4.21 Europe: a.d. 701 to 800

Europe

Back to Europe: A.D. 601 to 700

Southern europe

In these early Middle Ages, the deadly black stem rust began to ravage the wheat fields, producing famine in various areas of southern Europe. The disease had been brought in, unknowingly, with the barberry bush by the Arabs. The barberry was valued for the curative potion (the stem) and the brilliant berries, edible in a preserve. (Ref. 211 )

Eastern mediterranean islands

In this century Crete, previously under Byzantium control, along with most of these islands, had some bases established by the sea-going Venetians. Cyprus was taken by the Arabs and then reconquered by Byzantium. (Ref. 222 )

Greece

For some centuries now the great classical and early Christian centers of the lower Balkans, - Athens, Corinth, Thebes, Salonica and others, had lost all contact with the world of which they had been an integral part. In 726 Greeks revolted against the Byzantine Leo III, sending a Greek fleet toward Constantinople but they were defeated by the imperial navy using an incendiary mixture called "Greek fire". (Ref. 222 ) As the century ended the Slavs were once again beating down on the borders of this country.

Upper balkans

As in the last century the Balkans were filled with Slavic peoples, mixed here and there with Bulgars and Avars. In the new kingdom of Serbia the Serbs accepted the Greek Orthodox form of Christianity while the Croats adopted the Roman form. Stress inevitably followed so that by the end of the century the Croats had formed their own independent kingdom. (Ref. 8 ) The Danube Bulgars had continued to move west into the Balkans, taking land from Byzantium. Tervel, king of the Bulgars, actually exacted tribute from Emperor Justinian II. He was followed by King Sevar, the last of the Dulo Dynasty. (Ref. 206 ) Periods of war and peace between the Bulgars and Byzantium alternated throughout the century.

Italy

The Lombards, who now filled northern Italy, fought by bow and arrow from horseback and were essentially a warrior people. As a papal state emerged where a pope (though not an emperor) still lived, it was threatened by the Lombards and the pope finally requested the Frank King Charlemagne to invade the area. At the end of the century Charlemagne complied and Lombardy became a province of the Franks. In an attempt to regain prestige to match that of Byzantine, Pope Leo Ill eventually teamed up with the Frank king to extend the Church's domain, with the result that the pope became the spiritual ruler and Charlemagne the temporal emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. By this time, Rome had dropped in population from about 1,000,000 in A.D. 400 to under 100,000, principally because of famine after the cessation of the giving of free bread. Gradually a coalescence of the Lombards and the Roman people developed with the result that there was a substantial Lombardic contribution to the Italian language and to the artistic and literary fields. The Latin language continued to be Latin, but further and further removed from the classical standards. Cases had all but disappeared by this time and the language has been called Proto-Romance. (Ref. 137 , 213 )