Joseph Strayer

“ It had formed a thin hard crust on top of a fermenting mass of old beliefs and institutions, and as the crust cracked under the strains of the third and fourth centuries the obscure folk-ways of the native populations began to bubble out into sight. Every student of the Late Roman Empire has noticed the revival of oriental forms and beliefs in government, in religion, in art and literature. At first it was possible to absorb these oriental ideas into the dominant Graeco-Roman culture. The emperors assumed some of the trappings and many of the powers of an oriental despot ”

“ As the Roman Empire in the West slowly collapsed, the Christian Church emerged as the one stable institution among the ruins. The ablest inhabitants of the Empire became servants of the Church rather than the state, and they brought with them the Roman genius for administration and law. The men who were still capable of devotion to an ideal gave their loyalty to their faith rather than to their government. ”

“ In political and constitutional developments twelfth-century Europe occupies the same middle position. The Roman Empire was not a national state; it was a union of all the peoples who shared the common Mediterranean civilization under a single powerful ruler. The modern world, though it recognizes the fact of a common civilization, is divided into sovereign national states. The twelfth century knew neither the single powerful political unit nor the modern state. ”

“ The new doctrine, as it finally emerged in Mohammed's sermons and conversation, had enough familiar elements in it to be acceptable to many of the peoples of the East. He taught that there was one all-powerful God, the creator of the world, the protector and judge of mankind; that God had revealed His will to men through a series of prophets, of whom the greatest were Abraham, Jesus, and Mohammed; that those who believed His prophets and obeyed His commandments would enjoy Paradise whereas the wicked were to suffer endlessly. ”

“ In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries medieval civilization slowly decayed under the impact of the new forces which it had created by its own success. From this point of view there is real unity in the story of the Middle Ages; it is the story of the rise, development, and fall of a great civilization.
It is because the history of the Middle Ages is the history of a civilization that the subject is worth studying. The record of the rise and fall of any civilization deserves careful examination, for the basic problems of all civilizations are similar. ”

“ Modern occidental civilization is oceanic, not European; it is as typical of America, Australia, and parts of Asia and Africa as it is of Western Europe. In the Roman period most of Europe was a backward, colonial region, receiving its institutions and ideas from more advanced communities to the south and east. In the modern period Europe has been first the center and then a segment of a world civilization. But in the twelfth century European civilization stood by itself, neither greatly influencing nor greatly influenced by the civilizations of other continents. ”

“ The Eastern Roman Empire was not quite so impressive as the Arab Empire, but it was still an important center of civilization. The wealth of Constantinople, the manpower of Asia Minor, and a sophisticated diplomatic and military tradition gave it unusual strength and resilience. With its rich heritage of Greek and Christian culture it developed a remarkable civilization — conservative but not decadent, orientalized but not oriental, profoundly Christian but not theocratic. ”

“ There was general agreement that economic activity should be regulated and controlled in the interests of society and that individual profits were less important than social stability. This is not to say that the profit motive was completely suppressed in the twelfth century, but no one at that time thought that it was or should be the mainspring of human activity. As a result, neither individual capitalists nor the middle class as a whole had the same importance in the twelfth century that they have had in the modern world. ”

“ But as the position of Rome became more secure, and as Roman political institutions became more stable, the character of Roman government improved. Partly from the Greek philosophers, partly from their own experience, the Romans developed the concepts of a fundamental law binding all men, and of an ideal justice in which all should participate. Inspired by these ideals, guided by the great emperors of the second century A.D., the Roman Empire lost its predatory character and became a universal commonwealth. ”

“ Last and worst of all, the king could not raise money to support his government. Taxation seemed iniquitous and unnecessary to the Germans. The unpaid service of free men supplied the king with his army and courts, and they could not see the need for any other services. A king who taxed was always suspected, often with reason, of trying to increase his personal fortune.
The Germans lacked the political experience and traditions necessary to build strong states on the ruins of the Roman Empire. They were equally unable to solve the economic problems of the ancient world. ”

