Test Day

Today in western civ we took our last test on Rome before the final. Now we move onto the Middle Ages. Our homework for tonight is to read p. 151 and put the notes in your blog and for five extra points, copy the Chronology found on page 152.

• The first two early medieval centuries set the patterns for how this renewal would later take place in western and eastern Europe. 
• The Germanic kingdoms had taken over the western half of the Roman Empire.
• Roman institutions gradually stopped working.
• Cities ceased to be centers of trade and social life.
• Warfare became more important than education and culture. 
• Missionary-monks brought Christianity and Roman traditions to peoples beyond the empires's old frontiers.
• Both the missionaries and the Frankish rulers created precedents for spectacular later renewal in western Europe.
• The Roman Empire's surviving eastern half contributed to westerns Europe's chaos by efforts at reconquest.

Chronology:

• Fifth century:
• Angles and Saxons invade Britain.
• 486
• Clovis leads Frankish confederacy against Romans and rival Germanic invaders in Gaul
• 527-565
• Reign of Emperor Justinian in the Eastern empire
• 542
• Plague hits Egypt, then spreads throughout the Mediterranean area and much of western Europe.
• 568
• Lombard's conquer most of northern Italy
• 570-632
• Life of Muhammad
• 595
• Missionaries sent by the pope begin to convert the pagans of England
• 711
• Muslim invasion of Spain
• 800
• Slavs occupy almost all of eastern Europe