History 304: The Dark Ages
Professor William A. Percy III
Fall 2010
Class Meeting Times: Monday and Wednesday, 4:00-5:15 PM
Class Location: Science, 2nd Floor, Room 064
Office Hours: Monday and Wednesdays, 2:20-3:50 PM, and by appointment. I often have
lunch at the Faculty Club on Monday and Wednesday from 12:15 PM to 2:15 PM and
you are welcome to join me once during the semester at my expense, but be sure to
call me that morning to make sure I will be available that day for lunch.
Office Location: McCormack, 4th Floor, Room 634
Office Phone: 617-287-6879
Home Phone: 617-262-2101 (7:00AM - 1:00PM Mon, Wed, and Sat.; emergency only)
E-Mail: williamapercy@comcast.net
The course describes the decline of the Roman Empire and the triumph of barbarism and
Christianity over Greco-Roman civilization, devastating its secularism, humanism, rationalism,
science and law. I insist this the Dark Ages, though revisionists, usually of the Christian variety,
have for more than a century tried to claim that it wasn't so dark after all, as was classically
portrayed by Edward Gibbons, who began his classic work in 1776. German tribes overran the
enervated, Christianized, and multi-cultural western half of the Roman Empire during the fifth
century. They established primitive kingdoms there, leaving the Orthodox Greek eastern half of the
empire weakened. The surviving Greeks, having failed in their strenuous, heroic efforts under the
Emperor Justinian (525-565) to reconquer the western provinces, suffered from plagues as well as
his wars. The Byzantines, as they became to be called became religiously fanatic and backwardlooking under emperors who were head of the church as well as the state, despots “tempered by
assassination,” as Gibbons, the greatest historian of the period quipped, and presiding over endless
nitpicking quarrels among monks and priests. After Mohammed's ascension into heaven in 632,
the hoards of Bedouins from the Arabian desert, inspired and united, began the conquest of Syria,
Palestine and Egypt by 642, cutting the Byzantine Empire in half, and after 1071, the Turks, newly
converted to Islam, conquered half of Anatolia while the Slavs, attacking from the north, took half
of the Balkans, reducing the remaining Greek empire to one half of its previous extent, which had
previously embraced all of Anatolia and all of the Balkan peninsula. (In 1453, using canons, the
Turks finally seized Constantinople, which had been called the second Rome.)
Meanwhile the weak Latin speaking Catholics in the West barely survived the Arabic
Moslems onslaughts, stopping the invaders at the Battle of Torrs in the middle of France in 732. At
that year, the only Roman Catholics, as the Latin Christians came to be called to distinguish
themselves from the Orthodox Greeks in the east, remained unconquered in Great Britain,
northern and central Italy, and those parts of Gaul, as France had been called by the Romans, not
yet seized by the Arabs, and of course, as one must not fail to mention, in Ireland, that
insignificant outpost of what came to be called Western civilization, first converted by the legendary
Saint Patrick about 430 A.D. but hardly, even at its greatest glory at 732, of much significance. The
Irish did not save civilization, as some have claimed. It is true that their monks did copy
imperfectly certain Latin manuscripts, which might otherwise have been lost and, as missionaries,
tried to instill a new life in the demoralized churches on the Continent. They even tried to help the
Carolingian family, who came to power among the Franks, who occupied Gaul in the 5 th century, in
732. The Carolingians, of whom the greatest was Charlemagne (768-814) unified the Christian
West, except for the British Isles, conquering and Christianizing Germany, annexing the Germanic
Lombard Kingdom in northern and central Italy, liberating Acquitaine, and establishing a march or
outpost south of the Pyrenees. Crowned emperor by the pope in 800, to the consternation of the
Byzantines, he revived the western empire. He systematically divided his empire into about 90
counties and about 60 bishoprics, including the German regions which he converted forcibly.
During this so-called Carolingian Renaissance which his immediate successors continued, a
clerical culture improved with a modicum of prosperity.
