A Short History of Europe: From Charlemagne to the Treaty of Europe (3 page)

In 1057, army commander Isaac Komnenos (ruled 1057–59) forced Emperor Michael VI (ruled 1056–57) to abdicate and seized power. The empire would
flower again briefly in the twelfth century but, in 1204, the city of Constantinople was sacked after the emperor had failed to pay money to the forces of the Fourth Crusade and the lands of the empire were split up. The golden age was long gone.

In their rampage through Europe in the first half of the tenth century, the Magyar invaders overwhelmed
Italy, Bavaria, Saxony and Moravia. They represented such an ongoing and expensive threat – through the ransoms and tribute payments they demanded – that the German nobles abandoned their customary in-fighting and united against them. In 955, during yet another invasion of Bavaria, Otto I (Holy Roman Emperor 962–73), King of the Germans, defeated them at Lechfeld, near Augsburg. It was such a
decisive victory that it brought the Magyar threat to an end. The nomadic Magyars returned to the plains of modern-day Hungary where they settled and were eventually converted to Christianity by Byzantine missionaries.

They had contributed, however, to the future shape of Europe. Their conquest of Greater Moravia helped to create a number of independent states that exist to this day – Hungary,
Bohemia, Poland, Croatia, Serbia and Austria. They also played a major role in the creation of the prevailing power of the next few centuries – the Holy Roman Empire. The German princes had united behind Otto and, after the Battle of Lechfeld, he was raised high on their shields as they proclaimed him Emperor.

Otto had become King of Germany in 936. He was the son of Henry the Fowler (ruled 919–36)
who had turned Saxony into a force to be reckoned with by creating the eastern Marches, installing settlements and building walled towns in order to prevent invasion from the Danes, Slavs and Magyars. Critically, however, he managed to establish a link with Italy through the Pope. John XII (Pope 955–64) was losing a war against Berengar II (ruled 950–63), King of Italy, and he turned to Otto
for help. In return, the Pope promised he would crown the Saxon as Holy Roman Emperor in a formal ceremony in Rome. Otto jumped at the opportunity to obtain God’s approval for his title but he added one very important condition. He insisted on having control over all church appointments. John reluctantly agreed and, on 2 February 962, Otto was crowned Holy Roman Emperor. The restored Empire would
endure for more than 800 years, until it was finally dismantled by Napoleon in 1806.

Before long, however, the Pope began to regret his decision and became increasingly resentful of Otto’s power. He sent emissaries to both the Magyars and the Byzantines, urging them to form a league against the Saxons. A disgruntled Otto returned to Rome and deposed John, installing Leo VIII (Pope 963–65). Leo,
not even a clergyman, was ordained into the priesthood one day and elected Pope the next. As soon as Otto left, however, civil war broke out in Rome and John was restored to the papal throne. When he died shortly after and was replaced by Benedict V (Pope 966), Otto returned to Rome once more to depose this latest incumbent. This time, he made the Romans promise never to elect a pontiff without
the approval of the Emperor.

Otto’s imperial title did not impress the Byzantines and they were even more disturbed by the fact that, by 972, Otto had conquered all of their territories in Italy. Cleverly, however, he offered to hand them back in return for a mutual recognition of titles. He cemented the relationship by marrying his son to Theophanu, niece of a previous Byzantine Emperor, John
I Tzimisces (ruled 969–76). Thus the concept of one, unified Roman Empire disappeared forever.

Otto II (ruled 967–83), son of Otto the Great, did continue to harbour dreams of ruling over a larger realm but few shared them. Henry II (ruled 1014–24), the last of the Saxon dynasty, was too preoccupied with other matters to entertain thoughts of a single empire. He had to deal with civil wars in
Germany, skirmishes with the Slavs on their common border and, on the other side of the empire, occasional wars with the French.

The French had their own problems, but their succession issues were settled in 987 when the last Carolingian monarch died without issue. Hugh Capet (ruled 987–96), son of Hugh le Grand, Duke of France (898–956), a powerful landowner in the Île-de-France, was elected
by the kingdom’s feudal vassals who saw him as weak and easily manipulated. Initially, the new king’s power was limited only to the royal domain around Paris, a small area of approximately 400 square miles, stretching from Senlis in the north to Orléans to the south. It has to be remembered just how fragmented France, or West Francia, was at this time. There were as many as 150 different currencies
in circulation and a dozen different languages were spoken. Consequently, Hugh Capet’s reign was punctuated by power struggles with his feudal lords. He did, however, succeed in having his son, Robert, crowned early in his reign – on the pretext that he might be killed during one of his campaigns. Thus he ensured the survival of the Capetians, a survival that was further helped by three centuries
of male heirs which prevented any succession issues. The dynasty was to last 800 years, its uninterrupted rule being brought to an end by the French Revolution, but even then it returned after Napoleon’s demise and reigned for a further 33 years, from 1815 until 1848.

