In general this was a century of continued wars, jockeying of the various "barbarian tribes” for posts and attempted consolidation of their various positions. The chief consequences of the migrations of the 3rd to this 6th century have been listed by McNeill (Ref. 139) as follows:
The barbarians assimilated civilized styles of life
The civilized communities of Eurasia (excepting China) were impelled to modify their military, political and social systems by introducing features we call by the term "medieval". These included cataphracts (heavily armored cavalry) supported by various subsidies and the development of a peculiar military class, of ten mercenaries, which soon lessened the central authority over those "knights in armor". The Byzantines controlled this less effectively than the Persians
The rise of religion to a central place in personal and public affairs gave a radically new character to the high cultural traditions of both Rome and Persia and affected Chinese civilization in a similar, although less drastic fashion
The factors which finally resulted in the overthrow of the new barbarian empires are discussed in a separate section at the end of this chapter. Leprosy first appeared at this time in Egypt, France and Britain although it is probable that many, more ancient disfiguring skin diseases had been described under this heading, in error (Ref. 140)
In this century two great names, of ten called the Fathers of the Western Christian Society, appeared. One was St. Benedict who established a monastery in 529 which was to guide most later monasteries in the west. The other, living in the latter half of the century, was Pope Gregory I [124], a superstitious, credulous man with a terrifying piety who nevertheless gave law to monasticism and spread the Christian gospel through Europe. He developed parish organization, arranged orderly festivals and processions and standardized sacerdotal clothes. If one considers the European "Dark Ages" to have existed at this time - a period when learning and science and art and literature seemed to be at a standstill - one must credit the monasteries as being a great repository for the storage of some of that previously hard-earned knowledge. Cassiodorus was a monk contemporary with Benedict and Gregory who tried to preserve education and some science. His influence in making monasticism into a powerful instrument for restoration of social order was perhaps even greater than those contemporaries. (Ref. 49, 213)
In the early development of Christianity rational medical practice practically disappeared as the old Judaic concept of disease as being equated with a kind of sin was promoted. The corollary was that the only possible cure was through Grace, the unpredictable intervention of God. This interpretation of cause and cure of disease was expounded in detail by Pope Gregory. (Ref. 125)
From this century on the Jews became particularly identified with international and regional trade. The reasons for this included the widespread dispersion of these people in both Islam and Christian Europe, with group solidarity, linguistic communication and a uniform commercial law, based on the Talmud. (Ref. 8)
Back to Africa: A.D. 401 to 500
There were three separate Christian kingdoms in the region of Nubia in the middle Nile. At Ibrim an old temple, which was originally built probably during the Ethiopian Dynasty of Egypt in the 7th century B.C. and then modified later with typical Meriotic graffiti and votive inscriptions, was now made into the earliest of Ibrim Christian churches. A defensive wall around the church is now partially covered by Lake Nasser. (Ref. 271)
Early Abyssinians were active militarily, invading the Yemeni kingdoms on the Arabian Peninsula. In the middle of the century Axum was at the height of its power with a splendid court boasting royal elephants and gold. The capital city funneled materials from inner Africa to a maritime network reaching as far as Spain and even China. Axum covered an area of 75 hectares and contained many multistory stone buildings with 10,000 to 20,000 inhabitants and a fringe of suburban, elite villages. (Ref. 270) But the downfall of this country started when the Persians expelled the Axumites from south Arabia as a part of the Byzantine-Persian Wars. This was followed by raids by pagan Bela on the farmlands, so that gradually the people moved deeper into the highlands, merging with the pagan and Judaized people there and becoming the Abyssinians proper, the nucleus of later Ethiopia. (Ref. 82, 83)
Egypt continued to decay, politically and intellectually. Part of this was promoted by the decline in the incense trade which had previously come from the south, in part through Egypt. The country remained nominally under the control of the Byzantine Empire.
The Vandal kingdom of North Africa was reconquered for the Byzantine Empire by Justinian's General Belisarius in 533. Otherwise North Africa remained much as in the last century. (Ref. 8)
Back to The Near East: A.D. 401 to 500
By 525 Judaism had gained such a foothold in the Himyarite kingdom in the south that the rulers themselves began to persecute the Christian population. This was the justification which the Abyssinians (Ethiopians) used to invade south Arabia between 525 and 530, conquering the Himyarites and leaving an Abyssinian governor. By about 570, however, the Persians conquered and controlled the whole of Arabia. (Ref. 82, 222)
The western portion of this large area continued to share in the fate of Byzantium. Christian vandalism against the Jews and Samaritans[125], which had started in the preceding century, now increased with destruction of synagogues and temples. An earthquake of 526 did not help matters when it killed 200,000 to 300,000 people in Antioch. (Ref. 222) The Jews and Samaritans revolted in 529 and again in 560 and finally welcomed the invasion of the Persians as they extended their empire once again about 570. The Jews took this opportunity to destroy a few churches and Christians in revenge. Of course, the entire eastern portion of this Syrian area, that is, most of present day Iraq, belonged to the great Persian Empire throughout this period.
