Post-Roman Europe and Feudalism Overview

With the withdrawal of the Roman Empire to the Far East, centering on the capital over in Byzantium, Europe bends up basically out on its own. In a lot of ways, Europe was deeply reliant. I mean, everyone was reliant on the Roman Empire. Perhaps the worst blow, though, is the fact that the Roman soldiers no longer act as a police force. Without a police force, the government falls apart simply because there's no one to enforce the laws anymore. So basically the laws mean, well, Nothing. To make matters worse, the food stops coming and Europe is stuck in a position where it has to figure out how to grow food. Something it hasn't done to feed its own people in hundreds of years in any real way. Not only that, the farms in Europe, certainly people have been farming. It's not like no one in Europe has been farming. It's just that the farms in Europe were in no way adequate to support the number of people who were living in that region. It wasn't as much of a worry because food supplies arrived regularly from the other side of the Mediterranean. All of that's gone. In the world after the Roman Empire in Europe, things gradually break down from unified countries and areas to incredibly localized and parochial regions. Education slips to a point where scholars estimate approximately one out of every hundred people would have been able to read and write at even a minimal level. There's a lot we don't know about the 100 to 150 years after the Roman Empire withdraws to Byzantium. What we do know, we honestly gather mostly from examining bodies, forensic archaeology, and from getting church records, which are of course not exactly wonderful. And it'd be partially because, well, they're spotty. They don't cover everybody. They're spotty. We don't have a lot of the church records. I mean, they were lost. It's almost a thousand years ago. We don't have that information. And, well, third of all, those records record a lot of local activity in villages so small, so isolated. Most people in the village don't even use last names. So, great. This is the, you know, 16th Engelbert were born this month. Like, that helps. What we do know about life from about 500 to 768 CE is that we are pretty sure it was brutal, chaotic, and short. Now, again, we get a lot of this from digging up bodies, digging up graves, looking at the condition of the bodies. We know that there's a lot of infant mortality. Scholars estimate, and again I'm going to keep saying this over and over again, our records are extremely minimal. We're guessing on a lot of things. But from what we can tell, experts guess that infant mortality rates are somewhere between 40 and 50 percent, which is absolutely horrifying. That means that almost, not quite, but almost half of the children who are born die somewhere before the age of three. This skews life expectancies brutally. We have guessed the average life expectancy for males is around 35. Now, again, remember that almost half of your population is dying before the age of three. So if you're looking at statistics, that's going to skew your age lower, obviously. There are a lot of men who live beyond 35. It's not that everyone gets to 35 and dies. It's just a large chunk of your population is dying very young. Women's life expectancy is almost 10 years lower, around 25, simply because with so many children dying young, and the need in culture for a male child to survive because only male children could inherit you needed a boy to inherit women were expected to produce many children knowing that you were only going to have about half of them survive women were expected to produce a child a year which of course takes its toll and especially because in this time period medical care is extremely minimal We believe that women tend to die younger from men. A lot of the exhumations, a lot of the bodies we found, the women seem to have died in childbirth or complications from childbirth. Again, based on the bodies we found, malnutrition is brutal here. Most of the food, the reliance was on imported food from the outside under the Roman Empire. With the Roman Empire withdrawing, we know that farming is a constant struggle. Scholars estimate that most people in Europe, lower class people, not the wealthy, the people who actually are trying to run the system, your politicians, your governors, most poor people, we estimate, have meat in their diet around twice a year. malnutrition is a serious problem. Average height for the bodies we find the men is between 5'2 and about 5'5. They're extremely short and that's not genetics, that's severe malnutrition. The reason that they don't have a lot of meat in their diet is not because they're going all vegan and gluten free, it's actually because they don't have access to that material. They can't survive very well. Most of Europe, and again we're estimating from minimal records, it's very sketchy, We believe most of Europe becomes farmers. A number of years ago, I was teaching this in one of my face-to-face classes, and I was talking about how brutal things were, how difficult it was, the fact that a lot of the bodies that we find are actually killed. They die by violence, not by natural causes. And I talked about the threat, how localized everyone was, that, you know, most people don't travel. They stay in their home village because it's extremely dangerous to go out and travel. without the Roman military protecting people anymore. It is worth your life to go travel. We know from the few records we have and some of the stories that come down to us, fictional stories, warning stories, what to do, what not to do. We know cannibalism is actually a concern here because food is so scarce. It's actually a worry for people. And I talked about how people just, you know, tried to survive any way they could. And one of my students was like, Sue, it's like the zombie apocalypse. And I laughed and went, yeah. And then I stopped and thought about it. And I'm like, yeah, actually, you know, without the zombie virus, yeah, this is total post-apoc. I mean, life is brutal and short. Everything is about survival. Leaving your town means leaving the only people who know who you are. No one has ID cards here. If you go traveling, you're risking your life. There are bandits, there are mercenaries, there are people who will kill you casually for any property you have, for your clothes. If you're not strong, you are prey. And cannibalism is a threat. When the Roman Empire leaves, people gradually run out of food. I mean, think about it here. Think about what would happen to us if we stopped shipping and transporting food. If you check the grocery store, most of the labels on the grocery store food that we have... Most of those foodstuffs are actually brought in from outside. What if all the shipping stopped? What if we were forced to rely only on local food? Well, first of all, I mean, we'd raid all our grocery stores and all our access points. And then once we'd robbed everything, well, we'd be reduced to raiding the garden center and learning how to grow food for ourselves. Ultimately, that's what Europe finds itself doing. So what we believe about Europe at this point is the fact that somewhere around 70%, possibly as high as 80% of people, become farmers. Not because they really love plants and they want to become farmers, but because, well, they like to eat. And considering that the food from the Roman Empire is no longer coming across the Mediterranean Sea, from Turkey, from Egypt, from their primary food suppliers, their bread baskets, essentially, people have to do what they need to do to survive, and quite frequently that's essentially farming. These people become dirt farmers working to survive to get enough food for themselves and their families to eat. Now, if that's like, you know, somewhere around three quarters of the population, what happens to everybody the other percentage? Well, actually, we believe that that percentage, well, they don't feel like farming, so they kind of beat up the farmers and take their food. We believe a lot of them probably become mercenaries. Farmers live a very dangerous life. Again, exhuming. forensic archaeology, we