By Peter Heather
After the collapse of the Roman Empire, the Western world went through a turbulent and dramatic period during which a succession of kingdoms rose, grew, and crumbled in spans of only a few generations. The wars and personalities of the dark ages are the stuff of legend, and all led toward the eventual reunification of Europe under a different kind of Roman rule — this time, that of the Church. Below, historian Peter Heather selects ten moments from the period upon which the fate of Europe hinged.
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March 15, 493 AD: King Odoacer slain by Theoderic
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Theoderic, king of the new Ostrogothic coalition created since the death of Attila the Hun in 453, slices Odoacer in half after dinner in Ravenna to take complete control of Italy and the Adriatic coast of Dalmatia. He subsequently adds to this Sicily, a large part of modern Hungary, southern France and most of Spain to relaunch Empire in the west, consciously styling himself as the head of a fully and legitimately Roman state.
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January 1, 519 AD: Eutharic becomes consul
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Theoderic’s chosen heir and son-in-law, Eutharic, receives the Roman consulship with the full blessing of Constantinople, seeming to guarantee that Theoderic’s Empire will last into the next generation. But Eutharic dies before Theoderic, and, on the latter’s death, Constantinople encourages the centrifugal forces which break the Empire up once more into separate Gothic kingdoms in Italy and Spain.
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January 18, 532 AD: Massacre at the Nika riots
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The Emperor Justinian turns loose his General Belisarius and his trusted soldiery on a crowd in the Hippodrome, which has been baying for his replacement, after a sequence of military defeats against Persia. At the end of the day, thousands are dead and the ceremonial centre of Constantinople a burnt out ruin, but Justinian has clung onto power. (Pictured: the Hippodrome today.)
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September 14, 533 AD: The battle of Ad Decimum
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Desperately seeking renewed legitimacy, Justinian sends Belisarius to North Africa this time to exploit political division in the Vandal kingdom. In the battle, Belisarius wins a stunning victory over the Vandal king Gelimer, and Carthage swiftly falls. This unexpectedly easy victory leads Justinian to adopt a more general policy of conquest in the west which will add Italy, Dalmatia and parts of southern Spain, as well as North Africa, to his Empire by the mid-550s.
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June 8, 632: The prophet Muhammad dies
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Muhammad perishes on the eve of the great Islamic conquests which will engulf the Near East, North Africa, and much of Spain within the next hundred years. They utterly destroy the Persian Empire and deprive Constantinople of between two-thirds and three-quarters of its territories and tax revenues. The old East Roman Empire is reduced from world to regional power, and its domination of the western Mediterranean, reasserted under Justinian, destroyed forever.
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Christmas Day, 800 AD: Charlemagne is crowned emperor by Pope Leo III in St. Peters
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The Islamic destruction of Constantinople’s capacity to influence western events has combined with transalpine economic and demographic development to allow a restoration of Empire in the west based for the first time on a north European powerbase. Contrary to his own propaganda, Charlemagne has been actively seeking the imperial title for at least a decade, and it is no coincidence that, the day before, he had convened a synod which cleared the Pople of some very embarrassing allegations, with no questions asked.
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June 25, 841 AD: The Battle of Fontenoy
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Charlemagne’s grandsons fight a bloody engagement at Fontenoy, kickstarting the process of Carolingian imperial fragmentation. Unlike its Roman predecessor which used large-scale taxation to maintain professional military forces, the capacity of Charlemagne’s state to wage war was based on militarised gentry and aristocratic landowners whose allegiance had to be bought – largely by grants of land - in each generation. This made it extremely difficult to maintain centralised supra-regional power in the long-term, as wealth tended to leech away from monarchs, especially in the context of civil war, where military support was at a premium.
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February 12, 1049 AD: Coronation of Pope Leo IX
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Bruno of Egisheim-Dagsburg is crowned Pope Leo IX, marking the moment when the products of the Christian cultural revolution instigated by Charlemagne took possession of the Roman Papacy to further his ideals of Christian reform. Emperors and Kings had previously provided the Church with the necessary resources and enforcement structures to make reform work, but Latin Christendom (increasing in size as conversion continued) was now divided between too many rulers for any one to be the source of the united leadership that the common culture of Latin Churchmen, the product of Charlemagne’s libraries and reforms, desired.
