and local traits in a variety of forms, taking on a new meaning from the original but perceived as “Roman”. The further one travelled from the towns, military installations and elite villas, the less Roman physical evidence can be found, but even in the countryside the Roman presence was acknowledged.

Romanization was thus more than a provincial phenomenon. It involved social and cultural change even within Rome itself, and was received differently according to class and location. It permeated both society and culture, but there is no evidence of any sort of grand strategy for this permeation with one exception. No matter how the subjects of Rome chose to live their lives, they had to accept as a minimum an acknowledgement of Rome’s right to rule. That acknowledgement included a nod to the rituals of Rome. Any religion that could not Romanize at least that far could not be tolerated.

Section Three: Empire and Religion

Early Christianity is at first a side-issue in Roman history, but by the late third century would become a factor in imperial politics and society. The movement was also deeply wrapped up in Romanization, although in this case the impulse came from Roman Christians seeking the language to make Christianity accessible to Roman mentality. Crossan and Reed make plain that the roots of Christianity were decidedly non-Roman and rural:

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…None of the evidence… suggests that first-century Nazareth was anything other than a modest village void of public architecture. The massive layer representing the Christian construction of … Holy Land, rests atop a frail and elusive layer representing a simple Jewish peasant life: excavations underneath later Christian structures uncovered no synagogue, but also no fortification, no palace, no basilica, no bathhouse, no paved street, nothing. Instead, olive presses, wine presses, water cisterns, grain silos, and grinding stones scattered around caves tell of a population that lived in hovels and simple peasant houses…

The tiny village of Nazareth, off the main road, over the hill but still within walking distance of the city of Sepphoris, was Jesus’ home. The peasant families there hoped to eke out a living, pay their taxes, have enough left over to survive, and avoid attention from officials…

Roman urbanization and Herodian commercialization brought the Pax Romana’s economic boom to Lower Galilee, but that dislocated the ancient safety nets of peasant kinship, village cohesion, and just land distribution. It did not, of course, impoverish the entire area. It enriched it (for whom?), but it also involved profound changes and dispossessions as smaller farms were amalgamated into larger holdings and freehold farmers were downgraded into tenant farmers or day laborers…

It is precisely such dispossessed peasants, the newly rather than the permanently destitute as it were, that became the itinerants of the Kingdom program. It is to those that Jesus can say…”Blessed are the destitute.” That is a more correct translation than “Blessed are the poor…”

…[Augustus] was deified personally and directly by senatorial decree upon his death in 14 C.E. How exactly did one distinguish between politics and religion in such adulation? Could you oppose Augustus politically but not religiously, religiously but not politically? Indeed, from Augustus’s own viewpoint, why would anyone want to oppose the Pax Romana, his new world order of political reformation and moral rearmament, his hard roads free of bandits and his sea lanes free of pirates, his cities linked by common culture and economic boom, and his legions guarding the periphery…?

Where, across the spectrum of resistance, do we locate Jesus? He is not among the nonresisters… Jesus of Nazareth died under a mocking accusation that was also a serious indictment, accused as illegal “King of the Jews” by Rome. Rome, and Rome alone, decided who was and who was not King of the Jews. But that title and that fate, in their full religio-political meaning, indicate that Jesus was executed for resistance to Roman law, order, and authority… (John Dominic Crossan and Jonathan L. Reed, Excavating Jesus. San Francisco: Harper, 2002 pp. 31-2, 36, 127-8, 137, 172-4) [368 pp total, 427 words]

The Question: How was the early message of Christianity influenced by Jesus’ world? Why would it be seen as subversive and anti-Roman?

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Reed and Crossan pool their talents in archaeology and theology to suggest that the original venue inspired a message that was directed towards the economic losers, and a Jesus who advocated social reform. However, this is not the Christianity that emerged in the writings of Paul within 30 years after the Crucifixion, argues Meeks:

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Paul was a city person. The city breathes through his language. Jesus’ parables of sowers and weeds, sharecroppers and mud-roofed cottages call forth smells of manure and earth, and the Aramaic of the Palestinian villages often echoes in the Greek. When Paul constructs a metaphor of olive trees or gardens, on the other hand, the Greek is fluent and evokes schoolroom more than farm; he seems more at home with the clichés of Greek rhetoric, drawn from gymnasium, stadium, or workshop. Moreover, Paul was among those who depended on the city for their livelihood. He supported himself… making tents… This life as an artisan distinguished him both from the workers of the farms, who… were perhaps at the very bottom of the social pyramid in antiquity, and from the lucky few whose wealth and status depended on their agricultural estates. The urban handworkers included slave and free… but all belonged thoroughly to the city… The author of Acts hardly errs when he has Paul boast to the tribune, astonished that Paul knows Greek, that he is “a citizen of no mean city” (Acts 21:39 RSV)…

…within a decade of the crucifixion of Jesus, the village culture of Palestine had been left behind, and the Greco-Roman city became the dominant environment of the Christian movement… The movement had crossed the most fundamental division in the society of the Roman Empire, that between rural people and city dwellers, and the results were to prove momentous…

The Pauline world was one in which, for urban and mobile people, Greek was the lingua franca, but upon which the overwhelming political fact of Rome was superimposed… Paul’s mental world is that of the Greek speaking eastern provinces, specifically that of the Greek-speaking Jew. Still it is a Roman world – the existence of [Paul’s letter to the Romans] and the travel plans outlined in its chapter 15 indicate how central Rome is… even though it is Rome as seen from the cities of the East. (Wayne A. Meeks, The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983 pp. 9, 11, 50) [320pp total, 329 words]

The Question: What happens to Christianity as it goes from rural to urban in a Roman world?

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While in one sense we could talk about Christianity being originally a counter-Roman movement founded on the actions of an executed seditionist, in relatively quick time Christianity had become a religion made understandable to Romans by Romans. How was a Christian message able to survive in a world where Romanization at its core required loyalty to the emperor and Empire?

Roman belief found spiritual animation in all places and aspects of life, but the harmonic relationship between man and divine involved ritual, sacrifice and cultic practice for the gods, named or anonymous, for every action, event or place. Romans might also ‘invite’ deities of rivals to reside in Rome, promising a temple and priests if that deity would give the victory to the Romans. The city grew thick with small temples with a variety of beliefs. As far as the Romans were concerned, no god should be ignored, although the practices of its worshippers might have to be curtailed if they opposed the needs of the state. For instance, after a scandal in the Republic over the uninhibited worship of Bacchus by peripheral groups like slaves and foreigners (who were accused of holding orgies and corrupting initiates), the Senate prohibited worship, but did not censure the god himself.

With expansion into the east came interaction with a new type of religious experience generally called mystery religions, promising a revelation (Greek mistai “to reveal”) that would bring meaning to existence and perhaps a promise of regeneration in some form after bodily death. Some of the cults were quite ancient, and had worshippers from various classes in Rome as early as the Republic. Others, like the cult of Mithras, a somewhat enigmatic eastern import, had very restricted bodies of worshippers. Most had rituals and secret understandings to guide a believer towards a path of enlightenment.

Other imported religions, like Judaism, came with a lot of uncomfortable baggage. By the time the Romans had conquered Judea, Judaism had evolved into a structured monotheism, backed by ancient writings, a priestly structure and distinctive practices. Several Jewish groups outside Judea had Hellenized or Romanized to some degree, and the Judean coast and court of King Herod were also comfortable with Roman ways. Rome was originally welcomed as a champion against Greek domination, but the honeymoon soon wore off in conservative Jerusalem and countryside.

In some quarters Judaism took on a nationalistic theology upholding Judean autonomy. Activist Judean groups like the Zealots used terrorism to try and shift the Romans. By 65 the Judeans were at war with Rome, ending with the Roman destruction of the huge temple in Jerusalem and the final defeat at the mountain stronghold at Masada.

Radical Judaism was in some part a reaction to the Romanization adopted by imperial Jews and the upper class priesthood of Judea. At first Christianity was one of several Jewish sects looking meaning, renewal and a messiah to unite the people, as promised in the Jewish prophetic writings. Christians believed the messiah had come in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, whose teachings emphasized social justice, but not a physical overthrow of Rome.

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13Later they sent some of the Pharisees and Herodians to Jesus to catch him in his words. 14They came to him and said, “Teacher, we know you are a man of integrity. You aren’t swayed by men, because you pay no attention to who they are; but you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not? 15Should we pay or shouldn’t we?”

   But Jesus knew their hypocrisy. “Why are you trying to trap me?” he asked. “Bring me a denarius and let me look at it.” 16They brought the coin, and he asked them, “Whose portrait is this? And whose inscription?”
      “Caesar’s,” they replied.

 17Then Jesus said to them, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”
      And they were amazed at him. (Mark 12:13-17) [139 words]

The Question: Is the question rather to pay Caesar’s taxes or to carry Caesar’s coins? Is this passage a resistance to Romanization or an acceptance of it?

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Jesus attracted large crowds, and it is believed that ca 33 CE religious authorities who may have sought to curry favor with the Roman governor Pontius Pilate handed him over for trial. He was crucified, the standard punishment for non-citizens found guilty of sedition.

His followers claimed that he rose from the dead, and instructed them to teach this new “way” before ascending. Within ten years Paul, an educated Roman Jew and Christian convert from Tarsus, Anatolia, won over Peter, Jesus’ closest disciple and the informal leader of the movement, in his argument that non-Jews – Gentiles – must be included whether or not they kept Jewish customs. The Way opened itself to criticism for its insistence on venerating what in Roman perspective was an executed criminal who opposed the Empire. While the antiquity of the Jewish God gave acceptance to an otherwise unusual religion, there was no such validity for this new belief and Christians were branded as atheists. Our first verified Roman reference to Christianity comes from a letter by Pliny, a governor in Pontus-Bithynia to Emperor Trajan.

