The bubonic plague, like many other epidemics, comes in cycles. The first plague of the medieval period occurred during the reign ofjustinian (527565); the second, called “The Black Death,” struck in 1348. Plague is a bacterial infection normally spread to humans through the bite of a household flea that has picked up the bacteria from an infected household rat. Gregory of Tours, who saw the plague’s effects firsthand, wrote a very accurate description of
The clinical symptoms of the disease:
At this time it was reported that Marseilles was suffering from a severe epidemic of swelling in the groin. . . . I want to tell you exactly how this came about. . . . a ship from Spain put into port with the usual kind of cargo, unfortunately also bringing with it the source of infection. Quite a few of the townsfolk purchased objects from the cargo and in less than no time a house in which eight people lived was left completely deserted, all
The inhabitants having caught the disease. The infection did not spread through the residential quarter immediately. Some time passed and then, like a cornfield set alight, the entire town was suddenly ablaze with the pestilence. ... At the end of two months the plague burned itself out. The population returned to Marseilles, thinking themselves safe. Then the disease started again and all who had come back died. On several occasions later on Marseilles suffered from an epidemic of this sort.
The plague killed three-fourths of the people that it infected, so burial of the dead became a problem. In some places mass burials replaced the usual ritual of washing the body, putting it in a shroud (pictured in the center), and putting it in a coffin.
By the early sixth century, the world of learning was much changed from the time of Jerome and Augustine. Preservation of the past became the overwhelming preoccupation for the surviving Romans, as it had for Sidonius. Even Boethius’s great work, The Consolation of Philosophy, had more to say about the comforts of contemplating Greek philosophy than it did about his Christian present.
The comfortable compromise between Theodoric and the Pope did not long survive. The Roman emperor of the east, Justinian (527-565), began an ambitious program to reconquer Italy, North Africa, and Spain—the wealthiest parts of the former western empire. The expeditions were very expensive, however, and Justinian’s victories were few. The Byzantine armies defeated the Vandals but could retain only a small portion of North Africa. They did gain Sicily and southern Italy; however, the protracted campaigns weakened the Ostrogoths and destroyed more towns, villas, and Roman roads and viaducts than all the previous Gothic invasions. The senate finally ceased to meet, and the last public entertainment in the Coliseum was held in 549. Only Ravenna remained as a glorious outpost of Byzantine civilization in Italy.
The mid-sixth century was a grim time for Italy. Bubonic plague—the disease that would be called the Black Death in the 14th century—decimated the population. As a result of the Ostrogoths’ campaigns and the plague, Italy lay open to invasion by a savage new tribe, the Lombards. As earlier in the face of the Huns, the bishop of Rome was left alone to ward oif invasion. He
During the Middle Ages, sick people made pilgrimages to the shrines of saints, hoping to be cured by praying at the tomb or consuming dust from it. A superstructure with niches protected the tomb from being entirely scraped away by the pious; it allowed them to get only part of their bodies close to the tomb.
Managed to preserve Rome and the land around it, but the Lombards took over most of the northern part of the peninsula around Milan, which became known as Lombardy. The Lombards represented yet another challenge for conversion and assimilation into something resembling the Roman way of life.
The brutality of the times is depicted in a story about a Lombard king and his wife. The queen’s father had been a rival chieftain, whom her husband had killed. Proud of his deed, he carried the father-in-law’s skuU about as a trophy. During a banquet, he filled the skull with wine and forced his wife to drink his health. She complied but vowed to murder her husband—a promise she kept. Despite the gruesome infighting of the Lombard royal family, eventually the Lombards, too, were Christianized.
