5/20/2014

Middle Ages

• Charlemagne
• helped make Christians more popular.
• Only people who knew how to read and write were people in the Church.
• Europe begins to get many different languages, not just Latin. 
• Clovis
• Franks king.
• Converts to Christianity, and so do all of his troops. 
• Has a battle field conversion. 
• Unites franks into one kingdom. 
• Fear of Muslims in southern Europe spur many to become Christians. 
• Monasteries and Convents
• AD 520 Benedict
• wrote the rules for monks and monasteries
• poverty, chastity, obedience, study
• Benedict's sister, Scholastica did the same for nuns in convents. 
• 731 AD- the Venerable Bede wrote a killer history of England. 
• Monks opened schools, maintained libraries, and copied books (Bibles, Greek texts)
• The Church and the government are almost the same, you can barely tell them apart.
• Church can use money to build armies, etc. 
• Franks control largest European Kingdom. 
• The Roman providence called Gaul
• Ruled by Clovis - the Merovingian Dynasty.
• Major Domo- mayor of the palace- ruled by kingdom. 
• Charles Martel - Charles the Hammer
• Extended the Franks' reign to the north, south, and east.
• Defeated a Muslim army from Spain at the Battle of Tours in 732 
• A European empire evolves 
• Charles the Hammer's son - Pepin the Short
• possibly named for his unusually short haircut
• working for and with the Pope, Pepin fought the Lombards.
• Pope Stephen II named Pepin "King by the grace of God" - beginning the Carolingian Dynasty 751 - 987 AD
• (So a pope can name someone a king)
• Pepin the Short had Two sons, Carolman and Charles
• Carol man died, leaving ....
• Charlemagne aka Charles the Great
• Six foot four
• built the greatest empire since Rome. 
• Fought the Muslims in Spain
• Fought Germanic tribes
• Spread Christianity
• Reunited Western Europe 
• Became the most powerful king in western Europe 
• Pope Leo III crowned him emperor in 800 AD after he defended him from an unruly Roman mob.
• This signaled the joining of Germanic power, the Church, and the heritage of the Roman Empire. 
• Charlemagne's Government
• He limited the authority of the nobles
• He regularly visited every part of his kingdom
• kept close watch on his huge estates 
• cultural revival
• encouraged learning
• ordered monasteries to open school
• opened a palace school.
• But his heirs weren't nearly as good as him. 
• His son - Louis the Pious - was ineffective.
• Louis' three sons - Lothair, Charles the Bald, and Louis the German - split up the kingdom at the Treaty of Verdun in 843 AD.