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Early Medieval Europe 300–1050

Early Medieval Europe 300–1050: A Guide for Studying and Teaching empowers
students by providing them with the conceptual and methodological tools to investi-
gate the period. Throughout the book, major research questions and historiographical
debates are identified and guidance is given on how to engage with and evaluate key
documentary sources as well as artistic and archaeological evidence. The book’s aim
is to engender confidence in creative and independent historical thought.
This second edition has been fully revised and expanded, and now includes coverage
of both Islamic and Byzantine history, surveying and critically examining the often
radically different scholarly interpretations relating to them. Also new to this edition
is an extensively updated and closely integrated companion website (www.routledge.
com/cw/rollason), which has been carefully designed to provide practical guidance
to teachers and students, offering a wealth of reference materials and aids to mastering
the period, and lighting the way for further exploration of written and non-written
sources.
Accessibly written and containing over 70 carefully selected maps and images,
Early Medieval Europe 300–1050 is an essential resource for students studying this
period for the first time, as well as an invaluable aid to university teachers devising
and delivering courses and modules on the period.

David Rollason is Emeritus Professor of History at Durham University, UK. His

previous publications include Northumbria 500–1100: Creation and Destruction
of a Kingdom (2003) and The Power of Place: Rulers and Their Palaces, Landscapes,
Cities, and Holy Places (2016). His research has included the cult of saints in Anglo-
Saxon England, twelfth-century historical writing, the extensive medieval list of names
known as the Durham Liber Vitae, and most recently royal and imperial sites across
Europe.
Early Medieval Europe
300–1050
A Guide for Studying and Teaching
Second Edition

David Rollason
Second edition published 2018
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2018 David Rollason
The right of David Rollason to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
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registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
Every effort has been made to contact copyright-holders. Please advise
the publisher of any errors or omissions, and these will be corrected in
subsequent editions.
First edition published by Pearson 2008
Reprinted by Routledge 2015
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Names: Rollason, D. W. (David W.), author.
Title: Early medieval Europe, 300-1050 : a guide for studying and teaching /
David Rollaso.
Description: Second edition. | London ; New York : Routledge, 2018. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017046338 | ISBN 9781138936867 (hardback : alk.
paper) | ISBN 9781138936874 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781351173049
(ebook : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Europe—History—To 476—Study and teaching. |
Europe—History—476–1492—Study and teaching. | Middle Ages—Study
and teaching. | Civilization, Medieval—Study and teaching.
Classification: LCC D121. R65 2018 | DDC 940.1/2071—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017046338

ISBN: 978-1-138-93686-7 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-138-93687-4 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-351-17304-9 (ebk)

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Visit the companion website: www.routledge.com/cw/rollason

In memory of
R. H. C. Davis
(1918–91)
a great scholar and an inspirational teacher
Contents

List of figures xi
List of maps xiii
Preface xv
Companion website resources xvii

PART I
Introduction 1

1 Why study this period? 3

Formative character 3
Challenges to study 10
This book’s aims 11
Questions, models, and experiments 12

PART II
Empires and peoples 15
Introduction 17

2 From Roman Empire to barbarian kingdoms: cataclysm or transition? 20

The First Doom and Gloom Model 20
The Second Doom and Gloom Model 26
The Deliberate Roman Policy Model 29
Companion website resources 35
Research and study 36

3 The dismemberment and survival of the Byzantine Empire 39

The First Doom and Gloom Model 42
The Second Doom and Gloom Model 57
The Deliberate Byzantine Policy Model 58
Companion website resources 66
Research and study 66
viii Contents
4 The Arab conquests 69
Approach 1: Accepting the validity of the written sources 75
Approach 2: Being sceptical of the sources 77
Approach 3: Reading back from the heyday of the Umayyad
and ‘Abbasid caliphates 81
Companion website resources 89
Research and study 89

5 The making of peoples 92

The Biological Model 96
The Constitutional Model 104
Why did peoples form? 107
Companion website resources 112
Research and study 113

