Early Medieval Formation in Western Europe: Crises and Continuities

Völkerwanderung, literally, the movement of people is perhaps not the best word to describe the third century crisis that baffled the Pax Romana. Not only because it doesn’t hint at the bloodshed involved in the migration and the subsequent assimilation of the barbarians but also because it undermines the long term effects of the same which shaped the early medieval society in Europe.  

Located at the fringes of the Roman Empire, the so called barbarians started cutting across the empire from the third century (233 CE) and continued to do so well within the fifth century. Though the migrations may have taken the empire by surprise, this wasn’t the first time that it was dealing with the barbarians. The expanse of the empire necessitated that the areas located at the frontiers be governed by the barbarians. LeGoff tells us that the attitude of the Romans towards the barbarians was ambivalent. While the emperors gave them the status of federates, the traditionalists found them “closer to beasts than men”. Therefore if the relationship between the barbarians and the Romans was workable what drove them to besiege the empire?

Georges Duby blames the cold spell that gripped the area from Siberia to Scandinavia. The Alps experienced a glacial advance causing the forest cover to recede and famines that followed starved the barbarians. That the Pax Romana was ravaged by the hunger of the barbarians is just a tip of the iceberg. What lay deeper were the centrifugal forces in the empire. From the time of Marcus Aurelius (161-180 AD) the focus of the empire had shifted from Italy to other provinces so much so that in the Severan dynasty the emperors were African. This shift was formalized by granting Roman citizenship to all the inhabitants of the empire in 212 AD. Thus the provinces lying on the borders began asserting their independence adding to the misery of the empire.

When the tutelary deities of Rome failed to provide relief, Christianity bagged imperial assent under Constantine and the empire entered into the era of late antiquity. Stretching roughly from the fourth to the seventh centuries, the period refers to the oxymoronic evolution and disintegration of the empire. The empire was just beginning to absorb the shock of the first wave of invasions that another wave thrashed the shores of Rhine in the fifth century. This wave was bigger and gorier than the one before. Rome was sacked by Alaric, the leader of the Franks, in 410 and Carthage was seized in 439 by the Vandals. This ushered in a new era of acculturation and assimilation between the barbarians and Romans and shaped the early medieval society of Europe which reached its peak under the Carolingian empire in the 8^th century.

While the terms barbarian and Roman sound almost antithetical to each other, the acculturation happened because the barbarians were not the savages they were thought to be. Living on the fringes of a highly evolved empire, they had evolved much. Though accustomed to the culture of fleeing in search of new lands, the Germanic tribes were not nomads. They had halted more often and only extreme external pressures such as climatic changes had made them move once more. It is primarily because of this that they were able to fit themselves into the changing social reality of the empire.

Prior to the coming of the barbarians the empire was experiencing a dip in its population. This was started by two major epidemics which hit the empire in the second and third centuries wiped out nearly one third of the empire’s population. The cold wave called for a decrease in harvests and resulted in famines. Unable to pay taxes, townsfolk fled to the countryside. Thus in the fourth century the Roman state made laws to tie peasants to their lands and prevent them from fleeing. As Chris Wickham states “These laws were part of a general legislative package aimed at ensuring that people essential to the state stayed in their professions, and that their heirs would do so too.” Thus the society of manants developed where the Latin word manere (to remain was the principle). This society thrived on the villa type formations. The fact that place names started having words like ville, (Martinville and Buozonville) indicate the shift.

So to the small barbarian peasant his allod (personal property) was a way to show his superiority over the conquered others. The attachment was intrinsic for him to assert his independence. Moreover the barbarians were in no way egalitarian. Slavery existed among them too. Thus from the third to the fifth centuries the empire had three major social categories: totally alienated slaves, free peasants and the magnates. But from the sixth century onwards the tendency was to create more slaves. Given their heavy dependence on slaves, the Roman economy faced a crisis. With no new wars to replenish them, the tendency was now to create slaves from the small tenant farmers or the colonii. Gradually it turned into bondage in the Middle Ages where the serf was tied to his lord’s manorial estate in perpetuity.

With respect to trade Henry Pirenne’s argument seems plausible. Despite the sack of Carthage which cut off Rome’s supply of grains, on the whole trade did not decline. What happened in essence was that trade which had earlier been monopolized by the Roman state, dissipated into the hands of private merchants, primarily Jews and Syrians residing in the eastern half of the empire. Studies done by Richard Hodges and David Whitehouse in Rome and Carthage indicate that while amphorae carrying wines and oils from the eastern Mediterranean to Rome can be dated well within the fifth century, Carthage’s grain trade to Rome continued under the Vandals whose coinage widely circulated around the Mediterranean till the earlier half of the sixth century.

Unlike the Romans the barbarians did not have a single system of laws. Every man was not subject to a single law valid for all the inhabitants of a territory. One was judged on the basis of the judicial customs of one’s tribe. Hence when the two legal systems were fused together the differences were astonishing. While the rape of a virgin was punished by death for a Roman, a Burgundian was merely fined for it. The confusion caused by such divergent legal systems necessitated the need to codify laws which began in the fifth century.

