Class 5: Vikings, Slavers, Lawgivers: The Kyiv State (2)
that we'll be talking about next lecture,
that was an acceptable answer
all the way until the 14th century.
They did much more enslaving
than people did, enslaving of their people.
They stayed pagans for a very long time.
It worked for them.
But what I mean by the math is that Christians
are not supposed to enslave Christians.
Muslims are not supposed to enslave Muslims.
When Christian and Muslim states fight,
they'll do exchanges and so on.
But so long as you're a pagan,
you're fair game for everyone.
And so territorially,
as Christianity spreads into Europe,
there are more and more of them,
and fewer and fewer of you, right?
So every time some other state converts
to Christianity, the math is getting worse
for you as a pagan.
There are more and more situations
where you can be enslaved,
and fewer and fewer situations
where you're gonna find it practicable
to enslave other people.
It's just kind of a general logic.
Okay, I realize that's a strange answer
to the question of what is Christianity,
but what is Christianity
is fundamentally a way of joining a Christian order
of states in which you're not supposed
to enslave the other people,
who are also subjects of a Christian order of state.
More specifically, Christianity means
these two varieties of Christianity.
So when I say that Christianity is a power
and that it brings with it recognition,
okay, recognition by whom?
Recognition by the Franks
coming from the west,
or recognition from the Byzantines
coming from the south?
As you know, the Franks and the Byzantines
have two different accounts of what happened
to the Roman Empire.
It fell, and we rebuilt it.
Very beautiful. That's the Franks.
Or it never fell. We are it.
Also very beautiful.
That's the Byzantines.
So these are two relationships
to the classical world, but more importantly,
these are two powers
that are moving into Eastern Europe.
The Franks, so let's get some more detail about this.
The great leader of the Franks.
So this is not a course in French history,
but you'll find that we have to talk about
what the French, 'cause France, frankly,
was very important, okay?
So we will keep coming back to things
that happened in what's now France and Germany
because France and Germany are very important.
The turning point here,
the coronation of Charlemagne
as king of the Franks on Christmas Day
of the year 800.
Very easy to.
He calls it the.
(indistinct)
He calls it the restoration of empire.
Christmas Day, 800.
Charlemagne just means Charles the Great.
And incidentally, the word Charles.
So there's now another king called Charles, right?
Am I up on my news?
So the word Charles
in Slavic languages.
Well, how do you say like Charles
in a Slavic language?
Any Slavic language.
Hm? - Karel.
- Karel. Karel is good.
Okay, so that name Charles
becomes the Slavic word,
or a Slavic word, for king,
which is, I mean, that's kind of impressive, right?
Like, I mean, that's the sort of thing,
like if you were a rapper,
you would want your name to become
the word for king, right?
And I'm just gonna say now,
no rapper is ever going to achieve that, right?
I mean, no rapper is ever gonna outdo Charlemagne
on this front, I don't think.
Okay.
I mean, I'm just, I'm happy to have
that prediction on tape.
So Charles, in French,
Charles, Charles, becomes Karl
or Karol in Slavic languages,
which is the word for king.
In Polish, it's Karol.
Ukrainian, Karl.
So the very idea of kingship
is coming from this kingdom
of the Franks established in 800.
And it is a new model state.
It's the model state
which is then going to prevail in Europe,
very importantly, where the king accepts
that he is a Christian ruler,
and he accepts, for example,
that he can be crowned by a pope,
but he's not subordinate to the pope.
Whereas in the south, in Byzantium,
the idea of kingship is going to be very different.
The idea is that
the secular ruler and the religious power
are very much in alignment.
We'll return to that.
So the word for ruler in much of Eastern Europe
is czar, which comes from Caesar, right,
which comes from Rome.
That's the Byzantine tradition.
So the very words that you have
for the supreme leader in a political system
are coming from these two rival powers.
Okay, so what can we say about the south?
We've already said a lot of it.
Byzantium, the Byzantine empire.
Capital in Constantinople,
which is today Istanbul.
There's a song by They Might Be Giants about that,
which I'm sure those of you who are into oldies know.
It's been the capital of the Roman Empire
since the 4th century.
From the point of view of Byzantium,
there's an unbroken succession
of legitimate Roman emperors
the entire time.
They refer to themselves as the Romans.
They do so speaking Greek.
That's Byzantium.
That city, Constantinople,
is unparalleled in the Europe of the time.
It's 10, 20, 30 times bigger than.
It's 30 times bigger than Paris.
You know, we don't know exactly how big,
but maybe something like a million people.
A tremendous scale of a city for the time.
And gloriously beautiful in a way
which no European city
can vaguely think of rivaling.
And still worth a visit, by the way.
Still lovely, Istanbul.
Worth a visit.
I was there on my honeymoon.
It was worth it. Okay.
So the differences between the Franks
and the Byzantines.
We've listed several of them.
Two claims to the Roman inheritance, right?
Two varieties of Christianity,
although the theology's not so important.
