Germanic Kingdoms and the Growing Power of Christianity

    Today in class we talked about Germanic Kingdoms and Christianity power. Some of my notes are below.

Germanic Kingdoms emerge: AD 400-600

  • Germanic warriors' loyalty is to the lord of the manor
  • he provides them with food, weapons, and treasure
  • Result:
  • no orderly gov't for large areas 
  • small communities rule 
  • "I would die for my chief, but I see no reason to pay taxes to a king I don't even know. So there."
Clovis rules the Franks 
  • Clovis rules the Germanic people or Gaul known as the Frank's (where France comes from)
  • in 496 he has a battlefield conversion- he and 3000 of his warriors became Christians 
  • the Church and Rome like this 
  • by 511 the Franks are united into one kingdom with Clovis and the church working as partners
Spread of Christianity
  • Church and Frankish rulers= rise in Christianity 
  • In 520, Benedict writes out rules for monks 
    • vows of poverty (live simply in monasteries)
    • chastity (no marital relationships)
    • obedience (listen to church superiors)
  • His sister Scholastic writes similar rules for nuns
  • they operate schools, maintain libraries, copy books 
Pope Gregory and Papal Power Play
  • Pope Gregory I (Gregory the Great) goes secular (world power)
  • Church revenues are used to help the poor, build roads, and raise armies 
  • This is a theocracy (God government)
  • Gregory's spiritual kingdom (Christendom) extends from Italy to England, from Spain to Germany
Who's Running Europe?
  • Clovis rules the Frank's in Gaul until his death in 511
  • Most of the rest of Europe consists of smaller kingdoms (seven in England alone)
  • Clovis's descendants include Charles Martel, aka Charles the Hammer
  • Hammer defeats a muslim raiding party from Spain at the Battle of Tours in 732- if he hadn't won, western Europe could have become part of the Muslim Empire

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Constantine and Christianity

    Today in class we continued to talk about Christianity and we touched on Constantine. Some of my notes are below: Conversion of Constantine (AD 312) Roman emperor Constantine has a vision before the Battle at Milivian Bridge he sees an image in the sky of a cross and the words Ev ToUTw Nika ("In this sign, conquer") Orders troops to put a cross on shields they win Edict of Milan in AD 313 Christianity becomes a religion which is recognized/approved by the emperor it continues to gain strength By 380, it becomes the empire's official religion Chi-Rho: first two letters of "Christ" in Greek  Decline of the Roman Empire While Christianity strengthened, Rome weakened  Military: too week to defend huge area Economy: taxes too high; widening gap between rich and poor; trade disrupted Social: Who cares about public affairs?; disloyalty; population decreases Political: division of the empire (Constantine moved the capital to Byzantium)
Read more

Questions

    Today in class we worked on questions from the textbook. The questions include:  What is the significance of the following terms Renaissance: period from 1300 to 1600 when art, creativity, and writing were "rebirthed' Humanism: focused on human potential (arete) secular: Renaissance power was worldy patron: financially supported artist, wealthy became important perspective: art became more popular b/c the use of perspective drawing which shows 3D vernacular: a native language, started trends in writing that modern writers follow to this day   Qualities of a Renaissance man include mastering every area of studying including writing and art. Also, he should be charming, witty, well- educated, dancer, singer, musician poetry writer, skilled writer, wrestler and swordsmen Qualities of a Renaissance woman include knowing the classics, being charming, inspiring art, and some were skilled in politics.  How did Italy's cities help to make it a birthplace o
Read more

Non-Test Day

    Today in class we were supposed to take our Renaissance and Reformation test. Our class, however, voted to not take it. A lot of kids did not want to take a chance in hurting their grade, including me, It has taken me a very long time to get my grade up, so anything I can do to keep it where it is or get it higher I will do. I was a little uncomfortable with being tested on the i formations since we only took 2 days to talk about it and we crammed so much of the reformation in to one day. We "took" the test, but it didn't count. I didn't know a lot of the answers on the test because we never talked about them. I don't know when we would have, so if the test counted, I would have gotten those answers wrong and gotten a bad grade. The test was all on the reformation too, which I thought was weird because then we would have wasted time on the Renaissance when we could have learned about the Reformation in a larger amount of time and then we could have taken the t
Read more