The meeting between roman culture and german world: a neverending process

The name 'Europe' in the ancient world is a concept to tell a mere geographical entity and not a political one.
The news of the modern history is the entry on the scene of this political entity which is named Europe... which already, back in the early Middle Age, was a political-cultural entity with the Carolingian Renaissance.
...But still today we all know that this geo-political entity is not amalgamated yet.


In the Middle Age, when it starts to grow, it is a mix of different ethnicities, cultures and traditions; it has been the birthplace of deep contacts and collisions between the german and the roman worlds, which gave birth to a 'tertium' that is the Medieval Europe: it succeded in mixing a so distant cultural traditions, condense them in a synthesis. Acculturation dynamics process, privileged laboratory to understand this cultures fusion, which manifestated right in the heart of this european entity during the early Middle Age( we will still find collisions in the late Middle Age, even if Europe was then an entity already well stabilized ).


All the political and military power was then held by Germans but the roman world remained a highly cultured structure, even if it didn't detain more the political control. It has been a metamorphosis for the entire roman society, especially under the economical profile, as the Romans started sophisticated economical policies before Germans uprised.
Certainly it has been a true transformation, as an entire world had been rewritten!

Some essential dates

Would be impossible not to remark some of the most meaningful dates leaded to the early Middle Age.


First of all, we should recal the year 476 a.C., when the Roman Empire officially ended in western Europe with the Romolo Augustolo's dethronement.
The years between 535 and the 553 chronicled an attempt from Byzantium of reconquest of the Western part.


In the 732 we had an historical battle between Christians and Muslims, in what is nowadays the southern France, where the army of the Merovingians stopped the army of al-Andalus in the Battle of Poitiers. In the 743 Childeric III was dethroned and the Pepinid family uprised and took the power between Franks.
From 772 to 802 Franks conquest saxon lands and  774 the Lombard kingdom in Italy ended and those territories were incorporated in the Franks kingdom.


Meanwhile in Byzantium( 797 ), empress Irene gave order to blind her own son, the Pope refused to accept this and worked to give power to Charles the Great from Pepinids in the western part. Pope Leo III assaulted and accused of immorality and perjury, escaped and sheltered to Charles the Great and then convoied until Rome where he exculpated himself in front of a congress of dignitaries with Charles in the position of a judge, and from him discharged from every accusation. Two days after, the Christmas day of the year 800, in Saint Peter, Leo III crowned him King of Romans... so that the Roman Empire in western Europe reborned, even if only in a formal and abstract way, after 324 years from the dethronement of the last Roman emperor.

... wondering when the Middle Age started?

According to some historicians the Middle Age began with the Islamic expansionism and with the arise in Western Europe of the Carolingian Empire of Charles the Great, crowned emperor by Pope Leo III the Christmas day of the year 800. Then his Carolingian Renaissance started and the Western Roman Empire newly began.

On the contrary, the trade within the two different worlds( the Islamic and the Christian ) had never stopped... if the Italian seafaring Republics have been so precociously developped is because they traded with the Islamic Countries!

Another relevant change relates to the late-roman urban model which showed more directly the comparison between the Germans and the Romans; the tribal model of the Germans was founded on raid, while the Romans' model was founded on the State intervention in the Economy. Hence, when the Barbaric invasions began, they founded themselves in a crisis without solution, as the cohesion between markets, cities and countryside had collapsed... the historical link between cities and countryside collapsed. Anyway cities went on their existence and kept on having an economical role with their forum, place of market which it was still active even if less important.

Bondsmen existed but it is a quite stereotyped concept, in fact some farmers were servants as they choosed to stay under a seignior, but they weren't forced to do that... they have to pay rents with money or with corvées: if he couldn't afford to pay the rent with money or natural products, he could always work in the fields. There's so much confusion upon the 'ius primae noctis', which wasn't the lord abuse on the future farmer's wife, but just a tax the farmer need to pay if he whished to marry someone.

So the early Middle Age started... it certainly wasn't a period of complete desolation, as many think.

MEDIEVAL PATHS

I've always found the medieval world one of the most charming ever... because of its long history, its geography and its dangerous roads, literature, magics, relics, religious art and civil pride... and its mysterious lore too: spells, natural remedies, tales, popular characters, allegories, monsters and legends. I've never perceived they were tenebrous centuries... no more than ours!

For what I know, medieval paths were walked by pilgrims and merchants... and many, maaany heretics as well, who were looking for their freedom and peace of mind.

Mystical journeys, yes, like those ones which leaded to Santiago de Compostela or to Rome or to the Holy Land. 

And also journeys of artists, artisans, masons, stonecutters, lapicides, carpenters... journeys which mixed people, which connected very distant places, far buildings sites of noble and magnificent European gothic cathedrals and far architects, busy in such incompatible experiences. I cannot find a more lively world than the medieval one, regarding the circulation of ideas and experiences. And all this before the internet coming!

The conviction Middle Age was a dark backwater still crawling into the majority of people; it claims its dark veil to be ripped. Neverthless time is running out, my dear followers; we'll keep on this journey back in the Year 1000 soon. The candles are fainting now...