King Kobad, previously expelled by his own nobles, returned to the throne in 501 and waged the first war with Byzantium. But his previous friends, the Ephthalites, raided from the northeast and he had to sue for peace with the Christians before he could finally expel the Asian invaders from Persia in A.D. 513. The 2nd Byzantine-Persian War followed from 524 to 531 and at the end of that conflict Kobad's son, Chosroes I (or Khosru or Khosrau), became the greatest of the Persian kings. To insure his dynasty, like many another Asian monarch, he executed all of his brothers and their male offspring with one exception and included Mazdak and all of his followers. It was he who finally completely defeated the Ephthalites in central Asia in 557.
Pahlavi, the Indo-European language of Parthian Persia, was still in use and Zorastrianism was the official religion, with the God Ormuzd and the devil Ahriman. Chosroes' reign was tolerant, however, to Nestorian and other brands of Christians and to Jews. He actually helped the Nestorians to establish a library. The great Persian Medical School at Gondishapur also had a famous medical library containing works from Byzantium and perhaps some of Hippocrates' works came through here to the Arabic world. In this hey-day of the Persian Empire, the University of Judi-i-Shapur became the greatest intellectual center of the world, with teachers and scholars from all over Europe and Asia. Roads and villages were rebuilt and there was reform of the fiscal system and taxation methods. Many irrigation systems were completed and the famous metal-workers of Antioch, Syria were brought to Iran. (Ref. 15, 8)
After the Persians had driven to the Mediterranean coast and taken all of the Arabian peninsula, Byzantine allied with the Turks drifting down from the Eurasian border,- but they still could not defeat the Persians. At the end of the century, however, the Persian Empire became divided into four great satrapies: the east, comprised of Khosasan and Kerman; the west, including Iraq and Mesopotamia; the north, made up of Armenia and Azerbaijan; and the south, which contained Fars and Khuziasan. Wars continued on all borders until the end of the century.
The zenith of the Byzantine Empire was reached under the Emperor Justinian who was born in Sofia, possibly of Slavic peasant parents. He encouraged the oriental conception of royalty as divine, but labored to reunite the western and eastern Christian churches. He was strongly influenced by his wife, Theodora, a woman also of humble origins. The Justinian Code of Laws have remained in history as part of the Canonical Laws of the Catholic Church. Constantinople remained the greatest market and shipping center in the world, with companion harbors on the Black Sea and a direct sea route established through the Red Sea to India. Although the secret of silk was jealously guarded in the Far East, by various means Justinian introduced silk worms, white mulberries, the method of unwinding cocoons and the weaving of the thread, into Byzantium so that he also became the emperor of silk. From this the western Christian empire earned a fortune which it guarded for centuries. (Ref. 260)
On the religious front the church was unrelenting, the Jewish deuterosis was outlawed and there were expulsions of Jews with some massacres in Antioch in 592 and in Jerusalem after the turn of the century. Justinian's General Belisarius reconquered North Africa and southern Spain from the Vandals and most of Italy from the Goths, bringing the empire to its greatest geographical extent. (Ref. 49) Many of the units of the Byzantine army of this 6th century were remnants of the Huns called "Massagetae". They were intemperate drinkers and often difficult to control, although fierce warriors. (Ref. 127)
In the years 542 and 543 a great epidemic, of ten called the "Plague of Justinian" hit Asia Minor. This was definitely bubonic plague, penetrating from an original focus either in northeastern India or central Africa and spreading around the Mediterranean by ship. Necessary to this spread was the appearance of the black rat from its native India, along with its fleas. Procopius reported that 10,000 people died daily in Constantinople at the peak of the epidemic and the disease raged for four months. The political effect was great and the imperial power was weakened. Another epidemic in 655 and famine in 569, along with attacks by Bulgars and Avars from the Balkan area, all contributed to dissolution of the empire soon after Justinian's death. (Ref. 140, 213)
Armenia was caught up in most of the wars between Byzantium and Persia. For the most of this era it was subservient to Persia, but late in the century both Georgia and Armenia were again partitioned with Byzantium getting a large part of the latter. Because of Byzantine help to the Persian King Chosroes II in an internal fight, this monarch, once reestablished on the Persian throne, ceded Iberia and nearly all of Armenia to the
Eastern Roman Empire in A.D. 591, thus allowing Byzantine troops stationed there to return to defend the Balkans against the Avars. (Ref. 49)
Back to Europe: A.D. 401 to 500
An interesting map showing the extent and location of the various barbarian migrations and their kingdoms about A.D. 526 will be found on the next page.
All, including Malta remained a part of the Byzantine Empire.