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…I have never been present at the examination of the Christians [by others], on which account I am unacquainted with what uses to be inquired into, and what, and how far they used to be punished; nor are my doubts small… whether it may not be an advantage to one that had been a Christian, that he has forsaken Christianity? Whether the bare name, without any crimes besides, or the crimes adhering to that name, be to be punished? In the meantime, I have taken this course about those who have been brought before me as Christians. I asked them whether they were Christians or not? If they confessed that they were Christians, I asked them again, and a third time, intermixing threatenings with the questions. If they persevered in their confession, I ordered them to be executed; for I did not doubt but, let their confession be of any sort whatsoever, this positiveness and inflexible obstinacy deserved to be punished…. A libel was sent to me, though without an author, containing many names [of persons accused]. These denied that they were Christians now, or ever had been… Others of them that were named in the libel, said they were Christians, but presently denied it again; that indeed they had been Christians, but had ceased to be so… All these worshipped your image, and the images of our gods; these also cursed Christ. However, they assured me that the main of their fault, or of their mistake was this:-That they were wont, on a stated day, to meet together before it was light, and to sing a hymn to Christ, as to a god, alternately; and to oblige themselves by a sacrament [or oath], not to do anything that was ill: but that they would commit no theft, or pilfering, or adultery; that they would not break their promises, or deny what was deposited with them, when it was required back again; after which it was their custom to depart, and to meet again at a common but innocent meal, which they had left off upon that edict which I published at your command, and wherein I had forbidden any such conventicles. These examinations made me think it necessary to inquire by torments what the truth was; which I did of two servant maids, who were called Deaconesses: but still I discovered no more than that they were addicted to a bad and to an extravagant superstition. Hereupon I have put off any further examinations, and have recourse to you, for the affair seems to be well worth consultation…

My Pliny,

You have taken the method which you ought in examining the causes of those that had been accused as Christians, for indeed no certain and general form of judging can be ordained in this case. These people are not to be sought for; but if they be accused and convicted, they are to be punished; but with this caution, that he who denies himself to be a Christian, and makes it plain that he is not so by supplicating to our gods, although he had been so formerly, may be allowed pardon, upon his repentance. As for libels sent without an author, they ought to have no place in any accusation whatsoever, for that would be a thing of very ill example, and not agreeable to my reign. (Pliny, Letters tr. William Whiston) [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/maps/primary/pliny.html 559 words]

The Question: What can we derive about the “crime” of Christianity? What was the Roman response?

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Prosecution, not persecution was the spirit of the age. On the other hand, outright rejection of the core – the veneration of emperor and Empire – could not be tolerated.

In general Christians survived and even prospered over the first two centuries CE. Christianity promised redemption and salvation unconditional to status or gender, an afterlife based on a moral code rather than ritual, and community support. Other mystery religions also grew in popularity through the second century, but Christianity was the most rapidly growing of the groups. Rarely did it undergo persecution before the third century.

By then there were several varieties of Christianity, many of them taking as their point of departure texts that purported to be written by apostles and others with hidden knowledge of Jesus’ teachings. Orthodox (“Correct word”) Christianity based its beliefs on an Old Testament foundation, supported by authenticated apostolic writings and letters. Gnostic (Greek gnosis or knowledge) groups were condemned for using unauthenticated works or adding rituals designed for the select few, but quite frankly Gnostics were colorful and visible. Their practices, which ranged from enthusiastic love-fests to snake handling, did not help the Christian image. There were divisions even in Orthodoxy. The four accepted Gospels were vague on Jesus’ actual relationship to God. Questions about baptism, the Christian life, Jesus’ exact divinity and the administration of the church provided lively intellectual discussion using accepted classical rhetoric.

However, third century Christianity had attracted attention from the Empire in its refusal to comply in ritual sacrifice at imperial altars in a time of general spiritual malaise and political turbulence. Persecution increased in the third century, the largest program occurring under Diocletian. Harsher in the east than the west, where the future emperor Constantine’s own mother was Christian, the consequences of the Great Persecution will be addressed in the next chapter

Conclusion

The Roman Empire was a complicated beast. At the very least, provincials accepted that a Roman state had to be paid in Roman coin bearing the face of a Caesar. At the most a Latin-speaking citizen engaged in all the traditional social and cultural rituals of the Roman life in a Romanized urban setting from Londinium to Jerusalem. Most fell in between, adopting and adapting by circumstance, ability and desire, but understanding that Rome was there to stay. Whether there was actually a conscious “grand strategy” to encourage Romanization and to manage the limits of empire remains disputed, but certainly up until the mid-third century, resistance carried repercussions.

The Empire appeared successful and self-perpetuating. However, there were flaws just underneath the surface, already apparent by the accession of Marcus Aurelius. The empire suffered greatly in the third century, and there are signs of provincial economic slowdown even after Diocletian reformed the economy. Even with the accession of Constantine, the Empire never really regained its self-confidence in the provinces.

Constantine later attributed his victory at the Milvian Bridge in 312 to a supernatural event that continues to hold the attention of scholars. For Constantine, the battle was decided by the patronage of one very powerful God. Constantine claimed that on the eve of the Battle of the Milvian Bridge he saw a corona in the sky that resembled the chi rho, representing the first two letters of Christos, and heard the words “In this sign conquer.” A Mithraist himself, he ordered the chi rho painted on the shields. Within a year of his subsequent victory he declared in the Edict of Milan that persecution would be rescinded and that Christianity was a legal religion.

For 300 years the Roman Empire had survived provincial rebellions, economic crises, religious controversy and unpredictable dynastic transitions. However, beginning with the reign of Domitian there is a noticeable change in the personality of the empire. With Constantine the break between east and west widened, not only geographically but culturally and religiously. The next two centuries would witness a transformation of the Mediterranean world as the empire’s core flaws caught up with it.

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Chapter Eight: The Late Roman Empire: Decline or Transformation?

Rome had influenced Mediterranean civilization for almost 700 years. Then, in the later fifth century CE, the Roman emperor was removed from power in Italy. Traditionally, we refer to this period as the “Fall” of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the Middle Ages. However, there is debate today about the nature and speed of that transition. Was there a decline in Roman power, followed by a “fall”, or was it a gradual transition, marked by a few dramatic episodes, from the collapse of western Imperial government to new European societies?

It is difficult to define, let alone understand, ‘late antiquity”. As recently as fifty years ago there was little disagreement that Rome’s fall brought on centuries of darkness. The classical description of Rome’s final years was given by Gibbon in the eighteenth century.

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…the decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay: the causes of destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest; and, as soon as time or accident had removed the artificial supports, the stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of its own weight. The story of its ruin is simple and obvious; and, instead of inquiring why the Roman empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it had subsisted so long…The emperors, anxious for their personal safety and the public peace, were reduced to the base expedient of corrupting the discipline which rendered [the army] alike formidable to their sovereign and to the enemy; the vigor of the military government was relaxed, and finally dissolved, by the partial institutions of Constantine; and the Roman world was overwhelmed by a deluge of Barbarians…

The Romans were ignorant of the extent of their danger, and the number of their enemies. Beyond the Rhine and Danube, the northern countries of Europe and Asia were filled with innumerable tribes of hunters and shepherds, poor, voracious and turbulent; bold in arms and impatient to ravish the fruits of industry. The Barbarian world was agitated by the rapid impulse of war…the endless column of Barbarians pressed on the Roman empire with accumulated weight; and, if the foremost were destroyed, the vacant space was instantly replenished by new assailants. (Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Ed. J. B. Bury, 7 vols. (1896-1902), vol. IV, pp. 160-169)

The Question: What is the traditional view concerning Rome’s “decline and fall”?

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Gibbon would be one of the first to look at the history of late Rome. He saw several reasons for Rome’s fall, most importantly a weakening of what had made Rome great. Gibbon and others saw Rome as having been fatally wounded by factors like the degradation of older Roman values, ethnic dilution, Christian interference and barbarian invasions. In the end, Gibbon claimed, Rome declined in greatness, resulting in dramatic collapse. This view would hold into the twentieth century.

The counter-argument was initiated by Peter Brown in the mid-twentieth century:

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To study such a period one must be constantly aware of the tension between change and continuity in the exceptionally ancient and well-rooted world round the Mediterranean. On the one hand, this is notoriously the time when certain ancient institutions, whose absence would have seemed quite unimaginable to a man of about AD 250, irrevocably disappeared. By 476, the Roman empire had vanished from western Europe; by 655, the Persian empire had vanished from the Near East. It is only too easy to write about the Late Antique world as if it were merely a melancholy tale of “Decline and Fall”… On the other hand, we are increasingly aware of the astounding new beginnings associated with this period…

Looking at the Late Antique world, we are caught between the regretful contemplation of ancient ruins and the excited acclamation of new growth. What we often lack is a sense of what it was like to live in that world. Like many contemporaries of the changes… we become either extreme conservatives or hysterical radicals. A Roman senator could write as if he still lived in the days of Augustus, and wake up, as many did at the end of the fifth century AD, to realize there was no longer a Roman emperor in Italy…

…Perhaps the most basic reason for the failure of the imperial government, in the years between 380 and 410, was that the two main groups in the Latin world – the senatorial aristocracy and the Catholic Church – disassociated themselves from the fate of the Roman army that defended them…having hamstrung their protectors, they found, somewhat to their surprise, that they could do without them…

The barbarian invasions did not destroy western Roman society, but they drastically altered the scale of life in the western Roman provinces… In western Europe, the fifth century was a time of narrowing horizons, of the strengthening of local roots, and the consolidating of old loyalties. (Peter Brown, The World of Late Antiquity. 1971 pp. 7-8, 119, 126)

The Question: In the opinion of Brown, why should we be looking at “change and continuity”, rather than “decline and fall”?