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December 28, 1210 AD: Approval of the Compilatio tertia, the oldest official compilation of Papal legal decisions, or decretals
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When Leo IX became Pope, the Papacy enjoyed great prestige, but little practical authority. This was transformed by a legal revolution – beginning with Gratian’s Concordance of Discordant Canons in c. 1150 – which used the legal principles and techniques of old Roman imperial law systematically to resolve disagreements in Church teaching on the principle that existing Papal rulings carried greatest authority, while simultaneously requiring that any new or currently unresolved issues be addressed by new Papal decrees.
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November 11, 1215 AD: Fourth Council of the Lateran
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Seventy-one metropolitans, four hundred and twelve bishops, and nine hundred abbots and priors gather in Rome for the opening of Lateran IV, then the largest Christian council ever held. It defines required standards of Catholic lay and clerical piety which last down to the twentieth century. Equally important, it symbolises the transfer of ecclesiastical authority from emperors to Popes. Four hundred years earlier, it was Charlemagne who had called the ecclesiastical shots, but, in the meantime, the legal structure of one Roman Empire had been used to create a new one.
Peter Heather is Professor of Medieval History at King’s College London. He is the bestselling author of The Restoration of Rome: Barbarian Popes and Imperial Pretenders, The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians, Empires and Barbarians: The Fall of Rome and the Birth of Europe, and numerous other works on late antiquity and the early Middle Ages.
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Image credits: 1. Coin with profile of Odoacer. Permission via Creative Commons by Classical Numismatic Group, Inc. Via Wikimedia Commons. 2. 16th century statue of Theoderic. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons. 3. The Hippodrome of Constantinople today. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons. 4. Mosaic depicting Justinian. Permission via GNU license. Via Wikimedia Commons. 5. 18th century Turkish depiction of Muhammad ascending to Heaven. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons. 6. “Coronation of Charlemagne” by Jean Fouquet, c. 1460. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons. 7. “Battle of Fontenoy” by Pierre Lenfant, c. 1747. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons. 8. Statue of Pope Leo IX in Altorf, France. Permission via GNU license. Via Wikimedia Commons. 9. Pope Innocent III, whose decretals comprised the Compilatio Tertia, depicted in a fresco c. 1219. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons. 10. “Lateran Palace” by Giuseppe Vasi, c. 1752. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
The post The fall of Rome to the rise of the Catholic Church, in pictures appeared first on OUPblog.
By Peter Heather
The Roman Empire at its peak was the first great hemispherical power in human history. Over the years, though, this mighty society was torn apart by internal strife and attacks by rival powers. Below, the renowned historian Peter Heather describes the ten most critical turning points which led to the fall of the Empire and the beginning of the Dark Ages.
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242 AD: The accession of the Persian King of Kings
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The Sassanian Shapur I unites Iran and Iraq to create a Near Eastern superpower that inflicts colossal defeats on three different Roman Emperors. After sixty years of struggle, Rome restores stability on its eastern front, but at huge cost in terms of higher taxes to fund the necessary doubling of its armed forces, and the Persian threat is only parried not defeated. There is now little spare capacity left in the Roman imperial system should another major threat arise.
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August 9, 378 AD: Emperor Valens and two-thirds of his elite field army are killed on one day at Adrianople
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The root cause is the rise of Hunnic power on the fringes of Europe which caused tens of thousands of Gothic refugees to arrive on the Danube late in 376. At war with Persia, Valens had no choice but to admit them, and, faced with underlying Roman hostility, they effectively reorganised themselves into the new, militarily powerful coalition which destroyed Valens and his army.
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December 31, 406 AD: A huge mixed force of Alans, Vandals, and Sueves crosses the river Rhine into Gaul
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Following hot on the heels of Radagaisus’ invasion of Italy the previous summer, this unprecedented breakdown of order on the western Empire’s frontiers is a sign that the epicentre of Hunnic operations is shifting decisively westwards and, in the process, remaking the balance of strategic power in central Europe against Rome’s interests.