Conclusion 115

Timeline: Part II 117

PART III
Power and society 121
Introduction 123

6 Pagan, Roman, and Christian beliefs about rulers:

ideological power 126
Paganism and rulership 127
Roman ideology and kingship 135
Christianity and rulership 140
Companion website resources 150
Research and study 150

7 Edicts, taxes, and armies: bureaucratic power 153

Written documents 154
Oral communication, symbolism, and ritual 156
Government departments and staff 158
Capabilities of governments 165
Companion website resources 169
Research and study 170

8 Kings, warriors, and women: personal power 174

War-bands 174
Feasting, drinking, and the hall 180
The social pyramid 181
 Contents ix
Aristocratic elites 183
The role of women 186
Nearness to the king 187
Companion website resources 189
Research and study 189

Conclusion 193

Timeline: Part III 195

PART IV
The economic foundation 197
Introduction 199

9 Trade as a driving force? 202

Pirenne and his critics 202
The nature of the Roman and Byzantine economies 203
The economic influence of the Arab caliphate 209
Decline and revival of trade? 214
Companion website resources 224
Research and study 224

10 Cultivating the land: the basis of European society? 228

The continuity of Roman agriculture 228
An agricultural revolution? 237
Companion website resources 246
Research and study 246

11 Towns and cities: the functions of urban life 250

The fate of Roman cities 250
Functions of cities and towns 256
Growth of cities and towns 258
New towns 260
Cities and towns as tools of power 271
Companion website resources 274
Research and study 274

Conclusion 278

Timeline: Part IV 280

x Contents
PART V
The Church’s triumph 283
Introduction 285

12 Conversion to Christianity 288

The Roman Empire 288
The barbarians within the Roman Empire 295
Conversion outside the former Roman Empire 305
Companion website resources 307
Research and study 308

13 The success of monasticism 311

‘Bottom-up’ model 312
‘Top-down’ model 317
Companion website resources 327
Research and study 328

14 The power of bishops and popes 331

Bishops and popes in the Church hierarchy 331
The resources of popes and bishops 334
Bishops and popes in the world 341
Companion website resources 350
Research and study 350

