The History Book Club discussion

This thread is about the Early Middle Ages.



"The Early Middle Ages (or Early Mediaeval Period) was the period of European history lasting from the 5th century to the 10th century.

The Early Middle Ages followed the decline of the Western Roman Empire and preceded the High Middle Ages (c. 1001–1300). The period saw a continuation of trends begun during late classical antiquity, including population decline, especially in urban centres, a decline of trade, and increased immigration.

The period has been labelled the "Dark Ages", a characterization highlighting the relative scarcity of literary and cultural output from this time, especially in Northwestern Europe. However, the Eastern Roman Empire, or Byzantine Empire, continued to survive, and in the 7th century the Islamic caliphates conquered swaths of formerly Roman territory.

Many of these trends were reversed later in the period. In 800 the title of emperor was revived in Western Europe by Charlemagne, whose Carolingian Empire greatly affected later European social structure and history.

Europe experienced a return to systematic agriculture in the form of the feudal system, which introduced such innovations as three-field planting and the heavy plow. Barbarian migration stabilized in much of Europe, although the north was greatly affected by the Viking expansion."

Source: Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Mi...



Topics Include:

1 Periodization

2 History
 2.1 Collapse of Rome
 2.2 Migration Period
 2.3 Byzantine Empire
 2.4 Rise of Islam
 2.5 Resurgence of the Latin West
 2.5.1 Italy
 2.5.2 Britain
 2.5.3 Frankish Empire
 2.5.4 Feudalism
 2.6 Viking Age
 2.7 Eastern Europe
 2.7.1 Bulgaria
 2.7.2 Kievan Rus'

3 Transmission of learning
 3.1 Science
 3.2 Carolingian Renaissance
 3.3 Byzantium's golden age
 3.4 Islamic learning

4 Christianity West and East
 4.1 Christianization of the West

5 Holy Roman Empire
 5.1 10th century
 5.2 Founding of the Holy Roman Empire

6 Europe in AD 1000

7 Middle East
 7.1 Rise of Islam
 7.2 Islamic expansion
 7.3 Caliphs and empire
 7.4 European timelines
 7.4.1 Beginning years
 7.5 Ending years

Also Included:

Migration Period 
Decline of the Western Roman Empire 
Late Antiquity 
Decline of Hellenistic religion 
Christianization 
Rise of Islam 
First Bulgarian Empire 
Frankish Empire 
Bagratid Kingdom of Armenia 
Kingdom of Croatia 
Anglo-Saxon England 
Viking Age 
Carolingian Empire 
Old Church Slavonic 
Kievan Rus
Growth of the Eastern Roman Empire

Please make sure when adding books that you are recommending that you add both the book's cover and the photo or link to the author. This helps populate the site properly.

The Civilization of the Middle Ages

by Norman F. Cantor

Synopisis:

Now revised and expanded, this edition of the splendidly detailed and lively history of the Middle Ages contains more than 30 percent new material.

About the Author

Norman F. Cantor was Emeritus Professor of History, Sociology, and Comparative Literature at New York University. His academic honors include appointments as a Rhodes Scholar, Porter Ogden Jacobus Fellow at Princeton University, and Fulbright Professor at Tel Aviv University. His many books include the New York Timesbestseller In the Wake of the Plague, Antiquity, Inventing the Middle Ages, which was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award, and The Civilization of the Middle Ages, the most widely read narrative of the Middle Ages in the English language.

Charlemagne

by Derek Wilson

Synopsis:

An absorbing biography of the great leader who was the bridge between ancient and modern Europe — the first major study in more than twenty-five years.Charlemagne was an extraordinary figure: an ingenious military strategist, a wise but ruthless leader, a cunning politician, and a devout believer who ensured the survival of Christianity in the West. He also believed himself above the rules of the church, siring bastards across Europe, and coldly ordering the execution of 4,500 prisoners. Derek Wilson shows how this complicated, fascinating man married the military might of his army to the spiritual force of the Church in Rome, thereby forging Western Christendom. This is a remarkable portrait of Charlemagne and of the intricate political, religious, and cultural world he dominated.

Thank you Jose

Empires and Barbarians: The Fall of Rome and the Birth of Europe

by Peter Heather

Synopsis:

Here is a fresh, provocative look at how a recognizable Europe came into being in the first millennium AD. With sharp analytic insight, Peter Heather explores the dynamics of migration and social and economic interaction that changed two vastly different worlds (the undeveloped barbarian world and the sophisticated Roman Empire) into remarkably similar societies and states.