Although the original written legal codes of the Germanic tribes were intended to keep the Roman and Germanic populations separate, the distinctions between the two could not be maintained. Intermarriage frequently occurred, and the languages blended to create the Romance (or Latin-root) languages: Italian, French, Spanish, and Romanian. The two groups slowly assimilated into a common culture, but it is not known how people felt about this transition as it was takingplace. DidRoman fathers think that their Germanic sons-in-law had crude table manners? Did Germanic boys think that their dark-haired Roman brides, whatever land and wealth that they brought to the marriage, were less beautiful (or more beautiful) than the blonde girls they were used to? Did Roman women resent becoming wives to husbands who wore hides rather than tunics or had blond hair and blue eyes rather than dark hair and dark eyes? (Some women preferred a life in a nunnery to marriage, but not necessarily because they objected to the physical and cultural characteristics of a prospective husband.) In any case, the invaders settled, married into the local population, adopted hybrid languages of Latin and Germanic words, and produced children of mixed ancestry. Indeed, the entire Ostrogothic population was assimilated into the population of Italy. The western Mediterranean culture as well as the appearance of its people changed through genetic mixing that introduced fairer skin and blond and red hair into their population.
For some time the Romans managed to keep for themselves the distinction of serving as bishops in the old Roman towns. Gregory of Tours, for example, boasted that all but five of the bishops of Tours had been connected with his family. But his power and that of the other bishops depended on the tribal rulers. The bishops governed the towns and their surrounding countryside in a unit of land and government called the diocese. The church in which the bishop officiated was called a cathedral. Gregory of Tours described one built in Clermont-Ferrand; “It is one hundred and fifty feet long, sixty feet wide inside the nave and fifty feet high as far as the vaulting. It has a rounded apse at the end, and two wings of elegant design on either side. The whole building is constructed in the shape of a cross. It has fifty-two windows, seventy columns and eight doorways.
In it one is conscious of the fear of God and of a great brightness.’’
The cathedrals often contained the bones of early Christian saints. Pious Christians traveled to the shrines to cure their illnesses, for the religious experience of being near the body of a martyr, for the adventure of travel, or for the opportunity to buy and sell goods at their destination. They also left gifts, including extensive land holdings, to the cathedrals and churches that housed the bones of notable saints. Gregory had particular success as a bishop by making the shrine of St. Martin of Tours one of the most venerated stops for pilgrims. Another famous shrine was that of St. Denis the martyred, first bishop of Paris. His remains rested in a large and wealthy monastery. That monastery became even wealthier when it estabhshed an annual fair that attracted merchants from aU over Europe as well as the eastern Mediterranean.
Despite the popularity of St. Denis and St. Martin among pilgrims, the status of these saints was far lower than that of St. Peter, one of Jesus’ original apostles. The bishop of Rome held a special place in the hierarchy of bishops because Rome had been the center of the empire and because Christian tradition was woven aroundjesus’ words to Peter; “Thou art Peter and on this rock I shall build my church. ” According to Christian tradition, Peter had founded the first church in Rome and was martyred there. The bishop of Rome, as the successor of Peter, was considered the head of the Church and came to be called pope or papa (Latin for father). But the superior position of the bishop of Rome also owed much to
When monks took their final nows to join a monastery, they received a ton-sure—the hair on the top of their heads was cut ojf. Here, St. Guthlac (c. 674-714), an Anglo-Saxon, receives a tonsure from a bishop while his abbess and other nuns observe.
Peter, as the favored apostle ofJesus, held a place of special reverence in the early Church. Tradition maintained that he had founded the first Christian church in Rome and had suffered a martyr’s death in that city. In medieval illustrations he is depicted carrying two keys—the keys to heaven. The symbolism of the keys derives from words Jesus said to Peter: “I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven: Whatever you bind on earth will he considered bound in heaven; whatever you loose on earth shall be considered loosed in heaven.” The name Peter, from the Greek word for rock fpeCraj, becomes a pun when Jesus says “Thou art Peter and on this rock I shall build my church. ” The term “apostolic succession” —which was used often by medieval papacy—meant that the popes were directly descended by ordination from Peter and that they also held the power of the two keys.
