document_title: Early Middle Ages

question_text: where was scholarly learning concentrated in medieval europe

question_tokens: where was scholarly learning concentrated in medieval europe

text: Early Middle Ages

text: History[edit]

text: Collapse of Rome[edit]

text: Starting in the 2nd century, various indicators of Roman civilization began to decline, including urbanization, seaborne commerce, and population. Archaeologists have identified only 40 per cent as many Mediterranean shipwrecks from the 3rd century as from the first.[2] Estimates of the population of the Roman Empire during the period from 150 to 400 suggest a fall from 65 million to 50 million, a decline of more than 20 per cent. Some scholars have connected this de-population to the Dark Ages Cold Period (300–700), when a decrease in global temperatures impaired agricultural yields.[3][4]

text: Early in the 3rd century Germanic peoples migrated south from Scandinavia and reached the Black Sea, creating formidable confederations which opposed the local Sarmatians. In Dacia (present-day Romania) and on the steppes north of the Black Sea the Goths, a Germanic people, established at least two kingdoms: Therving and Greuthung.[5]

text: The arrival of the Huns in 372–375 ended the history of these kingdoms. The Huns, a confederation of central Asian tribes, founded an empire. They had mastered the difficult art of shooting composite recurve bows from horseback. The Goths sought refuge in Roman territory (376), agreeing to enter the Empire as unarmed settlers. However many bribed the Danube border-guards into allowing them to bring their weapons.

text: The discipline and organization of a Roman legion made it a superb fighting unit. The Romans preferred infantry to cavalry because infantry could be trained to retain the formation in combat, while cavalry tended to scatter when faced with opposition. While a barbarian army could be raised and inspired by the promise of plunder, the legions required a central government and taxation to pay for salaries, constant training, equipment, and food. The decline in agricultural and economic activity reduced the empire's taxable income and thus its ability to maintain a professional army to defend itself from external threats.

text:
Germanic tribes

     Angles, Saxons
     Franks
     Goths
     Visigoths
     Ostrogoths
     Huns
     Vandals

Roman Empire

     Western Empire
     Eastern Empire

text: In the Gothic War (376–382), the Goths revolted and confronted the main Roman army in the Battle of Adrianople (378). By this time, the distinction in the Roman army between Roman regulars and barbarian auxiliaries had broken down, and the Roman army comprised mainly barbarians and soldiers recruited for a single campaign. The general decline in discipline also led to the use of smaller shields and lighter weaponry.[6] Not wanting to share the glory, Eastern Emperor Valens ordered an attack on the Therving infantry under Fritigern without waiting for Western Emperor Gratian, who was on the way with reinforcements. While the Romans were fully engaged, the Greuthung cavalry arrived. Only one-third of the Roman army managed to escape. This represented the most shattering defeat that the Romans had suffered since the Battle of Cannae (216 BCE), according to the Roman military writer Ammianus Marcellinus.[citation needed] The core army of the Eastern Roman Empire was destroyed, Valens was killed, and the Goths were freed to lay waste to the Balkans, including the armories along the Danube. As Edward Gibbon comments, "The Romans, who so coolly and so concisely mention the acts of justice which were exercised by the legions, reserve their compassion and their eloquence for their own sufferings, when the provinces were invaded and desolated by the arms of the successful Barbarians."[7]

text: The empire lacked the resources, and perhaps the will, to reconstruct the professional mobile army destroyed at Adrianople, so it had to rely on barbarian armies to fight for it. The Eastern Roman Empire succeeded in buying off the Goths with tribute. The Western Roman Empire proved less fortunate. Stilicho, the western empire's half-Vandal military commander, stripped the Rhine frontier of troops to fend off invasions of Italy by the Visigoths in 402–03 and by other Goths in 406–07.

text: Fleeing before the advance of the Huns, the Vandals, Suebi, and Alans launched an attack across the frozen Rhine near Mainz; on 31 December, 406, the frontier gave way and these tribes surged into Roman Gaul. There soon followed the Burgundians and bands of the Alamanni. In the fit of anti-barbarian hysteria which followed, the Western Roman Emperor Honorius had Stilicho summarily beheaded (408). Stilicho submitted his neck, "with a firmness not unworthy of the last of the Roman generals", wrote Gibbon. Honorius was left with only worthless courtiers to advise him. In 410, the Visigoths led by Alaric I captured the city of Rome and for three days fire and slaughter ensued as bodies filled the streets, palaces were stripped of their valuables, and the invaders interrogated and tortured those citizens thought to have hidden wealth. As newly converted Christians, the Goths respected church property, but those who found sanctuary in the Vatican and in other churches were the fortunate few.

text: Migration Period[edit]

text: The Roman Empire wasn't "conquered" by Germanic tribes, but overrun and even completely displaced by the flood of Germanic migrants. The Goths and Vandals were only the first of many waves of invaders that flooded Western Europe. Some lived only for war and pillage and disdained Roman ways. Other peoples had been in prolonged contact with the Roman civilization, and were, to a certain degree, romanized. "A poor Roman plays the Goth, a rich Goth the Roman" said King Theoderic of the Ostrogoths.[8] The subjects of the Roman empire were a mix of Catholic Christian, Arian Christian, Nestorian Christian, and pagan. The Germanic peoples knew little of cities, money, or writing, and were still mostly pagan, though were becoming increasingly Arian. Arianism was a branch of Christianity that was first proposed early in the 4th century by the Alexandrian presbyter Arius. Arius proclaimed that Christ is not truly divine but a created being. His basic premise was the uniqueness of God, who is alone self-existent and immutable; the Son, who is not self-existent, cannot be God.

text: During the migrations, or Völkerwanderung (wandering of the peoples), the earlier settled populations were sometimes left intact though usually partially or entirely displaced. Roman culture north of the Po River was almost entirely displaced by the migrations. Whereas the peoples of France, Italy, and Spain continued to speak the dialects of Latin that today constitute the Romance languages, the language of the smaller Roman-era population of what is now England disappeared with barely a trace in the territories settled by the Anglo-Saxons, although the Brittanic kingdoms of the west remained Brythonic speakers. The new peoples greatly altered established society, including law, culture, religion, and patterns of property ownership.

text: The pax Romana had provided safe conditions for trade and manufacture, and a unified cultural and educational milieu of far-ranging connections. As this was lost, it was replaced by the rule of local potentates, sometimes members of the established Romanized ruling elite, sometimes new lords of alien culture. In Aquitania, Gallia Narbonensis, southern Italy and Sicily, Baetica or southern Spain, and the Iberian Mediterranean coast, Roman culture lasted until the 6th or 7th centuries.

text: The gradual breakdown and transformation of economic and social linkages and infrastructure resulted in increasingly localized outlooks. This breakdown was often fast and dramatic as it became unsafe to travel or carry goods over any distance; there was a consequent collapse in trade and manufacture for export. Major industries that depended on trade, such as large-scale pottery manufacture, vanished almost overnight in places like Britain. Tintagel in Cornwall, as well as several other centres, managed to obtain supplies of Mediterranean luxury goods well into the 6th century, but then lost their trading links. Administrative, educational and military infrastructure quickly vanished, and the loss of the established cursus honorum led to the collapse of the schools and to a rise of illiteracy even among the leadership. The careers of Cassiodorus (died c. 585) at the beginning of this period and of Alcuin of York (died 804) at its close were founded alike on their valued literacy. For the formerly Roman area, there was another 20 per cent decline in population between 400 and 600, or a one-third decline for 150-600.[9] In the 8th century, the volume of trade reached its lowest level. The very small number of shipwrecks found that dated from the 8th century supports this (which represents less than 2 per cent of the number of shipwrecks dated from the 1st century). There were also reforestation and a retreat of agriculture that centreed around 500.

text: The Romans had practiced two-field agriculture, with a crop grown in one field and the other left fallow and ploughed under to eliminate weeds. Systematic agriculture largely disappeared and yields declined. It is estimated that the Plague of Justinian which began in 541 and recurred periodically for 150 years thereafter killed as many as 100 million people across the world.[10] Some historians such as Josiah C. Russell (1958) have suggested a total European population loss of 50 to 60 per cent between 541 and 700.[11] After the year 750, major epidemic diseases did not appear again in Europe until the Black Death of the 14th century. The disease Smallpox which was eradicated in the late 20th Century did not definitively enter Western Europe until about 581 when Bishop Gregory of Tours provided an eyewitness account that describes the characteristic findings of smallpox.[12] Waves of epidemics wiped out large rural populations.[13] Most of the details about the epidemics are lost, probably due to the scarcity of surviving written records.

text: For almost a thousand years, Rome was the most politically important, richest and largest city in Europe.[14] Around 100 CE, it had a population of about 450,000.[15] Its population declined to a mere 20,000 during the Early Middle Ages, reducing the sprawling city to groups of inhabited buildings interspersed among large areas of ruins and vegetation.

text: Byzantine Empire[edit]

text: Under Emperor Justinian (r. 527-65), the Byzantines were able to reestablish Roman rule in Italy and most of North Africa

text:
Justinian's conquests
     Eastern Empire

text: The death of Theodosius I in 395 was followed by the division of the empire between his two sons. The Western Roman Empire disintegrated into a mosaic of warring Germanic kingdoms in the 5th century, making the Eastern Roman Empire in Constantinople the legal successor to the classical Roman Empire. After Greek replaced Latin as the official language of the Empire, historians refer to the empire as "Byzantine." Westerners would gradually begin to refer to it as "Greek" rather than "Roman." The inhabitants, however, always called themselves Romaioi, or Romans.

