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The Roman Empire underwent a major transition as it lost the ability to maintain peace within its borders. The empire fragmented into three culturally distinct parts in which language, religion, and loyalties separated people. In the west, Germanic invaders established new kingdoms, converted to Christianity and blended their own culture with that of Romans now living under their rule. In the east, the Roman Empire persisted for approximately another thousand years, but Byzantium was centered upon Constantinople and began to develop different characteristics with time. The language changed to Greek, while Slavic tribes in the north and Latins in the west influenced the development of a new empire. Finally, in the desert of Arabia, a prophet founded a new religion, which would soon spread rapidly, conquering the eastern and western shores of the Mediterranean and most of the Iberian Peninsula. These three civilizations coexisted uneasily, and their differences and conflicts would destroy Roman unity and shape Europe's future. Learning ObjectivesIn Chapter 6, the students learn: how the Roman empire evolved into three separate parts, and that, rather than "falling," it was "transformed" about the nature, lifestyles, and character of the Germanic tribes about the influence of Roman and Christian culture on the Germanic tribes how the cultures of Rome, the Germanic tribes and Christianity combined to create early medieval culture that the weakening of central political authority opened the way for increasing secular power for bishops how the bishops of Rome successfully pressed their claims to primacy over the Christian church through the Petrine doctrine about the development and importance of Benedictine monasticism about the importance of Irish Christianity, especially in missionary and monastic work how the Franks' conversion to orthodox Christianity influenced medieval Gaul about the renascence of learning under the Ostrogothic leader Theodoric about the persistence of Arian Christianity how the eastern Roman, or Byzantine, empire grew under the rule of Justinian and Theodora about the origins, spread and development of Islam along with its contributions in science and mathematics why Christendom considered Islam a threat about the commonalities and disparities of belief among Judaism, Christianity, and Islam |