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World History 1

<OpenstaxParagraph>
	While <OpenstaxTerm>Christianity</OpenstaxTerm> had developed in an atmosphere of antagonism to the Roman state, by the fifth century, the church had become the preserver of classical Greek and Roman law, literature, and philosophical ideas. Language and cultural differences existed between the eastern and western churches, and in the eighth century, their political and theological ties became strained. One dispute was over the use of images in Christian worship, which the popes supported but some emperors rejected. The popes had also been building up an argument for their supremacy over the church, based partly in scripture and partly in tradition. Early medieval popes like <OpenstaxTerm>Leo I</OpenstaxTerm> laid the groundwork for the power of the Bishops of Rome, a power the eastern churches largely rejected or ignored. Once they had made an alliance with the Frankish kings, however, the popes looked to western Europe for the church’s future.
</OpenstaxParagraph>
<OpenstaxParagraph>
	The papacy was not the only church institution in Europe; local traditions and needs shaped a variety of Christian beliefs and practices in the early Middle Ages. There were three ways in which the church helped transform the old Roman world into the new. First, the institutional church, often under the guidance of the popes, worked to convert the Germanic peoples to Christianity. Second, it helped to preserve the classical tradition. Finally, it worked with the new rulers to help legitimize their rule and Christianize their populations.
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	Missionary work was undertaken by men and women devoted to Christian beliefs and intent on incorporating new peoples into the society of Christian nations. Pope Gregory (also known as <OpenstaxTerm>Gregory the Great</OpenstaxTerm>) commissioned monks from Italy, led by <OpenstaxTerm>Augustine</OpenstaxTerm> of Canterbury, to convert the Anglo-Saxons. (Monks are men who do not marry, often live in community with each other, and devote their lives to serving God. Their female counterparts are called nuns.) The laity (nonclergy) often engaged in missionary work, and the wives of kings were especially influential in promoting widespread conversion to Christianity. Contemporaries noted the success of Clothilde’s persuasion in the conversion of her husband King Clovis, and Bertha, the wife of King Ethelbert of Kent, likewise encouraged her husband to convert. Both supported the efforts of the missionary (and later bishop) Augustine of Canterbury. Missionaries often worked closely with Christian rulers, whose conversion could be critical in expanding the frontiers of Catholic Christianity.
</OpenstaxParagraph>
<OpenstaxParagraph>
	Monasticism (the way monks live and their communal institutions) had developed in the Mediterranean world and flourished in western Europe among religious men and women. The most influential monastic leader was <OpenstaxTerm>Benedict of Nursia</OpenstaxTerm>, who composed a guidebook or “rule” for monastic life that stressed moderation, a balance between prayer and useful work, the self-sufficiency of communities, and enough education for monks to copy out books in Latin. Many communities were “double monasteries,” containing a community of men and a community of women and often operating under the regulation of an abbess. Monasticism gave women a role in society that was not based on their relationship to a father or husband, and some women enjoyed considerable influence as abbesses. <OpenstaxTerm>Radegund</OpenstaxTerm> was a Frankish queen who fled the court when her husband murdered her brother. She became famous as the founder and abbess of the Monastery of the Holy Cross in Poitiers and was widely venerated as a saint after her death. Women like Radegund found religious life preferable to the intrigue of the court and the whims of a violent husband (<a href="#fig-00006">Figure 13.9</a>).
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<OpenstaxFigure id="fig-00006" src="https://openstax.org/apps/archive/20240226.174525/resources/c18047d3045355eea9bbb692502488424782789e" alt="A highly decorated, faded image is shown with the top, bottom, and right edges decorated with orange, white, and dark colored 3-D “P” like images. At the top and bottom right corners sit circles with designs inside of similar colors. Inside the center a woman sits on an ornate orange chair in long blue, green, and orange robes with ornate trim. She wears a long cloth on her head with a red headband and has large eyes. She looks down at an orange and green book in her hand. Behind her walls are striped green, orange, and blue with white and orange curtains showing on the sides on hooks attached to an archway above her head." mediaType="image/jpg" width="650" height="1038" />
<OpenstaxFigureText width="650">
	<strong>Figure 13.9</strong> This eleventh-century image shows Radegund, queen of the Franks and later founder of a monastery, seated with a book, demonstrating her learning and piety. Religious women like Radegund were influential in the Middle Ages. (credit: “Saint Radegonde” by Poitiers Municipal Library/Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain)
</OpenstaxFigureText>
<OpenstaxParagraph>
	Monastic communities were often critical to the preservation of learning in the post-Roman world. There, monks copied out books by hand to foster the work of missionaries and preserve knowledge they thought was useful from the ancient world. Monasteries also served as refuges in times of crisis and could become valued centers of administration and nodes in communications networks. They were often the only place for the training of priests to serve newly converted peoples. While bishops were the undisputed authorities, especially the bishop of Rome (the pope), monasticism was equally crucial for both missionary work and the development of a Christian population.
</OpenstaxParagraph>
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	Finally, Christianity helped legitimize new rulers. Germanic kings could better integrate themselves with their Roman population once they converted to the Catholic Christianity their subjects practiced. Bishops could serve as administrators, and monasteries were places of education for the new elite. One issue raised by the career of <OpenstaxTerm>Charlemagne</OpenstaxTerm>, though, was the relationship between rulers and the papacy. <OpenstaxTerm>Leo III</OpenstaxTerm> had crowned Charlemagne, and clergy often performed an anointing ceremony when a king was invested with the symbols of office.
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	Aside from the rivalry between the eastern and western churches, an important non-Christian religion was present in the form of Judaism, which was given latitude by the Romans on account of its antiquity. With the collapse of Rome and the growing dominion of Catholic Christianity, however, Jewish communities faced new challenges as clergy and kings instituted restrictions on their behavior and practices. Christians often viewed Jewish people as outsiders no matter how long they may have lived in a given area. The mistaken belief that Jewish people were to blame for the death of Jesus led to rumors that they wanted to harm Christians. In some cases, as in Visigothic Spain, Jewish residents faced the threat of either converting to Christianity or being expelled from the kingdom. Hostility was never uniform, however, and kings like <OpenstaxTerm>Louis the Pious</OpenstaxTerm> granted Jewish people considerable freedoms. Rulers might also feel compelled to protect Jewish communities because of their connections, especially trade connections, to other communities across the Mediterranean. Still, the position of Jewish communities in the Middle Ages was often precarious.
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13.1.2 Religion and Society in Medieval Europe