“ In economics there was neither state regulation nor laissez-faire; instead local custom controlled farmers, artisans, and merchants in the interest of the whole community. In Gothic art, chivalric poetry, scholastic philosophy, and the university system of education the twelfth century created forms which were neither classical nor modern. These characteristics of twelfth-century civilization were not only distinct, but also interdependent; they fused into an organic whole. The economic institutions could not have existed without the political and religious institutions ”

“ The peoples of the West always expected the inhabitants of the Byzantine Empire to be more like themselves than they really were, and were bitterly disappointed when they found that their assumption was wrong. Members of a single family will criticize conduct in their relatives which they find perfectly normal in strangers, and Western Europe and the Byzantine Empire were more or less in the position of cousins, each of whom thinks the other is betraying the family tradition. ”

“ Inhabitants of Rome and Italy lost their special privileges, the rights of Roman citizenship were extended to almost all subjects of the Empire, and the provinces flourished in the peace and security provided by an honest and efficient government. As distinctions between conqueror and conquered disappeared, the Empire was accepted by all its subjects as a desirable and permanent form of political organization. Yet just as the Empire succeeded in creating a real community of interest and feeling in the Mediterranean basin, it began to decay. ”

“ The rulers of imperial Rome had tried hard enough to build up loyalty with their temples devoted to the imperial cult, their monuments and public buildings, their ceremonies and festivals. Their efforts failed partly because the cult of emperor-worship and Rome-worship was synthetic, foisted on the people from above instead of springing spontaneously from popular beliefs and experiences — even more because the average inhabitant of the Roman Empire could take no interest in the affairs of an organization in which he played no significant role. ”

“ The people of Constantinople developed their own brand of orthodoxy, which was neither that of Rome nor that of Alexandria, and rioted against any emperor who threatened to compromise it. A very strong emperor might have been able to force the peoples of the East to accept a common statement of religious beliefs if he had not had to worry about the opposition of the pope at Rome. Conversely, agreement between Rome and Constantinople could be secured only by losing the religious, which meant in the end the political, allegiance of Egypt and Syria. ”

“ Europe gradually separated itself from the Mediterranean world and worked out its own independent culture, based on Christianity, survivals of Roman institutions and ideas, and Germanic customs. The ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries were a period of adjustment and experimentation, in which Europeans slowly and painfully discovered the most effective institutional and ideological expressions of their basic beliefs and aspirations. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries were a period of fruition, of full development of all the potentialities of medieval civilization. ”

“ Even more than the Romans, they had sought local self-sufficiency; each German village had to supply itself with the essentials of life. They had imported a few luxuries from their neighbors, but there had never been active trade in common necessities. When they entered the Empire they could not alter the prevailing pattern of economic activity. They took over Roman estates and continued the Roman luxury trade with the East, but they certainly did not increase production or trade. Western Europe continued to be an almost purely agricultural region with few economic ties among its provinces. ”

“ Christianity was not the only religion which appealed to the inhabitants of the Empire. Various Oriental cults, such as the religion of Mithra or the worship of Isis and Osiris, offered some of the same satisfactions. They promised immortality and the forgiveness of sin; they stressed the importance of the individual in the community of believers. They were weaker than Christianity because they were tarnished with gross superstitions and obvious inconsistencies in doctrine. ”

“ The acceptance of Christianity by the rulers of the Empire did not repair the fatal weaknesses of the Roman state. The able men who became Christian bishops and teachers did not feel that it was their duty to occupy themselves with political and economic problems. They had the tremendous task of organizing churches throughout the towns of the Empire, of converting pagans and improving the morals of nominal converts, of combatting heresy and developing Christian theology into a logical and self-consistent system. ”

“ It is evident that rulers brought up in the German political tradition would find it difficult to maintain a government of the Roman type. They could not easily understand Roman political ideas and methods, and their German warriors were indignant over any attempt to change the customs of the folk. Three things especially were hard for a German king to do. He could not delegate authority with any safety, since there was no tradition of bureaucracy among his people. Political power was personal property for the Germans and a deputy always tended to become an independent hereditary ruler. ”

