Unit 2: Changing cultural landscapes during the Roman period and the early Middle Ages

(Alfred Pletsch)

During the second half of the last pre-Christian millennium the European cultural landscape changed fundamentally. In Central Europe the expansion of the Celts [1] goes along with an intensification in agricultural production and techniques, in crafts, with the expansion of trade patterns, the remodelling of settlement structures and a reorganisation of the society. At the same time, in Southern-Europe the vigorous city-states of Greece had already, economically and culturally, developed to a golden age based on commercial activities that were solidly established within the Mediterranean world.

There was, however, a third power that emerged at the end of the sixth century BC: Rome [2]. At the beginning this little Italian city-state on the banks of the Tiber was overshadowed by the glorious Greeks, compared to which the Romans were little better than barbarians. Hence, three centuries later, when Greece had passed her golden age, the sturdy and strong willed Romans appropriated the Greek heritage and used it as the foundation for a great and lasting culture of their own. Their possession of a legal, political and military genius carried them from triumph to triumph and allowed a territorial expansion that at its climax covered the whole Mediterranean and much of the central and west European world [3].

The northward expansion in Central Europe, however, was not as easy as it was for Julius Caesar to be victorious over the Gauls. It took him only six years (58 to 52 BC) to subject the Gaulish people [4] step by step before he finally besieged the last fortress at Alesia [5] where the famous Vercingetorix had thought he could resist best the Roman attacks. Strategically this was his greatest mistake, since all Caesar had to do was to wait until Vercingetorix and his troops would surrender because of the lack of provision. The situation was totally different in Germania, where the "barbarians" (as the Romans described the Germanic tribes) resisted much better to the Roman expansion [6]. What looked like an easy victory in the beginning turned out to be a disaster for the Roman cohorts when they were defeated in the famous Battle of the Teutoburger Wald [7] in 9 AD. Like the Celts some centuries earlier the Romans, too, were unable to conquer the "Germanic barrier" [8]. As a consequence they built the famous "Limes" [9], a fortified defence line stretching from the Lower Rhine valley to the Danube, thus subdividing Germania into two halves [10]. The southern portion became part of the Roman Empire, the northern part continued to belong to the various Germanic tribes for another couple of centuries.

From a geographic point of view, the repercussions of the Roman conquest on the landscape are of the greatest importance. They are manifold and only a few can be mentioned here. The two centuries of Roman peace since the time of Augustus were those of unprecedented prosperity. Of great importance for the new economic life was the network of military roads all over the empire that served at the same time for trade communication. In fact, communication between Central Europe and the Mediterranean world were probably never so rapid and safe until the coming of the railroad as they were during the first two centuries of the empire. Furs, amber, wax, and slaves were important commodities that were shipped from Germania to Rome, in return for oil and wine. A main corridor for these communications was the Rhine-Rhone-axis for it was topographically the easiest link across the continent. But there were also routes that crossed the Alps, others bridged the central uplands of southern Germania [11]. The network was dense and efficient and it allowed to solidly establish a pattern of cities, markets and settlements that became another characteristic of the human landscape of that time period.

There are a great many cities in today's Germany that were founded under the Romans. The best known are probably Cologne [12], Mainz [13] and Trier [14], in all of which remnants of the Roman origin are preserved. Other cities founded by the Romans include Xanten [15], Wiesbaden, Regensburg [16] as well as many smaller ones [17]. One of the characteristics of these cities was their regular checkerboard pattern [18], a ground plan that was also to be found in the subdivision of the fields in rural areas. Never before and never again was the subdivision of the landscape as geometrical as it was in Roman times. It can best be compared to the monotony of the North American township survey system.

