22.3 Europe: a.d. 701 to 800  (Page 4/6)

Hisha I, emir from 788 to 796, reversed the doctrine of tolerance and attacked the Christians, although he promoted a religious and intellectual aristocracy. This latter group was suppressed with cruelty; however, as Hakam I took control in 796. (Ref. 196 )

France&Netherlands and belgium

It is again recommended that the sections on GERMANY and FRANCE be studied together in this and adjacent centuries since both were administered more or less together under the Franks. In 732 Charles Martel, son of administrator Pepin II, extended his father's confiscations to include all income from church lands under Frankish control in order to support a substantial force of cataphracts (armored knights) which gave him military supremacy in the entire area. It was he who stopped the Moslems at Poiters, near Tours in 732, using cavalry equipped with stirrups so that they could ram home lances and use maces and swords while remaining mounted. Without this battle, western civilization might never have existed. Following that victory Europe had to increase its numbers of horses and horsemen to continue to protect itself and "feudalism" was the result. (Ref. 260 , 279 )

The Merovingian Dynasty came to an inglorious end and the Carolingean Dynasty began with Martel's son, Pepin , who began to dominate a greater area and paved the way for his son, Charles (Charlemagne), the greatest of the medieval European kings. He allowed the pope to crown him "Emperor of the Romans" in 800 A.D. No eastern emperor had visited Rome for some 300 years. (Ref. 49 , 213 )

In the far north in the Belgium-Netherlands area, the Frisians were on top commercially, trading in wine, salt, oil, glass, textiles and metal work. In the far south of France a few Byzantine goods drifted in and in return the West sent slaves, iron and timber to the East. (Ref. 137 , 213 ) (Continue on pages 488 and 490) Additional Notes

British isles

England&Wales

The scholar Bede states that five languages were spoken in England at this time - English, Celtic, Irish, Pict and Latin. The early English was the language of the Angles and differed little from Saxon and was intelligible to the Franks, Norwegians and Danes, all of these being varieties of basic German. The Beowulf, a famous Anglo-Saxon poem, appeared in England in this century. Gradually the Saxons developed kings, as glorified generals, who protected themselves by giving lands to barons and in this way a land aristocracy soon developed. In the last half of the century there were ceaseless wars between some seven kingdoms, all now nominally Christian. But Bede, writing to the Bishop of York, Egbert, in A.D. 734 complained that some bishops were drunken revelers and Boniface wrote in much the same vein to the Archbishop of Canterbury, complaining of drunkenness of bishops and loose living of nuns. So Christianity was not having an easy time. (Ref. 43 )

All of this 8th century activity was followed in A.D. 793 by the first great Viking sacking of the monastic center at Lindisfarne, probably by Norwegians. Another group, probably also Norwegian, had come down the English channel in 789, landing at Portland on the Dorset coast. Danes from Jutland also started their raids. There is no doubt that all of these raiders, - Angles, Jutes and the later Danes and Normans as well as the North- men who went down through Russia, and the still earlier Goths, were all waves of one and the same type of Germanic people. (Ref. 229 ) But to return to England, in spite of all the turmoil, there was some international trade and visitations in this century. There were even Chinese in King Offa lI's Mercia court at the end of the century. Mercia, along with Northumbria and Wessex, were the largest of the English kingdoms. (Ref. 8 )