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0:03
NARRATOR: After the fall of Ancient Rome. NARRATOR: Before the rebirth of the Renaissance, centuries of history have been swept under the rug. These are the dark ages. This would have been a pretty rough time to be living in. NARRATOR: When the Roman Empire crumbled, Europe was besieged by famine, plague, persecutions, and a state of war so persistent it was only rarely interrupted by peace. HISTORIAN: Half of the people that you know today were dead tomorrow. You couldn't even bury them on.
0:40
NARRATOR: But beneath this cloak of darkness were scattered rays of light-- men and women who boldly tended the flame of progress while the world around them descended into hell. Ultimately, these stars would illuminate the long dark night and propel Europe toward a new dawn, brighter than any it had seen in 1,000 years. August 24, 410 AD, the empire falls. Rome, a city so long in control of its own destiny and the worlds is invaded by a band of dirty, sweaty, smelly thugs.
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They are the Visigoths, a terrifying assortment of heathens from Europe's Northeastern frontier. And they've come to declare the death of Roman domination. For the first time in 800 years, the eternal city is under siege. HISTORIAN: Rome had not ever been conquered by a foreign enemy in the imperial period. The psychological effects of the greatest city of the ancient world being conquered was absolutely crushing.
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NARRATOR: For three days, the great capital of Caesar and Augustus is ravaged by its unwelcome guests. Stunning architectural marvels that have stood for centuries are burned to the ground. Germanic slaves rise up to enslave their Roman masters.
2:25
And the city's streets run red with the blood of its own people. HISTORIAN: The Roman citizens really are helpless. All they know is that they've had to surrender, that there's no one there to protect them, that these Gothic warriors would have been terrified. NARRATOR: At the head of the charge is Alaric, a Visigothic warrior who had once fought on the empire's behalf along its northern frontier. When he was passed over for a promotion within the ranks of the Roman legions,
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Alaric turned from friend to fall and used what he had learned about Roman warfare to launch his own campaign of aggression. HISTORIAN: He eventually decided that the only way he was going to advance was to really put the screws to Rome. So the siege of Rome was, to tell you the truth, a profit-making career move for Alaric.
3:21
NARRATOR: Two years earlier, in 408 AD, Alaric and his rebel army had arrived on the doorstep of Rome itself looking for power, plunder, and most of all, food. HISTORIAN: Anybody wants to look at why the Visigoths win. It's because of desperation. They need to win. If they don't, they starve to death. And that's the bottom line. NARRATOR: In order to conquer the city, Alaric would first have to strangle it from the outside. HISTORIAN: He can't undermine the walls. They're far too large.
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They're far too secure. And they're far too well-built. So he relies on starvation.
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Alaric's NARRATOR: Men surrounded Rome, took full control of its supply lines, and blocked all shipments of grain coming into the city.
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Gradually, the city died from within. And the pall of impending death began to permeate even its most hallowed traditions. HISTORIAN: Even in times of utter distress, it was really important for Roman society to continue to have chariot races and killing of wild beasts, gladiatorial combats, execution of criminals. Population was at the show, but they were literally starving. And wins condemned men, or gladiators is not clear if they're killed and are lying there, bleeding out
4:51
on the sands of the arena. The crowd started shouting, let us buy that meat. How much per pound do you want for that? That's how hungry they were. NARRATOR: In Rome, power and glory were rapidly being replaced by corpses and cannibalism. After two years of suffering inside the sealed off city, Roman pride had eroded enough to accept subjugation over starvation.
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On the orders of a Roman aristocrat, the city gates were opened. And the Visigoths stormed in.
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Their shopping spree turned up tons of treasure but hardly any food. So after three days, Alaric and his men moved on in Search of greener pastures and left the heart of the Roman Empire on life support. HISTORIAN: A contemporary puts it very well when it says, the mother of the world has been killed. That's what people thought, that the mother of the world had been brutally killed in a Gothic sack.
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NARRATOR: While Alaric's sacking of Rome certainly hastened its demise, the mother of the world had been terminally ill for quite some time.
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As early as the third century AD, the empire had fallen into the hands of a series of inept emperors whose obsession with personal gain threatened the public welfare and fostered civil war. During a 50-year period in the third century, nearly all of the two dozen emperors who seized power were brutally slain by rivals, rebels, and subjects.
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While Rome gradually imploded from within, external threats, both natural and man-made, only aided its self-destruction. HISTORIAN: Diseases such as smallpox and measles entered the European population pool for the first time during the second and third centuries. In this sense, the Roman Empire paid the price for its success. It had become so wealthy and had established contacts with other parts of the world, to such an extent that now it was not only importing the very valuable wares
7:08
of those regions, it was also importing the diseases that came from those regions.
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NARRATOR: As Rome's population began to dwindle, so did its border guard, leaving its emperors no choice but to hire barbarian fighters, like Alaric, as mercenaries But as the Romans became more and more dependent on foreign defenders, they also became more openly hostile toward them. HISTORIAN: When the Goths first entered the empire, they came really as refugees. And they were forced into rebellion by the treatment that they received at the hands of Roman officials.
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Famously, the Roman officials allowed slave traders to profit by selling dog meat to the Goths in exchange for Gothic children as slaves. And so both the incompetence and the cruelty of Roman officialdom drove the Goths into rebellion.
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NARRATOR: Alaric, the leader and living symbol of that rebellion, died of fever in 410, shortly after his historic sacking of Rome. While he wouldn't live to enjoy much of his success, future generations of barbarians would.
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Throughout the fifth century, wave after wave of invading tribes. Goths, Vandals, Franks, Britons and Saxons flooded in and fought to stake their claim on the waning empire.
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Rome's once invincible domain shattered into 1,000 pieces. Each one held by a military strongman who wanted to collect them all. The glory of Rome was gone forever. And the dark ages had begun. HISTORIAN: The empire wasn't there. There was no longer an emperor. And as a result, the world was a smaller place.
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The next seven centuries, spanning from the fall of Rome to the First Crusade, would be an age of widespread violence, illiteracy, disease, and superstition-- a time when urban populations throughout the continent declined and city life withered. HISTORIAN: The amenities and the technology of life and indeed the scale of life just got smaller and worse. The sewage systems stopped working, so that people can't get rid of their garbage the way they used to before. Aqueducts break down.
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And you have wells instead of running water. And as a consequence, the houses get less and less impressive. And people start living in, I suppose, what we'd call shacks.
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NARRATOR: Even the great monuments of Rome, engineering miracles that had defined an unprecedented age of innovation were quarried for quick building materials. HISTORIAN: The people who came in afterwards settled next to the Roman ruins, not on top of the Roman ruins, but next to the Roman ruins. They could not sustain the structures that had been there at one time. They took all the stones to make their houses and their own buildings from the Roman ruins.
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NARRATOR: Over time, even the Colosseum, once Rome's grandest showcase of power and prestige, succumbed to the decay of civilization. It became at various intervals a landfill, a shelter for the destitute, and a haven for packs of animals. All the while, its facade was gradually being picked apart by pilfering settlers who unwillingly left behind a hollow symbol of society's downward spiral. HISTORIAN: In the early Middle Ages, people would have been confronted with the fact
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that there was this once glorious civilization that had preceded them, and that they could in fact still see around them. They could see in the road system that the Romans had built. They could see in the aqueducts that were still standing. They could see in the bridges that were still standing in many parts of Europe. And when they looked at those things and they looked at the level of engineering that it took to build them, it must have led them to believe
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that they had regressed, that life had been better in the past than it was in the present. NARRATOR: The flames that had illuminated life in ancient Rome, cutting-edge technology, open trade, ready access to education, employment, and medicine, were extinguished amidst the chaos of the succeeding centuries. But despite the undeniable downshift in society's progress, debate still rages about whether it's fair to call this era the dark ages. HISTORIAN: The term dark ages has
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been used by lots of people. The famous Italian scholar patriarch in a sense invented it because he was comparing this period to the earlier classical period, which he saw as literally brilliant, full of light. And he said, hey, by comparison, the people of this period, they were in darkness, in gloom. You got up in the morning in this period, and if you were poor and if you were hungry, then you probably did look pretty dark. But that wasn't the case across the board.
