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120-689: The Leiden Willeram or Egmond Willeram , is the name given to a manuscript (UB Leiden, MS BPL 130) containing an Old Dutch version of the Old High German commentary on Song of Solomon by the German abbot Williram of Ebersberg . The translation, since 1597 in the Leiden University Library , was done at the end of the 11th century by a monk of the Abbey of Egmond in the present day Netherlands. The literary text would be seen as

240-441: A schwa ( /ə/ ). A short phrase from the gospel book of Munsterbilzen Abbey , written around 1130, still shows several unstressed vowels distinguished: That was a late monument, however, as the merging of all unstressed short vowels was already well underway by that time. Most likely, the difference was maintained only in spelling traditions, but it had been mostly lost in speech. With the introduction of new scribal traditions in

360-476: A North sea Germanic substrate . Linguists typically date this transition to around the 5th century. Old Dutch is divided into Old West Low Franconian and Old East Low Franconian ( Limburgian ); however, these varieties are very closely related, the divergence being that the latter shares more traits with neighboring historical forms of Central Franconian dialects such as Ripuarian and Moselle Franconian . While both forms of Low Franconian were instrumental to

480-597: A West Flemish monk in a convent in Rochester , England . For a long time, the sentence was commonly but erroneously considered to be the earliest in Dutch. However, it could be considered the oldest Dutch non-religious poetry. The text is usually considered a West Flemish dialect, but certain Ingvaeonic forms might be expected in any of the coastal dialects of Old English, Old Frisian, Old Saxon or Old Dutch. However,

600-488: A citadel. Former imperial capitals such as Cologne and Trier lived on in diminished form as administrative centres of the Franks . In Britain most towns and cities had been in decline, apart from a brief period of recovery during the fourth century, well before the withdrawal of Roman governors and garrisons but the process might well have stretched well into the fifth century. Historians emphasizing urban continuities with

720-411: A dialect continuum formed/existed between Old Dutch, Old Saxon and Old Frisian. Despite sharing some particular features, a number of disparities separate Old Saxon, Old Frisian, Old English and Old Dutch. One such difference is that Old Dutch used -a as its plural a-stem noun ending, while Old Saxon and Old English employed -as or -os . Much of the grammatical variation between Old Dutch and Old Saxon

840-436: A distinction in writing: dag "day" (short vowel), thahton "they thought" (long vowel). Later on, the long vowels were sometimes marked with a macron to indicate a long vowel: ā . In some texts long vowels were indicated by simply doubling the vowel in question, as in the placename Heembeke and personal name Oodhelmus (both from charters written in 941 and 797 respectively). Old Dutch may have preserved at least four of

960-412: A general decline in urban populations. As a whole, the period of late antiquity was accompanied by an overall population decline in almost all Europe, and a reversion to more of a subsistence economy. Long-distance markets disappeared, and there was a reversion to a greater degree of local production and consumption, rather than webs of commerce and specialized production. Concurrently, the continuity of

1080-501: A monk of the Abbey of Egmond , and so the manuscript's other name is Egmond Willeram . The text represents an imperfect attempt to translate the original into the local Old Dutch vernacular. The text contains many Old Dutch words as well as mistranslated words since the scribe must have been unfamiliar with some Old High German words in the original. It could nevertheless be regarded as the first book written in Old Dutch. However, since

1200-469: A partial revival of classicism). Nearly all of these more abstracted conventions could be observed in the glittering mosaics of the era, which during this period moved from being decoration derivative from painting used on floors (and walls likely to become wet) to a major vehicle of religious art in churches. The glazed surfaces of the tesserae sparkled in the light and illuminated the basilica churches. Unlike their fresco predecessors, much more emphasis

1320-520: A period of dynamic religious experimentation and spirituality with many syncretic sects, some formed centuries earlier, such as Gnosticism or Neoplatonism and the Chaldaean oracles , some novel, such as hermeticism . Culminating in the reforms advocated by Apollonius of Tyana being adopted by Aurelian and formulated by Flavius Claudius Julianus to create an organized but short-lived pagan state religion that ensured its underground survival into

