In this century Crete, previously under Byzantium control, along with most of these islands, had some bases established by the sea-going Venetians. Cyprus was taken by the Arabs and then reconquered by Byzantium. (Ref. 222)

For some centuries now the great classical and early Christian centers of the lower Balkans, - Athens, Corinth, Thebes, Salonica and others, had lost all contact with the world of which they had been an integral part. In 726 Greeks revolted against the Byzantine Leo III, sending a Greek fleet toward Constantinople but they were defeated by the imperial navy using an incendiary mixture called "Greek fire". (Ref. 222) As the century ended the Slavs were once again beating down on the borders of this country.

As in the last century the Balkans were filled with Slavic peoples, mixed here and there with Bulgars and Avars. In the new kingdom of Serbia the Serbs accepted the Greek Orthodox form of Christianity while the Croats adopted the Roman form. Stress inevitably followed so that by the end of the century the Croats had formed their own independent kingdom. (Ref. 8) The Danube Bulgars had continued to move west into the Balkans, taking land from Byzantium. Tervel, king of the Bulgars, actually exacted tribute from Emperor Justinian II. He was followed by King Sevar, the last of the Dulo Dynasty. (Ref. 206) Periods of war and peace between the Bulgars and Byzantium alternated throughout the century.

The Lombards, who now filled northern Italy, fought by bow and arrow from horseback and were essentially a warrior people. As a papal state emerged where a pope (though not an emperor) still lived, it was threatened by the Lombards and the pope finally requested the Frank King Charlemagne to invade the area. At the end of the century Charlemagne complied and Lombardy became a province of the Franks. In an attempt to regain prestige to match that of Byzantine, Pope Leo Ill eventually teamed up with the Frank king to extend the Church's domain, with the result that the pope became the spiritual ruler and Charlemagne the temporal emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. By this time, Rome had dropped in population from about 1,000,000 in A.D. 400 to under 100,000, principally because of famine after the cessation of the giving of free bread. Gradually a coalescence of the Lombards and the Roman people developed with the result that there was a substantial Lombardic contribution to the Italian language and to the artistic and literary fields. The Latin language continued to be Latin, but further and further removed from the classical standards. Cases had all but disappeared by this time and the language has been called Proto-Romance. (Ref. 137, 213)

NOTE: Map 34: Lombard Kingdom Before Its Conquest by Charlemagne in 774 and

Map 35: Expansion of the Papal States 756-817

Maps taken from Reference 97

Naples, Amalfi and Venice continued as independent states with Venice actually helping the Moors enslave some Europeans. (Ref. 222) The first European medical school was founded in this century at Salerno, in southern Italy. Sardinia was invaded by Moslem forces in 720 and in this and the next century Sicily was exposed to sudden, devastating raids by Moslem free-booters. (Ref. 137, 83)

In A.D. 709 and 710 Moslem Moors attacked the Spanish coast but didn't land. At about the same time the Visigoth nobles were quarreling over the succession to the dead King Wittiza, finally electing a younger son, Rodrigo. Supporters of the eldest son fled to Morocco to get aid. As a result, a mixed force of Arabs and Berbers, led by the Berber Tariq from Mauretania, invaded Spain in 711, quickly taking the southern part, helped both by Jews and the Visigoth supporters of the eldest son claimant to the throne. Another Moslem general, Muza, landed at Algeciras in 712, quickly took Seville and Merido and then headed north. The surging Moslems went on to cross the Pyrenees and swept into France to be stopped finally at Tours, by Charles Martel, in 732. Falling back into Spain, the Moslems broke up the overgrown estates of the Visigothic nobles and developed a new society. The ruling Abbasid Caliphate was never accepted in Spain and the Spanish Moors declared independence from Baghdad in 756, reviving a branch of the old Omayyad family to form the Omayyad Dynasty of Cordoba which lasted until 1031. No western city equaled Cordoba in size or culture and no government in the west was better than that of Moslem Spain. (Ref. 2, 137, 8, 196)

The unconquered Goths, Suevi, Christianized Berbers of a previous migration, and the Iberian Celts went into northwestern Spain and Portugal, where the Goth, Pelayo, became king of Asturias and founded what was to become the Spanish monarchy. After Pelayo came Alfonso I and II and during this period the Visigoth Spanish Catholics now brought forth Spain's most brilliant and characteristic creation, Mozarabic art, found now in liturgy remnants only in Toledo and Salamanca chapels. These Catholics, allowed to worship as they pleased, although more or less confined to ghettos within the Moslem state and separated from the main European tradition, developed both their own individual brand of Catholicism and art. The latter was a vivid combination of remote classicism, Islamic miniatures and the primitive idioms of Visigothic folk-art. It is of interest that this Muslim conquest of Spain also culminated in a “Golden Age" of Spanish Jewry' (Ref. 180, 8)

Hisha I, emir from 788 to 796, reversed the doctrine of tolerance and attacked the Christians, although he promoted a religious and intellectual aristocracy. This latter group was suppressed with cruelty; however, as Hakam I took control in 796. (Ref. 196)