Though the barbarian influence over the empire was pretty strong, the barbarians were well aware that they were in minority. Post their settlement in the western half of the empire, the barbarians formed only 5% of its whole population. This fear motivated the Merovingian rulers to make those cities as their capitals which had the barbarians in majority. The Merovingians lead by Clovis set up their kingdom in the seventh century. Though the barbarian languages altered the syntax and vocabulary of Latin, it was still made the language of the state.  Their rulers accepted high sounding titles like their Roman counterparts had done in the past. By the time of the Merovingians the villa type formation had disappeared in Gaul and Britain. They were now replaced by fortified hilltop centres. This could also have stemmed from the need of the barbarians to protect their selves from the local Roman populace which clearly outnumbered them. 

The barbarians feasted on the decay of the Roman Empire, preserving some traditions and discarding others. Yet, for Christianity as a religion and the Church as an institution this period of chaos and continuity was a win-win situation. Christianity’s biggest challenge was Paganism which was still deeply entrenched in the barbarians. So the church decided to use the imperial authority, its strongest weapon, to defeat its rival. To begin with Paganism was relegated to private sphere with Christianity gaining imperial assent under Constantine. In the fifth century Justinian enforced baptism through confiscation and at times execution.

However, the most novel innovation of the Church was to convert Pagan festivals into Christian festivals. Pagan festivals like Lent, Easter, Pentecost were festivals which involved feasting and merrymaking. The Church turned these into days of penance. Sunday, the day of the Sabbath was made as the day of complete rest when everything from farming to sexual intercourse was forbidden. The performance of these activities on a Sunday, it was believed, would end up producing bad crops and demon babies. Next up Christianity pressurized the Merovingians to codify their laws in accordance with Christian practices which lead to strengthening of sexual taboos and piety through penance.

The Church was no one’s ally. It changed with the change of time. It always kept its interests first. It demanded grants, revenues and exemptions. The Church affected production by draining it away so much so that in eighth century the papal estate at Capracorum supplied staples that imperial Rome had obtained from all over Mediterranean!  

In these times of confusion the Church assumed various roles. To their religious role they added a political one of negotiating with the barbarians, an economic role of distributing foodstuffs and alms and a social role of protecting the poor against the rich.

The western half of the empire was in shambles when the Carolingian empire under Pippin forged unity by conquering three directions to the South-East in Italy, South-West in Spain and East in Germany. The motive was two pronged conquest and convert. Christianity travelled with the Carolingian empire. LeGoff goes as far as to state that “the re-establishment of the empire in the west seems in fact to have been an idea of pope’s” The Carolingian Empire had the papal consent with the anointment of Pippin with holy oils. The Empire in essence was a Christian one where the Pope was the religious head of the Carolingians and the Emperor was the political head. It was an intricate nexus of politics and religion where the Pope needed political liaisoning to shore up the papal office and vice versa.

Apart from its close connections with Christianity the Carolingian Empire also gained legitimization through benefices which were landowning rights given to the aristocrats of the areas bought under the Empire. There was a ritual of gift giving to the aristocracy which brought the empire loyalty. Justice was dispensed according to the written word. Governance was done through the assembly which was a congregation of lay and ecclesiastical officers. Capitualaries were ordinances issued on aspects like administration of royal estates and educational reforms. To supervise the same a class off officers, missi dominici, was established. These officers were counts, dukes and marquises which formed an important place in the sub-in-feudation of land in the Middle Ages.  Capitualary of 789 was issued as models for moral behaviour of the clergy. This was followed by the oath where an oath of loyalty to the king was sworn on holy relics. It is here that the oath came into existence and forged the bond between the lord and the vassal in the Middle Ages.

In conclusion, the crises mixed with the continuities and converged under the Carolingian Empire. Yet, it is important to ask to what extent was the crisis responsible for the disintegration of the Pax Romana and the formation of the early medieval society. It wouldn’t be an overstatement if one was to say that the Roman Empire was already decaying when the barbarians came knocking on its doors. Roman society in its essence was a violent society. The sadistic pleasure of watching the gladiatorial wars was very dear to the Romans. Their laws were stringent and their omission called for gory punishments. Moreover the empire had begun to crumble under its own weight much before the third century. The expanse was too vast to be managed effectively which lead to unguarded fringes. These became the breeding grounds for rebellion and barbarianism. The empire’s heavy dependence on slaves crippled it when they became scarce in times of peace. All this has led to a decline in the state driven trade which the empire had thrived on for centuries. Thus the economic sluggishness had set in the empire as early as the second century and people had begun to depopulate cities for villages. All that the barbarian invasions did was fast track the changes which were already underway. The Pax Romana which ruled the seas and roads alike and gave birth to poets like Virgil and Homer died a rather gory and painful death. The void which it left was filled up by the sermon giving Church which ruled most of medieval Europe selling indulgences to sinners and promising them a better afterlife!