Under Charlemagne's inept descendents, who divided his empire and fought over how to do
so, that renaissance collapsed. The weakened Catholics in the West barely survived new Muslim
invasions, coming by sea rather than land, and Viking onslaughts, also seaborne, which fell most
harshly on Ireland, virtually wiping out its incipient culture. The Danes, cousins of the Norwegian
Vikings, overran six out of the seven pitiful Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in Britain as well. Worse,
perhaps, the Magyars, pony riding nomads, moving from just west of China, overran the central
Danube basin and raided by land northern Italy and southern Germany, and settled in the middle
basin of the Danube river. These devastating triple invasions of the ninth and tenth centuries
reduced the declining Catholics to a nadir during the Dark Age, which had begun with the fall of
the western empire during the fifth century. More than half of the population and almost all cities,
learning, and wealth perished while, inspired by Islam, the Arabs created the largest, richest, and
most scientifically advanced society the world had ever seen.
The ignorant, priest-ridden, ill-governed and impoverished Roman Catholics, who survived
only in north Western and Central Europe, crafted a feudal system to counter the triple invasions
of Saracens, Norsemen, and Magyars. Tiny minorities of knights and clerics from castles and
walled cathedrals enserfed the rest of the rural population while Muslims, though splitting between
Sunni and Shiite, dominated world trade and advanced learning. Amazingly, Catholicism survived.
During the tenth century, Germany, never united before Charlemagne, took the lead during the in
shaping Catholic improvement in what we call the Ottonian Renaissance, which itself was built on
the Carolingian one. Around 1000 A.D., helped by better weather and agricultural and commercial
revolutions that increased affluence, counts subdued the local robber-barons, who had prevailed in
western Europe before then. These political reforms, which included feudal customaries and
regulating anarchy, boosted security. The Roman Catholics began to multiply and expand. Around
1000, the Western Slavs, that is the Poles and the Czechs, as well as the Magyars and the
Norsemen, converted to Roman Catholicism, becoming partners rather than enemies. The Eastern,
also called Russian, and Southern Slavs converted to Orthodoxy thus borrowing their religion and
their civilization from Byzantium, not from Rome. Cities grew and learning increased. England,
France, and Germany formed monarchies that have existed more or less ever since.
About Me
An Episcopal atheist, I am a superannuated Southerner, though I have now lived for fortyone consecutive years in the frozen North among the damn Yankees. I began as a Democrat
backing civil rights and opposing the Vietnam War when teaching at LSU. In 1966, it was still the
largest university in the South, if you didn't count Texas as truly Southern. In that spring, I dared
to chair the first protest against the War in the deep South. Pandemonium ensued in that
benighted region, and there upon, because I was an active gay and subject to extreme penalties
then in fashion there, I had to leave. I became a refugee from the Ku Klux Klan, the Southern
Baptists, tough Southern sheriffs and cops. Because of Lyndon Johnson's war crimes and damage
to the economy, I became a Reagan-supporting Republican. Finally because of George W. Bush’s
crusading and economically disastrous policies, I left the GOP. Now, a capitalist of the variety of
Ralph Nader, my close undergraduate friend at Princeton; I denounce both parties. I am a nonconforming gay activist, neither Marxist nor lesbaterian .
Today, I am the senior professor of history and the senior pre-law advisor at UMB. I attended
nine universities and have taught in nine. I have published 5 books, a dozen articles, about 100
notes (short articles), and 100 book reviews. Much of my most recent writings, along with many
previous previous publications are now on my website: http://www.williamapercy.com. From me you
will gain a different perspective. On this politically-correct campus, I am diversity itself: a semiexpired white male of the old school.
Method
My lectures are general syntheses or explanations of particular points of view – sometimes
my very own. I encourage students to ask questions and make comments. It is most helpful if they
complete the reading assignment or some suitable alternative before the lecture. In addition,
students should seek to enhance their command of geography and chronology by memorizing the
three or four crucial places and dates for each topic. For the former purpose a paperback atlas or
maps on the Internet will be helpful and so will films and features or the history channels etc.
