Germanic
Kingdoms of Western Europe
- The Germanic Barbarians
- Barbarian warlords and their families who assimilated into Roman culture became the "nobles" or aristocrats of medieval Europe
- Germanic tribes who ruled former Roman lands sought to conquer and assimilated other barbarian peoples who lived beyond the frontiers and were sill pagans
- The angles and the Saxons (from Denmark and northwestern Germany) invaded Britain and assimilated the native Britons
- Most of the Anglo-Saxons were converted to Christianity in the seventh century
- The most powerful Germanic tribe was the Franks
- But the real power lay with the "mayors of the palace" who were royal officials and nobles themselves
Meanwhile,
back in the Eastern Empire…
- From "Eastern Empire" to "Byzantium"
- The Eastern Roman Empire continued on while the west was now divided up by the barbarian tribes
- When the emperor Justinian came to power in 527, he decided to reunite the entire Roman Empire by re-conquering the western territories
- Justinian succeeded for a time, but the land he re-took was soon conquered by new barbarian tribes and massive plague depopulated much of the west.
It’s a
Christian Empire Now
- Greek Byzantine emperors saw themselves as Roman emperors and the heads of the Christian Church
- Byzantines preserved Greco- Roman art, architecture, philosophy and writing despite much of it being non- Christian
- Justinian built the massive domed Hagia Sophia ("holy wisdom") in Constantinople, considered to be the most glorious church on earth at the time
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