Crisis, continuity and transformation in the making of early Medieval Western Europe (up to the 8th C.)
INTRODUCTION
The fall of antiquity and the
making of early medieval Europe is mainly seen and analysed on the basis of
structural differences between the East and West in Europe. The Arab conquest
finally marked the end of Antiquity. The 8th century western Europe
though with its diversity were cemented together by profound resemblances
giving birth to feudalism and subsequently to Modern Europe. Indeed, there were
a lot of elements of crisis after the fall of antiquity, however Europe was never
separated from economic prosperity and some kind of it always existed,
inherited from Ancient Rome. The period of middle ages in the beginning is seen
to be in a phase of crisis with slowly accommodating fusion of both elements
from that of outsiders, the so called barbarians and the insiders, the Romans.
The intermixture of both is seen to produce some distinct transformation
finally changing even the basic mode of production, i.e, from the slave owned
to the feudalistic one.
The middle ages are commonly seen
to have been started from 476A.D with the abdication of last Roman Emperor in
the west, Romulus Augustus, but since he was only a puppet emperor many like
Biondo dates it to 410A.D, with the sacking of Rome with the Goths. Within a
few years, the Visigoths under Alaric had sacked Rome, in 410. Two decades
later, the Vandals had taken Carthage, in 439. By 480, the first crude system
of barbarian states had been established on former Roman soil: the Burgundians
in Savoy, the Visigoths in Aquitaine, the Vandals in North Africa and the
Ostrogoths in North Italy.[1] The
military, political and economic unity of the Western Empire was irretrievably
shattered.
Jacques Le Goff has rightly
pointed that the middle ages, which is seen to be a period of violence,
dominated by the natural world was also a period of exceptional creativity
leading to development of western civilization. The medieval west born on ruins
of Roman world acted as both help and hindrance to it. The 1st
century Rome was ultra-conservative with almost no innovation since resources
were mostly acquired from warfare, pillage and hoarded treasures. The 2nd
century was attacked by forces of destruction and renewal but with the seizing
of Rome and Italy, the heart of Empire, there was a great crisis in the 3rd
century. There was a period of struggle with provinces becoming independent and
upcoming conquerors and Spaniards, Gauls and Orientals invading the Senate. The
medieval West is seen to have inherited this struggle which lost substance to
East by flowing off all of its gold for the luxury imports from it. The East
and West division became the feature of the Medieval world.
In addition to the great divide
which was cutting the West off from the East there was growing isolation
between the different parts of the West. Trade, which had above all been an
interior trade between provinces, declined.[2]
There was decline in export of products like Mediterranean oil, Rhenish glass,
or Gaulish pottery. Anderson points that in the first half of the 5th century,
the imperial order was laid waste by the inrush of barbarians throughout the
West. Provinces relapsed into endemic disorder and confusion, their traditional
administration submerged or adrift; social rebellion and banditry were rife
over large areas; archaic and buried local cultures surfaced, as the Roman
patina cracked in remote regions.[3]Coins
were becoming scarcer and of poorer quality, cultivated surfaces were being
abandoned and the number of deserted fields were increasing.
The decline of trade and lack of
coins forced townspeople to the countryside as urban population sustained on
imports and lack of it made them to be localized near the production site. Its
visual manifestation can be also analysed through archaeology which shows
cities to be decaying only to be hastened by barbarian invasions. Archaeology
clearly reflects the dramatic economic simplification of most of the West.[4] The
fiscal system, the judicial system, the density of Roman administrative
activity in general, all began to simplify as well.[5]
Goff argues that this disorganisation of exchanges increased hunger and hunger
pushed the masses into countryside and subjected them to servitude of ‘bread
givers’, the great lords. This moving to countryside had social aspects too
with social compartmentalization of occupation occurring upon as many late
Roman emperors started making trade hereditary as men who were necessary for
economy had to be kept on hands. Also, landlords started attaching the tenant
farmers to land and they started replacing slaves who were indeed becoming very
scarce.
G. Duby, who looks upon the
economy of early Europe points out that the period which we are dealing with
had such a low material civilization that economic prosperity of the period
could be analysed through man’s niche carved out with the continuous struggle
with the natural forces. He argues that though Europe was an uncivilized place
at the end of 6th century with almost no use of writing it was never separated
from economic prosperity and some kind of it always existed, inherited from
ancient Rome. The period between 5th and 8th century is seen as juxtaposition of
two struggles, one being the Germano-Slav, the barbarians world, with the scene
of sustained growth and the other was one of decay, the Roman civilization
which was reaching final stages of dilapidation.
Duby points out that the Paris
basin where encounters and interactions were taking place was an area of
geographical diversity and was fundamental in early stages of Economic growth.
The natural landscape of western Europe was mainly forested and wilderness seemed
to be prevailing all over. Also, relief was another problem, during summers
irrigation was needed for cultivation. On the basis of glacial flow analysis,
it is seen that climate was mostly fluctuating during the period. Population
was very scarce. The population density per square km in the 6th century Gaul
was 5.5, 2.0 in England (corresponding to a population of less than half a
million) and 2.2 in Germany with extent
of arable land hardly exceeding 4%. There was a prevailing existence of
malnutrition as evidence of bones and teeth shows up dietary deficiency. Also,
there is very little evidence on tools with use of iron that seemed very
limited as Roman Empire was mostly confined with Mediterranean area where metal
production is very less and because arable soil there are very thin Romans were hardly concerned with ploughing
techniques. Though written documents suggest the existence of Aratum or Carruca
used for ploughing their use seems limited in correlation to other factors.
The landscape of western Europe
representing the system of cultivation mostly depends upon the traditional
diet. The natural resources seemed to have been used in 2 ways, the Romans in
process of decay and Germanic in process of improvement. Bread and wine were
seen as the most expected diet of Romans thus cereal production and viticulture
meant to be put in operation as symbol of sustained civilization. West Europe
which is ill suited to both productions showed progress in both showing
Germanic adaptation to it. However, it also seems that in the Romanized country
the role of grain became limited during the period. This feature of Roman
Empire also seems to have come under decay as dietary traditions themselves
were undergoing change with lard, fat and wax replacing oil. In other words, as
Duby points out, saltus products from the wild were playing an increasing role
in human diet. This restoration of the
medieval west economy based on saltus
and not ager and the change of
culture from rather than cultivation to exploitation of natural resources
marked the fall of antiquity.
There was a lot of confusion
which was prevailing, as though the barbarians seemed to give value to Roman
culture it was natural that they had a strong desire not to lose their custom
and culture since they were less in number. The existence of ‘personality of
laws’ very much unusual to Roman juridical tradition was a marker for this. The
Roman community, on the other hand, characteristically kept its own
administrative structure, with comital units and functionaries, and its own
judicial system, both manned by the provincial landowning class. This dualism
was most developed in Ostrogothic Italy, where a Germanic military apparatus
and Roman civilian bureaucracy were effectively juxtaposed within Theodoric’s government,
which preserved most of the legacy of the imperial administration.[6] there was little or no attempt to tamper with the
strictly Latin legality governing the life of the Roman population. The Edict
of Theodoric attempted to have the same laws for everyone. Thus, in many ways,
Roman juridical and political structures were left intact within these early
barbarian realms: bastardized Germanic counterparts were merely added side by
side to them.
Wickham points to some new
aspects which resulted from barbarians coming to power. He argues that the
system of maintaining cultural homogeneity among the Romans who only
intermarried among themselves, no doubt came in trouble with the coming of the
barbarians whose identities refashioned all the time. He points that though
this genealogical network makes a nonsense of cultural difference, at least at
the imperial or royal level,[7]since,
from very earlier times the Roman kings were from outside but there exist an
association of more women power in the society with so called homogeneity, for
example in 5th century women’s like Galla Placidia and Pulcheria
were powerful enough to legitimize their husband as system of intermarriage as
a criterion for succession give them power. This feature tends to be
degenerated with barbarians occupying the throne who were also mostly military
in outlook hence powerful features also tended to be associated with military
strength.
Since tribal social organisation
was embedded in their religious outlook. Its transformation implies the similar
impact in the social dimension of the society. At the time of eruption in
Europe Germanic tribes were pagan but in the influence of Roman society there
was ideological change where they unanimously adopted Arianism, rather than
catholic orthodoxy and thereby maintained a separate identity. In most
barbarian kingdoms, except vandal Africa there was hardly any prosecution of
Catholics by Arians and both institutions, the Christian church and the Pagan
church existed together. Also, it was seen that barbarians were attracted to
Roman culture. Not only did the barbarians chief appealed to Romans as
counsellors, but they often tried to ape Roman customs and to decorate
themselves with Roman titles-consuls, patrician, and so on.[8]
No barbarian ruler before Charlemagne, who became emperor in 800A.D dared to
make himself as emperor. Many cultures were brought by barbarians and adapted
too, for example meat eating and public assembly, any decision taken got
legitimacy from the number of people present and not by their status of free
and unfree like the Romans.
In general, these barbarian
kingdoms modified the social, economic and cultural structures of the later
Roman world to a relatively limited extent, and more by fission than fusion.
Significantly, large-scale agrarian slavery was preserved in them, along with
the other basic rural institutions of Western Empire, including the colonate.
The new Germanic nobles showed no sympathy whatever for the Bacaudae,
understandably, and were on occasion used by the Roman landowners who were now
their social partners to put them down.[9]Slaves
still remained the basic mode of production. Most noticed aspect of continuity
of Roman West was in the linguistic field; no region of Roman West was
Germanized in speech by any of the early Germanic invasions. Many of local
pre-roman languages of the countryside in fact took some bloom like Basque and
Celtic.
