Summarize how post- roman europe fell into rule of the germanic states: maddie weber
Germanic Successor States:
- Germanic general Odoacer deposed the last of the western Roman emperors, but the administrative apparatus of the Roman empire did not immediately disappear.
- Provincial governors continued to rule in their territories with help from Roman bureaucrats and tax collectors.
- Roman generals continued to field armies throughout the crumbling empire.
- Cities of the western Roman empire lost population during the fifth century, as invasions and contests for power disrupted trade and manufacturing.
- The decay of the Roman cities hastened imperial decline.
- Late fifth century, the invaders organized a series of Germanic kingdoms as successor states in place of the Roman empire.
- Visigoths conquered Spain during the 470's.
- Ostrogoths dominated Italy from the fifth century until Justinian's forces reasserted imperial authority there during the 530s.
- Departure of Byzantine armies from Italy created a power vacuum, which the Lombard people quickly moved to fill.
- The Lombard's maintained their hegemony throughout most of Italy from the mid-fifth century until the mid-eighth century.
- At the beginning of the fifth century, Gaul fell under the control of other Germanic peoples, including the Burgundian, who settled in the southern and eastern regions.
- The Franks brought the more northerly and westerly regions under their control.
- Angles, Saxons, and other Germanic peoples from Germany and Denmark crossed the English Channel and established regional kingdoms in Britain.
- None of these people possessed the economic and military resources, or the political and social organization to dominate the others and establish their hegemony throughout western Europe.
- The Franks built an impressive imperial state that organized about half of the territories formerly embraced by the western roman empire.
- The Franks profoundly influenced the political, social, and cultural development of western Europe.
Describe the rise of Christianity under Frankish rule.
- Not until the fifth century did a strong military and political leader emerge from their midst.
- Clovis was the leader who ruled the Franks from 481 until his death in 511.
- He lead them to become ranked as the most powerful and dynamic of the peoples building new states in western Europe.
- A main part of their rapid rise had to do with religion.
- Origionally, all the Germanic invaders of the Roman empire were polytheists who honored a pantheon of warlike gods, and other deities representing elements of nature.
- Many Germanic people converted to Christianity.
- Most of them accepted Arian Christianity, which was popular in most of the Eastern roman empire.
- In both Rome and Constantinople, church authorities followed the decisions of church councils at Nicaea and Chalcedon and condemned Arian views as heretical.
- Clovis’s conversion to Christianity guaranteed support and aid from Catholic Rome.
- It also eased tensions between the Franks and the Catholic population in Gaul, which was more wiling to accept a Catholic monarch.
- Clovis’s religion impacted the future course of Western and Central Europe, as he spread his religious beliefs throughout nearly the entire region.