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Aims of studying early medieval Europe

Breaking away from school work

A totally new period

The period from 300 to 1050 is arguably of fundamental importance for an understanding of European history. It saw: the transformation of the Roman Empire into the political framework of kingdoms and countries which dominated Europe in subsequent periods; the rise of Christianity and Islam; the growth of towns and the development of European trade; and the emergence and crystallisation of the structure of European society. Yet it is probably entirely new to you. Studying it at this level is intended to force you to rethink your whole approach to history.

New approaches and methods

In this period, we are dealing with societies that are often very different from those with which we are familiar. Making sense of them will involve stretching our ideas and pursuing imaginative and flexible interpretations, sometimes based on the insights of other disciplines, such as anthropology. The limitations of the historical evidence surviving from this remote period also demand of us a flexibility of approach – developing understanding, for example, of the study of art-objects, archaeological sites, buildings, and coins.

Rapid and independent study

Mastering over seven centuries of history across Western Europe is tough. You are being expected to achieve a sufficient mastery of the broad framework and the themes of the period rapidly and independently. You need to show confidence, determination, concentration, and intellectual ability. If you hadn’t got these, you wouldn’t be at university!

Concepts, hypotheses, and models

History as science

History is not simply about facts; it seeks to understand the past through building up a series of hypotheses or models and examining how far these fit the evidence available to us. This is very like the way natural science works – develop a hypothesis, then run a series of experiments to test it. For us, the experiments consist of measuring our hypotheses or models against the evidence.

Originality and intellectual independence

Developing hypotheses or models is thus a crucial part of what you have to do in studying this period, and it is there that you have some chance of getting at the roots of what drives human societies, as well as of developing your own originality and independence of mind.

The otherness of the past

For this remote period, you cannot take anything for granted. Its palpable ‘otherness’ means getting your head around a wholly unfamiliar world and a society that works in ways quite different from those that you are familiar with. You will need to think deeply and imaginatively about how to interpret that world – and that experience should influence your approach to all history.

Mastering evidence

Understanding the evidence

Because there is not a great volume of evidence from this period, you really can get to grips with it; and you must learn to understand its difficulties, and to squeeze every drop of juice out of it. You must aim to become a very demanding researcher.

Evaluating the evidence

Evidence is not neutral. Written sources were written by someone for some purpose. Non-written sources (tombs, buildings, paintings, coins, even houses) were not made accidentally, but with particular objectives in view. You need to be critical, to think yourself into the mind-sets of the people who created this evidence, to probe into what made them tick, and how that might affect our understanding of how they lived.

Running the experiments

Applying the evidence to the hypotheses or models is the central objective. At university level, there are no right answers, only the interplay of hypothesis and counter-hypothesis, of dispute between ourselves and between historians world-wide, living and dead. This is the real excitement of history, and you should plunge into it, developing your skills of interpretation and substantiation. This does not mean, however, that we are making it up as we go along. Rigorous attention to the evidence and information that survives from this remote period (which is in many ways astonishingly rich) is the fundamental and indispensable basis of what we are doing, and you must expect to work really hard to achieve a factual mastery on the basis of which you can build hypotheses.

Frontiers of knowledge

Taking you to the limits of what is known and looking beyond

Degree work is not about what is certain and accepted (such matters we must take for granted as part of your basic preparation) but about the limits of knowledge. There, all is uncertain – like explorers we are developing ideas, looking for evidence that might substantiate or undermine them.

Managing uncertainty and ignorance

You should never be able to give cut and dried accounts of this period. You should always be arguing a case, assessing levels of uncertainty, assessing levels of validity of evidence, aware of counter-cases which might be made and how they might be neutralised by detailed reference to the evidence. You should find yourself frequently in disagreement with your teachers and your colleagues. No matter – it is in the debate that follows that progress is made.

Practicalities of studying and researching

Your study preparation

It is up to you to master the broad outline of the period and the historical geography of Western Europe as soon as you possibly can. You will feel more comfortable with discussion of the issues and more confident in your work. Use above all outline textbooks and historical atlases to get the bones of what happened when. This website’s consolidated Timeline and Narrative Histories are intended to help.

Your use of lectures

Lectures are about exploring hypotheses and models and giving you a rapid insight into the issues which historians have addressed and are addressing, and the directions which historical research is taking. They are the lecturer’s opportunity to do exactly what he or she is asking you to do – develop hypotheses and measure them in a sophisticated way against evidence. How do you rate his or her success? How would you interpret things differently? Where are the flaws in his or her argument? He or she is not expecting your acquiescence and likes nothing better than an intellectual scrap.

Your seminars

Seminars are your opportunity to develop original hypotheses, to marshall evidence to support them, and to defend them in debate with the lecturer and with your colleagues – in other words, to develop as an historian and to consolidate your understanding. You cannot expect firm conclusions from them; you can expect hands-on experience of how the process of historical debate and experimentation works.

