EMIGRANTS A THOUSAND YEARS AGO
THE MIDDLE AGES. It was more than a thousand years from the time of
Constantine to the time of Columbus. This period is called "Mediaeval,"
or the "Middle Ages." During these long centuries the ancient civilized
world of the Roman Empire was much changed. The Roman or Greek cities on
the southern shores of the Mediterranean were captured by Arabs or
Moors. The Moors conquered the larger part of Spain. The eastern lands
of Palestine and Asia Minor fell into the hands of the Turks. The Turks,
the Moors, and the Arabs were followers of the "prophet" Mohammed, who
died in the year 632. The Mohammedans were enemies of the Christians.
WESTERN EUROPE. The other part of the European world was also
changed. The countries on the shores of the Atlantic were now more
important than those on the shores of the Mediterranean. The names of
the different countries were changed. Instead of Gallia or Gaul, there
was France; instead of Britannia, England; for Hispania, Spain; for
Germania, Deutschland or Germany. Italy, the center of the old empire,
was finally divided into several states--city republics like Genoa and
Venice, provinces ruled by the pope, and other territories ruled by
dukes, princes, or kings.
FATE OF CIVILIZATION. The most important question to ask is, How
much of the manner of living or civilization of the Greeks and the
Romans did the later Europeans still retain? The answer is found in the
history of the Middle Ages. In this history is also found what men added
to that which they had learned from the Greeks and the Romans. The
emigrants to America were to carry with them knowledge which not even
the wisest men of the ancient world had possessed.
[Illustration: WALL OF AURELIAN This wall enclosed the ancient
city of Rome. It was about thirteen miles in circumference, fifty-five
feet high, and had three hundred towers]
MEDIAEVAL GERMAN EMIGRANTS. The first part of the history of the
Middle Ages explains how the German peoples from whom most of our
forefathers were descended began to move from the northern forests
towards the borders of the Roman Empire. Many thousand men had already
crossed the Rhine and the Danube to serve in the Roman armies. Sometimes
an unusually strong and skilful warrior would be made a general. Germans
had also crossed the Rhine to work as farmers on the estates of the rich
Gallic nobles. Other Germans, called Goths, worked in Constantinople and
the cities of the East as masons, porters, and water-carriers. The
Romans had owned so many slaves that they had lost the habit of work and
were glad to hire these foreigners.
STORY OF ULFILAS. Many of the Goths who lived north of the Danube
had forsaken their old gods and become Christians. They were taught by
Bishop Ulfilas, once a captive among them, afterward a missionary. He
translated the Bible into the Gothic language, and this translation is
the most ancient specimen of German that we possess. Many of the other
German tribes learned about Christianity from the Goths, and although
they might be enemies of the Roman government, they were not enemies of
the Church.
THE GOTHS INVADE THE ROMAN EMPIRE. The Roman emperors tried to
prevent the northern tribes from crossing the frontier in great numbers,
because, once across, if they did not find work and food, they became
plunderers. Not many years after Constantine's death, a million Goths
had passed the Danube and had plundered the country almost to the walls
of Constantinople. This was not like the invasion of a regular army,
which comes to fight battles and to arrange terms of peace.
The Goths, and the Germans who soon followed their example, moved as a
whole people, with their wives and children, their cattle, and the few
household goods they owned. Wherever they wished to settle they demanded
of the Romans one third, sometimes two thirds, of the land. They soon
learned to be good neighbors of the older inhabitants, although at first
they were little better than robbers. Alaric, one of the leaders of the
Goths, led them into Italy and in the year 410 captured Rome. Alaric did
not injure the buildings much, and he kept his men from robbing the
churches. Some of the other barbarous tribes who roamed about plundering
villages and attacking cities did far greater damage. The Roman
government grew weaker and weaker, until one by one the provinces fell
into the hands of German kings.
BEGINNINGS OF ENGLAND, FRANCE, AND GERMANY. Britain was attacked by
the Angles and Saxons from the shores of Germany across the North Sea.
They drove away the inhabitants or made slaves of
them and settled upon the lands they had seized. The country was then
called Angle-land or England, and the people Anglo-Saxons or Englishmen.
The Roman provinces in Gaul were gradually conquered by the Franks from
the borders of the Rhine, and they gave the name France to the land.
At about the same time the other German tribes that had remained in
Germany united under one king.
THE RESULT OF BARBARIAN ATTACKS. The part of the ancient world
which lay about Constantinople was less changed than the rest during the
Middle Ages. The walls of Constantinople were high and thick, and they
withstood attack after attack until 1453. Within their shelter men
continued to live much as they had lived in Ancient Times. A few
delighted to study the writings of the ancient Greeks. In Italy and the
other countries of western Europe most of the cities were in ruins. The
ancient baths, amphitheaters, aqueducts, and palaces of Rome crumbled
and fell. The mediaeval Romans also used huge buildings like the
Colosseum as quarries of cut stone and burned the marble for lime. This
was done in every country where Roman buildings existed.
