Blog Post 56: After Rome 500 - 700 A.D.

Germanic Kingdoms of Western Europe 

• The Germanic Barbarians 
• Barbarian warlords and their families who assimilated into Roman culture became the “nobles” or aristocrats of medieval Europe
• Germanic tribes who ruled former Roman lands sought to conquer and assimilate other barbarian peoples who lived beyond the frontiers and were still pagans
• More on Germanic Kingdoms
• The Angles and the Saxons (from Denmark and northwestern Germany) invaded Britain and assimilated the native Britons
• Most of the Anglo-Saxons were converted to Christianity in the seventh century
• Christianity became part of the government 
• The most powerful Germanic tribe was the Franks
• The real power lay with the “mayors of the palace” who were royal officials and nobles themselves
• Most powerful are the Franks; they stayed put in Germany & France though 
• The government has come more and more less important 
• Meanwhile, back in the Eastern Empire 
•  From "Eastern Empire" to "Byzantium" 
• The Eastern Roman Empire continued on while the west was now divided up by the barbarian tribes 
• When the emperor Justinian came to power in 527, he decided to reunite the entire Roman Empire by re-conquering the western territories
• Europe in the 500's just lost a lot of power 
• Justinian succeeded for a time, but the land he re-took was soon conquered by new barbarian tribes and a massive plague depopulated much of the west
• Its a Christian Empire now 
• Greek Byzantine emperors saw themselves as Roman emperors and the heads of the Christian Church
• It was getting hard to tell the difference between who had power and who was a churhc leader 
• the Church had  a lot of power 
• Byzantines preserved Greco-Roman art, architecture, philosophy and writing despite much of it being non-Christian
• Justinian built the massive domed Hagia Sophia ("Holy Wisdom") in Constantinople, considered to be the most glorious church on earth at the time
• Was trying to restore Europe 
• Built one of the most glorious church 
• Third version finished in 537, the Cathedral of Hagia Sophia, Justinian’s cathedral was later a mosque and is now a museum
• Using knowledge of the geometry of curves, it has a dome supported by arches high in the air that remained a model for both church-builders and mosque-builders for more than a thousand years