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The barbarian kingdoms, also known as the post-Roman kingdoms, the western kingdoms or the early medieval kingdoms, were the states founded by various non-Roman, primarily Germanic, peoples in
Western Europe Western Europe is the western region of Europe. The region's countries and territories vary depending on context. The concept of "the West" appeared in Europe in juxtaposition to "the East" and originally applied to the ancient Mediterranean ...
and
North Africa North Africa, or Northern Africa is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region, and it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of Mauritania in ...
following the collapse of the
Western Roman Empire The Western Roman Empire comprised the western provinces of the Roman Empire at any time during which they were administered by a separate independent Imperial court; in particular, this term is used in historiography to describe the period fr ...
in the fifth century. The formation of the barbarian kingdoms was a complicated, gradual and largely unintentional process, as the Roman state failed to handle barbarian migrants on the imperial borders, leading to both invasions and invitations into imperial territory, but simultaneously denied barbarians the ability to properly integrate into the imperial framework. The influence of barbarian rulers, at first local warlords and client kings without firm connections to any territories, increased as Roman emperors and usurpers used them as pawns in civil wars. It was only after the collapse of effective Western Roman central authority that the barbarian realms transitioned into proper territorial kingdoms. The barbarian kings of the west drew on legitimacy through connecting themselves to the Roman Empire in order to strengthen their rule. Virtually all of them assumed the style ''
dominus noster Dominus or domini may refer to: * Dominus (title), a title of sovereignty, clergy and other uses Art, entertainment, and media * Dominus (band), a Danish death metal band * Dominus (DC Comics), an alien character in DC Comics * Dominus (Ma ...
'' ("our lord"), previously used by the emperors, and many assumed the ''
praenomen The ''praenomen'' (; plural: ''praenomina'') was a personal name chosen by the parents of a Roman child. It was first bestowed on the ''dies lustricus'' (day of lustration), the eighth day after the birth of a girl, or the ninth day after the bi ...
''
Flavius The gens Flavia was a plebeian family at ancient Rome. Its members are first mentioned during the last three centuries of the Republic. The first of the Flavii to achieve prominence was Marcus Flavius, tribune of the plebs in 327 and 323 BC; ...
, borne by virtually all Roman emperors in late antiquity. The kings typically also assumed a subordinate position in diplomacy with the remaining
Eastern Roman Empire The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...
. The barbarian kings also adopted many aspects of the late Roman administration, but the old Roman system gradually dissolved and disappeared over the centuries, accelerated by periods of political turmoil. The major difference between the administration of the old Western Roman Empire and the new royal administrations was their scale, as the barbarian governments, on accounts of controlling significantly less territory, were less deep and less complex. As a result, there was a considerable breakdown in living standards as well as social and economic complexity. For the most part, the barbarian kingdoms were highly fragile and ephemeral. By the time of the coronation of
Charlemagne Charlemagne ( , ) or Charles the Great ( la, Carolus Magnus; german: Karl der Große; 2 April 747 – 28 January 814), a member of the Carolingian dynasty, was King of the Franks from 768, King of the Lombards from 774, and the first Holy ...
,
king of the Franks The Franks, Germanic-speaking peoples that invaded the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century, were first led by individuals called dukes and reguli. The earliest group of Franks that rose to prominence was the Salian Merovingians, who con ...
, as emperor in 800, the event usually seen as marking the end of the age of the barbarian kingdoms, only the
Frankish kingdom Francia, also called the Kingdom of the Franks ( la, Regnum Francorum), Frankish Kingdom, Frankland or Frankish Empire ( la, Imperium Francorum), was the largest post-Roman barbarian kingdom in Western Europe. It was ruled by the Franks dur ...
remained out of the once vast and diverse network of kingdoms.


