Chapter 7 Late Antiquity,

350–600

Hagia SophiaHagia Sophia (“Holy Wisdom”), built by the emperor Justinian in the sixth century, was the largest Christian cathedral in the world for a thousand years. After Constantinople was conquered by the Ottoman Turks in 1453, it became a mosque, and today is a museum.

Sadea Editore

The empress Theodora shown with the halo—symbolic of power in Eastern art.

The empress Theodora shown with the halo—symbolic of power in Eastern art.

Scala/Art Resource, NY

Holding his Rule in his left hand, the seated and cowled patriarch of Western monasticism blesses a monk with his right hand. His monastery, Monte Cassino, is in the background.

Saint Benedict

Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana

Heaven in Augustine’s City of GodHeavenly Jerusalem, from a twelfth-century Czech illuminated manuscript of Augustine’s City of God. Augustine’s writings were copied and recopied for many centuries in all parts of Europe, and they remained extremely influential. In this copy, the Czech king Wenzeslas and his grandmother are portrayed in the lower right corner; they probably paid for the manuscript.

Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY

In this sixth-century ivory carving, two men in a wagon, accompanied by a procession of people holding candles, carry a relic casket to a church under construction. Workers are putting tiles on the church roof. New churches often received holy items when they were dedicated, and processions were common ways in which people expressed community devotion.

Procession to a New Church

Amt fuer kirchliche Denmalpflege. Foto: Ann Muenchew

This map shows the migrations of various barbarian groups in late antiquity and can be used to answer the following questions:•1 The map has no political boundaries. What does this suggest about the impact of barbarian migrations on political structures?•2 Human migration is caused by a combination of push factors—circumstances that lead people to leave a place—and pull factors— things that attract people to a new location. Based on the information in this and earlier chapters, what push and pull factors might have shaped the migration patterns you see on the map?•3 The movements of barbarian peoples used to be labeled “invasions” and are now usually described as “migrations.” How do the dates on the map support the newer understanding of these movements?

The Barbarian Migrations

Anglo-Saxon EnglandThe seven kingdoms of the Heptarchy—Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia, Essex, Kent, Sussex, and Wessex—dominated but did not subsume Britain. Scotland remained a Pict stronghold, while the Celts resisted invasion of their native Wales by Germanic tribes.

An eighth-century chest made of whalebone depicting warriors, other human figures, and a horse, with a border of runic letters. This chest tells a story in both pictures and words. The runes are one of the varieties from the British Isles, from a time and place in which the Latin alphabet was known as well. Runes and Latin letters were used side-by-side in some parts of northern Europe for centuries.

Runic Inscriptions

Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY