Unit II

Unit Summary

Rome began on the Italian peninsula and spread around the Mediterranean Sea. At its greatest extent, the empire stretched from Britain to Egypt and from the Atlantic to Iraq. It united the entire Mediterranean region for the first (and only) time. Although the Romans did conquer northwestern Europe, they were more at home in the warm, dry climate around the Mediterranean Sea. Geographically, northern Europe lies within the temperate climatic zone that in ancient and early medieval times was heavily forested. Atlantic westerly winds bring high rainfall, mostly in winter, to ocean-facing Europe. Deeper into Eurasia, however, these latitudes become drier and colder. In Mediterranean Europe, mild, rainy winters and hot, dry summers prevail. Beginning in ancient times, farmers converted forests of southern Europe into wheat fields, olive orchards, and vineyards. Farming advanced more slowly in the dense woodlands and marshes of the north.

Rome was a multicultural empire. Romans spoke Latin, but they conquered Egyptians, Greeks, Syrians, Jews, Celts and Gauls, people who spoke Greek, Aramaic, and hundreds of other languages, and followed dozens of religions. Roman emperors built up the city of Rome to bring together the best from their empire and the world. However, this prosperity was based on riches from conquest and slave labor on large agricultural estates that provided food and luxuries for the cities. Wealthy Romans also purchased luxuries, such as silk from China, medicines and jewels from India, and animals from sub-Saharan Africa, brought into the empire by merchants on the Silk Road and other Afro-Eurasian trade routes.

After Augustus, Rome was ruled by an emperor who theoretically had total power. However, in practice, the power of the emperor was limited by the lack of an effective administration, except in the military. The Roman legions were the source of imperial authority. For civilian government, the empire relied on attracting local elites (landowners, wealthy and/or powerful people, religious leaders) to become local administrators. Corruption was a huge problem, and military leaders had too much power. However, the unity of Rome and the power of its culture gave many people a strong reason to support the empire. Roman citizenship was initially given to people from the provinces as a reward for service, for example, to retired auxiliary soldiers. They and their sons then had the right to vote. Gradually, everyone in the provinces gained citizenship, except for slaves. Broadening citizenship was a deliberate policy of certain emperors, who believed it would cause more people to support the empire and help it run smoothly. Roman laws also helped solidify the empire. A body of laws was passed down through the centuries and ultimately influenced legal systems in modern states such as France, Italy, and Spain, as well as Latin American countries.

In the late second century, the Romans came up against limits. Roman armies could not defeat the Persian Empire in the east, and there was little reason to expand into the rural communities and forests of northeastern Europe. Deprived of its income from conquest, Rome still had to defend its frontier on the Rhine and Danube rivers from the Germanic peoples and its border with the Persian Sassanian Empire in the east. In the third century, the emperors Diocletian and Constantine separated the Roman Empire into two halves and reformed the empire to focus its resources on military defense. Constantine established a new capital for the Eastern Roman Empire at Byzantium, which he renamed Constantinople (the name 'Byzantine Empire' is a relatively recent term coined by historians and was not used while the empire was standing).

In the fourth century CE, Emperor Constantine legalized the religion of Christianity, and soon after, it became Rome’s state religion. Constantine wanted the Christian Church to unify and support the now divided Roman Empire. As it became a state religion, Christianity changed. The bishops who had been leaders of semi-secret, persecuted communities were now charged with supporting the Roman Empire. Constantine insisted that the bishops hold a council at Nicaea and agree on one set of Christian beliefs, summarized in the Nicene Creed. Church leaders selected certain texts (gospels and letters) for the official Christian Bible, which was translated into Latin. They organized the Christian Church with a Roman structure and gave their support to Roman authorities. Church leaders then vigorously tried to convert everyone to Christianity. As the Western Roman Empire shrank, Christian bishops often took over administration and defense of Roman cities.

In 476 CE, the empire in the west disappeared, though the eastern half continued to thrive. As the Byzantine Empire, this Greek-speaking Roman state survived until 1453.