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1440-576: A population of 800,000 in the beginning of the period to a population of 30,000 by the end of the period, the most precipitous drop coming with the breaking of the aqueducts during the Gothic War . A similar though less marked decline in urban population occurred later in Constantinople, which was gaining population until the outbreak of the Plague of Justinian in 541. In Europe there was also

1560-521: A proliferation of various ascetic or semi-ascetic practices. Holy Fools and Stylites counted among the more extreme forms but through such personalities like John Chrysostom , Jerome , Augustine or Gregory the Great monastic attitudes penetrated other areas of Christian life. Late antiquity marks the decline of Roman state religion , circumscribed in degrees by edicts likely inspired by Christian advisors such as Eusebius to 4th-century emperors, and

1680-525: A shade exotic," observes H. R. Loyn , "owing their reason for being more to the military and administrative needs of Rome than to any economic virtue". The other institutional power centre, the Roman villa , did not survive in Britain either. Gildas lamented the destruction of the twenty-eight cities of Britain; though not all in his list can be identified with known Roman sites, Loyn finds no reason to doubt

1800-515: A vehicle for the last group of powerful pagans to resist Christianity, as in the late 4th century Symmachi–Nicomachi diptych . Extravagant hoards of silver plate are especially common from the 4th century, including the Mildenhall Treasure , Esquiline Treasure , Hoxne Hoard , and the imperial Missorium of Theodosius I . In the field of literature, late antiquity is known for the declining use of classical Greek and Latin , and

1920-582: Is Baiyara (perhaps modern Montoro ), mentioned as founded by Reccared in the 15th-century geographical account, Kitab al-Rawd al-Mitar . The arrival of a highly urbanized Islamic culture in the decade following 711 ensured the survival of cities in the Hispaniae into the Middle Ages. Beyond the Mediterranean world, the cities of Gaul withdrew within a constricted line of defense around

2040-605: Is debated . Constantine confirmed the legalization of the religion through the so-called Edict of Milan in 313, jointly issued with his rival in the East, Licinius (r. 308–324). By the late 4th century, Emperor Theodosius the Great had made Christianity the State religion, thereby transforming the Classical Roman world, which Peter Brown characterized as "rustling with the presence of many divine spirits ." Constantine I

2160-609: Is now archived in the Vatican Codex pal. 577. Sometimes interpreteted as Old Saxon, a number of Dutch scholars have concluded the Baptismal Vow was actually written in the 8th century in Old Dutch. The difficulty in establishing whether the text was written in Old Saxon or Old Franconian is that those languages were very much alike. Irlôsin sol an frithe sêla mîna fan thên thia ginâcont mi, wanda under managon he

2280-497: Is often cited as the time of the discontinuity, but it actually marks a time of profuse Dutch writing whose language is patently different from Old Dutch. The most notable difference between Old and Middle Dutch is vowel reduction . Back vowels ( a , o ) in non-stressed syllables are rather frequent in Old Dutch, but in Middle Dutch, they are reduced to a schwa : The following is a translation of Psalm 55 :18, taken from

2400-548: Is regarded as the primary stage in the development of a separate Dutch language. It was spoken by the descendants of the Salian Franks who occupied what is now the southern Netherlands , northern Belgium , part of northern France, and parts of the Lower Rhine regions of Germany. It evolved into Middle Dutch around the 12th century. The inhabitants of northern Dutch provinces, including Groningen , Friesland , and

2520-505: Is similar to that between Old Dutch and Old High German. It is also found that Old Dutch had lost the dual number for its pronouns, unlike Old English, which used wit to refer to "the two of us". Old Dutch would have used we both to refer to that and to refer to many more people in the "us" group, much like Modern Dutch and English. Old Dutch naturally evolved into Middle Dutch with some distinctions that approximate those found in most medieval West Germanic languages. The year 1150

