Mohammed and Charlemagne Revisited: The History of a Controversy (5 page)

Even the Frankish Merovingians, whose territories stretched far into the German heartlands east of the Rhine, were thoroughly Roman in their laws and administration. “The Frankish State, until its submission to the Carolingians, was essentially Neustrian and Roman, from the basin of the Seine to the Pyrenees and the sea. However, the Franks who had established themselves there were very few in numbers.”
[25]
Among the Merovingians, nearly all if not all the king’s agents were recruited among the Gallo-Romans. Even the best of the generals of that period, Mummolus, appears to have been a Gallo-Roman.
[26]
“Even in the governmental offices by which he was surrounded the king had Gallo-Roman
referendarii
.”
[27]

All of these kings and monarchies were immensely wealthy, and it was a wealth they employed not only in military enterprise but also in patronage of the arts and literature, as we shall see. In Pirenne’s words, “No prince of the West, before the 13th century, can have been so rich in money as these kings. The description of their treasuries calls up the image of a river of gold.”
[28]
“To regard them, as they have been regarded, merely as great landed proprietors is a manifest error, of which the only explanation is that they have been compared with [and equated with] the kings who came after them. But the fact is that owing to their wealth in money they were far more akin to the Byzantine kings than to Charlemagne.”
[29]
As well as an enormous revenue derived from manufacture and trade in their own domains, they drew enormous subsidies from Byzantium. We know that the Emperor Maurice sent 50,000 gold
solidi
to Childebert as payment for his alliance against the Lombards.
[30]
We note also the enormous dowry given to Riguntis in 584,
[31]
and the 6,000 gold
solidi
of alms given by Childebert to the Abbe of Saint-Germain for the poor. Pirenne notes that these, along with the munificence of Dagobert I, who covered the apse of Saint-Denis with silver, “give us some idea of the wealth of the Frankish kings.”
[32]

The Ostrogoth and Visigoth kings were even richer.

Another, and crucially important feature of these states, is that they were secular:

“The entire administration, in all its phases, was secular.” [We know that], “Although the kings were generally on good terms with the bishops, not one of the latter filled a governmental office: and here was one of the great differences between this period and the Middle Ages. On the other hand, many of the bishops had been royal
referendarii
. Here we have a striking contrast with the policy of Charlemagne, which was based on the
missi
, half of whom were necessarily bishops, or that of Otto, who entrusted the reins of government to the Imperial bishops. The fact is that on the morrow of the invasion the laity … was still educated.

“The profane Merovingian State was therefore very definitely unlike the religious Carolingian State. And the same may be said of all the other States: Ostrogothic, Visigothic, Vandal, Burgundian. In this respect, then – and this is the essential point – the ancient order of things continued. The king himself was a pure layman, and his power did not depend upon any religious ceremony.”
[33]

At a later stage, with the commencement of the real Middle Ages, this situation changed radically, and the state become “religionized”, with kings depending heavily upon the Church both for legitimacy and for the day to day running of the state bureaucracy. Why this occurred is a point of crucial importance, and we shall return to it at a later stage.

All during the sixth century, and for a time in the seventh, the Emperor in Constantinople was recognized as master of the world. “… the Barbarian kings regarded him [the Eastern Emperor] as their master, striking his effigy on their coins, and they solicited and obtained titles and favours from him. Justinian adopted Theodebert, as Maurice afterwards adopted Childebert.”
[34]
Even after Justinian’s death and the loss of Italy and many other western territories, “the Empire was still the only world-power, and Constantinople was the greatest of all civilized cities.”
[35]
In fact, throughout the fifth and sixth centuries, the lands of the West were undergoing a process of Byzantinization. This process had begun even before the formal abolition of the Western Empire in 476, but gathered pace in the final years of the fifth and during the sixth centuries. “Its [Byzantium’s] fashions and its art were spread throughout the West by means of navigation. It obtained a foothold in Rome, where there was a host of Greek monks, and everywhere in Southern Italy. Its influence was perceptible in Spain, and of course throughout Africa. In Gaul the
cellarium fisci
was reminiscent of the Byzantine commerciaries.”
[36]

