Germanic kingdoms of Western Europe

Today in class we went over another power point. Here are some of my notes:

• The Germanic barbarians. 
• Barbarians warlords and their families who assimilated into Roman culture became the "nobles" or aristocrats of medieval Europe.
• Germanic tribes who ruled former Roman lands sought to conquer and assimilate other barbarians people who lived beyond the frontiers and were still pagans.
• No more Christians persecuted, they were in power, and future emperors were Christians. 
• The Angles and Saxons (from Denmark and northwestern Germany) invaded Britain and assimilated the native Britons. 
• Most of the Anglo-Saxons were converted to Christianity in the seventh century. 
• The most powerful Germanic tribe was the Franks.
• But the real power lay with the "mayors of the palace" who were royal officials and noble themselves. 
• from "Eastern Empire" to "Byzantium" 
• The Eastern Roman Empire continued on while the west was now divided up by the barbarian tribes.
• When the emperor Justinian came to power in 527, he decided to reunite the entire Roman Empire by re-conquering the western territories.
• Justinian succeeded for a time, but the land he re took was soon conquered by new barbarian tribes and a massive plague depopulated much of the west.
• Plague killed barbarians, Romans, people from other empires and a lot of things did not happen.
• Smaller army.
• Greek Byzantine emperors saw themselves as Roman emperors and the heads of the Christian church.
• Byzantines preserved Greco-Roman art, architecture  philosophy and writing despite much of it being non Christian.
• Justinian built the massive dome Hagia Sophia ("Holy Wisdom") in Constantinople considered to by the most glorious church on earth at the time. 
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