The reading for Tuesday and today is the necessary background for our exploration of media, in the form of script, in the Carolingian period. As you probably know by now, Charlemagne created the most successful empire in Europe up to his time. I've found an on-line map that can help you get a sense of the empire's extent, along with the map I handed out in class. What I want you to concentrate on for this class are the ways in which power is acquired, maintained, extended, and projected during this period. Our reading gives us a sense of the limitations of the tools Charlemagne had to work with, as well as of Charlemagne's personal talents and limitations. Let's try to focus on these things.
First, consider Charlemagne's allies and supporters. The major relationship here is with the papacy. During the medieval period, the Roman church held a position that is unparallelled in today's world. It was a powerful combination of spiritual, moral, and political authority, all of which waxed and waned at various points in European history. Keep in mind that the struggle that is unfolding in our world now, as we study these things, involves a polarization between a people that lays claim to supreme religious authority--those who passionately embrace the world-view of radical Islam (not to be confused with the Islamic world in general, which is a complex and multivalent entity) embodied in the leadership of Osama bin-Laden--and the power of western capitalism and democracy, embodied in the leadership of the United States. Each is anathema to the other, and yet these two opposed forces share a world in which they are tragically brought together.
What of Charlemagne's world? Islam was founded in the 7th century C.E. (that's "Common Era," the equivalent of the A.D. designation) by a charismatic prophet, who was charged by his visions to conquer in the name of Allah. Muslim conquests swept through the Middle East and across north Africa, swallowing huge chunks of the Byzantine Empire, and over into Spain. Charlemagne's family, beginning with his ancestor Charles Martel, fought the invaders and eventually set up the Spanish March as a buffer. Later generations would mark Charlemagne as an inspirational figure in the protracted struggle between Christendom and Islam that we know of as the Crusades.
Charlemagne took on more than just the Muslims, however; he also conquered and converted the Saxons, to the east. The task was a bloody business; at one point, after the Saxons had rebelled, Charlemagne ordered the beheading of 4,500 people. He also resorted to forced resettlement of people in unfamiliar territory in an effort to break up communities and lines of support.
My question, then, is the following: what are the modes of power, and how are they applied? How can religion and culture be a means of domination? The term "cultural imperialism" comes to mind; it is one of the things that many in the Islamic world fear most about the west in our time, along with American economic and military strength. Getting back to the 8th and 9th centuries, why would an emperor care about the state of learning in the monasteries and the priesthood?
See you in class.