Agriculture was changed little or nothing by the invasions. The appearance of the countryside and the cities remained virtually unaltered. Paulinus of Pella, who was ruined by the Gothic invasion, relates that he was saved by a Goth, who bought a small estate which he owned in the neighborhood of Marseilles. “One could hardly wish for a better illustration of the way pillage was followed by social equilibrium. Here was a deserted estate, yet the invaders did not seize it. As soon as the Germans were established in the country in accordance with the rules of
hospitalitas
, society became once more stabilized.”
[37]
And in fact the great Gallo-Roman and Hispano-Roman estates survived. “There were still enormous
latifundia
. … The great landowners retained their villae, their fortresses.” Even in Africa, the Vandals merely replaced the old proprietors: they lived in the Roman villas. Everywhere these estates remained prosperous. Gregory of Tours mentions one Chrodinus who established villas, planted vineyards, erected farm buildings, and organized estates.
[38]
In Pirenne’s words, “Prestations were always paid in money, which shows that goods were circulating, that they were sold in the open market. There is no sign yet of the closed economy of the mediaeval
curtes
.”
[39]
He notes that in Provence during the Merovingian epoch the system of tenure was entirely Roman: “Great quantities of cereals were moved from place to place.” In 510 Theodoric sent quantities of corn to Provence on account of the ravages of war in that region.
[40]
There was a vigorous trade in cereals. Despite of his own enormous resources, Gregory the Great made purchases of grain. In 537-538 a
peregrinus acceptor
made important purchases in Istria. He seems to have been a corn-merchant.
[41]

It was the same throughout the former territories of the Western Empire: “Africa, under the Vandals, must have retained the prosperity which was derived from the cultivation of cereals and the olive, since it was still prosperous when the Byzantines returned to it. It does not appear that the aspect of Gaul was in any way less civilized. It seems that the culture of the vine was continued wherever it existed in the time of the Romans. If we read Gregory of Tours we do not by any means obtain the impression of a country in a state of decadence; unless it had been prosperous the landowners could hardly have been so wealthy. “The retention of the Roman
libra
affords indirect proof of the stability of the economic situation.”
[42]

We learn that on the large estates there existed workshops which produced various goods, including cloth, tools and pottery of various types. These workshops had already existed during the later years of the Empire.

“The population had retained the form which had been impressed upon it by the fiscal organization, although this had been greatly diminished by the almost complete curtailment of the military and administrative expenditure. In this respect the Germanic conquest may perhaps have been beneficial to the people. On the whole, the great domain had retained the essential social and economic element. Thanks to the domain, the economic basis of the feudal system already existed. But the subordination of the greater part of the population to the great landowners was manifested as yet only in private law. The
senior
had not yet interposed himself between the king and his subjects. Moreover, although the constitution of society was predominantly agrarian, it was not exclusively so. Commerce and the cities still played a considerable part in the general economic, social, and intellectual life of the age.”
[43]

* * *

International commerce seems to have been vibrant during this period; and the Mediterranean still acted, as it had in the Age of the Empire, as a conduit for goods and ideas. Merchandise of all kinds, but especially luxury items, flooded into western Europe from the East. The great bulk of this trade continued, as it had been under the Empire, to be carried on by Syrians. Great trading companies and families, with depots in Alexandria, Rome, Spain, Gaul and Britain, as well as on the Danube, were a vital element in the economic life of the time. “The invasions,” says Pirenne, “did not in any way alter the situation. Genseric, by his piracies [in the first half of the fifth century], may have hindered navigation a little, but at all events it was as active as ever when he had disappeared:

“Salvian (d. circa 484), doubtless generalizing from what he had seen at Marseilles, spoke of the
negociatorum et Syricorum omnium turbas quae majorem ferme civitatum universarum partem occupant
.

“This Syrian expansion is confirmed by the archaeologists, and the texts are even more significant.