[Illustration: THE AMPHITHEATER AT ARLES]
The amphitheater at Arles in southern France had a still stranger
fortune. It was used at one time as a citadel, at another as a prison
and gradually became the home of hundreds of the criminals and the poor
of the city. "Every archway held its nest of human outcasts. From stone
to stone they cast their rotting beams and plaster and burrowed into the
very entrails of the enormous building to seek a secure retreat from the
pursuit of the officers of the law."
Few persons traveled from Constantinople to Italy or France, and few
from western Europe visited Constantinople. The men of Italy and France
and England did not know how to read Greek. Many of them also ceased to
read the writings of the ancient Romans.
[Illustration: ST. MARTIN'S CHURCH, CANTERBURY, ENGLAND This
church is on the site of a chapel built in the sixth century. Its walls
show some of the bricks of the original chapel]
THE ENGLISH BECOME CHRISTIANS, 597 A.D. Christianity had spread
throughout the Roman Empire, and it became the religion of all the
tribes who founded kingdoms of their own upon the ruins of the Empire.
The Angles and Saxons, when they invaded Britain, were still worshipers
of the gods Wodan and Thor. They had never learned from the Goths of
Ulfilas anything about Christianity.
One day in the slave market at Rome three fair-haired boys were offered
for sale. Gregory, a noble Roman, who had become a monk and was the
abbot of his monastery, happened to be passing and asked who they were.
He was told they were Angles. "Angels," he cried, "yes, they have faces
like angels, and should become companions of the angels in heaven." When
this good abbot became pope, he sent missionaries to Angle-land and they
established themselves at Canterbury.
[Illustration: GREGORY AND THE LITTLE ENGLISH SLAVES]
MISSIONARIES TO THE GERMANS AND THE SLAVS. The conversion of the
English helped in the spread of Christianity on the Continent, for
Boniface, an English monk, was the greatest missionary to the Germans.
He won thousands from the worship of their ancient gods and founded many
churches. The Slavs, who lived east of the Germans, were taught by
missionaries from Constantinople instead of from Rome.
THE EDUCATED MEN OF THE MIDDLE AGES. The missionaries and teachers
of the Church had been educated like the older Romans. They read Roman
books, and tried to preserve the knowledge which both Greeks and Romans
had gathered. Influenced by them, the emigrants and conquerors from the
north also tried to be like the Romans. Educated men, and especially the
priests of the Church, used Latin as their language. In this way some
parts of the old Roman and Greek civilization were preserved, although
the Roman government had fallen and many beautiful cities were mere
heaps of ruins.
THE VIKINGS. The emigration of whole peoples from one part of
Europe to another did not stop when the Roman Empire was overrun. New
peoples appeared and sought to plunder or crowd out the tribes which had
already settled within its boundaries and were learning the ways of
civilization.
One of these peoples came from the regions now known as Norway, Sweden,
and Denmark. They were called Danes by the English, and Northmen or
Normans by other Europeans. They had another name, Vikings, which was
their word for sea-rovers.
It was their custom to sail the seas and rivers rather than march on the
land. They were a hardy and daring people, who liked nothing better than
to fight and conquer and rob in other countries. There was not a land in
western Europe, even as far south as Sicily, that they did not visit.
Wherever they went they plundered and burned and murdered, leaving a
blackened trail.
THE DANES IN ENGLAND. The Danes ravaged the eastern and southern
shores of England, and after they were tired of robbery, partly because
there was little left to take, they began to settle in the land. Alfred,
the greatest of the early English kings, was driven by them into the
swamps for a while, but in the year 878 A.D. he conquered an army of
them in battle and persuaded one of their kings to be baptized as a
Christian. Alfred was obliged to allow them to keep the eastern portion
of England, a region called Danelaw, because the law of the Danes was
obeyed there.
[Illustration: A VIKING SHIP AT SEA]
THE DANES BECOME NORMANS. No more Danes or Northmen came to trouble
England for a time, but instead they crossed the Channel to France and
rowed up the Seine and tried to capture Paris. A few years later a
Frankish king gave them the city of Rouen, further down the Seine, and
the region about it which was called Normandy. These Normans also
accepted Christianity.
THE VIKINGS BECOME DISCOVERERS. Before another hundred years had
passed the Northmen performed a feat more difficult than sailing up
rivers and burning towns. They were the first to venture far out of
sight of land, though their ships were no larger than our fishing boats.
