Mediocrity Through the Gates

 The Inheritance of Rome: A History of Europe from 400 to 1000,  by Chris Wickham; Penguin, 2009, 720 pages, $29.95.

The barbarians who pushed through the gates into the Roman empire were not all bad, but neither were they all good. This is the sober-sided conclusion of this latest attempt at a “definitive” history of what is best known as the “Dark Ages”, the six centuries from the collapse of the Roman empire of the west early in the fifth century AD through to the eleventh century. Wickham says the old “catastrophist” historian’s reading of the “barbarian” conquest began to decline around the end of the Second World War, but he cautions against the excessive revisionism which has shown much romantic light in the dark.

The period brought the formation of the European Christian world we have inherited, as well as the passing of the ancient world, but lack of records has made it a difficult time to penetrate. Now several decades of systematic archaeology, assisted by science and extra numbers of historians beavering away on obscure fragments of record, have finally removed much of the “darkness”.

In Western Europe, the “barbarians” were mostly Germanic tribes, including the Anglo-Saxons as well as the Franks, Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Lombards and others, who moved out of their central European homelands into England, France, Spain and Italy. They established themselves as ruling elites, though they were genetically equal to only a few per cent of the invaded populations and soon absorbed by intermarriage.

To the Romans and Greeks, “barbarians” were those who lived beyond the “civilised” world of the empire, which in the West did not extend much beyond the Rhine and Danube. Wickham shows these “barbarians” to be less primitive or destructive in their ways than the label implies and in fact eager to adapt themselves, if from a position of strength, to the advantages of the Romanised world. Trade and development generally declined, though, but did not stop, and there were few new buildings of note until after 1000.

If sometimes illiterate at the start, some of the newcomers’ progeny quickly became literate, if often barely so, in Latin and often the ancestral Germanic language too. Sometimes they were already Christian and if not, they soon converted. The Arian heresy, which had a following among the Gothic peoples, especially in Spain, faded out in favour of a loose-knit Catholicism.

The Arians claimed that Christ was not the Son of God, but this sort of theological nit-picking did not have as much impact in the west as in the eastern part of the Roman empire. Wickham says the Greek language encouraged it there.

The Catholic Church of the day acknowledged the primacy of the Pope, but looked to him as a distant source of prestige and authority. His ruling could be sought if, for example, there was a dispute over a bishop’s appointment or one of the frequent regional councils divided over a point of doctrine. But in practice local elites, either kingly rulers, major aristocrats or lay assemblies, selected the bishops. Local elites and even humble individuals also established the many monasteries and nunneries and often bequeathed extensive lands, not least as penance for their sins and in the hope for heaven.

As time went on, both the aristocracy and the monasteries became greedy for more land and neither was above taking it from the peasants by force. Where land tax had been the financial underpinning of the Roman empire, especially paying for the military legions which had kept both the peace and Roman control, land became even more the source of status and political power.

Though the empire was officially Christian when it crumbled, there were at first few churches or monasteries in the west outside the towns; pagan ways only slowly declined but the church steadily triumphed. Western Christianity was marked by the usual hypocrisy, such as pious spin to make official decisions sound less pragmatic; much of what we would now see as superstition; extensive corruption over land and jobs.

The religion of Jesus gradually, however, seeped into the society, moving values away from the harsher, more superstitious culture of the pagan world. Saints were numerous (monastic versions of saints’ lives have been a major source for historians) and while some were spurious, there was undoubtedly much saintliness. The church, especially the monasteries, was also the chief source of learning and literacy. There were, too, shows of robust, earthy peasant fundamentalism.

Over time, a rigidly superior—in its own and most eyes—aristocratic caste emerged, making way for the knights of the later Middle Ages. By 1000, the characteristic, hierarchical feudal society of the West had arrived, based on large aristocratic estates worked by peasants paying rent or tribute in goods and work and subject to military call-up by their landlord.

