Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 07.djvu/326

* EUROPE. 284 EUROPE. and the Germans retained the Arian creed after the Emperors and the Church councils had ac- cepted that of Athanasius. The Barbarian Kingdoms. It was the begin- ning of the end of the old order when, at the close of the fourth century and the beginning of the fifth, whole German tribes were settled within the frontier as allies of Rome, on the condition that they should hold back the tribes behind them. The incursions of the Huns (q.v.). which threw eastern and central Europe into confusion, hast- ened the destruction of the Empire. In the fifth century the frontier was lost: the Germans and the Huns broke through all along the line. (See Migration.) At the close of the fifth century, Saxons. Angles, and Jutes had established king- doms in eastern and southern Britain; Gaul was divided between Franks, Burgundians, and Visi- goths: Spain between Visigoths and Suevi ; northern Africa and the islands of the western Mediterranean were occupied by Vandals; and Italy, where a German leader of mercenaries (see Odoacer) had deposed the last West Roman Emperor, had passed, with all the territory be- tween the Middle Danube and the Adriatic, under the rule of the Ostrogoths. (See Burgundy: Goths: Suevi ; Vandals; etc.) To the Roman provincials (except in Britain) the change of conditions must have seemed slight. They had often been ruled by German officials, and the German kings who now ruled them held official titles conferred by the Emperor at Rome or the Emperor at Constantinople. The Romans re- mained free, and in their disputes with each other they were still governed by Roman law. The Burgundian and Visigothic kings caused manuals of Roman law to be compiled for the benefit of their Roman subjects. Theodorie (q.v.). King of the Ostrogoths, issued a similar compilation, by which Goths as well as Romans were to be governed. Each provincial landholder was. in- deed, compelled to surrender to a German a part of his estate and slaves; but under the Empire German soldiers had been quartered on the pro- vincials, and contributions had been exacted for the support of the soldiers. From such contri- butions the Romans were now freed. The chief cause of friction between the German kings and their followers on the one hand and the Roman provincials on the other lay in the fact that the former were generally Arian heretics. The re- sultant disaffection was a serious elemenl of weakness in the kingdoms of the Goths, Burgun- dians, and Vandals. Early in the sixth century the newly converted and orthodox Franks de- feated the Visigoths and the Burgundians, and brought, under their control all Caul excepl the Mediterranean coast. (See Clovis; Franks.) Latei in the same century the armies and fleets of the orthodox Justinian overthrew the king- dome of the Arian Vandals and Ostrogoths and wrested southeastern Spain from the Visigoths, i for a few years the Mediterranean was again Reman. (See JtJSTINIAN; BeLISARIUS; Narses.) Before the close of the century the Visigoths and the Suevi. whose realm the Visi- goths had annexed, abjured their heresies, and in thic Spain the clergy became all powerful. 1 1n' rian I ongi bard. or Lombard (q.v.), conquered northern and central Italy, Imt this tribe also accepted the orthodox faith in the middle of the seventh century, The scat- tered -' ttlemenl of the German conquerors among their Roman subjects favored a fusion of races, and the chief obstacle to fusion disappeared when the Germans became orthodox Christians. Of all the kingdoms founded by the Germans on Roman soil, that of the Franks became the most powerful and proved the most durable, because the Franks retained, as the central point of their power, their old home on the Lower Rhine, and because the expansion of their rule over Gaul and later over Italy was accompanied by expan- sion over purely German territory. At the close of the fifth century the Franks conquered the Alemnnni, and in the sixth the Thuringians and Bavarians. The Arabs. In the seventh century Christen- dom was forced into a struggle for existence against the hordes of Arabia and of Africa, fused into a fighting unit by a new religion — Mohamme- danism. Within a generation after the Hejira I a.m. Ii22) the Arabs had destroyed the kingdom of the Sassanides in Persia, had wrested from the Greek Empire Syria and Egypt, and were over- running North Africa. Before the close of the century they were besieging Constantinople. The Greeks, though hard pressed by Asiatic hordes north of the Balkans, nevertheless beat off the Mohammedan attack and maintained their hold on Asia Minor. Early in the eighth century the Arabs, now in complete control of northern Africa, defeated the Visigothic forces (a.d. 711), and conquered all Spain except the mountainous northern regions. Pressing into Gaul, they were beaten hack by the Franks in 732. The Frankish Empire and the Papacy. The gnat German-Gallic kingdom which the Franks had built up in the fifth and sixth centuries was threatened, in the seventh century, with dissolu- tion. The royal power was hereditary, but all the sons of the King had equal rights of inheri- tance. The resulting partitions were indeed temporary; by wars and by murders the realm was repeatedly reunited; but in these struggles the territorial magnates gained increasing in- dependence, while the degeneracy of the reigning house diminished its authority. (See Merovin- gians.) The power that was slipping from the hands of the Merovingians was. however, grasped by new rulers. Arnulrings or Carolingians (q.v.), who. tirst as mayors of the palace, later as kings, reestablished the royal power, and in the eighth century widened the Frankish kingdom into a European empire. As in the earlier stages of Frankish expansion, the acquisition of new Ro- manic territory (Italy and northeastern Spain) was lialan I by conquests of other German tribes (Frisians and Saxons). Even more than the Merovingians, the Carolingians identified their dynastic interests with those of the orthodox Christian Church. They carried the Gospel among the heathen Germans with the sword, converting as they conquered. They drove the Arabs back across the Pyrenees (see Charles M irtel and Pepin the Short under Pepin). and extended the boundary of Christendom to the river Fbro. Tliri'iiglioiii their realms, they sup- ported with ready assistance the supreme author- ity of the popes in ecclesiastical discipline; and when they interfered to protect him against the Lombards they recognized him as ruler over a strip of central Italy, reaching from Ravenna to Rome, and thus laid the basis of the temporal power which the popes Held until 1870. (See Donation of Pepin; Papal States.)