Formation

The rise of the barbarian kingdoms in the territory previously governed by the
Western Roman Empire The Western Roman Empire comprised the western provinces of the Roman Empire at any time during which they were administered by a separate independent Imperial court; in particular, this term is used in historiography to describe the period fr ...
was a gradual, complex and largely unintentional process. The starting point of the process that led to their formation were the migrations of large numbers of barbarian (i.e. non-Roman) peoples into the territory of the Roman Empire. The migrations were spurred by both invasions and invitations. Inviting peoples from beyond the imperial frontier to settle Roman territory was not a new policy, but something that had been done several times by emperors in the past, mostly for economic, agricultural or military purposes. The capacity for immigration in a state as large and powerful as the Roman Empire was nearly infinite, but several events and accidents in the fourth through fifth centuries complicated the situation. In 376, the
Visigoths The Visigoths (; la, Visigothi, Wisigothi, Vesi, Visi, Wesi, Wisi) were an early Germanic people who, along with the Ostrogoths, constituted the two major political entities of the Goths within the Roman Empire in late antiquity, or what is ...
, fleeing before the
Ostrogoths The Ostrogoths ( la, Ostrogothi, Austrogothi) were a Roman-era Germanic peoples, Germanic people. In the 5th century, they followed the Visigoths in creating one of the two great Goths, Gothic kingdoms within the Roman Empire, based upon the larg ...
, who in turn were fleeing before the
Huns The Huns were a nomadic people who lived in Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Eastern Europe between the 4th and 6th century AD. According to European tradition, they were first reported living east of the Volga River, in an area that was part ...
, were allowed to cross the
Danube The Danube ( ; ) is a river that was once a long-standing frontier of the Roman Empire and today connects 10 European countries, running through their territories or being a border. Originating in Germany, the Danube flows southeast for , pa ...
river and settle in the
Balkans The Balkans ( ), also known as the Balkan Peninsula, is a geographical area in southeastern Europe with various geographical and historical definitions. The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains that stretch throughout the who ...
by the government of the
Eastern Roman Empire The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...
. Mistreatment of the Gothic refugees caused a full-scale rebellion, and in 378 they inflicted a crippling defeat on the Eastern Roman field army in the
Battle of Adrianople The Battle of Adrianople (9 August 378), sometimes known as the Battle of Hadrianopolis, was fought between an Eastern Roman army led by the Eastern Roman Emperor Valens and Gothic rebels (largely Thervings as well as Greutungs, non-Gothic A ...
, in which Emperor
Valens Valens ( grc-gre, Ουάλης, Ouálēs; 328 – 9 August 378) was Roman emperor from 364 to 378. Following a largely unremarkable military career, he was named co-emperor by his elder brother Valentinian I, who gave him the eastern half of ...
(364–378) was also killed. The defeat at Adrianople was shocking to the Romans, and forced them to negotiate with and settle the Visigoths within the borders of the Empire, where they would become semi-independent ''
foederati ''Foederati'' (, singular: ''foederatus'' ) were peoples and cities bound by a treaty, known as ''foedus'', with Rome. During the Roman Republic, the term identified the ''socii'', but during the Roman Empire, it was used to describe foreign stat ...
'' under their own leader. Roman civil wars in the late 4th century, as well as periods of cold war between the imperial courts of the Western and Eastern Roman empires allowed the Visigoths under their leader Alaric I (395–410) to become an active force in imperial politics, only tenuously linked to the imperial government itself. The arrival of the Visigoths in the Balkans was followed by the
Alans The Alans (Latin: ''Alani'') were an ancient and medieval Iranian nomadic pastoral people of the North Caucasus – generally regarded as part of the Sarmatians, and possibly related to the Massagetae. Modern historians have connected the Al ...
,
Vandals The Vandals were a Germanic peoples, Germanic people who first inhabited what is now southern Poland. They established Vandal Kingdom, Vandal kingdoms on the Iberian Peninsula, Mediterranean islands, and North Africa in the fifth century. The ...
and Suebi migrating into Gaul between 405 and 407 in the
crossing of the Rhine The crossing of the Rhine River by a mixed group of barbarians which included Vandals, Alans and Suebi is traditionally considered to have occurred on the last day of the year 406 (December 31, 406). The crossing transgressed one of the Roman ...
. Though the barbarians on the Rhine were effectively kept in check and managed by the usurper-emperor Constantine III (407–411), the end of his reign due to further internal Roman conflict led to the tribes being able to penetrate deep into Gaul and Hispania. With the barbarians settling within the imperial borders in large numbers, the second stage in the formation of the barbarian kingdoms was imperial acceptance of the ''status quo''. Though Romans did not see the existence of the barbarian realms as desirable, they began to be tolerated through the 420s and 430s. It was not the goal of either the Romans or the barbarians to found lasting territorial kingdoms in the sense of replacing the imperial government; their formation derived not from an interest by the barbarians in founding them but rather from failures in Roman governance and the failure to grant the barbarian rulers a place within the Roman imperial systems. The early barbarian kings were tolerated only on the terms of the empire. Early kingdoms, such as those of the Suebi and