The book's vivid narrative begins at the time of Christ, when the Mediterranean circle, newly united under the Romans, hosted a politically sophisticated, economically advanced, and culturally developed civilization: one with philosophy, banking, professional armies, literature, stunning architecture, even garbage collection. The rest of Europe, meanwhile, was home to subsistence farmers living in small groups, dominated largely by Germanic speakers. Although having some iron tools and weapons, these mostly illiterate peoples worked mainly in wood and never built in stone. The farther east one went, the simpler it became: fewer iron tools and ever less productive economies. And yet ten centuries later, from the Atlantic to the Urals, the European world had turned. Slavic speakers had largely superseded Germanic speakers in central and Eastern Europe, literacy was growing, Christianity had spread, and most fundamentally, Mediterranean supremacy was broken. The emergence of larger and stronger states in the north and east had, by the year 1000, brought patterns of human organization into much greater homogeneity across the continent. Barbarian Europe was barbarian no longer.

Bringing the whole of first millennium European history together for the first time, and challenging current arguments that migration played but a tiny role in this unfolding narrative, Empires and Barbarians views the destruction of the ancient world order in the light of modern migration and globalization patterns. The result is a compelling, nuanced, and integrated view of how the foundations of modern Europe were laid.

The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages, 400-1000

by Chris Wickham (no photo)

Synopsis:

Prizewinning historian Chris Wickham defies the conventional view of the Dark Ages in European history with a work of remarkable scope and rigorous yet accessible scholarship. Drawing on a wealth of new material and featuring a thoughtful synthesis of historical and archaeological approaches, Wickham argues that these centuries were critical in the formulation of European identity. Far from being a middle period between more significant epochs, this age has much to tell us in its own right about the progress of culture and the development of political thought.

Sweeping in its breadth, Wickham's incisive history focuses on a world still profoundly shaped by Rome, which encompassed the remarkable Byzantine, Carolingian, and Ottonian empires, and peoples ranging from Goths, Franks, and Vandals to Arabs, Anglo- Saxons, and Vikings. Digging deep into each culture, Wickham constructs a vivid portrait of a vast and varied world stretching from Ireland to Constantinople, the Baltic to the Mediterranean. The Inheritance of Rome brilliantly presents a fresh understanding of the crucible in which Europe would ultimately be created.

Vandals to Visigoths: Rural Settlement Patterns in Early Medieval Spain

by Karen Eva Carr (no photo)

Synopsis:

Though many argue that the fall of Rome around 400 C.E. had little effect on the rural poor of the western Mediterranean, Karen Eva Carr argues persuasively to the contrary. Vandals to Visigoths shows how the empire's collapse significantly transformed the lives of rural people. Even after the dust settled from the Germanic invasions, landscape archaeology shows the surviving rural population defending themselves in isolated hill-forts and cut off from the larger Mediterranean world.

Vandals to Visigoths uses archaeological survey data as a springboard to a theoretical discussion of rural survival strategies in the non-industrial world and the ways in which these strategies are affected by government actions. Carr draws on historical, archaeological, and ethnographic comparanda to conclude that the larger, more powerful Roman government was more advantageous for the rural poor than the weaker Vandal and Visigothic regimes. Though Carr agrees that the lives of the rural people and the free slaves were miserable, she shows through her data and theory that they became even more wretched after the decline of the empire.

Vandals to Visigoths will appeal to historians of Rome, as well as of Early Medieval Europe and Spain. Anthropologists, economists, and political scientists who study Late Antiquity and the medieval period will also be interested, as it discusses the broader implications of the role of government in the lives of early medieval Spain's subjects.

Karen Eva Carr is Associate Professor of History, Portland State University.

Visigothic Spain 409-711

by Roger Collins (no photo)

Synopsis:

This history of Spain in the period between the end of Roman rule and the time of the Arab conquest challenges many traditional assumptions about the history of this period.
Presents original theories about how the Visigothic kingdom was governed, about law in the kingdom, about the Arab conquest, and about the rise of Spain as an intellectual force.
Takes account of new documentary evidence, the latest archaeological findings, and the controversies that these have generated.
Combines chronological and thematic approaches to the period.
A historiographical introduction looks at the current state of research on the history and archaeology of the Visigothic kingdom.