Conclusion 352

Timeline: Part V 353

General Conclusion 356

Sources 359
References 363
Image credits 392
Index 395
List of figures

2.1 Portchester Saxon Shore fort from the air 23

2.2 The liburna (oxen-powered paddle-ship) from the anonymous
‘On Military Matters’ 24
3.1 Image from an illuminated manuscript, the Madrid Skylitzes 46
3.2 Granaries at Dara 47
3.3 The land-walls of Constantinople 48
3.4 Constantinople, the church of Hagia Sophia, exterior 50
3.5 Constantinople, church of Hagia Sophia, interior, looking up
from the nave into the central dome 51
3.6 Great Preslav, the Round Church 61
3.7 The Holy Crown of Hungary, viewed from the back 63
4.1 Petra, the so-called Khazneh (Treasury), which was probably in
reality the tomb of a king of the Nabataeans 79
4.2 Palmyra, Temple of the god Ba‘aldžamin 80
4.3 An ‘Arab-Sasanid’ coin, imitating a Sasanid coin with a bust of
Chosroes II, shah of Persia, wearing his regalia 84
4.4 An ‘Arab-Byzantine’ coin issued by the Umayyad caliph before the
reform of ‘Abd al-Malik in 696 85
4.5 An Arab silver coin (dirhem) issued by the caliph after the
reform of ‘Abd al-Malik in 696 86
4.6 MadƯnat al-ZahrƗ, the Great Portico 88
5.1 Cremation urns from the cemetery of Sancton I
(Yorkshire East Riding) 99
5.2 The skull and hair of a man recovered from a bog at Osterby
(Schleswig-Holstein, Germany) 103
6.1 The Sun rising in a four-horse chariot from the ocean 128
6.2 Cast of the seal ring of King Childeric 131
6.3 Sutton Hoo whetstone-sceptre 133
6.4 Ravenna, the Mausoleum of Theoderic 136
6.5 Trier (Germany), Roman hall or basilica, interior, looking
towards the apse where the emperor would have sat 138
6.6 San Vitale, Ravenna and the palace-church of Aachen, now
Aachen Cathedral 139
6.7 Reconstruction of the palace of Ingelheim (Germany) as built by
Charlemagne 140
xii List of figures
6.8 Rome, Santa Costanza, mosaic in the west niche showing
Christ as ruler of the cosmos 141
6.9 Constantinople, mosaic above the Imperial Gate in the church
of Hagia Sophia, showing Christ enthroned with the emperor
prostrate at his feet 142
6.10 Scene from the ninth-century Sacramentary of Metz, illustrating
the text of the service for the inauguration of the king 144
6.11 Ivory panel from the Pushkin Museum representing Christ
blessing Emperor Constantine VII 146
6.12 Emperor Otto III enthroned 147
7.1 Harold Godwinsson’s oath to Duke William of Normandy
represented in the Bayeux Tapestry 158
7.2 A Merovingian and a Carolingian coin 165
7.3 A section of Offa’s Dyke, near Clun (Shropshire), looking south 167
8.1 The Sutton Hoo Mound 1 ship as excavated just before the
Second World War in 1939 177
9.1 Ships represented on coins 223
10.1 The village of Chaussoy-Épagny in the valley of the river Somme,
photographed from the air by Roger Agache 236
10.2 Model of a plough in use from Arezzo (Italy) 241
10.3 A mouldboard plough represented in the margin of the
Bayeux Tapestry 241
11.1 Tower 19 (the ‘Anglian Tower’) in the fortifications of York 254
11.2 The forum at Rome 257
11.3 Aerial view of Burford (Oxfordshire) 261
11.4 Reconstruction of the layout of Hamwih showing the grid pattern
of streets at right angles to the River Itchen 263
11.5 Aerial view of Wallingford, Oxfordshire 270
11.6 Rome, Trajan’s Forum, looking towards Trajan’s Column 272
11.7 Ravenna, church of San Vitale, mosaic representing the emperor
Justinian on the north wall of the chancel 273
12.1 Arch of Constantine, Rome 290
12.2 Franks Casket, left side of the front 303
12.3 The Gosforth Cross, Gosforth churchyard (Cumbria) 304
13.1 Mount Athos, monastery of the Dionysiou seen from the
Aegean Sea 314
13.2 Jarrow (England), reconstruction model of the monastery as it
was in the early eighth century 319
13.3 ‘Triumphal Arch’ at Lorsch (Germany) 322
14.1 The east end of St Peter’s in the Vatican, reshaped by Pope
Gregory the Great 338
14.2 Poreƙ (Croatia), the first-floor hall of the bishop’s residence 342
List of maps

1.1 The extent of the Roman Empire 4

1.2 Western Europe around 1000–50 6
1.3 Expansion of the Arab Muslims 7
1.4 Europe in 500 18
2.1 The distribution of later Roman cities 30
3.1 The Byzantine Empire and the Arab caliphate following the
Arab conquests 41
3.2 The site of Constantinople 49
3.3 The Byzantine Empire around 1045 60
4.1 The Persian Empire in the reign of Chosroes I (531–79) 71
5.1 A map of the barbarian invasions 94
5.2 Treaty of Verdun (843) 109
7.1 Charlemagne’s itinerary 162
9.1 Distribution of pottery from La Graufensque 207
9.2 Rivers between the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea 218
10.1 Map of the principal Carolingian polyptychs for the northern part
of the Carolingian empire 230
11.1 York, showing the components of the Roman settlement 253
11.2 Archaeological remains at Haithabu (Hedeby) 264
11.3 Winchester in the period 993 to 1066 268
14.1 The city of Trier in the Early Middle Ages 345
Preface