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Brown and others talk of transition from ancient Rome to medieval Europe, arguing that older values were slowly replaced by more expedient values guided by Church, local interests and the new barbarian rulers. While there was tension and disruption, people got on with their lives and society adjusted. Gibbon’s history sees a break between a grand ancient world and a grim Germanic dark age. Instead of outright decline, Brown envisioned a period where antiquity shaded into medieval. Today, “”late antiquity” is used to describe the period from the reign of Constantine to the disappearance of Romanity,, a heritage that lingered in many places well after the western Roman empire had disappeared.

This chapter will address the question of when and how Rome “ended”. Section One will ask what role if any Christianity and the institution of the Church had in the transformation or collapse of Rome. Section Two will look at the popular belief that the barbarians brought Rome down. The final section will look at what we mean by “Decline and Fall” and the immediate consequences of the collapse of the western government.

The backdrop to late antiquity in some ways begins with Constantine the Great, who established a new capital city at the old Greek town of Byzantium. Constantine had recognized that power, wealth and military concerns now lay to the East, where a reinvigorated Persian Empire made its presence known on the eastern frontier. The West was simply not as important economically, and the city of Rome too far removed from the frontiers. Constantine moved his court to the newly named Constantinople, making it clear that he was building a new and religiously purer Rome on the Bosporus Straits. With him went the most powerful and most ambitious elites and churchmen. Those who stayed in Rome were generally the older or more conservative families. The city of Rome quickly lost political relevance. The political division between east and west had cultural consequences as well. The Hellenistic world had remained Greek in character and language under the Empire. When Rome had been the imperial capital, the East had looked west to Rome. However, with the establishment of Constantinople, the Greek East now looked no further west than the Balkans.

By the death of Emperor Theodosius in 395 there were signs of economic hardship. The decline was certainly not consistent across the empire, and some places continued to prosper, but monies for government and armies had already begun to dwindle in the reign of Diocletian, who tried to bring the economy under state control. By then, the middle class and cities had become overburdened with taxes, with diminishing benefits. At the height of the Roman Empire, elected city offices held coveted status, but the appeal declined as elites increasingly found themselves mandated to run for office and make up the tax shortfalls out of their own pockets. As no one wanted to volunteer the family fortune for the good of the state, elites abandoned city life for their villas in the countryside, away from imperial reach. The old civic centers of Roman life eroded in the west, except where bishops maintained some imperial representation. Cities endured, especially in the east, but politics became increasingly more regional. On the other hand, some areas of the empire continued to prosper, and we can detect a new urban landscape as physical centers shifted from the forum to the churches.

The military was also affected. Military service had once been part of the elite Roman’s training for future leadership. Now, few aristocratic families sent sons to the frontiers. The best officers came from the periphery and were increasingly of partial barbarian descent. The emperors came to prefer such men as military officers. Loyal to those who promoted their advance, they would have a more difficult time leading any sort of usurpation because of their ancestry.

Thus, there is a period after Constantine when there are noticeable social and economic changes. In some places there was certainly upheaval. In other places life went on in ways that would still be seen as quite Roman. Two other factors have been examined in great detail for their contribution to late antiquity and the collapse versus change question: the influence of the Church and the activities of the barbarians.

Section One: Christianity in Many Forms

Constantine waited until days before his death to become a baptized Christian. This was not uncommon in a world that believed that baptism wiped away prior sins. However, no matter what his actual perceived state of grace, he had significant impact on the Church in his lifetime. There is agreement among historians that the Church played an enormous role in politics from Constantine on. However, did the Church weaken the late Roman state or help prolong it? Again, the classic view was forwarded by Gibbon:

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As the happiness of a future life is the great object of religion, we may hear without surprise or scandal that the introduction, or at least the abuse of Christianity, had some influence on the decline and fall of the Roman empire. The clergy successfully preached the doctrines of patience and pusillanimity; the active virtues of society were discouraged; and the last remains of military spirit were buried in the cloister: a large portion of public and private wealth was consecrated to the specious demands of charity and devotion; and the soldiers’ pay was lavished on the useless multitudes of both sexes who could only plead the merits of abstinence and chastity. Faith, zeal, curiosity, and more earthly passions of malice and ambition, kindled the flame of theological discord; the church, and even the state, were distracted by religious factions, whose conflicts were sometimes bloody and always implacable; the attention of the emperors was diverted from camps to synods; the Roman world was oppressed by a new species of tyranny; and the persecuted sects became the secret enemies of their country. Yet party-spirit, however pernicious or absurd, is a principle of union as well as of dissension. The bishops, from eighteen hundred pulpits, inculcated the duty of passive obedience to a lawful and orthodox sovereign; their frequent assemblies and perpetual correspondence maintained the communion of distant churches; and the benevolent temper of the Gospel was strengthened, though confirmed, by the spiritual alliance of the Catholics. The sacred indolence of the monks was devoutly embraced by a servile and effeminate age; but if superstition had not afforded a decent retreat, the same vices would have tempted the unworthy Romans to desert, from baser motives, the standard of the republic. (Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Ed. J. B. Bury, 7 vols. (1896-1902), vol. IV, pp. 160-169

The Question: Why does Gibbon believe Christianity weakened the Roman Empire?

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Gibbon suggests that Christian values of pacifism and charity sapped Roman strengths, and that religious struggles led to too much preoccupation with church affairs, to the detriment of the armies. Heather, on the other hand, suggests that the impact was limited:

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But while the rise of Christianity was certainly a cultural revolution, Gibbon and others are much less convincing in claiming that the new religion had a seriously deleterious effect upon the functioning of the Empire. Christian institutions did…acquire large financial endowments. On the other hand, the non-Christian religious institutions that they replaced had also been wealthy, and their wealth was being progressively confiscated at the same time as Christianity waxed strong. It is unclear whether endowing Christianity involved an overall transfer of assets from secular to religious coffers. Likewise, while some manpower was certainly lost to the cloister, this was no more than a few thousand individuals at most, hardly a significant figure in a world that was maintaining, even increasing, population levels. Similarly, the number of upper-class individuals who renounced their wealth and lifestyle for a life of Christian devotion pales into insignificance beside the 6,000 or so who by AD 400 were actively participating in the state as top bureaucrats…

Nor was there any pressing reason why Christianity should have generated such a crisis, since religion and Empire rapidly reached an ideological rapprochement. Roman imperialism had claimed…that the presiding divinities had destined Rome to conquer and civilize the world… After Constantine’s public adoption of Christianity, the long-standing claims about the relation of the state to the deity were quickly, and surprisingly easily, reworked. The presiding divinity was recast as the Christian God… The claim that the Empire was God’s vehicle…changed little: only the nomenclature was different. (Peter Heather, The Fall of the Roman Empire. 2006, pp. 122-3).

The Question: In Heather’s view, what was the impact of Christianity in the relationship between Empire and the divine? Is the idea that only a few thousand were involved believable? Why?

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While Heather accepts that there was a cultural change in the way Christians viewed their relationship with the Classical world, from a political and comparative standpoint there was little difference in the monies and attention given to the Church, nor did it have a measurable role in weakening the empire. This did not stop non-Christians over the next century, however, from believing that it had.

During most of the fourth century, Christianity and paganism coexisted in joint legality. The formidable theologian Augustine, who served as bishop of the North African city of Hippo, for instance, was raised by mixed parents, and had a foot in both traditions. However, it became increasingly difficult to maintain pagan worship, and those who did so were subject to violence from churchmen and the Christian community. Temples could be publicly desecrated, often in humiliating ways, the stones recycled for churches. The gulf between the Christian and non-Christian view of Rome’s future grew wider.

Much of the debate lies in the nature of Christianity itself by late antiquity. Before Constantine the Church had been an underground movement that advocated social justice for the oppressed. Once Constantine legalized the faith, he made Christianity a partner of a military state that emphasized victory, conquest and lordship. The language of the church changed into a militant cry for battle against the unbeliever. The Church itself became a weapon of the state.

Of course, defining “the Church” was also problematical. Even 300 years after the life of Jesus of Nazareth, there were still many unresolved questions concerning the nature of Christianity, and the Christian life, especially those issues dealing with the actual life and nature of Christ before and after ascension, the nature and structure of the Trinity, and the necessary steps towards redemption and salvation. Now that the Church had an imperial stamp of approval, the Church was faced with the challenge of establishing a standard belief system. Deviations, now called heresies, were not to be allowed.

Donatism was one such alternate interpretation labeled as heresy. Donatists, so-called after the views of Bishop Donatus during Diocletian’s Great Persecution of the early fourth century, believed that apostasy (turning away from the faith) should be severely punished in penitence. Moreover, clergy who had apostatized should not be allowed to take up their office again. In most Christian churches, apostates had been allowed back, but the Donatists of Africa, where Christians had suffered greatly in the Persecution, had little sympathy for the weak-spirited. Although Donatists refused to follow mainstream church guidelines on readmitting lapsed Christians, Donatist churches and liturgy otherwise looked very much like the orthodox (“correct word”) Church.