The Visigoths from the Migration Period to the Seventh Century: An Ethnographic Perspective

by Peter Heather

Synopsis:

Between 376 and 476 the Roman Empire in western Europe was dismantled by aggressive outsiders, "barbarians" as the Romans labelled them. Chief among these were the Visigoths, a new force of previously separate Gothic and other groups from south-west France, initially settled by the Romans but subsequently, from the middle of the fifth century, achieving total independence from the failing Roman Empire, and extending their power from the Loire to the Straits of Gibraltar. These studies draw on literary and archaeological evidence to address important questions thrown up by the history of the Visigoths and of the kingdom they generated: the historical processes which led to their initial creation; the emergence of the Visigothic kingdom in the fifth century; and the government, society, culture and economy of the "mature" kingdom of the sixth and seventh centuries. A valuable feature of the collection, reflecting the switch of the centre of the Visigothic kingdom from France to Spain from the beginning of the sixth century, is the inclusion, in English, of current Spanish scholarship. Dr Peter Heather teaches in the Department of History at University College London. Contributors: Dennis H. Green, Peter Heather, Ana Jimenez Garnica, Giorgio Ausenda, Ian Nicholas Wood, Isabel Velazquez, Felix Retamero, Pablo C. Diaz, Mayke de Jong, Gisela Ripoll Lopez, Andreas Schwarcz.

Before France and Germany: The Creation and Transformation of the Merovingian World

by Patrick J. Geary (no photo)

Synopsis:

From the twilight of the Roman Empire emerged the kingdoms of Merovingian Europe (c. 400-700 AD), which were, in turn, the basis for the nations of medieval and modern Europe. Professor Geary draws on the latest archaeological and historical findings to elucidate one of the least understood periods of European history. This text is aimed at both survey and graduate courses on medieval history, which invariably take the Merovingian period as their starting point.

The Merovingian Kingdoms 450–751

by Ian N. Wood (no photo)

Synopsis:

Of all Rome's western successors, the Frankish kingdom that emerged in France, Belgium, the Rhineland and Switzerland was the most powerful and the longest-lasting; yet the Merovingians, who ruled it for nearly 300 years (481-751), have been harshly treated by posterity. This is partly through the hostility of the Carolingians, who usurped and succeeded them, and partly because of a family history that was lurid and bloody even by contemporary standards. Ian Wood rescues them from the shadows of obscurity and contempt in this superb survey, which covers every aspect of the age.

After considering the nature of the sources, the book begins with the rise of the Franks. It then examines the establishment of the Merovingian dynasty itself, and the structure of the Merovingian kingdom—or kingdoms, since throughout its long history was both fluid and fissiparous, with borders moving to and fro under the pressures of external enemies and internal dynastic conflict. Ian Wood then goes on to consider the influence of the Merovingians on their own territories and on Europe more widely. In particular he reassesses their cultural importance (long and unjustly neglected) in the world of the sixth and seventh centuries).

Finally, he reconsiders the whole question of Merovingian decline, arguing that the later, biased, Carolingian sources so widely used by subsequent historians have misrepresented its course and character down to our own time. Indeed, one of the book's central aims is to re-evaluate Merovingian history in the light of contemporary opinion, insofar as that can now be recovered, away from the hostile historiography of the Carolingian successors.

In doing so, Ian Wood brings a remote age to life. To most of us Childeric, Clovis, Chlothar, Dagobert and their fellows are little more than names, if that, and their family ramifications are as complicated as they are unedifying; but in these deft and authoritative pages the dynastic complexities of Merovingian history disentangle, and the remote and shadowy figures within become real again as the powerful individuals on whom, for almost three hundred years, the fate of much of western Europe depended.

Good adds Jose.

The Early Middle Ages: The Birth of Europe

by Lynette Olson (no photo)

Synopsis:

As a global perspective grows and Eurocentrism wanes, it becomes more important, not less, to see where Europe came from. Lynette Olson offers an exploration of the fascinating original formation of Europe from the fall of Rome to the First Crusade. Written in an easy to follow century-by-century format and richly illustrated, with due attention given to the female population and the secular side of life, this book will engage both students and scholars.

Thank you Jose - Jerome (smile)

Bentley, I didn't add anything here since Saturday. Please, give due credits to Jerome (smile).

Italy in the Early Middle Ages: 476-1000

by Cristina La Rocca (no photo)

Synopsis:

An international team of leading historians and archaeologists provide thematic coverage of this turbulent and controversial period of Italian history, offering reliable and authoritative chapters incorporating relevant discoveries and analyses in archaeological and historical research. Professor La Rocca's substantial introduction and conclusion draw together key areas of debate and special attention is paid to the wealth of early medieval Italian written documents, such as private charters, and epigraphs.

A History of the Franks

by Gregory of Tours (no photo)

Synopsis:

A dramatic narrative of French history in the sixth century. Gregory of Tours (c.A.D. 539-594) intended his History to be a chronicle of events and included the 21 years he spent as Bishop of Tours. This volume contains all ten books of the History. As Gregory unravels the bewildering events of those decades, what emerges is no dry historical document but a colorful, detailed and moving pageant.