text: The Eastern Roman Empire aimed at retaining control of the trade routes between Europe and the Orient, which made the Empire the richest polity in Europe. Making use of their sophisticated warfare and superior diplomacy, the Byzantines managed to fend off assaults by the migrating barbarians. Their dreams of subduing the Western potentates briefly materialized during the reign of Justinian I in 527–565. Not only did Justinian restore some western territories to the Roman Empire, but he also codified Roman law (with his codification remaining in force in many areas of Europe until the 19th century) and built the largest and the most technically advanced edifice of the Early Middle Ages, the Hagia Sophia. A bubonic plague pandemic,[16][17] the Plague of Justinian, marred Justinian's reign, however, infecting the Emperor, killing perhaps 40% of the people in Constantinople, and contributing to Europe's early medieval population decline.

text: Justinian's successors Maurice and Heraclius had to confront invasions of the Avar and Slavic tribes. After the devastations by the Slavs and the Avars, large areas of the Balkans became depopulated. In 626 Constantinople, by far the largest city of early medieval Europe, withstood a combined siege by Avars and Persians. Within several decades, Heraclius completed a holy war against the Persians by taking their capital and having a Sassanid monarch assassinated. Yet Heraclius lived to see his spectacular success undone by the Muslim conquests of Syria, three Palaestina provinces, Egypt, and North Africa which was considerably facilitated by religious disunity and the proliferation of heretical movements (notably Monophysitism and Nestorianism) in the areas converted to Islam.

text: Although Heraclius's successors managed to salvage Constantinople from two Arab sieges (in 674–77 and 717), the empire of the 8th and early 9th century was rocked by the great Iconoclastic Controversy, punctuated by dynastic struggles between various factions at court. The Bulgar and Slavic tribes profited from these disorders and invaded Illyria, Thrace and even Greece. After the decisive victory at Ongala in 680 the armies of the Bulgars and Slavs advanced to the south of the Balkan mountains, defeating again the Byzantines who were then forced to sign a humiliating peace treaty which acknowledged the establishment of the First Bulgarian Empire on the borders of the Empire.

text: To counter these threats, a new system of administration was introduced. The regional civil and military administration were combined in the hands of a general, or strategos. A theme, which formerly denoted a subdivision of the Byzantine army, came to refer to a region governed by a strategos. The reform led to the emergence of great landed families which controlled the regional military and often pressed their claims to the throne (see Bardas Phocas and Bardas Sklerus for characteristic examples).

text: By the early 8th century, notwithstanding the shrinking territory of the empire, Constantinople remained the largest and the wealthiest city of the entire world, comparable only to Sassanid Ctesiphon, and later Abassid Baghdad. The population of the imperial capital fluctuated between 300,000 and 400,000 as the emperors undertook measures to restrain its growth. The only other large Christian cities were Rome (50,000) and Salonika (30,000).[19] Even before the 8th century was out, the Farmer's Law signalled the resurrection of agricultural technologies in the Roman Empire. As the 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica noted, "the technological base of Byzantine society was more advanced than that of contemporary western Europe: iron tools could be found in the villages; water mills dotted the landscape; and field-sown beans provided a diet rich in protein".[20]

text: The ascension of the Macedonian dynasty in 867 marked the end of the period of political and religious turmoil and introduced a new golden age of the empire. While the talented generals such as Nicephorus Phocas expanded the frontiers, the Macedonian emperors (such as Leo the Wise and Constantine VII) presided over the cultural flowering in Constantinople, known as the Macedonian Renaissance. The enlightened Macedonian rulers scorned the rulers of Western Europe as illiterate barbarians and maintained a nominal claim to rule over the West. Although this fiction had been exploded with the coronation of Charlemagne in Rome (800), the Byzantine rulers did not treat their Western counterparts as equals. Generally, they had little interest in political and economic developments in the barbarian (from their point of view) West.

text: Against this economic background, the culture and the imperial traditions of the Eastern Roman Empire attracted its northern neighbours—Slavs, Bulgars, and Khazars—to Constantinople, in search of either pillage or enlightenment. The movement of the Germanic tribes to the south triggered the great migration of the Slavs, who occupied the vacated territories. In the 7th century, they moved westward to the Elbe, southward to the Danube and eastward to the Dnieper. By the 9th century, the Slavs had expanded into sparsely inhabited territories to the south and east from these natural frontiers, peacefully assimilating the indigenous Illyrian and Finno-Ugric populations.

text: Rise of Islam[edit]

text: From the 7th century Byzantine history was greatly affected by the rise of Islam and the Caliphates. Muslim Arabs first invaded historically Roman territory under Abū Bakr, first Caliph of the Rashidun Caliphate, who entered Roman Syria and Roman Mesopotamia. As the Byzantines and neighbouring Persian Sasanids had been severely weakened by a long succession of Byzantine–Sasanian wars, especially the climactic Byzantine–Sasanian War of 602–628, under Umar, the second Caliph, the Muslims decisively conquered Syria and Mesopotamia, as well as Roman Palestine, Roman Egypt, parts of Asia Minor and Roman North Africa, while they entirely toppled the Sasanids. In the mid 7th century AD, following the Muslim conquest of Persia, Islam penetrated into the Caucasus region, of which parts would later permanently become part of Russia.[21] This expansion of Islam continued under Umar's successors and then the Umayyad Caliphate, which conquered the rest of Mediterranean North Africa and most of the Iberian Peninsula. Over the next centuries Muslim forces were able to take further European territory, including Cyprus, Malta, Septimania, Crete, and Sicily and parts of southern Italy.[22]

text: The Muslim conquest of Hispania began when the Moors (mostly Berbers with some Arabs) invaded the Christian Visigothic kingdom of Iberia in the year 711, under their Berber leader Tariq ibn Ziyad. They landed at Gibraltar on 30 April and worked their way northward. Tariq's forces were joined the next year by those of his superior, Musa ibn Nusair. During the eight-year campaign most of the Iberian Peninsula was brought under Muslim rule—save for small areas in the north-westnorthwest (Asturias) and largely Basque regions in the Pyrenees. This territory, under the Arab name Al-Andalus, became part of the expanding Umayyad empire.

text: The unsuccessful second siege of Constantinople (717) weakened the Umayyad dynasty and reduced their prestige. After their success in overrunning Iberia, the conquerors moved northeast across the Pyrenees, but were defeated by the Frankish leader Charles Martel at the Battle of Poitiers in 732. The Umayyads were overthrown in 750 by the Abbāsids and most of the Umayyad clan massacred.

text: A surviving Umayyad prince, Abd-ar-rahman I, escaped to Spain and founded a new Umayyad dynasty in the Emirate of Cordoba in 756. Charles Martel's son Pippin the Short retook Narbonne, and his grandson Charlemagne established the Marca Hispanica across the Pyrenees in part of what today is Catalonia, reconquering Girona in 785 and Barcelona in 801. The Umayyads in Spain proclaimed themselves caliphs in 929.

text: Birth of the Latin West[edit]

text: This article's tone or style may not reflect the encyclopedic tone used on Wikipedia. See Wikipedia's guide to writing better articles for suggestions. (March 2016) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

text: Due to a complex set of reasons, conditions in Western Europe began to improve after 700.[23][24] In that year, the two major powers in western Europe were the Franks in Gaul and the Lombards in Italy.[25] The Lombards had been thoroughly Romanized, and their kingdom was stable and well developed. The Franks, in contrast, were barely any different from their barbarian Germanic ancestors. Their kingdom was weak, hopelessly divided, and ruled by a king who was barely distinguishable from a peasant.[citation needed] Impossible to guess at the time, but by the end of the century, the Lombardic kingdom would be extinct, while the Frankish kingdom would have nearly reassembled the Western Roman Empire.[25]

text: Though much of Roman civilization north of the Po River had been wiped out in the years after the end of the Western Roman Empire, between the 5th and 8th centuries, new political and social infrastructure began to develop. Much of this was initially Germanic and pagan. Arian Christian missionaries had been spreading Arian Christianity throughout northern Europe, though by 700 the religion of northern Europeans was largely a mix of Germanic paganism, Christianized paganism, and Arian Christianity.[26] Catholic Christianity had barely started to spread in northern Europe by this time. Through the practice of simony, local princes typically auctioned off ecclesiastical offices, causing priests and bishops to function as though they were yet another noble under the patronage of the prince.[27] In contrast, a network of monasteries had sprung up as monks sought separation from the world. These monasteries remained independent from local princes, and as such constituted the "church" for most northern Europeans during this time. Being independent from local princes, they increasingly stood out as centres of learning, of scholarship, and as religious centres where individuals could receive spiritual or monetary assistance.[26]

text: The interaction between the culture of the newcomers, their warband loyalties, the remnants of classical culture, and Christian influences, produced a new model for society, based in part on feudal obligations. The centralized administrative systems of the Romans did not withstand the changes, and the institutional support for chattel slavery largely disappeared. The Anglo-Saxons in England had also started to convert from Anglo-Saxon polytheism after the arrival of Christian missionaries around the year 600.

text: Italy[edit]

text: The Lombards, who first entered Italy in 568 under Alboin, carved out a state in the north, with its capital at Pavia. At first, they were unable to conquer the Exarchate of Ravenna, the Ducatus Romanus, and Calabria and Apulia. The next two hundred years were occupied in trying to conquer these territories from the Byzantine Empire.