However, the 1st phase
of Germanic invasion did not last long and it was the 2nd phase of
it which transformed the elements of antiquity and determined the later map of
western feudalism permanently. However, as it is evidenced from a source, the
Life of St Severinus, it is seen that Rome tried to play off one lot against
another, and hurriedly attempted to Romanize the first arrivals and to turn
them into a tool against the next group which remained more barbarian.[10] The
second wave marked by the Frankish conquest of Gaul, the Anglo-Saxon occupation
of England and - a century later, in its own way the Lombard descent on Italy differed
in character and scale from the 1st wave. It was the 1st
wave which created the ground for the 2nd wave ease in its
proliferation. The rigid and brittle dualism of the 5th century
progressively disappeared in the 6th (except in the last fortress of the
first-generation states- Visigothic Spain, where it died away in the 7th).[11]
There was an element of fusion
where a new synthesis was produced by integrating both Germanic and Roman
elements. The Roman landlords in most parts were crushed and were taken away
from there land and somewhere they were even reduced to condition of slavery.
This led to greater turnover from the fields. The period marked the coming of
village communities which were the most important feature of mediaeval
feudalism. In Gaul too villa system underwent to give rise to primitive hamlets
of huts combined with agrarian traditions of tribal homelands. It is hard to
estimate the final resultant combination of dependent tenures, small peasant
holdings, communal lands, surviving roman slavery and villa system. It is
however clear that there were existence free peasants in different parts of
western Europe. The administration seemed incapable of controlling minting with
coins becoming degraded.
Politically, the second wave led
to end of dualist administration and laws with Germanic law becoming
predominant all over. Germans recasted the civil and juridical system of the
country in the regions which they occupied. The taxation system almost lapsed.
On the other hand, Germanic religious separatism now conversely ebbed away. The
Franks adopted Catholicism directly with the baptism of Clovis in the last
years of the 5th century, after his victory over the Alamanni, who did so in
order to get popular support if not from papacy. The Anglo-Saxons were
gradually converted from paganism by Roman missions in the 7th century. The
Visigoths in Spain relinquished their Arianism, with the conversion of Reccared
in 587. The Lombard realm accepted Catholicism in 653.[12]However,
the 8th century turned to be the century of Franks with them
reforming the clergy under the direction of Boniface and Young, enterprising
the dynasty of Carolingians.
conclusion:
The middle ages of Europe which
is mostly studied based on dimensions occurring in western medieval Europe by
historians due to their striking character as comparative to East which showed
almost the same features of earliest phase even in this period, is seen to have
become the fertile ground for the germination of the feudal mode of production.
There are elements of crisis and continuity which tend to exist on parallel
grounds during the 5th and 7th century, however during
the beginning of barbarian invasions their impact is not so noticeable but
slowly their character is set to ground where they can be matched by shifts in
imagery, values, cultural style, which makes the seventh century in the West
noticeably different in feel from the fourth or even the fifth. The synthesis
of both cultures however, finally, produced some innate transformations, which
are clearly with the reign of Charlemagne where the basis of power became land
and faith became the basis of morality.
- Anderson, Perry, Passages
from Antiquity to Feudalism, London, 1996
- Duby, Georges, The Early Growth of the European
Economy, New York, 1978, pp.1-36
- Le Goff, Jacques, Medieval Civilization,
400-1500, Oxford, 1988, pp. 3-56.
4.
Wickham, C. (2010). The
Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages, 400-1000. New York, N.Y.:
Penguin Books.
[1] Perry Anderson, Passages from
Antiquity to Feudalism, London, 1996. p-110
[2] Jacques Le Goff, Medieval Civilization, 400-1500,
Oxford, 1988, p-23.
[3] Perry Anderson, Passages from
Antiquity to Feudalism, London, 1996. p-112.
[4] Chris Wickham, (2010). The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the
Dark Ages, 400-1000. New York, N.Y.: Penguin Books.p-122
[5] Ibid.
[6] Perry Anderson, Passages from
Antiquity to Feudalism, London, 1996. p- 117
[7] Chris Wickham, (2010). The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the
Dark Ages, 400-1000. New York, N.Y.: Penguin Books. p-123.
[8] Jacques Le Goff, Medieval Civilization,
400-1500, Oxford, 1988, p-14.
[9] Perry Anderson, Passages from Antiquity to
Feudalism, London, 1996. p- 119.
[10] Jacques Le Goff, Medieval Civilization,
400-1500, Oxford, 1988, p-15.
[11]Perry Anderson, Passages from Antiquity
to Feudalism, London, 1996, p-122.
[12] Ibid. p-125
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