The Rule of Saint Benedict

by Benedict of Nursia

Synopsis:

Composed nearly fifteen hundred years ago by the father of Western monasticism, The Rule of St. Benedict has for centuries been the guide of religious communities. St. Benedict's rules of obedience, humility, and contemplation are not only prerequisites for formal religious societies, they also provide an invaluable model for anyone desiring to live more simply. While they presuppose a certain detachment from the world, they provide guidance and inspiration for anyone seeking peace and fulfillment in their home and work communities. As prepared by the Benedictine monk and priest Timothy Fry, this translation of The Rule of St. Benedict can be a life-transforming book. With a new Preface by Thomas Moore, author of The Care of the Soul.

"God is our home but many of us have strayed from our native land. The venerable authors of these Spiritual Classics are expert guides--may we follow their directions home."
--Archbishop Desmond Tutu

The Year 1000: What Life Was Like at the Turn of the First Millennium

by Robert Lacey

Synopsis:

In the year 1000 the world was one of mystery and magicians, monks, warriors and wandering merchants - people who feared an apocalypse and people who had no idea what year it was or what lay beyond the nearest valley. It was a world of dark forests and Viking adventures in which fear was real and death a constant companion. People felt they walked hand-in-hand with God, and envisaged him so literally that even Christians were sometimes buried with supplies for the journey to the new life in heaven. Narrated through the progression of the seasons, this book presents a recreation of English life at the end of the first millennium AD.

In Search of the Dark Ages

by Michael Wood

Synopsis:

This edition of Michael Wood's groundbreaking first book explores the fascinating and mysterious centuries between the Romans and the Norman Conquest of 1066. In Search of the Dark Ages vividly conjures up some of the most famous names in British history, such as Queen Boadicea, leader of a terrible war of resistance against the Romans, and King Arthur, the 'once and future king', for whose riddle Wood proposes a new and surprising solution. Here too, warts and all, are the Saxon, Viking and Norman kings who laid the political foundations of England - Offa of Mercia, Alfred the Great, Athelstan, and William the Conqueror, whose victory at Hastings in 1066 marked the end of Anglo-Saxon England.

Reflecting recent historical, textual and archaeological research, this revised edition of Michael Wood's classic book overturns preconceptions of the Dark Ages as a shadowy and brutal era, showing them to be a richly exciting and formative period in the history of Britain.

—'With In Search of the Dark Ages, Michael Wood wrote the book for history on TV.' The Times

—'Michael Wood is the maker of some of the best TV documentaries ever made on history and archaeology.' Times Literary Supplement

Theodora: Empress of Byzantium

by Paolo Cesaretti (no photo)

Synopsis:

Theodora of Byzantium, rising from the lowest ranks of Byzantine society, became one of the most important and powerful women in history. In this gripping biography, Theodora's full story is revealed for the first time, according her a well-deserved place in the pantheon of great women.
Theodora's meager beginnings as the daughter of a bear-keeper could not have foretold her astonishing future as the wife of Justinian, the powerful ruler of the Byzantine empire. An actress at the time who was chastised for her scandalous performances, she eventually caught the attention of the young Justinian, who was no doubt charmed as much by her beauty as by her cunning.

Justinian and Theodora ruled the empire together from their rich and bustling seat of power in Constantinople, making decisions regarding the fate of their kingdom that would reverberate for centuries to come. Time and time again, Theodora's wisdom and counsel to the emperor saved Justinian's empire and assured their place in history.

Hailed by European reviewers as "Book of the Year" upon its publication in Italian, Paolo Cesaretti's book gives a balanced portrait of an intriguing figure who, in the face of those who tried to defame her, rose from the ranks of the poor to build an empire at the side of her ambitious husband.

Paolo Cesaretti, a professor of Byzantine studies, teaches at University of Chieti, Italy. In addition to many books on a variety of subjects related to Byzantine art and history, he regularly contributes to important Italian publications including Corriere della Sera.

Since I must admit that I don't know much about Medieval history, this short explanation of the rise of Islam during the 7th century was helpful.

Rise of Islam

From the 7th century Byzantine history was greatly affected by the rise of Islam and the Caliphates. Muslim Arabs first invaded historically Roman territory under Abū Bakr, first Caliph of the Rashidun Caliphate, who entered Roman Syria and Roman Mesopotamia. Under Umar, the second Caliph, the Muslims decisively conquered Syria and Mesopotamia, as well as Roman Palestine, Roman Egypt, and parts of Asia Minor and Roman North Africa. This trend continued under Umar's successors and under the Umayyad Caliphate, which conquered the rest of Mediterranean North Africa and most of the Iberian Peninsula. Over the next centuries Muslim forces were able to take further European territory, including Cyprus, Malta, Crete, and Sicily and parts of southern Italy.