find that almost half of the bodies die either violent deaths or deaths from sudden disease. So essentially, we believe that a lot of these farmers are constantly at risk from attacks from mercenaries and from falling suddenly and devastatingly ill. Now, those mercenaries, they sweep in, they take food, and we believe they may in fact often kill the farmers, which if you stop and actually think it through like an intelligent person is an exceedingly stupid idea. If you kill the person who's growing the food, they're not going to grow any more food. We think eventually somebody figures this out and they go into a protection racket. Basically they offer to protect the farmers and their fields, to not let anybody sweep in and hurt them, if in exchange the farmers will give them a percentage of the food. Now, that may not sound like a great deal until you realize that the person who's making the deal, or at least offering the deal, is someone on a large horse with large weapons. Yeah, like that. Now, basically you say yes or you're running the risk of getting killed. However, we believe that some of these guys who are working this protection racket have really good intentions and they do keep their promises, they do protect the farmers, and it's good for just about everyone all the way around. Eventually, over the next 100 to 150 years, those protectors, those guys who are working the protection racket, are gradually and slowly going to become known. as what you and I would call knights. Now again, they don't start this way. It starts out as a protection in exchange for food, but eventually those knights begin doing this to protect those who need protection, and they get the benefit of getting a percentage of the crops, a percentage of the food out of it. It works out well for both parties. It's a matter of protecting the land, giving up food, giving up the profits of the land in exchange for protection. The problem is that those protectors, those knights, are not going to have clearly defined areas of protection. They're going to overlap. They're going to fight each other over who's protecting whom. And eventually, someone decides that those knights need management. Now, again, over the next 100 to 150 years, this kind of slipshod protection that we don't know where it starts, we don't have the records, gradually over time, it is going to become what you and I would call nobility. And in some cases, that... management is also provided by church officers. Now, these nobles essentially act as managers for the knights. They promise protection for the knights, and they promise to look after the knight's interests to make sure that everything is divided evenly, that each knight gets a variety of crops from different farms, that their group of knights are protecting for their nobility. In exchange, the knights promise their loyalty. They promise to not hold back, to share equally, to serve and protect the interests of their nobility. This verbal contract, this promise of loyalty and protection, is what is known as fealty. And this is what holds the system together. Now initially, like I said, this starts out as simply a matter of necessity. Survival, protection, protecting the land, protecting the crops, in exchange for food, for survival. But over time, this system becomes more and more formal, more and more codified and accepted. and gradually over time it becomes what we call the feudal system the feudal system is essentially this big pyramid scheme of protection it is specifically based on land this society is what we call an agrarian society it is all based on land property and farming now in this agrarian society the largest percentage of people are still going to be your peasants they're going to be your farmers they are essentially the backbone of the system they work the land they grow the crops Above them, a smaller number are going to be your protectors, your knights. Now, again, this system is based on two things. It's based on land, and it's based on protection or fealty. Now, the knights protect the peasants in exchange for a percentage of the crops. Above that are your church and nobility, who are your protectors for your knights. They're your management. The knights wear loyalty or fealty to them in exchange for their protection. And ultimately, you're going to end up with a king. In many cases, the king is not the kind of king you're thinking of, not like movies and stuff and shining armor in a castle. These are very small, very local managers because everything at this point in history is extremely local. Everything is, I mean, we estimate, we believe that in the early Middle Ages, some of the kingdoms, so-called, in France are like the size of like Pasco County. I mean, they're very, very small regional districts. This system is... the only organization there is and it's tough it's brutal it's based on land and protection people miss the good old days now you should know by now there never really were good old days but we always look back at times before ours and think they were better they're longing for order they're longing for stability they remember the days of the roman empire and they wish they could go back to something that organized and stable they want a real king someone who's going to bring back nationhood in a lot of ways We see that in the very few pieces of writing that we have from this time period. One of those pieces of writing that tells us a lot about the way they think, about the way they think the world works, is a history book by a monk named Gregory of Tours. Now, monks are pretty much the only people who can read and write at this point in history. It's very basic. There's a very low literacy rate. I mentioned that before. We think about, you know, one out of every hundred people or so can actually read and write at all. The few that can are usually monks, and Gregory is one of those. Gregory writes of a history book called History of the Franks, which may possibly be one of the worst history books ever written. It is terrible. You can get it free online. I highly recommend it for insomnia. It is really good for putting you to sleep. So why is it like in the presentation? Why am I even mentioning it if it's that bad? Well, mostly because this is like the only history book we have from the early Middle Ages. I keep saying our records are really spotty. We don't have a lot of evidence. This is one of the only records we have. And let me tell you, you can be important if you suck, but you're still the only game in town. And that's exactly what the history of the Franks is. Now, Gregory of Tours is a history of the Frankish nation. And Gregory is a lousy historian. He's terrible. Most scholars politely call him a credulous source, which basically translates to Gregory will believe absolutely anything he's told if it fits in with his view of the world. I mean, you know, your uncle's brother's cousin's first nephew, twice removed, saw a statue move once. So Gregory's like, dude, it was totally true. It was in a church. I'm a monk. I mean, it is really a not necessarily very historical history. However, it does tell us some really useful information about the way people see the world. That's not history, that's culture. And Gregory's account of the French people, that would be the Franks. No, no, it's not hot dogs. Don't pick that multiple choice answer on your quiz. Gregory's history of the Franks basically tells a story of the French people the way he sees them, not necessarily the way they really are. What it tells us is that people in the Middle Ages are superstitious. They're scared of everything. They believe that God, like, miraculously helps people who do good things and, like, nukes people who do bad things. There's an entire story about a bunch of mercenaries who rob a church and get struck by lightning. And according to Gregory, that's totally because they just made God mad. They robbed God's church, so God just phew, sukes him with lightning. The big thing it tells us, though, more than anything else, is exactly how desperate people like Gregory are to have order, to have stability, to have something that represents a real country, an identity, apart