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So there's a lot more to this period than just the notion that people were living in gloom and were gloomy. NARRATOR: In fact, in spite of its widespread chaos anarchy and upheaval, or perhaps because of it, this remote period of history would dramatically alter the course of Europe's future.
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For while the continent was fragmented politically, a new form of unity was gradually emerging that couldn't be measured on a map. It was not the work of warriors and weapons but of monks and missionaries. To the people of Dark Ages Europe, the new emperor was Jesus Christ.
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NARRATOR: Christmas Day, 496 AD, the basilica at Reims in Northern France is bathed in the light of 1,000 candles.
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The air inside the sanctuary is thick with incense as the local bishop sends up a silent prayer of thanksgiving.
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This is a red letter day for the Catholic Church. This morning, the King of Europe's newest barbarian superpower, the Franks, will renounce his pagan roots and become a Christian.
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As he kneels down in deference to his new Savior, this King, Clovis, will cement not only his own spiritual allegiance but that of an entire nation. HISTORIAN: In France, this is seen as the beginning of France becoming a Christian nation. It was a very strategic move. By choosing Catholicism, Clovis in essence united his people.
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NARRATOR: After Rome's fall, Western Europe had splintered into countless small territories commanded by Germanic conquerors, such as Clovis who overthrew the last Roman governor of Gaul and claimed most of the province for himself. In the course of a single generation, the security and order that had so long stabilized life on the continent was history. And the citizens of the 6th century faced a new world disorder that offered only uncertainty.
15:14
HISTORIAN: They were often not given even that minimal level of security that was necessary for them to enjoy a basic existence. Warfare was endemic. Civil war was very common. Feuding was common. Vendettas were common. Any kind of political problem very quickly escalated into a military problem. And the people who are often caught in the middle were the people who were trying very peacefully to wrest a living from the land. And I think through much of history that's been true.
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It's the noncombatants that one really has the sympathy for. It's the people who simply get caught up in the fighting. And yet they are often the ones who suffer as a result. NARRATOR: Amidst the unrelenting political turbulence of the Dark Ages, in which loyalties and alliances shifted with the winds, Christianity was the only common thread. HISTORIAN: In the period after the fall of the empire, for the average countrymen or indeed the average citizen, life could be very, very difficult.
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And as a result, Christianity, which offered some sort of hope of eternal peace was very attractive. NARRATOR: Five centuries after his death, Christ's following had grown from a handful of Jewish converts into a flock of millions spread throughout the old Roman Empire. For the earliest Christians, the road to redemption was paved with persecution. But after 300 years as an outlaw minority, the movement suddenly gained steam when the Emperor Constantine legalized it and 313 AD
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after experiencing a divine intervention in the midst of war. HISTORIAN: He had a vision of a Christian symbol in the sky. And he heard the words, in this sign, you shall conquer. And when he did subsequently win the major battle that led him to become the emperor, he attributed his success in battle to this sign and to the fact that the Christian god had decided to support him. Within a couple of generations after the conversion of Constantine, Christianity clearly
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had the upperhand within the Roman Empire. There was a flood of converts to Christianity. Individuals who understood that, it would now be to their advantage to be Christian rather than pagan. NARRATOR: Clovis, the Barbarian King of the Franks, was one of those individuals. As his pagan army extended its conquests deeper and deeper into Christian territories, it became clear that the way into the hearts and minds of his new subjects was through their souls.
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HISTORIAN: As his power spread in the old Roman provinces of Gaul, the really significant part of the population was Roman and often Roman churchmen-- bishops. As a result, it made a great deal of sense for Clovis to convert. It gave him a new set of allies and helped him cement his power. NARRATOR: After his baptism, Clovis would have trouble abiding by one of his new faith's golden rule-- thou shalt not kill. His conversion could do little to quench his thirst for blood.
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Instead it only gave him a new justification for his military campaigns. Now, they were more than territorial plunders. They were holy wars fought in the name of faith. But his meteoric rise from small time tribal chieftain to master of God really has less to do with religion than with ruthlessness. HISTORIAN: Clovis was never reluctant to employ murder as a tool. Everybody was well aware that it didn't bode well for you if you spoke up in Clovis' court.
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It was much better to keep your mouth shut.
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NARRATOR: At the age of 15, Clovis had taken command of a section of the Rhine delta in northern France. He had inherited a small number of soldiers from his father, which he immediately put to the test, plundering surrounding tribes for treasure and more troops. HISTORIAN: When he conquered a village, he didn't simply massacre everybody in the village or make them into serfs or something like this, he actually elevated them to the same status that his men were.
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So that his recruitment policy was to gather all the men that he had conquered and to make his new army. Those individuals created the invincible army that Clovis had.
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NARRATOR: By the time he converted to Catholicism at the age of 30, Clovis had emerged as the supreme ruler over most of modern day France. And he had laid a foundation for a new dynasty called the Merovingians, famous today as the supposed protectors of Christ's bloodline in the Da Vinci code.
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In reality, the last thing Clovis wanted to protect was his bloodline. It was customary among Frankish kings to divide their territories among their sons upon their death. So to make sure no one could surface to challenge his claim to sovereignty, Clovis had any relatives outside his immediate household systematically eliminated. A surviving report recalls an emotional speech delivered toward the end of his reign, lamenting the absence of any loyal kinfolk. HISTORIAN: He didn't mean it.
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He only said that because he was trying to smoke out any other people who might hold up their hands and say, oh, but wait, I'm still part of your family. I'll support you. So that Clovis could then murder them, too. NARRATOR: The only fate worse than being Clovis' his relative was being his captive.
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In certain cases, a king endorsed a barbaric Dark Age practice known as the ordeal.
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HISTORIAN: In the ordeal of boiling water, caldron of boiling water with a small pebble at the bottom would be presented to the party who is on trial. And the person had to stick their hand in and get the pebble. And get their hand out again. And the hand would be bandaged. And after two or three days, they would be examined by a priest to see if it was healing well or not. If it was healing well, your innocent. If it was not healing, then that was evidence of your guilt.
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HISTORIAN: There's also the ordeal by water, where the person be thrown in. If they float, that means the water is rejecting them, and they're guilty. If they sink, that means they're innocent. And first, they would pull them back out, didn't let them drown. Critical to the notion of the ordeal is the idea that God's justice is something which comes down to earth. If you know how to read it, and so why the ordeal might seem strange to us. I think within this world of the early Middle Ages,
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it very much made sense. God will be on the side of good. NARRATOR: Clovis died of an unknown cause in 511 AD. His brutality had been legendary but it would not define his legacy. He had United the barbarian tribes of France into one emerging superpower, the Franks. And he had forged a crucial alliance with the increasingly influential Roman Catholic church. In so doing, he had proven to be a stabilizing force at a time that can only be described as chaotic, dangerous, and dark.
