Early Middle Ages

QUESTION 1
Aristocrats during the early Middle Ages considered themselves more as partners rather than the subjects of their kings.
True
False

QUESTION 2
The kingdom of the Franks was the ancestor of both France and Germany.
True
False

QUESTION 3
The Synod of Whitby in 664 was called in order to iron-out the differences in the way that pagans would be treated by the church in its conversion doctrines. The Romans converted by the sword, giving potential converts the choice of conversion or decapitation, while the Celtic church followed a policy of peaceful conversions.

The Synod of Whitby mandated that peaceful methods be followed up if necessary by methods such as slow boiling or the popular 'water torture'.
True
False

QUESTION 4
Pope Gregory the Great (590-604) was unable to fill the power vacuum left by receding Byzantine forces, was unable to feed the desperately hungry Roman population during periods of famine or to comfort them through the dark years of plague and warfare as most were still pagan, and so laid the foundations for a very weak and pusillanimous medieval papacy.
True
False

QUESTION 5
The aristocratic lifestyle of the early Middle Ages focussed on study of the classics, sartorial display, romantic intrigue and riding to the hounds.
True
False

QUESTION 6
The real power in the Frankish kingdom was held by regional strongmen called dukes.
True
False

QUESTION 7
France and England are both named after Germanic tribes: Franks and Angles.
True
False

QUESTION 8
In the early Middle Ages, kings were considered the absolute source of law, which was no longer tribal tradition or custom, but was based entirely upon the sometimes cruel whims of each tribal chieftain.
True
False

QUESTION 9
In the early Middle Ages the peasantry of Europe gradually became Christian, as bishops founded parish churches in the villages of large estates and the faith gradually radiated into the countryside.
True
False

QUESTION 10
The main goal of members of the Frankish aristocracy was wealth and power.
True
False

QUESTION 11
Clovis the leader of the tribe of Salian Franks, converted to Christianity in the hopes that God would help him smite his enemies, and also with the expectation that the local Gallo-Roman aristocracy would support him, which they did.
True
False

QUESTION 12
Was it really possible to crown Charlemagne emperor in the year 800 because Byzantium was being ruled by a mere female?
True
False

QUESTION 13
The last Merovingian king was deposed by Pippin III in a conspiracy with Pope Zacharias who legitimized the overthrow of the last of the anointed kings of the Merovingian Dynasty, marking the first union of royal legitimacy and ecclesiastical sanction in European history.
True
False

QUESTION 14
In the sixth and seventh centuries, a plague killed as much as one-third of Europe's population.
True
False

QUESTION 15
England was transformed into Britain, the 'land of the Britons' by an invasion of Celtic tribes from Brittany, and so the Roman traditional urban life of exploitation and brutality was replaced by the values of peace, quietude and Irish monastic Christianity.
True
False

QUESTION 16
Emperor Charlemagne wanted to replace pagan art forms with Christian representational art so that he could use the images to frighten and terrorize pagans into converting.
True
False

QUESTION 17
In 613, in Visigothic Spain, all Jews were commanded either to accept Christian baptism or leave the kingdom, and Jews were often happy in 711 when Muslims conquered the Visigothic kingdom and brought some measure of religious toleration.
True
False

QUESTION 18
By the ninth century, the basic unit of Western economy was the large Roman latifundia that dotted the European landscape, surrounded by walls and overpopulated by immense numbers of the descendants of slaves, and ruled over by armed comes and their armed and violent retinue of tonsured monastics.
True
False

QUESTION 19
Cluniac monks thought of themselves as God's spiritual 'shock troops' and so they fought against evil, with their prayers as their armed cousins did with their swords.
True
False

QUESTION 20
During the late ninth and tenth centuries, all the powers of government, the courts and military force became the private possession of the Catholic Church that now had absolute spiritual and physical coercive power over all levels of society, especially kings who ruled with the permission and blessing of the Pope.
True
False