The Eastern Roman Empire was stronger than the Western portion. It had more people, more cities, greater manufacturing and commerce, more tax revenues, and more effective defenses against mounted warrior attacks from the north. Its military strength and wealth from the Afro-Eurasian luxury trade caused a flowering culture in the period between 600 and 1000 CE. The Byzantine Empire, as the eastern lands became known, had strong historical connections to earlier Hellenistic civilization. Its language was Greek, not Latin. This state was highly centralized around its capital of Constantinople and the rule of the emperor and his officials. The Christian church in the Byzantine Empire was closely connected to the emperor and his administration.

In the fourth and fifth centuries, the Western Roman Empire fragmented, causing population to fall, cities to shrink, and agriculture to contract. As the empire shrank, Germanic armies and migrants overran Europe, dividing the region into small rudimentary kingdoms. early medieval kingdoms did not have strong authority. Local leaders and landholders were much more effective rulers of their small territories. In the Middle Ages, all power was local, not centralized in a state. Over the next few centuries, there was little trade, and most cities disappeared. In the eighth century, a Muslim dynasty founded a strong state in Iberia. Charlemagne (768-814), was an exceptionally strong Christian king, who temporarily united a large part of Europe in the late eighth century and contributed much to the advancement of Latin literacy, learning, and the arts.

After Charlemagne, political order was again fragmented by Viking, Magyar, and Muslim invasions. Local power, established in parts of Western Christendom through feudal relations, was the key to defeating the invaders. In feudalism, kings and powerful regional rulers offered protection and farm estates, or manors, to less powerful knights in return for loyalty and military service. The manors provided the income needed for a knight’s horses, armor, and training. Knights, as lords of the manors, also controlled the serfs, peasants who were tied permanently to manor and obligated to give their lord labor and crops in return for security. Knights, regional lords, and aristocrats gained rights to hand down fiefs to heirs. Mothers and prospective wives often exerted great influence over marriages and family alliances. Gradually the elite mounted warriors began to be known as nobles.

These nobles wanted to keep control over local areas rather than to give power to the king and central government. The conflict between King John and the great nobles in England, who forced the king to grant the Magna Carta is an example of the weakening of the power and central control of the king. This document guaranteed trial by jury of one’s peers and the concept of no taxation without representation. From this root, other medieval developments in England, such as common law and Parliament, gradually limited the king’s power and laid the foundations of English constitutional monarchy.

In the tenth century, serfs and free peasants employed new technologies, such as the moldboard plow and the horse collar, to cultivate new farmland and boost agricultural production. Around 1000 CE, these innovations caused an agricultural revolution in Western Christendom, which caused the population to increase, trade to expand, and cities to grow again. In this expansion, many of the forests of northern Europe were cut down, as humans used wood for heating and cooking and cleared land for farming.

In the Middle Ages, people called the Christian parts of Europe “Christendom,” which shows that an important part of their identity was being Christian. Since kings and states were so weak, the Church, whose hierarchy of clerics extended from the Pope down to the village priest, became the largest, most integrated organization in Europe. The Church followed a hierarchy adopted from the Roman Empire. Missionaries spread out to convert Germanic and Slavic people to Christianity. Christianity spread in Central and Eastern Europe, facilitating formation of states such as Poland in 966. Although most of the conversions were voluntary, some Christian kings forced people to convert to Christianity, as Charlemagne did to the Saxons in early 800s. Wealthy Christians donated land to monasteries, filled with monks and nuns who pledged themselves to live separately from the world. These monks and nuns were the only educated people, and they devoted themselves to copying Roman and Christian texts. Around 900, popes began to assert their control over the church hierarchy, which brought them into conflict with secular monarchs. A split between the Orthodox Church, which acknowledged the leadership of the patriarch of Constantinople, and the Catholic Church, which recognized the authority of the pope in Rome occurred. Churches in Eastern Europe (Russian, Greek, Serbian) followed the Orthodox or Greek Church, since missionaries led by Constantinople had converted their people to Christianity. Because missionaries led by Rome had converted people in Western, Central and Northern Europe, these remained in “the Church,” also called the Latin Church and, later, the Roman Catholic Church.