from... These tiny little kinglets, these tiny little countries that are constantly at war with one another. Gregory is desperately looking for stability. And he's looking for authority. Now, in Gregory's history of the Franks, a lot of that authority comes from a connection to the past. In the history of Franks, he actually traces the history of the newest kinglet, a guy that Gregory has great hope in. He's named Clovis. No, no one's ever heard of him. It's okay. It's just Gregory's desperate desire for order out of chaos. and gregory puts a huge amount of emphasis um on on connection to religion i mean gregory actually traces the rise of clovis and the all the way back from adam and eve no i'm not kidding the book starts with adam and eve and from the bible traces the whole bible history through jesus to the first missionaries coming to france and then traces those missionaries to the crowning of his king clovis he does connect everything to religion and religious beliefs And you can say, well, Gregory's a monk and he's just a close-minded jerkwad and of course, ooh, ah, religion. But guys, there's a lot to it more than that. There's something we don't realize today and there's something we don't really think about that much today. You've got to think, these people were under the control of the Roman government for almost a thousand years. They're so used to it, they don't think of anything else. I mean, come on, the United States, we've been around for what? Like about, not quite, 250 years? And we can't think of our government being anything different because we're so used to the way that things run. We are accustomed to our world and our power system being the way it is. For the people in Europe, they had like 500 to 800 years of the Roman government. It was status quo. Everyone knew how things worked until they didn't work that way anymore. Rome rules the world. It is the way things are. They control an area roughly the size of the United States for centuries. And everyone knows how things work. They're used to money working the same one way. They're used to government working one way. They're used to food being shipped across the Mediterranean like it always has been. They're used to, yeah, corruption, but they know how the government works. They know how the system works. And then? Then the Roman government decides that all those barbarian invasions are too much. And they decide to withdraw to the area around Byzantium, around Constantinople, effectively abandoning Europe. Europe loses everything. They lose their government, their financial system, their police force, their ability to travel, their news and information sources. Everything falls apart and nothing's the same. Everything's gone. Except one thing. When Constantine... reached out to Christianity, making Christianity legal with the Edict of Milan, he actually sets up an organizational structure within the Christian church. That's a big part of what the Council of Nicaea was about. That organizational structure doesn't leave. When everything else goes away under the Roman Empire, when Rome withdraws and leaves Europe on its own high and dry, the only thing that doesn't dissolve, the only thing that doesn't go away, is the structure of the Christian church. And that structure is very different than what you and I think of today. That structure actually represents not just religion, religion, religion. It's their social safety net. The church. The church is a hospital. When you get sick and you don't know what to do, you don't go to a doctor like we do today. You go to the church. They're the only educated people around. They probably know more about medicine and taking care of people than anyone else does, and they're willing to do it because they believe it is morally right. It's what their god tells them to do. They provide mental health care. They take care of people who are mentally ill when no one else will. Why? Because it's their moral duty. They provide welfare, not the government. Oh, that was ace. He was just outside digging. He's very excited. That was a big earthwap and lots of panting. If you heard something weird, just the dog. Don't worry about it. They believe that basically their job is to take care of the sick, the poor. The government doesn't do that. That's a recently new invention for us. They don't have a government that takes care of those people in need. That is all the church. So the church is not just this religious thing that teaches them to worship. Yes, worshiping God is part of it. But part of their worship of God is also taking care of the poor, the sick. People give money because the church does that for them. The church is their social stability. It is the thing that's left over from the Roman Empire, and it is one of the things that takes care of the people in need in their society. They cling to it because it is the only organizational structure they have. Now, order is finally going to return to Europe in the political sphere as well. And it actually happens with a French king. A French king named Charles the Great, or as they would say in French and the way we know him, Charlemagne. Now, Charlemagne's a really big deal, guys. They don't know that when he's born. If you'll notice, Charlemagne is actually born during the early Middle Ages when everything is really chaotic and localized. We don't even have a definite birth date for him. They don't know exactly when he was born because nobody writes it down because, oh, look, another baby. It's probably going to die. Don't worry about it. However, as Charlemagne grows up, as he becomes a man, Charlemagne is a brilliant guy with a wonderful political mind. Now, if you think like the way the people in the Middle Ages do, it's obvious that Charlemagne is going to be important. We actually have a physical description of him from his secretary that's at the bottom of the slide there. His court secretary, who has an awesome name, his name is Egan Hart. He actually writes that King Charlemagne was six feet four and built to scale. That means he's a big dude all over. He's built to be six foot four. He's built like a linebacker. He had beautiful white hair, animated eyes, a powerful nose, and a presence, quote, always stately and dignified. Charlemagne is a big dude and a man of character. Now if you have someone doing the Middle Ages, they tell you that that size tells you that God knows he's important. God makes him big so you'll notice him! Yeah, well, they don't really do science, guys, so like, you know, most people are malnourished and 5'3", 5'4", and this 6'4 guy walks in a room and you're like, whoa, God bless that dude. Charlemagne is a mighty warrior. He's good both in close combat and in ranged combat. He's brilliant. He speaks at least six languages that we know of. He also has an almost perfect memory. He can recite back something that is read to him almost perfectly. And Charlemagne. Charlemagne is the guy who's smart enough to bring back order to Europe. Charlemagne becomes a legendary figure. They write poems about him. There's a poem you'll take a quiz on called The Song of Roland that basically shows how mighty Charlemagne is and how Charlemagne is given to Europe by the will of God to restore order and bring back the greatness of the good old days. Now Charlemagne, the first thing that Charlemagne does is he looks at this extremely localized system with very small governments all fighting one another and Charlemagne says, no, no, no, no, no. Charlemagne says, look guys, you've got the feudal system. It's based on land and protection. You know, but all you guys, you little kinglets, you little tiny kings, you're all fighting each other over tiny areas of land. That's stupid. We can improve on this. Charlemagne begins basically promoting the idea that the feudal system would work better if everyone got organized, and he actually became the CEO of the feudal system in Europe. He manages it. He begins unifying these small kingdoms, bringing them together underneath his control, until he has unified the entire area in the center of Europe, renaming it the Carolingian Empire. He then begins to continue expanding this organization of the feudal system