Vandals The Vandals were a Germanic peoples, Germanic people who first inhabited what is now southern Poland. They established Vandal Kingdom, Vandal kingdoms on the Iberian Peninsula, Mediterranean islands, and North Africa in the fifth century. The ...
in Hispania, were relegated to the edges of less important provinces. In 418, Emperor Honorius (393–423) settled the Visigoths in Aquitania in southern
Gaul Gaul ( la, Gallia) was a region of Western Europe first described by the Romans. It was inhabited by Celtic and Aquitani tribes, encompassing present-day France, Belgium, Luxembourg, most of Switzerland, parts of Northern Italy (only during ...
, the beginning of the
Visigothic Kingdom The Visigothic Kingdom, officially the Kingdom of the Goths ( la, Regnum Gothorum), was a kingdom that occupied what is now southwestern France and the Iberian Peninsula from the 5th to the 8th centuries. One of the Germanic peoples, Germanic su ...
. The Romans envisioned the settlement as a provisional settlement of loyal clients of the imperial government, whose support could be relied on in internal struggles, and not a ceding of territory given that the imperial government was also envisioned as continuing in the granted lands. Though Roman generals in the time of Honorius had worked to curb the influence and power of the barbarian kings, the number of civil wars that followed Honorius's death made the status of the barbarians a secondary concern. Instead of suppressing the barbarian kings, emperors and usurpers in the 4th century viewed them as useful internal players. The third stage was the imperial government of the Western Roman Empire recognizing that it could no longer effectively administer its territories. This led the empire to cede effective control of more lands to the barbarian kings, whose realms now formed a permanent part of the landscape, though this did not mean that the lands within the former imperial borders ceased to be part of the empire on a conceptual level. Treaties made with the Visigoths in 439 and the Vandals, who had conquered North Africa, in 442 effectively recognized the rulers of those peoples as territorial governors of parts of imperial territory, ceasing the pretension of active imperial administration. These treaties, though not seen as irrevocable, laid the foundations of true territorial kingdoms. Almost nowhere in the west were the kings firmly linked to territorial kingdoms until the very late fifth century or even later. The fourth and final stage in the formation of the barbarian kingdoms was the barbarian kings, left to their own devices, slowly losing the habit of waiting for the empire to again function properly and instead starting to take on the roles of the former emperors, becoming proper territorial kings. This process was only possible through the acceptance of the barbarian rulers by local Roman aristocrats, who in many cases supported the barbarian kings as they saw the possibility of restored Western Roman central control as an increasingly futile prospect. The exact process in which the barbarian kings took on certain functions and prerogatives previously ascribed to the Roman emperors is not entirely clear but it was a highly drawn-out process. Alaric I, the generally recognised first king of the Visigoths, is only seen as a king retroactively; contemporary sources call him only ''
dux ''Dux'' (; plural: ''ducēs'') is Latin for "leader" (from the noun ''dux, ducis'', "leader, general") and later for duke and its variant forms (doge, duce, etc.). During the Roman Republic and for the first centuries of the Roman Empire, '' ...
'' or at times ''
hegemon Hegemony (, , ) is the political, economic, and military predominance of one state over other states. In Ancient Greece (8th BC – AD 6th ), hegemony denoted the politico-military dominance of the ''hegemon'' city-state over other city-states. ...
'', and he did not rule a kingdom, but rather spent much of his career unsuccessfully trying to integrate himself into the Roman imperial system as a Roman military officer. The earliest Visigoth ruler to unambiguously call himself king, and to issue documents from something resembling an imperial chancery, was
Alaric II Alaric II ( got, 𐌰𐌻𐌰𐍂𐌴𐌹𐌺𐍃, , "ruler of all"; la, Alaricus; – August 507) was the King of the Visigoths from 484 until 507. He succeeded his father Euric as king of the Visigoths in Toulouse on 28 December 484; he wa ...
(484–507), though contemporary writings allude to widespread acceptance and recognition of a Visigothic kingdom in Gaul by the 450s. The Visigoths did not establish a secure power-base as a consciously post-imperial kingdom until the 560s under
Liuvigild Liuvigild, Leuvigild, Leovigild, or ''Leovigildo'' (Spanish and Portuguese), ( 519 – 586) was a Visigothic King of Hispania and Septimania from 568 to 586. Known for his Codex Revisus or Code of Leovigild, a law allowing equal rights between the ...
, after slow and often brutal conquests in Hispania.


