yet seen.When the Germans finally came to dominate Western Europe there was virtually no academics or literacy. The historical record from this point is cloudy. The main source of knowledge comes from the church and its scribe monks. This obviously gives their interpretation of the events of the time a less than secular point of view. The church in fact quickly assumed the reins of a European political vacuum. Churches and monasteries usually were the only centers of knowledge and trade and of community. Eventually a reorganization of the political order developed locally with feudalism. It was a cheap, local and efficient from of government. It didn’t offer much more than order and protection from invading barbarians by creating a system of lord and vassal military relationships for defense. Economically, the majority of people were serfs bound to their land. The lords owned the courts of justice.This new stability allowed for the opportunity of savvy individuals to carve out the first semblances of a state since ancient Rome, however, they wouldn’t even come close to its sophistication. The Carolingian Empire under Charles Martel, Charlemagne, was the most prominent. IT however, was just an extension of the feudal notion of military alliances in the lord vassal arrangement, and remained impoverished. The peoples still remained loyal to their local leaders. Charlemagne, however, became an exemplar to future European state builders. The Carolingian dynasty was short-lived due to an ineffective German tradition of splitting the inheritance and, therefore, the empire among Charlemagne’s three sons who soon lost influence. However, the die was cast, a future German state would later form with almost the exacting borders as the Carolingian Empire. The real centers of western civilization that flourished were in the Byzantine Empire, and later in the Arab Caliphates. They remained centers of high culture ...