until he owns the northern part of Italy, including Rome, allowing himself to be called a Roman emperor. He's bringing back order out of the chaos, and he believes he is actually on a God-given mission to bring back and reorganize this land, to bring back some of the order of the glory days of the Roman Empire. And he begins bringing people together, unifying them, restoring organization in large areas of land. He believes he is on a mission from God to restore that order and that belief. is reflected in the stories and legends told about Charlemagne. Now, Charlemagne does the same thing that leaders and powerful kings have been doing since all the way back in the ancient world. Just like Sargon all the way back in Mesopotamia, Charlemagne begins having art created of himself. The art is very silly. For example, this is actually a statue of Charlemagne that he has made of himself. It's silly. The horse is, like, totally the wrong size for the dude. In fact, we believe the horse was actually a sculpture from ancient Rome that somebody, like, found, and they made a statue of Charlemagne and, like, stuck it on top of it. But the point is the same. Basically, this is Charlemagne proving that he has the power and authority to run the country. He has this sense of stability and authority that's different than what other kings before him had. He is truly a great leader, a real emperor, like there was back in the Roman days. And he's proving that he has the stability, the money, and the power by having artworks created honoring him. Now, Charlemagne has a goal here. He's not just doing this for his own power. Charlemagne has a dream. His dream is to make Europe an international power, like it used to be. Something that is great and respected. Now, that's a tall order. because for over a century europe has essentially been the redneck cousins nobody talks about very small very localized not a lot of trade people don't travel their system is just based on land ownership and protection there is no great organization no leadership charlemagne sees himself as that leadership and he wants to go out and prove that europe can be an international power competing with the other two major international powers of his time those two international powers of the byzantine empire what's left of the ancient Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, which as you can see is largely located in what today we would call Greece and Turkey, and the Islamic Empire, a newcomer to the scene, which has conquered much of the rest of what used to be the Roman Empire, including what we today would call the Middle East and the northern coast of Africa. Both the Byzantine Empire and the Islamic Empire are international powers, cultured, educated, and Charlemagne really wants to compete with them. It's not easy. He's got a long way to come. He's working, trying to organize a system that has been local for over 100 years, dealing with people who are ignorant and uneducated, and trying to create a system that has diplomats that can go negotiate trade agreements with cultivated, educated societies. And it's an uphill fight. Charlemagne realizes that, number one, he's managed to organize people. He's created a stable political system. That's step one. He is a real king. He actually calls himself the new Holy Roman Emperor. But he's also got to have diplomats, trade negotiators, people he can send out. And that's a problem because, well, he doesn't have a lot of literate people. So Charlemagne actually imports teachers from the Middle East. He sets up schools to train his diplomats and his trade negotiators. Now, let me be very clear. This is so not a public education system. Not just anyone gets educated, in fact very few people get educated. Only the people that Charlemagne believes really need an education actually receive this education. This education is very broad and very general. It's what we call a liberal arts education. Essentially, it's training in a wide variety of different things. The liberal arts education focuses on two general areas, what we would call the arts and the sciences. The arts are taught in what we call the trivium, three different things, grammar, rhetoric, and dialect. Now, let me really quickly tell you what those three things are and why they're being taught in the liberal arts education. The first of those three things is grammar, because essentially the people in Europe speak one language. Charlemagne's diplomats and trade negotiators would be speaking Frankish, an early form of French, but they're expected to write in the formal language of Europe. That would be Latin. So basically they're writing a different language than they're speaking. That's why they need to be taught grammar so they understand how to write in a language they've never spoken in their lives. They're also taught rhetoric. Now, rhetoric is dialect, public speaking, basically. It's argument, debate, public debate, which is really important if you're sending someone off to negotiate a treaty because they're going to need to be able to speak, to debate, to be able to wow people with their charisma and verbal prowess. The third is dialect. Dialect is essentially knowing how people say things in different parts of the world so you can speak clearly no matter who you're talking to and not cause any kind of offense. On the other side of the education are your sciences and maths, that's called the quadrivium, that's broken down into arithmetic and geometry. Again, basic math skills, that's really good if you're negotiating a trade agreement, you need to know if you're getting ripped off, and that kind of requires math. They also teach astronomy, both as a way of knowing where you're located, navigation, astronomy is the GPS of the medieval period. Also, it's a matter of education, being able to recognize stars, constellations, and music. Now, music may seem a weird choice to be on the math and science side, but if you play music or read music, you know that there's a lot of math actually involved in music, so it fits on that side. Now this is a very broad curriculum. One of my other classes they asked me, well do I choose which thing I take? No, no, no, no, you got to take them all. This is a very broad curriculum. It's intended to prepare you for anything that you encounter when you're out on a trade negotiation or a diplomatic mission. Charlemagne wants his people to be broadly educated. These people are getting a secular education, a non-religious education, so they can go out and serve the government. Essentially, these few special hand-picked people who get this education are going to be some of the only literate people in Europe. Other than them, most people who can read and write are actually going to be monks. And honestly, it's the monks who actually preserve a lot of the information. Charlemagne's liberal art schools, they teach people that information, but they don't preserve it or try to pass it down. One of the greatest contributions that monks make to medieval society is actually copying books. They actually preserve information, make copies of it, so that it can be remembered for later generations and or traded between monasteries. That information that is lost when literacy goes through the floor, the monasteries are the ones who preserve it, largely by creating books. The books they create are spectacular. You'll learn more about those in your quizzes. Many of these books are known as illuminated manuscripts, and essentially, they're not just about words. they're also about beautiful decorations, texts that help people to understand the words by providing pictures, and pictures that inform and heighten people's experience. In religious texts, they provide extra information in a way of honoring and worshiping God through the beautiful images along with the words. Those books are bound into spectacular covers that are as beautiful as the illustrations inside them. Those books actually represent one of the two great forms of art created during the medieval period. And that's why I want you to go a little bit more in depth and learn about those books and why they are, in point of fact, works of art in their own right.