text: The Lombard state was relatively Romanized, at least when compared to the Germanic kingdoms in northern Europe. It was highly decentralized at first, with the territorial dukes having practical sovereignty in their duchies, especially in the southern duchies of Spoleto and Benevento. For a decade following the death of Cleph in 575, the Lombards did not even elect a king; this period is called the Rule of the Dukes. The first written legal code was composed in poor Latin in 643: the Edictum Rothari. It was primarily the codification of the oral legal tradition of the people.

text: The Lombard state was well-organized and stabilized by the end of the long reign of Liutprand (717–744), but its collapse was sudden. Unsupported by the dukes, King Desiderius was defeated and forced to surrender his kingdom to Charlemagne in 774. The Lombard kingdom ended and a period of Frankish rule was initiated. The Frankish king Pepin the Short had, by the Donation of Pepin, given the pope the "Papal States" and the territory north of that swath of papally-governed land was ruled primarily by Lombard and Frankish vassals of the Holy Roman Emperor until the rise of the city-states in the 11th and 12th centuries.

text: In the south, a period of chaos began. The duchy of Benevento maintained its sovereignty in the face of the pretensions of both the Western and Eastern Empires. In the 9th century, the Muslims conquered Sicily. The coastal cities on the Tyrrhenian Sea departed from Byzantine allegiance. Various states owing various nominal allegiances fought constantly over territory until events came to a head in the early 11th century with the coming of the Normans, who conquered the whole of the south by the end of the century.

text: Britain[edit]

text: Roman Britain was in a state of political and economic collapse at the time of the Roman departure c. 400. A series of settlements (traditionally referred to as an invasion) by Germanic peoples began in the early fifth century, and by the sixth century the island would consist of many small kingdoms engaged in ongoing warfare with each other. The Germanic kingdoms are now collectively referred to as Anglo-Saxons. Christianization began to take hold among the Anglo-Saxons in the sixth century, with 597 given as the traditional date for its large-scale adoption.

text: Western Britain (Wales), eastern and northern Scotland (Pictland) and the Scottish highlands and isles continued their separate evolution. The Irish descended and Irish-influenced people of western Scotland were Christian from the fifth century onward, the Picts adopted Christianity in the sixth century under the influence of Columba, and the Welsh had been Christian since the Roman era.

text: Northumbria was the pre-eminent power c. 600–700, absorbing several weaker Anglo-Saxon and Brythonic kingdoms, while Mercia held a similar status c. 700–800. Wessex would absorb all of the kingdoms in the south, both Anglo-Saxon and Briton. In Wales consolidation of power would not begin until the ninth century under the descendants of Merfyn Frych of Gwynedd, establishing a hierarchy that would last until the Norman invasion of Wales in 1081.

text: The first Viking raids on Britain began before 800, increasing in scope and destructiveness over time. In 865 a large, well-organized Danish Viking army (called the Great Heathen Army) attempted a conquest, breaking or diminishing Anglo-Saxon power everywhere but in Wessex. Under the leadership of Alfred the Great and his descendants, Wessex would at first survive, then coexist with, and eventually conquer the Danes. It would then establish the Kingdom of England and rule until the establishment of an Anglo-Danish kingdom under Cnut, and then again until the Norman Invasion of 1066.

text: Viking raids and invasion were no less dramatic for the north. Their defeat of the Picts in 839 led to a lasting Norse heritage in northernmost Scotland, and it led to the combination of the Picts and Gaels under the House of Alpin, which became the Kingdom of Alba, the predecessor of the Kingdom of Scotland. The Vikings combined with the Gaels of the Hebrides to become the Gall-Gaidel and establish the Kingdom of the Isles.

text: Frankish Empire[edit]

text: The Merovingians established themselves in the power vacuum of the former Roman provinces in Gaul, and Clovis I converted to Christianity following his victory over the Alemanni at the Battle of Tolbiac (496), laying the foundation of the Frankish Empire, the dominant state of early medieval Western Christendom. The Frankish kingdom grew through a complex development of conquest, patronage, and alliance building. Due to salic custom, inheritance rights were absolute, and all land was divided equally among the sons of a dead land holder.[28] This meant that, when the king granted a prince land in reward for service, that prince and all of his descendants had an irrevocable right to that land that no future king could undo. Likewise, those princes (and their sons) could sublet their land to their own vassals, who could in turn sublet the land to lower sub-vassals.[28] This all had the effect of weakening the power of the king as his kingdom grew, since the result was that the land became controlled by not just by more princes and vassals, but by multiple layers of vassals. This also allowed his nobles to attempt to build their own power base, though given the strict salic tradition of hereditary kingship, few would ever consider overthrowing the king.[28]

text: This increasingly absurd arrangement was highlighted by Charles Martel, who as Mayor of the Palace was effectively the strongest prince in the kingdom.[29] His accomplishments were highlighted, not just by his famous defeat of invading Muslims at the Battle of Tours, which is typically considered the battle that saved Europe from Muslim conquest, but by the fact that he greatly expanded Frankish influence. It was under his patronage that Saint Boniface expanded Frankish influence into Germany by rebuilding the German church, with the result that, within a century, the German church was the strongest church in western Europe.[29] Yet despite this, Charles Martel refused to overthrow the Frankish king. His son, Pepin the Short, inherited his power, and used it to further expand Frankish influence. Unlike his father, however, Pepin decided to seize the Frankish kingship. Given how strongly Frankish culture held to its principle of inheritance, few would support him if he attempted to overthrow the king.[30] Instead, he sought the assistance of Pope Zachary, who was himself newly vulnerable due to fallout with the Byzantine Emperor over the Iconoclastic Controversy. Pepin agreed to support the pope and to give him land (the Donation of Pepin, which created the Papal States) in exchange for being consecrated as the new Frankish king. Given that Pepin's claim to the kingship was now based on an authority higher than Frankish custom, no resistance was offered to Pepin.[30] With this, the Merovingian line of kings ended, and the Carolingian line began.

text: Pepin's son Charlemagne continued in the footsteps of his father and grandfather. He further expanded and consolidated the Frankish kingdom (now commonly called the Carolingian Empire). His reign also saw a cultural rebirth, commonly called the Carolingian Renaissance. Though the exact reasons are unclear, Charlemagne was crowned "Roman Emperor" by Pope Leo III on Christmas Day, 800. Upon Charlemagne's death, his empire had united much of modern-day France, western Germany and northern Italy. The years after his death illustrated how Germanic his empire remained.[30] Rather than an orderly succession, his empire was divided in accordance with Frankish inheritance custom, which resulted in instability that plagued his empire until the last king of a united empire, Charles the Fat, died in 887, which resulted in a permanent split of the empire into West Francia and East Francia. West Francia would be ruled by Carolingians until 987 and East Francia until 911, after which time the partition of the empire into France and Germany was complete.[30]

text: Feudalism[edit]

text: Around 800 there was a return to systematic agriculture in the form of the open field, or strip, system. A manor would have several fields, each subdivided into 1-acre (4,000 m2) strips of land. An acre measured one "furlong" of 220 yards by one "chain" of 22 yards (that is, about 200 m by 20 m). A furlong (from "furrow long") was considered to be the distance an ox could plough before taking a rest; the strip shape of the acre field also reflected the difficulty in turning early heavy ploughs. In the idealized form of the system, each family got thirty such strips of land. The three-field system of crop rotation was first developed in the 9th century: wheat or rye was planted in one field, the second field had a nitrogen-fixing crop, and the third was fallow.[31]

text: Compared to the earlier two-field system, a three-field system allows for significantly more land to be put under cultivation. Even more important, the system allows for two harvests a year, reducing the risk that a single crop failure will lead to famine. Three-field agriculture creates a surplus of oats that can be used to feed horses.[32] Because the system required a major rearrangement of real estate and of the social order, it took until the 11th century before it came into general use. The heavy wheeled plough was introduced in the late 10th century. It required greater animal power and promoted the use of teams of oxen. Illuminated manuscripts depict two-wheeled ploughs with both a mouldboard, or curved metal ploughshare, and a coulter, a vertical blade in front of the ploughshare. The Romans had used light, wheel-less ploughs with flat iron shares that often proved unequal to the heavy soils of northern Europe.

text: The return to systemic agriculture coincided with the introduction of a new social system called feudalism. This system featured a hierarchy of reciprocal obligations. Each man was bound to serve his superior in return for the latter's protection. This made for confusion of territorial sovereignty since allegiances were subject to change over time and were sometimes mutually contradictory. Feudalism allowed the state to provide a degree of public safety despite the continued absence of bureaucracy and written records. Even land ownership disputes were decided based solely on oral testimony. Territoriality was reduced to a network of personal allegiances.

text: Viking Age[edit]

text:
8th century homeland
     9th century expansion
     10th century expansion

text: The Viking Age spans the period between roughly between the late 8th and mid-11th centuries in Scandinavia and Britain, following the Germanic Iron Age (and the Vendel Age in Sweden). During this period, the Vikings, Scandinavian warriors and traders raided and explored most parts of Europe, south-western Asia, northern Africa, and north-eastern North America.

text: With the means to travel (longships and open water), desire for goods led Scandinavian traders to explore and develop extensive trading partnerships in new territories. Some of the most important trading ports during the period include both existing and ancient cities such as Aarhus, Ribe, Hedeby, Vineta, Truso, Kaupang, Birka, Bordeaux, York, Dublin, and Aldeigjuborg.