The debate over Arianism presents the problem faced by Constantine as he tried to work through the vicious politics of the various bishops defending their beliefs. Many of the bishops were from the elite families that once would have produced senators and governors in an unforgiving political environment. They understood power politics, and played games with the lives of rivals in a way that reminded one scholar of a wild animal hunt.

Much of the debate centered on the nature and structure of the Christian Trinity – God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, somehow all at once and yet distinct. Many Roman Christians had had difficulties seeing Jesus as having the same substance and power as God. After all, in a good Roman family sons are not equal to fathers. Named after its chief apologist, Bishop Arius, Arianism saw Jesus as Son of God but still a creation and thus not equal to God.

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To his very dear lord, the man of God, the faithful and orthodox Eusebius, Arius, unjustly persecuted by Alexander the Pope, on account of that all-conquering truth of which you also are a champion, sendeth greeting in the Lord.

… the bishop greatly wastes and persecutes us, and leaves no stone unturned against us. He has driven us out of the city as atheists, because we do not concur in what he publicly preaches, namely, God always, the Son always; as the Father so the Son; the Son co-exists unbegotten with God; He is everlasting; neither by thought nor by any interval does God precede the Son; always God, always Son; he is begotten of the unbegotten; the Son is of God Himself. Eusebius, your brother bishop of Cæsarea, Theodotus, Paulinus, Athanasius, Gregorius, Aetius, and all the bishops of the East, have been condemned because they say that God had an existence prior to that of His Son; except Philogonius, Hellanicus, and Macarius, who are unlearned men, and who have embraced heretical opinions. Some of them say that the Son is an eructation, others that He is a production, others that He is also unbegotten. These are impieties to which we cannot listen, even though the heretics threaten us with a thousand deaths. But we say and believe, and have taught, and do teach, that the Son is not unbegotten, nor in any way part of the unbegotten; and that He does not derive His subsistence from any matter; but that by His own will and counsel He has subsisted before time, and before ages, as perfect God, only begotten and unchangeable, and that before He was begotten, or created, or purposed, or established, He was not. For He was not unbegotten. We are persecuted, because we say that the Son has a beginning, but that God is without beginning. This is the cause of our persecution, and likewise, because we say that He is of the non-existent. And this we say, because He is neither part of God, nor of any essential being. For this are we persecuted; the rest you know…. (Arius, Letter to Eusebius of Nicomedia, Theodoret, Historia Ecclesiastica, 1.4.1-4 tr from NPNF series, earlychurchtexts.com)

The Question: What did Arians believe about the Trinity?

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In 325 the Church leaders and Constantine gathered in council at Nicaea, in Bithynia, to discuss the controversy:

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We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of all things visible and invisible; and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only-begotten of his Father, of the substance of the Father, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten not made, being of one substance (homoousios) with the Father. By whom all things were made, both which is in heaven and in earth. Who for us men and for our salvation came down [from heaven] and was incarnate and was made man. He suffered and the third day he rose again, ascended into heaven. And he shall come again to judge both the living and the dead. And [we believe] in the Holy Ghost. And whosoever shall say that there was a time when the Son of God was not, or that before he was begotten he was not, or that he was made of things that were not, or that he is of a different substance or essence [from the Father] or that he is a creature, or subject to change or conversion–all that so say, the Catholic and Apostolic Church anathematizes them. (Nicene Creed, CE 325)

The question: How does a universal creed change and define the late antique Church? How does this differ from Arian belief?

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This Nicene Creed is the ancestor of the standard belief statement still used in much of Christianity today. Although Arius was excommunicated, his followers found converts on the frontiers, especially among the barbarian tribes who also saw the unequal relationship between father and Son as sensible and obvious. The Council of Nicaea demonstrated that Christians had little tolerance for variant beliefs.

The role of an annoyed Constantine in calling the council was equally important. When the Church accepted the protection and patronage of the empire, it tacitly acknowledged that the Emperor had a great deal of influence on the official theology of the Church. Constantine’s son, for example, was an Arian who recalled the Arian bishops to the court. His short-lived successor, Julian, renounced his Christian upbringing and tried to stem the tide of Christian influence in the Empire. After Julian, the eastern emperors at least tended to be surrounded by the sternly orthodox.

The Church remained embroiled in controversy by the time Theodosius made public paganism illegal in 391. Christians still did not agree on the nature of Christ or the Christian life, and confrontations between Christians and pagans had gotten, if anything, more violent since Julian. Those views deemed heresies were given short shrift.

By the time of Julian in the mid-fourth century, the Empire had split into two, with the eastern court in Constantinople and the west ostensibly in the city of Rome. In the east, the emperor’s court had remained strong. Some of the best administrators remained in imperial service. The Church was more easily regulated by the court, and the Eastern Roman Emperors continued to control the direction of the church, a system we call Caesaropapism. In the West, on the other hand, the Church grew increasingly self-reliant, in part because of the weakness of the western imperial court. Ambitious and competent Romans of good western families often found the Church to be a better institution for advancement than the court or increasingly powerless local administration. Moreover, the Church was an effective tax shelter. Wealthy Romans could take on a Church career and so save the family fortune. Bishops, being members of a class born to be governors, leaders and ambassadors, could not help but take over local administrations as well.

Increasingly, the Bishop of Rome administered the city of Rome as well as the church, and was called the Little Father or “Papa” -“Pope”. The Pope saw himself as uniquely positioned above all other bishops in spiritual authority, based on a text from the Book of Matthew which was subsequently call the Petrine Doctrine. By tradition Peter was the first bishop of Rome, and had been buried in the cemetery on the Vaticanus hill across the Tiber River from the city.

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And I tell you that you are Peter,[ and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades[ will not overcome it. 19I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be[ bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” Matthew 16:18-19, New International Version)

3. The covenant of the truth therefore abides and the blessed Peter, persevering in the strength of the Rock, which he received, has not abandoned the helm of the Church which he accepted. For he was ordained before the rest in such a manner that as he was called the Rock, as he was declared the foundation, as he was constituted doorkeeper of the kingdom of Heaven, as he was appointed judge to bind and loose, whose judgments will retain their validity in Heaven, by all these mystical titles we might perceive the nature of his relationship to Christ.

And today he still more fully and effectually performs the office entrusted to him and carries out every part of his duty and his charge in Him and with Him by whom he was glorified. So if any act or decree of ours is righteous, if we obtain anything by our daily supplications from God’s mercy, it is his work and his merits, whose power lives in his see and whose authority is so high….

4. And so, dearly beloved, with reasonable obedience, we celebrate today’s festival in such a way that in my humble person he may be recognized and honored, on whom rests the care of all the shepherds, as well as the charge of the sheep commended to him. His dignity is not diminished by even so unworthy an heir. Hence the presence of my venerable brethren and fellow priests, as much desired and valued by me, will be still more sacred and precious if they will transfer the chief honor of this service, in which they have deigned to take part, to him whom they know to be not only the patron of this see but also the primate of all bishops. When therefore we utter our exhortations in your ears, holy brethren, believe that he is speaking whose representative we are, because it is his warning that we give and nothing but his teaching that we preach. (Matthew 16:18-19. Pope Leo,” Sermon 3”).

The Question: How did the Pope justify the primacy of Rome in Christianity? How does this impact Rome’s relevance in the years to come?

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The popes saw themselves as spiritual successors of Peter. Thus, if Jesus had given the powers of decision-making for the Church to his “rock” (Greek Petros), then that power had been spiritually passed down through the succeeding bishops. Leo argued that the Church at Rome – the Roman Catholic Church – thus held primacy among all Christian churches. This would also perpetuate the idea that Rome was eternal, no matter what happened politically.

Not surprisingly, Constantinople did not see it that way. The massive, wealthy and glittering New Rome gave short shrift to the claim of a bishop in old Rome that his word topped those of the sophisticated and powerful bishops of the East. On the other hand, while the west was far from agreeing with the Pope’s claim to primacy, westerners preferred the authority of the ancient city of Rome to a seemingly trumped up claim by an eastern city with no saints and practically no portfolio.

The Church was by now an urban institution, often dominated by the politics of bishops and local leaders. However, some Christians withdrew into reclusive communities or into solitude so as to be less distracted. The third century Antony and others after him fled into the quiet of the Egyptian desert to hear the commands of God, surviving on donations from pilgrims. Such hermit recluses became known as monks (Greek monachorum for singular). They were noted and revered for their ascetism, an almost total surrender of self and the needs of the body. Note this selection from “Life” of Antony:

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… More and more confirmed in his purpose, he hurried to the mountain, and having found a fort, so long deserted that it was full of creeping things, on the other side of the river; he crossed over to it and dwelt there. The reptiles, as though some one were chasing them, immediately left the place. But he built up the entrance completely, having stored up loaves for six months–this is a custom of the Thebans, and the loaves often remain fresh a whole year–and as he found water within, he descended as into a shrine, and abode within by himself, never going forth nor looking at any one who came. Thus he employed a long time training himself, and received loaves, let down from above, twice in the year.

And so for nearly twenty years he continued training himself in solitude, never going forth, and but seldom seen by any. After this when many were eager and wishful to imitate his discipline, and his acquaintances came and began to cast down and wrench off the door by force, Antony, as from a shrine, came forth initiated in the mysteries and filled with the Spirit of God. Then for the first time he was seen outside the fort by those who came to see him. And they, when they saw him, wondered at the sight, for he had the same habit of body as before, and was neither fat, like a man without exercise, nor lean from fasting and striving with the demons, but he was just the same as they had known him before his retirement,…. he persuaded many to embrace the solitary life. And thus it happened in the end that cells arose even in the mountains, and the desert was colonised by monks, who came forth from their own people, and enrolled themselves for the citizenship in the heavens. (Athanasius: Select Works and Letters, Volume IV of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series II, Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, eds.: 12-14)

The Question: Why would this spiritual lifestyle be so appealing? How does it break from classical perspectives of society?

