Early Middle Ages.PDF

The Early Middle Ages

Part I

Professor Philip Daileader

T HE T EACHING C OMPANY ®

Philip Daileader, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of History, The College of William and Mary

Philip Daileader is Associate Professor of History at The College of William and Mary in Virginia. He received his

B.A. in history from The Johns Hopkins University in 1990, where he was graduated Phi Beta Kappa, and his M.A.

and Ph.D. in history from Harvard University in 1991 and 1996, respectively. While a graduate student, he was a

four-time winner of the Harvard University Certificate of Distinction in Teaching. Prior to taking his position at

William and Mary, he taught at the University of Alabama and the State University of New York at New Paltz. He

is the recipient of William and Mary’s 2004 Alumni Fellowship Award for excellence in teaching. His research

focuses on the social, cultural, and religious history of Mediterranean Europe. Among his current research projects

are a biography of Saint Vincent Ferrer (1350–1419) and a study of customary law in medieval Catalonia. Dr.

Daileader’s first book, True Citizens: Violence, Memory, and Identity in the Medieval Community of Perpignan,

1162–1397, was published by E. J. Brill Academic Publishers in 2000. A French translation of the book appeared in

2004. His published articles include “The Vanishing Consulates of Catalonia,” Speculum 74 (1999): 65–94, and

“One Will, One Voice, and Equal Love: Papal Elections and the Liber Pontificalis in the Early Middle Ages,”

Archivum Historiae Pontificiae 31 (1993): 11–31. As a member of the history faculty at The College of William and

Mary, Dr. Daileader won the 2004 Alumni Fellowship Award given “to recognize younger members of the faculty,

who are particularly outstanding as teachers.” This is Dr. Daileader’s second course with the Teaching Company;

his first, The High Middle Ages , was released in 2001.

Table of Contents

The Early Middle Ages

Part I

Professor Biography ............................................................................................i

Course Scope .......................................................................................................1

Lecture One Long Shadows and the Dark Ages ............................3

Lecture Two Diocletian and the Crises of the Third Century .........6

Lecture Three Constantine the GreatChristian Emperor ...............9

Lecture Four Pagans and Christians in the Fourth Century...........12

Lecture Five Athletes of God........................................................15

Lecture Six Augustine, Part 1 .....................................................18

Lecture Seven Augustine, Part 2 .....................................................21

Lecture Eight Barbarians at the Gate..............................................24

Lecture Nine Franks and Goths .....................................................27

Lecture Ten Arthur’s England .....................................................30

Lecture Eleven Justinian and the Byzantine Empire.........................33

Lecture Twelve The House of Islam..................................................37

Maps ..................................................................................................................40

Timeline .............................................................................................................42

Glossary .............................................................................................................46

Biographical Notes ............................................................................................49

Bibliography ......................................................................................................52

The Early Middle Ages

Scope:

In this course, we will examine a period of European history that is sometimes designated as the “Dark Ages.” Our

focus will be on the seven centuries between 300 and 1000, a period most unlike the thousand years that would

follow. Our period is dominated by the history of two empires, the Roman and the Carolingian, rather than by the

history of independent kingdoms or nation-states. It is a period when the mass movement of ethnic groups,

involving hundreds of thousands of individuals sweeping across Europe, was nearly a routine event. It is a period

when Europe is buffeted time and time again by external invaders, from the Huns to the Arabs to the Vikings. Many

aspects of life at this time will appear strange to you. None of us is a serf, vassal, or lord. None of us is a stylite,

living atop tall poles for 20 or 30 years at a time. None of us has undergone trial by ordeal, whereby we prove our

case by plunging a hand into a cauldron of boiling water as we try to pick up a pebble resting at the bottom.

Odd as this world may seem at times, it is a world that is recognizably becoming our own, and we should not

unquestioningly accept the label of the “Dark Ages.” In countless ways, seemingly obscure events and

developments from the “Dark Ages” impinge on the lives of people today. This is true in the realm of religion,

because our period saw the triumph of Christianity over paganism. This is true in the realm of language, because

every word that we speak and write—indeed, the handwriting that we use each and every day—is a product of the

historical forces that we will study. This is true in the realm of family life, because many practices that existed in

300, such as polygyny , marriage within the kin group, and infanticide, are illegal today and were vanishing or

completely gone by the year 1000. This course will attempt to strike a balance between difference and similarity,

recognizing what this period bequeathed and failed to bequeath to the present.

The course is divided into two sections. The first half will cover the period from circa 300 to circa 650, which

historians sometimes call the world of Late Antiquity . Late Antiquity is a period that saw the political collapse of the

western half of the Roman Empire and the official acceptance of Christianity by Europe’s rulers. Late Antiquity is

still, in many ways, part of the ancient world, but the ancient world is changing into the medieval world. The

transformation of the ancient into the medieval was highly complex—our goal will be to trace the history of that

transformation and to explain why it happened at all. The second half of the course will deal with the period from

circa 650 to circa 1000, or the Early Middle Ages proper. With the ancient world gone, Europe developed new

political orientations, new military technologies, new cultural forms, and new social categories, among many other

things. The second half of the course will highlight not only those developments that separated the Early Middle

Ages from the ancient world but also those that would be crucial in determining Europe’s future identity and

development. This course is at an intermediate academic level. As you will soon perceive, not everything has been

said that could have been said about, for example, the birth of Islam. Those with an interest in any of the topics that

we consider should regard the lectures as a point from which they can launch their own in-depth explorations.

Nonetheless, the lectures are more detailed and more involved than is the case in an introductory survey.

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