text: Viking raiding expeditions were separate from, though coexisted with, regular trading expeditions. Apart from exploring Europe via its oceans and rivers, with the aid of their advanced navigational skills, they extended their trading routes across vast parts of the continent. They also engaged in warfare, looting and enslaving numerous Christian communities of Medieval Europe for centuries, contributing to the development of feudal systems in Europe.

text: Eastern Europe[edit]

text: The Early Middle Ages marked the beginning of the cultural distinctions between Western and Eastern Europe north of the Mediterranean. Influence from the Byzantine Empire impacted the Christianization and hence almost every aspect of the cultural and political development of the East from the preeminence of Caesaropapism and Eastern Christianity to the spread of the Cyrillic alphabet. The turmoil of the so-called Barbarian invasions in the beginning of the period gradually gave way to more stabilized societies and states as the origins of contemporary Eastern Europe began to take shape during the High Middle Ages.

text: Magyar region

text: Turkic and Iranian invaders from Central Asia pressured the agricultural populations both in the Byzantine Balkans and in Central Europe creating a number of successor states in the Pontic steppes. After the dissolution of the Hunnic Empire, the Western Turkic and Avar Khaganates dominated territories from Pannonia to the Caspian Sea before replaced by the short lived Old Great Bulgaria and the more successful Khazar Khaganate north of the Black Sea and the Magyars in Central Europe.

text: The Khazars were a nomadic Turkic people who managed to develop a multiethnic commercial state which owed its success to the control of much of the waterway trade between Europe and Central Asia. The Khazars also exacted tribute from the Alani, Magyars, various Slavic tribes, the Crimean Goths, and the Greeks of Crimea. Through a network of Jewish itinerant merchants, or Radhanites, they were in contact with the trade emporia of India and Spain.

text: Once they found themselves confronted by Arab expansionism, the Khazars pragmatically allied themselves with Constantinople and clashed with the Caliphate. Despite initial setbacks, they managed to recover Derbent and eventually penetrated as far south as Caucasian Iberia, Caucasian Albania and Armenia. In doing so, they effectively blocked the northward expansion of Islam into Eastern Europe even before khan Tervel achieved the same at the Second Arab Siege of Constantinople and several decades before the Battle of Tours in Western Europe.[33]

text: In the beginning of the period the Slavic tribes started to expand aggressively into Byzantine possessions on the Balkans. The first attested Slavic polities were Serbia and Great Moravia, the latter of which emerged under the aegis of the Frankish Empire in the early 9th century. Great Moravia was ultimately overrun by the Magyars, who invaded the Pannonian Basin around 896. The Slavic state became a stage for confrontation between the Christian missionaries from Constantinople and Rome. Although West Slavs, Croats and Slovenes eventually acknowledged Roman ecclesiastical authority, the clergy of Constantinople succeeded in converting to Eastern Christianity two of the largest states of early medieval Europe, Bulgaria around 864, and Kievan Rus' circa 990.

text: Bulgaria[edit]

text: In 632 the Bulgars established the khanate of Old Great Bulgaria under the leadership of Kubrat. The Khazars managed to oust the Bulgars from Southern Ukraine into lands along middle Volga (Volga Bulgaria) and along lower Danube (Danube Bulgaria).

text: In 681 the Bulgars founded a powerful and ethnically diverse state that played a defining role in the history of early medieval Southeastern Europe. Bulgaria withstood the pressure from Pontic steppe tribes like the Pechenegs, Khazars, and Cumans, and in 806 destroyed the Avar Khanate. The Danube Bulgars were quickly slavicized and, despite constant campaigning against Constantinople, accepted Christianity from the Byzantine Empire. Through the efforts of missionaries Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius,[34] the Bulgarian Glagolitic and Cyrillic alphabets were developed in the capital Preslav and a vernacular dialect, now known as Old Bulgarian or Old Church Slavonic, was established as the language of books and liturgy among Orthodox Christian Slavs.

text: After the adoption of Christianity in 864, Bulgaria became a cultural and spiritual hub of the Eastern Orthodox Slavic world. The Cyrillic script was developed by Bulgarian scholar Clement of Ohrid in 885-886 and was afterwards introduced to Serbia and Kievan Rus'. Literature, art, and architecture were thriving with the establishment of the Preslav and Ohrid Literary Schools along with the distinct Preslav Ceramics School. In 927 the Bulgarian Orthodox Church was the first European national Church to gain independence with its own Patriarch while conducting services in the vernacular Old Church Slavonic.

text: Under Simeon I (893–927), the state was the largest and one of the most powerful political entities of Europe, and it consistently threatened the existence of the Byzantine empire. From the middle of the 10th century Bulgaria was in decline as it entered a social and spiritual turmoil. It was in part due to Simeon's devastating wars, but was also exacerbated by a series of successful Byzantine military campaigns. Bulgaria was conquered after a long resistance in 1018.

text: Kievan Rus'[edit]

text: Led by a Varangian dynasty, the Kievan Rus' controlled the routes connecting Northern Europe to Byzantium and to the Orient (for example: the Volga trade route). The Kievan state began with the rule (882–912) of Prince Oleg, who extended his control from Novgorod southwards along the Dnieper river valley in order to protect trade from Khazar incursions from the east and moved his capital to the more strategic Kiev. Sviatoslav I (died 972) achieved the first major expansion of Kievan Rus' territorial control, fighting a war of conquest against the Khazar Empire and inflicting a serious blow on Bulgaria. A Rus' attack (967 or 968), instigated by the Byzantines, led to the collapse of the Bulgarian state and the occupation of the east of the country by the Rus'. An ensuing direct military confrontation between the Rus' and Byzantium (970-971) ended with a Byzantine victory (971). The Rus' withdrew and the Byzantine Empire incorporated eastern Bulgaria. Both before and after their conversion to Christianity (conventionally dated 988 under Vladimir I of Kiev—known as Vladimir the Great), the Rus' also embarked on predatory military campaigns against the Byzantine Empire, some of which resulted in trade treaties. The importance of Russo-Byzantine relations to Constantinople was highlighted by the fact that Vladimir I of Kiev, son of Svyatoslav I, became the only foreigner to marry (989) a Byzantine princess of the Macedonian dynasty (which ruled the Eastern Roman Empire from 867 to 1056), a singular honour sought in vain by many other rulers.

text: Transmission of learning[edit]

text: With the end of the Western Roman Empire and with urban centres in decline, literacy and learning decreased in the West. This continued a pattern that had been underway since the 3rd century.[35] Much learning under the Roman Empire was in Greek, and with the re-emergence of the wall between east and west, little eastern learning continued in the west. Much of the Greek literary corpus remained in Greek, and few in the west could speak or read Greek.[35] Due to the demographic displacement that accompanied the end of the western Roman Empire, by this point most western Europeans were descendants of non-literate barbarians rather than literate Romans. In this sense, education wasn't lost so much as it had yet to be acquired.[35]

text: Education did ultimately continue, and was centred in the monasteries and cathedrals. A "Renaissance" of classical education would appear in Carolingian Empire in the 8th century. In the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium), learning (in the sense of formal education involving literature) was maintained at a higher level than in the West. The classical education system, which would persist for hundreds of years, emphasized grammar, Latin, Greek, and rhetoric. Pupils read and reread classic works and wrote essays imitating their style. By the 4th century, this education system was Christianized. In De Doctrina Christiana (started 396, completed 426), Augustine explained how classical education fits into the Christian worldview: Christianity is a religion of the book, so Christians must be literate. Tertullian was more skeptical of the value of classical learning, asking "What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem?"[36]

text: De-urbanization reduced the scope of education, and by the 6th century teaching and learning moved to monastic and cathedral schools, with the study of biblical texts at the centre of education.[37] Education of the laity continued with little interruption in Italy, Spain, and the southern part of Gaul, where Roman influences were more long-lasting. In the 7th century, however, learning expanded in Ireland and the Celtic lands, where Latin was a foreign language and Latin texts were eagerly studied and taught.[38]

text: Science[edit]

text: In the ancient world, Greek was the primary language of science. Advanced scientific research and teaching was mainly carried on in the Hellenistic side of the Roman empire, and in Greek. Late Roman attempts to translate Greek writings into Latin had limited success.[39] As the knowledge of Greek declined, the Latin West found itself cut off from some of its Greek philosophical and scientific roots. For a time, Latin-speakers who wanted to learn about science had access to only a couple of books by Boethius (c. 470–524) that summarized Greek handbooks by Nicomachus of Gerasa. Saint Isidore of Seville produced a Latin encyclopedia in 630. Private libraries would have existed, and monasteries would also keep various kinds of texts.

text: The study of nature was pursued more for practical reasons than as an abstract inquiry: the need to care for the sick led to the study of medicine and of ancient texts on drugs;[40] the need for monks to determine the proper time to pray led them to study the motion of the stars;[41] and the need to compute the date of Easter led them to study and teach mathematics and the motions of the Sun and Moon.[42][43]

text: Carolingian Renaissance[edit]

text: In the late 8th century, there was renewed interest in Classical Antiquity as part of the Carolingian Renaissance. Charlemagne carried out a reform in education. The English monk Alcuin of York elaborated a project of scholarly development aimed at resuscitating classical knowledge by establishing programs of study based upon the seven liberal arts: the trivium, or literary education (grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic), and the quadrivium, or scientific education (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music). From 787 on, decrees began to circulate recommending the restoration of old schools and the founding of new ones across the empire.

