Peter and Paul, in a mosaic from Ravenna (500s AD) In the later Roman Empire and the Middle Ages, the Pope was the leader of the Catholic Church. Whenever there was a question [...]
St. Mark's Cathedral in Venice, Italy (about 1100 AD) During the fall of the Roman Empire, in the 400s AD, people who lived along the north-east coast of Italy didn't feel safe. Central [...]
Matilda of Canossa (Vatican Museum) Northern Italy around 1000 AD By 1000 AD, the invading Lombards had married local rich men and women of Italy. They mixed their families together. A few rich families, [...]
Early Middle Ages: Interior of Hagia Sophia When is the Early Middle Ages? The Early Middle Ages comes after the fall of Rome, about 400 AD. But all the way through the [...]
A Viking ship. Viking trade took the Vikings all over the world. Who were the Vikings? The Vikings were Indo-European people from Scandinavia (modern Denmark, Norway and Sweden). Around the 400s AD the Vikings started to [...]
The Lombards: a Lombard Christian altar (700s AD) (University of Alabama) Where did the Lombards come from? In 568 AD, a Turkic people, the Avars, pushed the Indo-European Lombards out of their home in Central [...]
Who was Charlemagne? This is Charlemagne, or possibly his grandson (now in the Louvre Museum) What's Charlemagne's real name? Charlemagne's name is really Charles le Magne, or Charles the Great. [...]
Grasslands of Central Asia - the steppe homeland of the Avars Ruled by the Rouran The Avars were a mostly Turkic group of people. We first hear of them living [...]
Leo the Isaurian (ca. 720 AD, Louvre museum, Paris) Anastasius II When Justinian II's assassin Philippicus turned out to be a worthless party animal, other Roman officials killed him. In 713 [...]
Mu'awiya on a Sassanian-style coin When Heraclius died in 641 AD, his sons Heraclonas and Heraclius Constantine took over as Byzantine emperors, ruling together. They only lasted a few years. Heraclius Constantine [...]