So basically the laws mean, well, Nothing. To make matters worse, the food stops coming and Europe is stuck in a position where it has to figure out how to grow food. Something it hasn't done to feed its own people in hundreds of years in any real way.

Not only that, the farms in Europe, certainly people have been farming. It's not like no one in Europe has been farming. It's just that the farms in Europe were in no way adequate to support the number of people who were living in that region. It wasn't as much of a worry because food supplies arrived regularly from the other side of the Mediterranean.

All of that's gone. In the world after the Roman Empire in Europe, things gradually break down from unified countries and areas to incredibly localized and parochial regions. Education slips to a point where scholars estimate approximately one out of every hundred people would have been able to read and write at even a minimal level. There's a lot we don't know about the 100 to 150 years after the Roman Empire withdraws to Byzantium.

What we do know, we honestly gather mostly from examining bodies, forensic archaeology, and from getting church records, which are of course not exactly wonderful. And it'd be partially because, well, they're spotty. They don't cover everybody.

They're spotty. We don't have a lot of the church records. I mean, they were lost.

It's almost a thousand years ago. We don't have that information. And, well, third of all, those records record a lot of local activity in villages so small, so isolated. Most people in the village don't even use last names. So, great.

This is the, you know, 16th Engelbert were born this month. Like, that helps. What we do know about life from about 500 to 768 CE is that we are pretty sure it was brutal, chaotic, and short.

Now, again, we get a lot of this from digging up bodies, digging up graves, looking at the condition of the bodies. We know that there's a lot of infant mortality. Scholars estimate, and again I'm going to keep saying this over and over again, our records are extremely minimal.

We're guessing on a lot of things. But from what we can tell, experts guess that infant mortality rates are somewhere between 40 and 50 percent, which is absolutely horrifying. That means that almost, not quite, but almost half of the children who are born die somewhere before the age of three.

This skews life expectancies brutally. We have guessed the average life expectancy for males is around 35. Now, again, remember that almost half of your population is dying before the age of three. So if you're looking at statistics, that's going to skew your age lower, obviously.

There are a lot of men who live beyond 35. It's not that everyone gets to 35 and dies. It's just a large chunk of your population is dying very young. Women's life expectancy is almost 10 years lower, around 25, simply because with so many children dying young, and the need in culture for a male child to survive because only male children could inherit you needed a boy to inherit women were expected to produce many children knowing that you were only going to have about half of them survive women were expected to produce a child a year which of course takes its toll and especially because in this time period medical care is extremely minimal We believe that women tend to die younger from men. A lot of the exhumations, a lot of the bodies we found, the women seem to have died in childbirth or complications from childbirth. Again, based on the bodies we found, malnutrition is brutal here.

Most of the food, the reliance was on imported food from the outside under the Roman Empire. With the Roman Empire withdrawing, we know that farming is a constant struggle. Scholars estimate that most people in Europe, lower class people, not the wealthy, the people who actually are trying to run the system, your politicians, your governors, most poor people, we estimate, have meat in their diet around twice a year.

malnutrition is a serious problem. Average height for the bodies we find the men is between 5'2 and about 5'5. They're extremely short and that's not genetics, that's severe malnutrition. The reason that they don't have a lot of meat in their diet is not because they're going all vegan and gluten free, it's actually because they don't have access to that material. They can't survive very well.

Most of Europe, and again we're estimating from minimal records, it's very sketchy, We believe most of Europe becomes farmers. A number of years ago, I was teaching this in one of my face-to-face classes, and I was talking about how brutal things were, how difficult it was, the fact that a lot of the bodies that we find are actually killed. They die by violence, not by natural causes. And I talked about the threat, how localized everyone was, that, you know, most people don't travel. They stay in their home village because it's extremely dangerous to go out and travel.

without the Roman military protecting people anymore. It is worth your life to go travel. We know from the few records we have and some of the stories that come down to us, fictional stories, warning stories, what to do, what not to do.

We know cannibalism is actually a concern here because food is so scarce. It's actually a worry for people. And I talked about how people just, you know, tried to survive any way they could.

And one of my students was like, Sue, it's like the zombie apocalypse. And I laughed and went, yeah. And then I stopped and thought about it.

And I'm like, yeah, actually, you know, without the zombie virus, yeah, this is total post-apoc. I mean, life is brutal and short. Everything is about survival. Leaving your town means leaving the only people who know who you are.

No one has ID cards here. If you go traveling, you're risking your life. There are bandits, there are mercenaries, there are people who will kill you casually for any property you have, for your clothes. If you're not strong, you are prey.

And cannibalism is a threat. When the Roman Empire leaves, people gradually run out of food. I mean, think about it here. Think about what would happen to us if we stopped shipping and transporting food. If you check the grocery store, most of the labels on the grocery store food that we have...

Most of those foodstuffs are actually brought in from outside. What if all the shipping stopped? What if we were forced to rely only on local food?

Well, first of all, I mean, we'd raid all our grocery stores and all our access points. And then once we'd robbed everything, well, we'd be reduced to raiding the garden center and learning how to grow food for ourselves. Ultimately, that's what Europe finds itself doing. So what we believe about Europe at this point is the fact that somewhere around 70%, possibly as high as 80% of people, become farmers.

Not because they really love plants and they want to become farmers, but because, well, they like to eat. And considering that the food from the Roman Empire is no longer coming across the Mediterranean Sea, from Turkey, from Egypt, from their primary food suppliers, their bread baskets, essentially, people have to do what they need to do to survive, and quite frequently that's essentially farming. These people become dirt farmers working to survive to get enough food for themselves and their families to eat. Now, if that's like, you know, somewhere around three quarters of the population, what happens to everybody the other percentage?

Well, actually, we believe that that percentage, well, they don't feel like farming, so they kind of beat up the farmers and take their food. We believe a lot of them probably become mercenaries. Farmers live a very dangerous life.