Roman heritage and continuity


Administrative continuity

Although power was dispersed from a single capital, such as Rome or Ravenna, to local kings and warlords, the apparatus of the former Roman imperial government fundamentally continued to function in the west as the new barbarian rulers adopted many aspects of the late Roman administration. Roman law continued to remain the predominant legal system in the west through the fifth and sixth centuries. Several barbarian kings showing interest in legal matters and issuing their own law codes, developed based on Roman law. Initially, towns and cities, the main building blocks of the Roman Empire, remained the building blocks of the barbarian kingdoms as well. The old Roman imperial administrative framework dissolved and disappeared only gradually in a slow process spanning centuries, at times accelerated due to political upheaval. The major difference between the Roman imperial administration and the new royal administrations that meant to imitate and replicate it was their scale. Without a central imperial court, and officers that linked the governments of the different provinces together, the administration in the kingdoms was flattened. Compared to the Roman Empire, the governments of the barbarian kingdoms were as such significantly less deep and less complex. This breakdown in Roman order had the side effect of resulting in a marked decline in living standards, as well as a marked collapse in economic and social complexity.


Roman legitimacy

In the aftermath of the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, the various barbarian rulers in Western Europe made an effort to strengthen legitimacy by adopting certain elements of the former empire. The title most widely used by the kings was '' rex'', which formed a basis of authority that they could use in diplomacy with other kingdoms and the surviving imperial court in Constantinople. Although some Eastern Roman authors, such as
Procopius Procopius of Caesarea ( grc-gre, Προκόπιος ὁ Καισαρεύς ''Prokópios ho Kaisareús''; la, Procopius Caesariensis; – after 565) was a prominent late antique Greek scholar from Caesarea Maritima. Accompanying the Roman gener ...
, described ''rex'' as a 'barbarian term', it had at points in the past sometimes been used to describe Roman emperors and clearly indicated that the barbarian rulers were sovereign rulers, though not with authority eclipsing that of the emperor in Constantinople. Many, but not all, of the barbarian kings used ethnic qualifiers in their title, the Frankish kings for instance rendering their title as ''rex Francorum'' ("king of the Franks"). The rulers of Italy, where the pretense of Roman continuity was especially strong, are notable in that they only rarely used ethnic qualifiers. In addition to ''rex'', the barbarian rulers also assumed a selection of Roman imperial titles and honours. Virtually all of the barbarian kings assumed the style ''
dominus noster Dominus or domini may refer to: * Dominus (title), a title of sovereignty, clergy and other uses Art, entertainment, and media * Dominus (band), a Danish death metal band * Dominus (DC Comics), an alien character in DC Comics * Dominus (Ma ...
'' ("our lord"), previously used only by Roman emperors, and nearly all of the Visigothic kings and the barbarian kings of Italy (up until the end of the
Lombard kingdom The Kingdom of the Lombards ( la, Regnum Langobardorum; it, Regno dei Longobardi; lmo, Regn di Lombard) also known as the Lombard Kingdom; later the Kingdom of (all) Italy ( la, Regnum totius Italiae), was an early medieval state established ...
) used the ''
praenomen The ''praenomen'' (; plural: ''praenomina'') was a personal name chosen by the parents of a Roman child. It was first bestowed on the ''dies lustricus'' (day of lustration), the eighth day after the birth of a girl, or the ninth day after the bi ...
''
Flavius The gens Flavia was a plebeian family at ancient Rome. Its members are first mentioned during the last three centuries of the Republic. The first of the Flavii to achieve prominence was Marcus Flavius, tribune of the plebs in 327 and 323 BC; ...
, borne by virtually all Roman emperors in late antiquity. The early barbarian rulers were careful to maintain a subordinate position to the emperors in Constantinople, and were in turn sometimes recognised with various honours by the emperors, in effect being highly autonomous client kings.