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For centuries after the fall of Rome, Western Europe would remain shrouded in a thick shadow of misery. But to the East, there was a light shining forth that pierced the night. There, the Roman Empire endured. And there, a new emperor was plotting to restore its former glory by launching a hostile takeover of the West. As his soldiers marched forth from Constantinople, he could never have guessed that his most dangerous enemy was invisible. And it was already in his midst.
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NARRATOR: 533 AD, the empire strikes back. More than a century after the sack of Rome, an army of self-proclaimed Romans marches forth from the Byzantine capital of Constantinople, intent on recapturing all the Western territories that have fallen into the hands of Dark Age despots like Clovis.
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By this time, former Roman strongholds, like Italy, Spain, and even North Africa, are ruled by so-called Barbarians. But the light of the empire still burns brighter than ever to the East, in places like Greece, Turkey, and Egypt.
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Those territories are still commanded by Roman Emperors, protected by Roman troops, and reaping all the benefits of Roman technology and trade. In the 6th century, west and east are like night and day. HISTORIAN: For inhabitants of the Western half was Roman Empire. Those who came from the East, the Greek speakers, were effeminate. They bathed too much. They didn't like a good fight. They were always preferring to play tricks on their enemies rather than meet them in pitched battle.
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Whereas people from the Greek East tended to regard hat those from the West as uncouth, backwards, to ready to resort to forests instead of relying on diplomacy.
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NARRATOR: The cultural divide between East and West first turned political late in the 3rd century when the Roman Empire split into two halves, each to be governed by its own emperor. HISTORIAN: By having an empire in the East and in the West, it would be easier to respond to crises very quickly. In the long run however, splitting the empire into two and institutionalizing this divide between the Greek East and the Latin West left the Latin west at a grave disadvantage.
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It did not have the material resources that the eastern half of the Roman Empire had. Before to split, the wealth of the east could be used to prop up the West. But once there are now two halves to the empire, the West has to stand or fall on its own. And it fell. While the west floundered amidst the chaos of the Barbarian invasions, in the eastern capital of Constantinople, it was business as usual. Water flowed from its faultless. Trade goods flowed through its ports.
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And the cheers of boisterous sports fans echoed from its arenas during chariot races. There, the dream of Rome endured. When an ambitious emperor named Justinian came to power in 527, he resolved to export that dream back to the territories from which it originally came. Justinian was a smart shrewd military man of humble roots, who harbored grandiose visions of a reunited empire. HISTORIAN: For Justinian to conceive of the idea that he could somehow reconstitute
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the geographical extent of the empire was a remarkable dream. And what is even more remarkable is that he had some measure of success in achieving it. NARRATOR: In the empire's heyday centuries earlier, the Mediterranean Sea had been called a Roman lake. Justinian resolved to resurrect that label. But it would take a massive army and a mountain of cash to buy that much waterfront property.
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HISTORIAN: Justinian relied on various forms of trickery to try and raise the funds that would be necessary to support his military campaigns. He was infamous for not paying his soldiers. And then when signing a peace treaty, telling his soldiers that they were going to give up all of their back wages to him as thanks for his signing a peace treaty. He would forge wills that stated that the subjects had out of great love of Justinian decided to bequeath all their property to him.
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In one especially notorious case, an individual who had been captured by the enemy had his mother collect the ransom to free him. And Justinian refused to allow the ransom to be paid to the enemy, saying that this was funding the enemy and it was against the interests of the Byzantine empire. Where the individual died in captivity, Justinian produced a letter allegedly from the person in captivity stating that he understood the reason why Justinian wouldn't let him be freed,
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and instead he wanted the ransom money to be paid to Justinian himself. NARRATOR: Greedy tactics like these sent Justinian's approval ratings plunging. And by the fifth year of his reign in 532, an undercurrent of popular unrest boiled over into outright revolt. At a chariot match between Constantinople's top two teams, fans of both sides gradually directed their catcalls away from each other and toward their emperor. Bellowing a unified chant of Nika, meaning conquer,
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a throng of thousands stormed the palace grounds and held Justinian under siege. HISTORIAN: It says, if the Yankees and Mets fans decided to overthrow the mayor of New York, it was the worst possible situation. HISTORIAN: These-- people destroyed the city in their right I mean the chaos was extraordinary. HISTORIAN: Justinian was so terrified that he was literally on the dock ready to go into exile-- take the ship and get out of town. At which point his wife, the formidable and beautiful
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Theodora, says, I'm not going.
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NARRATOR: There's an old saying that behind every powerful man lies an equally powerful woman. Empress Theodora is exhibit A. Born and raised in the lowest class of Byzantine society, she first caught Justinian's eye while working as a dancer in a burlesque theater.
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HISTORIAN: She was a courtesan, a performer, who utilized sex both as a means of gaining power and all sorts of means of entertainment.
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HISTORIAN: Her act was so raunchy and so popular the Emperor Justinian fell in love with Theodora. And in fact, he changed the law of the empire so he could marry this woman. Why? She was beautiful. Even her enemies say, she was, oh, so sexy, oh, so beautiful. But she was also, oh, so smart. And that's clearly one of the reasons why Justinian fell so deeply in love with her and remained in love with her.
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NARRATOR: From the beginning of his reign in 527, Justinian regarded Theodora as an equal shareholder in sovereignty. And as that sovereignty hung by a thread during the Nika riots, it was the empress who pulled herself and her husband together in time to save it.
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HISTORIAN: She says, I'm an Empress. I'm not running away. Purple, that's the color of rule. Purple is a great color for a funeral. I'm staying. Justinian, so shocked, he didn't go. With Theodora's advice, he calls in the shock troops and slaughtered 30,000 fans whom they had lured to the horse racing stadium. She saved him from throwing away his empire. NARRATOR: Having regained his footing, Justinian then ordered the execution of all of his prominent political enemies.
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Their opposition now all but extinct. The Emperor and Empress celebrated their reversal of fortune and shifted their focus back to their ultimate goal-- sole possession of their own private lake. With the West's sputtering deeper and deeper into darkness, it seemed like only an act of God could derail that dream. Justinian and Theodora could never have imagined that one was about to wipe out half of their population and leave 100 million lifeless bodies strewn across the civilized world.
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NARRATOR: Early spring 538 AD, in Italy, a Byzantine army is blazing a trail of carnage from Rome to Milan. They are fighting on behalf of Justinian, the Eastern emperor who harbors dreams of a reunited Roman Empire.
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While the glory days of Roman dominance in Western Europe have long since passed, Justinian is hell bent on resurrecting them. Town after town, village after village falls to his formidable legions. Just as they did in North Africa, Sicily, and southern Italy, one bloody battle at a time the emperor is reconquering the West. And it looks like Rome will rise again. HISTORIAN: The Italian campaign was one of the nastiest wars of antiquity in terms of entire cities being depopulated,
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entire populations massacred. And just the fact that the countryside was fought over for 20 years really destroyed Italy's productive capacity for a couple of centuries afterwards. NARRATOR: While Italy bleeds, the emperor builds. 1,000 miles away in Constantinople, he is dedicating a new cathedral built over the ashes of his charred capital. While the kings of northern Europe are building drafty wooden dwellings, Justinian is redefining the limits of ancient architecture.