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Such a work is called a hagiography, an account of a holy person’s life. It is not meant to be so much biographical as inspirational, demonstrating what faith could accomplish. Certainly ascetism was viewed by several as an alternative to life in Roman society, but we must be careful with the numbers claimed for hermitic monasticism. Holy men need admirers, as the wilderness will only supply so much of human needs.

While several preferred to live in individual solitude, some formed silent self-sufficient communities that ate together for convenience, establishing “Rules” of order, one of the first being that of the fourth century monk Pachomius of Egypt. This “coenobitic” monasticism soon spread, and became more communal and less isolationist. It found appeal in the fifth century west, where the life at first attracted those who in earlier times would have gone into government and civil service, men with some education and a desire to share repose with like-minded men. Silence was tempered with spiritual discussion, prayer with communal activity. For these monks, there was peril in trying to live a spiritual life without rules:

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It is manifest that there are four kinds of monks. The cenobites are the first kind; that is, those living in a monastery, serving under a rule or an abbot. Then the second kind is that of the anchorites; that is, the hermits-those who, not by the new fervour of a conversion but by the long probation of life in a monastery, have learned to fight against the devil, having already been taught by the solace of many. They, having been well prepared in the army of brothers for the solitary fight of the hermit, being secure now without the consolation of another, are able, God helping them, to fight with their own hand or arm against the vices of the flesh or of their thoughts.

But a third very bad kind of monks are the sarabaites, approved by no rule, experience being their teacher, as with the gold which is tried in the furnace. But, softened after the manner of lead, keeping faith with the world by their works, they are known through their tonsure to lie to God. These being shut up by twos or threes, or, indeed, alone, without a shepherd, not in the Lord’s but in their own sheep-folds-their law is the satisfaction of their desires. For whatever they think good or choice, this they call holy; and what they do not wish, this they consider unlawful. But the fourth kind of we are about to found, therefore, a school for the monks is the kind which is called gyratory. During their whole life they are guests, for three or four days at a time, in the cells of the different monasteries, throughout the various provinces; always wandering and never stationary, given over to the service of their own pleasures and the joys of the palate, and in every way worse than the sarabaites. Concerning the most wretched way of living of all such monks it is better to be silent than to speak…. (Benedict, Rule for Monasteries, tr. Leonard J. Doyle Collegeville MN: The Liturgical Press, 1948, 1)

The Question: Why would Benedict see issues in non-coenobitic monasticism? In what ways does his Rule perpetuate what is “Roman”?

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Benedict of Nursia advocated an interactive coenobitic monastic life rooted in humble discipline and obedience. He devised a code for a self-supportive spiritual community based on humility, chastity and obedience, and established such a community at Monte Cassino, Italy, in the early sixth century. The lives of Benedictine monks were simple, rooted in the understanding that monks surrendered personal property and all but basic needs for a disciplined routine of work and prayer. Monasteries and convents were normally situated outside old Roman centers, and provided a secure link to Roman values of service and a community governed by law. For a woman of some standing, retreat into a convent gave opportunities for a life beyond the drudgery of an arranged marriage and multiple pregnancies. Sacrifices in one’s personal freedom might be a small price to pay for repose, a chance for leadership and assured salvation. While isolated, monasteries and convents retained connections to the church and offered services to the outside. Local elites often placed their sons in the monastic schools for basic education and safety, or entrusted their assets to monastic care.

One interesting success for the institution of monasticism was in Ireland, which had never been part of the Roman Empire, although evidence suggests a vigorous economic interaction with Roman Britain. By tradition, Patrick was the first Christian missionary, having spent his youth there as a British slave captured by Irish pirates. The actual impact of Patrick himself on the spread of Christianity in Ireland remains debated, but he was certainly at the forefront of successful Christian missions which proved powerfully effective. No matter when exactly monasticism was established in Ireland, Irish monks valued Latin learning and promoted not only the preservation of the written word, but the illumination of sacred texts. Irish-founded monasteries became famous for the concentration of learning within their walls.

As in the East, Irish monasticism placed emphasis on remote contemplation, often at harsh, secluded, sometimes almost inaccessible islands, promontories and cliff sides. They also took missionary work seriously, travelling to Britain, Scotland, Scandinavia and the northern isles, and establishing major monastic centers at Iona and Lindisfarne. The Roman Catholic Church also had an interest in the region. Pope Gregory “the Great” had established an active monastery in Canterbury in 595, in the kingdom of Kent in what had been southeast Britain. One would think that Irish and Roman monks would now work together for the conversion of England, but there were conflicts from the very beginning. First, there was the matter of the proper shape and tradition of the tonsure, the shaved scalp pattern all monks wear. There was also disagreement on how to calculate the date of Easter, the one date on which all Christians (by Roman reckoning) must agree in order to affirm the Resurrection. One of the most interesting confrontations between the Irish and Roman missionaries came at the Synod at Whitby in 664, where the Irish representative was asked to explain his belief about Easter and Rome’s authority to King Oswiu. Unable to refute the Petrine Doctrine, the Irish conceded the debate, and Oswiu adopted the Catholicism of Canterbury. Anglo-Saxon kings noted the way the wind blew to throw their patronage to Canterbury or Iona, sometimes switching allegiances for political advantage. By the mid-eighth century, however, much of Europe had been converted to Catholicism.

Section Two: Barbarians

The role of the Church in the continuity of Romanity continues to evoke debate. However, that question pales beside the controversy over the identity and impact of the barbarians, by which the Romans meant the peoples on the borders of the classical world and beyond. Were the barbarians the cause of Rome’s collapse, or were they merely the beneficiaries of internal problems? Two recent opinions summarize the continuing debate. Goffart believes that the idea of “barbarian invasions” has been blown out of proportion, while Heather revives the classic “the barbarians did it”:

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…The “Germanic world” is a damaging modern invention and usage that badly needs to be abandoned.

The same non-existence goes for “migrating peoples”, the ostensible actors in the Migration Age. “Migration” was not inherent in any of the peoples of late antiquity…It is absurd to believe that the Huns attacked the Alans and then the Goths simply because migration pushed them in that direction…No metaphysical power of migration thrust the Huns westward; they had their reasons even if we have no idea what they were…

…This conjuring up of migrants from distant parts is the international equivalent of the tale of Germanic expansion traced long backward in space and time. In this perspective…the peoples are qualified as “migrating” because they started to travel long, long ago and far, faraway, and never stopped shoving themselves forward until they were destroyed or settled inside the Roman world…Migration was means and a result, not a determinant; the barbarians of late antiquity were not “migrants,” let alone “wanderers”.

…The Roman Empire may have found its existence harder in the fourth century than it had in the first, but the culprit was not a greater force exerted by northern neighbors, since they were no more numerous, no better organized, no more fearsomely armed, and no more hostile than they had been…

It can never be said often enough that the vision of polarity – a coherent north pressing downward along the long river frontiers of the Empire – is a historian’s mirage… The strains affecting the Empire came as much from its own desire for peace and security for its borders as from the turbulence of its neighbors. External security for the Empire presupposed internal restraint and discipline; it was critically undermined by civil wars between competitors for the imperial throne. Church fathers plucked out of the Hebrew Bible the image of a vat in the north disgorging its masses onto the tremulous weaklings to the south…Then as now the vat is fuller of emotion than of ferocious enemies. (Walter Goffart, Barbarian Tides 2006, pp. 20-21, 37-8)

Heather represents the opposing view:

…it was armed outsiders warring on Roman territory who played the starring role. In successive stages, the different groups first forced their way across the frontier, then extracted treaties; then, in the end, detached so much territory from the Empire’s control that its revenues dried up… I take an entirely different view…from [Goffart] who has commented: ‘What we call the fall of the Roman Empire was an imaginative experiment that got a little out of hand.’ You can only argue this…if you don’t let narrative history dirty your hands… In my view, it is impossible to escape the fact that the western Empire broke up because too many outside groups established themselves on its territories and expanded their holdings by warfare….

…The Roman Empire had sown the seeds of its own destruction…not because of internal weaknesses that had evolved over the centuries, nor because of new ones evolved, but as a consequence of its relationship with the Germanic world…The west Roman state fell not because of the weight of its ‘stupendous fabric’, but because its German neighbors had responded to its power in ways that the Romans could never have foreseen… By virtue of its unbounded aggression, Roman imperialism was ultimately responsible for its own destruction. (Peter Heather, The Fall of the Roman Empire 2006, pp. 436, 459)

The Question: Why does Goffart downplay the idea that the barbarians brought down the Empire? How does this compare with Heather’s view?

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Goffart, a classicist, suggests that too much emphasis is given to dubious sources that want to put the blame on the migrating Germans with little proof that they migrated much at all. For Goffart, the barbarians profited from Roman troubles, but did not cause them. Heather, who brings archaeological data into the picture, believes that too little attention has been placed recently on the role played by the groups in constant flux on the periphery.

In the later fourth century, thousands of barbarians asked to cross over the Danube River into the Balkans to escape more aggressive peoples. Scholars divide sharply over the identity of these refugees. Traditionally they are called the Goths, a people who supposedly migrated over several centuries from the region of Scandinavia. Some suggest, however, that the term “Goth” is more of an artificial construct of several Germanic tribes constantly on the move that joined and separated depending on need. No matter what their actual origins they were desperate to escape into the Roman world, promising military service in exchange for security.

