The Rudolf Steiner Archive

History of the Middle Ages Up to the Great Inventions and Discoveries III

[ 1 ] One need only mention a single fact among all those that point in the same direction to see what radical changes took place in the 5th century. At the end of the 4th century, we find the Visigoths east of the Danube; a century later, the map shows them in Spain. Just as this people moved from one end of Europe to the other, so did many others. They migrated to lands where they encountered different cultures and adopted different customs.

[ 2 ] We must look back at the preceding historical era to understand the upheaval that the past hundred years brought about in Central Europe. If we follow the accounts of the Romans, we find warlike tribes along the Rhine whose main occupation, aside from fighting, is hunting. Further to the east, we find agriculture and livestock farming among the Germanic peoples, and still further to the northeast, tribes living by the sea, whom the Romans describe as if they were something entirely obscure and nebulous.

[ 3 ] It is said that this people worshiped the sun and derived their belief from seeing the sun goddess rise from the sea. It is said of the Semnones, the people who lived in these regions of the Mark of Brandenburg, that their religious practices were characterized by bloody sacrifices. Although they usually offered animals rather than humans to the gods, their sacrificial rites were said to have been so cruel that they differed from those of the other tribes. And there is much more that could be described about this period.

[ 4 ] A relatively quiet period then follows.

[ 5 ] Gradually, individual tribes began to cross the borders of the Roman Empire. In the 3rd century, the Burgundians were the first to advance against the Roman Empire in the southwest, while further north the Franks invaded Gaul. Further to the east, along the Danube, other Germanic peoples also advanced against the Empire. Thus, the Romans, with their highly developed culture, had to defend themselves against these peoples. Here we find a great difference in cultural levels. Among the Germanic peoples, a subsistence economy still prevailed everywhere, while the Romans had a developed monetary economy. Trade among the Germanic peoples consisted merely of barter; trade involving money was not yet known. It is telling that in France—whose population contains so much Celtic blood—a fully developed monetary economy was introduced following the Roman conquest, only to be supplanted once again by a subsistence economy upon conquest by Germanic tribes. This illustrates the clash between a highly developed culture and barbarian tribes.

[ 6 ] Then the Huns invade. In the year 375, the first clash occurs, initially between the Ostrogoths, who were settled along the Black Sea, and the Heruls. They are driven westward, and as a result, the Visigoths are also forced to leave their settlements. Where else could they go but into the Roman Empire, which they overran as far as the Danube? By then, the Roman Empire had already split into the Eastern and Western Roman Empires, the former with its capital at Byzantium, the latter with Rome as its capital. The Eastern Roman ruler assigned settlements to the Visigoths, though they first had to fight for possession of them in the Battle of Adrianople. It was there, in those regions, that Ulfila wrote his translation of the Bible. But soon they had to continue their migration. Advancing Slavic peoples pushed them further west. Under their king Alaric, they conquered Rome and founded the Visigothic Kingdom in Spain in the 5th century.

[ 7 ] The Ostrogoths followed in their footsteps and likewise attempted to establish settlements within the territory of the Roman Empire. The Germanic tribe of the Vandals conquered Spain, then sailed across to Africa, where they established a Vandal kingdom in the region where Carthage had once stood, and from there disrupted Rome with raids. Thus, the defining characteristic of this upheaval of peoples is that these Germanic tribes forced their way into all the parts that made up the new structure of Christian Rome. This type of conquest gave rise to new formations of a very distinctive nature.

[ 8 ] In the territory of what was once Gaul, a powerful empire emerged—the Frankish Empire—which left its mark on all of Central Europe for centuries. It was within this empire that what is commonly referred to as “Roman Christianity” primarily took shape. Those other peoples who, in a rapid series of victories, had subjugated parts of the Roman Empire—the Goths and the Vandals—soon disappeared completely from history. With the Franks, we see a powerful empire expanding across Europe. What are the reasons for this?

[ 9 ] To find the answer, we must examine the way these tribes expanded their empire. This was done by dividing one-third to two-thirds of the territory they invaded among the conquerors. Thus, the leaders received large tracts of land, which they then had cultivated for themselves. The subjugated population, some of whom had become slaves or serfs, was used for this labor. This is how the Visigoths in Spain and the Ostrogoths in Italy operated. As you can imagine, under the existing conditions—where the population lived at a higher level of civilization—this practice encountered great difficulties and could not be sustained in the long run.