text: Institutionally, these new schools were either under the responsibility of a monastery (monastic schools), a cathedral, or a noble court. The teaching of dialectic (a discipline that corresponds to today's logic) was responsible for the increase in the interest in speculative inquiry; from this interest would follow the rise of the Scholastic tradition of Christian philosophy. In the 12th and 13th centuries, many of those schools founded under the auspices of Charlemagne, especially cathedral schools, would become universities.

text: Byzantium's golden age[edit]

text: Byzantium's great intellectual achievement was the Corpus Juris Civilis ("Body of Civil Law"), a massive compilation of Roman law made under Justinian (r. 528-65). The work includes a section called the Digesta which abstracts the principles of Roman law in such a way that they can be applied to any situation. The level of literacy was considerably higher in the Byzantine Empire than in the Latin West. Elementary education was much more widely available, sometimes even in the countryside. Secondary schools still taught the Iliad and other classics.

text: As for higher education, the Neoplatonic Academy in Athens was closed in 526. There was also a school in Alexandria which remained open until the Arab conquest (640). The University of Constantinople, founded by Emperor Theodosius II (425), seems to have dissolved around this time. It was refounded by Emperor Michael III in 849. Higher education in this period focused on rhetoric, although Aristotle's logic was covered in simple outline. Under the Macedonian dynasty (867–1056), Byzantium enjoyed a golden age and a revival of classical learning. There was little original research, but many lexicons, anthologies, encyclopedias, and commentaries.

text: Islamic learning[edit]

text: In the course of the 11th century, Islam's scientific knowledge began to reach Western Europe, via Islamic Spain. The works of Euclid and Archimedes, lost in the West, were translated from Arabic to Latin in Spain. The modern Hindu-Arabic numerals, including a notation for zero, were developed by Hindu mathematicians in the 5th and 6th centuries. Muslim mathematicians learned of it in the 7th century and added a notation for decimal fractions in the 9th and 10th centuries. Around 1000, Gerbert of Aurillac (later Pope Sylvester II) made an abacus with counters engraved with Hindu-Arabic numbers. A treatise by Al-Khwārizmī on how to perform calculations with these numerals was translated into Latin in Spain in the 12th century.

text: Monasteries[edit]

text: Monasteries were targeted in the eighth and ninth centuries by Vikings who invaded the coasts of northern Europe. They were targeted not only because they stored books but also precious objects that were looted by invaders. In the earliest monasteries, there were no special rooms set aside as a library, but from the sixth century onwards libraries became an essential aspect of monastic life in the Western Europe. The Benedictines placed books in the care of a librarian who supervised their use. In some monastic reading rooms, valuable books would be chained to shelves, but there were also lending sections as well. Copying was also another important aspect of monastic libraries, this was undertaken by resident or visiting monks and took place in the scriptorium. In the Byzantine world, religious houses rarely maintained their own copying centres. Instead they acquired donations from wealthy donors. In the tenth century, the largest collection in the Byzantine world was found in the monasteries of Mount Athos (modern-day Greece), which accumulated over 10,000 books. Scholars travelled from one monastery to another in search of the texts they wished to study. Travelling monks were often given funds to buy books, and certain monasteries which held a reputation for intellectual activities welcomed travelling monks who came to copy manuscripts for their own libraries. One of these was the monastery of Bobbio in Italy, which was founded by the Irish abbot St. Columba in 614, and by the ninth century boasted a catalogue of 666 manuscripts, including religious works, classical texts, histories and mathematical treatises.[44]

text: Christianity West and East[edit]

text: From the early Christians, early medieval Christians inherited a church united by major creeds, a stable Biblical canon, and a well-developed philosophical tradition. The history of medieval Christianity traces Christianity during the Middle Ages—the period after the fall of the Roman Empire until the Protestant Reformation. The institutional structure of Christianity in the west during this period is different from what it would become later in the Middle Ages. As opposed to the later church, the church of the early Middle Ages consisted primarily of the monasteries.[45] The practice of simony has caused the ecclesiastical offices to become the property of local princes, and as such the monasteries constituted the only church institution independent of the local princes. In addition, the papacy was relatively weak, and its power was mostly confined to central Italy.[45] Individualized religious practice was uncommon, as it typically required membership in a religious order, such as the Order of Saint Benedict.[45] Religious orders wouldn't proliferate until the high Middle Ages. For the typical Christian at this time, religious participation was largely confined to occasionally receiving mass from wandering monks. Few would be lucky enough to receive this as often as once a month.[45] By the end of this period, individual practice of religion was becoming more common, as monasteries started to transform into something approximating modern churches, where some monks might even give occasional sermons.[45]

text: During the early Middle Ages, the divide between Eastern and Western Christianity widened, paving the way for the East-West Schism in the 11th century. In the West, the power of the Bishop of Rome expanded. In 607, Boniface III became the first Bishop of Rome to use the title Pope[citation needed]. Pope Gregory the Great used his office as a temporal power, expanded Rome's missionary efforts to the British Isles, and laid the foundations for the expansion of monastic orders. Roman church traditions and practices gradually replaced local variants, including Celtic Christianity in Great Britain and Ireland. Various barbarian tribes went from raiding and pillaging the island to invading and settling. They were entirely pagan, having never been part of the Empire, though they experienced Christian influence from the surrounding peoples, such as those who were converted by the mission of St. Augustine of Canterbury, sent by Pope Gregory the Great. In the East, the conquests of Islam reduced the power of the Greek-speaking patriarchates.

text: Christianization of the West[edit]

text: The Catholic Church, the only centralized institution to survive the fall of the Western Roman Empire intact, was the sole unifying cultural influence in the West, preserving Latin learning, maintaining the art of writing, and preserving a centralized administration through its network of bishops ordained in succession. The Early Middle Ages are characterized by the urban control of bishops and the territorial control exercised by dukes and counts. The rise of urban communes marked the beginning of the High Middle Ages.

text: The Christianization of Germanic tribes began in the 4th century with the Goths and continued throughout the Early Middle Ages, led in the 6th to 7th centuries by the Hiberno-Scottish mission and replaced in the 8th to 9th centuries by the Anglo-Saxon mission, with Anglo-Saxons like Alcuin playing an important role in the Carolingian renaissance. Saint Boniface, the Apostle of the Germans, propagated Christianity in the Frankish Empire during the 8th century. He helped shape Western Christianity, and many of the dioceses he proposed remain until today. After his martyrdom, he was quickly hailed as a saint. By 1000, even Iceland had become Christian, leaving only more remote parts of Europe (Scandinavia, the Baltic, and Finno-Ugric lands) to be Christianized during the High Middle Ages.

text: Holy Roman Empire[edit]

text: 10th century[edit]

text:
Borders (Solid); Otto I (927)
     Borders (Dots); Konrad II (1032)
     Theodisc kingdom (Solid)
     Saxon Eastern March (Slashed)
     Kingdom of Italy
     Kingdom of Burgundy / Duchy of Bohemia

text:
Byzantium
     Papal States
     Republic of Venice
     Saracens / Moors / Arabs
     Not Specified

text: Listless and often ill, Carolingian Emperor Charles the Fat provoked an uprising, led by his nephew Arnulf of Carinthia, which resulted in the division of the empire in 887 into the kingdoms of France, Germany, and (northern) Italy. Taking advantage of the weakness of the German government, the Magyars had established themselves in the Alföld, or Hungarian grasslands, and began raiding across Germany, Italy, and even France. The German nobles elected Henry the Fowler, duke of Saxony, as their king at a Reichstag, or national assembly, in Fritzlar in 919. Henry's power was only marginally greater than that of the other leaders of the stem duchies, which were the feudal expression of the former German tribes.

text: Henry's son King Otto I (r. 936–973) was able to defeat a revolt of the dukes supported by French King Louis IV (939). In 951, Otto marched into Italy and married the widowed Queen Adelaide, named himself king of the Lombards, and received homage from Berengar of Ivrea, king of Italy (r. 950-52). Otto named his relatives the new leaders of the stem duchies, but this approach didn't completely solve the problem of disloyalty. His son Liudolf, duke of Swabia, revolted and welcomed the Magyars into Germany (953). At Lechfeld, near Augsburg in Bavaria, Otto caught up with the Magyars while they were enjoying a razzia and achieved a signal victory in 955. The Magyars ceased living on plunder, and their leaders created a Christian kingdom called Hungary (1000).

text: Founding of the Holy Roman Empire[edit]

text: The defeat of the Magyars greatly enhanced Otto's prestige. He marched into Italy again and was crowned emperor (imperator augustus) by Pope John XII in Rome (962), an event that historians count as the founding of the Holy Roman Empire, although the term was not used until much later. The Ottonian state is also considered the first Reich, or German Empire. Otto used the imperial title without attaching it to any territory. He and later emperors thought of themselves as part of a continuous line of emperors that begins with Charlemagne. (Several of these "emperors" were simply local Italian magnates who bullied the pope into crowning them.) Otto deposed John XII for conspiring against him with Berengar, and he named Pope Leo VIII to replace him (963). Berengar was captured and taken to Germany. John was able to reverse the deposition after Otto left, but he died in the arms of his mistress soon afterwards.

