Barbarians at the Gate
Fall of Rome and the Rise of the Medieval Period

The Decline of the Pax Romana

• External Pressures contributing to decline
  • Barbarians - Anyone not classified as a Roman citizen
  • Unprotected frontiers and boarders leads to instability in the outer provinces
• Internal Pressures contributing to decline
  • City entitlements - Free Corn
    • City magnets and rural flight
    • Expansion of the free entitlements - bread, circuses, wine, oil, baths, etc.
• Roman response lays the foundation for a new age
  • High taxes discourage productivity
  • debased currency. i.e. unsound money
  • Coercion to keep people in the country side
    • Losing the freedom to leave the farms through mandating work
    • The surf - peasant bound to the land
• The Effect - The Fall
  • Fragmentation of the central government into local fiefdoms
  • Rejection of currency in favor of trade in kind
  • Emergence of Feudalism

The Rise of the Middle Ages

• Feudalism - The defining social/economic structure of the Middle Ages
  • Land ownership and personal loyalty
  • A fief was given to a vassal by a lord in exchange for fidelity
    • Fief - Title to a piece of land
    • Vassal - The person whom receives a fief sealed with a pledge of fidelity
    • Lord - The person whom gave a fief to a person (making them a vassal) with the promise of fidelity given in exchange
  • A hierarchy of mutual inherited obligations with absolute faithfulness
• Instability
  • War as primary means to resolve differences
  • Famine either from wars, or poorly understood techniques of farming from the classical world now forgotten
  • Bubonic plague (Black Death) a reoccurring plague that could desolate the population
  • Cultural effects
    • Decline of the humanistic perspective in favor of abstract and spiritual ones
    • Worldly torment and heavenly afterlife
• A Society in Three Stratums based mostly on birth
  • "Those that fight"
    • Nobility with an inherited title and claim to land
    • Kings, knights and Castles
    • The political power and order of society ruling through armed superiority
  • "Those that pray"
    • Ecclesiastical order (Catholic Church)
    • Pope, monks and cathedrals
    • Seat of learning wherein literacy survived
  • "Those that work"
    • Commoner
    • Peasants, peasants and more peasants
    • The surf bound to the land and effectively owned by the aristocratic who had title to said land

Humanities Resource of Mark Hunter