Again, exhuming. forensic archaeology, we find that almost half of the bodies die either violent deaths or deaths from sudden disease. So essentially, we believe that a lot of these farmers are constantly at risk from attacks from mercenaries and from falling suddenly and devastatingly ill. Now, those mercenaries, they sweep in, they take food, and we believe they may in fact often kill the farmers, which if you stop and actually think it through like an intelligent person is an exceedingly stupid idea. If you kill the person who's growing the food, they're not going to grow any more food.

We think eventually somebody figures this out and they go into a protection racket. Basically they offer to protect the farmers and their fields, to not let anybody sweep in and hurt them, if in exchange the farmers will give them a percentage of the food. Now, that may not sound like a great deal until you realize that the person who's making the deal, or at least offering the deal, is someone on a large horse with large weapons.

Yeah, like that. Now, basically you say yes or you're running the risk of getting killed. However, we believe that some of these guys who are working this protection racket have really good intentions and they do keep their promises, they do protect the farmers, and it's good for just about everyone all the way around.

Eventually, over the next 100 to 150 years, those protectors, those guys who are working the protection racket, are gradually and slowly going to become known. as what you and I would call knights. Now again, they don't start this way.

It starts out as a protection in exchange for food, but eventually those knights begin doing this to protect those who need protection, and they get the benefit of getting a percentage of the crops, a percentage of the food out of it. It works out well for both parties. It's a matter of protecting the land, giving up food, giving up the profits of the land in exchange for protection.

The problem is that those protectors, those knights, are not going to have clearly defined areas of protection. They're going to overlap. They're going to fight each other over who's protecting whom.

And eventually, someone decides that those knights need management. Now, again, over the next 100 to 150 years, this kind of slipshod protection that we don't know where it starts, we don't have the records, gradually over time, it is going to become what you and I would call nobility. And in some cases, that...

management is also provided by church officers. Now, these nobles essentially act as managers for the knights. They promise protection for the knights, and they promise to look after the knight's interests to make sure that everything is divided evenly, that each knight gets a variety of crops from different farms, that their group of knights are protecting for their nobility. In exchange, the knights promise their loyalty.

They promise to not hold back, to share equally, to serve and protect the interests of their nobility. This verbal contract, this promise of loyalty and protection, is what is known as fealty. And this is what holds the system together.

Now initially, like I said, this starts out as simply a matter of necessity. Survival, protection, protecting the land, protecting the crops, in exchange for food, for survival. But over time, this system becomes more and more formal, more and more codified and accepted. and gradually over time it becomes what we call the feudal system the feudal system is essentially this big pyramid scheme of protection it is specifically based on land this society is what we call an agrarian society it is all based on land property and farming now in this agrarian society the largest percentage of people are still going to be your peasants they're going to be your farmers they are essentially the backbone of the system they work the land they grow the crops Above them, a smaller number are going to be your protectors, your knights. Now, again, this system is based on two things.

It's based on land, and it's based on protection or fealty. Now, the knights protect the peasants in exchange for a percentage of the crops. Above that are your church and nobility, who are your protectors for your knights. They're your management.

The knights wear loyalty or fealty to them in exchange for their protection. And ultimately, you're going to end up with a king. In many cases, the king is not the kind of king you're thinking of, not like movies and stuff and shining armor in a castle. These are very small, very local managers because everything at this point in history is extremely local. Everything is, I mean, we estimate, we believe that in the early Middle Ages, some of the kingdoms, so-called, in France are like the size of like Pasco County.

I mean, they're very, very small regional districts. This system is... the only organization there is and it's tough it's brutal it's based on land and protection people miss the good old days now you should know by now there never really were good old days but we always look back at times before ours and think they were better they're longing for order they're longing for stability they remember the days of the roman empire and they wish they could go back to something that organized and stable they want a real king someone who's going to bring back nationhood in a lot of ways We see that in the very few pieces of writing that we have from this time period. One of those pieces of writing that tells us a lot about the way they think, about the way they think the world works, is a history book by a monk named Gregory of Tours.

Now, monks are pretty much the only people who can read and write at this point in history. It's very basic. There's a very low literacy rate. I mentioned that before.

We think about, you know, one out of every hundred people or so can actually read and write at all. The few that can are usually monks, and Gregory is one of those. Gregory writes of a history book called History of the Franks, which may possibly be one of the worst history books ever written. It is terrible. You can get it free online.

I highly recommend it for insomnia. It is really good for putting you to sleep. So why is it like in the presentation?

Why am I even mentioning it if it's that bad? Well, mostly because this is like the only history book we have from the early Middle Ages. I keep saying our records are really spotty.

We don't have a lot of evidence. This is one of the only records we have. And let me tell you, you can be important if you suck, but you're still the only game in town.

And that's exactly what the history of the Franks is. Now, Gregory of Tours is a history of the Frankish nation. And Gregory is a lousy historian. He's terrible. Most scholars politely call him a credulous source, which basically translates to Gregory will believe absolutely anything he's told if it fits in with his view of the world.

I mean, you know, your uncle's brother's cousin's first nephew, twice removed, saw a statue move once. So Gregory's like, dude, it was totally true. It was in a church. I'm a monk. I mean, it is really a not necessarily very historical history.

However, it does tell us some really useful information about the way people see the world. That's not history, that's culture. And Gregory's account of the French people, that would be the Franks. No, no, it's not hot dogs. Don't pick that multiple choice answer on your quiz.

Gregory's history of the Franks basically tells a story of the French people the way he sees them, not necessarily the way they really are. What it tells us is that people in the Middle Ages are superstitious. They're scared of everything. They believe that God, like, miraculously helps people who do good things and, like, nukes people who do bad things.

There's an entire story about a bunch of mercenaries who rob a church and get struck by lightning. And according to Gregory, that's totally because they just made God mad. They robbed God's church, so God just phew, sukes him with lightning.

The big thing it tells us, though, more than anything else, is exactly how desperate people like Gregory are to have order, to have stability, to have something that represents a real country, an identity, apart from... These tiny little kinglets, these tiny little countries that are constantly at war with one another. Gregory is desperately looking for stability.

And he's looking for authority. Now, in Gregory's history of the Franks, a lot of that authority comes from a connection to the past. In the history of Franks, he actually traces the history of the newest kinglet, a guy that Gregory has great hope in. He's named Clovis.