[ 10 ] The situation was different in Gaul. There were vast forests and uninhabited regions there. Here, too, the conquered territories were divided up, and large portions went to the leaders. Here, they were not forced into pre-existing conditions; there was scope for expansion. The leaders became large landowners and rulers over the subjugated tribes. But the circumstances allowed this to happen without too much coercion. In the times before the Migration Period, the members of a tribe had essentially been equal to one another. Freedom was a shared, Germanic asset, and in a certain sense, each person was his own master—accountable to no one—on his own land. This independence and power of the leaders now expanded as a result of so many people coming under their control.

[ 11 ] This enabled them to protect themselves more effectively, and small landowners sought the protection of the larger ones. Thus, a relationship of protection emerged between the powerful and the less powerful. The many small feuds led many small landowners, who could not defend themselves adequately, into a relationship of dependence on the more powerful. They pledged allegiance in the event of war; others ceded parts of their property or paid a fee to their overlord. Such dependents were called vassals. Others were granted a holding by the great landowners in return for their service in times of war, subject to revocation: the fief. The powerful became the feudal lord, and the other became a vassal. Thus, in the most natural way possible, certain property relationships took shape.

[ 12 ] The Gothic campaigns of conquest had no lasting effect. Those peoples who had forced their way into already cultivated regions achieved nothing; their power was soon broken. — The situation was different in Gaul. Here, where vast areas still needed to be cleared, the influx of new populations could only be welcomed in the interest of cultural development. The leaders of the Frankish realm had free rein in shaping the character of their people.

[ 13 ] The Goths and Vandals have been wiped out, along with all the Germanic tribes that had settled in already established economic regions. Among the Franks, we see independence from the economic infrastructure, and the Franks shaped the character of the subsequent period, notably because the emerging Christianity found fertile ground to spread in such freedom. While the Visigoths were originally Arian Christians, ideas foreign to their nature were instilled in them; under economic conditions alien to their character, what can be regarded as the pressure of material circumstances developed. This was not the case with the Franks. It was within the Frankish tribes that the Church became a major landowner. Unfazed by material circumstances, these abbots, bishops, priests, and scholars were able to devote themselves to the service of religion. Pure, as it arose from the very nature of these people’s sensibilities, the distinctive culture of this Christianity took shape. Intellectual endeavors within free Frankish society were fostered by the influx of the Celtic element. The Celts, whose fiery spirit was once again coming to the fore, became teachers and leaders of the Franks, who were less intellectually active. Celtic monks and priests came in great numbers from Scotland and Ireland to proclaim their faith in the Frankish Empire.

[ 14 ] All of this made it possible for Christianity at that time not to be a mere reflection of external circumstances, but to develop freely, unhindered by material pressures. Conditions in Central Europe were shaped by Christianity. In this way, all the knowledge of antiquity was preserved for the Germanic peoples through Christianity. Aristotle provided the intellectual core that Christianity sought to comprehend. At that time, there was still no dependence on Rome. Christian life was able to develop freely in the Frankish Empire. Plato’s world of ideas also found its way into this spiritual life. This occurred particularly through Scottish and Irish monks, above all through Scotus Erigena in his work On the Division of Nature, a work that represents a pinnacle of spiritual life. Thus we see how spiritual life takes shape, undeterred by external circumstances. Intellectual currents take on their characteristic form precisely where they are independent of economic conditions. Later, as material pressures expand, they retroactively take on the character of these conditions; but then they themselves flow into them and influence them in turn.

[ 15 ] Several small kingdoms made up the empire we know as the Merovingian Empire, which only later came under the control of a single ruler.

[ 16 ] Based on what has been described to you, you will realize that Christianity in the south must have been different from this Frankish Christianity, with which it later intermingled. Frankish Christianity was relatively independent and was able to use the political circumstances to its advantage. The more Roman rule was pushed back, the greater the proportion of the clergy that came from the Franks, whose education lagged far behind that of the other clergy; the learned priests and monks, however, were all Celts.

