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Chapter 9 History Outline
Section 1: Transforming the Roman World
I. The New Germanic Kingdoms
A. Visigoths- occupied Spain and Italy
B. Ostrogoths- took control of Italy after the Visigoths
C. The Kingdom of the Franks
1. –Established by Clovis
a. first Germanic to convert to Christianity
2. by 510 Clovis established a powerful new Frankish Kingdom that stretched from the Pyrenees to the German lands in the east.
D. Germanic Society
1. Germans and Romans intermarried
2. The German concept of family affected the way Germanic law treated the problem of crime and punishment.
3. the wergild was the amount paid by a wrongdoer to the family of the person he or she injured or killed.
4. the ordeal was based on the idea of divine intervention.
II. The Role of the Church
A. By the end of the 4th century, Christianity had become the supreme religion of the Roman Empire.
B. Organization of the Church
1. Local Christian communities called parishes were led by priests, a group of parishes was led by a bishop, and the bishops were joined together under the direction of an archbishop.
a. bishopric- a bishop’s head of authority
2. Over time, one bishop (the Bishop of Rome) began to claim the he was the ruler of what was now called the Roman Catholic Church. Later, bishops were known to be successors of Peter and they came to be known as popes.
3. Gregory I strengthened the power of the papacy and the Roman Catholic Church.
a. especially active in converting non-Christian people of Europe to Christianity
C. The Monks and Their Missions
1. A monk is a man who separates himself from ordinary human society in order to pursue a life of total dedication to God.
2. The practice of living a life of a monk is known as monasticism.
3. Saint Benedict founded a community of monks for which he wrote a set of rules
a. this community established the basic form of monasticism in the Catholic Church
b. Benedict’s rule divided each day into a series of activities, w/ primary emphasis on prayer and manual labor.
c. Physical work was required of all monks for several hours a day, because idleness was a “the enemy of the soul.”
d. At the heart of every community practice was prayer, the proper “Work of God.” Although prayer included private meditation and reading, all monks gathered together seven times during the day for common prayer and the chanting of Psalms.
e. Monks ate, worked, slept, and worshipped together
f. Each Benedictine monastery was strictly ruled by an abbot/ “father” of the monastery
g. Each monastery owned lands that enabled it to be a self-sustaining community, isolated and from and independent of the rest of the world surrounding it.
4. Monks became the new heroes of the Christian civilization and were and important force in the new European civilization.
a. The monastic community came to be seen as the ideal Christian society that could provide a moral example to the wider society around it.
b. They were the social workers of their communities, providing schools for the young, hospitality for travelers, and hospitals for the sick.
5. Monasteries became the centers of learning wherever they were located.
6. English and Irish monks were especially enthusiastic missionaries- people sent out to carry religious messages- who undertook conversation of non-Christian peoples, especially in German lands. By 1050 most western Europeans had become Catholics.
7. Women, called nuns, also began to withdraw from the world to dedicate themselves to God.
a. These women played an important role in the monastic movement. They lived in convents headed by abbesses.
III. Charlmagne and the Carolingians