These bold sailors visited the Orkney and the Shetland Islands, north of
Scotland, and finally reached Iceland. In Iceland their sheep and cattle
flourished, and a lively trade in fish, oil, butter, and skins sprang up
with the old homeland and with the British islands.
Before long one of the settlers, named Eric the Red, led a colony to
Greenland, the larger and more desolate island further west. He called
it Greenland because, he said, men would be more easily persuaded to go
there if the land had a good name. This was probably in the year 985.
[Illustration: LEIF ERICSON From the statue in Boston]
DISCOVERY OF VINLAND. Eric had a son, called Leif Ericson, or Leif
the Lucky, who visited Norway and was well received at the court of King
Olaf. Not long before missionaries had persuaded Olaf and his people to
give up their old gods and accept Christianity, and Leif followed their
example. Leif set out in the early summer of the year 1000 to carry the
new religion to his father, Eric the Red, to his father's people, and to
his neighbors. The voyage was a long one, lasting all the summer, for on
the way his ship was driven out of its course and came upon strange
lands where wild rice and grape-vines and large trees grew. The milder
climate and stories of large trees useful for building ships aroused the
curiosity of the Greenlanders.
They sent exploring expeditions, and found the coast of North America at
places which they called Helluland, that is, the land of flat stones;
Markland, the land of forests; and Vinland, where the grape-vines grow.
Helluland was probably on the coast of Labrador, Markland somewhere on
the shores of Newfoundland, and Vinland in Nova Scotia.
THE SETTLEMENT IN VINLAND. Thornfinn Karlsefni, a successful trader
between Iceland and Greenland, attempted to plant a colony in the new
lands. Karlsefni and his friends, to the number of one hundred and sixty
men and several women, set out in 1007 with three or four ships, loaded
with supplies and many cattle. They built huts and remained three or
four winters in Vinland, but all trace of any settlement
disappeared long ago.
They found, their stories tell us, swarthy, rough-looking Indians, with
coarse hair, large eyes, and broad cheeks, with whom they traded red
cloth for furs. Trouble broke out between the Northmen and the Indians,
who outnumbered them. So many Northmen were killed that the survivors
became alarmed and returned to Greenland.
[Illustration: DISCOVERIES OF THE NORTHMEN The American lands
they found are marked with diagonal lines]
VINLAND FORGOTTEN. The voyages to Vinland soon ceased and the
discoveries of Leif and his followers were only remembered in the songs
or "sagas" of the people. They thought of Vinland mainly as a land of
flat stones, great trees, and fierce natives. Nor did the wise men of
Europe who heard the Northmen's story guess that a New World had been
discovered. It was probably fortunate that five hundred years were to go
by before Europeans settled in America, for within that time they were
to learn a great deal and to find again many things which the Romans had
left but which in the year 1000 were hidden away, either in the ruins of
the ancient cities or in libraries and treasure-houses, where few knew
of them. The more Europeans possessed before they set out, the more
Americans would have to start with.
[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF A BIT OF AN OLD SAGA MANUSCRIPT]
QUESTIONS
1. What is meant by the "Middle Ages" or the "Mediaeval" period?
2. Show on the map, what part of the Roman Empire was
conquered by the Mohammedans.
3. Mention the Roman names of England, France, Germany, and Spain,
Why were they changed to what they are now?
4. What people early in the Middle Ages began to emigrate from their
homes to the Roman Empire? What did they do for a living?
5. Where did the Goths live? Who taught them the Christian religion?
When the Goths entered the Roman Empire what did they ask of the
inhabitants? Did they destroy much? How many years separated the
capture of Rome by Alaric from its capture by the Gauls?
6. What tribes conquered England or Britain? What tribes conquered
Roman Gaul or France? How long before Constantinople was captured?
7. What was the effect of these raids and wars upon many cities? Who
tried to keep fresh the memory of what the Greeks and the Romans had
done? Who used the language of the Romans?
8. Tell the story of the way the English became Christians. Who
taught the Christian religion to many Germans? From what city did
the Slavs receive missionaries?
9. What different names are given to the inhabitants of Denmark,
Norway, and Sweden who became rovers over the seas? Where did they
make settlements?
10. Tell the story of how Leif the Lucky discovered America. Why did
the Northmen leave Vinland?
EXERCISES
1. Point out on the map all the places mentioned in this chapter.
2. On an outline map mark the names of the peoples mentioned in the
chapter on the countries where they settled.
3. Ask children in school who know some other language than English
what are their names for England, Germany, France, Spain, and Italy.
_Important dates_:
Alaric's capture of Rome, 410 A.D.
Discovery of America by the Northmen, 1000 A.D.