Your reading

You are looking for what hypotheses are being developed. Do you agree with them, and if not why not? How could they be subverted? In places you need to read in fine detail, including the footnotes. What evidence is being adduced? Could it be interpreted differently? How could you use it in other contexts?

Your essays

Essays are your opportunity to write up the results of your experiments, and you need to think of them in those terms. How you do that is up to you, but you probably need to include these elements:

Research question

It is not enough just to have the essay title. How are you going to articulate the historical problem, how to break it down analytically so that you can measure it against the evidence?

Research context

You need to think about how other historians have approached your question, what the deficiencies of their results are, and how you are advancing on what they have done.

Research method

What evidence are you going to use and how are you going to apply it to the problem you are facing? Identify this and then use it, painstakingly showing how the elements of your interpretation can be supported (and what their areas of vulnerability are). Everyone understands that your handling of the evidence will be partial (you are not writing a book).

Research results

What interpretations are made possible by the material you have read and the work you have done?

Revision projects

These revision projects are intended to provide alternative formulations of the issues involved in early medieval history, together with possible examination questions. Do not allow yourself to be put off by the latter – think carefully and calmly about what you have read and try answering them with the material you have and the ideas you have developed. Your examiner should be looking for originality and freshness of approach, not for some pre-conceived ‘right’ answer.

The end of the Roman Empire in the West

Interpretative models

The First Doom and Gloom Model

The empire was the victim of long-term processes of decline.

The Second Doom and Gloom Model

The empire was overwhelmed by barbarians.

The Deliberate Roman Policy Model

The end of the Roman Empire in the West was the result of the policies of the East Roman emperors in Constantinople.

Questions

  • ‘The successor-kingdoms of the Roman Empire in the West were not essentially barbarian, but sub-Roman’. Discuss.
  • ‘The Roman character of early medieval kingdoms was no more than a façade created by their elites’. Discuss.
  • How great was the military threat posed by the barbarians to the Roman Empire in the fourth and fifth centuries?

The formation of peoples

Interpretative models

The Biological Model

There were in our period mass-migrations of long-established peoples, whose identity was founded on descent from common ancestors, shared customs, and a common homeland.

The Constitutional Model

Peoples were based rather on shared laws, allegiance to a leader or leaders, and they had formed in quite specific and often recent historical circumstances.

Submodels

  • Mass migration submodel: there really were migrations of peoples into the Roman Empire, but these were peoples of recent creation, formed along the lines of the Constitutional Model.
  • Military elite submodel: there were very few barbarians involved in the creation of the barbarian kingdoms, but deliberate changes of identity by the native Romans produced the barbarian peoples which we see in our sources.

Questions

  • To what extent was the history of this period dominated by the movements and military activities of clearly defined peoples?
  • How far was the formation of peoples in the early middle ages a process of identity change and how far of population change?
  • How far was the emergence of peoples an artificial process contrived from above?
  • How greatly did the ethnic composition of Western Europe change in the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries?

Ideological power

Issues

  • The extent to which the ideological power of kingship and emperorship had their roots in pagan beliefs and practices, or in Roman traditions and prestige, or in the beliefs and rituals of the Christian Church.
  • The extent to which the ideology of kingship and emperorship was unchanging across our period and across Europe, or was on the contrary very varied and very fluid.

Questions

  • To what extent did early medieval kings and emperors owe their power to the Church?
  • How far did early medieval kingship and emperorship have their roots in the pagan past?
  • How much did early medieval kings and emperors owe to the Roman Empire and to its Byzantine successor?

Bureaucratic power

Issues

  • The bureaucratic sophistication of government.
  • The efficacy of government.
  • The importance of writing as a means of governmental communication.
  • The role of the Church in government.

Questions

  • How legitimate is it to describe early medieval kingdoms and empires as ‘states’?
  • How powerful was early medieval royal and imperial government?
  • Why did early medieval kings and emperors make laws?
  • How important was writing for government in this period?

Personal power

Issues

  • The extent to which the power created by personal loyalty, especially in the context of the war-band, was a reality rather than an imaginary aspect of literary writing.
  • The source of the power of aristocratic elites and their relationship to rulers.
  • The nature of the social structure – dominated by aristocratic families of long standing, or much more fluid and open?

Questions

  • ‘Loyalty between man and lord was central to the functioning of early medieval social élites’. Discuss.
  • ‘Nearness to the king or emperor was the principal source of aristocratic power’. Discuss.
  • ‘The rituals of the mead-hall and the war-band served to consolidate a steep social pyramid dominated by an aristocratic warrior élite’. Discuss.

Women

Issues

  • The ways in which women able to exert political power – sexual attraction, family connections, control of wealth, piety and sanctity.
  • The status of women relative to men in terms of landholding, rights to make wills, control of families, role in government.
  • The role of women in the Church – as nuns and abbesses, as pious women, as patrons of churches.

Questions

  • How politically important were early medieval queens and princesses?
  • How far was the position of women in the Early Middle Ages more than one of subordination to men?
  • ‘Only in the Church could early medieval women enjoy authority and influence’. Discuss.