text: Besides founding the German Empire, Otto's achievements include the creation of the "Ottonian church system," in which the clergy (the only literate section of the population) assumed the duties of an imperial civil service. He raised the papacy out of the muck of Rome's local gangster politics, assured that the position was competently filled, and gave it a dignity that allowed it to assume leadership of an international church.

text: Europe in 1000 CE[edit]

text: Speculation that the world would end in the year 1000 was confined to a few uneasy French monks.[46] Ordinary clerks used regnal years, i.e. the 4th year of the reign of Robert II (the Pious) of France. The use of the modern "anno domini" system of dating was confined to the Venerable Bede and other chroniclers of universal history.

text: Western Europe remained less developed compared to the Islamic world, with its vast network of caravan trade, or China, at this time the world's most populous empire under the Song Dynasty. Constantinople had a population of about 300,000, but Rome had a mere 35,000 and Paris 20,000.[47][48] By contrast, Córdoba, in Islamic Spain, at this time the world's largest city contained 450,000 inhabitants. The Vikings had a trade network in northern Europe, including a route connecting the Baltic to Constantinople through Russia, as did the Radhanites.

text: With nearly the entire nation freshly ravaged by the Vikings, England was in a desperate state. The long-suffering English later responded with a massacre of Danish settlers in 1002, leading to a round of reprisals and finally to Danish rule (1013), though England regained independence shortly after. But Christianization made rapid progress and proved itself the long-term solution to the problem of barbarian raiding. The territories of Scandinavia were soon to be fully Christianized Kingdoms: Denmark in the 10th century, Norway in the 11th, and Sweden, the country with the least raiding activity, in the 12th. Kievan Rus, recently converted to Orthodox Christianity, flourished as the largest state in Europe. Iceland and Hungary were both declared Christian about 1000 CE.

text: In Europe, a formalized institution of marriage was established.[49][50] North of Italy, where masonry construction was never extinguished, stone construction was replacing timber in important structures. Deforestation of the densely wooded continent was under way. The 10th century marked a return of urban life, with the Italian cities doubling in population. London, abandoned for many centuries, was again England's main economic centre by 1000. By 1000, Bruges and Ghent held regular trade fairs behind castle walls, a tentative return of economic life to western Europe.

text: In the culture of Europe, several features surfaced soon after 1000 that mark the end of the Early Middle Ages: the rise of the medieval communes, the reawakening of city life, and the appearance of the burgher class, the founding of the first universities, the rediscovery of Roman law, and the beginnings of vernacular literature.

text: In 1000, the papacy was firmly under the control of German Emperor Otto III, or "emperor of the world" as he styled himself. But later church reforms enhanced its independence and prestige: the Cluniac movement, the building of the first great Transalpine stone cathedrals and the collation of the mass of accumulated decretals into a formulated canon law.

text: Middle East[edit]

text: Rise of Islam[edit]

text: Consult particular article for details

text:
Area I : Muhammad
     Area II : Abu Bakr
     Area III : Omar
     Area IV : Uthman

text: (Andalusian city, Córdoba, Spain)

text: The rise of Islam begins around the time Muhammad and his followers took flight, the Hijra, to the city of Medina. Muhammad spent his last ten years in a series of battles to conquer the Arabian region. From 622 to 632, Muhammad as the leader of a Muslim community in Medina was engaged in a state of war with the Meccans. In the proceeding decades, the area of Basra was conquered by the Muslims. During the reign of Umar, the Muslim army found it a suitable place to construct a base. Later the area was settled and a mosque was erected. Madyan was conquered and settled by Muslims, but the environment was considered harsh and the settlers moved to Kufa. Umar defeated the rebellion of several Arab tribes in a successful campaign, unifying the entire Arabian peninsula and giving it stability. Under Uthman's leadership, the empire, through the Muslim conquest of Persia, expanded into Fars in 650, some areas of Khorasan in 651, and the conquest of Armenia was begun in the 640s. In this time, the Islamic empire extended over the whole Sassanid Persian Empire and to more than two-thirds of the Eastern Roman Empire. The First Fitna, or the First Islamic Civil War, lasted for the entirety of Ali ibn Abi Talib's reign. After the recorded peace treaty between with Hassan ibn Ali and the suppression of early Kharijites' disturbances, Muawiyah I acceded to the position of Caliph.

text: Islamic expansion[edit]

text:
Muhammad's conquests, 622–632

  Rashidun Caliphate, 632–661

  Umayyad Caliphate, 661–750

text: The Muslim conquests of the Eastern Roman Empire and Arab wars occurred between 634 and 750. Starting in 633, Muslims conquered Iraq. The Muslim conquest of Syria would begin in 634 and would be complete by 638. The Muslim conquest of Egypt started in 639. Before the Muslim invasion of Egypt began, the Eastern Roman Empire had already lost the Levant and its Arab ally, the Ghassanid Kingdom, to the Muslims. The Muslims would bring Alexandria under control and the fall of Egypt would be complete by 642. Between 647 and 709, Muslims swept across North Africa and established their authority over that region.

text: The Transoxiana region was conquered by Qutayba ibn Muslim between 706 and 715 and loosely held by the Umayyads from 715 to 738. This conquest was consolidated by Nasr ibn Sayyar between 738 and 740. It was under the Umayyads from 740-748 and under the Abbasids after 748. Sindh, attacked in 664, would be subjugated by 712. Sindh became the easternmost province of the Umayyad. The Umayyad conquest of Hispania (Visigothic Spain) would begin in 711 and end by 718. The Moors, under Al-Samh ibn Malik, swept up the Iberian peninsula and by 719 overran Septimania; the area would fall under their full control in 720. With the Islamic conquest of Persia, the Muslim subjugation of the Caucasus would take place between 711 and 750. The end of the sudden Islamic Caliphate expansion ended around this time. The final Islamic dominion eroded the areas of the Iron Age Roman Empire in the Middle East and controlled strategic areas of the Mediterranean.

text: At the end of the 8th century, the former Western Roman Empire was decentralized and overwhelmingly rural. The Islamic conquest and rule of Sicily and Malta was a process which started in the 9th century. Islamic rule over Sicily was effective from 902, and the complete rule of the island lasted from 965 until 1061. The Islamic presence on the Italian Peninsula was ephemeral and limited mostly to semi-permanent soldier camps.

text: Caliphs and empire[edit]

text: The Abbasid Caliphate, ruled by the Abbasid dynasty of caliphs, was the third of the Islamic caliphates. Under the Abbasids, the Islamic Golden Age philosophers, scientists, and engineers of the Islamic world contributed enormously to technology, both by preserving earlier traditions and by adding their own inventions and innovations. Scientific and intellectual achievements blossomed in the period.

text: The Abbasids built their capital in Baghdad after replacing the Umayyad caliphs from all but the Iberian peninsula. The influence held by Muslim merchants over African-Arabian and Arabian-Asian trade routes was tremendous. As a result, Islamic civilization grew and expanded on the basis of its merchant economy, in contrast to their Christian, Indian, and Chinese peers who built societies from an agricultural landholding nobility.

text: The Abbasids flourished for two centuries but slowly went into decline with the rise to power of the Turkish army they had created, the Mamluks. Within 150 years of gaining control of Persia, the caliphs were forced to cede power to local dynastic emirs who only nominally acknowledged their authority. After the Abbasids lost their military dominance, the Samanids (or Samanid Empire) rose up in Central Asia. The Sunni Islam empire was a Tajik state and had a Zoroastrian theocratic nobility. It was the next native Persian dynasty after the collapse of the Sassanid Persian empire, caused by the Arab conquest.

text: European timelines[edit]

text: Beginning years[edit]

text:
410: Visigoths under Alaric I sack Rome
430: Death of Saint Augustine
476: Odoacer deposes Romulus Augustus
496: Battle of Tolbiac, Clovis I converts to Catholicism
507: Battle of Vouillé
527–565: Justinian I
535–552: Gothic Wars
541–542: Plague of Justinian in Constantinople
547: death of Benedict of Nursia
c. 570: birth of Muhammad
590–604 Pope Gregory I
597: death of Columba
602–629: Last great Roman-Persian War
615: death of Columbanus
626: Joint Persian-Avar-Slav Siege of Constantinople
627: Byzantine Emperor Heraclius invites the Serbs to settle in the Balkans
632: death of Muhammad
636: death of Isidore of Seville
674–678: First Arab siege of Constantinople
681: First Bulgarian Empire established

text: Ending years[edit]

text:
7th century: Khazar empire established
711–718: Umayyad conquest of Hispania
717: Second Arab siege of Constantinople
721: death of Ardo, last king of the Visigoths
730: Byzantine Iconoclasm
732: Battle of Poitiers
735: death of Bede, British historian
746: Blood court at Cannstatt
751: Pepin the Short founds the Carolingian dynasty
754: death of Saint Boniface
768–814: Charlemagne
778: Battle of Roncevaux Pass
782: Bloody Verdict of Verden
793: first Viking raids
796–804: Alcuin initiates the Carolingian Renaissance[dubious – discuss]
815: Byzantine Iconoclasm
843: Treaty of Verdun
862: Rurikid Dynasty established
871–899: Alfred the Great
872–930: Harald I of Norway
882: Kievan Rus' established
911: Treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte (Normandy)
955: Battle of Lechfeld
962: Otto I crowned Holy Roman Emperor
969: Kievan Rus' subjugates Khazars
987–996: Hugh Capet
988: Christianization of Kievan Rus'
991: Battle of Maldon


document_title: Characters of Malcolm in the Middle

question_text: what disease does stevie from malcolm in the middle have

root

text: Characters of Malcolm in the Middle

text: Characters[edit]

text: This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (March 2014)

tag: table

text: Originally there were four brothers (although Malcolm's oldest brother attended a military school away from home, so Malcolm was still the middle sibling left at home). A fifth son was introduced in the show's fourth season, a boy named Jamie. The boys are, from eldest to youngest: Francis, Reese, Malcolm, Dewey, and Jamie. In the final episode, Lois discovered she was pregnant with a sixth child. In the third season, Francis travels home (to celebrate his father's birthday) with an Alaskan girl named Piama, and reveals that they are married.