Repercussions are also very obvious in the settlements of rural areas. A great many of so called "villae" [19] were established in Roman times, more or less small land holdings in a dispersed settlement pattern, at least in Germania. In other parts of the empire, including parts of Gaul, Spain, and the eastern Mediterranean world, these land holdings were frequently much bigger, known as latifundium. Within the pattern of these agricultural domains, the market places (in Latin "vici") played an important role for the exchange of goods and as administrative centres. Also they were often located in the proximity of military camps for which they were important places to supply provisions. To mention this is of great importance since many of the later villages and cities originated from these villae or vici, thus the Roman settlement pattern reflected even in today's human landscape of Germany to a certain extent.

For the first two centuries after Christ, much less is known about the northern half of Germania where the Germanic tribes formed a great variety of cultural and economic units without being united. One could rather say that disunity was one of the main characteristics within this portion of Central Europe. This is probably the main reason why an overall distinct Germanic cultural landscape never evolved or cannot be identified. However, German geographers have started very early to scrutinise these parts of the continent, including the famous work by August Meitzen on "Siedelung und Agrarwesen der Westgermanen und Ostgermanen, der Kelten, Römer, Finnen und Slawen" (Berlin, 1895). What has been discovered through these studies is that there is apparently a widespread settlement pattern of Germanic origin as can be identified through the original place names.

As early as in the middle of the third century AD. Germanic tribes renewed barbarian inroads. It all started with the Alamanni [20] who were successful in attacking the limes and forced the Romans to step back beyond the Rhine river. Who exactly these Alamanni were is hard to say. The most convincing description is that they formed one of these more or less clearly defined West Germanic tribes whose original home was the central southern coast of the Baltic. The other important confederation of West Germanic tribes [21] were the Franks, an expression that stands for the amalgamation or federation of smaller tribes or fractions of peoples that had formed along the lower Rhine valley. In addition, along the North sea and in the Danish peninsula, were the Saxons, the Angles, and Jutes who were later to invade England. Another important confederation were the East Germanic tribes whose early home was the southern part of the Scandinavian peninsula and the Baltic coast between the Oder and the Vistula including the Burgundians whose origin was the island of Bornholm from where they moved southwards to the Rhine-Main triangle during the fourth century. Other tribes of this confederation included the Vandals, the Lombards, the Visigoths. the Ostrogoths, and several others.

Because of permanent inroads, wars, sieges, destruction, replacements, spatial migrations, disappearance and eventually resurrection of cultures and whole civilisations, the 3^rd to the 5^th centuries is often referred to as the Dark Ages or the Völkerwanderung [22] (Migration of the Peoples ), as German scholars call the great migrations into the Roman empire. What exactly the reasons were for these migrations is still not clear in its full dimension. One of the more convincing theories is that the increase in population drove the Germanic tribes to seek more fertile and less thickly populated lands, a north south directed movement that piled up the tribes against the barrier of the Roman frontier which eventually collapsed under this pressure. The plausibility of this argument is even more convincing if we take into account the primitive methods of agriculture used by the Germanic tribes and their reliance on herds and hunting for the greater part of their food. One of the worst chapters of the Dark Ages was written by the Huns [23] who invaded Central Europe under the famous Attila in the 5^th century and spread terror through the West. Only the joint forces of the Romans, the Visigoths, Burgundians and other foederati were successful to stop the westward expansion of the Huns in the decisive Battle of Châlons (Katalaunische Felder) in 451 AD.

One of the confederated troops were the Franks. Though their early history is very obscure, they were evidently one of the most backward and barbarous of the Germanic peoples. They nevertheless managed to invade, by the end of the 5^th century, the northern angle of Gaul between the Rhine and the sea and to defeat the last remnants of the West Roman empire on Gaulish territory in the Battle of Soissons in 486. The Frankish troops were commanded by Clovis, the king of one of the Frankish tribes who, ten years later crushed the Alamanni and added their lands in the upper Rhine-valley to his kingdom. Meanwhile he had married a niece of the Burgundian king, Clotilda. In 596, Clovis converted to Christianity, an important event in the building of the Frankish rule [24] to have far-reaching results in the ensuing centuries.

