Page 192 - Western Civilization A Brief History, Volume I To 1715 9th - Jackson J. Spielvogel

destroyed the Visigothic kingdom itself (see “The Rise of Islam” later in this chapter).
The Frankish Kingdom
Only one of the German states on the European conti- nent proved long-lasting—the kingdom of the Franks. The establishment of a Frankish kingdom was the work of Clovis (ca. 482–511), a member of the Merovingian (meh-ruh-VIN-jee-un) dynasty who became a Catholic Christian around 500. He was not the first German king to convert to Christianity, but the others had joined the Arian sect of Christianity, considered by the Roman Catholic Church as heretics whose beliefs diverged from official church doctrine. Clovis’s conver- sion to Catholic Christianity gained him the support of the Roman Catholic Church, which was eager to obtain the friendship of a major Germanic ruler who was a Catholic Christian. By 510, Clovis had established a powerful new Frankish kingdom stretching from the Pyrenees in the West to German lands in the East (modern-day France and western Germany). After the death of Clovis, however, his sons divided the newly created kingdom among themselves, as was the Frank- ish custom. Thus, during the sixth and seventh centu- ries, the once-united Frankish kingdom came to be partitioned into three major areas: Neustria (NOO- stree-uh) in northern Gaul; Austrasia (au-STRAY-zhuh), consisting of the ancient Frankish lands on both sides of the Rhine; and the former kingdom of Burgundy.
During the sixth and seventh centuries, the Frank- ish kingdom witnessed a fusion between Gallo-Roman and Frankish cultures and peoples, a process accompa- nied by a significant decline in Roman standards of civ- ilization and commercial activity. The Franks were warriors and did little to encourage either urban life or trade. By 750, Frankish Gaul was basically an agricul- tural society in which the old Roman estates of the late empire had continued unimpeded. Institutionally, how- ever, Germanic concepts of kingship and customary law replaced the Roman governmental structure.
Anglo-Saxon England
The barbarian pressures on the Western Roman Empire had forced the emperors to withdraw the Roman armies and abandon Britain by the beginning of the fifth century. This opened the door to the Angles and Saxons, Germanic tribes from Denmark and northern Germany. Although these same peoples had been conducting plundering raids for a century, the withdrawal of the Roman armies enabled them to establish settlements instead. They met with resist- ance from the Celtic Britons, however, who still con- trolled the western regions of Cornwall, Wales, and Cumberland at the beginning of the seventh century. The German invaders eventually succeeded in carving out small kingdoms throughout the island, Kent in southeastern England being one of them.
The Society of the Germanic Kingdoms
As Germans and Romans intermarried and began to create a new society, some of the social customs of the Germanic people began to play an important role. The crucial social bond among the Germanic peoples was the family, especially the extended or patriarchal family of husbands, wives, children, brothers, sisters, cousins, and grandparents. In addition to working the land to- gether and passing it down to succeeding generations along male lines, the extended family provided protec- tion, which was sorely needed in the violent atmos- phere of Merovingian times.
The German conception of family affected the way Germanic law treated crime and punishment. In the Roman system, as in our own, a crime such as murder was considered an offense against society or the state and was handled by a court that heard evidence and arrived at a decision. Germanic law tended to be per- sonal. If one person injured another, the result could be a blood feud in which the family of the injured party took revenge on the kin of the wrongdoer. Feuds could involve savage acts of revenge, such as hacking off hands or feet, gouging out eyes, or slicing off ears and noses. Because this system could easily get out of con- trol, an alternative system arose that made use of a fine called wergeld (WURR-geld), which was paid by a wrongdoer to the family of the person he had injured or killed. Wergeld (literally, “man money”) was the value of a person in monetary terms. That value varied according to social status. An offense against a noble- man, for example, cost considerably more than one against a freeman or a slave.
CHRONOLOGY The Germanic Kingdoms
Theodoric establishes Ostrogothic kingdom in Italy
Frankish king Clovis converts to Christianity Reconquest of Italy by Byzantines
Lombards begin conquest of Italy
Muslims shatter Visigothic kingdom in Spain
493
ca. 500 535–552 568
711
154 Chapter 7
Late Antiquity and the Emergence of the Medieval World
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