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

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

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

How the Irish Saved Civilization

by Thomas Cahill

Synopsis:

From the fall of Rome to the rise of Charlemagne - the "dark ages" - learning, scholarship, and culture disappeared from the European continent. The great heritage of western civilization - from the Greek and Roman classics to Jewish and Christian works - would have been utterly lost were it not for the holy men and women of unconquered Ireland. In this delightful and illuminating look into a crucial but little-known "hinge" of history, Thomas Cahill takes us to the "island of saints and scholars, " the Ireland of St. Patrick and the Book of Kells. Here, far from the barbarian despoliation of the continent, monks and scribes laboriously, lovingly, even playfully preserved the west's written treasures. With the return of stability in Europe, these Irish scholars were instrumental in spreading learning. Thus the Irish not only were conservators of civilization, but became shapers of the medieval mind, putting their unique stamp on western culture.

Sun Dancing: Life in a Medieval Irish Monastery and How Celtic Spirituality Influenced the World

by Geoffrey Moorhouse

Synopsis:

Visible on a clear day off the west coast of Ireland, the Skellig Islands, a cluster of cruel rocks, rise spectacularly from the Atlantic Ocean. A sanctuary to birds and seals today, for over six hundred years during the middle ages it was a center for a particularly intense form of monastic life, one that acclaimed writer Geoffrey Moorhouse explores with utmost fascination, scholarship, and imagination in Sun Dancing. A must read for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of Celtic spirituality, Moorhouse's lively narrative is a superbly imagined account of the monks' isolated life-the spiritual struggles and triumphs and unbelievable physical hardships. To complement and enrich the book, Moorhouse establishes the historical context of Irish monasticism and describes the monks' influence and undeniable role in preserving western civilization, as well as unexpected connections between medieval Ireland and India, Egypt, and Byzantium, and the surviving impact of pagan mythology. An entertaining and enlightening work, Sun Dancing makes medieval Ireland come alive.

The Great Caliphs: The Golden Age of the 'Abbasid Empire

by Amira K. Bennison (no photo)

Synopsis:

In this accessibly written history, Amira K. Bennison contradicts the common assumption that Islam somehow interrupted the smooth flow of Western civilization from its Graeco-Roman origins to its more recent European and American manifestations. Instead, she places Islamic civilization in the longer trajectory of Mediterranean civilizations and sees the ‘Abbasid Empire (750–1258 CE) as the inheritor and interpreter of Graeco-Roman traditions.

At its zenith the ‘Abbasid caliphate stretched over the entire Middle East and part of North Africa, and influenced Islamic regimes as far west as Spain. Bennison’s examination of the politics, society, and culture of the ‘Abbasid period presents a picture of a society that nurtured many of the “civilized” values that Western civilization claims to represent, albeit in different premodern forms: from urban planning and international trade networks to religious pluralism and academic research. Bennison’s argument counters the common Western view of Muslim culture as alien and offers a new perspective on the relationship between Western and Islamic cultures.

Muhammad and the Believers: At the Origins of Islam

by Fred McGraw Donner (no photo)

Synopsis:

The origins of Islam have been the subject of increasing controversy in recent years. The traditional view, which presents Islam as a self-consciously distinct religion tied to the life and revelations of the prophet Muhammad in western Arabia, has since the 1970s been challenged by historians engaged in critical study of the Muslim sources.

In "Muhammad and the Believers," the eminent historian Fred Donner offers a lucid and original vision of how Islam first evolved. He argues that the origins of Islam lie in what we may call the "Believers' movement" begun by the prophet Muhammad a movement of religious reform emphasizing strict monotheism and righteous behavior in conformity with God's revealed law. The Believers' movement thus included righteous Christians and Jews in its early years, because like the Qur'anic Believers, Christians and Jews were monotheists and agreed to live righteously in obedience to their revealed law. The conviction that Muslims constituted a separate religious community, utterly distinct from Christians and Jews, emerged a century later, when the leaders of the Believers' movement decided that only those who saw the Qur'an as the final revelation of the One God and Muhammad as the final prophet, qualified as Believers. This separated them decisively from monotheists who adhered to the Gospels or Torah.

The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates: The Islamic Near East from the 6th to the 11th Century

by Hugh Kennedy

Synopsis:

The definitive, authoritative history of the Near East from the time of Mohammed to the end of the Caliphates.

