Kalliope’s Reviews > The Barbarian West: The Early Middle Ages, A. D. 400-1000 > Status Update

It would be going too far to state that Saracen gold financed the Carolinginan and Ottonian renaissances, but it may have invigorated the economy of the north. For the first time the Orient, the Mediterranean and the North were linked and sustained by a single monetary system; and this lasted just so long as the Islamic hegemony lasted, that is, to the eleventh century.

The Carolingians delighted to ape the Greeks, who, after all, were their near neighbours in Italy. Many Carolingian illuminations of the ninth century demonstrate the closeness of this dependence on Byzantine models; the church of Metz, where Charles was consecrated prided itself, like Rome, on its Greek school.

A king (and much more, an emperor) was a lawgiver: that was the tradition of Rome, Byzantium, the Old Testament and teh barbarians themselves.

The Carolingians had bought present peace at teh cost of endless future war; for neitehr the East nor the West Franks ceased to covet the rich lands that lay between them and had once belonged to both, lands in which stood the Carolingian estates and Aachen, the palatium of Charlemagne. The ancient hostility of France and Germany goes back no further than the Treaty of Verdun (843).

Awareness of the classical heritage and anxiety to preserve it characterized the Western barbarians almost as much as the men of the Late Empire. What then is meant by 'the renaissance' of the eighth and ninth centuries? Of what precisely was there a Renaissance?

But did the Arabs fight on horseback? Recent research in Moslem sources has revealed that the first regular cavalry squadrons did not arrive from africa till eight years after the battle of Poitiers (740) and even then fought their first engagements on foot.

One group of tribes they called the 'Franci', a name perhaps derived from th Germanic 'frak' or 'frech', meaning 'savage' or 'proud'.

Thousands of Greek monks, fleeing from the iconoclast persecution, settled in southern Italy and penetrated as far north as Rome. It is not going too far to say that Rome was hellenized afresh between 600 and 750. Partly this was the work of the Exarchs, whose links with Rome were closer than is sometimes thought. But still more was due to the popes themselves. Thirteen of them were Greek-speaking easterners.

Byzantium civilized her enemies. The art of the Lombards as developed over the seventh and eighth centuries, bore increasing evidence of the proximity of Ravenna, city of imperial craftsmen. In Lombard grave-goods interlace was replaced by Byzantine plant or animal ornamentation.

Gold supplies were, further, being drained out of Western Europe into Byzantium where they remained, mostly immobilised as church treasure, till partially released by the Islamic invaders.