Sophia Elahi RPC Blog

In my last two essays, I talked about the 9^th and 10^th century invasions and its effects on how people lived.  These invasions caused a lot of changes in Europe.  One of them was how the church system worked.  In this essay, I am going to talk about the Moderate Reform, which was a result of the invasions.

During the 9^th and 10^th century invasions, many people felt that they needed someone to protect them if any invaders came to pillage the town.  Since the government did nothing for the people, the practices of feudalism and manorialism started.  Manorialism was the practice of labor for protection.  People moved themselves and their family to a local strong man’s estate and work for him.  In return, he would grant them protection.

This mindset led to the practice of lay investiture, which is when laymen (men who were not members of the Church) appointed and installed Church officials.  Many believed that if there was a Church on their land, they owned it and that gave them the right to name Church officials.

This practice caused a lot of problems.  The priests and popes who were supposed to be pious and holy people were actually greedy men who only wanted power.  They allowed simony (the practice of selling a Church position), and clerical marriage (allowing priests to engage in sexual relations).

When Pope Leo IX (r. 1049-1054) was instated as pope, he decided to lead a campaign against putting corrupt men in high Church positions.  He condemned the men in the Church who abused their powers.  He emphasized how Church officials should be men who follow God and His rules.

However, Leo did not get rid of laymen investiture, but simply said that the laymen should choose better men to serve these positions.  This is why this period is called the Moderate Reform.

As you can see, laymen investiture was a huge problem, and while Pope Leo had good intentions, his reform did not do much.  Laymen investiture only truly ended with the Concordat of Worms in 1122, which stated that the king cannot be the only person instating Church officials.

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During the 9^th and 10^th century invasions, many people did not feel safe in their own homes.  When they realized that the government could not protect them, they turned to the local warlords for protection, inadvertently creating a social system known as manorialism, which came hand in hand with feudalism.

The practice of manorialism was simply labour for protection.  Some would say that it was a system that was bordering slavery, but I disagree with this view.  People who went to the warlords for help were given their own houses, food, and were not sold off without warning.  The lords were not allowed to separate the family or abuse them.  The system was more of a voluntary serfdom.

From there, feudalism was formed, which was considered to be a form of government.  Feudalism is when a lord would give property to a vassal/knight to live on and make a profit from.  These vassals were free to dispense their own laws on their estate.  Sometimes vassals would have vassals of their own.  This was known as subinfeudation.

As you can see, when the government started to fail, the people came up with their own ways to stay safe.  As these practices continued in France, a dynasty of kings, known as the Capetian Kings, would come to power and build France into the country we know today.

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This week in class, I learned about the 9^th and 10^th century invasions.  They started in Sicily in 827 AD with the Vikings and ended during the late 10^th century with the Muslims.  In this essay, I am going to briefly summarize what happened during these 200 years.

Norsemen, more commonly known as Vikings, started invading France in the early 9^th century.  They started with coastal cities at first, but after the death of King Louis the Pious in 840 AD, they got bolder and moved onto the towns inland.  They showed no mercy to the inhabitants of the towns they pillaged.  Houses would be burned, valuables stolen, and people were enslaved.  Sometimes they would demand large amounts of money from the townspeople in exchange for immunity from their merciless pillaging.  Those who refused would be completely destroyed.

One of the characteristics of the Vikings was how they never stayed in the town they looted.  Once they gathered their prize, they would sail back home to Scandinavia.  This showed that unlike other groups of people that came before them, they were unwilling to be ‘civilized.’

In 911 AD, King Charles the Simple officially gave a piece of land to the Vikings, even though they had completely monopolized it during the years prior.  Charles hoped that this would convince the Vikings to settle down and stop pillaging.  His attempt worked and the Vikings stopped majority of their violent plunders of France, and they established their own homes in the land, creating the region of Normandy.

While this was happening, a group known as the Magyars, who are said to have come from Asian descent, were attacking Germany, northern Italy, and some parts of France during the mid-9^th and 10 centuries.  They were merciless when they attacked the Germans, much like how the Vikings were to the French.  However, by the year 100 AD, they were Christianized and settled down, creating the Christian kingdom of Hungary.

