Early Middle Ages. Carolingian Empire’s Traditions

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Table of Contents

Introduction
The Carolingian empire
The implementation of Catholic Church
The purpose of Latin
The influence of Roman architecture
Conclusion
Bibliography

Introduction

There’s no doubt that no culture or community stands apart of the other world and develop in isolation of other nations. Since the early ages the tribes had to interact with each other, to trade, to migrate in search of better living conditions, to hold against enemies’ attacks, to establish peaceful coexistence and cooperation. Thus, in the course of time, due to these factors their cultures interwove and influenced on each other introducing or imposing new traditions, languages, religious beliefs that sometimes led to partial or total extinction of cultures.

The Early Middle Ages or Dark ages embraces the period of the 5th and 10th centuries (Sayre 126). The era of the Early Middle Ages began after the collapse of the Roman Empire that included vast European territories.In this connection some historians claim that European culture takes its root from the fall of the Roman Empire and so being nothing else as a synthesis of Greco Roman, Germanic, and Christian traditions.

The Carolingian empire

In this paper I’m going to concentrate on the Carolingian empire, ruled by Charles the Great (Charlemagne or Carolus Magnus) and to examine how these traditions are implemented into in the Early Middle Ages at the court of Charlemagne providing examples to illustrate and prove my assumptions.

To deeply understand how the Early Middle Ages combine different traditions that served as a basis for European culture it’s necessary to dwell on the origins and development of Greco Roman, Germanic, and Christian traditions at the court of Charlemagne.

The Carolingian empire was ruled by Charles the Great (Charlemagne), “a dynamic and powerful ruler” was the first dominant state of the medieval European world since the collapse of the Roman Empire (Sayre 126). During his reign Charlemagne introduced a lot of reforms into various spheres, such as religion and church, education, politics and was known for his achievements as a “the father of Europe”. The period of his reign is regarded by twentieth-century historians as the “Carolingian Renaissance” (Gabriel, Stuckey 247). A fierce warrior and a just ruler, Charlemagne successfully led military campaigns expanding the territory of his state and uniting most of Western Europe, conquering tribes that resisted his rule and occupying the territory of modern-day Germany and Italy during his long reign (768-814) (Gabriel, Stuckey 247). Charles is greatly known for converting tribes into Christianity during his miscellaneous campaigns. Alongside this, the emperor tried to strengthen economic ties to the Mediterranean.

The implementation of Catholic Church

A powerful ruler, Charles the Great realized that enlisted by the Catholic Church’s support he can strengthen his possessions over Europe. Ancient Germanic tribes worshipped many gods and denied the divinity of god. Charlemagne established relationships with the Catholic Church and enthusiastically encouraged missionary work among the tribes, in which he succeeded when eventually converting all the tribes under his subjecting.

In the course of expanding the rule of Christianity over Europe, Charlemagne introduced the reforms into church offices, replacing archbishops and bishops, almost all of them “unqualified relatives of royal families”, for new clergy that accepted his rule and were ready to meet their commitments.

Alongside this, was observed the increasing influence of Christian traditions over every-day life. The stabilizing of marriages and attaching great importance to the god’s blessing to the ceremony serves as a good example of how Christian traditions successfully incorporated into Western culture of that time. Before that marriages were arranged by fathers of the families whose goal was to strengthen the material welfare of the family. Moreover, having an affair for a man was a common case: even Charlemagne himself, a passionate supporter of Christianity, had several women (called “concubines”) (Gabriel, Stuckey 253). To reduce this, the church emphasized that monogamy was dictated by god’s will and polygamy and easy divorce was regarded as a “condemned practice” (Spielvogel 208). Though not easily accepted this rule eventually came into practice. A young family was still under the control of the eldest members, the eldest woman controlled the rest of female members, and husband dominated over his wife, but despite all this, a young wife could keep her own household and raise her children by her own (Gabriel, Stuckey 253).

As far as the economic affairs are concerned power in Carolingian society was associated with land ownership, a basic principle of Feudalism. To earn the loyalty of people Charlemagne looked back to the seventh century, and “instituted an oath of fidelity – a promise to do nothing that would endanger the king or his sons or the royal power” (Boussard 42). “The feudal monarchy created by Charlemagne had two definite characteristics: absolute power limited only by advice given by nobles and the Church and power based on a contract – the oath of fidelity pledging allegiance by the king’s subjects” (Boussard 42).

Not only a strict ruler and warrior, but an ardent defendant of education, Charles the Great stressed the importance of knowledge and learning himself he also established schools for his people. The schools established under the rule of Charlemagne were directed for education of priests basically, but could be used also by common people. His aim was to spread the culture, arts, literature over Western Europe. The schools of Carolingian empire collaborated with schools of other neighboring countries. Taking a great interest in languages, he mastered Greek and Latin, studied rhetoric and eloquence.

One of Charlemagne’s revolution reforms was his writing reform. The ruler himself had difficulties with writing, attempted many times to master it but achieved only little success. However, he ordered to create a legible script and teach it in schools. The new script was a combination of Roman and scripts that were used in English and Irish monasteries. However, the Roman tradition was changed: small case letters were used instead of the all-capitals style in Latin. The laws of spelling were a mixture of Roman law and tribal traditions.

It’s necessary to point out that the period of Charles’s reign had a great impact of preserving old manuscripts. Many classical Latin scripts were copied by Carolingian monks and thus making those available to modern historians.

As it has already been mentioned the period of Charles’s reign was named as the “Carolingian Renaissance”. It’s also obvious that Charlemagne built his empire on the basis of collapsed Roman Empire, Greek culture with the influence of tribal cultures and traditions that greatly affected the European civilization.

The purpose of Latin

Taking into account the fact that the Carolingian Empire consisted of miscellaneous tribes, one can assume that they spoke various dialects or languages despite the fact that Latin was used as a basic language for communicating between the tribes. Moreover, influenced by Latin new dialects began to develop. These new languages were commonly spoken and eventually evolving into modern European languages such as French, English. Latin was announced a language of the whole empire not by accident – Charles the Great understood the problem of linguistic diversity and attached much importance to uniting the tribes by one language and one law. The clergy were also to be taught in Latin, as well as it was taught in schools (Story 211).

The influence of Roman architecture

As far as the architecture is concerned, it was also influenced by Roman style and blended with Germanic traditions in architecture produced an interesting combination. Earlier the monasteries and churches were built of timber; later on they were built according to all main principles of Roman architecture, of stone and on much larger scale. Much of the constructions presented an implementation of both Roman and German architecture, i.e. a new Carolingian style with multiple towers and westworks. The historians state that such buildings expanded all over the empire very quickly (Spielvogel 189).

Conclusion

Concluding, I’d like to say that Charlemagne was on of the pivotal figure in the Early Middle Ages, a fair and driven ruler who made a great contribution into the formation of European identity.

Bibliography

Boussard, Jacques. The civilization of Charlemagne. McGraw-Hill, 1968.

Gabriel, Matthew, Stuckey, Jace. The Legend of Charlemagne in the Middle Ages: Power, Faith, and Crusade. New Middle Ages Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.

Sayre, Henry. M. The Humanities: Culture, Continuity, and Change, Volume 1. Prentice Hall, 2007.

Spielvogel, Jackson J. Western Civilization: To 1500. Cengage Learning, 2008.

Story, Joanna. Charlemagne: Empire and Society. Manchester University Press, 2005.

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