Transcript Collapse of the Western Roman Empire

After the fall of Rome
 The
fall of the Roman Empire has been
endlessly debated
 But it is difficult to assign a single cause to
the collapse
 However, it can be said that internal decay in
combination with external pressures brought
about the fall of the empire
 The
sheer size of the empire and the huge
expense of maintaining it certainly
contributed to the fall
 A succession of weak, inefficient, and
corrupt leaders definitely contributed to the
fall
 And a series of epidemics certainly didn’t
help
 On
its borders, Rome faced external
pressures from groups of German invaders
 In defense, Roman authorities put Germanic
peoples such as the Visigoths (who had
adopted Roman law and Christianity) on the
borders
 But in the early fifth century, Attila and his
Huns began to press on the Germanic tribes
 The
Germanic tribes had no other place to
retreat from the Huns
 They crossed the border into Roman territory
 The Visigoths sacked Rome in 410 CE
 By 476 CE, the Roman emperor had been
deposed
 The fall of the western half of the Roman
Empire was complete
 The eastern half would survive, but not as
the Roman Empire
 It was later renamed the Byzantine Empire
 Two
major causes of decline are internal
(such as economic depression, natural
catastrophes, and social unrest)
 And external (for example, invading armies)
 The Romans, Gupta, and Han faced invasions
by or conflict with nomadic groups
 And the Romans, Gupta, and Han also
experienced difficulties regarding taxation
 After
the classical Roman Empire fell apart,
due in part to invasions from Germanic
tribes, these tribes settled throughout
western Europe
 Most of the tribes converted to Christianity
relatively quickly, though politically they
continued to act independently
 During
the Medieval period, the Roman
Catholic Church provided a sense of unity
 The Roman Catholic Church was the only
Christian Church in western Europe during
the Medieval period
 The
Germanic tribes often came into conflict
with each other
 Yet sometimes they formed alliances and
expanded
 Indeed sometimes they expanded enough to
be considered kingdoms
 The most significant of these early kingdoms
was the Franks
The frequent fighting among Germanic tribes
made the early Medieval period a difficult
time for people.
 The
Franks were a Germanic tribe that
united under the leadership of King Clovis in
the late fifth century
 Clovis converted to Roman Catholicism and
established his capital in Paris
 After he died, his empire was divided among
his sons
 Yet
the empire did help the various
peoples of western Europe solidify under
a common culture
 This made it easier for them to unify
against Muslim invasions, which in the
eighth century took over parts of Spain
and Italy
 Charles Martel led the revolt against the
advancing Muslim armies
 In 732, Martel’s armies defeated them at
the Battle of Tours, not far from Paris
 Martel then founded the Carolingian
Dynasty
 When
his son, Pepin, came to power, he
chose to have his succession certified by the
pope, a significant step that sent the clear
signal that an empire’s legitimacy rested on
the Roman Catholic Church’s approval
 In
the centuries following the
breakup of the Roman Empire, no
true empire existed in western
Europe
 The Franks had built a large
kingdom, but it could hardly be
considered an empire
 It would be Pepin’s son, Charles
(747-814 CE), who would revitalize
the concept of the empire in western
Europe
 Like his father, Charles was crowned
by the Pope in 800 and became
known as Charlemagne (“Charles the
Great”)
 The
empire Charlemagne built would come
to be called the Holy Roman Empire upon
the coronation of Otto the Great in 962
 This empire, however, had little in
common with the original Roman Empire,
other than the fact that power was once
again centralized and Rome began to think
of itself again as a world center
 The
size of the Holy Roman Empire, in
comparison to its namesake, was relatively
small
 It included northern Italy, Germany, Belgium,
and France
 Yet it marked the beginning of western
European ambition in terms of empirebuilding, especially among those in the
church
 Under
Charlemagne, a strong focus was
placed on the arts and education but with a
religious emphasis
 Educational efforts were centered in the
monasteries and under the direction of the
church
 But as strong as Charlemagne was, his rule
was not absolute
 Society was structured around Feudalism
 Local lords held power over local territories,
answering to Charlemagne only on an asneeded basis
 And
because Charlemagne did not levy taxes,
he failed to build a strong and united empire
 After his death, and the death of his son
Louis, the empire was divided among his
three grandsons
 Feudalism,
the name of the European social,
economic, and political system of the Middle
Ages, had a strict hierarchy
 At the top was a king, who had power over
an entire territory called his kingdom
 Beneath him were the nobles, who in
exchange for military service and loyalty to
the king were granted power over sections of
the kingdom
 The nobles, in turn, divided their lands into
smaller sections under the control of lesser
lords called vassals
 The
vassals could also split their lands into
smaller pieces in the custody of even more
subordinate vassals, and so on
 Below the vassals were peasants, who
worked the land
 For this system to work, everyone had to
fulfill obligations to others at different levels
in the hierarchy
 The
estates that were granted to the vassals
were called fiefs, and these later became
known as manors
 The lord and the peasants lived on the manor
 The peasants worked the land on behalf of
the lord, and in exchange the lord gave the
peasants protection and a place to live
 The manors were self-sufficient
 Peasants
(called serfs) in the feudal social
system, whether male or female, had few
rights
 As manorial life evolved, an increasing
number of peasants became tied to the land
literally
 They couldn’t leave the manor, without
permission from their lord
 Peasants were not quite slaves, but not free
either
 But peasants learned how to do whatever it
took to make the manor on which they
worked self-sufficient
 Advances
made in the science of agriculture
during this time helped the manors to
succeed
 The three-field system, centered on the
rotation of three fields: one for the fall
harvest, one for the spring harvest, and one
not-seed fallow harvest (the latter allowing
the land to replenish its nutrients)
 Most
lords followed the code of chivalry, an
honor system
 And the feudal system was male-dominated
 Land equaled power, and males inherited
land, so women were pretty much powerless
 When
a lord died under the feudal system his
land and title passed down via primogeniture
to his eldest son
 Even noblewomen had few rights – though
they were socially elevated
 Women could inherit a fief, but they could
not rule it
 And their education was limited to only
domestic skills
 Noblewomen were valued primarily for their
beauty or compassion
 And were essentially regarded as property to
be protected or displayed
 In
western Europe after the fall of the Roman
Empire, the practice of feudalism caused life
to be centered on small, self-sustaining
communities
 At first, these communities didn’t generate
much of a surplus
 But as they subsequently built up storehouses
of food and supplies, people came into
greater contact with each other
 Some were freed to pursue other endeavors
 Towns and cities began to grow
 And
in the midst of all of the changes, there
were the Vikings
 The Vikings developed highly maneuverable
multi-oared boats around 800
 They raided well beyond their borders
 The Viking were from Scandinavia and
limited resources and population pressures
led to their periodic raiding of lands and
monasteries
 The Vikings even raided as far as
Constantinople
 Yet the Vikings, too, were converted to
Christianity
 And
don’t forget the serfs
 As many of the serfs became skilled in trades
other than farming, and Europe slowly but
surely started trading with the rest of the
world, some of these skilled crafts people
began to earn extra income
 Over time, this chipped away at the rigid
social stratification of the manor system
 When banking began in Europe, towns and
cities began to gain momentum
 The
result was the emergence of a “middle
class,” made up of urban craftsmen and
merchants
 By the eleventh century, western Europe was
re-engaging with the world
 Yes,
it began with the fall of a city and
changed with the rise of towns and cities
again