Notes for pages 164 to 173...
- Shortly after A.D 700, the renewal of European civilization in the West began.
- Around A.D 800, the Carolingian warrior king Charlemagne was able to conquer barbarian peoples in central Europe.
- During the era of renewal, barbarian and nomadic peoples, notably the Norsemen and Hungarians, continued to raid, conquer, and settle in lands that had once belonged to Rome.
- By 1000, civilization had spread throughout Europe, and the three-thousand year old European barbarian way of life came to an end.
LO1 The Carolingians
- By A.D 700, the kingdom of the Franks, once the most powerful state in western Europe, was seemingly falling apart.
- The kingdom was divided among rival kings of the Merovingian dynasty, each controlled by a "mayor of the palace" (head of the royal household)
- In 714, an out-of-wedlock son of the family by the name of Charles laid claim to the position and won it in several years of civil war.
- Charles thereby became the ancestor of the new dynasty, the Carolingians
- The Carolingians rebuilt the Frankish kingdom. It was they who began the rise of the western Europe to become the heartland of Western civilization
The Rise of the Carolingian Dynasty
- Charles was a ruthless and warlike ruler who went down in history as Charles Martel ("Charles the Hammer")
- Rewarding followers meant giving gifts of land - but not from one's own family possessions, the main source of a ruler's wealth and power.
- Charles was a generous donator of land to favored monasteries, but bishops and abbots often belonged to noble families that he distrusted.
- Charles also gave land to foot soldiers who served him in peace and war.
- In 732, an Arab army moved out of the occupied territory on a large-scale raid far north into the Frankish kingdom
..........
No comments:
Post a Comment