Hello and welcome to the fifth video podcast. In this podcast we will see Europe transform from the Roman era to the medieval one. We'll also witness the rise of two great world religions, Christianity and Islam.
The end of the Roman Empire was a transformative period for the West, a time of great migration and change. The learning objectives for this unit are number one explain the causes and consequences of the decline and fall of the Western Roman Empire. Number two understand the reasons for Christianity's rise and spread throughout the Roman world. Number three identify and describe the Byzantine Empire and number four describe the rise of Islam and understand it spread across North Africa and into Europe. When we left off last week, we saw Rome enter into a period of peace and stability under the leadership of successive Roman emperors beginning with Augustus, who you see here.
We call this time the Pax Romana, or the Roman Peace. During the Pax Romana, the empire reached the height of its power and size. Long-distance trade flourished.
Rome's legions protected her borders, and a vast network of roads stretched from one end of the Empire to the other. However, over time, the Roman Empire began to struggle. The crisis of the 3rd century was a period of approximately 50 years in the 3rd century CE, during which the Roman Empire nearly collapsed in the face of civil war, foreign invasion, plague, and economic depression. By the middle of the 3rd century, Rome's vast empire had become increasingly difficult to control. It extended as far north as Britain and the Rhine, as far south as the northern coast of Africa, and as far east as modern-day Iraq and Syria.
As you can imagine, controlling such a vast territory was a bureaucratic and logistical nightmare. Rome increasingly relied on the provinces to supply the manpower and supplies, but in the terms of the crisis, The allegiance of the soldiers often was local too, and far away from centralized Rome. The third century brought about a phenomenon called Barrack Emperors.
These were men who were usually generals or military leaders, and they had used their power to gain the favour of the soldiers. The idea is that they are elected or chosen by the army in the army barracks. That's where the term Barrack Emperors comes from.
As you can imagine, a man who had an army at his command could usurp the throne and even murder the emperor if he wanted to. And indeed, this is exactly what happened to the emperor whose death traditionally ends the period of peace and the beginning of the crisis, Emperor Alexander Severus, who was assassinated by rebellious troops in 235 CE. After the death of Severus, over the next 50 years, Rome would see a series of nearly 20 different emperors, a near-constant civil war.
In simple terms, no one was strong enough to take control, and as a result, most reigns were very short-lived. This period became one of increasing civil unrest and instability. The Pax Romana was over. Rome just didn't face constant civil war and changes in leadership. Rome also faced natural disasters during the 3rd century, and the most disastrous of them was the plague.
Now we don't exactly know what all these plagues were. Some have suggested they were waves of measles or the smallpox. We do know that the effects were absolutely devastating.
Two of them which I can name would be the Antonon Plague which actually happened just before the third century and that had already decimated the ranks of the Roman armies. And then the worst of it was between 249 CE and 262 CE, a plague that they called the Cyprian Plague, devastated the Roman Empire so much that in some cities, such as the city of Alexandria, nearly everybody died. Alexandria, for example, experienced a 62% decline in population.
So, not surprisingly, these plagues greatly hindered the Roman Empire's ability to ward off foreign barbarian invasions, but it also factored into more problems at home, such as famine, as with everybody dying, lots of farms became abandoned and unproductive. This agricultural instability was made worse by a series of bad harvests which led to a famine during the third century. Many years of successive drier summers meant less agricultural productivity, less food to go around. At the same time, not surprising with all this stuff happening, Rome entered into a great financial depression. Since the days of the Pax Romana, Rome's economy had depended on trade, and trade was very difficult to happen given all of this civil unrest and all these natural disasters.
When Rome was at peace, it was relatively simple and safe for merchants to travel from one end of the empire to the other. In a matter of weeks, they could do that. However, civil unrest and war during the crisis made it hazardous for merchants to travel. Rampant inflation only made things worse. The issue of climate change and plague would not just have affected Rome, but also those people who lived outside of Rome, who lived outside the empire.