tag: p

text: During the first season, the writers decided to keep the family's last name a mystery. In the fifth season episode "Reese Joins the Army (1)", Reese uses a fake ID by the name of "Jetson" to lie about his age. In the series finale, "Graduation", Francis' employee ID reads "Nolastname" (or "No Last Name", a joke referring to the fact that the family name was never spoken aloud). In the same episode when Malcolm was introduced to give the graduation speech, the speaker announces Malcolm's name, but microphone feedback makes his surname inaudible, even though he does appear to mouth the phrase "No last name".[1]

text: In the pilot episode, the name Wilkerson can be seen on the name badge of the uniform Francis is wearing at Marlin Academy. In the sleeve notes for the season 5 DVD released in Europe, the family is referred to as the Wilkersons in the description for the episode "Block Party". British television advertisements and some Fox promotional material also occasionally referred to the family as the Wilkersons, although this name was never spoken aloud in the series. In an early version of the pilot, Malcolm had an exchange of dialogue with a classmate, who claims to have overheard his parents talking about Malcolm's family and asks him what his last name is. When Malcolm responds, "Wilkerson, why?" the friend replied with the punchline, "Oh...who are the 'Pariahs'?"

text: Out of the show's six leads, Cranston, Muniz, Berfield and Sullivan were the only ones to appear in all 151 episodes.

text: Character Appearances[edit]

text:
Actor
Character
Season

1
2
3
4
5
6
7

Main characters

Jane Kaczmarek
Lois
Main

Bryan Cranston
Hal
Main

Christopher Masterson
Francis
Main
Recurring

Justin Berfield
Reese
Main

Erik Per Sullivan
Dewey
Main

Frankie Muniz
Malcolm
Main

James and Lukas Rodriguez
Jamie

Recurring
Main

Catherine Lloyd Burns
Caroline Miller
Main
Recurring

Recurring characters

Craig Lamar Traylor
Stevie Kenarban
Recurring

David Anthony Higgins
Craig Feldspar
Recurring

Gary Anthony Williams
Abe Kenarban
Recurring

Evan Matthew Cohen
Lloyd
Recurring

Kyle Sullivan
Dabney
Recurring

Daniel Von Bargen
Edwin Spangler
Recurring
Flashback

Will Jennings
Kyle
Recurring

Flashback

Drew Powell
Drew Horton
Recurring

Flashback

Arjay Smith
Ken Finley
Recurring

Flashback

Karim Prince
Stanley Winn
Recurring

Eric Nenninger
Eric Hansen
Guest
Recurring
Flashback

Merrin Dungey
Kitty Kenarban
Guest
Recurring
Guest

Guest

Kasan Butcher
Joe
Guest
Recurring

Flashback

Tania Raymonde
Cynthia

Recurring
Guest
Guest

Cloris Leachman
Ida

Guest
Recurring

Emy Coligado
Piama Tananahaakna

Recurring

Chris Eigeman
Lionel Herkabe

Recurring
Guest
Recurring

Victor Z. Isaac
Kevin

Recurring

Brenda Wehle
Lavernia

Recurring

Sandy Ward
Pete

Recurring

John Ennis
Artie

Recurring

Kenneth Mars
Otto Mannkusser

Recurring

Meagen Fay
Gretchen Mannkusser

Recurring

text: The Family[edit]

text: Hal[edit]

text: Hal, played by Bryan Cranston (all 151 episodes), is the father of the family. Though relaxed in his parenting when compared to Lois, Hal has shown that he can slide into a disciplinarian when confronted by the boys' bad behavior. He comes from a wealthy family who resent his choice to marry Lois over Susan (an action also shared by Victor and Ida). Hal has a hard time making good decisions, which he often deferred to Lois. Despite the fact many of the neighbors hate his family, Hal blends in well with them. He loves Lois more than she loves him, never even thinking about other women. He is also very scared of her, even more than the boys are, which is why he often bribes their sons to take the fall for his wrongdoings. He is very neurotic and has a slight obsessive-compulsive disorder, and also enjoys unusual hobbies. Hal is also a sex addict, this was revealed in the episode "Forbidden Girlfriend" when Lois is taking medication and is unable to have sex for an entire week, it is mentioned again in the episode "Poker 2" when Hal tells his friends he has sex 14 times per week. It was also revealed that Hal was a chain smoker before quitting the habit. Hal's best friend is Abe Kenarban.

text: Francis[edit]

text: Francis, played by Christopher Masterson (119 episodes), is the oldest of the brothers, whom Malcolm often looks up to. It is revealed in the episodes "Sleepover" and "The Bots and the Bees" in season one that Francis was a breech birth, and in "Flashback" in season 2, that Lois was in labor with him during her and Hal's wedding. A rebel from birth, showing signs of Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and Conduct Disorder, he was exiled to Marlin Academy by Lois for his behavior before eventually emancipating himself to run away from the Academy to work in Alaska, incurring his mother's wrath. Upon moving to Alaska, he marries a local woman named Piama, who is about one year older than him, and had previously been married briefly, and whom Lois doesn't like. In the series finale, Hal discovers that Francis has taken a job with Amerysis, and Francis admits he likes sitting at a desk sorting computer data. However, he also admits that he has no intentions of telling Lois about the job and enjoys torturing her by telling her that he's still unemployed.

text: Malcolm[edit]

text: Malcolm, portrayed by Frankie Muniz (150 episodes), is the protagonist of the series. He is Five years younger than his oldest brother Francis, one year younger than his older brother Reese, Four years older than his younger brother Dewey, and about 15 years older than his youngest brother Jamie. In the first episode of the series, he is discovered to be a child prodigy and immediately moved from his regular class into the 'Krelboynes', a class for gifted students. Despite his high intelligence, he still gets into mischief either alongside or working against his brothers (in particular, Reese), although he becomes more self-absorbed and egotistical in the later seasons as he goes through puberty. Malcolm, like Reese, is not very popular. However, he has had a number of girlfriends during the series run. Even though he is very intelligent, Malcolm has a short temper, can be easily manipulated and also has problems containing his opinion about himself. Malcolm also occasionally serves as the voice of reason, and does have a conscience, (for instance, despite emotionally manipulating a grieving Hal to buy him a car in the episode "Hal Grieves," when the time comes to make the purchase he finds he can't go through with it). In the series finale, it is revealed that Lois intended him to have a hard life, knowing that he is destined to assume the role of President of the United States; she wants him to remember where he came from to get there and try to help families like his own when he assumes the office. Malcolm eventually comes to terms with his future, after being unable to tell Lois he can't do it. In the series finale, Malcolm begins taking classes at Harvard University. Throughout the series, Malcolm frequently breaks the fourth wall and talks to the viewer about either the current situation or giving exposition about past events.

text: Lois[edit]

text: Lois, played by Jane Kaczmarek (146 episodes), is Francis, Reese, Malcolm, Dewey, and Jamie's angry and temperamental mother. She is an overbearing control freak despised by the neighbors to the point that they refuse to invite her to their gatherings, revealed in "Mono". Unlike Malcolm, Lois isn't bothered by it and tries her best to blend in with it. She was revealed to be a charming and a nurturing mother while Francis was little, but toughened up. She is also always stubbornly right, to the point of being unable to say that she was wrong. It was also shown that she is overbearing and mad as a result of her children's bad behavior, and not her pure hate. At the series finale, Lois is revealed to be pregnant with a sixth child (actually twins). Her unfairness and behavior also come from her miserable childhood, living with a tough mother and an uncaring father (both of whom favored her younger sister, Susan).

text: Reese[edit]

text: Reese, played by Justin Berfield (all 151 episodes), is the second oldest of the sons. He is two years younger than his older brother Francis, one year older than his younger brother Malcolm, six years older than his younger brother Dewey, and about 16 years older than his youngest brother Jamie. It was revealed in the episode "Flashback", in season 2, that Reese has been vicious from the womb, so vicious in fact that when he kept kicking Lois during labor, she pushed him out by force. A complete moron from birth, Reese is the worst-behaved of the brothers. Reese is inclined to beat up the Krelboynes. He is intimidated by certain students, including Ira, a dumb jock at school. Despite his violent, idiotic nature, Reese is a culinary prodigy, after finding that he has a talent and genuine love for cooking and baking. He is also the favorite grandson of his grandmother Ida, who taught him the importance of having patsies. In the series finale, Reese moves in with Craig Feldspar and is a janitor at his alma mater North High.