England, meanwhile, enjoyed the reign of one of its greatest kings. Alfred, the fourth son of King Æthelwulf to become king, ruled
the southern Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex from 871 until his death in 899, defeating the Danes and bringing much-needed stability and order to his kingdom. Athelstan (ruled 924–39) not only established a single administrative and legislative system but, having won the submission of King Constantine II of the Scots (ruled 900–43), felt able to style himself ‘King of All Britain’. The Vikings
were never very far away, however, and the payment of tributes –
Danegeld
– was crippling to the royal purse. Finally, the Danish Canute the Great (ruled 1016–35), son of Sweyn Forkbeard who had briefly held the throne of England, subjugated the country with a raid in 1014. Canute now ruled a vast northern empire from the Baltic to Greenland. He reigned in England until his death in 1035 but,
by 1042, rivalry amongst his successors led to the election by the Witan – England’s governing council – of an Anglo-Saxon king again. This was Edward the Confessor (ruled 1043–66), the last king of England from the House of Wessex. Although he did divide the country into counties, his reign was marked by the increasing power of the nobles and his death without an heir led to the strife depicted in
the Bayeux Tapestry. In 1066, Duke William of Normandy defeated and killed King Harold II at the Battle of Hastings and took the throne as King William the Conqueror.

From the ninth to the twelfth centuries, countries fell to Christianity like dominoes. Moravia, Bohemia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland and even Kievan Rus’, colonised by Varangians (pagan Scandinavians), were all converted
and some were rewarded with crowns from the Pope. Even heathen Scandinavia, whose warlike ways seemed to be very much at odds with the tenets of the Christian church, began to succumb during the eleventh century. Given, however, that missionary work was central to both the Greek and Latin churches, it was fairly inevitable that their teaching would make inroads into the various cultures with which
the missionaries came into contact.

First to convert was Moravia, situated in the east of the present-day Czech Republic. In 862, two Greek brothers, Cyril (827–69) and Methodius (826–85), both later canonised, were sent by the Patriarch of Constantinople to carry out missionary work in opposition to German priests already there. King Rastislav (ruled 846–70) had obtained his throne with the
help of the Frankish monarch Louis the German but he was eager to assert his independence from the Frankish Empire. St Cyril devised the Glagolitic alphabet, the first alphabet to be used for Slavonic manuscripts. Its descendant alphabet – the Cyrillic – is still in use in many countries today. Cyril also translated the Bible.

In Bulgaria, Boris I (ruled 852–89) toyed with both churches before
agreeing to be baptised by the Patriarch of Constantinople, while in Bohemia successive kings alternated in their religious allegiances. Eventually, after more than a century under the Premyslid dynasty, when both the Slavonic and Latin liturgy were performed, the Latin won out. Since Bohemia was a fief of the Empire and affiliated to the German church, this was always the likeliest outcome.

The mission of Cyril and Methodius provided Poland with its first Christian connection and the chief of the Vistulanian tribe – the people who lived along the banks of Poland’s longest river, the Vistula – was baptised in 875. His people’s association with the Slavonic rite continued until the twelfth century. In the north, however, it took until the tenth century to convert people from their pagan
practices and it was the Latin Church that succeeded in doing so. In 965, Mieszko I (ruled c.962–92), in the face of a surge of Saxon power following their decisive defeat of the Magyars at the Battle of Lechfeld, formed an alliance with the Czechs. Mieszko married a Czech princess and was baptised. By 1000, Wielkopolska (Great Poland) had been joined to Malopolska (Little Poland) in the south
and Mieszko’s successor, Boleslaw the Brave (ruled 992–1025), was given the first crown of Poland by Pope Benedict VIII (Pope 1012–1024). Poland would repay this gift by becoming and remaining the shining light of Catholicism in Eastern Europe.