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2640-531: Is synonymous with Old Dutch . Depending on the author, the temporal boundary between Old Dutch and Old Frankish is either defined by the onset of the Second Germanic consonant shift in Eastern Frankish, the assimilation of an unattested coastal dialect showing North Sea Germanic -features by West Frankish during the closing of the 9th century , or a combination of both. Some linguists use

2760-520: Is the end of the polis model. While there was a decline of urban life in late antiquity (especially in the West) the epoch brought with it new forms of political participation in the urban spaces as well. Especially the role of crowds and masses in cities has increased, leading to new levels of tension. In the cities the strained economies of Roman over-expansion arrested growth. Almost all new public building in late antiquity came directly or indirectly from

2880-514: Is the subsumption of the High German consonant shift , a set of phonological changes beginning around the 5th or 6th century that partially influenced Old Dutch, and extensively influenced Central Franconian and other Old High German dialects. Old English , Old Frisian and (to a lesser degree) Old Saxon share the application of the Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law . Old Dutch was considerably less affected than those other three languages, but

3000-578: The Augustus . The later Roman Empire was in a sense a network of cities. Archaeology now supplements literary sources to document the transformation followed by collapse of cities in the Mediterranean Basin . Two diagnostic symptoms of decline—or as many historians prefer, 'transformation'—are subdivision, particularly of expansive formal spaces in both the domus and the public basilica , and encroachment, in which artisans' shops invade

3120-482: The -n of the third-person plural hebban , which is absent in both Old English and Frisian, identifies the language as Old Dutch ( Old High German habent uses a different stem). Hagunnan and hi(c) have a prothetic h , which points also to West Flemish in which the h was frequently dropped or, in the written language, added before vowels (compare abent in the Latin version). However, it has been postulated that

3240-578: The Anglo-Saxon period depend largely on the post-Roman survival of Roman toponymy . Aside from a mere handful of its continuously inhabited sites, like York and London and possibly Canterbury , however, the rapidity and thoroughness with which its urban life collapsed with the dissolution of centralized bureaucracy calls into question the extent to which Roman Britain had ever become authentically urbanized: "in Roman Britain towns appeared

3360-520: The Arab invasions marked—through conquest and the disruption of Mediterranean trade routes—the cataclysmic end of late antiquity and the beginning of the Middle Ages . On the other hand, there is a more recent thesis, associated with scholars in the tradition of Peter Brown, in which Islam is seen to be a product of the late antique world, not foreign to it. This school suggests that its origin within

3480-654: The Byzantine military manuals achieving great renown and influence: the most famous of which is the Strategikon attributed to Emperor Maurice , written in the 6th century. One genre of literature among Christian writers in this period was the Hexaemeron , dedicated to the composition of commentaries, homilies, and treatises concerned with the exegesis of the Genesis creation narrative . The first example of this

3600-471: The De arithmetica , De musica , and De consolatione philosophiae of Boethius —both later key works in medieval education). The 4th and 5th centuries also saw an explosion of Christian literature , of which Greek writers such as Eusebius of Caesarea , Basil of Caesarea , Gregory of Nazianzus and John Chrysostom and Latin writers such as Ambrose of Milan , Jerome and Augustine of Hippo are only among

3720-657: The Greek East and Latin West became more pronounced. The Diocletianic Persecution of Christians in the early 4th century was ended by Galerius and under Constantine the Great , Christianity was made legal in the Empire. The 4th century Christianization of the Roman Empire was extended by the conversions of Tiridates the Great of Armenia , Mirian III of Iberia , and Ezana of Axum , who later invaded and ended

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3840-568: The Kingdom of Kush . During the late 4th century reign of Theodosius I , Nicene Christianity was proclaimed the state church of the Roman Empire . The city of Constantinople became the permanent imperial residence in the East by the 5th century and superseded Rome as the largest city in the Late Roman Empire and the Mediterranean Basin . The longest Roman aqueduct system, the 250 km (160 mi)-long Aqueduct of Valens