No, no one's ever heard of him. It's okay. It's just Gregory's desperate desire for order out of chaos.

and gregory puts a huge amount of emphasis um on on connection to religion i mean gregory actually traces the rise of clovis and the all the way back from adam and eve no i'm not kidding the book starts with adam and eve and from the bible traces the whole bible history through jesus to the first missionaries coming to france and then traces those missionaries to the crowning of his king clovis he does connect everything to religion and religious beliefs And you can say, well, Gregory's a monk and he's just a close-minded jerkwad and of course, ooh, ah, religion. But guys, there's a lot to it more than that. There's something we don't realize today and there's something we don't really think about that much today. You've got to think, these people were under the control of the Roman government for almost a thousand years.

They're so used to it, they don't think of anything else. I mean, come on, the United States, we've been around for what? Like about, not quite, 250 years? And we can't think of our government being anything different because we're so used to the way that things run.

We are accustomed to our world and our power system being the way it is. For the people in Europe, they had like 500 to 800 years of the Roman government. It was status quo.

Everyone knew how things worked until they didn't work that way anymore. Rome rules the world. It is the way things are. They control an area roughly the size of the United States for centuries.

And everyone knows how things work. They're used to money working the same one way. They're used to government working one way. They're used to food being shipped across the Mediterranean like it always has been. They're used to, yeah, corruption, but they know how the government works.

They know how the system works. And then? Then the Roman government decides that all those barbarian invasions are too much. And they decide to withdraw to the area around Byzantium, around Constantinople, effectively abandoning Europe. Europe loses everything.

They lose their government, their financial system, their police force, their ability to travel, their news and information sources. Everything falls apart and nothing's the same. Everything's gone.

Except one thing. When Constantine... reached out to Christianity, making Christianity legal with the Edict of Milan, he actually sets up an organizational structure within the Christian church. That's a big part of what the Council of Nicaea was about.

That organizational structure doesn't leave. When everything else goes away under the Roman Empire, when Rome withdraws and leaves Europe on its own high and dry, the only thing that doesn't dissolve, the only thing that doesn't go away, is the structure of the Christian church. And that structure is very different than what you and I think of today. That structure actually represents not just religion, religion, religion. It's their social safety net.

The church. The church is a hospital. When you get sick and you don't know what to do, you don't go to a doctor like we do today.

You go to the church. They're the only educated people around. They probably know more about medicine and taking care of people than anyone else does, and they're willing to do it because they believe it is morally right. It's what their god tells them to do.

They provide mental health care. They take care of people who are mentally ill when no one else will. Why?

Because it's their moral duty. They provide welfare, not the government. Oh, that was ace.

He was just outside digging. He's very excited. That was a big earthwap and lots of panting.

If you heard something weird, just the dog. Don't worry about it. They believe that basically their job is to take care of the sick, the poor. The government doesn't do that. That's a recently new invention for us.

They don't have a government that takes care of those people in need. That is all the church. So the church is not just this religious thing that teaches them to worship.

Yes, worshiping God is part of it. But part of their worship of God is also taking care of the poor, the sick. People give money because the church does that for them. The church is their social stability.

It is the thing that's left over from the Roman Empire, and it is one of the things that takes care of the people in need in their society. They cling to it because it is the only organizational structure they have. Now, order is finally going to return to Europe in the political sphere as well. And it actually happens with a French king.

A French king named Charles the Great, or as they would say in French and the way we know him, Charlemagne. Now, Charlemagne's a really big deal, guys. They don't know that when he's born. If you'll notice, Charlemagne is actually born during the early Middle Ages when everything is really chaotic and localized.

We don't even have a definite birth date for him. They don't know exactly when he was born because nobody writes it down because, oh, look, another baby. It's probably going to die. Don't worry about it.

However, as Charlemagne grows up, as he becomes a man, Charlemagne is a brilliant guy with a wonderful political mind. Now, if you think like the way the people in the Middle Ages do, it's obvious that Charlemagne is going to be important. We actually have a physical description of him from his secretary that's at the bottom of the slide there.

His court secretary, who has an awesome name, his name is Egan Hart. He actually writes that King Charlemagne was six feet four and built to scale. That means he's a big dude all over. He's built to be six foot four. He's built like a linebacker.

He had beautiful white hair, animated eyes, a powerful nose, and a presence, quote, always stately and dignified. Charlemagne is a big dude and a man of character. Now if you have someone doing the Middle Ages, they tell you that that size tells you that God knows he's important. God makes him big so you'll notice him!

Yeah, well, they don't really do science, guys, so like, you know, most people are malnourished and 5'3", 5'4", and this 6'4 guy walks in a room and you're like, whoa, God bless that dude. Charlemagne is a mighty warrior. He's good both in close combat and in ranged combat. He's brilliant.

He speaks at least six languages that we know of. He also has an almost perfect memory. He can recite back something that is read to him almost perfectly.

And Charlemagne. Charlemagne is the guy who's smart enough to bring back order to Europe. Charlemagne becomes a legendary figure. They write poems about him.

There's a poem you'll take a quiz on called The Song of Roland that basically shows how mighty Charlemagne is and how Charlemagne is given to Europe by the will of God to restore order and bring back the greatness of the good old days. Now Charlemagne, the first thing that Charlemagne does is he looks at this extremely localized system with very small governments all fighting one another and Charlemagne says, no, no, no, no, no. Charlemagne says, look guys, you've got the feudal system.

It's based on land and protection. You know, but all you guys, you little kinglets, you little tiny kings, you're all fighting each other over tiny areas of land. That's stupid. We can improve on this.

Charlemagne begins basically promoting the idea that the feudal system would work better if everyone got organized, and he actually became the CEO of the feudal system in Europe. He manages it. He begins unifying these small kingdoms, bringing them together underneath his control, until he has unified the entire area in the center of Europe, renaming it the Carolingian Empire. He then begins to continue expanding this organization of the feudal system until he owns the northern part of Italy, including Rome, allowing himself to be called a Roman emperor. He's bringing back order out of the chaos, and he believes he is actually on a God-given mission to bring back and reorganize this land, to bring back some of the order of the glory days of the Roman Empire.