This is the second edition of Early Medieval Europe 300–1050: The Birth of
Western Society (Harlow: Pearsons, 2012). The original subtitle signalled that the
first edition was almost exclusively focused on Western Europe, whereas this second
edition includes chapters on the Byzantine Empire and the Arab conquests (Chapters
3–4), with more extensive referencing of the Byzantine Empire in the course of other
chapters. There has naturally been updating of the ‘research and study’ sections where
appropriate works have been published since 2012.
The new subtitle underlines the character of the book, which is purely and simply
to provide guidance and assistance to undergraduate students embarking for the first
time on early medieval European history, and equally to their teachers faced with
developing courses and modules concerned with it. Consequently, the book is not
intended to be a definitive statement of research results, or even a distillation of my
own interpretations, but rather a road-map to the ideas, questions, scholarship, and
sources which make up the heady mix of study and research. It is emphatically not con-
cerned with showing its readers what to think but how to think about the period in
question. So its priority is to encourage them to develop their ability to frame questions,
to shape concepts, and to devise research strategies. For this reason, each chapter is
focused on themes and historical problems, brings readers into close contact with
written and non-written evidence, and offers a ‘research and study’ section to guide
their work by posing questions, by dividing the topic of the chapter up into manageable
study-blocks, and by offering commentary on what seems to me to be the most exciting
and appropriate reading.
A chronological grip on the period is, of course, essential to understanding it, but
at undergraduate level acquiring that must be a beginning and not an end. The book
consequently concentrates on analysis and historical problems, while the chronological
framework to be mastered is offered both by the timelines which are appropriate
to the themes of the chapters in question, and can be found at the end of each of
the book’s parts; and in the extensive narrative and descriptive accounts of the
period’s phases to be found on the website. There too readers will find guidance on
the lives of principal figures, the character of the principal sites crucially important
to understanding the history, the principal sources and contemporary writers, as well
as explanations of technical terms, reference aids, and pointers to visual and docu-
mentary source-materials. In short, the website contains what a reader might expect
to find in a conventional beginner’s textbook. It also offers resources for teachers
(including guidance and templates for seminars) and guidance for student learning
(including revision projects).
xvi Preface
These are ambitious aims, but I have tried to be realistic as to what is possible for
students in the context of a single course or module aimed at beginners. For the book’s
guidance on reading and research, I have selected only works in English, with apologies
to those students who read other languages and may be anxious to use them. Even so,
the number of works available is often daunting and overwhelming. I have further
tried to select books and papers which seem to me to take students to the heart of
issues, without bogging them down in technicalities and detail which are beyond what
is needed at this stage of study.
I have also selected the source-materials used and recommended, both written and
non-written, on the grounds of how practical it is for students who read only English
to acquire in-depth understanding of them. For written sources, for example, this
is not just a question of the availability of translations into English, but also the
availability of readily accessible and usable commentaries on them. The result of this,
however, is that the book’s emphasis is heavier than I might have wished on north-
western Europe, with much use, for example, of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the
English People and Gregory of Tours’s History of the Franks (or, more accurately, Ten
Books of Histories). There are, of course, exciting sources and issues relating to more
southern areas, such as Spain and Italy, and students may well wish to pursue with
regard to those areas the ideas and questions developed in this book.
It is a great pleasure to acknowledge the role in the writing of this book played by
over thirty generations of Durham University history students. Their enthusiastic res-
ponse to lectures, their sharp-minded, critical approach to seminars, and their unfailing
commitment to scholarship have guided and inspired me throughout my career, and it
is a huge satisfaction to commit some of what they have given me to print and to the
web. Colleagues at Durham and elsewhere have been unfailingly generous and helpful.
To Robin Frame, I am immensely grateful for his patience and understanding over the
many years during which we taught early medieval history together. He very generously
read and commented on the first edition of this book, and it was tighter and clearer
for his efforts. For that edition, I was similarly grateful for their time and comments
to Bob Moore, who shares with me affectionate memories of the book’s dedicatee,
Ralph Davis, to Christian Liddy, to Conrad Leyser, to John-Henry Clay, to Len Scales,
and to Barbara Crawford. My school-teacher, Andrew Thomson, who first instilled
in me the importance of clarity of thought and analysis, also read and improved the
first edition, close on fifty years after he first taught me. Mari Shullaw at Pearsons first
suggested the book and the website, and was unfailingly helpful and supportive. For
the book’s second edition, I am very grateful to Laura Pilsworth at Taylor and Francis
for suggesting that I should undertake it and for her support with it. I am also deeply
appreciative of the support of John-Henry Clay, who has, with his students, been an
enthusiastic user of the first edition and has guided me with the second; to my very old
friend and student colleague, Mike Donithorn, who has brought the sharpness of his
mind and his experience of history to bear on my text; to Hugh Kennedy who has
generously and patiently guided my efforts with Muslim history; and to Andrew
Louth for similarly guiding me with Byzantine history.