Grading
Grades consist primarily of an average of the two 75 minute long hour exams (25% each)
and the comprehensive 3-hour final (50%). The essay part of these exams will be graded on
organization and style as well as on historical theory and command of facts. Students will find it
advantageous to read Strunk and White’s Elements of Style (in 78 brief and witty pages). A version
of the book can be found online at www.bartleby.com/141/. I allow some extra credit for rewriting the
essays on each of the hour exams in light of my comments, and further research on your part.
Notable contributions to classroom discussion will also be weighed; failure to participate in
discussions, however, will not detract from a student's grade. The rewritten papers, together with
quizzes, and classroom participation will help raise the grade. Lastly, students who attend classes
regularly, pay attention to lectures and discussions, and take notes should do well in this course.
Readings
Disseminating scholarship on the printed page in the twenty-first century is analogous to
publishing it on manuscripts during the sixteenth century. The Internet is now no longer like
Cunabula (books printed before 1500)—rare commodities even then. It is in fact now rapidly
displacing print on paper. Look at what Wikipedia is doing to the Encyclopædia Britannica! Printed
dictionaries and bibliographies likewise are becoming obsolete because their online counterparts
are so easy to update. Expenses, delays, and storage problems are also forcing scholarly journals
to go online. Why not monographs (which sell too few copies to be cost-effective), syntheses, and
textbooks, as well? In light of the changing publishing landscape, the formerly required texts listed
below are now optional:
Gibbon, Edward. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Penguin; Dero A. Saunders: an
abridgement)
Hitti, Philip K. Islam and the West (Krieger)
Vasiliev, A. A. History of the Byzantine Empire, Vol. I (AMS Press)
Wallace-Hadrill, J. M. The Barbarian West (Basil Blackwell/Harper & Row)
Ward-Perkins, Bryan The Fall Of Rome And The End Of Civilization
SUGGESTED: Bloch, Marc. Feudal Society, Vol. 1 (University of Chicago), which years ago I began to
translate the first part of before I was scooped by a Brit.
Any edition of the books above is suitable for this course. They can be found, at great discount,
online on Amazon, (see used prices for each book), Ebay, and half.ebay.com.
Wikipedia or the Encyclopedia Britannica are both extremely useful in obtaining an overview of
nearly any subject in the course, and it is beneficial to read the entries for topics in both to for
comparison. In addition, all editions (including those from 60 years ago) of The Encyclopedia of World
Historywhether by William L. Langer or Peter N. Stearns, which used to be available online, contain
nearly all the facts you will need to know for the tests. Google has made the available the whole 1883
edition of its predecessor work, A Handbook of Universal History, edited by the William Tillinghast, as
well as a limited portion of the modern (Stearns) edition available. Search Google Books using these
titles and editor names to see what's currently available. The Oxford Classical Dictionary is also highly
recommended.
Contact Policy
Although I have provided my e-mail address and home telephone number, please e-mail or
call me only if you have an urgent matter to discuss with me (Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday 7AM1PM). Understand that if you e-mail me, it may take me several days to see your e-mail as I am
computer illiterate and must rely on others to access my e-mail. Therefore, call me in case of an
emergency. There is, however, no need for you to e-mail or call me to let me know that you will miss
or have missed a class. I fully understand that events out of your control will arise from time to time
and may cause the occasional absence. So explanations are unnecessary. If you would like to find
out what you missed in class while you were absent, ask a classmate.
Class
Date
Lecture Topics
#
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Readings in Print
8
Sept.
Wed.
13
Sept.
Thurs
.
14
Sept.
15
Sept.
20
Sept.
22
Sept.
27
Sept.
8
29
Sept.
4 Oct.
9
6 Oct.
10
11
12
11
Oct.
13
Oct.
18
Oct.
Pax Romana, The Twelve
Caesars and Good
Emperors
The Severi
Map quiz.
Crisis of the Third
Century
Recovery under Diocletian
Short ID quiz.