Possibility of imperial restoration

In the early 6th century, the most powerful kings in Western Europe were
Theodoric the Great Theodoric (or Theoderic) the Great (454 – 30 August 526), also called Theodoric the Amal ( got, , *Þiudareiks; Greek: , romanized: ; Latin: ), was king of the Ostrogoths (471–526), and ruler of the independent Ostrogothic Kingdom of Italy b ...
of Italy and Clovis I of the Franks. Both rulers received honours and recognition by the imperial court in Constantinople, which granted them a certain degree of legitimacy and was used to justify territorial expansion. Theodoric was recognised as a
patrician Patrician may refer to: * Patrician (ancient Rome), the original aristocratic families of ancient Rome, and a synonym for "aristocratic" in modern English usage * Patrician (post-Roman Europe), the governing elites of cities in parts of medieval ...
by Emperor Anastasius I, who also returned the western imperial regalia, in Constantinople since 476, to Italy. These regalia were worn by Theoderic on occasions, and some of his Roman subjects referred to him as an emperor, but he appears to himself only have used the title ''rex'', careful not to insult the emperor. After the Franks defeated the Visigoths at the
Battle of Vouillé The Battle of Vouillé (from Latin ''Campus Vogladensis'') was fought in the northern marches of Visigothic territory, at Vouillé, near Poitiers (Gaul), in the spring of 507 between the Franks, commanded by Clovis, and the Visigoths, comman ...
in 507, Clovis was recognised by Anastasius as honorary consul, a patrician and a client king. Like Theoderic, some of the subjects of Clovis also referred to him as an emperor, rather than king, though he never adopted that title himself. If Theodoric and Clovis had gone to war against each other, something that appeared likely many times, it is conceivable that either would have re-established the Western Roman Empire under their own rule. Though no war happened, such developments worried the eastern emperors, who after seeing how their granted honours could be seen as imperial "stamps of approval" never granted them to the same extent again. Instead, the eastern empire began to emphasise its own exclusive Roman legitimacy, which it would continue to do for the rest of its history. In the 6th century, Eastern Roman historians began to describe the west as "lost" to barbarian invasions, rather than the barbarian kings having been settled by the Romans themselves, a development termed the "Justinianic ideological offensive" by modern historians. Though the rise of the barbarian kingdoms in the place of the western empire was far from an entirely peaceful process, the idea of "barbarian invasions" bringing a sudden and violent end to the world of antiquity, once the widely accepted narrative among modern historians, does not satisfactorily describe the period. Ascribing the end of the Western Roman Empire to "barbarian invasions" ignores the diversity of the new kingdoms in favor of a homogenous non-Roman barbarism and ignores any analysis in which the empire could be seen as complicit in its own collapse.


Culture

Despite being divided into several smaller realms, the populace of the barbarian kingdoms maintained strong cultural and religious connections with each other, and continued to speak Latin. The barbarian kings adopted both
Christianity Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. It is the world's largest and most widespread religion with roughly 2.38 billion followers representing one-third of the global pop ...
(at this point firmly established as the Roman religion) and the Latin language themselves, thus inheriting and maintaining Rome's cultural heritage. At the same time, they also remained connected to their non-Roman identity and made efforts to establish their own distinct identities. The Eastern Roman Empire emphasizing its own unique Roman legitimacy, sometimes through waging war on the barbarian kingdoms, and the barbarian ruling class and Roman population merging ethnically, led to the gradual disappearance of
Roman identity grc, Ῥωμαῖοι, , native_name_lang = , image = Pompeii family feast painting Naples.jpg , image_caption = 1st century AD wall painting from Pompeii depicting a multigenerational banquet , languages = , religi ...
in the west. The fading connectivity to the Roman Empire and the political division of the west led to a gradual fragmentation of culture and language, eventually giving rise to the modern Romance peoples and
Romance languages The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European language fam ...
.