From what – or whom- they were escaping is another issue. More than likely it was the Huns, a central Asian group that had grown strong in the fourth century. Like the Goths, the actual number of “Huns” might have been small compared to the amalgamation of peoples who called themselves Hun. Huns were renowned for their fighting skills, especially their skill with the asymmetric recurve bow, a weapon that allowed them to shoot with ease from horseback. The Hun arrival changed the balance of power in the North and East.

The Goths sent emissaries to the emperor to negotiate entrance across the Danube, but in the meantime they were delayed by Roman officials on the take. After several bad decisions on the Roman side, the Goths broke into organized revolt and poured across the Danube, devastating the countryside and smaller towns. In August 378 the Eastern Emperor, Valens, confronted the Goth army near Adrianople. It was a major disaster for the Romans. The overheated army was boxed in and brought down. Possibly two-thirds of the army, including Valens, died. The Goths had defeated a Roman army and had gotten away with it. While the threat dissipated over the next few years and treaties were made with the Goths, the message was clear. Rome was no longer unbeatable.

There was a brief moment when it looked as if the Empire would revive under the tough-minded Spaniard Theodosius, who assumed charge over the East after Valens. Theodosius managed to defeat various western contenders to reunite the empire in 394. He was also the first to initiate full-scale loyalty oaths from barbarians in exchange for land, thus “accommodating” them into the Empire. Many would question whether this was a slippery slope to take, but the reality was that the Romans now needed the barbarians in the armies, and could no longer afford the massive campaigns to defeat them. It was far less expensive to pay them, settle them down, and then recruit them. Accommodation may sound like appeasement, but it was cost-effective. Theodosius briefly reunited the Empire but died within a year, leaving the empire to be divided between his sons. The temporary solution had become permanent.

In the early fifth century there was unrest again among the various barbarian groups. Despite accommodation, many Goths felt they had been poorly treated. Under the leadership of Alaric, the Goths harried forces in both East and West. The capable half-Vandal commander of the western forces, Stilicho, managed to keep them at bay for several years. Stilicho, something of an enigma, was to some a loyal warrior and to others a would-be usurper plotting to conquer Constantinople. He certainly had enemies in the court looking for an opportunity to sway Emperor Honorius against him. Eventually Stilicho, whether from frustration or calculation, authorized a payment of 4000 pounds of gold to Alaric to keep the Goths loyal. The insinuations were enough to bring Stilicho down, and the payments were stopped.

Without Stilicho to oppose him, Alaric easily moved into Italy, probably hoping to have the agreement restored so he could pay his own troops. When Honorius, safe in the north Italian town of Ravenna, hesitated, Alaric allowed his men to sack the city of Rome, carrying off cartloads of loot as well as the emperor’s half-sister, Galla Placidia. Two accounts show the mixed reaction.

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12. Whilst these things were happening in Jebus a dreadful rumour came from the West. Rome had been besieged and its citizens had been forced to buy their lives with gold. Then thus despoiled they had been besieged again so as to lose not their substance only but their lives. My voice sticks in my throat; and, as I dictate, sobs choke my utterance. The City which had taken the whole world was itself taken; nay more famine was beforehand with the sword and but few citizens were left to be made captives. In their frenzy the starving people had recourse to hideous food; and tore each other limb from limb that they might have flesh to eat. Even the mother did not spare the babe at her breast. In the night was Moab taken, in the night did her wall fall down… Jerome Letters 127.12)

7.39 Alaric appeared before trembling Rome, laid siege, spread confusion, and broke into the City. He first, however, gave orders that all those who had taken refuge in sacred places, especially in the basilicas of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, should be permitted to remain inviolate and unmolested; he allowed his men to plunder as much as they wished, but he gave orders that they should refrain from bloodshed. A further proof that the storming of the City was due to the wrath of God rather than to the bravery of the enemy is shown by the fact that the blessed Innocent, the bishop of Rome, who at that time was at Ravenna…did not witness the destruction of the sinful populace…

7.40 It was in the one thousand one hundred and sixty-fourth year of the City that Alaric sacked Rome. Although the memory of the event is still fresh, anyone who saw the numbers of the Romans themselves and listened to their talk would think that “nothing had happened,” as they themselves admit, unless perhaps he were to notice some charred ruins still remaining. (Orosius, History Against the Pagans 7.39-40 tr. I Raymond).

The Question: How did contemporaries view the Sack of Rome?

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Despite the news Jerome heard in Jerusalem, Orosius thinks it was a fairly civilized sack. A good Arian Christian, Alaric had not wanted to take that final step. Says Kulikowski:

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…for Alaric the sack of Rome was an admission of defeat, a catastrophic failure. Everything he had hoped for, had fought for over the course of a decade and a half, went up in flames with the capital of the ancient world. Imperial office, a legitimate place for himself and his followers inside the empire, these were now forever out of reach. He might seize what he wanted…but he would never be given it by right. The sack of Rome solved nothing and when the looting was over Alaric’s men still had nowhere to live and fewer future prospects than ever before…

…Three painful days of August 410 entered into the ongoing debate about the effects on the empire of the imperial conversion to Christianity…some suggested that the only way to stave off Alaric was to offer sacrifices to the old gods who had protected the city for so long. Those sacrifices, in all likelihood, were never offered, and then the city was sacked. Thus did pagans find themselves vindicated, though it was a melancholy satisfaction when Rome still smouldered around them. (Michael Kulikowski, Rome’s Gothic Wars from the Third Century to Alaric. 2007 pp. 177, 178)

The Question: In what ways does the sack of Rome connect the issues of religious change and the barbarian issue?

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Kulikowski suggests that the sack was a no-win situation for an Alaric who had truly hoped to be bought off with Roman standing, but also suggests that it was again a moment to face the question: did Christianity help or hurt the Empire? Alaric was actually amazed at how little Ravenna cared for Rome’s fate at his hands. The city of Rome had lost its administrative usefulness. To the Roman world, however, the sack of the Eternal City represented the beginning of the end. There was even talk that the fall of the city would be the beginning of the end foretold in Christian prophecy. Zosimus, on the other hand, blamed the sack of Rome on Christianity:

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Theodosius convened the Senate. The Senators had remained faithful to their long-standing ancestral rites and would not be moved to agree with those who condemned the gods. Theodosius delivered a speech to them in which he exhorted them to recant their “error” (as he called it) and to embrace the Christian faith because it promised forgiveness of every sin and every kind of impiety. None was persuaded by this harangue or was willing to give up the rites which had been passed on from generation to generation since the City’s founding, in favor of an absurd belief. For, the Senators said, by preserving the former rites they had inhabited a city unconquered for almost 1,200 years, while they did not know what would happen if they exchanged these rituals for something different.

In turn Theodosius said that the treasury was burdened by the expense of the rites and the sacrifices; that he wanted to abolish them; that he did not approve of them and, furthermore, that military necessities called for additional funds. The Senators replied that the ceremonies could not be performed except at public expense. Nevertheless, a law abolishing them was laid down and, as other things which had been handed down from ancestral times lay neglected, the Empire of the Romans was gradually diminished and became a domicile of barbarians. (Zosimus, Historia Nova, tr. David Koeller)

The Question: How did Zosimus, a non-Christian, see the role of Christianity in the “Fall” of Rome? Is his viewpoint influenced?

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To downplay the incident, Augustine of Hippo preached a series of sermons which he eventually collected into his greatest work, The City of God. Augustine had written extensively on his journey to a Christian life and was concerned with the relationship of free will to the fallen condition of man. He wrote that Rome in the end did not matter. Rome was a city of man, and all works of men invariably fall. Christians lived for a new Jerusalem. Rome was not eternal, and should not be mourned. In many ways, The City of God represented a new mentality. Instead of confidence in the choices of man, Augustine argued, we must admit that free will causes us to sin. Only submission to the grace of God can save. Moreover, because man cannot make moral choices, the Church must provide guidance. Thus would be born the theology that would dominate western thinking for the next thousand years.

Soon after the sack, the Goths agreed to a peace treaty, settling down in parts of Gaul and Italy, and promising in return to protect the region. How the deprived Roman landholders felt about it is a matter of some speculation. More than likely they came to terms, and went with whatever regime would defend their interests. Landholders could not simply pick up and leave if times got bad or if barbarians were accommodated in the region. Their wealth was land-based. Many learned to live with the new realities. In any case, Romans believed that Rome would bounce back. It always had.

Still, the sack had consequences. Rome began to pull back from its less cost-effective holdings. Honorius released Britain to its own defenses in 410, cutting loose an entire region from the Empire. Court politics continued to be filled with plots and conspiracies. Whenever a ruler died, there were power plays. As Heather put it:

The pinnacle of late Rom politics was for high rollers only; if you failed to stay atop the greasy pole, you were likely to end up atop a bloody one” (Peter Heather, The Fall of the Roman Empire 2006, p. 254).

Meanwhile the Visigoths moved into Spain and the south of Gaul by the early 430’s, while the Vandals conquered North Africa. The region was a huge provider of wheat, and the Rome-Carthage route had been crucial to control of the western Mediterranean. The loss of the grain revenues cut into the Roman budget, forcing an increase in taxes to maintain the military.

