As Byzantium and Islam enjoyed their cultural peaks, Latin Christendom struggled to rise from the remains of the Roman Empire.  This chapter discusses how Europe, under the leadership of the church, began to emerge as a distinct civilization.

With the collapse of the Roman Empire, Greco-Roman culture and organization declined steadily.  Under the new Germanic kingdoms, towns survived, but the focus of life and economic activity shifted to the countryside.  Meanwhile, the church served as the principal integrating institution.  Under Gregory the Great, the papacy strengthened its authority, using Roman administrative methods to govern its own lands and direct the activities of clergy and monks.  Irish and English monks took the lead in cultivating Latin as the language of church life, preserving elements of the classical intellectual tradition, producing illuminated manuscripts, founding monasteries, and converting people throughout Europe.  Through these means, the church managed to offer Europeans a coherent world view and a semblance of civilization.

The idea of a universal empire reemerged under Charlemagne.  Descended from Clovis, the first Christian Merovingian king, Charlemagne built a Frankish empire that encompassed much of western and central Europe.  When he was crowned by Pope Leo III, his rule symbolized the fusion of Roman and Christian universalism with the Germanic warrior tradition.  Although Charlemagne presided over the birth of a distinctive European civilization, his large, diverse empire crumbled after his death.

In its place developed a feudal society, in which local lords ruled in the absence of centralized authority.  These warrior-lords governed their territories according to customary law and served as the military vassals of their superiors.  Through the manorial economic system, land-bound serfs supported these lords, who, in turn, owed them the duty of protection.  With little hope of earthly advancement, serfs tended to focus on heavenly rewards available through the church as represented by local priests.  As wives and daughters of feudal lords, noblewomen were entirely subservient to men, who regarded them as morally and intellectually inferior.  However, feudal ladies performed important functions in the household and exerted full authority when their men were away at war.  If such women did not marry, they generally entered convents where they could develop their intellectual talents and, like Hildegard of Bingen, even rise to positions of authority.

During this period, elements of Greco-Roman humanism survived.  Transmitters including Boethius, Cassiodorus, and Isidore of Seville worked to preserve classical learning through translation and compilation. The last Latin scholar trained in Greek and Greek philosophy, Boethius was especially important as the forerunner of the high-medieval philosophers who unified faith and reason.  Other transmitters, including Alcuin of York and Einhard, helped advance the Carolingian Renaissance, during which Charlemagne promoted Latin education for clerics and administrators and the preparation of reliable sacred texts.  Through such enterprises, this movement prepared the ground for the Twelfth-Century Awakening.

Early medieval literature explored both secular and sacred themes, and much of it was written in vernacular languages.  The Welsh Mabinogion compiled Celtic British mythological tales and provided the source for the later Arthurian legends.  Irish lyric poetry drew upon classical models to explore themes of love and nature.  However, the prose epic cycles of Ulster and Leinster were entirely unique in their narration of heroic deeds.  Based on some historical events, the Old-English Beowulf explores the Germanic heroic ethos, representing it in a somewhat Christianized form.  Christian themes appear in the work of a few authors, including the nuns Brigid, an Irish woman who wrote devotional poems, and Hroswitha of Gandersheim, whose dramas developed strong Christian heroines and presented the Virgin Mary as a model of womanhood.

Early medieval art fused Celtic, Germanic, and Greco-Roman elements, a process that culminated with the great Ottonian works.  Illuminated manuscripts, including the Lindisfarne Gospels and the Book of Kells, include intricate designs based on ornamental Germanic and Celtic art.  The Carolingian Gospel Book of Charlemagne features a portrait of St. Matthew based on classical models.  Charlemagne's Palatine Chapel employs the Greco-Roman centralized plan and an exterior westwork, a German invention that became standard for medieval churches.  The Ottonian abbey church of St. Michael at Hildesheim includes a large westwork and was built according to the basilica plan, as was most European churches.  Other innovations include a raised western choir to accommodate a crypt and bronze doors with panels illustrating biblical stories, the figures of which anticipate the greater realism of later medieval sculpture.

Europe was the third civilization based on religion to emerge after Rome.  Blending Christian, Germanic, and Greco-Roman elements, Europe developed a distinct culture with the church as its central institution and Latin Christianity its unifying world view.  Though Byzantine and Islamic civilization outstripped European during much of the Middle Ages, Europe eventually took the lead in shaping the modern world.