David Rollason
Durham
Companion website resources

For teachers and lecturers, the Companion website offers detailed notes and guidance
on seminars and their organisation.
For students, the Companion website > Student resources offer tips for learning and
study, and suggestions for revision projects.
For both groups, the Companion website > Reference aids offer easily accessible
reference aids, including: lists of reference works; a glossary of terms; brief notes on
persons prominent in the history of the period; a consolidated timeline for the period;
and brief narrative and descriptive histories of the later Roman Empire, the Byzantine
Empire, Anglo-Saxon England, the development of Christianity, and so on. These are
intended to provide a basic framework within which the thematic discussions in the
book itself can be placed.
The Companion website > Sources offer succinct notes on written and non-written
sources, including sites and monuments, manuscript illuminations and paintings, and
coins. Wherever possible it provides more extensive illustration than has been possible
in the book, together with URLs for sites providing additional material on sources,
written and non-written.
Part I
Introduction
1 Why study this period?

Formative character
The intention of this book is to explore how far for the development of Europe, in
political, religious, cultural, social, and economic terms, the period from 300 to 1050
was one of the most formative in its history. Fully to appreciate that, we need to
consider not just Europe itself, but also its wider context. Europe was by no means
an island, but was always closely connected to the lands to the east, bordering the
Mediterranean Sea, and to the south, equally bordering that sea and extending to
the fringes of the Sahara Desert. It is for that reason that this book, focused as it is first
and foremost on Europe, also contains a chapter discussing the Arab conquests of the
seventh century (Chapter 4).
As regards the formative character of the period which it covers, consider, first, how
in 300 Europe and the Middle East were dominated politically by the Roman Empire
on the one hand, and the Persian Empire to the east. The former’s frontiers stretched
from the Atlantic Ocean on the west to the Rivers Tigris and Euphrates on the east,
from Hadrian’s Wall in the north, to the Atlas Mountains of North Africa in the south
(Map 1.1).
The Persian Empire, which was at that time ruled by a dynasty called the Sasanids,
adjoined it on the east, and extended eastwards, around the southern shores of the
Caspian Sea and the northern shores of the Persian Gulf as far east as the mountains
of the Hindu Kush (Paropamisus Range) and modern Afghanistan (Map 4.1).
Now consider the situation in 1050, when the political map of Europe and the
Middle East was very different. In place of the unitary might of the Roman Empire,
the western section of which had come to an end in the late fifth century, a series of
often very fragmented kingdoms had come into existence in Western Europe, and we
can perhaps dimly perceive underlying this development the beginnings of modern
political geography, with the kingdoms of France, England, and Germany, for example,
already appearing in embryonic form (Map 1.2).
Developments in the eastern Mediterranean had been equally far-reaching. After
the break-up of the Roman Empire in the West, the Roman Empire in the East con-
tinued to exist as an important state, with its centre in the great city of Constantinople
(modern Istanbul); and, from the sixth century onwards, it is generally known to
modern scholarship as the Byzantine Empire, and I shall follow that practice in this
book. It was itself reduced in size when, following the rise of Islam in the early seventh
century, Arab armies robbed it of the provinces of Syria, Egypt, Libya, Tripoli, and the
remainder of North Africa, as well as destroying the Persian Empire and taking over
its lands. In 711, Muslims from North Africa invaded Spain, where the Byzantine
Map 1.1 The extent of the Roman Empire. The governmental units called provinces and
dioceses are marked as in Late Roman documents.
6 Introduction