Muslim troops based in Spain and Africa also joined the pillaging of European countries during this time, but they stopped during the late 10^th centuries.

As you can see, the 9^th and 10^th centuries were a very rough time for France and Germany.  However, these invasions are very important to history, as you will see in my next essay about feudalism and manorialism.

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This week in class, I learned about Justinian (r. 527 – 565), a Byzantine Emperor who was later named the Roman Emperor.  During his reign, there was a scholar named Procopius, who wrote several works about Justinian and his rule as well as his personal character.  In one of his works known as Secret History you can see how highly Procopius thought of the emperor.

Procopius described Justinian as vile and wicked.  He considered the emperor to be untrustworthy and two-faced.  Not only were his morals less than ideal, he was not a good fit for emperor.  Procopius described the man as a criminal who knew how to get into power.  Justinian was described as rash, bloodthirsty, and senseless.  It was obvious from the writing that the scholar thought of Justinian as another power-hungry politician with a large ego.

He wrote about how Justinian would bribe hostile tribes when they started to attack Byzantine instead of fighting back.  This made all nearby tribes come to Byzantine and attack with the hope of leaving with their pockets full of gold.

As you can see, through Procopius’ descriptions, he was obviously not fond of Justinian and did not want him to be in power.  Whether or not these descriptions were true, it is hard to tell.  For all we know, Procopius had a grudge against the man and over exaggerated his crimes to make people hate him as well.

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This week in class, I spent a lesson learning about how Christianity spread in England.  The reason it all happened was because of Saint Gregory the Great.  Gregory was determined to convert England to Christianity, and he successfully accomplished it.

In around 600 AD, Gregory sent one of his friends, Saint Augustine of Canterbury (not Saint Augustine of Hippo) to England to convert the people.  More specifically, the Anglo-Saxons that lived there.

When Augustine and his group of chosen companions reached England in the spring of 597 AD, they were greeted by King Ethelbert, whose wife was a Catholic.  Ethelbert gave his blessing to the group to evangelize his people, but warned that they should not destroy the culture of the people, but instead add to it and slowly change it into the Catholic culture.

For example, many of the native people in England were pagans.  Augustine’s group slowly started to introduce the idea of there being one absolute God.  Sacrifices that were originally meant for the pagan gods were given in the name of the one and only God.

In the winter of 597 AD, Augustine baptised thousands of Ethelbert’s people.  This great victory prompted Pope Gregory to send over more missionaries to assist Augustine.

The religion spread across the England kingdoms quickly, but many kingdoms refused to convert.  Their only reason was that they wanted to provoke their Christian enemies.  Despite this, the conversion of England was going smoothly.  King Ethelbert even converted a few years into the conversion mission.  However, in 616 AD, King Ethelbert died, causing an uprising against the Christian religion.

When this happened, Augustine met with the British Bishops (seven in total), and asked for their help in converting the Anglo-Saxons.  Augustine thought that if he could convert the Saxons, the uprising that was happening at the time would calm down.

However, the British Bishops refused.  When Rome fell in 476 AD, their troops were removed from England, allowing the Saxons to enter the land and pillage and steal from the natives.  Many of the native Englanders refused to assist in the conversion of the Saxons because of what they did to their ancestors.  When the British refused to help, the Irish came to assist with the conversion of the Saxons.

In 626 AD, a man named Edwin became the king of North Umbria (an Anglo-Saxon kingdom) and converted to Christianity.  But he was hesitant to introduce it to his people.  He called a council of pagan priests and asks them if he should let his people continue to be pagans or if he should introduce them to Christianity.  The priests tell Edwin that their religion has disappointed them so far, and encouraged him to introduce Christianity to the people.

The Anglo-Saxons were successfully converted, but in 633 AD, two other Saxon kings overthrow Edwin.  This threw all missionary work into disarray.  A year later, Edwin’s nephew, Oswald, took over.  He was converted by the Irish, who had a slightly different idea of Christianity, which caused some Saxons to have a different version of Christianity than others.

As you can see, the spread of Christianity in England was all because of Saint Gregory, who wanted to spread the religion to the rest of the Western world.  It turned out that the Anglo-Saxons did not need many missionaries to convert them, but a king who wanted what is best for his people.