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HISTORIAN: Justinian has able to use this chaos to build his empire. And he builds his empire by building the greatest symbol of Christianity-- the Hagia Sophia Church. All of the rest of the mosques in Constantinople-- if you want to go to Venice, St. Marks. If you want to go elsewhere, even to the Vatican-- all of them are imitating Hagia Sophia. HISTORIAN: Justinian spared no expense-- the best marble, the best gold leaf, the best artists--
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anything that he could do to increase the visual impact as one walked into the cathedral. It was meant to persuade contemporaries that he was a figure who ought to be thought of in biblical terms. NARRATOR: With his conquests and construction projects proceeding according to plan, Justinian had every reason to feel a little cocky.
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By 542, his domain extended farther than any emperor in more than two centuries, encompassing Italy and North Africa as well as Egypt, Turkey, Greece, and Palestine. The Mediterranean was once again a Roman lake.
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But somewhere in that vast dominion, an invisible killer was making its way toward Constantinople with enough ammunition to wipe out not just the capital city, but the entire continent. That killer was bubonic plague. HISTORIAN: This one was truly terrifying. 25% to 50% of the population, at least in urban areas like Constantinople, was killed. 10 people, five of them are gone. Think of that. What that would mean in life if half of the people that you know today were dead tomorrow.
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NARRATOR: Symptoms would begin with a sudden fever, followed by chills, vomiting, and an increased sensitivity to light. Within three days, an excruciating pain would follow in the groin, the armpits and behind the ears. Then tumors would form all over the body. And violent muscle spasms would erupt. The luckier victims would fall into a coma before the disease stall their last breath. HISTORIAN: There was, of course, no treatment. This turns out to have been one of the most virulent pandemics
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in history. NARRATOR: The plague's place of origin is a mystery. But it arrived in Constantinople via cargo ship. It was carried by infected fleas which hid in the fur of rats that had hitchhiked in from parts unknown. In May of 542, the first victims fell ill in the city's waterfront district. Within four months, it had infected nearly half of the city, including the emperor himself. A small percentage of those infected managed to survive the plague. Justinian was among them.
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But as was the case with nearly all plague survivors, the disease permanently scarred both his body and his mind. HISTORIAN: By all accounts after the plague comes through, Justinian was not the man he used to be, didn't have as much energy or as much bigger. Justinian was pretty much sick during all the subsequent decades of his life. HISTORIAN: We are told that he became increasingly tyrannical, increasingly paranoid. And there's a memorable story about him sort
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of never sleeping but wandering the halls of the palace at night and plotting new ways in which to grind his subjects down.
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NARRATOR: As the pestilence reached a fever pitch, the city of Constantinople went on lockdown. Shipments into and out of the city were suspended. And those citizens that did survive quickly began running out of food.
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Some citizens blamed the plague on the Empress Theodora, saying it was a punishment from God for her sexual promiscuity. But its effects reverberated far beyond the boundaries of her domain.
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When all was said and done, up to half of the empire's population, perhaps 100 million people, were struck down by the plague of Justinian.
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HISTORIAN: It spread very rapidly in the course of a year or so, all the way as far as Britain and even Ireland. And the devastation was such that at least a third of the population in most cities was killed off and sometimes much more than that.
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HISTORIAN: When you have that kind of devastating population loss-- I mean, think of it, the United States has 300 million people. We have 150 million people died. You couldn't even bury them all. But worse than that, your economic productivity tumbles. Your ability to defend yourself becomes truly crippled. And I think this is one of the long term cascading effects. And it literally took hundreds of years for the population of Europe to be restored.
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NARRATOR: If the future looked bleak for Europe before, now it looked pitch black. In 542, the autumn chill brought an end to the plague in Constantinople. But throughout the 6th, 7th, and 8th centuries, new outbreaks would suddenly resurface to ravage various pockets of Europe and inflict repeated suffering on a defeated dwindling populace.
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HISTORIAN: If you'd gone to Europe in the sixth and seventh centuries, the thing that would have struck you most was how empty it was and how small the towns were if you could find towns. And you would have been struck by the towns in which only a small section was inhabited and the rest was now totally abandoned and overrun by animals.
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NARRATOR: In 548 AD, the Empress Theodora died of cancer. Justinian outlived her by 17 years. Throughout his reign, his armies managed to hold on to his conquests in Western Europe. But his dream of a reunited Rome would die with him.
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HISTORIAN: As soon Justinian dies, the Byzantine Empire decides that it can not fund these overseas forces. And so they simply pull back. So while Justinian may have had this great influence, it was not a lasting influence. The Byzantine Empire could not financially sustain what had once been the original Roman Empire.
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NARRATOR: As the last of the Romans retreated into history, the door of prosperity closed behind him. And with its final ties to the eastern coffers severed, Western Europe was about to get even darker. For most people, life in these times would be nasty, brutish, and for the luckiest among them, short.
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NARRATOR: By the turn of the seventh century, Northwestern Europe had become a land shrouded in darkness. With the final withdrawal of Justinian's forces from the West, the last vestiges of Roman control had faded into history. And the continent was divided among Barbarian warlords who were consumed with conquest at all costs. As disease and warfare claimed countless thousands, trade and industry shrank to a virtual standstill. And Europe's economy was once again dependent on agriculture
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and herding as it had been before the rise of Rome 1000 years earlier. HISTORIAN: Roads had fallen into complete disrepair so communication was difficult. And so I think it was roughest in these areas where you were isolated. You could have your local community, but you really couldn't tell what was going on in the wider world. You couldn't tell what threats might be coming at you through the forest. And there really wasn't a sufficient population for there
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to be near that critical mass of ideas that eventually allows human beings to make life better for themselves.
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NARRATOR: In the Dark Ages, the untamed wilderness was a source of endless fear and fascination. Wide-eyed villagers told tales of witches, wizards, and warlocks lurking deep in the shadows, who possessed supernatural powers strong enough to cast spells, kill livestock, and summon terrifying storms of lightning.
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The Catholic Church condemned such ghost stories as pagan nonsense. But for the average Dark Age villager, the realities of daily life were just as unnerving. HISTORIAN: It's a very regimented type of work that we do today where you work 50 weeks per year, where you work nine to five, if you're lucky, five days a week. That sort of work pattern was non-existent during the Dark Ages. You worked according to seasonal patterns. In that, there were long periods when you did nothing.
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During the winter months, you just sat around and drank. Those periods of doing nothing which could stretch for months on end alternated with periods of frantic activity during harvest time, when you were sowing the crops, when you would be working dawn to dusk. You and everyone in your family old enough to walk would be out there trying to produce the food you needed to survive. NARRATOR: As Europe's masses struggle to scrape by, misery was one commodity that was never in short supply.
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HISTORIAN: Half of your children would have died before they reached adolescence. Probably a quarter of all newborns died within the first year of life. Another quarter of your children would have died by the time they were 10 or 12. And perhaps most children experienced loss of one or both parents before they reached adulthood. Today, I think it's hard to imagine what life would be like if half of your children died. NARRATOR: Throughout the Dark Ages,
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life was shrouded beneath the long shadow of death.
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But there was light to be found in the darkness. And it most often shined from a local monastery. HISTORIAN: Monasteries became some of the most important institutions in Europe. Some of the most wealthy institutions, they were centers of commerce, centers of political authority. This is where the action was.
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NARRATOR: Jarrow, England, 730 AD, on a dark and bitterly cold night when the outside world is crusted over like a tomb, there are signs of life visible through a single monastery window.