Map 1.2 Western Europe around 1000–50. What was to become France as we know it was
divided into a series of duchies such as Flanders, Normandy, and Aquitaine, and
Aquitaine itself was subdivided into Poitou, Guyenne, and Gascony; but
nevertheless it was at least notionally under the rule of a king whose centre of power
lay in the area around Paris, that is the Île de France, or ‘Francia’ as it was known
and is marked on this map. Germany was also fragmented into duchies such as
Saxony, Swabia, and Franconia, but nonetheless a clear political distinction was
emerging between the western and eastern parts of Western Europe. To the east lay
areas such as Bohemia whose status and connection to Germany were still fluid. To
the south, lay the kingdom of Italy, also very fluid and occupying broadly northern
Italy, with duchies such as Spoleto to the south, and also the ‘Patrimony of St Peter’,
which was the pope’s lands, the nucleus of the future papal states. To the south-west
of the Pyrenees, the Christian kingdoms and counties of Navarre, Aragon, and
Barcelona (with Leon-Castile to the west of this map) were pressing against the
Arab caliphate and emirates to the south.

Empire still had a foothold, destroyed the kingdom of the Visigoths there, and subjected
almost the whole of the Iberian peninsula to their rule. The Byzantine Empire was
reduced to Asia Minor, the Balkans, and parts of Italy and the Mediterranean islands.
Its eastern provinces and the whole of the former Persian Empire became part of the
Arab caliphate, centred first at Damascus under the Umayyad caliphs (661–750) and
then at Baghdad under the ‘Abbasid caliphs (Map 1.3; Map 3.1). These conquests laid
the foundations for the spread of Islam, even though the speed of that spread remains
a matter of debate.
Map 1.3 Expansion of the Arab Muslims. The horizontal shading shows the expansion of Arab Muslim power down to
656, including the Byzantine provinces of the eastern and southern shores of the Mediterranean Sea and the Persian
Empire. The vertical shading shows its expansion down to 750, including the kingdom of the Visigoths. Spain is
now entirely under Muslim control, apart from the kingdom of Asturias in the north. The River Indus is almost the
limit of Muslim power in the east, beyond the eastward extent of this map. Notice the rump to which the Byzantine
Empire is reduced, consisting of Asia Minor and the Balkans, although the latter was fragmented by the incursions
of Slavs.
8 Introduction
The frontiers of the Byzantine Empire were certainly not unchanging after this,
for much of its territory in Asia Minor was lost to the invading Seljuk Turks in the late
eleventh century; but in essence the empire remained as a political force in the eastern
Mediterranean down to 1453, when its principal city, Constantinople, was captured
by those Turks, and the empire was destroyed. Similarly, the Arab caliphate exper-
ienced a process of disintegration beginning already in the late eighth century, so that
by 1050 the caliph at Baghdad was no more than a figurehead, with his former lands
divided into a series of effectively independent states, including in Egypt a line of rival
caliphs, the FƗ৬imids.
Nevertheless, the basic pattern was still one of incipient kingdoms in Western Europe,
the Byzantine Empire seeking at least to dominate the eastern Mediterranean, and
Muslim rulers in power over a vast area embracing North Africa, the Middle East,
and the lands eastward to Afghanistan and Central Asia, and southwards to the Persian
Gulf. The change from a unified pax Romana imposing a political and cultural unity on
the lands around the Mediterranean Sea to a situation in which they were split between
Christian states on the one hand and states embracing Muslim culture and political
structures on the other was to dominate the subsequent centuries, very obviously in the
period of the Crusades from around 1100, but arguably down to the present day. In
the light of this sketch, we may well think that the events of this book’s period were
potentially formative for Europe in subsequent centuries, and into the modern period,
and we shall need to ponder their significance.
We may also be seeing crucially formative changes in the development of political
institutions. In 300, Europe and the lands around the Mediterranean Sea were domi-
nated by the institutions of the Roman Empire, the emperor or co-emperors at least
notionally at its head, and the exercise of power in the hands of a paid civil service and
a standing army. In the Persian Empire, a similar system prevailed. By 1050, although
emperors still ruled in the Byzantine Empire, Western Europe was dominated by kings,
their households, and their military followers. Although Roman writers knew of
kings as the leaders of their barbarian allies or enemies, kingship as we know it may
have begun in this period, including the shaping of its rituals, regalia, and ideology.
Certainly, the 1953 coronation ceremony of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom
had its roots in the ninth century, when the various rituals of the ceremony first
appeared, notably in the inauguration ceremony of Charles the Bald, king of West
Frankia (840–77), in broadly what is now France. Was the period of this book then
one in which the political structures of Europe were shaped in broadly the form in
which they were to remain for centuries to come?
Social and economic organisation may have been changed in this period in similarly
radical ways. Although modern scholars have sometimes emphasised the European
aristocracy’s continuity with the Roman world, the change in its character and structure
was nevertheless striking, and many of its branches believed that they had originated
in the course of this period, notably in the ninth century. In the Byzantine Empire,
likewise, we need to ponder how continuous was the life of the aristocratic elite, and
how far here too our period was one of long-lasting change.
The organisation of rural life no doubt owed something to the Roman past; but, by
