The coming of the Germans and end to the western Roman Empire

1. The Roman Empire

Octavian did not leave an effective plan for successors. When one of his heirs, Nero, mismanaged the Empire, civil war ensued. However, after Nero died in 68 A.D., an extraordinary string of "good" emperors were co-opted into the job by adoption, effectively masking this festering problem and thwarting further civil wars until the end of the 2nd century.

Octavian’s success at protecting the empire’s borders depended on powerful enemies not pressing the frontiers at the same time. The Romans enjoyed a relatively "peaceful" situation until the later 2nd century, when enemy attacks began to increase.

2. Late Roman Empire and the rise of the military

Crises in the late second century, including threats to the empire’s territorial integrity, led to a military monarchy and heightened the importance of the army. Yet as the army grew more powerful, great generals clashed over the imperial dignity.

With frequent murders of emperors and the enemy pressing on in the West, Diocletian divided the Empire into East and West, with rulers called "Augustus" and their junior partners were called "Caesars."

After Diocletian’s death, the tetrarchy fell apart and power went to Constantine.  Adopting Christianity for the empire, Constantine hoped to use "one God, one emperor, and one empire" to unify his realm.  But he was apprehensive to the "barbaric" neighbors in the north, whom the Romans called the Germans.  To prevent possible German attacks on Rome, Constantine built a new capital for the empire called Constantinople in Greece.  The Roman Empire had two emperors after Constantine.  Gradually, the western part of the empire came under Germanic rule.

3. The end of the western Roman Empire

410, Visigoths’ sacking of Rome. 
451-453, Attila the Hun overran Rome. 
455, the Vandals conquered Rome. 
476, Odovacar deposed the Roman emperor and made himself the emperor. Power passed from the Romans to the German generals.

4. Romans, Germans, Slavs and Vikings

Germania: Roman word to indicate where the Germans lived. Goths: Western and Eastern; Vandals; Burgundians; Lombards; Franks; Anglos; Saxons, and many others.

Slavs: Scandinavian tribes that congregated in the area around today's Poland before they branched out to southern, eastern, and western Europe.

Vikings: groups of merchants, traders, and plunderers from Denmark, Norway, and Scandinavia who descended on other parts of Europe around the 9th century. The word "Viking" could mean a variety of things, such as the Norse word "vik" meaning creek or inlet of the sea, or "wic," an Anglo-Saxon word for camp.  They were also called Normans (northmen).  When they went to Russia around the 9th century, the  Vikings bought or plundered furs, hides, honey, and wax, from the Slavs, as well as enslaving the latter.  The word Russia perhaps came from the word "Rus" meaning, "rowers," or "Roslagen" (home of many Vikings in Sweden) or "red" (hair color).  Russian Vikings soon became assimilated into Slavic culture.

5. German Assimilation into Roman Culture

With no written language and only tribal form of social organization, the Germans quickly assimilated into Roman culture within Roman boundaries, establishing kingdoms in the Roman Empire.  Historically, Germanic societies

  • emphasized on clan based organizations within the tribes.
  • Used wergeld: each person's worth, as a way to resolve disputes through monetary compensation in lieu of blood feud.

Contact with the Romans led to not only a Latin based language and sophisticated social organizations such as kingdoms, but also, assimilations of German and Roman religions.  One example is the conversions of the weeks of the day:

Roman                                            Germanic

Sunday                                            Sunday

Mon (moon) day                                Monday

Marsday                                           Tiwsday (Tiw: god of war and athletics)

Mercuriisday                                      Wodensday (Woden: supreme Germanic god)

Jovesday                                          Thor'sday Thor: (Norse god of thunder, son of Woden,
                                                                                        was the counterpart of Jove, or Jupiter)

Venusday                                          Frigg's day: Frigg: wife of Woden and queen of the heavens.

Saturnday                                         Saturday  

Another Roman religious influence was Christianity. Early German Christianity: Arianism (argument that God preceded Jesus Christ: "There was a time when Jesus was not.")

6. The Franks and the Merovingian Dynasty

Of all the Germanic tribes, the Franks gradually became the strongest and established the largest kingdom in western and central Europe after the downfall of the western Roman empire.  

The Franks were a confederation of tribes in what is today's western Germany.  The beginning of their tribe is unknown but they were first mentioned by Roman historians in 241. The Merovingians were a family that produced kings who ruled over the Franks starting from 430.  They were called after an early king Merovich (r. 447-458 who was supposed to be both human and a descendent of sea god).  The most famous of the Merovingians, however, was Clovis (r.481-511), who was known as laying the groundwork for modern day France.  He was the first Frankish ruler who switched from cooperating with Rome to fighting against Rome (when the remnants of Roman armies in Gaul put up resistance against the Germanic tribes even after Rome's downfall).  He was also the first Frankish king to become a Christian.
Clovis’s conversion to orthodox Christianity and his defense of the Pope against the Lombards won him and the Franks continued support from the pope over the generations.
  • Rise of the papacy in the 1st century A.D.: the church of Rome versus the churches at Constantinople, Antioch, and Alexandria; and the establishment of bishoprics along Roman administrative lines of the diocese.
  • The fall of the western Roman empire led to the loss of an administrative center: after Odovacar and Theodoric, no leader to unify the west. 
  • Emperor Justinian's temporary conquest of parts of Italy in the 6th century.  
  • The pope's transformation into both religious leader and administrator of papal lands and the subordinate churches.
  • German/Slavic competition and religious conversion in eastern Europe:

  Polish conversion to Latin Christianity. Hungarian conversion to Latin Christianity.

  • Clovis's alliance with Christianity, the religion that was to be the universal identity of Europeans, seemed to build the kingdom on earth that corresponded with the followers of the Kingdom of Heaven. 

 Clovis, however, divided his kingdom among his three sons.

  • It was a unique German practice to divide land among male descendants. It reflected a very personal aspect of Germanic authority, i.e., the ruler as head of household. It often led to fraternal in-fighting.

The three kingdoms fought against each other, eventually they were all weakened and one secretary (mayor) of the palace Pepin took advantage of the situation and took over, unifying the three kingdoms into a new Frankish kingdom ruled by him and his descendants, called the Carolinians, after the most famous of them all, Charles (Carolus) the Magnificent (Charlemagne).