3960-582: The Late Antique Little Ice Age ) and a disastrous pandemic (the Plague of Justinian in 541). The effects of these events in the social and political life are still under discussion. In the 7th century the disastrous Byzantine–Sasanian War of 602–628 and the campaigns of Khosrow II and Heraclius facilitated the emergence of Islam in the Arabian Peninsula during the lifetime of Muhammad . Subsequent Muslim conquest of

4080-599: The Leiden Willeram translates as "All night long on my bed I looked for the one my heart loves; I looked for him but did not find him". The manuscript, now in the library of the Leiden University in the Netherlands, contains an Old Dutch translation of an Old High German (East Franconian) commentary on Song of Solomon , written by the German abbot Williram of Ebersberg . The translation was done by

4200-457: The Ostrogoths and Visigoths saw themselves as perpetuating the "Roman" tradition. While the usage "Late Antiquity" suggests that the social and cultural priorities of classical antiquity endured throughout Europe into the Middle Ages , the usage of "Early Middle Ages" or "Early Byzantine" emphasizes a break with the classical past, and the term " Migration Period " tends to de-emphasize

4320-460: The Republican senatorial class was replaced with the silk court vestments and jewelry associated with Byzantine imperial iconography. Also indicative of the times is the fact that the imperial cabinet of advisors came to be known as the consistorium , or those who would stand in courtly attendance upon their seated emperor, as distinct from the informal set of friends and advisors surrounding

4440-594: The Wachtendonck Psalms ; it shows the evolution of Dutch, from the original Old Dutch, written c. 900, to modern Dutch, but so accurately copies the Latin word order of the original that there is little information that can be garnered on Old Dutch syntax . In Modern Dutch, recasting is necessary to form a coherent sentence. Old Dutch texts are extremely rare and much more limited than for related languages like Old English and Old High German . Most of

4560-620: The later Roman Empire , as it was reorganized by Diocletian (r. 284–305), and the Early Middle Ages are stressed by writers who wish to emphasize that the seeds of medieval culture were already developing in the Christianized empire, and that they continued to do so in the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantine Empire at least until the coming of Islam . Concurrently, some migrating Germanic tribes such as

4680-411: The "Good Shepherd", resembling the traditional iconography of Hermes. He was increasingly given Roman elite status, and shrouded in purple robes like the emperors with orb and scepter in hand — this new type of depiction is variously thought to be derived from either the iconography of Jupiter or of classical philosophers. As for luxury arts, manuscript illumination on vellum and parchment emerged from

4800-425: The 12th and 13th century, the practices were abandoned, and unstressed vowels were consistently written as e from that time onward. Notes: Old Dutch was spelt using the Latin alphabet. The length of a vowel was generally not represented in writing probably because the missionaries, who were the ones capable of writing and teaching how to write, tended to base the written language on Latin, which also did not make

4920-558: The 3rd century was a major step in the development of Christian spirituality. While it initially operated outside the episcopal authority of the Church, it would become hugely successful and by the 8th century it became one of the key Christian practices. Monasticism was not the only new Christian movement to appear in late antiquity, although it had perhaps the greatest influence and it achieved unprecedented geographical spread. It influenced many aspects of Christian religious life and led to

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5040-578: The 5th century, with a few manuscripts of Roman literary classics like the Vergilius Vaticanus and the Vergilius Romanus , but increasingly Christian texts, of which Quedlinburg Itala fragment (420–430) is the oldest survivor. Carved ivory diptychs were used for secular subjects, as in the imperial and consular diptychs presented to friends, as well as religious ones, both Christian and pagan – they seem to have been especially

5160-704: The Balkans and Persian destructions in Anatolia in the 620s. City life continued in Syria, Jordan and Palestine into the 8th. In the later 6th century street construction was still undertaken in Caesarea Maritima in Palestine, and Edessa was able to deflect Chosroes I with massive payments in gold in 540 and 544, before it was overrun in 609. The stylistic changes characteristic of late antique art mark