The climatic problems would have affected them too, and this might have contributed to the reason why there were more barbarians trying to invade the empire, as they also would have experienced the detrimental effects of climate change, and perhaps they were trying to push inward to more productive regions around the Mediterranean. With a vacuum of power in the centre, rebellions in the provinces... became commonplace. Tribes such as the Franks penetrated along the Rhine River, the Goths threatened along the Danube River, and the Saxons began to raid Britain. At the same time, the Sassanids became more aggressive in the east, and suddenly Rome was in a very precarious position.
It should be noted that most of these tribes, the main goal for them was to just find land to farm in, to survive. They didn't necessarily seek the destruction of the empire, in fact, they wanted to join it. As a result, the frontiers of Rome experienced almost incessant raids during the third century from aforementioned tribes among others.
Now Rome would finally settle down under the rule of this man, Emperor Diocletian. Diocletian's reign stabilized the empire and generally marks the end of the crisis of the third century. Diocletian's innovation was that he realized that the empire had become too big for any one person to rule alone.
He decided to divide the empire between himself and a colleague of his choice. Thus, in 286 CE, Maximian, one of Diocletian's old comrades, was proclaimed co-emperor. Whilst Diocletian ruled in the east, Maximian was in charge of the west. In 293 CE, each emperor appointed a junior emperor, called a Caesar, to his choice.
who would take over as emperor in the event of their deaths and would rule a smaller subsection of their region. Thus, the senior emperor would be called an Augustus and the junior emperor would be called a Caesar. This was the beginning of the tetrarchy which means rule of four.
Diocletian also began to make peace with some of the barbarian tribes which had been pushing in on the borders for so long. He invited some of them in and allowed them to settle in return for military service. The Franks are a good example of a tribe that he did this for, and this allowed the army to be enlarged and strengthened with the support of these barbarian tribes.
Here you see a map of Diocletian's division of the Roman Empire. In 286 CE, Diocletian divided the Roman Empire into eastern and western halfs. and each half was divided again into two smaller units.
Thus, four regions, four rulers, and bureaucratic administrations replaced the ineffective rule of just one man. It was against this backdrop that Rome also experienced massive change with respect to religion. Traditionally, Rome had always been very accommodating with respect to other religions.
You see, the Romans were polytheistic, that is they believed in many gods in fact many of their gods had direct correspondence to Greek gods some of the most important are Jupiter Juno Minerva and Mercury and Mars here you see an image from Pompeii depicting two layers who were protected deities and in this case the sons of the god mercury pouring wine from a drinking horn into a bucket Now, the one religion which was quite a bit different for the Romans was Judaism. The Jews were monotheistic, that is, they believed in one God. Initially the Jews in the Roman Empire were left mostly at peace to practice their religion.
However, a Jewish rebellion in 66 CE, which the Romans brutally suppressed, made that situation a little bit more uneasy. Added to the mix, there were other foreign religions which began to spread throughout the empire. Mystery cults such as the Egyptian cult of Isis, the Greek cult of Dionysus, and the Egyptian cult of Cybele all achieved high popularity within Rome.
Christianity would prove to be very different. Christianity begins as a Jewish sect. Jesus of Nazareth who lived at the beginning of the first millennium, was almost certainly a Jew himself. He became popular against a backdrop of numerous Jewish end-time groups, that is, groups who believed that the end of the world was close at hand, and that the prophesied Jewish Saviour would soon come to earth. Jesus himself may have been an end-time preacher or an apocalyptic prophet, proclaiming that the Kingdom of God was imminent.
After achieving some fame and many followers, he was arrested by the Romans and crucified sometime around 26. to 36 CE, perhaps for stirring up crowds at the festival of Passover. Crucifixion was the Roman penalty for rebels and traitors, not a very good way to die. Suddenly, after his death, his disciples claimed that he, in fact, had come back to life and risen from the dead and then ascended to heaven.