End of the barbarian kingdoms

The barbarian kingdoms proved to be extremely fragile states. Even out of the most powerful and longest-lasting kingdoms, those of the Visigoths,
Franks The Franks ( la, Franci or ) were a group of Germanic peoples whose name was first mentioned in 3rd-century Roman sources, and associated with tribes between the Lower Rhine and the Ems River, on the edge of the Roman Empire.H. Schutz: Tools, ...
and
Lombards The Lombards () or Langobards ( la, Langobardi) were a Germanic people who ruled most of the Italian Peninsula from 568 to 774. The medieval Lombard historian Paul the Deacon wrote in the ''History of the Lombards'' (written between 787 and ...
, only that of the Franks survived the Early Middle Ages. The Visigothic realm collapsed already in the sixth century and had to be restored almost from scratch under Liuvigild in the 560s and 570s. It was finally destroyed when it was conquered by the
Umayyad Caliphate The Umayyad Caliphate (661–750 CE; , ; ar, ٱلْخِلَافَة ٱلْأُمَوِيَّة, al-Khilāfah al-ʾUmawīyah) was the second of the four major caliphates established after the death of Muhammad. The caliphate was ruled by th ...
in the early 8th century. In a series of wars in the 6th century, the Eastern Roman Empire under
Justinian I Justinian I (; la, Iustinianus, ; grc-gre, Ἰουστινιανός ; 48214 November 565), also known as Justinian the Great, was the Byzantine emperor from 527 to 565. His reign is marked by the ambitious but only partly realized ''renovat ...
(527–565) conquered and destroyed the kingdoms of the
Vandals The Vandals were a Germanic peoples, Germanic people who first inhabited what is now southern Poland. They established Vandal Kingdom, Vandal kingdoms on the Iberian Peninsula, Mediterranean islands, and North Africa in the fifth century. The ...
in
Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...
and that of the
Ostrogoths The Ostrogoths ( la, Ostrogothi, Austrogothi) were a Roman-era Germanic peoples, Germanic people. In the 5th century, they followed the Visigoths in creating one of the two great Goths, Gothic kingdoms within the Roman Empire, based upon the larg ...
in Italy. Most of the smaller kingdoms in Gaul were conquered and absorbed into the Frankish kingdom or disappear from historical sources entirely. The new realms that emerged in the seventh through ninth centuries represented a new order largely disconnected from the old Roman world. The Umayyad Caliphate, which conquered Hispania from the Visigoths and North Africa from the Eastern Romans, made no pretences of Roman continuity. The Lombard kingdom, though often counted among the other barbarian kingdoms, ruled an Italy destroyed by conflict between the Ostrogoths and the Eastern Roman Empire. Their rule in Italy came to an end when their kingdom was conquered by the Franks in 774. The small successor kingdoms of the Visigoths in Hispania, the predecessors of medieval kingdoms such as León, Castile and
Aragon Aragon ( , ; Spanish and an, Aragón ; ca, Aragó ) is an autonomous community in Spain, coextensive with the medieval Kingdom of Aragon. In northeastern Spain, the Aragonese autonomous community comprises three provinces (from north to sou ...
, were fundamentally sub-Frankish, culturally and administratively closer to the Frankish kingdom than the fallen Visigothic realm. As the sole survivor of the old kingdoms, the Frankish realm provided the model of early medieval kingship that would later inspire medieval monarchs throughout the rest of the medieval period. Though the Frankish rulers remembered Roman ideals and often aspired to vague ideas of imperial restoration, the centuries of their rule had transformed the governance of their kingdom into something that resembled the Roman Empire very little. The new form of government was a personal one, based on powers of and relationships between individuals, rather than the heavily administrated, judicial and bureaucratic system of the Roman Empire. The time of the barbarian kingdoms came to an end with the coronation of
Charlemagne Charlemagne ( , ) or Charles the Great ( la, Carolus Magnus; german: Karl der Große; 2 April 747 – 28 January 814), a member of the Carolingian dynasty, was King of the Franks from 768, King of the Lombards from 774, and the first Holy ...
,
king of the Franks The Franks, Germanic-speaking peoples that invaded the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century, were first led by individuals called dukes and reguli. The earliest group of Franks that rose to prominence was the Salian Merovingians, who con ...
, as Roman emperor by
Pope Leo III Pope Leo III (died 12 June 816) was bishop of Rome and ruler of the Papal States from 26 December 795 to his death. Protected by Charlemagne from the supporters of his predecessor, Adrian I, Leo subsequently strengthened Charlemagne's position b ...
in 800, in opposition to the authority of the remaining Eastern Roman Empire. Charlemagne's
Carolingian Empire The Carolingian Empire (800–888) was a large Frankish-dominated empire in western and central Europe during the Early Middle Ages. It was ruled by the Carolingian dynasty, which had ruled as kings of the Franks since 751 and as kings of the Lom ...
, a predecessor of France and Germany, was in reality more similar to a collection of kingdoms united only by Charlemagne's authority than a realm with a meaningful connection to the old Western Roman Empire.