The history of the Frankish kingdoms [25] from its Merovingian beginnings to the Carolingian apogee at the turn of the 8^th to the 9^th centuries is complicated and must be left to the historians in a text that focuses mainly on the repercussions of this time period on the human landscape. They are, once more, manifold. Of greatest importance of the historical developments during the three centuries [26] of the Frankish rule (referred to as the Early Middle Ages) [27] were the territorial expansion of the Frankish kingdom, the conversion of the Germanic tribes to Christianity, and the rise of the papacy to a position of unprecedented secular and spiritual authority in alliance with the Frankish rulers. Though it lasted for less than a century, the Carolingian Empire (that reached its culmination under the reign of Charlemagne) united the three elements of medieval civilisation [28], the Germanic, the Roman, and Christian traditions. The territorial expansion of the Frankish empire covered almost entirely the continental portions of Central and Western Europe and included parts of the Mediterranean world, thus representing a political entity that had never existed before in Europe, nor has it ever been restored in the same boundaries once it was subdivided into three parts in the Treaty of Verdun [29] in 843 AD.

One of the repercussions of the Frankish period was the territorial subdivision of the country reflecting an administration pattern that initially was one of the strengths of the Empire. The monarch was the absolute ruler. In the administration of his Empire he was assisted by a great number of palace officials. Local administration throughout the country was the responsibility of counts and bishops who had become recognised administrative officers of the state as well as of the church. The roots of the feudal system [30] are already embodied in the social structures that really developed in the High Middle ages and gave birth to the territorial fragmentation that characterises the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation.

Otherwise the Frankish society was mainly a rural one. From the innumerable decrees or "capitularies" of the Kings we know that by far the greatest number of the people were engaged in farming [31] (or drew their income from the land). Many place names throughout Germany belong to what has been identified as the Frankish colonisation period [32]. There was apparently a considerable improvement in agricultural methods (e.g. the early beginnings of the so called "three fields rotation" -Dreifelderwirtschaft) [33] and a change in the structure of the rural society. On the one hand, there were great estates that belonged to the nobles and the church (called Fronhof) [34], on the other hand there were many small landowners in more or less independent legal positions [35] towards the local power holders. The hierarchical structure of the rural society was clearly mirrored through different types and forms of the Frankish farmsteads which is still today be referred to in German as the Fränkische Gehöftformen . But changes occurred: the building-up of large estates went on steadily through the Frankish period, as the small landowners lost their land and freedom under the stress of compulsory work obligations towards the local nobility, and shares (e.g. the Tenth) they had to pay. This often proved too great an economic strain on the small landowners, and added to the power of the nobles and the church. Other industries and crafts were not widespread. They were mostly limited to the production of the tools, weapons, clothing etc. needed by the local people.

This also means that commerce did not play a major role during the Frankish period. But there is more to this question. The trade relations between Central Europe and the Mediterranean, though flourishing in Roman times, had considerably declined as a consequence of the conquest of the Mediterranean by the Moslems (which hindered especially the trade with the East). In fact, during the eighth century, trade was limited in Central Europe almost exclusively to the meeting of local needs, based more on the market-system of an exchange of goods (barter) than on a "money economy" that had already been flourishing in Roman times.

Nevertheless, the early Middle Ages can also be seen as a new start. Following the Roman example, the Frankish military roads ( Heerwege ) also became more and more trade routes, especially after the 9^th century. Trade and commerce developed within Central Europe, be it slowly at first, along these routes [36]. This automatically implicated the birth of market places and settlements that were no longer exclusively based on agriculture. They became in many cases the nuclei of the towns that admittedly, came legally only into being in the high Middle Ages. Other features of the Frankish period have also their continuity after the break-up of the Carolingian empire, including the structure of the society, territorial fragmentation etc. When the Saxons took over the power from the Franks, they obviously did not fundamentally change this heritage and it would not have been easy to do so. Otto the Great (936 - 973), despite all his efforts to establish an effective authority, was none too successful in this endeavour. The Holy Roman Empire [37] was nothing more than what the Franks had already laid the roots for.