The Romans were unable to deal with the Vandals and Visigoths because their attention was turned to an even greater threat from Attila, leader of the Hun alliance. Even today, the name of Attila the Hun conjures up visions of terror. He is the ultimate barbarian. In reality Attila was a shrewd negotiator who eliminated his rivals and managed to hold a multi-ethnic empire together through skill and charisma from 441-53. His campaigns were brutal and effective, inspiring terror among Roman communities in his path. On the excuse of a personal marriage invitation from a high-handed imperial princess, Attila moved west in 450, looting and burning along the way. He stopped short of sacking Rome itself in 451. Several theories have been proposed. The traditional tale is that Pope Leo was sent – or went – to negotiate with Attila, and managed to turn him back. More practically, the Huns had encountered some problems with supplies of food and material. After all, they were a long way from the Hun center. Whatever the reason, Attila chose not to sack Rome, although he could have done so. He died in 453 after a drinking binge and massive internal hemorrhage on one of his wedding nights. The Hun empire broke up within the decade.

Despite’s Attila’s brief career, far too many cities and villas had been destroyed for easy recovery. The Romans were forced to devote so many resources to dealing with the Huns that other threats had to be ignored. The Vandals and Visigoths were not the only groups to take advantage. In Britain, Angles, Saxons and Irish moved in during the fifth century, blurring the Romano-British culture that had clung on after Rome had withdrawn. The legend of King Arthur may have part of its roots in the attempts of Romano-British leaders holding back the Saxons.

Section Three: Decline, Fall or Change?

By Attila’s death Rome no longer had political influence in most of Europe and Africa. The Hun collapse had created a lot of refugees, which accelerated the problem of accommodation. The western court also continued to feed on itself, arranging the murder of the most capable officers for fear of their ambitions. Emperors came and went in assassinations and plots. The Vandal sack of Rome in the 450’s, a brutal affair, made it clear that Rome’s political relevance existed in name only. A futile attempt to recapture North Africa cost the western empire most of its remaining forces. All the same barbarian leaders continued to pay compliments to Rome, using Roman manners, adopting Roman dress, and retaining Roman advisors.

By 476, all that remained of the western Empire was Italy. In the rest of the Roman world, Romans attempted to keep a Roman lifestyle. A poignant tale is recorded from central Europe of some of the last Roman soldiers:

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So long as the Roman dominion lasted, soldiers were maintained in many towns at the public expense to guard the boundary wall. When this custom ceased, the squadrons of soldiers and the boundary wall were blotted out together. The troop at Batavis, however, held out. Some soldiers of this troop had gone to Italy to fetch the final pay to their comrades, and no one knew that the barbarians had slain them on the way. One day, as Saint Severinus was reading in his cell, he suddenly closed the book and began to sigh greatly and to weep. He ordered the bystanders to run out with haste to the river, which he declared was in that hour besprinkled with human blood; and straightway word was brought that the bodies of the soldiers mentioned above had been brought to land by the current of the river. (Eugippius, Life of Saint Severinus 12)

The Question: What happened to the Roman army when the western empire collapsed?

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As the pay disappeared, Roman soldiers abandoned the garrisons, and sought new local employment. Townsfolk and villa owners made peace with the new masters. Small landholders went with the flow. Slowly, the laws and customs of the new ruling class would determine the survival of what had been Romanity. In 476, Odoacer the Ostragoth deposed the western Emperor Romulus Augustulus, a youth who had been put there just two years before. He sent the imperial regalia to Constantinople and ruled as king of Italy. The western empire was no more.

The Romans saw these events through a different lens than we do. We have several accounts of ruin and pillage, which seems to support a sudden and violent ending. However, many of the accounts are of local events. There are others writing as if Rome would weather the storm in much the same way as she had survived before. One of the most famous accounts of ruin comes from the pen of Gildas, a monk in Britain:

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23. …. The barbarians being thus introduced as soldiers into the island, to encounter, as they falsely said, any dangers in defense of their hospitable entertainers, obtain an allowance of provisions, which, for some time being plentifully bestowed, stopped their doggish mouths. Yet they complain that their monthly supplies are not furnished in sufficient abundance, and they industriously aggravate each occasion of quarrel, saying that unless more liberality is shown them, they will break the treaty and plunder the whole island. In a short time, they follow up their threats with deeds.

24. For the fire of vengeance, justly kindled by former crimes, spread from sea to sea, fed by the hands of our foes in the east, and did not cease, until, destroying the neighbouring towns and lands, it reached the other side of the island, and dipped its red and savage tongue in the western ocean. In these assaults, therefore, not unlike that of the Assyrian upon Judea, was fulfilled in our case what the prophet describes in words of lamentation: “They have burned with fire the sanctuary; they have polluted on earth the tabernacle of thy name.”…. So that all the columns were levelled with the ground by the frequent strokes of the battering-ram, all the husbandmen routed, together with their bishops, priests, and people, whilst the sword gleamed, and the flames crackled around them on every side. Lamentable to behold, in the midst of the streets lay the tops of lofty towers, tumbled to the ground, stones of high walls, holy altars, fragments of human bodies, covered with livid clots of coagulated blood, looking as if they had been squeezed together in a press; and with no chance of being buried, save in the ruins of the houses, or in the ravening bellies of wild beasts and birds; with reverence be it spoken for their blessed souls, if, indeed, there were many found who were carried, at that time, into the high heaven by the holy angels. So entirely had the vintage, once so fine, degenerated and become bitter, that, in the words of the prophet, there was hardly a grape or ear of corn to be seen where the husbandman had turned his back. Gildas, “On the Ruin of Britain” 23-4, tr. J. Giles)

The question: If we rely on Gildas, what can we say about the barbarians’ impact on Roman civilization?

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Gildas paints a portrait of barbarism which lingers with us. However, compare this contemporary account of the Ostrogoth king of Italy, Theodoric:

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57. Hence Theoderic was a man of great distinction and of good-will towards all men, and he ruled for thirty-three years. In his times Italy for thirty years enjoyed such good fortune that his successors also inherited peace. For whatever he did was good. He so governed two races at the same time, Romans and Goths, that although he himself was of the Arian sect, he nevertheless made no assault on the Catholic religion; he gave games in the circus and the amphitheatre, so that even by the Romans he was called a Trajan or a Valentinian, whose times he took as a model; and by the Goths, because of his edict, in which he established justice, he was judged to be in all respects their best king. Military service for the Romans he kept on the same footing as under the emperors. He was generous with gifts and the distribution of grain, and although he had found the public treasury nothing but a haystack, by his efforts it was restored and made rich.

65 After peace was made in the city of the Church, King Theoderic went to Rome and met Saint Peter with as much reverence as if he himself were a Catholic. The Pope Symmachus, and the entire senate and people of Rome amid general rejoicing met him outside the city. 66 Then coming to Rome and entering it, he appeared in the senate, and addressed the people at The Palm, promising that with God’s help he would keep inviolate whatever the former Roman emperors had decreed.

67 In celebration of his tricennalia he entered the Palace in a triumphal procession for the entertainment of the people, and exhibited games in the Circus for the Romans. To the Roman people and to the poor of the city he gave each year a hundred and twenty thousand measures of grain, and for the restoration of the Palace and the rebuilding of the walls of the city he ordered two hundred pounds to be given each year from the chest that contained the tax on wine….

70 … He was besides a lover of building and restorer of cities. 71 At Ravenna he repaired the aqueduct which the emperor Trajan had constructed, and thus brought water into the city after a long time. He completely finished the palace, but did not dedicate it. He also built baths and a palace at Verona, and added a colonnade extending all the way from the gate to the Palace; besides that, he restored the aqueduct at Verona, which had long since been destroyed, and brought water into the city, as well as surrounding the city with new walls. Also at

Ticinum

he built a palace, baths, and an amphitheatre, besides new city walls.

73 And he followed this principle so fully throughout all Italy, that he gave no city a gate; and where there were already gates, they were never shut; and every one could carry on his business at whatever hour he chose, as if it were in daylight. In his time sixty measures of wheat were bought for a single gold-piece, and thirty amphorae of wine for the same price. (The Anonymous Valesianus 12.57-73)

The Question: If we rely on this source, how does Theodoric, a barbarian, maintain Roman society? How does this account of the barbarians differ from that of Gildas?

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Theodoric, a well-educated Ostrogoth, understood something of Romanity. He divided the governmental functions of Italy to allow for Roman and Ostrogothic custom. The transition was not always easy, but it was not a violent break from Roman tradition. In a nutshell, Theodoric was a better ruler than any fifth century western emperor. Certainly there was violence and terror as the barbarians moved in, but there are also examples of barbarians who wanted to be part of the Roman world, not its destroyers.

One recent scholar listed over 200 separate theories of what caused such a huge empire to collapse. These theories range from the traditional explanations of barbarian invasions or moral decay, such as Gibbon proposed, to various social, environmental and religious factors that took much longer. The ancient writers are of little help in the matter. It brings us back to our dilemma at the beginning: was the end sudden or gradual? Goldsworthy is one of the most recent scholars to put his hat in the ring:

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The Late Roman Empire was not designed to be an efficient government, but to keep the emperor in power and to benefit the members of the administration…Sheer size prevented rapid collapse or catastrophe. Its weakness was not obvious, but this only meant that collapse could come in sudden, dramatic stages… Gradually, the empire’s institutions rotted and became less and less capable of dealing w/any crisis, but still did not face serious competition. Lost wars were damaging, but the damage was not fatal to the empire itself…

The Roman Empire continued for a very long time. Successive blows knocked away sections of it, as attackers uncovered its weaknesses. Yet at times the empire could still be formidable and did not simply collapse. Perhaps we should imagine the Late Roman Empire as a retired athlete, whose body has declined from neglect and an unhealthy lifestyle. At times the muscles will still function well and with the memory of former skill and training. Yet, s the neglect continues, the body becomes less and less capable of resisting disease or recovering from injury. Over the years the person would grow weaker and weaker, and in the end could easily succumb to disease. Long decline was the fate of the Roman Empire. In the end, it may well have been “murdered” by barbarian invaders, but these struck at a body made vulnerable by prolonged decay. (A. Goldsworthy, How Rome Fell. 2009, pp. 414-5)

The question: How does Goldsworthy explain the collapse of the western empire?

