Dark+Age

·The Goths and Vandals were only the first of many waves of invaders that flooded Western Europe. Some lived only for war and pillage and disdained Roman ways. Others admired Rome and wished to become its heirs. "A poor Roman plays the Goth, a rich Goth the Roman" said King [|Theodoric] of the Ostrogoths. ·The Romans were trinitarian Christians, the disciplined subjects of a long-established bureaucratic empire. The Germanic peoples knew little of cities, money, or writing. They valued freedom above all else. They were recent converts to [|Arian] Christianity and were thus heretics to the churchmen of the empire. ·The era of the migrations has historically been termed the "[|Dark Ages]" by some Western European historians, and as [|Völkerwanderung], or "wandering of the peoples", by German historians. The term Dark Ages has fallen from favour since the Second World War, partly to avoid the entrenched stereotypes associated with the phrase, but also because more recent research and archaeological findings from the period challenge old notions of backwardness in the arts, technology, political and social organizations. ·The earlier settled population was often, but not always, left intact. Whereas the peoples of France, Italy, and Spain continued to speak dialects of Latin, the smaller Roman-era population of Britain disappeared with barely a trace, displaced by the Anglo-Saxons. The new peoples greatly altered established society, including law, culture, religion, and patterns of property ownership.