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Inside, a Benedictine monk sits hunched over his desk surrounded by books. His name is Bede. and he is writing his most important literary achievement, a five-volume history of England spanning from the time of Julius Caesar until his own. In an age when more books are being burned than being written, has kings and clerics everywhere condemned material that contradicts Catholicism, Bede's work is an essential link to the pre-Christian past. HISTORIAN: Pretty much all of the texts
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we have from the classical period came down to us preserved in these manuscripts that were written by, copied by Christian monks in the Middle Ages. And there's a real deep seated ambivalence towards it. The monks, they read Virgil. They read the classics. They copied them down. At the same time, there's always a sense, you don't want to like them too much, because what really matters is scripture. NARRATOR: Bede, a master collection of nearly 250 books,
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though perhaps not impressive by today's standards, in the Dark Ages, this gave him one of the most extensive libraries in England. With such a rare wealth of knowledge at his disposal, Bede was possibly the most educated individual in Europe. But he wasn't the only man of the cloth who doubled as a man of letters. HISTORIAN: Monks were the de facto guardians of Europe's literary culture. And the violent and anarchic conditions of the period, it
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was increasingly difficult to have any kind of education. By the 7th century there was virtually nobody outside of the ranks of the clergy who was still literate.
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NARRATOR: A key figure in the development of the monastic lifestyle was St. Benedict of Nursia who lived two centuries before Bede. In 500 AD, Benedict left his comfortable life among the nobility and began living as a hermit in the Italian countryside. But as word spread about his special powers of healing, he was forced to sacrifice his simple life of seclusion. HISTORIAN: His reputation for sanctity and for miracle working caused people to seek him out wherever he went.
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People would come to him for matters as mundane as fixing a tray that they had dropped and broken in halves. And they would give it to him. And he would fuse the two ends together, so now your tray was whole again. But they'd also come to him for extraordinary miracles, such as for telling the future, healing the sick, and even raising to dead. NARRATOR: Recognizing Benedict's rising star power, a group of local monks begged him to be the abbot of their monastery.
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Benedict heeded the call, and the monks got their man.
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But his brand of discipline would prove too strict for his new subordinates. And almost as quickly as they had elected him, they hatched a secret plot to eliminate him. HISTORIAN: Many of the people who are going into these monasteries, they came from wealthy families. These are not people who are used to being servants. There is a story of this one notable Roman family, and their son was in the monastery. And he's holding a lamp over Benedict while Benedict eat.
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And he's thinking to himself, who am I to be standing here holding his lamp while this guy's just sitting there eating? And I think in many cases, for a lot of people going to these monasteries, this idea of submitting to the authority of the abbot, they might find that hard to bear at point. NARRATOR: In blatant disregard of their own vows, the monks tried twice to poison St. Benedict. But evidently, he had god in his side. The first time they poisoned his drink.
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But as he prayed over the cup before taking a sip, it suddenly shattered. Then they poisoned his bread. But before he could take a bite, a raven swooped in and stole it away.
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Having twice defied death, Benedict left the wayward abbey and established his own chain of 12 new monasteries, nestled quietly in the Italian high country southeast of Rome.
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The monks living inside their walls were challenged to obey a rigorous code of ethics called the Rule of St. Benedict.
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HISTORIAN: The purpose of the Rule of St. Benedict is to allow individuals to obliterate their wills. The will was the source of sinfulness. The will was what caused you to do bad things. If you could eliminate the will, then you could eliminate those drives that caused you to sin. For example, monks are forbidden to speak except in dire necessity, because to speak is to exercise your own will. NARRATOR: During the Dark Ages, thousands of men and women flooded into monasteries and convents
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as a refuge from the chaos of the wider world. Thousands more were forced in by parents looking to secure God's favor for their families. For those unwilling to embrace its strictness and simplicity, religious life was a heavy cross to bear. HISTORIAN: We see for instance nuns trying to climb over the monastery walls to escape because they were unhappy there. Now, of course, in these accounts which are mainly taken from saints' lives, these are women who are described
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as being possessed by the devil, by sort of being taken over by demonic forces. That would be the only thing that would force them to leave from these places. But we do have to remember, in many cases, those who entered into monasteries were not there of their own free will. NARRATOR: 600 years after Christ's crucifixion, his church had become the dominant cultural force in Europe. But while his disciples were flocking to monasteries in search of solitude, further East
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the followers of another prophet were taking up arms in search of conquest. On the dusty shores of North Africa and Arabia, mighty armies were waging war not in the name of Christ but of the Quran. Their religious movement would spread even farther and faster than Christianity and threatened to compete for the souls of Europe. The only thing standing in their way was one Christian King who had seen them coming.
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NARRATOR: October 10, 732 AD, Tours France is on the front in a holy war that will define Europe's spiritual and political future. The conflict pits the Christian Franks against the Muslim Moors who had recently crossed into Spain from North Africa. The Moors want to expand their empire and import their faith in Muhammad, the prophet of Islam who lived a century earlier. The Christians want to keep them out at all costs. HISTORIAN: They saw it as a immediate and local threat to themselves.
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The Muslims believed that they were there to rule over the earth and bring about God's justice and institute God's order. And so in that sense, there might have been what you could call a religious mission to the conquest. NARRATOR: The Moors saw Europe as easy prey-- a land defended by Barbarians who were too busy fighting each other to fight anyone else.
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In 730, Moorish General Abd al-Rahman al-Ghafiqi crossed into France with an army of 50,000 men. At the head of the charge was an elite division of cavalry unmatched in Europe.
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HISTORIAN: The Moorish armies in Gaul moved very, very fast. And they were considerably more maneuverable than the Frankish army. And they could hit and run in a way this large Frankish host simply could not. NARRATOR: The Moors tore through southern France with terrifying tenacity. Devastating the regions of Aquitaine and Gascony and leaving a legion of enemy dead behind at the Battle of the River Goran.
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One Moorish fighter wrote that his army went through all places like a desolating storm. A Christian chronicler lamented that God alone knows the number of the slain.
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After relieving the local monasteries of all their riches, the Moors turned northward, confident they could conquer all of France.
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But there, the commander of the Frankish army stood guard, waiting patiently for the enemy to strike. And when it did, he would be ready. HISTORIAN: Now, does he think he can win? I don't know. He has to win, because there's no other answer. The Islamic forces will continue to attack and continue to fill France with Islam, unless he defends. NARRATOR: The general's name was Charles "The Hammer" Martel.
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As commander in chief of the Frankish army, Martel would anticipate the unique threat posed by the Moorish invasion and take proactive steps to confront it head on. But to do so, he would first have to convince his own countrymen to trade their plowshares for swords. In Dark Ages Europe, most troops were farmers who were only available to fight between the spring planting and the fall harvest.
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But Charles Martel understood that the Moorish threat couldn't be met without a well-oiled group of professional full time soldiers at his disposal.
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HISTORIAN: He knew he was at a disadvantage. What's the basis of every successful army? Money. To get the money, he had to go to the Church. This was not a popular move with the Church. And Charles came very close to being excommunicated. That's to say being damned to hell for eternity. The Church pull back in just the last minute. Charles took land and property from the Church and used it to finance the development of an army that could be trained to withstand this formidable force.
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NARRATOR: While Charles "The Hammer" founded courage into his core, Abd al-Rahman maintained his march northward into the realm of an enemy he had severely underrated. HISTORIAN: The perception of the Franks, these warriors, was not particularly impressive. Abd al-Rahman may not have been paying as close attention to Charles Martel as he probably needed to, in this case. He may not have at all been prepared for the kind of force he was going to meet.
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NARRATOR: The Franks dug in on a high-wooded ridge that offered a critical strategic advantage. When the Moors arrived, they were stunned to find such a formidable force awaiting them. For six days, the two armies stood firm waiting for the other to make the first move.