text: Dewey[edit]

text: Dewey, played by Erik Per Sullivan (all 151 episodes), is portrayed as being quieter and more inclined to the arts than his brothers. He soon finds he is a musical prodigy, and as the series goes on he becomes more caring and thoughtful especially in regards to his younger brother Jamie, whom he decides not to bully like he was by Malcolm and Reese. Lois remarks at one point that unlike Malcolm, who would have to work hard to achieve success, Dewey would have success handed to him. Dewey joins the Buseys, a class for the emotionally disturbed, by mistake and ends up becoming their unofficial teacher. He ended up caring for his fellow students so much that, when the mistake was uncovered, he feigned severe emotional problems so he could remain. In the final few seasons, Dewey becomes increasingly bitter towards his parents due to them overlooking him throughout his childhood and neglecting his interests. Because of this, he forces them to give Jamie the childhood he never had. In the last episode, he and Jamie (the only other remaining brother living at home) continued the tradition of causing havoc all over the house.

text: Jamie[edit]

text: Jamie was played by identical twin brothers James and Lukas Rodriguez (35 episodes). The youngest brother born who is the only brother to have beaten Lois in her own game, bordering to attacking her (though Reese was mostly responsible for feeding him soda). Like Malcolm and Dewey, Jamie is revealed to be intelligent, evident when he tricked Reese into taking a marker after he colored part of the wall.

text: Recurring characters[edit]

text: This section may need to be rewritten entirely to comply with Wikipedia's quality standards. You can help. The discussion page may contain suggestions. (March 2014)

text:
Stevie Kenarban, played by Craig Lamar Traylor (56 episodes), is Malcolm's best friend and classmate. He is wheelchair-bound and is missing a lung, requiring him to speak slowly and take deep breaths after saying a word. Though Malcolm is initially upset when Lois arranges a "playdate" for him and Stevie in the pilot episode, the boys immediately find common ground, particularly their love of comic books, and become friends. His parents are very overprotective of him, although Stevie displays in many episodes that he lives very comfortably with his disability and even has a dark sense of humor about it.
Craig Feldspar, portrayed by David Anthony Higgins (39 episodes), is Lois' co-worker at the Lucky Aide. He is a hopeless romantic, and has unrequited feelings for Lois. He is very childish and is a coward. He plays the ukulele and the banjo, and he sings in a countertenor voice. By the end of the series, Craig becomes Reese's roommate.
Piama Tananahaakna, played by Emy Coligado (29 episodes), is Francis' wife whom he met and married off-screen during his year in Alaska. Piama is about a year older than Francis, and before him, Piama had previously been married briefly. Primarily due to her being brought home under volatile circumstances, in which Francis (while still a minor, although emancipated) shocked the family with news of the marriage and thus disrupting Hal's birthday party, Lois disliked Piama from her introduction in the third season and into the fourth. However, after an embarrassing encounter with her wealthy in-law's, Lois has been much more respectful of Piama. She originally started off against having children, but by Graduation, Piama got over it after Reese's prank went awry ("We may as well go ahead and have kids now, I'm not afraid of changing diapers any more.")
Victor Welker and Ida Kenzel-Welker, played by Robert Loggia (1 episode) and Cloris Leachman (11 episodes) respectively, are Lois' parents of a Croatian background. Victor dies some time before the events of the season two episode "Christmas", in which Ida is widowed. Ida harbors a strong dislike for both Francis and Lois, evident for the way she has been treated by them. She favors Reese, which allows him to love her. Ida belittles Malcolm for being weak in not standing up against his mother and largely ignores Dewey (although she did, on one occasion, save him from being hit by a car, causing her to lose a leg). Ida harbored resentment towards Victor's secret other family for stealing what was rightfully hers, until Lois discovered that she isn't blood related to Victor (and possibly Susan as well) and abandoned Ida. Ida acknowledged that her life growing up in Croatia under the Ustaše was difficult, possibly due to the Ustaše's policies.
Abraham "Abe" Kenarban, played by Gary Anthony Williams (19 episodes), is Stevie's father and Kitty's husband, and a close family friend of both Lois and particularly Hal. Abe is initially depicted as cowardly and dependent on Kitty's guidance (which he attributes to his upbringing, having been raised by his grandmother and four spinster aunts). However he ultimately becomes more self-reliant after Kitty's departure. Despite this, Abe is more than willing to take Kitty back after her return, going as far as to harbor resentment towards Lois after she criticized Kitty's decision to leave.
Kitty Kenarban, played by Merrin Dungey (5 episodes), is Stevie's mother and Abe's wife. Because of actress Merrin Dungey's commitment to the ABC series Alias, Kitty remains unseen for much of the series before it is revealed that she abandoned her husband and son, briefly throwing Stevie into a deep depression. She returns briefly in the season six episode "Kitty's Back".
Caroline Miller, played by Catherine Lloyd Burns (15 episodes), is the primary teacher of Malcolm's "Krelboyne" class in the first two seasons. She is shown to be overly-earnest as well as to adore Malcolm, who might possibly have been her favorite student. In season 1, she is included as part of the main cast, but in season 2, is a recurring character. In season 2, she is shown to be pregnant until she gives birth to her baby in the parking lot. After her baby was born, she quit teaching. She was never seen or mentioned again after season 2.
Cynthia Sanders, played by Tania Raymonde (4 episodes), is one of Malcolm's classmates. She has a very extensive vocabulary, but has a difficult time making friends. Depicted as relatively cheerful, Cynthia becomes one of Malcolm's earliest crushes on the show, although a relationship never develops. Cynthia is last seen claiming to never have sex with Malcolm again (which never happened in the first place) to snap him out of a recent funk and keep him from pulling a prank meant to get him sent away like Francis.
Lloyd Jensen, played by Evan Matthew Cohen (25 episodes) is one of Malcolm's "Krelboyne" classmates who recurs throughout the series. He frequently worries about random small things, gets hurt, and falls victim to bullies. He also has an effeminate personality.
Dabney Hooper, played by Kyle Sullivan (24 episodes) is one of Malcolm's "Krelboyne" classmates who recurs throughout the series. Often depicted as the weakest and most cowardly of the group, Dabney's life is almost completely controlled by his overbearing mother, although in his last appearance his ability to release his anger towards his mom results in him immediately developing a tougher persona.
Flora Mayesh, played by Kristin Quick (15 episodes), is one of Malcolm's other "Krelboyne" classmates. Flora was mostly just a background character and rarely had dialogue and was therefore not in the credits for 12 of her episodes.
Eraserhead, played by Will Jennings (12 episodes), is one of Malcolm's "Krelboyne" classmates who recurs throughout early episodes of the series.
Kevin, played by Victor Z. Isaac (5 episodes)
Jessica, played by Hayden Panettiere (4 episodes), is a classmate of Malcolm and Reese's. In one instance, she babysat Malcolm and Reese despite being younger than them, embarrassing the brothers.
Mr. Herkabe (first name Lionel), played by Chris Eigeman (8 episodes), is introduced in Season 3 as the Krelboynes' teacher after Caroline leaves. A Krelboyne himself in middle school, he was forced into a teaching career after losing his millions in a failed dot-com company. He is portrayed as an evil and conniving man who thrives on psychological warfare and making children suffer. He is especially threatened by Malcolm and quickly becomes his nemesis at school, even blackmailing North High's principal, Block (before Hodges took over), into hiring him as vice principal when Malcolm enrolls there. For some reason Mr. Herkabe also intensely enjoys humiliating Reese to antagonize Malcolm more. However, Herkabe's arrogance in confessing that he had failed gym and lied about not taking the course, was brought to light that led to his GPA Award being revoked by Mr. Hodges. He was last seen being humiliated by Reese during dodgeball.
Commandant Edwin Spangler, played by Daniel von Bargen (16 episodes), is the military veteran in charge of the cadets at Marlin Academy. He has a contentious relationship with the rebellious Francis throughout his entire stay at the Academy, although the two were shown at times to have a deep sympathy for the other's emotional scarring. After Spangler is fired from Marlin Academy and arrives in Alaska, Francis gets him a job at the Snow Haven Retirement Home where he has free rein to bully the elderly.
Cadet Eric Hansen, played by Eric Nenninger (28 episodes), one of Francis' friends and classmates from Marlin Academy. Francis accompanies Eric in his plan to abandon the Academy to find well-paying labor work in Alaska. At the end of season three, Eric is seen for the final time being left by Francis to hitchhike home, possibly as revenge for even suggesting to find work in Alaska.
Lavernia, played by Brenda Wehle (10 episodes), is Francis and Eric's malevolent boss who owns the logging site in Alaska. She has a debt book and presumably knows every dirty secret about her workers. Lavernia has a personal grudge towards Piama, who blackmailed her to be nice to Francis by holding her pet parakeet hostage.
Otto Mankusser, played by Kenneth Mars (13 episodes), is Francis' friendly and cheerful boss at the dude ranch, albeit a bit naïve at times.
Ed, played by Paul Wilson (5 episodes), is one of the many neighbors who despises Hal and Lois, along with Reese. He has shown some favoritism towards Malcolm for helping him set up his new computer.
Ira Prescott, played by Jonny Acker (3 episodes), is a student of North High School. He is Billy's older brother and Reese's bully. Ira made his first appearance in "Forbidden Girlfriend" in which he owns a car which Reese ruins by using Dewey in pouring cement in it and letting Billy take the blame for the prank. With Dewey's help, Ira got his revenge on Reese for his prank and using Billy by simply beating him up. He returns briefly in Season 5's "Malcolm Films Reese" who is among the students in humiliation and in Reese's Apartment when Malcolm is tutoring Ira and help get him a passing grade in his classes so he can keep his spot on the North High School sports team(which is never specified). Unlike Reese, Ira has more respect for Malcolm.

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