Early Middle Ages Spain and Italy

Visigoth Spain 418-711 The Visigoths were branches of the nomadic tribes of Germanic peoples referred to collectively as the Goths. These tribes flourished and spread during the late Roman Empire in Late Antiquity, or the Migration Period. The Visigoths emerged from earlier Gothic groups who had invaded the Roman Empire beginning in 376 and had defeated the Romans at the Battle of Adrianople in 378. The Visigoths invaded Italy under Alaric I and sacked Rome in 410. Their long history of migration led the Visigoths to compare themselves to the Biblical Hebrew people who purportedly wandered for forty years in the Sinai Desert. After the Visigoths sacked Rome, they began settling down, first in southern Gaul and eventually in Spain and Portugal, where they founded the Kingdom of the Visigoths.

Visigoth Spain 418-711

Visigoth Spain When the Visigoths began their migration from Dacia (modern day Romania) in 376, they had already embraced Christianity. The Visigoths entered Hispania (modern Spain and Portugal) in 418, and they rose to be the dominant people there until the Moorish invasion of 711 brought their kingdom to an end. This period in Iberian art is dominated by their style. Visigothic art is generally considered in the English-speaking world to be a strain of Migration art, while the Portuguese and Spanish-speaking worlds generally classify it as Pre-Romanesque. Branches of Visigothic art include their architecture, their crafts (especially jewelry), and even their script

Votive Crown

Votive crown

Belt Buckle

Illuminated Manuscript

Santa Maria del Lara

Capela de San Frutuso

San Pedro

Carved Stone Capital

Carved Stone

Medieval Italy The Italian peninsula has a complicated political history during the medieval period, roughly defined as the time between the collapse of the Western Roman Empire AD 476 and the Italian Wars of 1494 to 1559. Late Antiquity in Italy lingered on into the 7th century under the Ostrogothic Kingdom and the Byzantine Empire under the Justinian dynasty, the Byzantine Papacy until the mid 8th century. The "Middle Ages" proper begin as the Byzantine Empire was weakening under the pressure of the Muslim conquests, and the Exarchate of Ravenna finally fell under Lombard rule in 751.

Medieval Italy Lombard rule ended with the invasion of Charlemagne in 773, who established the Kingdom of Italy and the Papal States. This set the precedent for the main political conflict in Italy over the following centuries, between the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor, culminating with conflict between Pope Gregory VII and Henry IV and the latter's "Walk to Canossa" in 1077.

Medieval Italy The Church (and especially the bishop of Rome, by now styled the pope), had played an important political role since the time of Constantine, who tried to include it in the imperial administration. In the politically unstable situation after the fall of the western empire, the Church often became the only stable institution and the only source of learning in western Europe. Even the barbarians had to rely on clerics in order to administer their conquests. Furthermore, the Catholic monastic orders, such as the Benedictines had a major role both in the economic life of the time, and in the preservation of classical culture (although in the east the Greek authors were much better preserved).

Medieval Italy After the Lombard invasion, the popes (i.e. St. Gregory, St. Peter, and St. Mark) were nominally subject to the eastern emperor, but often received little help from Constantinople, and had to fill the lack of stately power, providing essential services (ex. food for the needy) and protecting Rome from Lombard incursions; in this way, the popes started building an independent state. At the end of the 8th century the popes definitely aspired to independence, and found a way to achieve it by allying with the Carolingian dynasty of the Franks; the Carolingians needed someone who could give legitimacy to a coup against the powerless Merovingian kings, while the popes needed military protection against the Lombards.

Medieval Italy In 751 the Lombards seized Ravenna and the Exarchate of Ravenna was abolished. This ended the Byzantine presence in central Italy (although some coastal cities and some areas in south Italy remained under Byzantine control until the 11th century). Facing a new Lombard offensive, the papacy appealed to the Franks for aid. In 756 Frankish forces defeated the Lombards and gave the Papacy legal authority over all of central Italy, thus creating the Papal States. However, the remainder of Italy stayed under Lombard or Byzantine control.

Medieval Italy

Castle

Book Cover

Lombard Ivory of St. John

Jewelry Case

Ravenna Mosaic 547

Ravenna Sancta Pollinare

Cosmological Manuscript