Europe: A History (61 page)

As so often in history, the long-term consequences were not foreseen. The Franks were unable to disentangle themselves from Italy. The Bishop of Rome put himself in a position to be recognized as the supreme Patriarch, ‘the Pope’ the papacy gained the territorial basis for a sovereign state; and the Franco-papal alliance became a durable feature of the international scene. By daring to cross the Alps, Stephen II had personally forged the link which gave the north a permanent voice in the affairs of the south. Above all, the authority of the Empire was critically weakened in the West. The boy who had ridden out to greet Bishop Stephen in Burgundy was left with the idea that he might found an empire of his own.

*
‘Vlach’ or ‘Wloch’ is the old Slavonic word for Latin. It gave rise to a number of Vallachias—Old Vallachia in Serbia, Vallachia Major in Thessaly, Vallachia Minor in northen Romania, Wallachia in southern Romania, and Maurovallachia, the land of the
Negrolatini
or ‘Black Vlachs’ in the Dinaric Alps.
Wlochy
is still the usual Polish word for ‘Italy’.

*
The name Grand St Bernard was not adopted until after the 11
^th
c, when St Bernard of Montjoux (d. 1008) built hospices on the summits both of the Alpis Poenina and of the Alpis Graia (the Little St Bernard). The breed of huge St Bernard dogs, which were trained to rescue travellers from the snow, dates from the same period, 3 centuries after Stephen 11’s journey.

MEDIUM

The Middle Age, c.750–1270

T
HERE
is an air of immobility about many descriptions of the medieval world. The impression is created by emphasizing the slow pace of technological change, the closed character of feudal society, and the fixed, theocratic perceptions of human life. The prime symbols of the period are the armoured knight on his lumbering steed; the serfs tied to the land of their lord’s demesne; and cloistered monks and nuns at prayer. They are made to represent physical immobility, social immobility, intellectual immobility.

Medium Aevum
, ‘the Middle Age’, was a term first used by devout Christians who saw themselves living in the interval between Christ’s first and Second Coming. Much later it was taken up for different purposes. Renaissance scholars began to talk in the fifteenth century of the ‘Middle Age’ as the interval between the decline of antiquity and the revival of classical culture in their own times. For them, the ancient world stood for high civilization; the Middle Age represented a descent into barbarism, parochiality, religious bigotry. During the Enlightenment, when the virtues of human reason were openly lauded over those of religious belief, ‘medievalism’ became synonymous with obscurantism and backwardness. Since then, of course, as the ‘Modern Age’ which followed the Middle Age was itself fading into the past, new terms had to be invented to mark the passage of time. The medieval period has been incorporated into the fourfold convention which divides European history into ancient, medieval, modern, and now contemporary sections. By convention also, the medieval period is often subdivided into early, high, and late phases, creating several successive Middle Ages. Of course, people whom later historians refer to as ‘medieval’ had no inkling of that designation.

Unfortunately, there are no clear lines which mark the end of the ancient world or the beginning of modern times. The start of the medieval period has been fixed at any number of points from the conversion of Constantine onwards. Its end has variously been fixed at 1453, at 1493, at 1517, or even, by those who use their own definition of feudalism as the touchstone of medievality, at 1917. Almost all
medievalists would agree, therefore, that the label which defines their subject is unsatisfactory. Many who base their views on a knowledge of Western Europe alone would stress the contrast between the destructive tendencies of the early medieval phase and the constructive tendencies of the later phase. In this scheme, the ‘Dark Ages’ of the fifth to eleventh centuries are characterized by the progressive dismemberment of the Roman world; the turning-point is reached with the so-called ‘twelfth-century renaissance’; and the peak of ‘high’ medieval civilization is reached in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. These distinctions bear little relation to the East, where the Roman Empire survived until 1453, and where no ‘renaissance’ in the Western sense was ever experienced.

Most would agree, however, that the unifying feature of the medieval world is to be found in organized Christianity. Here they would accord with the people of medieval Europe, who, if asked, would have seen themselves as Christians, living in the Christian era and in the Christian part of the earth. Yet Christendom itself was an elastic concept. It contracted and expanded over the centuries in response to the wars with Islam and the campaigns against the pagans. It was never exactly coterminous with the Peninsula of ‘Europe’. The Christendom known to Stephen II, when he crossed the Alps in 753, was a very different place from the Christendom of 1453, when the Turks scaled the walls of Constantinople.