Two different relationships between state
and secular power, where in Byzantium,
state and, sorry, state and religious power,
state and spiritual power
are much more carefully lined up.
Two relationships between lords and vassals.
In the Frankish political tradition,
the vassals are gonna be lined up
in something which we think of as a feudal system,
where they have the right to property
and have a certain amount of autonomy.
That is going to be less true in Byzantium.
But both of them are in Europe,
and both of them are in a Europe
which is pushing into the pagan world.
There are the Scandinavians to be converted,
there are the Celts to be converted
and there are the Slavs to be converted.
The Celts.
The Celts, you know, the Scots,
the Irish, they're out of reach of Byzantium.
The Scandinavians, it turns out,
are also out of reach of Byzantium,
except for the Scandinavians who travel to Kyiv,
which we're gonna get to,
but the Slavs are not out of reach.
And the Slavs are the biggest group,
the Slavs are the biggest prize,
and the Slavs are an object
of direct and explicit competition
between these two powers.
Byzantium is already there,
with its missionary activity.
We mentioned Cyril and Methodius.
That's an example of missionary activity from Byzantium.
The Franks set up an archbishopric
in the German city of Magdeburg
in 962.
And that is a kind of outpost
of missionary activity.
So when you think of these archbishoprics.
So the way that the Christian Church in the West
is set up, there are bishops, and the bishop
of Rome is the highest bishop,
and he's known as the pope, right?
Underneath the pope, there are archbishops,
who have territory.
Underneath the archbishops, there are bishops,
and they have territory.
Underneath the bishops, there are priests,
and the priests have territory.
And that territory is known as a parish.
It's all beautifully organized.
But when you think of these archbishoprics,
you should be thinking of imperial expansion, too.
Magdeburg is about imperial expansion to the west.
And Bremen, by the way,
is about imperial expansion to the north.
So when the German speakers are trying to convert
the Scandinavians, they're doing it from Bremen.
In the meantime, people are also trying to convert
the Scandinavians from England.
But the Scandinavians are out of reach.
I just mentioned this as another example.
This is also a nice place to visit.
The Scandinavians are out of reach, but the Slavs are not.
Okay.
This all hooks together.
It all connects when everyone.
And, you know, if you try to think, like,
what is the one thing which causes this?
Things are always connecting, right?
So if I say, "What does religion have to do with it?"
Well, religion has to do with creating a state,
but it also has to do with not being enslaved,
and eventually, it has to do with what people
actually believe, and these things are all connected.
If I say, at this part of the lecture,
"What do the Vikings have to do with it?"
The Vikings come in
to the history of both the Franks
and the Byzantines, right?
Because this period that we're talking about
is the Viking age.
The Viking age begins in 793.
That's when the Vikings first make themselves known.
And if you say the Viking age,
it's like now we cut
to a completely different movie, right?
We forget everything else.
It's just the wooden ships
with their beautiful brows and the burly men
and the beards and the horns
and the throwing the spears over the enemy,
which probably is a myth, and the berserker thing,
which is also probably a myth.
But we're cutting to a completely different story, right?
And that's what we can't do,
because the Viking age is happening simultaneously
with the expansion of the Franks
and with the expansion of the Byzantines,
and it's related to these two things.
It is the expansion of the Franks
which probably provokes the Vikings
to test out their own naval technology
by plundering the Franks. (laughs)
And then, realizing they can do this,
they can get down rivers,
they can do interesting things,
they can also go out to sea and do interesting things.
So the Vikings are probably best understood
as a reaction to Charlemagne.
And in their reaction,
as they realize that there are an awful lot
of rivers they could go down in river in Europe,
and there's an awful lot that could be plundered,
or looking at it more sympathetically,
trade routes to be established,
this brings them to Eastern Europe
and to Byzantium.
And I know you guys are wondering why
I keep obsessing about the mountains
and the rivers and all these things
that don't matter anymore because the internet,
I know, but you can't figure out
what the Vikings are up to
without knowing where the rivers are.
The Vikings are trying to get from north to south,
because they're trying to make a huge amount of money.
There's a lot of silver down there with the Arabs,
and they can get that silver,
and they can bury it in big hoards,
which is what they like to do, for mysterious reasons.
It's really great for archeologists and for historians,
because we can say, "Okay, look,
"here is a hoard of coins,
"which were clearly minted
"in an Arab-speaking place at this time.
"But look, it's in Northwestern Russia."
And how do we explain that?
And we explain it with the Vikings, right?
So the Vikings are trying to make a lot of money
by trading from north to south.
And they do that with their technology,
which is the boat,
but they have to find a way, right?
So they try to get down with the Volga,
which doesn't work.
They try to get down with the Dnipro,
which does work, right, the river which runs
through the middle of Ukraine.
They eventually find their way down
and they eventually start to trade.
But this means that our Vikings, these Vikings,
who are known as the Rus',
these Vikings come into contact
with Byzantium.
They come into contact with Byzantium, right?
Byzantium is the big economic
