Pg. 151

• the two centuries after the fall of Rome were a time of turmoil in Europe that would continue for 500 years

• half a millennium that counts as the "early" part of the Middle Ages. As with the upheaval of the early middle ages ended not in a collapse of civilization but in its renewal, and the first two early medieval centuries set the patterns from how this renewal would later take place in western and eastern Europe.

• In the Germanic kingdoms that had taken over the western half of the Roman Empire, Roman institutions gradually stopped working, cities ceased to be centers of trade and social life, and warfare became more important than education and culture in the lives of the upper-class

• By 700, the emperors in the eastern capital, Constantinople, ruled only Anatolia and a few patches of land in Europe, and their state had become more Greek than Roman, to mark the difference, the remaining empire is today usually called by its capital's original Greek name Byzantium

• Byzantium was still a powerful state and a center of Christianity and Greek culture

• Chronology

• 5th century- Angles and saxons invade Britain

• 486- Clovis leads Frankish confederacy against Romans and rival Germanic invaders in Gaul

• 527-565- Reign of Emperor Justinian in the Eastern empire

• 542- Plague hits Egypt, then spreads throughout the Mediterranean life and much of western Europe

• 568- Lombard's conquer most of northern Italy 

• 570-632- Life of Muhammad 

• 595- Missionaries sent by the people begin to convert the pagans of England

• 711- Muslim invasion of Spain

• 800- Slaves occupy almost all of eastern Europe