When the Magyars were defeated at the Battle of Lechfeld, Hungary came under German control and the Latin Church held sway. The bond with the Empire was
confirmed by the baptism of Magyar Prince Géza (ruled 972–97) in 975 and the subsequent marriage of his son István (ruled 997–1038) to a Bavarian princess.

For the Varangians of Kievan Rus’, conversion to Christianity was merely the pragmatic thing to do. Vladimir, Prince of Kiev (ruled 980–1015), was certainly no Christian. He had murdered his brother and had taken numerous wives. He had considered
all the major religions but settled on Christianity as the necessary price for persuading the Eastern Empire to hire the 6,000 soldiers of his Varangian Guard as mercenaries. Missionaries spread from Kiev to Minsk, Novgorod and Polotsk.

Scandinavia did not welcome Christianity with open arms. In Denmark, Sweyn Forkbeard (ruled 986–1014), whose father Harold Bluetooth (ruled 958–86) had been baptised
and then excommunicated, was the driving force. Then Canute the Great sent Anglo-Saxon missionaries to try to convert Scandinavia. In Norway, Olaf Haroldson (ruled 1016–28) converted his country by nefarious means, coercing and paying off reluctant nobles on his way to national sainthood. Meanwhile, in Sweden, following the baptism in 1008 of King Olaf Skötkonung (ruled 995–1022), civil war
broke out between pagans and Christians and lasted for a hundred years.

The two Churches, Latin and Greek, managed to coexist for centuries, never fully cooperating and enduring endless disputes and crises – such as the long-running Iconoclasm Crisis. In 1043, however, a critical moment for Christianity arrived. Patriarch Michael Kerularios (1000–59) was engaged in a dispute with Pope Leo IX
(Pope 1049–54) over a number of issues, but primarily the use of unleavened bread in the Eucharist. He had already riled the Pope by closing all the Latin churches in Constantinople after falling out with the Byzantine governor of southern Italy. Leo sent the papal legate Humbert of Silva Candida (1015–61) to Constantinople to press his claims of supremacy over the Eastern Church but the Patriarch
spurned the legate and was summarily excommunicated, the excommunication document being laid by Humbert on the altar of Hagia Sophia. The Patriarch retaliated and, Leo having died in the meantime, excommunicated the legates. The two churches had reached an impasse. The schism between East and West has never been repaired. Since 1054, Europe has been split between the Catholic lands in the West and
the Orthodox lands to the East.

Since the fall of the Roman Empire, the way that people interacted with each other had changed. In Roman times the relationship that mattered was that of the individual to the state, the Empire. In the absence of that impersonal central authority, what began to matter was people’s relationship to each other within a system known to us as ‘feudal’, although
the term was unknown to those that lived at the time. The dictionary definition of feudalism is:

a system of social organisation prevalent in Western Europe in the Middle Ages in which powerful land-owning lords granted degrees of privilege and protection to lesser subjects holding a range of positions within a rigid social hierarchy.

(Chambers Dictionary 10
^th
Edition, published Chambers Harrap
Publishers, 2006.)

Although this definition of the word is not absolute – in practice, it varied from one region or country to another – feudalism was basically a hierarchical system by which one man became the ‘vassal’ of another, more powerful person. The king was a vassal of the emperor, the aristocrats were lords to their vassals, the knights; agricultural workers, ‘villeins’, were vassals
of the knights, and below them, at the bottom of the heap, were the peasants, or serfs. Thus, in this system, each man knew his position, a position that remained the same for his entire life. Above all, he knew what his relationship was to the others in the complex social network of the Middle Ages.

Each person, from the most powerful to the very poorest and weakest, had something to contribute.
There were two currencies – land and military service. The lord loaned his vassal land – a ‘fief’ – to work and to live off and the vassal provided his master with loyalty and service, often in battle.

The vassalage ceremony was codified in France at the end of the eighth century. People saw that feudalism was a way of ensuring security in turbulent times and provided the means to raise local
militia to deal with incursions and lawlessness. The feudal system was an absolute necessity if a sizeable warrior class of knights was to be maintained. Equipment and the upkeep of retinues and castles were all very expensive and feudalism provided a framework within which they could be supported. The first indications of the system emerged in northwestern Gaul, or France, but it spread quickly
to the Rhine and across the rest of Europe. The ninth century saw Charlemagne’s knights bringing it to northern and central Italy and it was William the Conqueror who introduced it to England after 1066, a little later than the rest of Christendom.