“In the sixth century there were large numbers of Orientals in Southern Gaul. The life of Saint Caesar, Bishop of Arles (d. 524), states that he composed hymns in Greek and Latin for the people.”
[44]

There were also many Orientals in northern Gaul, and we have Gregory of Tours testimony to the existence of Greek merchants in Orleans. These advanced, singing, to meet the king.
[45]
Large numbers of Syrians, it seems, settled in Gaul, where they are mentioned in many inscriptions of the fifth and sixth centuries.
[46]
One of these is in the chapel of Saint Eloi in Eure, near the mouth of the Seine.
[47]
Pirenne notes that the latter “was doubtless trading with Britain.”
[48]

As we shall see, the links between the Byzantine East and Britain under the Anglo-Saxons, were spectacularly confirmed by the discoveries made at the Sutton Hoo burials, discoveries made after Pirenne’s death.

In Gaul, Gregory of Tours mentions a negotiator of Bordeaux, who possessed a great house in which was a chapel containing relics.
[49]
Another such merchant was Eusebius of Paris, who purchased the Episcopal dignity and then, finding fault with his predecessor’s
scola
, constituted one of his own, which comprised only Syrians.
[50]
Pirenne notes that the population of Narbonne in 589 consisted of Goths, Romans, Jews, Greeks and Syrians.
[51]

Evidence indicates that there were substantial communities of Syrian traders throughout Western Europe during the fifth and sixth centuries. Procopius mentions, for example, the existence in Naples, during the time of Justinian, of a great Syrian merchant, Antiochus, who was the leader of the Roman party in that city.
[52]

As well as Syrians, Greeks and Egyptians, there were many, very many, Jews. These were particularly numerous in Spain, but there were also large communities of them in Italy, Gaul, and even in Germany along the Rhine. Pirenne notes for example that when Naples was besieged by Belisarius, the Jews formed a great part of the merchant population of the city.
[53]
The existence of sizeable Jewish communities in Ravenna, Palermo, Terracina, and Cagliari, is also mentioned by various writers.
[54]
The “immense majority” of the Jews, both in Italy and elsewhere, were engaged in commerce.

On the whole, there is a superabundance of evidence to show that during the fifth and sixth centuries, trade within the territories of the Western Empire was of great importance, and that some of this trade was carried on by native merchants, some of whom “were assuredly very wealthy.” Pirenne notes that “it is a very long time before we hear of such wealthy merchants again.”
[55]
Some of these merchants, like the Syrians, Greeks and Jews, were involved in the sea-borne trade with the Eastern Mediterranean; a trade that was apparently lively and even growing. “I think we can say that navigation was at least as active as under the Empire.”
[56]

What did this trade bring into western Europe? It brought a great variety of things, but most especially luxury items. It also brought many of the essentials of civilized life – including, crucially, large quantities of papyrus from Egypt. Thus Pirenne notes that the Royal Diplomas of the Merovingian kings, preserved in the Archives Nationales of Paris, are written on papyrus.
[57]
The disappearance of papyrus in Western Europe, and its replacement by the extremely expensive parchment, is one of the crucial markers that stand at the dividing line between the classical civilization of late antiquity and that of the medieval age. This occurred, as we shall see, in the middle of the seventh century.

Contrary to popular opinion, which imagined a decline in urban life after the dissolution of the Western Empire, the cities, said Pirenne, actually prospered under the Germanic kings:

“The cities [of this time] were both ecclesiastical and commercial in character. Even in the cities of the North, such as Meaux, there were street with arcades which were sometimes prolonged into the suburb. These arcaded houses must have given the cities an Italian appearance, even in the north. They doubtless served to shelter shops, which were generally grouped together; according to Gregory of Tours, this was especially the case in Paris.

“In these cities, besides the merchants, lived the artisans, concerning whom we have very little information. Saint Caesarius speaks of their presence at Arles, in the 6th century. The glass industry seems to have been important; the Merovingian tombs contain many objects made of glass.”
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