This system gave the peasants some security against raids by outsiders—which could rob, kill or even enslave them—but it reduced their status even further. Peasants were about 90 per cent of the population in most of the empire, Wickham reminds us, but there has been little historical light on their daily lives. He says independent farms and middling estates had been more common earlier in the period, but gradually fell to the feudal pattern, through conquest, or for economic and other reasons. Local assemblies assisting in government also declined.

The shape of the future nation-states, with their distinctive languages, was emerging, but central control remained weak, where it existed at all. What centralised organisation there had been around the time of Charlemagne, the French-German emperor (742–814) slipped away.

There were few towns in the West before 1000, other than around the Mediterranean. There were the Roman-established London, York and Cologne, fledgling Paris, Charlemagne’s Aachen and a few more smallish ones along the Rhine, Elbe and Seine. Total populations were small—England had a mere two million inhabitants for the Domesday book in 1086.

Rome continued as an independent and substantial, if smaller, city ruling a chunk of central Italy, the basis of the future Papal States which lasted until the nineteenth century. There were several other developed Italian cities, mainly in the Lombard-ruled north.

My emphasis on the West here is the natural bias of those who think of “Europe” mainly as Western Europe. The Roman empire of the East, using the Greek language, continued until the Ottoman Turks overran its capital, Constantinople, in 1453 and renamed it Istanbul. The Ottomans claimed they continued this Byzantine empire, so it can be argued as lasting until 1919. The Russian Tsars claimed similar continuity, so a Bolshevik stretch could have it lasting until the Iron Curtain finally disintegrated in 1991.

The emperor and officialdom had much more influence in the East than in the scattered West and the (Orthodox) church was more bound into the system. The imperial boundaries were whittled away much more slowly than in the West. Byzantium still controlled much of southern Italy during the period.

Wickham reminds us that Egypt was the biggest granary and probably the most developed part of the empire, with the modern Syria and North Africa generally not far behind. Around 80 per cent of the population were peasants in these more advanced regions, compared with 90 per cent in the West. This was the area Islam—whether it should be called a “barbarian” force is debatable—conquered around the eighth century and further developed under the Caliphate. Around the same time Sclavenian (Wickham prefers this to the more linguistically-based Slav) “barbarians” settled in, partly took over and won for their languages the Balkan regions of the former Yugoslavia.

Scandinavia and most of Eastern Europe had always been outside the Roman empire. They only began to move from a scattered tribal basis and to become Christian towards the end of this period. Little of their history of the time is recorded. While Scandinavia spawned the Vikings of the ninth century, Wickham sees their societies even then as fairly solid and sensible.

The kingdom of England gradually developed through conquests and amalgamations of what were originally Anglo-Saxon and later Viking tribal groups. Wickham acknowledges that the original British were much more numerous, perhaps 90 per cent of the population, but does not attempt to assess—for lack of adequate records—how the Anglo-Saxon culture came to dominate as quickly as it did.

He brings the poorly recorded Pictish society, the basis of Scotland, a little more into the light than usual, seeing it as fairly robust and lasting and genetically mainly Welsh. Ireland, also outside the empire, has been relatively well recorded for the period. If its feuding kingly politics were any guide to other Dark Age societies, they could have been pretty … well, Byzantine.

Wickham says he has written about the period on its own terms, avoiding previous historical tendencies to see it as either the fading out of the ancient world or the birth of Europe. The outline has been fairly well known, but there is immense detail here. The result is somewhat dogged in character and the period as a whole does not seem particularly attractive, though at least these days it is generally regarded as dull rather than awful. Wickham is now Chichele Professor of Medieval History at Oxford, but makes a point of noting a thirty-year association with the University of Birmingham, hinting at less of a culture cringe than that which Oxbridge tends to exhibit towards Greece and Rome.

As the high Middle Ages approached towards the end of the story, it was like encountering an old friend, a more familiar world of cathedrals, castles, knights, scholarly monks, more pronounceable names. Outstanding buildings, good literature and the arts and manners do add to life.

Robert Murray is a frequent contributor to Quadrant on history.