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August 24, 410 AD: The sack of Rome by the Visigoths
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At the head of the Visigoths - a new coalition built out of the Gothic refugees of 376 and the followers of Radagaisus – Alaric sacks the city of Rome. The Emperor Honorius is powerless to protect the old imperial capital and soon has to write to the British provinces to advise them to look to their own defence. Faced with both Visigoths and the Rhine invaders of 406, the imperial authorities start to abandon outlying territories to concentrate force where it is absolutely needed.
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Summer 418 AD: A treaty gives Gallia Aquitania to the Visigoths
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Fl. Constantius, eminence grise behind the throne of the western Emperor Honorius, is forced to cut the Visigoths a deal. They are settled permanently, with full imperial recognition, in southwestern Gaul. The western Empire no longer has sufficient military strength to defeat all the invaders now established on its soil, and wants to use the Goths, perceived as the lessor of two evils, to help defeat the Rhine invaders of 406 who have occupied most of Spain.
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October 19, 439 AD: The Vandals take a Kingdom
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Geiseric, king of a new Vandal-Alan coalition formed from the survivors of the Rhine invasion, ravaged by combined Gotho-Roman assault, leads them off their current Libyan reservation to take possession of Carthage and the richest provinces of the entire western Empire. This is a direct threat to the continued flow of vital tax revenues which keeps the Empire’s remaining armies in being.
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Summer 441 AD: The Huns attack
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Attila and Bleda, new leaders of the Huns, attack cities of the East Roman Balkans. This causes Constantinople to withdraw its forces from a joint expeditionary force gathering in Sicily to restore Carthage and its surrounding Tunisian provinces to Roman control. As a direct result, the western Empire has to recognise Geiseric’s control of the richest parts of North Africa and accept the decline in its own military capacity which necessarily follows from this loss of revenue.
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July 9, 455 AD: Avitus is declared western Emperor at the Council of the Gallic provinces in Arles
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He wins recognition from the Roman Senate, and is the first legitimate western emperor to rely directly on the military power of recent immigrants – in this case the Visigoths – as a crucial building block of his regime. Rome’s military capacity has declined to such an extent that, from now on, at least some of the new barbarian powers established on west Roman soil will have to be included in the process of imperial regime creation.
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Summer 468 AD: Rome’s final grab for Africa fails
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An East Roman expeditionary force led by the general Basiliscus is destroyed by Vandal fireships off the coast of North Africa. The last attempt to win back the riches of North Africa from Geiseric fails and the other barbarian powers established on Roman soil realise that the western imperial centre is nothing but a hollow sham. They therefore quickly grab all the territory that they can, often coming more into conflict with one another than the few remaining Roman armies.
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September 4, 476 AD: Romulus Augustulus is deposed, ending the empire
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Odovacar, commander of the last Roman army of Italy, exploits discontent over pay arrears among his soldiers to depose the last western Emperor, Romulus Augustulus. He pays them off in land because so many provinces have now been lost that the surviving tax revenues are insufficient. He also persuades the Roman senate to send the western imperial vestments and diadem to Constantinople with a declaration that the west no longer needed – in fact could no longer support - an emperor of its own.
(Pictured: "Romulus Augustulus resigns the Crown," from Mary Yonge's "Young Folks' History of Rome.)
Peter Heather is Professor of Medieval History at King’s College London. He is the bestselling author of The Restoration of Rome: Barbarian Popes and Imperial Pretenders, The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians, Empires and Barbarians: The Fall of Rome and the Birth of Europe, and numerous other works on late antiquity and the early Middle Ages.
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Image credits: 1. Coin with profile of Shapur. Permission via GNU license via Wikimedia Commons. 2. Statue of Valens. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons. 3. “Vandals Plundering,” from Mary Charlotte Yonge’s Young Folks’ History of Rome. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons. 4. “Sack of Rome by the Visigoths” by JM Sylvestre. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons. 5. Map of Roman territories; Gallia Aquitania highlighted. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons. 6. Map of the Vandal-Alan Kingdom. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons. 7. “Attila, the Scourge of God,” by Ulipano Checa. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons. 8. Coin with profile of Avitus. Permission via GNU license via Wikimedia Commons. 9. Cap Bon, site of the Roman defeat. Photo by Sergey Prokopenko. Creative Commons license via Wikimedia Commons. 10. “Romulus Augustulus resigns the Crown before Odoacer,” from Mary Charlotte Yonge’s Young Folks’ History of Rome. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
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After the Second World War ended in 1945, Britain and France still controlled the world’s two largest colonial empires, even after the destruction of the war. Their imperial territories extended over four continents. And what’s more, both countries seemed to be absolutely determined to hold on their empires; the roll-call of British and French politicians, soldiers, settlers, and writers who promised to defend their colonial possessions at all costs is a long one. But despite that, within just twenty years, both empires had vanished.