1 Understanding the Past

1.1 Developing a Global Perspective

1.1.1 World History as Preparation for Life after College

1.1.2 World History and Global Citizenship

1.1.3 Features of This Textbook

1.2 Primary Sources

1.2.1 Learning to Evaluate Documents and Images

1.2.2 Documentary Sources: Competing Narratives

1.2.3 Textual Sources: The Importance of Language

1.2.4 Hidden in History

1.3 Causation and Interpretation in History

1.3.1 Levels of Causation

1.3.2 Interpretation in History

2 Early Humans

2.1 Early Human Evolution and Migration

2.1.1 Human Evolution

2.1.2 Why Did Humans Move and Where Did They Go?

2.1.3 Early Human Technologies

2.2 People in the Paleolithic Age

2.2.1 Ice, Ice, and More Ice

2.2.2 Life in the Paleolithic Age

2.2.3 Diverse Paleolithic Peoples

2.3 The Neolithic Revolution

2.3.1 The Development of Agriculture

2.3.2 How Farming Changed the Human Experience

2.3.3 Neolithic Peoples

3 Early Civilizations and Urban Societies

3.1 Early Civilizations

3.1.1 Attributes of Early Civilizations

3.1.2 The First Urban Societies

3.2 Ancient Mesopotamia

3.2.1 The Rise and Eclipse of Sumer

3.2.2 The Rise of the World’s First Empire

3.2.3 Later Empires in Mesopotamia

3.2.4 Society and Religion in Ancient Mesopotamia

3.3 Ancient Egypt

3.3.1 The Origins of Ancient Egypt

3.3.2 The Age of Pyramid Building

3.3.3 A Second Age of Egyptian Greatness

3.4 The Indus Valley Civilization

3.4.1 The Origins of the Indus Valley Civilization

3.4.2 Trade, Writing, and Religion

3.4.3 The Era of Decline

4 The Near East

4.1 From Old Babylon to the Medes

4.1.1 Power Politics in the Near East

4.1.2 Foreign Affairs and Trade

4.1.3 Daily Life and the Family in the Near East

4.2 Egypt’s New Kingdom

4.2.1 The Hyksos in Egypt

4.2.2 The Pharaohs of the New Kingdom

4.2.3 Egypt’s Foreign Policy

4.3 The Persian Empire

4.3.1 The Rise of Persia

4.3.2 Darius I and the Reorganization of the Empire

4.3.3 Persian Culture and Daily Life

4.4 The Hebrews

4.4.1 The History of the Hebrews

4.4.2 The Culture of the Hebrews

5 Asia in Ancient Times

5.1 Ancient China

5.1.1 Prehistoric China

5.1.2 Early Dynastic China

5.1.3 The Zhou Dynasty

5.1.4 The Warring States Era and Qin Unification

5.2 The Steppes

5.2.1 The Nomadic Culture of the Steppes

5.2.2 Tribes, Confederations, and Settled Neighbors

5.3 Korea, Japan, and Southeast Asia

5.3.1 Ancient Korea

5.3.2 Ancient Japan

5.4 Vedic India to the Fall of the Maurya Empire

5.4.1 Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro

5.4.2 The Aryans and Brahmanism

5.4.3 Buddhism

5.4.4 The Mauryan Empire

5.4.5 The Gupta Dynasty

6 Mediterranean Peoples

6.1 Early Mediterranean Peoples

6.1.1 The Late Bronze Age World

6.1.2 Phoenicians, Greeks, and Etruscans

6.2 Ancient Greece

6.2.1 Archaic Greece

6.2.2 Sparta and Athens

6.2.3 Classical Greece

6.3 The Hellenistic Era

6.3.1 The Kingdom of Macedon

6.3.2 Hellenistic Culture

6.4 The Roman Republic

6.4.1 The Foundation and Function of the Roman Republic

6.4.2 The Expansion of the Roman Republic

6.5 The Age of Augustus

6.5.1 The First Triumvirate

6.5.2 From Republic to Principate

7 Experiencing the Roman Empire

7.1 The Daily Life of a Roman Family

7.1.1 The Structure of Roman Families

7.1.2 A Day in the Life of a Roman Family

7.1.3 What Family Meant in Rome