The able men who held the oiEce and their heroic leadership in both church and state matters. For example, Leo the Great (pope from 440-461) had defended Rome against the Huns, and Gregory the Great (c. 540604) did much to increase the power of the papacy through missionary activity, reform of the church, and administration of the papal estates around Rome.
While the peoples within the old empire were gradually being Christianized, those on the fringes were either pagans or Arian heretics. Monks served as missionaries to these peoples. St. Patrick (c. 389—c. 461), for example, was a missionary in Ireland. According to his early biographer, he came from a Christianized family in Britain, but at the age of 16 Irish raiders captured him. He spent six miserable years as a slave in Ireland before he escaped and returned to Britain. He received further education in Christianity among the Roman population of southern Gaul. Summoned in a dream to go back to Ireland and Christianize the people there, he accepted the mission and began preaching and baptizing new converts. Although many of his followers were killed and he was nearly martyred, Ireland became Christian. The Irish then sent their own missionaries to the north ofEngland, where a remarkable monastic culture was established at such places as Iona. The monasteries housed both men and women and were often supervised by an abbess rather than an abbot.
The monasteries in Ireland and the north ofEngland (in the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria) produced remarkable artists, scholars, saints, and missionaries. The designs in their books and of their statuary and altar ornaments combined motifs derived from indigenous animals with Christian symbolism. Their saints were remarkable for their perseverance and their relationship with animals. For example, the Irish saint Brendan set out in a small boat in the Atlantic with few provisions, but birds ensured that he was fed. St. Cuthbert once stood up to his neck in the cold waters of the North Sea to meditate. When he got out, otters came to dry his feet.
While the Irish and Anglo-Saxons in the far north were practicing their own type of monasticism, a young Roman noble, Benedict (c. 480—c. 550), decided that he did not want to follow the usual career path for his class. Instead of entering pohtics, he became a hermit. His reputation for piety grew, and he soon had more followers than he could easily setde near him. Furthermore, his disciples were overwhelmed by worldly temptations, and fought with one another. To provide them with a more peaceful refuge, Benedict moved his followers from outside Rome to Monte Cassino in southern Italy. His sister, Scholastica, set up a hermitage nearby, and became the patron saint of Benedictine nuns. Eventually, Benedict wrote a set of rules for his followers—the Benedictine Rule—that monastic orders in the west stiU follow. Indeed, the Benedictines are among the most numerous of the monastic orders in the world today.
The Benedictine Rule was based on three simple precepts: a vow of poverty, a vow of chastity, and an acceptance of complete obedience to the abbot. When a person entered a monastery or nunnery, he
The word “illuminate” comes from the Latin illuminare, which means “to light up.” In the Middle Ages, illuminated manuscripts were texts decorated with letters and images formed from colored inks. Usually red ink was used for the capital letter of the first word on a page or the first word in a paragraph. Such red letters were called mbrics (from the Latin rubrkare, “to make red”). Decorations of important manuscripts were much more complex. They featured illustrations of scenes from the text or small pictures within the first letter of a word. Many of the most beautiful existing manuscripts are Bibles and Books of Hours (books of daily prayers). The paintings were usually small because they appeared within the text; for this reason, they are often called miniatures.
Illuminating manuscripts was exacting work, particularly in elaborate books in which various colors of inks were used. Design motifs varied from century to century. The Book of Kells, a richly
In this illumination from the Lindisfarne Gospels, snakes curl to form the initial letters (L, I, andB) of St. Matthew’s gospel. The Celtic patterns within the snake’s bodies transform into the heads of dragons and other creatures. In illuminated Bibles the first page ofi a Gospel was generally the most ornate, containing large decorative images with few words.
Decorated manuscript of the four Gospels made in the eighth century, contains some of the most interesting early motifs, combining Celtic and Christian artistic traditions. In its complex borders, images of snakes
And dragons surround religious scenes. The book was made in northern England or possibly Scotland or Ireland, but its name comes from the monastery of KeUs in Ireland, where it was housed from about 1006 to 1653.
World History
