ABSTRACT
The Latin west stabilized politically for about a century (750-850) under the rule of the Carolingian dynasty. During that crucial period a civilization emerged in western Europe which differed enough from its Roman predecessor as well as from contemporary Byzantium and Islam as to be recognizably something new. Indeed, it has been called 'the First Europc'i ' The characteristic features of the new civilization are discernible by 800 and persisted for a long time. Europe had a new geographical focus. It was not centred on the Mediterranean, as .Roman civilization had been, but on the fertile plains which extended from southern England across northern France into Germany. It also had a new economic base. Whereas Rome, Byzantium and Islam were built on varying degrees of commercial activity, Europe was until the twelfth century an agricultural society in which cities, trade and manufacturing played a minor part. Its religious and intellectual core was Catholic Christianity, with the pope holding an important though not precisely defined position of religious pre-eminence. As heir to both the Roman and the Christian past, Europe had a sacred language, Latin, which was used by the elite in matters of religion, high culture and some governing activities.