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But as the October cold set in, Moorish General Abd al-Rahman knew he had to move quickly if he wanted to take tour before winter.
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So on the seventh day, he ordered attack.
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HISTORIAN: Charles Martel's infantry is great. And they stand like a wall. That is what the sources on the Muslim side say, that is what the sources on the Christian side say. NARRATOR: While his infantry kept the Moors occupied, Charles "The Hammer" nailed down his victory with a covert mission behind enemy lines. HISTORIAN: Charles had sent some troops to the Muslim camp. That's to say, the encampment behind the line of battle, where this incredibly successful Muslim army had kept all
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the plunder that they have obtained in their successful campaign. This was cutting off the head of the snake from the perspective of Charles and his troops. HISTORIAN: That encouraged people to retreat from the front lines to the tents. And it convinced a lot of people that a general retreat was being called. NARRATOR: General Abd al-Rahman tried to rally his fleeing forces. But as he screamed out orders to stand and fight, he was surrounded and struck down by enemy infantry.
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Overnight, the Moors withdrew and made a beeline south for Spain.
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It was his stunning victory at the Battle of Tours that earned Martel the nickname Charles "The Hammer". At a time when many parts of the old Roman and Persian empires were falling under Muslim rule, Charles was credited as the Savior of Christianity in Europe. HISTORIAN: He had some really good PR. Charles Martel was quick to stand up and basically say, look what I just did. I'm the defender of Christendom. And I helped turn back these forces that threatened us.
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NARRATOR: Over the next seven decades, Martel's descendants would transform his Christian kingdom into an empire. And one of them would even become powerful enough to assume the title emperor of Rome.
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That grandson of Charles "The Hammer" would be remembered as the father of Europe. His name was Charlemagne, and he was the greatest King of the Dark Ages.
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NARRATOR: Christmas day, 800 AD, at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, a new emperor is crowned, the first in more than three centuries. The pope is on hand to do the crowning and to announce the formation of a new Roman Empire.
1:00:43
The new emperor and the most powerful man in Europe since the days of ancient Rome is Charlemagne, King of the Franks. Charlemagne would be remembered as one of the most illuminating figures of the Dark Ages.
1:00:59
HISTORIAN: Everything you want to say about him is probably accurate. He never ever lost a military conquest. He gives birth again to education. He reestablishes the economic importance of the empire. Anytime let's [inaudible] is too few.
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NARRATOR: At its largest, Charlemagne's domain stretched from the North Sea to the Mediterranean and encompassed modern France, Germany, Holland, Switzerland, Austria, Poland, and most of Italy.
1:01:35
Not since the fall of Rome had so much of the continent been under the command of one man. But the only thing Roman about this kingdom was its size. HISTORIAN: But it isn't the same empire. There is nothing that is the same. The urban areas of fallen trade is non-existent. The economic structure, the transportation structure, engineering has all faltered. Charlemagne does his best to build up education once more because that's destroyed. It's going to be a very, very long time before Europe gets
1:02:05
back to the empire that it once had. NARRATOR: Charlemagne was a renaissance man born seven centuries early. As the founder of the Holy Roman Empire, he would attempt to singlehandedly pull Europe out of the trenches of darkness.
1:02:24
When Charlemagne's father died in 768, the Frankish kingdom was split between him and his brother, Carloman.
1:02:35
HISTORIAN: Frankish property was always divided amongst the male heirs. And in the case of Royalty, that means the same thing. And as a result, Charlemagne and his brother had to share power. They weren't too keen on this arrangement and weren't very fond of each other. NARRATOR: For three years, the brothers ruled separate halves of their father's kingdom, corresponding coldly through their mother.
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Then suddenly, Carloman turned up dead. HISTORIAN: History says he dies, that's all. We want to believe that Charlemagne had something to do with it. Maybe he did. We will never know for sure.
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NARRATOR: At the age of 24, Charlemagne suddenly found himself the sole shareholder of the largest single kingdom in Europe.
1:03:26
But his ultimate goal was to command its only kingdom.
1:03:34
Over the course of his 46-year reign, he would launch more than 50 military campaigns designed to expand his empire and save souls. As his armies seized countless new territories, they gave the conquered a simple choice-- embrace the Christian god or meet that God immediately. HISTORIAN: He thought he really was going to save them by making them Christian, even if he had to do it at the point of a sword. NARRATOR: When Charlemagne conquered the Saxons
1:04:08
of northern Germany in 782, he condemned 4,500 tribal leaders to die by their heads in sword after they were caught worshipping false gods.
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For days afterward, the River [inaudible] ran red with blood. The massacre became known as The Bloody Verdict of Verdun. HISTORIAN: This brutal execution, it really was part of a bigger picture. Charlemagne meant business. Anyone who's caught worshipping pagan gods or performing pagan rites, it's a death sentence. Anyone who cremate someone, a dead body, instead of burying them as a Christian is executed. Anyone who disobeys the king is executed.
1:04:55
Anyone who is not baptized, who refuses to be baptized the Christian, that is again the death penalty. So the execution on that day, I think, is just one sign of this brutal and ultimately successful policy that Charlemagne pursued in the region.
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NARRATOR: As his Christian soldiers enforced God's will on new frontiers, Charlemagne sought to enforce his own within the borders of his kingdom.
1:05:25
To tighten his grip on an increasingly vast dominion, he divided it into 350 counties, and put each in the charge of account, who answered directly to him. [non-english speech]
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NARRATOR: Charlemagne made sure each one knew he was being closely watched.
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HISTORIAN: He traveled constantly. It was management by walking around, as they say today. He didn't shut himself up in the palace isolated from what was going on. And he also had a vision of what it meant to be a King. Like the great kings of the period after Alexander the Great, he believed that he had to increase the social, political, and intellectual organization of his society. And in putting all of these complicated aspects of rule
1:06:17
together, he distinguished himself from every other ruler, you know? Certainly, for the 300 years before him. NARRATOR: As Charlemagne traveled far and wide throughout his burgeoning territory, he resolved to rekindle the long lost culture of creativity that had been extinguished so many centuries before.
1:06:43
Throughout his empire. He built a chain of Royal Schools that would ignite a new age of learning and provide children of all classes with access to an education.
1:06:55
Even the King himself got in on the act. In an age when few rulers could even recite the alphabet, Charlemagne made a concerted effort to read and write. HISTORIAN: This was very unusual that a King would actually devote serious effort to trying to learn how to read and to write as a grown man. Reading and writing were the work of the monks, they were not the work of a warrior, they were not the work of somebody who was engaged in practical, political, rule that often
1:07:23
involved making very difficult military decisions. It was a luxury that simply didn't seem necessary. NARRATOR: Although it wasn't one of his job requirements, there were few things Charlemagne was more passionate about than learning. One of those things was women. Over the course of his life Charlemagne had five wives, five known mistresses, and at least 20 children. HISTORIAN: In the period under Charlemagne, the whole idea of marriage as a sacrament,
1:07:52
hadn't even really been developed the way we think of it in this day and age it's really not until much later that the church managed to enforce the notion that you should have only one marriage between a man and a woman and that it would be for life. And so the notion that Charlemagne had multiple wives and concubines this would have been pretty standard, really, for someone of his background.
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NARRATOR: By the year 800, Charlemagne was nearly 60-years-old and had ruled for more than three decades.
