Notes on the Germanic Kingdoms

In class today, we took notes on the Germanic kingdoms of Western Europe and the Eastern Empire.

The Germanic Barbarians:
- barbarian warlords and their families who assimilated into roman culture became the "nobles" or aristocrats of Roman medieval Europe.
- germanic tribes who ruled former roman lands sought to conquer and assimilate other barbarian peoples who lived beyond the frontiers and were still pagans
more on germanic kingdoms...
- the angles and the Saxons (from Denmark and northwestern Germany) invaded Britain and assimilated the native Britains
- most of the anglo-saxons were converted to christianity in the seventh century
- the most powerful germanic tribe was the franks
- but the real power lay with the "mayors of the palace" who were royal officials and nobles themselves
meanwhile, back in the eastern empire...
from "eastern empire" to "Byzantium"
- the eastern Roman Empire continued on while the west was now divided up by the barbarian tribes
- when the emperor Justinian came to power in 527, he decided to reunite the entire Roman Empire by re-conquering the western territories
- Justinian succeeded for a time, but the land he re-took was soon conquered by new barbarian tribes and a massive plague depopulated much of the west
its a christian empire now...
- greek Byzantium emperors saw themselves as roman emperors and the heads of the christian church
- Byzantines preserved greco-roman art, architecture, philosophy, and writing despite much of it being non-christian
- Justinian built the massive domed Hagia Sophia ("holy wisdom") in Constantinople, considered to be the most glorious church on earth at the time
- third version finished in 537, the cathedral of Hagia Sophia, Justinian's cathedral, was later a mosque and is now a museum. Using knowledge of the geometry of curves, it has a dome supported by arches high in the air that remained a model for both church-builders and mosque-builders for more than a thousand years.

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