“ The leaders of the Christian Church flatly refused to compromise on matters of belief, they would not dilute their faith in order to gain lukewarm adherents. As a result, Christianity spread more slowly than its rivals, but it also spread more surely. Once a Christian Church had been established it seldom went out of existence, and backsliding among individual Christians was rare. The consistency and certainty of Christian doctrine attracted men of outstanding ability, and under their leadership the new faith began to spread to the middle classes. ”

“ The Carolingian age saw the establishment of a Western European culture, strong enough to endure terrific strains, independent enough to keep its identity when brought into contact with other traditions, broad enough to include all the peoples of Western Europe, rich enough to develop new forms and ideas from its own resources. ”

“ As a result, a European conscience developed, based on Christian ethics — a conscience which could be easily aroused by spiritual leaders. There was plenty of brutality and stupidity in the centuries after Charlemagne, but it no longer passed without protest as it had in the earlier barbarian kingdoms. Reform movements succeeded each other with hardly a break from the tenth to the thirteenth century, and each wave of reform played a part in shaping medieval civilization. ”

“ The Slavic peoples of the Balkans usually admitted the hegemony of the emperor and took their basic concepts of religion, art, and literature from Constantinople. The Russians were converted by the Greek Orthodox Church and so the stream of Byzantine culture flowed into the great plains of Eastern Europe. Thus the division between East and West, which had begun in the last days of the old Roman Empire, was extended far beyond the limits of the Mediterranean basin. ”

“ Both in the fourth and in the twelfth centuries the great majority of the population of Europe was engaged in agriculture, and most of these agricultural laborers were unfree. The great difference between the two periods is that the fourth century was a period of declining economic activity, whereas the twelfth century was a period of economic expansion. The Romans of the Late Empire would have been satisfied if they could have kept production and commerce at their old level; the men of the twelfth century were making a great effort to increase production and commerce. ”

“ Mohammed had given the Arabs their first effective political organization, and his immediate successors profited more from this than they did from his promulgation of a new faith. Like all new religions, Mohammedanism was slow to sink into the minds and hearts of the people. The Arabs and their neighbors did not become fanatical Mohammedans overnight, and the great Arab conquests of the seventh century were the result of political, not religious, imperialism. ”

“ Yet the Roman population never made a move against the intruders. The bulk of the opposition was furnished by mercenaries usually Germans themselves who would fight only as long as they were well paid, and by a minority of Roman aristocrats who had preserved some memory of the old Roman patriotism. We can say with absolute truth that the Roman Empire fell because the great majority of its inhabitants made no effort to preserve it. ”

“ The Arabs, like the Germans, were a small, rather poorly organized group of peoples, who had raided the Empire intermittently for centuries without constituting a real military danger. Nothing shows the weakness of the old Mediterranean civilization in its last days quite so clearly as the fact that these weak border peoples could change the fate of millions with only a slight effort. ”

“ Yet within the Mediterranean unity, separatist tendencies were developing, and these tendencies were strongest in the East. The Germans had lowered the level of Roman civilization, but they had no rival civilization to set in its place. In the East there were rival civilizations, long suppressed but strangely potent. The Greeks and the Romans had ruled Syria and Egypt for over seven hundred years, and yet Graeco-Roman civilization had not stifled the old native cultures. ”

“ Both political and economic pressures barred Roman citizens from military service. The emperors were suspicious of members of the upper classes who sought military distinction, and succeeded in keeping them from serving as officers. Poorer citizens, sinking into economic servitude, could not be released from their tasks for military service. By the third century it was no longer possible to fill the ranks of the army from the inhabitants of the Empire, and the emperors had to seek their soldiers beyond the frontiers. Thousands of barbarians, especially Germans, were taken into the army ”

“ In Italy, Spain, and most of Gaul, the Germans were never numerous enough to change the fundamental characteristics of the population, but even in these regions there was a profound alteration in the organization of society and the activities of the people. Roman institutions and culture had been decaying for two centuries in the West, and the Germans were not able to put new life into a senile civilization. ”

“ The most obvious symptom of decay was the occupation of the western part of the Empire by migrating Germanic peoples. Yet there were millions of Roman citizens, compared to a few hundred thousand Germanic invaders. At any stage in the collapse of the Empire the Roman or Romanized population could have driven out the Germans and restored the unity of the state if they had really wanted to do so. ”