Romano-Germanic Culture - Medieval Aristocracy

Medieval Aristocracy

With a renewed close attention to the history and literature of ancient Rome in the 12th century, the medieval aristocracy saw itself mirrored in the accounts of ancient Roman nobility. Some made doubtful claims to direct descent from Roman aristocracy.

In the 19th century German and French medievalists worried about the origins of the great medieval families. Did the great families descend from the aristocracy of the Roman Empire or from the barbarian chieftains who invaded the Roman Empire between 400 and 600? Did the families originate in the Latin or Germanic world? Both it seems. Medieval Western Europe was an amalgam of Roman and 'Barbarian' bloodlines. The cultural and genetic influence of the Visigoths, Franks, et al. is readily apparent in the socio-cultural and political framework of Medieval Europe and in the Germanic physiological features of Italians of Lombardy (Lombards), the Dutch (Salian Franks) and even the English (Angles, Saxons, Jutes), to name a few. In spite of this the legacy of Rome, both social-cultural and genetic pervaded every aspect of Medieval society - this was of course greatly assisted by the medieval Church.

Beginning in the 19th century scholars such as Nikolay Yakovlevich Danilevsky and other pan-Slavism and Slavophile writers have used the term to distinguish eastern and western Europe, or Slavic-Russian culture as oppose to Romano-Germanic culture. The earliest mentions of these ideas arose when the Hellenic Byzantine east made attempts to distinguish itself from the Latin west during the times of the Roman Empire.