And he begins bringing people together, unifying them, restoring organization in large areas of land. He believes he is on a mission from God to restore that order and that belief. is reflected in the stories and legends told about Charlemagne.

Now, Charlemagne does the same thing that leaders and powerful kings have been doing since all the way back in the ancient world. Just like Sargon all the way back in Mesopotamia, Charlemagne begins having art created of himself. The art is very silly. For example, this is actually a statue of Charlemagne that he has made of himself. It's silly.

The horse is, like, totally the wrong size for the dude. In fact, we believe the horse was actually a sculpture from ancient Rome that somebody, like, found, and they made a statue of Charlemagne and, like, stuck it on top of it. But the point is the same.

Basically, this is Charlemagne proving that he has the power and authority to run the country. He has this sense of stability and authority that's different than what other kings before him had. He is truly a great leader, a real emperor, like there was back in the Roman days. And he's proving that he has the stability, the money, and the power by having artworks created honoring him. Now, Charlemagne has a goal here.

He's not just doing this for his own power. Charlemagne has a dream. His dream is to make Europe an international power, like it used to be.

Something that is great and respected. Now, that's a tall order. because for over a century europe has essentially been the redneck cousins nobody talks about very small very localized not a lot of trade people don't travel their system is just based on land ownership and protection there is no great organization no leadership charlemagne sees himself as that leadership and he wants to go out and prove that europe can be an international power competing with the other two major international powers of his time those two international powers of the byzantine empire what's left of the ancient Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, which as you can see is largely located in what today we would call Greece and Turkey, and the Islamic Empire, a newcomer to the scene, which has conquered much of the rest of what used to be the Roman Empire, including what we today would call the Middle East and the northern coast of Africa.

Both the Byzantine Empire and the Islamic Empire are international powers, cultured, educated, and Charlemagne really wants to compete with them. It's not easy. He's got a long way to come. He's working, trying to organize a system that has been local for over 100 years, dealing with people who are ignorant and uneducated, and trying to create a system that has diplomats that can go negotiate trade agreements with cultivated, educated societies.

And it's an uphill fight. Charlemagne realizes that, number one, he's managed to organize people. He's created a stable political system. That's step one. He is a real king.

He actually calls himself the new Holy Roman Emperor. But he's also got to have diplomats, trade negotiators, people he can send out. And that's a problem because, well, he doesn't have a lot of literate people.

So Charlemagne actually imports teachers from the Middle East. He sets up schools to train his diplomats and his trade negotiators. Now, let me be very clear.

This is so not a public education system. Not just anyone gets educated, in fact very few people get educated. Only the people that Charlemagne believes really need an education actually receive this education.

This education is very broad and very general. It's what we call a liberal arts education. Essentially, it's training in a wide variety of different things.

The liberal arts education focuses on two general areas, what we would call the arts and the sciences. The arts are taught in what we call the trivium, three different things, grammar, rhetoric, and dialect. Now, let me really quickly tell you what those three things are and why they're being taught in the liberal arts education. The first of those three things is grammar, because essentially the people in Europe speak one language.

Charlemagne's diplomats and trade negotiators would be speaking Frankish, an early form of French, but they're expected to write in the formal language of Europe. That would be Latin. So basically they're writing a different language than they're speaking. That's why they need to be taught grammar so they understand how to write in a language they've never spoken in their lives. They're also taught rhetoric.

Now, rhetoric is dialect, public speaking, basically. It's argument, debate, public debate, which is really important if you're sending someone off to negotiate a treaty because they're going to need to be able to speak, to debate, to be able to wow people with their charisma and verbal prowess. The third is dialect.

Dialect is essentially knowing how people say things in different parts of the world so you can speak clearly no matter who you're talking to and not cause any kind of offense. On the other side of the education are your sciences and maths, that's called the quadrivium, that's broken down into arithmetic and geometry. Again, basic math skills, that's really good if you're negotiating a trade agreement, you need to know if you're getting ripped off, and that kind of requires math. They also teach astronomy, both as a way of knowing where you're located, navigation, astronomy is the GPS of the medieval period.

Also, it's a matter of education, being able to recognize stars, constellations, and music. Now, music may seem a weird choice to be on the math and science side, but if you play music or read music, you know that there's a lot of math actually involved in music, so it fits on that side. Now this is a very broad curriculum. One of my other classes they asked me, well do I choose which thing I take? No, no, no, no, you got to take them all.

This is a very broad curriculum. It's intended to prepare you for anything that you encounter when you're out on a trade negotiation or a diplomatic mission. Charlemagne wants his people to be broadly educated. These people are getting a secular education, a non-religious education, so they can go out and serve the government. Essentially, these few special hand-picked people who get this education are going to be some of the only literate people in Europe.

Other than them, most people who can read and write are actually going to be monks. And honestly, it's the monks who actually preserve a lot of the information. Charlemagne's liberal art schools, they teach people that information, but they don't preserve it or try to pass it down. One of the greatest contributions that monks make to medieval society is actually copying books. They actually preserve information, make copies of it, so that it can be remembered for later generations and or traded between monasteries.

That information that is lost when literacy goes through the floor, the monasteries are the ones who preserve it, largely by creating books. The books they create are spectacular. You'll learn more about those in your quizzes. Many of these books are known as illuminated manuscripts, and essentially, they're not just about words. they're also about beautiful decorations, texts that help people to understand the words by providing pictures, and pictures that inform and heighten people's experience.

In religious texts, they provide extra information in a way of honoring and worshiping God through the beautiful images along with the words. Those books are bound into spectacular covers that are as beautiful as the illustrations inside them. Those books actually represent one of the two great forms of art created during the medieval period.

And that's why I want you to go a little bit more in depth and learn about those books and why they are, in point of fact, works of art in their own right.

Transcript for:Post-Roman Europe and Feudalism Overview

Transcript for:
Post-Roman Europe and Feudalism Overview