In the two videos below Martin Thomas, author of Fight or Flight: Britain, France, and their Roads from Empire, discusses the disintegration of the British and French empires. He emphasizes the need to examine the process of decolonization from a global perspective, and discusses how the processes of decolonization dominated the 20th century. He also compares and contrasts the case of India and Vietnam as key territories of the British and French Empires.
Click here to view the embedded video.
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Martin Thomas is Professor of Imperial History in the Department of History at the University of Exeter, where he has taught since 2003. He founded the University’s Centre for the Study of War, State and Society, which supports research into the impact of armed conflict on societies and communities. He is a past winner of a Philip Leverhulme prize for outstanding research and a holder of a Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship. He has published widely on twentieth century French and imperial history, and his new book is Fight or Flight: Britain, France, and their Roads from Empire.
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Michelle Rafferty, Publicity Assistant
Recently Tim Parsons, Professor of African History at Washington University and author of Rule of Empires: Those Who Built Them, Those Who Endured Them, and Why They Always Fall, stopped by Oxford with his wife Ann. In the following podcast Ann asks Tim a few questions about his book and what empires past can tell us about the present.
Michelle Rafferty: Today we have a special treat here at Oxford. I’m here with Tim Parsons and his wife Ann Parsons, and Ann is actually going to interview Tim. Here we go.
Ann Parsons: Your specialty is African History. What motivated you to write a book about empires worldwide?
Tim Parsons: Well in the past as a social historian of Africa I’ve written books about common people, which means I write about how common people live their daily lives, and in this case, in studying East Africa, I’ve looked at how East Africans, average people, experienced empire. And one of the things that troubled me is in the last ten years we’ve heard a lot about how empires can be benevolent, civilizing, how they were forces for global order and security, and how then the way to solve the problem of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the global war on terror, was that the United States should impose an empire from above, and that this would be the way to restore order to the world. And as someone who has studied empire from the bottom up, that I see the true realities of empire, I knew from the start in 2003 that this was a very bad idea. One of the things that I felt I had to do was make this case, I had to actually talk about empires historically, to go back in time and to see if what I know about the British Empire in East Africa held true all the way back to the Roman Empire because that’s what many of the current proponents of empire now, cite.
Ann: So then what do these historical empires tell us about the present?
Tim: Well, first of all they us that it’s really a very bad idea to cite ancient civilizations as examples for modern American foreign policy. In others words, empires, if we go back 2,000 years to the Roman Empire, if we even go back to the 15th century Spanish Empire in the Americas, yes those empires did last a long time, but one of the reasons why they did is because things were very different back then. The communication was much slower, transportation was much slower, they were largely agrarian societies when literacy was not very widespread, and most identities, which means how people identified themselves, were local and confined to the village level. And in those times it was very easy to conquer many villages and then to impose rule from above. So that made these empires appear much more stable than they actually really were. And what you find out, if you at the history of empire over time, you see that the lifespan of empires gets shorter, and shorter, and shorter, to the point, as I argue in the book, that empires today don’t exist.
Critics on the left of American policy in the last maybe 50 years have branded the United States as a new empire, as the new Rome because they don’t like American foreign policy, because they don’t like the exertion of American force around the world. And that’s a problem I think, because by calling the United States an empire they are missing the true definition of empire. An empire is direct formal rule. They fail to recognize that it’s not the question of whether the United States is an empire or not, it’s that they should point out using empire as a model is a very bad idea because empir
This is the time of year I yearn to be back out in the garden. I miss digging and planting and watering and that feeling of tearing a weed clean from the soil knowing I've gotten every bit of root.
Outside my studio window I can see the remnants of plants that I should have cleaned up in the fall. By then I was too tired. But now I'm re-energizing, for yet another season.
Have you noticed how the quality of late-afternoon light starts to change toward the end of January? Spring is coming!