And they now had a new mission, that was to spread the good news of Jesus'resurrection, called the Gospel, and that the Kingdom of God, would soon arrive. Christianity spread slowly first, and initially only amongst Jewish populations. However, it was not long before they came under the notice of the Romans. In 64 CE, a great fire devastated Rome and destroyed much of the city. For reasons unknown, the Emperor Nero decided to make Christians the scapegoat.
Rumours had abounded that Nero himself was responsible for the fire. He certainly took advantage of the resulting devastation of the city, and he built himself a brand new, lavish palace on part of the site of the fire. Perhaps to divert attention from these rumours, Nero ordered that Christians should be rounded up and killed. Some were torn apart by dogs, others burnt alive as human torches.
Over the next hundred years or so, Christians were sporadically persecuted. This led to a major aspect of the early Christian faith, that there was no greater good than to die. a martyr for your faith.
Sometimes Christians face theatrical punishments alongside criminals. Damnatio ad Bastias, which is Latin for condemnation to the beast, was a form of Roman capital punishment in which the condemned person was killed by wild animals, usually lions or other big cats. This form of execution, which first came to Rome around the 2nd century BCE, was part of a wider class of blood sports called bestiarii.
After the death of Jesus, his followers began to spread his message and the stories of his life throughout the Roman Empire, particularly in the Eastern Roman Empire. Now, initially, this was something which spread only amongst Jewish communities. As the disciples of Jesus were Jews themselves, they brought his message to other Jews.
Some converted and joined Christians, others did not. But to the surprise of many observers, it wasn't just Jews who were interested in this new faith. faith.
It was also who the Jews called Gentiles, that is non-Jews, or pagans, who also wanted to join the movement. This unexpected occurrence raised questions of inclusion. Should these pagans become Jews first, which would entail circumcision and following dietary laws and Sabbath observance? At a meeting in Jerusalem in around 49 CE, a council of Christians decided that pagans could indeed join the movement without becoming Jews. By the end of the first century there were many non-Jewish Christians In fact more non-Jewish Christians than Jewish Christians in the movement One of the most important early followers of Christianity started off in fact as a persecutor of Christians And that was Paul of Tarsus Paul of Tarsus was born a Jew and according to his own testimony Paul persecuted some of the early disciples of Jesus in an area of Jerusalem prior to his conversion According to the story in the Christian Bible, Paul was traveling along the road from Jerusalem to Damascus on a mission to arrest them and bring them back to Jerusalem, when the resurrected Jesus appeared to him in a great light.
He was struck blind, but after three days, his sight was restored, and Paul began to preach that Jesus of Nazareth was in fact the Jewish Messiah and the Son of God. Paul would help spread Christianity to Gentiles or non-Jews across the Roman Empire. By around the year 200 CE, Christianity had fully emerged as a religion distinct from Judaism.
Here you see a map detailing the expansion of Christianity to 200 CE. After its origin in Palestine, early Christianity had found its main centres in the Greek-speaking cities of the Roman East. Missionaries such as Paul also brought the new faith to the Latin-speaking West, such as Rome itself, as well as to Ethiopia, and Mesopotamia. However, Christianity would find its greatest patron in the Emperor of Rome himself.
By the 4th century, Christianity had slowly began to spread into the upper echelons of Roman society. It would be Constantine, who is sometimes known as Constantine the Great, sometimes known as Saint Constantine if you're a Christian, who would change the fortunes of Christians completely. Constantine was born sometime in the later 280s, and he was a typical product of a military governing class of the later 3rd century. He was the son of a junior emperor or Caesar of the West.
His father had started off as an army officer, but had risen through the ranks and was eventually made a junior emperor under Emperor Maximian, who was the co-senior emperor with Diocletian. Probably most important for Constantine's subsequent life, his mother He was a devout Christian. Constantine himself was raised to sacrifice to the old Roman gods. But his mother's influence on his later life is indisputable.