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Goldsworthy is one of several who suggest that the empire died by attrition, rather than by rapid barbarian blows or other sudden causes. Peter Wells, an archaeologist, examines the consequences from the material record.

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This set of ideas about Rome, its collapse, and subsequent developments have dominated popular understanding to the present day…The traditional model of the development of European culture and society during the first millennium is based almost exclusively on the surviving texts…but a very different story now emerges from the abundant archaeological evidence that is available for this period from all parts of Europe…there was no gap in the cultural development between the Roman Empire and the Carolingian Renaissance. There were certainly major changes, but to judge them in terms of “decline,” or the communities that instigated the changes as “barbaric,’ is to adopt the cultural prejudices of the late Roman writers. What has traditionally been called the Dark Ages was a period of immense cultural, economic, and political development along lines different from those of Roman civilization as we traditionally understand it…

The decline (“collapse” is too strong a term) of the Roman Empire was a long, gradual process that took place over at least three centuries. Looked at from a modern perspective, it can seem like a steady, even inevitable unraveling of the military, political, and economic institutions that Rome had created over its seven centuries of growth. But it was much more complex than that, and few people living at the time would have noticed or felt that their world was declining. In different parts of the vast Roman Empire, changes occurred at different times, and often a period of apparent decline would be followed by one of renewed growth…

The Roman Empire “fell” only in the minds of people who had a particular and limited view of what the Roman Empire was and who understood events such as Alaric’s capture of Rome in A.D. 410 as marking its end…Too often, modern researchers lose sight of the fact that these fixed points re intended only to provide a framework for understanding peoples of the past, not real breaks in the social or cultural development of early Europeans.

For the auxiliary soldier serving on the Rhine frontier at the end of the Roman period, for farmers in villages in central France, and for the elites at northern centers…there was no abrupt fall of the imperial power. The changes that were taking place from the fifth to the eighth century were gradual; they would not been seen as abrupt or transformational to anyone living at the time… (Peter Wells, Barbarians to Angels. 2008 pp.4-5, 18-19, 200-202)

The Question: According to Wells, what impact did the decline of the western government have on Europe? Why does he reject the term “collapse”?

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Whereas Goldsworthy looks at the aging giant from the top down, Wells advocates a “bottom-up” approach to understanding the nature of European society after the disappearance of the western empire. The elites who wrote the histories emphasized the disaster of Rome’s “fall”, but Wells argues that the archaeological evidence suggests that European communities not only survived but often prospered in the changes.

Even the Eastern Empire barely managed to hold its own in this period although it had not suffered from barbarian appropriations as had the West. In the East, Constantinople’s court also played politics, but the reigns were longer and more stable. It retained its wealth and commitment to one day restoring the empire. The last attempt to reclaim the west came in the reign of Justinian (527-65). Under the capable leadership of General Belisarius, Justinian’s forces retook Africa from the Vandals in 533. The Italian campaign was far less successful, due in great part to court politics that set Justinian against Belisarius. By the 550’s Italy was in shambles. The Ostrogoths may have been destroyed as a people, but several Italian towns had suffered, including Rome. When the Lombards entered Italy in the 560’s Byzantium did not have the manpower in place to stop them. It was the end of any dream of reconquest.

Had Justinian stopped with this, he might be remembered as a failure. However, he is also known for reorganizing the old law codes into something more systematized and understandable. The Code of Justinian preserved law from a time when the state, not the ruler, made the law. He also commissioned elaborate building projects, the most famous being his complete renovation of the Church of Holy Wisdom, the Hagia Sophia. However, Justinian was no closer to solving the relationship of church and state than were his predecessors, and the emperor continued to have great power, to the dismay of the church.

Basilica of S. Vitale, 547

The Question: What are the issues in interpreting the relationship of church and state in this mosaic of Justinian and Bishop Maximianus? What does it suggest about the role of emperor in the East?

Justinian was known for his role in the continuing religious controversies. Constantinople was by now a city of over one million people, practicing every variety of Christianity known. The city was also sports-mad, especially when it came to chariot racing. Chariot teams were often the favorites of various factions, some of them religious. Upsets at the horsetrack could result in small riots. In 532 the Blue and Green factions rebelled in common when the government interfered in a riot, organizing a prison break. The result, the Nike Rebellion, was a city-wide insurrection so massive that Justinian considered abdicating his throne and escaping. By tradition, Justinian’s remarkable wife Theodora, a former commoner who was possibly no stranger to the street, declared that she would accept no burial shroud but the purple, an honor reserved for the imperial family. Justinian faced down the angry rioters and restored peace.

Let us be careful in our evaluation of Justinian’s programs. His programs, especially his campaigns westwards, cost a great in money and attention. He left the Empire struggling in debt at a time when new threats faced it from the north and east, as we will see in the next chapter. After Justinian there was no real attempt to unify the two halves of empire. The Byzantine emperor lived surrounded by layers of church and bureaucracy, but remained head of church and state. The western empire, on the other hand, had become a multitude of small barbarian kingdoms.

Conclusion

There is no consensus yet about the transition between the ancient and medieval worlds. Some would put the ending in the economic and social transformations beginning as far back as Constantine and before. Others point to the role of the legalized Church as a turning point. The transition from a classical viewpoint to a medieval understanding of the relationship of the Church to the Roman state came in the fourth century and was best expressed by Augustine. Others point to the traumatic military and political episodes of the fifth century that led to the collapse of the western Roman state, and cite 476 as the dividing line between ancient and medieval. Still others suggest a longer transition into the sixth and seventh centuries, during which new institutions and localized economies replaced the Roman systems. In Chapter Nine, we will see that some take late antiquity into the Merovingian period, suggesting that the interaction between Islam and Europe replaced classical ideas with the new centers of power in the Islamic world and northern Europe.

The question of how the Roman world was transformed into the medieval world is linked to the question of how the Roman state collapsed in the first place, a question which continues to draw debate. Whether the barbarians or Church played an active role in the collapse, or whether internal weaknesses gave opportunity to new peoples is just as puzzling as whether Rome declined, fell, or simply evolved into something new. Whatever the process, and however we define late antiquity, certainly by the time of Justinian there was a new European society in the making.

A GOOD PLACE FOR BOETHIUS ETC.

Culture in the W

1. Monasteries as places for intellectual life

2. Cassiodorus

3. Reconciling Roman and German trads

4. Institutes – curriculum of study for monks

5. Calculation of Easter

6. Church music

7. Trivium and Quadrivium

8. Boethius

9. Boethian philosophy

10. Consolation of Philosophy

11. Fortune and God’s Purpose

12. Benedict of Nursia

13. Communal over hermitic monasticism

14. Monte Cassino

15. Rule of Benedict

16. Life of monks

17. Manual labor and humility

18. Rule as constitution.

Essays guideline

When writing a paper in this class, there are certain professional and academic standards that will be expected.

0. All papers must be cited throughout. This means that if you use information from any source besides the one that everybody uses for the assignment, you must tell me immediately in the paper. You can do this either by a parenthetical citation (author, title of source, and page number if you can find one) or by footnote[footnoteRef:1]. Please note the little number next to “footnote”. This tells me to look at the bottom of the page. Without in-text or footnote citation, you can be accused of lifting somebody else’s thought without giving that person credit. Modern computers have a footnoting function you can use. [1: This is a footnote. Here you can put the same sort of information as a parenthetical citation, or even other information that you think is important, but would break the thought of the paragraph if you tried to put it there. Your computer has a function for doing this automatically.]

0. Any time you quote, you must cite, even if it comes from the source everybody is reading for the assignment. Also, always identify all your sources at the end of the paper, even the common assignments.

0. When using the Sourcebook, I am not the author!! The author to be cited is the person who wrote the excerpt (Augustus, Sappho, Villehardouin, etc)… If this is confusing, then you can use the general editor of the series.

0. Internet sources are not free intellectual property. If you cut and paste from the Internet, you are plagiarizing, a fancy word for stealing somebody else’s thoughts or ideas. Just like hard sources, please cite. If you find that an Internet source says it just right, take the statement and rearrange the ideas into your own words. Then cite it. If you download and paste directly from the Internet, your grade will suffer.

0. Any time I suspect evidence of Internet or any other kind of plagiarism, I will run it through various plagiarism programs I have. If they come out positive, you will fail that assignment.

For each assignment, in 3-5 pages typed, answer the pertinent question. Defend any arguments you make using the source at hand. Be certain to let me know within the introduction the argument you intend to follow. Then, give evidence for your belief, analysis and interpretation of that evidence, and your conclusions. All assignments are due by class time, and will be penalized for lateness. I will not accept “printer ate my homework” excuses.

Plagiarism will be severely punished. If at any time you submit a paper that I discover was in some way plagiarized, I will award a “0” for all previously submitted papers. Plagiarism is the act of incorporating directly quoted or closely paraphrased statements from the work of another author or student without fully citing the source in either a note or a parenthesis. Obviously, with only one source, you may find it necessary sometimes to use the author’s language. Do it as little as possible, and avoid using quotes unless absolutely necessary. However, if you feel a quote or close paraphrase is appropriate, restrict it to two lines at most, and cite its location as best you can in the source.

Papers may be rewritten and resubmitted, with the original annotated submission attached, within one week of the assignment’s original due date.