The Perils of Presentism in Historical Analysis

The study of early medieval history has long suffered from what might be termed the “Monday morning quarterback” approach – the tendency to judge past societies through the moral lens of modern values. This retrospective moralizing fundamentally distorts our understanding of periods like the early Middle Ages (roughly 400-1000 CE), which operated under entirely different cultural and social paradigms than our contemporary world.

Modern concepts such as liberalism, secularism, tolerance, and even our particular forms of humor and interest in others’ perspectives simply did not exist in the early medieval period. While traces of some values might be detected in embryonic forms, the fundamental worldview of early medieval people differed radically from our own. Their humor, for instance, largely revolved around mocking imitation or crude puns that would likely offend modern sensibilities. Their social structures rested on assumptions about natural hierarchy that contemporary society would find abhorrent.

The Social Fabric of Early Medieval Europe

Early medieval societies universally accepted social stratification as natural and inevitable. Nearly all writers from this period – including those adhering to the egalitarian principles found in the New Testament or Quran – maintained that nobility conferred inherent moral superiority. These authors themselves typically came from aristocratic backgrounds, reinforcing this worldview. Servility from lower classes toward their superiors and the conscious oppression of inferiors by elites were not just accepted but often celebrated as virtues.

Gender hierarchies were equally entrenched, with men universally regarded as naturally superior to women. While modern racism based on biological essentialism didn’t exist in its current form, early medieval societies practiced a generalized chauvinism that viewed foreign peoples as inferior and intellectually deficient. These fundamental differences in social organization and worldview make it challenging for modern historians to find early medieval figures they might admire. Only a handful – Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Gregory the Great, Einhard, perhaps Braulio of Zaragoza, and Augustine (more for his intellectual brilliance than any particular tolerance) – emerge as potentially sympathetic figures to contemporary sensibilities.

Six Pivotal Transitions in Early Medieval Europe

### The Fall of the Western Roman Empire

The dissolution of Western Roman imperial structures in the 5th century represents the first and most significant transition. Earlier historians often moralized this as the “end of classical civilization,” while recent scholarship emphasizes continuities in cultural and religious practices. However, significant changes did occur: the land tax system that funded Roman administration disappeared, economic unity across the western Mediterranean fractured, and aristocracies became more localized and generally poorer. The military aristocracy that emerged created political systems suited to their simpler realities, with political culture becoming increasingly militarized across Latin Europe.

### The Arab Conquests (636-651 CE)

In the East, the Arab conquests pushed Byzantium onto a different political trajectory – more centralized and militarized than before. The Umayyad Caliphate represented something entirely new, shifting political gravity eastward from the Mediterranean to Syria and later Iraq. While Eastern political structures maintained more continuity than the West experienced in the 5th century, the changes were more dramatic and, for contemporaries, often terrifying. Caliphs like Umar I and Uthman oversaw irreversible political and cultural transformations unmatched by any other figures of the period, including Charlemagne or 5th century conquerors like Gaiseric and Clovis.

### The Carolingian Moralization of Politics (780-880 CE)

The second major Western transition occurred in the cultural realm as Western Europe developed explicitly moralized political behavior. While Christian polities had moralizing traditions dating to late antiquity, the Carolingians created comprehensive political programs aimed at the religious salvation of entire populations. They established tighter partnerships between state and semi-autonomous churches that would define Western politics for centuries. Perhaps more significantly, they introduced the concept that kings should submit to moral supervision by churchmen – an innovation that would plague European rulers from Louis the Pious onward.

### The Fragmentation of the Carolingian World

The third Western transition involved not just the expected dissolution of Carolingian unity, but the collapse of public power structures in West Francia and Italy around 1000 CE. This marked the end of an era and ushered in fundamentally different political paradigms across much of Europe. Like the 5th century transition, this shift has been both exaggerated by catastrophe theorists and unduly minimized by continuity proponents.

### The Collapse of the Caliphate (Early 10th Century)

Parallel to Western developments, the Abbasid Caliphate’s disintegration reshaped the Islamic world. While successor states maintained many administrative structures, political fragmentation allowed Byzantium to emerge as the dominant regional power under Basil II – arguably Europe’s most powerful ruler until the Seljuk Turks’ arrival in the 11th century.

### Northern Political Development (10th Century)

Across northern Europe, from the Frankish-Byzantine borderlands to Scandinavia, stable political structures and social stratification emerged. Anglo-Saxon kings led this process in the 8th century, followed by Danes, Poles, Bohemians and Rus in the 10th. This permanent crystallization of royal authority and social hierarchy testifies to the enduring political models created by Carolingian and Byzantine rulers.

Structural Foundations of Early Medieval Societies

Three fundamental structures undergirded early medieval political systems across the regions studied:

### Wealth and Land

Power and wealth derived overwhelmingly from land control. The ability to extract rent or taxes from peasants determined one’s resources, military capacity, and political influence. Tax-based states like Byzantium and the Caliphate remained stronger than Western kingdoms where taxation had collapsed. Even in the West, kings grew wealthy through royal landholdings, and this wealth attracted elite supporters, creating self-reinforcing cycles of power consolidation.

### Institutionalized Power

Lasting power required more than land distribution – it needed institutionalization. Tax states maintained professional armies and bureaucracies that created stable career paths independent of personal loyalty to rulers. In the post-Roman West, while bureaucracies disappeared, elite hierarchies persisted through offices like counts and dukes. Carolingians enhanced this system by granting “honors” combining offices, lands, and ecclesiastical control. Regular assemblies – whether public meetings, church councils, or military musters – helped institutionalize political behavior even in large, decentralized realms like Francia.

### Public Culture

The Roman distinction between public and private spheres persisted in modified forms across early medieval societies. Byzantine and Islamic states maintained concepts of public space and functions funded by taxation. Western kingdoms preserved ideas of public spheres through royal properties, courts, officials, and assemblies. The incorporation of Germanic assembly traditions actually expanded concepts of public participation by theoretically connecting kings directly with all free men. This public political culture only weakened in 10th century West Francia and Italy, where lords began treating public powers as private property.

Conclusion: The End of an Era

The year 1000 serves as a conventional endpoint for the early Middle Ages, though this marker fits some regions better than others. It works well for West Francia and Al-Andalus, less so for Byzantium or England where Carolingian political patterns persisted longer. In Slavic and Scandinavian worlds, the late 10th century marked the emergence of stable states. This period’s conclusion is best understood through fundamental changes in political power concepts, as the last vestiges of Roman public traditions faded in Western Europe. The early Middle Ages present us with societies profoundly different from our own – not primitive or backward, but organized around entirely different principles. Understanding them requires setting aside modern moral frameworks while still recognizing their distinct historical realities. Only by doing so can we appreciate both the creativity of early medieval political solutions and the genuine strangeness of this distant world.