1050, we may be seeing in many parts of Europe the manors, villages, and pattern of
fields, in which rural life was to endure until the agricultural and industrial revolutions
of the modern age. As for urban life, there has of course been a major transformation
produced by modern industrialisation; but we may nevertheless be seeing the origins
 Why study this period? 9
of the pattern of much modern urban development in this period, not least the
concentration of cities in the valleys of the Rhine and adjacent rivers, and in north
Italy, and the emergence already by 1050 of cities like London, York, Dublin, and
Paris, as well as Muslim cities such as Córdoba in Spain. And we shall need to ponder
the significance for the development of Europe as a whole of the vigorous, long-
distance trading activity which may have grown up in the Muslim lands, with their
close connections with the Mediterranean Sea on the one side, and the lands stretching
eastwards to Central Asia on the other.
Most dramatic of all, however, was the change in religion. In 300, the Roman Empire
was dominated by the paganism of the classical world, which had often absorbed and
made its own the pagan cults of indigenous Celtic inhabitants. By 1050, Christianity,
which had in 300 been a minority religion, until very recently the victim of campaigns
of bloody persecution, had secured a monopoly as the religion of Europe, even in
lands outside the former Roman Empire, like Ireland which had been converted to
Christianity already in the fifth century, and Scandinavia which was converted by the
early eleventh. Intolerant of other religions, Christianity had succeeded in crushing
both classical paganism and Germanic, barbarian paganism, and it had become the
defining characteristic of European civilisation. Europe was Christendom by 1050,
and its eastern frontiers were frontiers against pagans beyond. Only in Spain was
Christianity challenged, there by the religious and political power of Islam, following
the conquest of Spain by Muslims from north Africa at the beginning of the eighth
century. Indeed, the other great religious change of our period had been the rise of
Islam, which by 1050 dominated the lands of the Arab caliphate in North Africa and
the Middle East. The Muslim-Christian divide was a product of our period.
In the case of Christianity, its dominance was not just a matter of belief. It was also
a matter of organisation and wealth. Some bishops were certainly already functioning
as ‘prince-bishops’, and the popes had gone a long way to achieving a position of
dominance in Western Europe at least. A similar pattern may have been evident in the
Byzantine Empire, although there the position comparable to that of the pope was
occupied rather by the Patriarch of Constantinople. Also, monasticism, originating in
the Nile Valley in the fourth century, had risen to considerable prominence in the
Christian lands, with a dense distribution of monasteries and an astonishing proportion
of the productive land in their hands.
As for the learning, scholarship, and culture of Europe, this new dominance of
Christianity may have proved seminal for the way in which the learning of the ancient
world was transmitted across the centuries, fused with new Christian scholarship, in
forms which were to shape European culture throughout the Middle Ages. This cul-
ture was largely founded on the Latin language in the West, and increasingly on the
Greek language in the Byzantine Empire, as Roman classical culture had been. But
our period also saw the rise of the vernacular languages. The very first texts in the
ancestor-languages of French and German belong to the ninth century, as does one of
the earliest texts in the Old Norse language of Scandinavia. The earliest texts in Old
English belong to the eighth century, and that language came to be widely used in
writing from the ninth century onwards. As for the Muslim lands, the rise of Arabic
as a scholarly and literary language, the language of the Qu’rƗn and the commentaries
on it, belongs firmly to our period.
In this book, we need to explore the case for the importance, or otherwise, of these
changes. Modern scholars have refined our understanding of their nature and extent,
10 Introduction
and they have sometimes disputed their importance. We need to examine their findings
in depth, and we need to be aware that we are everywhere surrounded by controversy
and debate. We shall have to argue whatever case we choose to make – powerfully and
vigorously. But there can be no doubt that, however we might want to answer the
questions raised, however much we might want to finesse our answers and conclusions,
we are looking at a period which is potentially a central one for understanding what
Europe is and has been.
This period is, however, arguably crucial to our understanding of history more
widely. We can study it for the joy of discovery, for the fascination of looking at a
remote and often exotic period. But we should never forget that it has been of crucial
and often sinister relevance to political ideas and ideologies up to the present day. The
imperial robes of the emperor Napoleon were decorated with jewelled insects inspired
by those found in the tomb of the fifth-century king Childeric; Napoleon’s predecessors
who ruled France through the later middle ages and the early modern period believed
that the oil used in their coronations was miraculously the same oil used to baptise
their first Christian predecessor, Clovis, king of the Franks (c.481–c.511). The ideo-
logues seeking to build a late medieval German nation drew on Roman writers of our
period, and Hitler and his fascist colleagues used the history of Germanic peoples in
and before our period as the basis of their ideology of the Aryan race. History, however
remote, is never irrelevant and never neutral. This period has had more than its share
in the shaping of European political ideology, and an understanding of it is crucial to
appreciating how that developed.