[ 17 ] Thus, over the course of these centuries, the most diverse peoples had gradually been shaken up and intermingled; the invasion of the Huns had provided the impetus for these changes. While the developments described here were taking shape within the cultural currents themselves, major conflicts were unfolding on the outside. But what we call cultural development was not significantly affected by these external conflicts.

[ 18 ] The Huns had advanced far to the west. If we are not blind to what ancient legends tell us, we know that they had reached as far as southern France. In the ancient heroic epic preserved in Latin, the Song of Walthari, it is recounted how the princes of the Germanic tribes—the Burgundians, the Franks, and so on—were forced to hand over hostages to the Huns, including Walthari, the son of the prince of the Germanic tribe that ruled in Aquitaine. This heroic epic recounts the deeds of this Walther, Hagen, and Gunther. The Huns continued to launch raids, unsettling the Germanic peoples far to the west, until finally the Franks, the Goths, and what remained of the Roman people formed a force that confronted the Huns in 451 at the Battle of the Catalaunian Fields. This was the first blow suffered by the Huns’ rule—a rule that weighed heavily on the peoples but left no lasting impression.

[ 19 ] The Huns were a people whose customs and traditions were so foreign to the European nations that their entire manner and appearance were described as something utterly strange. What was significant was that this people formed a cohesive unit; their subservience to their king, Attila—which rose to the level of deification—made them appear irresistibly terrifying to other peoples. After the Battle of the Catalaunian Fields, this power received its final, decisive blow from Leo the Great, the Bishop of Rome, who confronted Attila and persuaded him to retreat. From a psychological perspective, this event is understandable. Leo knew the power that Attila wielded over his people. Attila, however, for all his power, did not know what stood against him: Christianity; that is why he yielded to it.

[ 20 ] The rule of the Huns thus remained a mere episode; what came from the West had a far more lasting impact. After Attila’s death in 453, the power of the Huns soon crumbled again; the rule of the Goths, Gepids, Vandals, and so on was also short-lived—they found themselves confined by existing circumstances and were unable to preserve their distinct identity. This, however, was not the case in the Frankish Kingdom; this culture remained true to the character of the Frankish tribe, and thus we see how this people developed powerfully. Later, however, we also see how this tribe forcibly compels the others to adopt Christianity. We further see that there is nothing more suitable for shaping material culture than Christianity; all manner of cultural institutions are shaped by external Christianity. And because they are able to freely preserve their character, they provide the framework for loose structures within which spiritual life can develop: thus arise the spiritual economic communities in monasteries and so on. Over time, however, a disconnect arises between spiritual and economic culture. Although Charlemagne’s empire establishes itself as a Christian empire, it contradicts the spirit of Christianity by spreading the faith by force. Consequently, Christianity soon ceases to fit within economic life. The conditions of economic life are perceived as oppressive, and thus the free cities emerge.

[ 21 ] This is the development of spiritual and material culture in broad strokes. The conditions are presented to you in their true significance. You can see how it was only when spiritual currents no longer coincided with material conditions that this imbalance found expression in the emergence of a purely material culture—urban culture. For these economic structures had arisen out of material interests. The population, unable to endure life in the countryside, flocked into the cities to find protection and security there. Thus we see new economic structures emerge that were to become of the most far-reaching significance. You see empires rise and fall, and new structures take the place of old ones. But you also see that we can only understand their structure if we recognize how the first defining empire—the Frankish Empire—took shape. Not forced into preexisting conditions, but rather in a place where space for free expansion was available, the essence of this tribe had developed and been able to establish its rule.

[ 22 ] The tribes that had been driven from their homelands by the Great Migration were not only thoroughly shaken up, but had been reshaped. Some had vanished entirely from history, while others took their place. The great transformation had taken place not only externally, but much more so at the very core of their character. At the beginning of the era of the Migration Period, we see the various Germanic peoples grappling with the question of their destiny. For the Goths, who had chosen a tolerant form of Christianity, this question meant annihilation; for the Franks, who were confronted with this question under different, freer, and for them more favorable circumstances, it meant the expansion of their power for centuries to come. Was this for the good of all? We shall see in the course of this work.