LO-1 notes

Tonight’s Western Civilization assignment is to read and take notes on Ch. 10 LO-1. Here are my notes. The Frankish Kingdom started to fall apart in 700 A.D. Eventually, a man named Charles Martel (Charles the Hammer) won the throne in a civil war. This was the start of the Carolingian dynasty. Anyway, the Carolingian rebuilt the Frankish kingdom. Frankish rulers centered on rewarding followers (giving them land) and crushing opponents (conquering enemies). When it came to land distribution, the Franks never distributed gave out their own land because it was their source of wealth and power. Often, rulers would give out conquered land, or another source in Charles the Hammer’s case, that land was from the Church. However, he mostly took from noble families that he mistrusted. He thought, “It’s fine if I take land from people who are going to use it to oppose me.” All the influential people had sworn loyalty to the Merovingian descendants of Clovis, so it was difficult to attain any legal power. This lead to an alliance between the Frankish kings and the pope, since the pope now has the ability to transfer royal power. After Pepin, Charlemagne was next in line. His name meant “Charles the Great.” His rule lasted for 46 years. Charlemagne built an empire and he also gained the power to appoint bishops. Charlemagne ruled his empire by breaking it up into “counties” which were ruled by “counts.” A count was a representative of the king in his county. Eventually and inevitably, his empire was conquered by the Vikings or “Norsemen” (men of the North) as they called them.    

test questions

For the 1^st half of Western Civilization today, we were asked to brainstorm questions for the test. Here are mine:

1)      Which of the following are NOT one of the problems we discussed that was wrong with the Roman Empire?

A.      Disease

B.      Too many poor people

C.      Corrupt government

D.      Trouble defending the outer edges of the empire

2)      Name and describe one of Diocletian’s reforms. (At least 3 sentences)

One of Diocletian’s reformations was increasing the size of the Military. Diocletian recruited so many new soldiers, that the size of the military increased by 33%. He was able to get these numbers by recruiting from conquered barbarians.

OR

One of Diocletian’s reformations was dividing the Roman Empire into provinces. He then assigned a separate ruler, or governor, to be in charge of collecting taxes and other governmental functions for that area. This meant that they were more efficient at gathering the money for taxes since there were local people that the people knew to gather it. Also, because of this reform, the number of officials was 10 times the amount that Caesar Augustus had.

3)      How many Edicts were published by Diocletian?

A.      2

B.      12

C.      7

D.      6

E.       4

4)      When was the 1^st Edict that Diocletian made published.

A.      284 A.D.

B.      303 A.D.

C.      300 A.D.

D.      44 B.C.

Diocletian and Constantine

SHEESH! Why is it, that humans are always horrible to people who are different from them! I mean REALLY! Today we learn about how Diocletian ordered that any Christian churches within the Empire could be razed and that Christian MUST worship the Roman gods. On top of that, he even publically tortured a Christian by tying them up raising them up, then scourging him with a multi-ended whip with tacks on the end. Then more than a millennia later, the Nazis come along and try to wipe Judaism off the face of the planet! Fortunately, there are plenty of people in this world that actually have some sense in them. For example, Constantine took the throne and before the Battle of Milvian Bridge, he saw a vision of a cross with the words “in this you will conquer.” AND HE DID!!! Not only that, but after getting these great results from praying to God, he passed the Edict of Milan. This stated that Christians could publically worship and if anybody had their land taken away from them by Diocletian, they would be given it back. Basically Constantine was like “He da man!”

More Christian Notes

More notes were taken today in Western Civilization, however these notes were more focused on the Fall of Rome. However, the notes could have been on what we discussed yesterday if the notes were literally taken. In any case, we took notes on the start of the end of the Roman Empire. Mr. Schick started off by listing some of the 99 problems that arose after and at the end of the Pax Romana. Some of these problems were that disease was spreading, it was difficult to defend the outer borders of the empire, and primarily there were just too many poor people. Then came Diocletian. Diocletian was Rome’s “knight in shining armor,” meaning he had some brilliant reforms in mind. Some of his reformations included increasing the army size by 33% and dividing up the empire into provinces to make ruling it more manageable. Also, under his rule, there were 20,000 officials working for the government (10*the amount there was under Augustus). We were also asked to find out what Diocletian did to the Christians and What Constantine’s connection was to Christianity. The answer to question 1 is that Diocletian made laws that banned Christianity. If you were found guilty of this crime, then your sentence was either imprisonment or execution. Question 2’s answer is that Constantine was the ruler that made Christianity legal due to his personal preference of the religion.

Christianity Notes

Now that we are done with Rome, it is time to move on to Christianity. We will only be learning one section of this chapter, though. Anyway, LO-2 centers on Jesus. What we know about his life, we know from the Gospels (Who da thought!). In case you were unaware, and did not learn anything in Religion class, gospel means “good news.” These 4 books in the Bible focus on Jesus’s birth, teachings, death, and resurrection. Jesus grew up in a Jewish family, and was arguing religion in the temple. An apostle was one of Jesus’ followers and messengers of his teachings. The other important person in the section, is Paul. Paul (originally named Saul) started out persecuting Christians, but then he had a vision on the road to Damascus. In this vision, Jesus told him to stop persecuting him and start preaching about him. Anyway, Paul did as he was told 3 days after this vision, as he was blinded by the light in the vision. Vocab word number 2 is predestination. This refers to God deciding who is saved and who is not.

Final Rome Test

TEST!!!! BUT I DIDN’T STUDY!!!!! Actually, I did. Today Mr. Schick collected our papers, gave us about ten minutes to study, and then handed out the test. The test was 20 questions long, or one could say that it was 8 ½ inches long, since that is how long the piece of paper was. The test itself was not that diff... I mean easy. Mr. Schick was going to say that the test was easy, but he changed his mind because he didn’t want to jinx it and cause half the class to fail like what happened with the last test. Instead, he told us that the test was super difficult. After the test, we checked the blog to see what the homework was on like we usually do. For Chapter 9, we are going to be skipping LO-1 and going straight to LO-2, and then we are going to move on to Chapter 10: The Medieval Era, dun, dun, dun, dun.    

Research Time!

Today in West Civ., we were given our exact expectations for the research paper. Although, in my opinion it is not even really a proper research paper. This is because Mr. Schick told us that we don’t even need to include a works cited page because he is giving us our main sources of information, so he did not feel like it was necessary. After we got our formal instructions, we were set loose to begin work on our papers. My paper is probably going to include most of the topics in the book except for maybe the section on writers and philosophers. The due date for our research papers is Monday at the start of class, if we turn it in any later, submit it to our BLOG, or email it to him, it is late. Thus, he is expecting us to hand him a hard copy of the paper like we are supposed to. After we hand in our paper, Mr. Schick will hand us our test in exchange.