Challenges to study
At first glance, the study of such a remote period can be daunting. There are few
archives of records surviving, and there never were helpful documents such as censuses,
or guides to popular feelings such as newspapers, which are the life-blood of the history
of the modern period. In some parts of Europe, notably Scandinavia, there was little or
no use of writing at all for most of the period. In the Middle East, evidence is extremely
difficult to evaluate for the period of the origins of Islam and the Arab conquests; while
in the Byzantine Empire there is a an almost complete lack of documentary sources.
The volume of evidence is thus spectacularly less than that for modern centuries,
when the problem for historians is often its sheer scale rather than its scarcity.
But that presents a challenge rather than a handicap, for it offers you the possibility
of mastering a significant proportion of that evidence. And, given the remoteness of
the period, it is rich and vivid. It includes unrivalled writers of history, such as the
sixth-century Gregory of Tours, whose History of the Franks provides a rich picture
of royal and aristocratic life in the area of modern France and western Germany, or
the Arabic writer al-BalƗdhurƯ, who has left us a rich account of the Muslim conquests,
or the eighth-century Bede, whose Ecclesiastical History of the English People is justly
celebrated as a subtle, wide-ranging, and influential work. We possess in addition, for
example, accounts of the lives and deaths of saints, detailed surveys of landed estates
and the peasantry who lived on them, and documents casting light on the organisation
of land and power. Limited as such evidence often is in its scope, its vividness is often
astonishing.
Moreover, the small size of this base of evidence and the remoteness and strangeness
of the period will compel you to analyse it deeply and imaginatively in a way which is
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