Mohammed and Charlemagne

by Henri Pirenne

Synopsis:

Remarkable classic that developed the revolutionary theory of how the advance and influence of Islam caused the Europe of the Roman Empire to evolve into the Europe of the Middle Ages. "An important...seminal book, worthy to close one of the most distinguished careers in European scholarship." — Saturday Review of Literature.

Barbarians to Angels: The Dark Ages Reconsidered

by Peter S. Wells

Synopsis:

The barbarians who destroyed the glory that was Rome demolished civilization along with it, and for the next four centuries the peasants and artisans of Europe barely held on. Random violence, mass migration, disease, and starvation were the only way of life. This is the picture of the Dark Ages that most historians promote. But archaeology tells a different story. Peter S. Wells, one of the world's leading archaeologists, surveys the archaeological record to demonstrate that the Dark Ages were not dark at all. The kingdoms of Christendom that emerged starting in the ninth century sprang from a robust, previously little-known, European culture, albeit one that left behind few written texts. This recently recognized culture achieved heights in artistry, technology, craft production, commerce, and learning. Future assessments of the period between Rome and Charlemagne will need to incorporate this fresh new picture.

How a tiny insect changed history.......a very interesting look at the world's first pandemic.

Justinian's Flea: Plague, Empire, and the Birth of Europe

by William Rosen

Synopsis:

The Emperor Justinian reunified Rome’s fractured empire by defeating the Goths and Vandals who had separated Italy, Spain, and North Africa from imperial rule. In his capital at Constantinople he built the world’s most beautiful building, married its most powerful empress, and wrote its most enduring legal code, seemingly restoring Rome’s fortunes for the next five hundred years. Then, in the summer of 542, he encountered a flea. The ensuing outbreak of bubonic plague killed five thousand people a day in Constantinople and nearly killed Justinian himself.

In Justinian’s Flea, William Rosen tells the story of history’s first pandemic — a plague seven centuries before the Black Death that killed tens of millions, devastated the empires of Persia and Rome, left a path of victims from Ireland to Iraq, and opened the way for the armies of Islam.

It wasn't the first pandemic in World History, but surely one of the most influential ones (although there wasn't just one outbreak, but instead several during at least two centuries, a bit like the bubonic plague in the late Middle Ages, to which this plague is probably related) because it started the economical decay of the Eastern Roman Empire and made more difficult for the Empire to hold its own against its enemies and reconquer the West (just as Justinian desired) due to the lack of money and manpower. It wasn't the only reason behind the success of the islamic rise of the 7th century, but weakened Rome significantly to the point it helped that dramatic event to occur.

The GR blurb for this book is wrong......because I know you are right re: the first pandemic. You know your stuff, Jose!!!

I think we sometimes forget that the bubonic and pneumonic plagues, typhus, and cholera killed millions and changed history dramatically in many instances. It is not always war that sends history in a different direction.

Jill wrote: "The GR blurb for this book is wrong......because I know you are right re: the first pandemic. You know your stuff, Jose!!!"

Thank you very much for your compliments. Before Justinian's time there had been two pandemics (the Antonine and Ciprian's plague, but beware that these so-called pandemics were a bit more localized than the modern ones despite their huge scale). Regarding the role of war and politics in History, it's clear today that they are just an important factor of historical processes. There are also demographic, religious, philosophical and scientifical factors as well. Take for instance the conversion of the Roman Empire in the 4th century, the Portuguese discoveries or even the American Revolution. Those events can't be reduced to political and military factors and in the last example, for instance, it's very important to talk about the illuminists' philosophical views and the financial and economical reasons behind the British taxes imposed after the Seven Years' War. In my humble view, we need a balanced view of History between the vision of the École des Annales and the political and miltary centred History.

Pandemic is a word that may be overused when speaking of some of the localized but deadly outbreaks of various diseases. The cholera outbreak in London in 1854 which was the most intense of the Victorian period comes to mind. Ir was centered in a small area of the city but because of it, two men (a physician and a clergyman) were spurred to action to solve the most pressing medical issue of the time....how and why did some people get cholera while others who lived in the next street did not. Their findings led to the history changing developments in the rise of cities and how human waste was handled.

I am interested in the formation of the scientific spirit during the Middle Ages. This book is a popular introduction to one of the characters that helped to move Arab scholarship (from Spain) to the mainstream cultural life in Europe. I enjoyed it although I am not knowledgable enough about the period as to know if it is too much of a popularization... Nancy Marie Brown

Thanks, Jorge. I put the book and my "to read" list :)

Thank you very much, Jorge. This book joins a whole chorus of bibliography which in the last decades expelled the notion of this historical period as the "Dark Ages". This approach to medieval science (lacking due to time issues and priorities on other subjects) is more than welcome and I hope your suggestion will be followed.