See also

*
Early Middle Ages The Early Middle Ages (or early medieval period), sometimes controversially referred to as the Dark Ages, is typically regarded by historians as lasting from the late 5th or early 6th century to the 10th century. They marked the start of the Mi ...
*
Byzantine Empire under the Justinian dynasty The Byzantine Empire had its first golden age under the Justinian dynasty, which began in 518 AD with the accession of Justin I. Under the Justinian dynasty, particularly the reign of Justinian I, the empire reached its greatest territorial exte ...
*
History of Europe The history of Europe is traditionally divided into four time periods: prehistoric Europe (prior to about 800 BC), classical antiquity (800 BC to AD 500), the Middle Ages (AD 500 to AD 1500), and the modern era (since AD 1500). The first ea ...
*
Migration Period The Migration Period was a period in European history marked by large-scale migrations that saw the fall of the Western Roman Empire and subsequent settlement of its former territories by various tribes, and the establishment of the post-Roman ...
*
Dark Ages (historiography) The ''Dark Ages'' is a term for the Early Middle Ages, or occasionally the entire Middle Ages, in Western Europe after the fall of the Western Roman Empire that characterises it as marked by economic, intellectual and cultural decline. The conce ...
*
Core Europe European integration is the process of industrial, economic, political, legal, social, and cultural integration of states wholly or partially in Europe or nearby. European integration has primarily come about through the European Union and its ...
*
Germanic Europe The Germanic-speaking world is the part of the world where Germanic languages are either official, co-official, or significantly used, comprising Germanic-speaking Europe as well as parts of North America, Germanic-speaking Africa, Oceania and ...
*
Latin Church , native_name_lang = la , image = San Giovanni in Laterano - Rome.jpg , imagewidth = 250px , alt = Façade of the Archbasilica of St. John in Lateran , caption = Archbasilica of Saint Joh ...
*
Late antiquity Late antiquity is the time of transition from classical antiquity to the Middle Ages, generally spanning the 3rd–7th century in Europe and adjacent areas bordering the Mediterranean Basin. The popularization of this periodization in English ha ...
*
Germanic Christianity Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. It is the world's largest and most widespread religion with roughly 2.38 billion followers representing one-third of the global populati ...
*
Germanic Heroic Age The Germanic (or "German") Heroic Age, so called in analogy to the Heroic Age of Greek mythology, is the period of early historic or quasi-historic events reflected in Germanic heroic poetry. Periodisation The period corresponds to the Germani ...
*
Timeline of Germanic kingdoms in the Iberian Peninsula This is a historical timeline of the Iberian Peninsula during the period of the post-Imperial kingdoms (5th to 8th centuries). 5th century *409 **Invasion of the NW of the Iberian peninsula (the Roman Gallaecia) by the Suevi ( Quadi and Marco ...


Notes


References


Bibliography

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * {{Barbarian kingdoms States and territories established in the 400s States and territories disestablished in the 8th century 6th century in Europe 7th century in Europe Former kingdoms Migration Period Barbarians