22.3 Europe: a.d. 701 to 800  (Page 3/6)

Charlemagne's Empire was Roman Christian and Germanic, all in one. Economically and socially it never attained to that cohesion and unity that characterizes a thoroughly civilized state. Beer had been made and drunk in large quantities in the German areas for several centuries and it was consumed throughout Karl's territory and even made by master brewers in his palaces. No hops were used. Christianization of northern Germany was completed partly by missionaries and partly by forced conversion by Frankish overlords After Charlmagne was crowned emperor by the pope on Christmas, A.D. 800, his Italian affairs occupied him so completely that he lost control of Germany and the Slavs again entered from the east in the next century. The Weser River represented the farthest limits of the Slav expansion westward. (Ref. 177 , 181 ) Additional Notes

Western europe

Spain and portugal

In A.D. 709 and 710 Moslem Moors attacked the Spanish coast but didn't land. At about the same time the Visigoth nobles were quarreling over the succession to the dead King Wittiza, finally electing a younger son, Rodrigo. Supporters of the eldest son fled to Morocco to get aid. As a result, a mixed force of Arabs and Berbers, led by the Berber Tariq from Mauretania, invaded Spain in 711, quickly taking the southern part, helped both by Jews and the Visigoth supporters of the eldest son claimant to the throne. Another Moslem general, Muza, landed at Algeciras in 712, quickly took Seville and Merido and then headed north. The surging Moslems went on to cross the Pyrenees and swept into France to be stopped finally at Tours, by Charles Martel, in 732. Falling back into Spain, the Moslems broke up the overgrown estates of the Visigothic nobles and developed a new society. The ruling Abbasid Caliphate was never accepted in Spain and the Spanish Moors declared independence from Baghdad in 756, reviving a branch of the old Omayyad family to form the Omayyad Dynasty of Cordoba which lasted until 1031. No western city equaled Cordoba in size or culture and no government in the west was better than that of Moslem Spain. (Ref. 2 , 137 , 8 , 196 )

The unconquered Goths, Suevi, Christianized Berbers of a previous migration, and the Iberian Celts went into northwestern Spain and Portugal, where the Goth, Pelayo, became king of Asturias and founded what was to become the Spanish monarchy. After Pelayo came Alfonso I and II and during this period the Visigoth Spanish Catholics now brought forth Spain's most brilliant and characteristic creation, Mozarabic art, found now in liturgy remnants only in Toledo and Salamanca chapels. These Catholics, allowed to worship as they pleased, although more or less confined to ghettos within the Moslem state and separated from the main European tradition, developed both their own individual brand of Catholicism and art. The latter was a vivid combination of remote classicism, Islamic miniatures and the primitive idioms of Visigothic folk-art. It is of interest that this Muslim conquest of Spain also culminated in a “Golden Age" of Spanish Jewry' (Ref. 180 , 8 )