Trade

Issues

  • Whether there was continuity or discontinuity in commerce and trade-routes across our period.
  • The mechanisms by which commerce was conducted – gift-exchange, use of money, state control.
  • The social basis of trade – limited to the elite or much more far-reaching.
  • The relative commercial importance of different areas of Europe.

Questions

  • How far was trade the driving force of early medieval economic and political development?
  • How important was commerce to all levels of early medieval society?
  • ‘Trade in the Mediterranean was much more important to the development of early medieval Europe than was trade in the northern seas’. Discuss.

Agriculture

Issues

  • The extent of continuity in agriculture and rural life from the Roman period onwards.
  • The importance of free peasants and their holdings relative to great estates and slaves.
  • The role of technological change and the mechanisms that may have driven it.

Questions

  • ‘Roman agricultural organisation showed extraordinary resilience during this period’. Discuss.
  • How important to the early medieval rural economy were free peasants?
  • To what extent were changes in agricultural technology the driving force behind the development of early medieval rural society?

Towns

Issues

  • The nature and importance of any continuity between Roman towns and later towns – continuity of site, organisation, function.
  • The importance of trade and industry in urban development and urban life –  whether towns were primarily commercial or political, religious, and social centres.
  • The relationship between towns and rulers and lords – were they created and fostered by a top-down process involving rulers and lords, or were they more the bottom-up creation of merchants and artisans?

Questions

  • How closely linked were urban development and commerce in this period?
  • How important were capital cities in the exercise of power in this period?
  • Was early medieval urbanisation a tool of lordship?

Conversion

Issues

  • The reasons for the success of conversion – missionary activity, changes in the social and political position of the converts, political action by rulers, weakness of paganism, strengths of Christianity, changes in the climate of ideas of beliefs.
  • The extent to which Christianity was flexible enough to make itself acceptable to pagans.

Questions

  • Evaluate the importance of missionaries in bringing about conversions to Christianity in this period.
  • ‘Political and military pressures were the principal drivers of conversion to Christianity in the Early Middle Ages’. Discuss.
  • How far was conversion to Christianity in this period a question of calculating advantages and rewards?
  • Was paganism a negligible force in the Early Middle Ages?

Monasteries

Issues

  • The reasons for the attractiveness of monasticism – the nature of its religious appeal, as against the potential of monasteries for fulfilling political, social, and economic roles.
  • The extent to which monasticism adapted itself to the social and political organisation of Western Europe.
  • The functions of monasteries – as places of prayer and intercession for the dead, as pseudo-towns, as governmental centres, as commercial and industrial centres, as centres of agricultural exploitation, as foci of political power.

Questions

  • Why did early medieval kings and nobles found monasteries?
  • Why did rulers to such an extent patronise and pay attention to monks and holy men?
  • To what extent were monasteries the main centres for fostering early medieval art and scholarship?
  • Were monasteries principally intended to distribute spiritual benefits to early medieval society as a whole?

Popes and bishops

Issues

  • The source of the power of popes and bishops – their own holiness, the faith of their congregations, their support from secular rulers, their social status and wealth, the wealth and position of their churches.
  • The extent to which popes and bishops were like secular rulers.
  • The ways in which popes and bishops extended their authority over the Church – through establishing their constitutional position, through scholarly and theological expertise, through patronage of the cult of saints and pilgrimage, through church-building and patronage of art.

Questions

  • ‘Bishops in this period were more important for their political and practical roles than for their role in the development of ideas and religious practices’. Discuss.
  • How typical of early medieval bishops was the pope?
  • To what extent did early medieval bishops resemble secular lords?
  • How far was the papacy’s rise to dominance in the Church the result of deliberate papal policy?

Arab conquests

Issues

  • The problem of the nature of pre-Islamic Arabian society and whether our sources even permit us to understand it.
  • The role of Islam as a force consolidating previously anarchic tribal society (depending on your view of the first issue).
  • The validity of the evidence for Arab military superiority.
  • The degree of decline and vulnerability in the Byzantine provinces invaded by the Arabs.

Questions

  • ‘The conventional history of the rise of Islam is a political construct of the Abbasid period’. Discuss.
  • How far did the success of the Arab conquests depend on the acquiescence of the indigenous populations of the Byzantine provinces?
  • How effective as politicians and military commanders were the Rightly Guided Caliphs?

Byzantine Empire

Issues

  • How far the organisation of the Byzantine Empire into themes and the imperial legislation aimed at preserving their free peasantry were effective in maintaining Byzantine military power.
  • How far Byzantine military and naval technology was in advance of that of its enemies.
  • The validity of Obolensky’s views on the nature and efficacy of the Byzantine Commonwealth.
  • The efficiency or otherwise of Byzantine government.

Questions

  • ‘Militarily active emperors were much less advantageous to the Byzantine Empire than emperors who concentrated on religious and cultural influence’. Discuss.
  • ‘The Byzantine army and navy were an extraordinary achievement in recruitment, organisation, and technical innovation’. Discuss.
  • How far was the Byzantine imperial government effective in this period?