It is again recommended that the sections on GERMANY and FRANCE be studied together in this and adjacent centuries since both were administered more or less together under the Franks. In 732 Charles Martel, son of administrator Pepin II, extended his father's confiscations to include all income from church lands under Frankish control in order to support a substantial force of cataphracts (armored knights) which gave him military supremacy in the entire area. It was he who stopped the Moslems at Poiters, near Tours in 732, using cavalry equipped with stirrups so that they could ram home lances and use maces and swords while remaining mounted. Without this battle, western civilization might never have existed. Following that victory Europe had to increase its numbers of horses and horsemen to continue to protect itself and "feudalism" was the result. (Ref. 260, 279)

The Merovingian Dynasty came to an inglorious end and the Carolingean Dynasty began with Martel's son, Pepin , who began to dominate a greater area and paved the way for his son, Charles (Charlemagne), the greatest of the medieval European kings. He allowed the pope to crown him "Emperor of the Romans" in 800 A.D. No eastern emperor had visited Rome for some 300 years. (Ref. 49, 213)

In the far north in the Belgium-Netherlands area, the Frisians were on top commercially, trading in wine, salt, oil, glass, textiles and metal work. In the far south of France a few Byzantine goods drifted in and in return the West sent slaves, iron and timber to the East. (Ref. 137, 213) (Continue on pages 488 and 490) Additional Notes

Of the territory of the Germanic peoples, only Scandinavia kept out of Charlemagne's Empire. In Sweden, the town of Birka began to dominate the area of Lake Malar. It was an economic unit of considerable importance. Even a bronze Buddha has been found there. Just west of present day Stockholm, the island of Helgo was the center of industry, including the production of cheap jewelry, iron-working, etc.

The first Dano-Norwegian raid to strike real terror in Europe was the attack on Lindisfarne, England in 789, where a famous convent and seat of learning was attacked and the inmates killed or taken off as slaves. Many of the raids of the Frisian and English coasts originated in the vigorous kingdom of Juteland in Denmark. "Viking" probably means "men from the fiords", because "vik" means "a little fiord" in both Danish and Norwegian. In addition to sea travel, the Scandinavians travelled great distances by land, as from Uppland, Sweden to Trondelag, Norway, by horses, sledges and carts. There was an ox-road from north Juteland into Germany. In winter men used skates and skies and put spikes on horses’ hooves. (Ref. 117) Additional Notes

In this century the Finns, coming from the south and southwest, took present day Finland (at least Karelia) from the Lapps, who receded northward. As noted previously the Finns spoke a Finno-Ugric language, related to Lapp and Livonian. Their language, although not their blood types, suggest distant relation to the Huns and the Magyars who came from the upper Volga and Oka rivers. There were three basic tribes: the Tavastians, who settled in western Finland; the Karelians; and the true Finns who had originally settled on the south shore of the Gulf of Finland. They cleared the forest and drained the marshes, but the three tribes waged war on each other. (Ref. 61)

Related to the Finns were the Borussians (Old Prussians), Esths (Estonians), Livs (Livonians), Litva (Lithuanians) and Latvians who settled the Baltic areas south of the Gulf of Finland. All of these people remained pagan for several centuries.

Throughout this and the next century the Goplani and Lendizi Slavic tribes competed for control of the central area of Poland, with the Goplani initially the more successful. Recent excavations at Mietlica show sunken houses, chiefly of one room, rather typical of early Slavic abodes. Few houses had identifiable hearths, but there were hearths and pits in the central area of the town, suggesting a practice of communal cooking. (Ref. 244)

The word "Rus" may have derived from the Finnish Ruotsi, old Norse rodr, or may be related to Rolagen in Uppland, Sweden. There were two major trade routes of the Viking Scandinavians down through Russia. The first went from the Baltic directly into Lake Nevo (Ladog) then down the River Volkhov to the great Lake Ilmen, to Lovat and portage to the Dnieper. Along this route, great towns of Kiev, Smolensk, Novgorod and Staraja were founded. The second was a more easterly route, along the Volga where there were already towns established for the fur trade and controlled by Bulgars and Khazars who charged a toll on traders. From the great bend of the Volga traders could strike out across the desert to reach the Silk Route somewhere near the Aral Sea. (Ref. 237)

Itil, on the mouth of the Volga and capital of the Khazars, became one of the great commercial cities of the world. The Arabs raided the Khazar homeland and put an end to the greatness of this Khanate, as the Volga Bulgars took advantage to assert their independence in the north of the area and the same was probably true of the Magyars, a Finnish tribe that had migrated to the steppe north of the Black Sea and had up until then been under Khazar domination. Their language was basically Finnish with a Turkish element added. These three oriental powers - Khazars, Bulgars and Magyars - remained friendly, with the Khazars still somewhat senior in the relationships. Reduced in size, the Khazar Khanate persisted until about A.D. 1,000 and its people did help to re-route the land trade route to the Far East north of the Caspian as Justinian had wanted to do. (Ref. 137) Elsewhere in Russia by the end of the century there was a Slavic Sea, with Slavic peoples spilling over into central Europe and the Balkans. Additional Notes