Greece was an integral part of Byzantium. The Emperor Justinian closed the University of Athens and some of the professors fled to the more enlightened Persia to continue their work there. All pagans were ordered to become Christians. About A.D. 600 Slav tribes crossed the Danube and descended into Greece, driven by Avars behind them and soon only a few southern coastal cities remained Greek, in the old sense. (Ref. 8)
NOTE: Insert Map 32: The Barbarian, Migrations and Kingdoms AD. 526
For most of the century, the Ostrogothic king of Italy, Theodoric, also reigned over the Balkan area bordering the Adriatic in the region known as Dalmatia. At the end of the century, however, the Bulgars, Avars and a mixture of southern and western Slavs entered the area and remained to become the Croats, Serbs and finally the Yugoslavians. The Avars were a Mongolian people of mixed Turkic background who had moved from Turkistan through southern Russia, enslaved masses of Slavs, as the Huns had ahead of them and moved on into Europe, ravaging the Balkans on the route and almost wiping out the Latin speaking peoples. Except for Salonica, Macedonia was permanently settled by Slavs in this century. Their occupation of ancient Dacia cut the land contact between Rome and Constantinople. The Bulgars, who moved in from beyond the Danube, controlled the Slavs in their area but gradually took over the Slavic language and culture. (Ref. 49, 137, 125)
At the end of the last century, the Byzantine Emperor Zeno had commissioned the Arian Ostrogoth King Theodoric to conquer Italy and he had promptly done so. He then reigned over southern Italy, Sicily and a portion of the southern Balkans, Dalmatia, which was nominally under the Byzantine emperor. In addition, early in the century Theodoric defeated some of the Franks and kept the French Mediterranean strip as well as later increasing his holdings in Provence. He was a relatively just and progressive ruler encouraging a revival of learning and literature. His minister of state, Cassiodorus, a Roman of Greek lineage, tried to reconcile the Germanic and Roman types of culture and failing, he withdrew to found a monastery. He composed a history of the Goths, written in Latin.
The original has been lost, but excerpts by Jordanes, another Gothic official, are to be found in his Getica. Cassiodorus was responsible for saving some books from the great Roman libraries, including some works of Hippocrates and Galen, which he stored with other classic manuscripts in his ultimate monastery. (Ref. 49, 15, 137, 127)
The long Gothic wars ruined Italy. The problems included the existence of two distinct races - Roman and Goth - and two religions - Catholic and Arian, trying to live side by side, each practicing its own laws and traditions. The eastern Emperor Justinian, through his General Belisarius, retook Sicily in 535 and invaded Italy proper in 536 but did not crush the Ostrogoths until 563 when the Germanic Lombards, perhaps originally from Scandinavia and now driven west from Bohemia and Germany by the Avars, arrived to conquer the northern half of the Italian peninsula. These Lombards were the last invaders of Italy, and they ruled their half for two centuries. An outbreak of bubonic plague had weakened the defense of Italy and some say that these Germanic people came into what was practically an empty country. This plague raged in Rome in A.D. 590 and in that same year a Byzantine counter-attack cut the new Lombard Kingdom into two parts, across the waist of Italy but the Lombard vitality continued in spite of this. In the area at the head of the Adriatic Sea, the Veneti tribe and refugees from other regions formed an island empire of sea-farers. (Ref. 8, 137)
Throughout the peninsula the old Roman institutions were rather quickly abandoned and among the first to be dispensed with were those of law and medicine. For some reason not entirely clear, non-clerical physicians just ceased to exist. The Benedictine monks encouraged care of the sick but only through prayer could cure come, so St. Benedict forbade the study of medicine. (Ref. 49, 125)
The Slavic Wends had pushed into Germany as far as the Elbe River. West of the Elbe and Saal rivers were the surviving German tribes in the following locations, each retaining its own identity:
(a) Saxons in the north central region.
(b) East Franks along the lower Rhine.
(c) Thuringians between the Saxons and Franks.
(d) Marcomanni (Bavarians) along the middle Danube. They had migrated from Bohemia in this 6th century into an area of collapsing Ostrogoths.
(e) Suevi (Swabians) along and between the upper Rhine and upper Danube and along the northern Alps.
Of these tribes, the Franks were culturally of the greatest significance. Reinhardt (Ref. 177) says that this culture stands out as the fountainhead and pattern of the future German civilization. There is some disagreement concerning the language changes. Wells (Ref. 229) writes that the Franks were akin to the Anglo-Saxons in speaking a "low German" which later developed into Dutch and Flemish, but Reinhardt does not agree, stating that the Franks, Alemanni and Bavarians from A.D. 500 to 800 had the high German sound shift ("p" to "pf" or "f"; "t" to "ts", "z" or "s"; and "k" to "ch"), while Anglo-Saxon, Dutch, Flemish (Walloon) kept the original low or north German sounds. Clovis ruled the Franks until 511 and more about this dynasty will be found below under FRANCE.
By A.D. 560, Clovis' sons and grandsons had extended Frankish rule to take over dominance of Thuringia, Bavaria, Rhaetia and Alamannia in Germany as well as the Burgundian kingdom in Switzerland and southern France. There was little displacement of the native popuIations, however, and German and French developed as separate languages while the government remained in the hands of bishops and counts from the old Gallo-Roman aristocracy. The real power, however, remained with the Frankish army.
The migrating and raiding Avars (See HUNGARY and CENTRAL AND NORTHERN ASIA, this chapter) came in contact with the Franks on the Elbe in 562 at which time the Avar Khanate was perhaps one-half as large in north-south and east-west dimensi