1:08:31
He already had a resume that would cement his celebrity status in Europe's history books. But on Christmas Day, in St. Peter's Basilica, he added one final feather to his cap. HISTORIAN: One of Charlemagne biographers claimed that when Charlemagne walked into the church, on Christmas day 800, he had no idea that the imperial coronation is going to take place, and that he later regretted the fact that he had ever been crowned emperor. HISTORIAN: On the other hand, did Charlemagne really
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walk into that church not knowing what was about to happen?
1:09:10
NARRATOR: Charlemagne would rule as emperor of the West for 14 years. It was during these years, the twilight of his reign, that he would face his most daunting political challenge. That challenge would come not from the Byzantines, nor the Moors, nor any of Europe's traditional foes.
1:09:33
Instead, it would descend on Europe like a cold northern wind and drag it village by village back into the darkness from which it had just begun to emerge. They literally were out of control and they would kill everything in sight.
1:09:59
NARRATOR: June 8, 793, the wrath of Satan is unleashed on a house of God in northern England. In the village of Lindesfarne, a barbaric band of heathens is tearing apart the local monastery. They are on the hunt for treasure and they have no qualms about slaughtering anyone who stands in their way.
1:10:24
The savage rage is the work of just a small group of men but it will mark a giant setback for mankind.
1:10:33
The Viking age has begun and the dark ages are about to get a whole lot darker. HISTORIAN: Nobody had anticipated being on the northern sea and being attacked from abroad. Pirates may have existed along the channel, but nobody had ever seen them that far north. And suddenly, these Vikings come in they find no opposition, and they absolutely sack the place. And what do they get back? The greatest wealth of England. This was like putting up a sign in any Viking village uncle Olaf wants you.
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NARRATOR: The raiders had sailed from Scandinavia where overpopulation had begun forcing young drifters out onto the high seas in a hunt for new land and high adventure. And with each big score, like the one at Lindesfarne, the monasteries to the south looked more and more like banks waiting to be robbed. HISTORIAN: There were no walls, monks had no weapons, there were no defending forces. Ultimately, it simply becomes an idea of survival if you're going to be a raider, you're
1:11:38
going to want to raid where you're least likely to die. HISTORIAN: They were perhaps the best pirates, the best Raiders, that the ancient and evil world had ever seen. I think it was the unexpectedness of their arrival. You really couldn't tell where they might show up because their ships were both seaworthy for ocean voyages, but because of their shallow draft, they could sail right up the rivers to cities that were far inland and didn't expect to be subjected to water borne raids.
1:12:09
And so when they appeared totally unexpected, and send in their killing machines, the Vikings could seem unstoppable. NARRATOR: In the early 9th century, during the last years of Charlemagne's his reign as emperor, the Vikings began terrorizing any vulnerable villages within a stone's throw of water. And as the Raiders became more and more brazen they set their sights on the heart of the Holy Roman Empire. HISTORIAN: In an attempt to fend off the Vikings,
1:12:42
Carolingians began to pay them protection money. And these payments were so enormous that there were years when an empire had no currency anymore. There was no money to be had. It had all been shipped off to the Vikings and people had to barter for what they needed. This was a significant setback for the recovery of Europe.
1:13:04
NARRATOR: The emperor of Charlemagne died of natural causes at the age of 72 in 814, while the Viking Raiders were still warming up.
1:13:15
They would spend the next several decades honing their craft and perfecting the art of savagery. HISTORIAN: And they left legends that were then copied down later. They're wonderful at telling the stories of the Vikings. And for example the story of [inaudible],, who at six years of age gets defeated in a ballgame by one of his friends. [inaudible] goes home, grabs the axe, comes back and actually plants it in the guy's skull killing him. His mother, instead of being rather upset,
1:13:44
looks at [inaudible] and says, he'll make a good Vikings someday. HISTORIAN: One Viking was known as the children's man because of his refusal to kill children, which all the other Vikings thought was hilarious. And any time you're attacked by someone whose last name a Skull Splitter, you have to be concerned. NARRATOR: The Vikings took their horror show on a whirlwind tour terrorizing audiences as far and wide as Iceland, the Middle East, and even North America.
1:14:14
But their favorite target was their first, Great Britain. HISTORIAN: Britain is very vulnerable to sea invasion. There is no place in the British Isles that is more than a couple of days march from the sea. And for the Vikings, whose great strength was their expertise at sailing, in Ireland was the perfect place for them to attack because they could appear anywhere within the British Isles, with almost no forewarning at all. NARRATOR: In 866 the Vikings took aim at the British kingdom
1:14:44
of Northumbria.
1:14:48
But this time they weren't just interested in loot, they wanted land, lots of it. So rather than sending a couple dozen men on a garden variety raid, they came ashore with several thousand warriors. It was the largest group of Vikings ever assembled and came to be known as the Great Heathen Army. The head to heaven was a massive man oddly named Ivar The Boneless. Theories are abound as to how he got that name. HISTORIAN: Well, their stories, oh, he had only cartilage in his legs.
1:15:22
He had no bones. Well, this is probably a physical impossibility. Maybe he was impotent and this was referring to his lack of sexual prowess, I don't think we'll ever know. HISTORIAN: What we do know is that he had to be carried around on a shield because he was unable to walk. NARRATOR: Whatever its cause, Ivar's abnormality didn't cripple his drive toward conquest. He had his sights set on northern England's most precious prize, the City of York.
1:15:51
Within its towering walls, lived his arch enemy, a callous and corrupt King named Aella. HISTORIAN: And Aella is supposed to have killed his father and this inspired Ivar to spend the rest of his life trying to figure out a way that he could get revenge. NARRATOR: After a brutal and bloody battle, York fell to Ivar and his great heathen army. King Aella managed to escape, but he couldn't stay away. Four months later, he tried to recapture his city, but instead it was he who was captured
1:16:29
and the Vikings, never known for their mercy, we're compelled to get creative in their torture tactics.
1:16:39
HISTORIAN: They decided to punish him with what police referred to in the sources as the bloody eagle. What does that mean? HISTORIAN: To open up the torso, allow the ribs to be shown, and then pull the lungs to pass the ribs, so that they actually form a couple of wings.
1:17:06
HISTORIAN: And the physical image of the king resembled an eagle. HISTORIAN: And this then because of the bloody mess of it all, and the fact that it would still be red, would be called the bloody eagle. Yeah, pretty gruesome. NARRATOR: With King Aella off of his chest, Ivar turned his attention to conquering the rest of Britannia.
1:17:32
But while fighting the Irish near Dublin at age 73, the boneless barbarian breathed his last.
1:17:43
His great army endured and returned to England where it continued to carve up territories at will. But there was one kingdom in the deep south that refused to crumble.
1:17:57
It was ruled by a resourceful and resilient warrior King, whose name was Alfred the Great. HISTORIAN: He realized that the Vikings referred raids and lightning campaigns and they didn't want to have to attack fortresses. So what did Alfred do? He built fortresses. HISTORIAN: And they were earth and wood fortifications that Alfred had constructed where the people would go and hide and take their goods and take their cattle and other things that the Vikings might want to remove from them.
1:18:33
And once they got in there, the Vikings could not attack them. They simply did not have the siege technology or the willfulness to do so. HISTORIAN: And so by figuring out what would be the most effective defense against his enemies, Alfred was, basically, able to do what Muhammad Ali called his rope-a-dope strategy. He really let the enemy wear themselves out fighting against him and then mobilized his population in a way that could then counteract the strengths of the attackers.
1:19:08
NARRATOR: It took 25 years of almost constant fighting for Alfred to bring down the Great Heathen Army.