Constantine lived his entire life in the imperial court and eventually serving as a high-ranking staff officer for Diocletian. Upon the death of his father, many contenders arose for control of the West, including Constantine himself, and at one point six different men claimed to be the new ruler of the West. Constantine, however, had one trump card in that he was beloved by his troops.
they proclaimed him Caesar in 308 CE. For the next five years, Constantine would have to fight his rivals for control. By 313 CE, things had settled down to the point where it was back to four men controlling the Roman Empire in sort of the Diocletian divisions.
They had an uneasy truce of sorts. Diocletian's concept of empire divided four ways would continue a little bit longer. In the East, Galerius ruled as senior emperor or Augustus. Maximinus Dia was his junior emperor in the East or Caesar.
In the West, a man named Maxentius emerged as the senior emperor, and Constantine was junior emperor. However, the peace was not long lived. The armies of Constantine and Maxentius in the West would eventually meet at a very fateful battle, the Battle of Milvian Bridge.
The Battle of Milvian Bridge took place between Constantine and Maxentius on the 28th of October 312, and it took its name from the bridge, which was an important route over the Tiber. And this actually is an image of the bridge, which is still standing to this day, which is quite remarkable. Now, according to legend, on the eve of the battle, Constantine had a vision.
A voice said to him, In hoc signo inces, which means in Latin, in this sign you will conquer. The sign was a Christian symbol, perhaps a cross. He ordered that the symbol be painted on the shields of his army.
And the next morning at the Battle of Milvian Bridge, Constantine put the vision to the test. Constantine won the battle and started on a path that would lead him to end the Tetrarchy and become the sole ruler of the Roman Empire. Maxentius himself drowned in the Tiber River during the battle.
His body was later taken from the river and decapitated, and his head was paraded through the streets of Rome on the day following the battle. The Battle of Milvian Bridge and the defeat of Maxentius gave Constantine sole control over the western half of the Roman Empire. In the east, things began to change as well.
The senior emperor Galerius died of cancer, and his junior emperor Maximinus Dia attempted to seize control, but almost immediately, Galerius'heir and friend, Licinius, attempted to challenge him for that role. Now here is where the story of Christianity takes an interesting turn. Licinius was similar to Constantine in the fact that he fought under the sign of the Christian cross. However, he didn't likely do it because of faith, mostly to gain the support of the Christians, who were becoming a sizeable number of the population in the eastern half of the Roman Empire. On the other hand, Maximinus, his opponent, had promised to eradicate Christianity.
By most accounts, Licinius was a committed supporter of Christians, although like Constantine, he himself was most likely a pagan. Despite inferior numbers, Licinius ultimately was victorious, and after the suicide of Maximinus, he seized control of the eastern half of the Roman Empire. To be safe and secure in his right for the Eastern throne, he immediately did what many emperors do, and executed the sons and daughters of all the former emperors in the East.
Now there were only two emperors, emperors, one in the west, Constantine, and one in the east, Licinius. Like Constantine, Licinius owed some of his success to the support of Christians. And in 313, the two emperors, Constantine and Licinius, did something to pay them back.
The Edict of Milan officially legalized Christianity. No longer would it be persecuted. Moreover, it gave freedom of religion throughout the empire.
In the years that followed, there was a bit of an uneasy truce between the two emperors. Licinius actually married Constantine's half-sister, Constantine. which helped a little bit, but it was not long before the two of them were fighting again, and there was little mini-wars.
Licinius'attitude towards Christians eventually changed, after he burned several Christian churches and had some prominent Christians executed, and that was all the reason Constantine needed to invade one last time, and defeat Licinius for good in 324 CE. Thus, in 324 CE, Constantine had done the impossible. At 52 years of age, he had become the first emperor since Diocletian to control the entire Roman Empire, both east and west. A sense of stability returned to the empire. Constantine, however, wanted to make a clearer break from the past.
He decided to build a new capital city to replace Rome in 330 CE. For his location, he chose the small city of Byzantium, and being a humble man, he renamed it after himself, Constantinople. Constantinople was strategically located on the European side of the Strait of Bosphorus, so it would control traffic to and from the Black Sea from east to west.
