6. ISLAM AND THE WEST DURING THOSE DARK DAYS
AN OVERVIEW
AN OVERVIEW
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Islam (600s and 700s)
The Byzantine church's moving up alongside Roman imperial authority was to cause its collapse in the East – in contrast to the Catholic church's survival in the West. At a time in the Roman East when the imperial order was losing touch with the masses – again, because of taxes, loss of family lands, etc. – this was a poor time for the church to decide to go imperial. In the early 600s, a very unexpected explosion of a new religious mood collapsed Roman (Greek Orthodox) rule in most of the East. Muhammad's Muslim religion, "Islam," starting up in the desert wastes of Arabia, amazingly quickly rolled across Syria and Palestine, across Egypt, and soon across the long sweep of the African coast. It also at the same time quickly swallowed up an exhausted Sassanid Persia. These Arabs had come into the East the same way the Germans had come into the West two centuries earlier, finding a political-moral vacuum there among the people, who were quite willing to let these outsiders replace the imperial order that they no longer had affections for. Thus Islam easily moved in to fill the moral gap. Islam stopped in Europe by Charles Martel (732)
In the early 700s Islam crossed from Africa into Spain ... and then soon moved under momentum of
its enormous power all the way up into central France. However, there
in 732 Islam was turned back by a Christian German (Frankish) army
under Charles Martel, sparing the rest of Western Europe from Arab
rule. The Muslims had finally come up against a Christian people who
were deeply committed to their Christian moral-religious legacy.
Consequently, Islam had to content itself with holding only Spain in
the West – and even that got chipped away at slowly over the years by a
Christian Reconquista (reconquest) or crusade to restore Western Europe to Christ.Charlemagne (800)
By 800, Charles the Great ("Charlemagne"), grandson of Charles Martel, had continued to develop Frankish (French) power, adding to his French lands, Germany and (at least symbolically) Italy by conquering a vast number of German (and Slavic) tribes in these lands. Such was his accomplishment that the Pope crowned him "emperor" in Rome. But sadly, his lands were divided up among his grandsons (becoming basically France, Italy and Germany) and the new momentum for political and cultural revival was lost in the West. Viking attacks plunge the West back into darkness
(mid-800s to mid-1000s) From the mid-800s and through the 900s Western Europe sunk back into the dark ages again as new invaders descended upon Western Europe. From Norway and Denmark came Northmen or Vikings sacking and pillaging the British Isles and Northern France – sailing even as far as the Mediterranean in their raids; from Sweden came Northmen down into the Slavic lands of what is today Russia. And from the East came the Asian Magyars to Hungary. Eventually these groups settled into the areas they attacked – bringing some degree of relief from the attackers. |