Conversion of Constantine
Monks and Fathers; The
Christian Empire
Short essay quiz.
Heretics and Councils
Short On-line
Gibbon 1-60
Munro Ch. 1
Katz Ch. 1*
Gibbon 61-120
Gibbon VI
Katz Ch. 2*
Gibbon 121-180
Gibbon 181-214
Munro Ch. 2
Gibbon X
Gibbon XIII
Katz Ch. 3*
Encyclopedia of
World History
Dawson 1
Gibbon 215-259
Vasiliev 1-65
Gibbon 260-384
Vasiliev 66-128
Gibbon XIV
Munro Ch. 6
Gibbon XV
Dawson 2
Gibbon 385-467
Gibbon XVI
Dawson 3
Huns and Primitive
Germans
Barbarian Kingdoms
Gibbon 468-549
Munro Ch. 3 and 4
Katz 4
Gibbon 550-630
Munro Ch. 5
Katz 5
COLUMBUS DAY (HOLIDAY)
Dawson 4
Justinian and Theodora
Gibbon 631-649
Vasiliev 129-192
Vasiliev 193-221;
Dawson 6
Katz 6
Dawson 7
“Slavs” –
Encyclopedia
Britannica and/or
Wikipedia
The Slavs
15
Heraclian and Iconoclasm
610-843
Conversion of Slavs;
Macedonian Dynasty
Muhammad and Islam
16
3 Nov.
Arab Conquests
17
8 Nov.
18
10
Nov.
Religious wars. Islamic
Culture Religion: East
goes West – Jihad
West goes East – The
Crusades
14
Long On-line
ADD/DROP ENDS
20
Oct.
25
Oct.
27
Oct.
1 Nov.
13
Readings
Dawson 6
Katz 6
Gibbon LV
Dawson 5
FIRST EXAM
12
Nov.
Dark Ages syllabus
Vasiliev 222-299
Gibbon XLVIII
Vasiliev 300-374
Encyclopedia of
World History
Encyclopedia of
World History
Dawson 8
Gibbon 649-662
Hitti 1-23, 95-107
Hitti 24-33, 108112
Hitti 33-63, 113179
Gibbon L
Munro Ch. 9
Gibbon LI
Munro Ch. 19
Dawson 9
Hitti 78-86, 180187
Gibbon LVIII
Dawson 12
Dawson 10, 11
COURSE WITHDRAWAL and PASS/FAIL DEADLINE
Page 5 of 6
19
20
21
22
23
15
Nov.
17
Nov.
22
Nov.
24
Nov.
25-28
Nov.
29
Nov.
24
1 Dec.
25
6 Dec.
26
8 Dec.
27
13
Dec.
15 Dec
SECOND EXAM
Fall of Western Empire
and Italy under the
Lombards
France and the
Merovingians
Early Carolingians
Wallace-Hadrill 163
Wallace-Hadrill 64
- 86
Wallace-Hadrill 87
- 100
Sullivan*
Munro Ch. 7
Sullivan*
Munro Ch. 8
Sullivan*
THANKSGIVING RECESS
Charlemagne/Carolus
Magnus/Karl der
Grosse/Charles the Great;
Louis the Pious
The Visigoths in Spain
Later Carolingians and
Triple Invasions of
Saracens, Norsmen, and
Magyars
Holy Roman Empire
Wallace-Hadrill
100 - 114
Munro Ch. 10
Wallace-Hadrill
115-139
Munro Ch. 11
Wallace-Hadrill
140-163
Munro Ch. 14
Sullivan*
Encyclopedia of
World History
Sullivan
Encyclopedia
Britannica and/or
Wikipedia
Bryce Chapter 1
Feudal Anarchy
16-22 Dec.
Dark Ages syllabus
Munro Ch. 12 and
Painter, Medieval
15
Society*
STUDY PERIOD (One day! If you've waited this long to study seriously, you're in
trouble.)
FINALS PERIOD (Thursday-Wednesday)
Page 6 of 6