However I must warn you that you should cite your book the following way, according to the group's rules:

by Nancy Marie Brown

Thanks Jorge for you post and thanks Jose for showing Jorge the correct book citation. It takes a while to get used to but soon it becomes second nature!!!!

Past Convictions: The Penance of Louis the Pious and the Decline of the Carolingians

by Courtney M. Booker (no photo)

Synopsis:

How do people, in both the past and the present, think about moments of social and political crisis, and how do they respond to them? What are the interpretive codes by which troubling events are read and given meaning, and what part do these codes play in suggesting specific strategies for coping with the world? In "Past Convictions" Courtney Booker attempts to answer these questions by examining the controversial divestiture and public penance of Charlemagne's son, the Emperor Louis the Pious, in 833.

Historians have customarily viewed the event as marking the beginning of the end of the Carolingian dynasty. Exploring how both contemporaries and subsequent generations thought about Louis's forfeiture of the throne, Booker contends that certain vivid ninth-century narratives reveal a close but ephemeral connection between historiography and the generic conventions of comedy and tragedy. In tracing how writers of later centuries built upon these dramatic Carolingian accounts to tell a larger story of faith, betrayal, political expediency, and decline, he explicates the ways historiography shapes our vision of the past and what we think we know about it, and the ways its interpretive models may fall short.

The Penitential State: Authority and Atonement in the Age of Louis the Pious, 814-840

by Mayke De Jong (no photo)

Synopsis:

In 833 emperor Louis the Pious, Charlemagne's son, submitted to a public penance in the wake of a rebellion by his three elder sons. This penance amounted to a deposition, for Louis was to atone for his sins for the rest of his life. However, only half a year later, he was back on the throne again. In this evaluation of Louis' reign, Mayke de Jong argues that his penance was the outcome of a political discourse and practice in which the accountability of the Frankish ruler to God played an increasingly central role. However heated their debates, this was a moral high ground Louis shared with churchmen and secular magnates. Through a profound re-reading of texts by contemporary authors who reflected on legitimate authority in times of crisis, this book reveals a world in which political crime was defined as sin, and royal authority was enhanced by atonement.

The Early Middle Ages - Open Yale Courses (Lecture series)




Speaker:
Paul Freeman, Chester D. Tripp Professor of History at Yale

Major developments in the political, social, and religious history of Western Europe from the accession of Diocletian to the feudal transformation. Topics include the conversion of Europe to Christianity, the fall of the Roman Empire, the rise of Islam and the Arabs, the "Dark Ages", Charlemagne and the Carolingian renaissance, and the Viking and Hungarian invasions.

The Early Middle Ages

Source: Open Yale Courses

The Restoration of Rome: Barbarian Popes and Imperial Pretenders

by Peter Heather

Synopsis:

In 476 AD the last of Rome’s emperors was deposed by a barbarian general, the son of one of Attila the Hun’s henchmen, and the imperial vestments were despatched to Constantinople. The curtain fell on the Roman Empire in Western Europe, its territories divided between successor kingdoms constructed around barbarian military manpower. But if the Roman Empire was dead, the dream of restoring it refused to die. In many parts of the old Empire, real Romans still lived, holding on to their lands, the values of their civilisation, its institutions; the barbarians were ready to reignite the imperial flame and to enjoy the benefits of Roman civilization, the three greatest contenders being Theoderic, Justinian and Charlemagne. But, ultimately, they would fail and it was not until the reinvention of the papacy in the eleventh century that Europe’s barbarians found the means to generate a new Roman Empire, an empire which has lasted a thousand years.

The Birth of the West: Rome, Germany, France, and the Creation of Europe in the Tenth Century

by Paul Collins

Synopsis:

The tenth century dawned in violence and disorder. Charlemagne’s empire was in ruins, most of Spain had been claimed by Moorish invaders, and even the papacy in Rome was embroiled in petty, provincial conflicts. To many historians, it was a prime example of the ignorance and uncertainty of the Dark Ages. Yet according to historian Paul Collins, the story of the tenth century is the story of our culture’s birth, of the emergence of our civilization into the light of day.

The Birth of the West tells the story of a transformation from chaos to order, exploring the alien landscape of Europe in transition. It is a fascinating
narrative that thoroughly renovates older conceptions of feudalism and what medieval life was actually like. The result is a wholly new vision of how civilization sprang from the unlikeliest of origins, and proof that our tenth-century ancestors are not as remote as we might think.