1:19:16
By the time he died in 1899, he had achieved lasting peace for his kingdom, but it would take another half century to expunge the Vikings from England once and for all. While some sailed off to plunder new frontiers across the Atlantic, others quietly settled down and assimilated into Europe's Christian culture.
1:19:43
After spending more than a century on red alert, Viking victims throughout the continent crossed their fingers that the darkest days were finally over, but before the skies cleared completely there would be one more series of catastrophic storms.
1:20:04
[music playing]
1:20:06
NARRATOR: By the middle of the 11th century, the people of Northwestern Europe had endured a seemingly endless barrage of bad fortune for more than 600 years. Those families not torn apart by the aggression of ruthless conquerors were confronted with severe economic depression, religious persecution, and the devastation of rampant disease.
1:20:32
As the Viking threat finally abated, Europe shell shocked masses were desperate for a new dawn.
1:20:40
But the end of the Viking age didn't trigger the end of the dark ages. For all though foreign raiders is no longer threatened the coasts and riverbanks of Christendom, there was an equally menacing threat lying within. One concealed beneath thick plates of shiny armor. HISTORIAN: Your typical medieval knight had much more in common with Tony Soprano than with Lancelot.
1:21:10
They're thugs, they're muscle. They're violent individuals, whose primary purpose is to beat people up. And the owner of a castle would unleash knights on the presence of a neighboring territory and they would enter the village assaulting people taking property in an attempt to force these peasants to accept the lordship of the owner of the castle.
1:21:45
NARRATOR: In the decades after the last Viking attacks, Europe was teeming with unemployed soldiers, trained killers, who found it hard to hang up their swords.
1:21:57
HISTORIAN: The Viking invasions had done a lot to militarize Europe a lot more soldiers and so forth were put together into armies. Once the threat is over, what do you do with all these soldiers?
1:22:15
NARRATOR: With no immediate danger looming, the soldiers allied with local counts, who were wealthy enough to hire their own private armies. HISTORIAN: Local lords, who are ruling over these very small areas, they become the principal sources of authority. These are people who built castles, not necessarily to protect the countryside from outside raiders, but to subjugate the countryside, to enforce their will upon the local peasants, to take from them what they needed.
1:22:46
This period particularly if you're a peasant, would've been a pretty rough time to be living in.
1:22:55
NARRATOR: In a desperate bid to stem the violence, the Catholic church tried to place limits on when, where, and against whom the knights could strike.
1:23:06
And to get the knights to pay attention the clergy relied on the most powerful weapons in their arsenal the clothes, blood, and bones of the saints.
1:23:21
HISTORIAN: They would gather all the relics from a given area and collect them in one place often in an open field, giant pile and then they would summon all the knights, and they would show them the pile of relics and demand that they swear to obey the peace and truth of god. Otherwise, the saints associated with these relics would attack them and punish them. And so when you're confronted with these relics, it often had a powerful psychological effect on knights.
1:23:50
Sometimes they just collapse senseless on the ground at the thought of all of these collected saints punishing them.
1:23:59
NARRATOR: To reinforce the power of the relics, the church issued two proclamations detailing God's position on war. They were called the Peace of God and the Truce of God.
1:24:14
HISTORIAN: The Peace of God proclaimed that certain individuals-- peasants, widows, priests, individuals who cannot defend themselves, should not be attacked by knights. The Truce of God proclaim that certain periods of time should be free of knightly violence entirely, that lent or the Sunday's, the period around Christmas, those should be parades when there was no warfare. HISTORIAN: The bishops were trying to, essentially, redirect the energies of the nobility, many of whom
1:24:47
had access to armament, but didn't possess land. So they didn't have anything really to do with that energy and re-channel that energy in other directions. NARRATOR: One direction everyone could endorse was the Middle East. Ever since non-Christian forces conquered the holy land for centuries earlier, murmurs of a military mission to liberate it had echoed across Christian Europe. Now, with the Viking threat a thing of the past, and soldiers everywhere itching for a cause,
1:25:22
the time seemed right to launch a crusade. HISTORIAN: The crusades were undertaken as a kind of vengeance on behalf of Jesus. And so in the kind of fantastical imagination, they had this really vivid picture of Jesus's home being defiled by this Pagan alien presence. And it seemed to strike a chord. NARRATOR: In 1095, Pope Urban II, kicked off the First Crusade by declaring Deus vult, Latin for God wills it. Over the next 200 years a total of nine brutal crusades
1:26:02
devastated the holy land and its Muslim inhabitants. In all, eight generations of fighters took part in the bloody seesaw struggle for Jerusalem. Ultimately, the crusaders came away with no permanent conquests, but they returned with something even more valuable-- knowledge. HISTORIAN: Europe, with the crusades, turned the corner from the dark ages. There's medical information and surgical information that's brought back, books are brought back,
1:26:35
languages are brought back, Aristotle's brought back, everything is brought back. So the crusades really do change Europe in a way that we have not seen before.
1:26:51
NARRATOR: The crusades spawned a rebirth of trade and architecture unseen in Europe since the fall of Rome. Massive stone fortresses were built to replace the smaller wooden ones that had been a staple of dark age defense. Military supply lines opened up new markets for goods flowing in and out across the Mediterranean. Roads that had been neglected since Roman times were rebuilt to accommodate the flow of troops to and from battle. And tales of exotic lands to the east
1:27:25
sparked a new boom in tourism, but the crusades and their consequences are just a few of countless factors that contributed to Europe's medieval awakening. It's thought that around the year 1000, that Europe became somewhat warmer, that it emerged from a period of what's known as a mini ice age. And this seems to have made it possible to cultivate lands that have formerly been considered quite marginal. So starting around the year 2000, we see a growth in population in Western Europe.
1:28:02
HISTORIAN: If you look at the archaeology of a medieval town during the 11th and 12th centuries, the 13th century is the exact opposite of what happened during the last few centuries of the Roman Empire. The town walls are rebuilt bigger and bigger and bigger to try and encompass this growing population, and that suggests that Europe had at long last turned a corner. HISTORIAN: Europe was on the verge of one of the most productive and creative periods of its entire history.
1:28:30
Things like the great Gothic Cathedrals, the universities, the law courts and legal systems, all of those were created in the 12th and 13th centuries. So following this long period of darkness, there came a tremendous explosion of really brilliant cultural achievements.
1:28:50
NARRATOR: In the popular mind, the dark ages are an empty void between the glory of Rome and the triumph of the Renaissance. But a closer look reveals a period writhing with chaos, turbulence, and humanity. A time when new life emerged from the scorched earth of post Roman Europe, only to perish again amidst the perilous conditions of the age. If there was ever a time that tried men's souls, this was it. HISTORIAN: There was political chaos, there were injustices, it's certainly true.
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But what's most admirable and human about the people, who lived during the era of the so-called dark ages, is the efforts they made sometimes successful and sometimes not, to illuminate themselves in the way that mattered most to them before God. HISTORIAN: This was a time when you see the landscape of Europe, as we think of it today, with the cities like Paris and London. These things all have their roots in the era that we call the Dark Ages. So on that level, were they so dark?
1:29:57
Perhaps, we live in the Dark Age. I mean, look what just happened in the 20th century with everything mustard gas to atom bombs. I mean, who's to say? NARRATOR: The sunsets and sunrises of civilization are inevitably separated by intervals of isolating darkness the night that followed the Romans sunset was long and uncertain, and the turmoil it wrought consumed countless men.
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But mankind itself did not yield.
1:30:30
With its gaze fixed on a distant future, it persevered. Until, the first rays of a new dawn at long last penetrated the horizon.
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