Complete the account of the religious division between the Germanic kingdoms and their subjects.
Most Germanic ruling groups were ______, a position condemned at the Council of ______ in 325, while the populations they governed were Nicene. ______ broke the pattern by converting directly to Nicene Christianity, which turned the Gallo-Roman ______ from rivals into allies.
Word bank: Arian · Nicaea · Clovis · bishops · Manichaean · monks
Hints
- The disputed question was whether the Son was equal to or subordinate to the Father.
- The Frankish king who took the Nicene side won the alliance of the existing church hierarchy.
Show the answer
Most Germanic ruling groups were Arian, a position condemned at the Council of Nicaea in 325, while the populations they governed were Nicene. Clovis broke the pattern by converting directly to Nicene Christianity, which turned the Gallo-Roman bishops from rivals into allies.
Arianism is what separated ruler from ruled almost everywhere else, and it made every Visigothic or Vandal king a heretic in his subjects’ eyes. Clovis skipped that problem entirely, and the bishops, who were also the surviving administrative class, became the Frankish monarchy’s civil service.
Practise Late Antiquity and the Germanic Kingdoms
The app has 3 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. History II is free to start.
More questions on Late Antiquity and the Germanic Kingdoms
- Arrange these turning points in the western empire’s dissolution, earliest first.
- Odoacer deposed the last western emperor in 476 and sent the imperial insignia to Constantinople rather than…
- Germanic settlements arose through negotiated accommodation rather than wholesale external destruction. What…
- The Germanic successor kingdoms discarded Roman law and Roman administration and governed by custom alone.
- Sort each piece of evidence by whether it supports CONTINUITY across the fifth century or a genuine material…
- In which year was Romulus Augustulus deposed, the date conventionally given for the fall of the western Roman…
- Which claims about the "fall versus transformation" debate are defensible on the evidence?
- Match each Germanic kingdom to the territory it came to hold.
- At Adrianople in 378 the eastern emperor Valens was killed by Gothic forces the empire had itself admitted…
- Clovis converted to Nicene rather than Arian Christianity, unlike almost every other Germanic king of his…
- Arrange the stages by which a Germanic war-band typically became a territorial kingdom.