Anglo-Saxon England

by F.M. Stenton

Synopsis:

Discussing the development of English society, from the growth of royal power to the establishment of feudalism after the Norman Conquest, this book focuses on the emergence of the earliest English kingdoms and the Anglo-Norman monarchy in 1087. It also describes the chief phases in the history of the Anglo-Saxon church, drawing on many diverse examples; the result is a fascinating insight into this period of English history.

A History of the Vikings

by Gwyn Jones (no photo)

Synopsis:

An utterly splendid book, quite the most brilliantly written, balanced, and explanative general work on the Vikings ever to appear in English or in any language."-- Scandinavian Studies
The subject of this book is the Viking realms, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, their civilization and culture, and their many sided achievements at home and abroad.
A highly readable narrative follows the development of these Northern peoples--the Nordmenn--from their origins and the legendary pre-history to the military triumphs of Canute and the defeat of Harald Hardradi at Stamford Bridge in 1066, which symbolically ended the Viking age.
The book recounts the Vikings' exploits in war, trade, and colonization: the assault on Western Christendom; the trading and military ventures to the Slav and Muslim worlds and to Byzantium; and the western voyages of discovery and settlement to Greenland, Iceland, and America.
Numerous photographs, maps, and drawings contribute to Gwyn Jones's rounded portrait of Viking civilization and vividly evoke the importance in their culture of religion, art, and seafaring.

The Early Medieval Balkans: A Critical Survey from the Sixth to the Late Twelfth Century

by John V.A. Fine (no photo)

Synopsis:

Discusses the development of ethnic nationalism among Bulgars, Croatians, Serbians, and Macedonians.

Hungarians & Europe in the Early Middle Ages: An Introduction to Early Hungarian History

by Andras Rona-Tas (no photo)

Synopsis:

The early history of Hungarians is embedded into the history of Eurasia and special attention is given to the relationship of the Hungarians with the Khazars and the Bulghar-Turks.

The Throne of Adulis: Red Sea Wars on the Eve of Islam

by G.W. Bowersock (no photo)

Synopsis:

Just prior to the rise of Islam, in the sixth century AD, southern Arabia was embroiled in a holy war between Christian Ethiopians and Jewish Arabs. The Jewish kingdom, composed of ethnic Arabs who had converted to Judaism more than a century before, had launched a bloody pogrom against Christians in the region. The ruler of Ethiopia, who claimed descent from the union of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba and even was rumored to possess an object no less venerable than the Ark of the Covenant, aspired both to protect the persecuted Christians and to restore Ethiopian control in the Arabian Peninsula. Though little known today, this was an international war that involved both the Byzantine Empire, who had established Christian churches in Ethiopia beginning in the fourth century, and the Sasanian Empire in Persia, who supported the Jews in a proxy war with Byzantium.
Our knowledge of these events derives mostly from an inscribed throne at the Ethiopian port of Adulis seen and meticulously described by a Christian merchant known as Cosmos in the sixth century. Trying to decipher and understand this monument takes us directly into religious conflicts that occupied the nations on both sides of the Red Sea in late antiquity. Using the writings of Cosmas and archaeological evidence from the period, historian G. W. Bowersock offers a narrative account of this fascinating but overlooked chapter in pre-Islamic Arabian history. The extraordinary story told in Throneof Adulis provides an important and much neglected background for the rise of Islam as well as the collapse of the Persian Empire before the Byzantines.

The War of the Three Gods: Romans, Persians, and the Rise of Islam

by Peter Crawford (no photo)

Synopsis:

The War of the Three Gods is a military history of the Near and Middle East in the seventh century—with its chief focus on the reign of the Eastern Roman Emperor Heraclius (AD 610–641)—a pivotal and dramatic time in world history. The Eastern Roman Empire was brought to the very brink of extinction by the Sassanid Persians before Heraclius managed to inflict a crushing defeat on the Sassanids with a desperate, final gambit. His conquests were short-lived, however, for the newly converted adherents of Islam burst upon the region, administering the coup de grace to Sassanid power and laying siege to Constantinople itself, ushering in a new era.

Peter Crawford skillfully narrates the three-way struggle between the Christian Roman, Zoroastrian Persian, and Islamic Arab empires, a period of conflict peopled with fascinating characters, including Heraclius, Khusro II, and the Prophet Muhammad himself. Many of the epic battles of the period—Nineveh, Yarmuk, Qadisiyyah and Nahavand—and sieges such as those of Jerusalem and Constantinople are described in as rich detail. The strategies and tactics of these very different armies are discussed and analyzed, while plentiful maps allow the reader to follow the events and varying fortunes of the contending empires. This is an exciting and important study of a conflict that reshaped the map of the world.