The vacuum left by the decline of the Roman Empire was filled by the growing awareness of Christendom, not just as a religious community but also as a coherent political entity. Though the Roman Empire ultimately perished, its religion triumphed. The spiritual and temporal leaders of Christianity gradually assumed the mantle of the Caesars. In the West, where the Empire first crumbled, it was the Bishop of Rome who conceived the notion of a new order predicated on the joint authority of the Latin Church and a Catholic Emperor. ‘The Papacy’, wrote Thomas Hobbes, ‘is no other than the Ghost of the deceased Roman Empire sitting crowned upon the grave thereof.’
¹
The chosen instrument of the Papacy was found in the new Caesars or ‘Kaisers’ of Germany. In the East, where the Roman Empire survived far longer, the notion of a substitute order, based on the authority of the Greek Church and of a new Orthodox Emperor, had to await the emergence of the Caesars or ‘Tsars’ of Moscow.

In this light, if the central theme of the Middle Ages is taken to be the reorganization of Christendom into new imperial systems, a clear chronological framework emerges. The first step may be seen in the coronation of Charlemagne on Christmas Day in the year 800, the last step in the definitive adoption of the title of Tsar by Ivan III, Grand Duke of Moscow, in 1493.

From an early stage, however, the growing community of Christendom was divided against itself. Though the Latin and the Greek Churches shared all their basic beliefs, they often regarded each other as aliens. Though impartial observers might see them as two variants of the same faith, like the Sunnis and the Shiahs of the Muslim world, they were more conscious of their differences than their commonality. In the first millennium they maintained at least a façade of unity; in the second millennium they abandoned the façade. The old crack opened wide
after the schism of 1054. Here was proof that even the foundations of Christendom were subject to movement.

750–1054

From the eighth century onwards, faltering thoughts about a new political order were stimulated by continuing depredations from beyond the fringe of Christendom. The foundation of the Empire of Charlemagne in 800, of the Holy Roman Empire from 962, and eventually of the Tsardom of Moscow can only be understood in conjunction with the activities of the Vikings, the Magyars, the Mongols, and the Turks.

The Vikings or ‘Northmen’ ravaged the northern coasts for more than 200 years. They were the product of overpopulation in the remote fiords of Scandinavia, whose ‘rowmen’ took to their longships for plunder, trade, mercenary service, and sheer adventure. From
c
.700 parties of Vikings would raid isolated settlements in the British Isles or Frisia before sailing home at the end of each season. They ransacked Lindisfarne in 793 and lona in 795
[IONA]
.
From the middle of the ninth century, however, huge Viking camps were set up to act as bases for more protracted campaigns of pillage. In several instances these camps led to permanent settlement. The Danish Vikings, for example, created one such ‘great army’ at the mouth of the Seine, from which they repeatedly looted the defenceless cities of northern France. They captured ports such as Rouen and Nantes, whilst sailing off to Portugal (844), to the Balearic Islands, even to Provence and Tuscany (859–62). In 851 they invaded England, fanning out through the eastern half of the country. From 866 the ‘Danelaw’ was established from Northumbria to East Anglia. The struggle between the Anglo-Saxons and the Danes dominated the next 150 years of England’s history. In 911, tradition holds that the Northmen of the Seine were permanently settled under Rollo, thereby creating ‘Normandy’.

The Norwegian Vikings concentrated on the outer islands. They occupied the Orkneys and Shetlands in the eighth century, the Faroes, the Hebrides, and eastern Ireland in the ninth. Their major colony, Iceland, was settled from 874. Dublin was founded in 988. They discovered Greenland; and in all probability, under Eric the Red, they sailed on to North America, which they called Vinland.
[EIRIK]
The Swedish Vikings operated throughout the Baltic. They established fortified camps at Wolin on the Oder, at Truso on the Vistula, and at Novgorod, whence they penetrated the rivers of the Bay of Riga and the Gulf of Finland. In the ninth century they took hold of the overland route between the Baltic and the Black Sea. Known as Varangians, they controlled the Dnieper, and appeared in Constantinople,
[DIRHAM] [FUTHARK]

In the final period, adventurers of Viking origin, who had acquired a veneer of the culture of their adopted countries, created a number of new political states.

Map 12. Europe,
c
.
AD
900

Rurik the Varangian and his sons organized the first durable principality of the eastern Slavs at Novgorod and Kiev,
c
.860–80. Knut the Dane or ‘Canute the Great’ (r. 1016–35) was lord of a vast North Sea empire joining England with Denmark (see p. 308). Robert Guiscard, the Norman, sailed to southern Italy in 1059 (see p. 336). William the Bastard, Duke of Normandy, conquered the kingdom of England in 1066 (see p. 339). Norman rule was destined to last longer in Sicily and in England than in Normandy itself,
[DING]