The media through which power was expressed in the early middle ages changed in many and various ways. Before Charlemagne, in the Merovingian era, power was expressed through use of violence. In the time of Clovis, for instance, he would express power over those in his sphere simply by overtaking and violating an area or a people. Clovis’ key contribution to the ages, aside from wonderful examples of how to deceive your neighbors and kin, was to convert a large portion of Europe to Roman Catholicism as opposed to various heresies that had been spreading through Western Europe at the time. The conversion of Europe is important in that it paves the way for a few centuries of religious uniformity, and as the Church was about the only place learning was preserved in Merovingian times, this was central in the maintenance of knowledge during the troubled years to follow. As was the popular trend for rulers of large amounts of territory, Clovis dictated many of his commands to scribes. These scribes used the crude Merovingian script, among others, to record the commands of the King. Clovis word was law where he was, or where there was literacy and knowledge of the hand used to write his orders. Clovis was succeeded by four sons who carved up their father’s kingdom into four territories.
	This began a period of intense infighting that caused massive disruption of life and learning in Medieval Europe, wherein power was only expressed in the struggle for more power between increasingly irrelevant Merovingian monarchs. This was only put to an end when Charles Martel finally took control of all of the Frankish houses. It was the security established under Charles and his decedents that allowed for state bureaucracy to be developed and allowed power to be expressed through established means such as standard written laws.
	At the time of Clovis, the political culture of Europe was a shambles. Feudalism and fratricide fomented great political instability, and caused separation between the various states of Gaul. This instability and separation resulted in a decline in education and dissemination of the products of culture, which is evidenced by the multifarious forms of scripts and the bastardization of Latin language and grammar within many of the manuscripts of the time. In short, at this time, the exchange of information and culture was a severely wounded animal.

Created with Stone Design's Create(r) at 2001-10-10 17:00:08 -0500