It also provided a location that could be easily defended. The move of the capital from west to east would have profound implications not just for the future of the Roman Empire, but for the Western world. The city of Constantinople would remain a shining beacon of civilization for centuries and would continue to be important even after it was renamed Istanbul by the Ottomans hundreds of years in the future. Christianity during the time of Constantine was still a religion in flux.
There were many different competing Christian sects and various beliefs. Some considered that Jesus was the Son of God and divine, while other people believed that he was a human. However, over time, the beliefs of Christianity began to consolidate. By the 4th century, the basic structure of the Christian Bible had appeared. with its Old Testament based on Jewish texts and the New Testament with stories about the life of Jesus.
It had also been translated from its various languages such as Greek, Aramaic and Hebrew into one Latin language version of the Bible, which became known as the Vulgate Bible, after the Latin word for people called Vulgus. It would be the Latin Vulgate Bible which would be copied again and again during the Middle Ages and form the basis of medieval Christianity. In 325 CE, Constantine helped the process of consolidation along by calling the Council of Nicaea, which was a gathering of Christian leaders to determine what the formal or orthodox beliefs of Christianity would be. The result of this council was the Nicene Creed, which laid out the agreed upon beliefs of the council. Many Christians still recite the Nicene Creed today as part of their church services.
It was also this time that a clearer hierarchy of the church began to appear. At the top were bishops, usually one bishop per city. They were in charge of all the Christians in a particular region. Beneath bishops were priests who tended to the day-to-day needs of the Christian population, such as baptizing babies or holding church services, etc.
However, a new branch of the church also emerged which we call monasticism, which were the monks and the nuns. Monks and nuns were men and women who wanted to dedicate their lives to quiet study and prayer, believing that only through isolation would they be able to do so. Could they be closer to God? They took strict vows of celibacy, obedience, and poverty and lived together in monasteries, cut off from the outside world.
However, while Christianity had achieved remarkable success by the 4th century, it was still mostly contained to urban areas and cities close to the coast around the Mediterranean. In 380 BCE, a Christianity finally reached the zenith of its power in the empire. The emperor Theodosius issued an issued an edict which made Christianity, specifically the one based on the Nicene Creed, the official religion of the Roman Empire.
Here you can see a map which shows the spread of Christianity to about 600 CE from its beginnings in Palestine. When Christianity was still illegal, it spread mainly in heavily urbanized regions, but after Constantine legalized Christianity, the faith began to spread into every corner of the Roman world. However, it's important to note that most of Europe would remain pagan well into the 7th century.
Now, as Christianity continued to flourish, the days of the Roman Empire were numbered. A hundred years after Constantine, the Roman Empire was nearly at its end. The fall of the Roman Empire was not something which happened overnight. It was a slow and gradual decay. Eventually, the Empire just found it more and more difficult to maintain control over such a vast region.
One of the first tangible signs that things were going the withdrawing of troops from the frontier to protect the heartland of Rome. They had to do this because Rome itself was increasingly becoming vulnerable. In 410 CE, for the first time in 800 years, the city of Rome itself was captured and ransacked by an invading army.
The empire was forced to abandon its province of Britannia on the frontier and bring the troops home. While Rome itself was recovering from the ransacking in 410, Roman Britons were forced to defend themselves against invading Germanic tribes such as the Angles and the Saxons. Over time, these tribes succeeded and established new Anglo-Saxon kingdoms where once the Roman cities stood.
This is why we speak English, which is really just Anglo-Saxon, rather than a Romance language based off Latin. Finally, on September 4th, 476 CE, faced with an advancing army led by the Germanic leader, Odassar, the last Western Roman Emperor, Flavius Romulus Augustus abdicated the throne of the Western Roman Empire. He was just 16 years old. By convention, his abdication marked the end of the Roman Empire.
People would later refer to him as Augustus, or Little Emperor. The end of the Western Roman Empire marked the end of one era, and the beginning of a new one, the Middle Ages. However, as we discussed in the last unit, the eastern half of the Roman Empire continued on.
Eventually, it would be called something different, the Byzantine Empire. but it would continue for several centuries and, in many ways, it retained a unique Roman identity. Here you see a map of Europe after the fall of the Western Roman Empire.
In the absence of Roman control, Europe broke up into individual Germanic kingdoms. However, it is important to note that, for many people, life remained mostly the same. These Germanic tribes, although they had seized control of the territories from Rome, had themselves been thoroughly Romanized.
The Franks, for example, would lose their Germanic language and speak Latin instead. Their Latin, of course, would become French, and their land one day would be called France. In the East, the Roman world continued. Indeed, they continued to call themselves the Romans, and there were even a few half-hearted attempts over the centuries to reclaim the West. But it was different, and it would never be the same as it once was.
Now, the Eastern half of the Roman Empire had always been distinct from the West. For one thing, they tended to speak Greek in the East rather than Latin. This is the legacy of the Greek Empire of Alexander the Great.
Over time, the Eastern half became something unique and truly distinctive from ancient Rome. Historians refer to the Eastern half as the Byzantine Empire. It would continue to endure throughout the Middle Ages and would not fall until 1453 when it was conquered by an invading Islamic force, the Ottoman Turks.
The Byzantines actually had a brief resurgence when it seemed almost that the great Roman Empire might be whole again under Emperor Justinian. However, Justinian is most remembered today for the fact that he ordered that all the various Roman law codes from the centuries be compiled and edited into a single unified code. The Corpus Iuris Civilis that was compiled under his watch would become the basis of all Roman law today, which, as we discussed in the last unit, covers a significant part of the planet. it.
During his reign, Justinian sought to revive the empire's greatness and reconquer the lost western half of the historical Roman Empire. And he was partially successful, as you can see on this map. He reconquered parts of Italy, Spain, North Africa, and the Middle East. However, it was the last gasp of the Roman Empire, and it would not last.
Justinian's hold over these territories was extremely tenuous, and it did not outlast his death. In the wake of the fall of the Roman Empire, another major world religion, Islam, would arise and become a major competitor to Christianity for dominance in the West. The word Islam means submission to the will of God, and all followers of Islam are known as Muslims.
Muslims are monotheistic, like Christians and Jews, and worship one God, an all-knowing God, who in Arabic is known as Allah. In many ways, Islam was a continuance of faith from Judaism to Christianity, Indeed, all three peoples in these religions are known as people of the book, since all three religions share some texts. The Prophet Muhammad, who was the founder of Islam, was born in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, around 570 CE.
For Muslims, Muhammad was the final prophet in a long line of prophets which included Jesus and Moses, sent by God to reveal their faith to mankind. According to Islamic texts and traditions, an angel named Gabriel visited Muhammad in 610 CE while he was meditating in a cave. The angel ordered Muhammad to recite the words of Allah. Starting in around 613 CE, Muhammad began preaching throughout Mecca the messages he received. Like Christianity before it, Islam would be incredibly successful, and it spread very quickly.
The expansion after Muhammad was rapid. Within 150 years, it had spread through the Middle East and across North Africa and even into Europe. It quickly began to rival Christianity in both popularity and influence.
Islam became the predominant religion across the Middle East, much of Anatolia, and North Africa. And Islam also began to expand into Europe. In 711 CE, Muslim forces invaded and in seven years conquered the Iberian Peninsula. This is modern-day Spain. This Spanish area would become one of the great Muslim civilizations, reaching its summit with the Umayyad Caliphate of Cordova in the 10th century.
And so, by the 8th century, the former Roman Empire was now dominated by two major religions, Christianity and Islam. The two faiths would shape Western civilization for centuries to come. In our next unit, we will look to the post-Roman world in more detail, a time that we call the Middle Ages.