5280-508: The Balkans, 'where inhabited centres contracted and regrouped around a defensible acropolis , or were abandoned in favour of such positions elsewhere." In the western Mediterranean, the only new cities known to be founded in Europe between the 5th and 8th centuries were the four or five Visigothic "victory cities". Reccopolis in the province of Guadalajara is one: the others were Victoriacum , founded by Leovigild , which may survive as

5400-689: The Byzantine age and beyond. Mahāyāna Buddhism developed in India and along the Silk Road in Central Asia , while Manichaeism , a Dualist faith, arose in Mesopotamia and spread both East and West, for a time contending with Christianity in the Roman Empire. Many of the new religions relied on the emergence of the parchment codex (bound book) over the papyrus volumen (scroll),

5520-681: The Early Middle Ages. The Roman Empire underwent considerable social, cultural and organizational changes starting with the reign of Diocletian , who began the custom of splitting the Empire into Eastern and Western portions ruled by multiple emperors simultaneously . The Sasanian Empire supplanted the Parthian Empire and began a new phase of the Roman–Persian Wars, the Roman–Sasanian Wars . The divisions between

5640-568: The Eastern Roman Empire at Constantinople meant that the turning-point for the Greek East came later, in the 7th century, as the Eastern Roman, or Byzantine Empire centered around the Balkans , North Africa ( Egypt and Carthage ), and Asia Minor . The cities in the East were still lively stages for political participation and remained important for background for religious and political disputes. The degree and extent of discontinuity in

5760-651: The German philologist Willy Sanders proved in his study Der Leidener Willeram that the text actually represents an imperfect attempt by a scribe from the northwestern coastal area of the Low Countries to translate the East Franconian original into his local Old Dutch vernacular . The text contains many Old Dutch words not known in Old High German, as well as mistranslated words caused by the scribe's unfamiliarity with some Old High German words in

5880-684: The Great led to the fall of the Ostrogothic and Vandal Kingdoms, and their reincorporation into the Empire, when the city of Rome and much of Italy and North Africa returned to imperial control. Though most of Italy was soon part of the Kingdom of the Lombards , the Roman Exarchate of Ravenna endured, ensuring the so-called Byzantine Papacy . Justinian constructed the Hagia Sophia , a great example of Byzantine architecture , and

6000-649: The Levant and Persia overthrew the Sasanian Empire and permanently wrested two thirds of the Eastern Roman Empire's territory from Roman control, forming the Rashidun Caliphate . The Byzantine Empire under the Heraclian dynasty began the middle Byzantine period , and together with the establishment of the later 7th century Umayyad Caliphate , generally marks the end of late antiquity. One of

6120-573: The Netherlands before Old Dutch was spoken have been found, and they are sometimes called Oudnederlands (English: "Old Netherlandic" or "Old Dutch") in a geographic sense. The oldest known example, wad 'mudflat', is already mentioned c.  107–108 AD in Tacitus ' Histories (Book 5), in Latinised form as vadam (acc. sg.), as the name of a village, Vada , probably reflecting Early Germanic *wada . The word exclusively referred to

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6240-482: The North of the Netherlands. In the rest of the coastal region, these dialects were mostly displaced following the withdrawal to England of the migrating Angles , Saxons and Jutes , who gave rise to Old English. It was largely replaced by Weser–Rhine Germanic dialects, spoken by the Salian Franks . It spread from northern Belgium and the southern Netherlands to the coast and evolved into Old Dutch. It has, however,

6360-517: The Old Dutch period, the distinction between the feminine ō -stems and ōn -stems began to disappear, when endings of one were transferred to the other declension and vice versa, as part of a larger process in which the distinction between the strong and weak inflection was being lost not only in feminine nouns but also in adjectives. The process is shown in a more advanced stage in Middle Dutch. Old Dutch reflects an intermediate form between Old Saxon and Old High German. Like Old High German, it preserved

6480-691: The Rhinelandic Rhyming Bible (Dutch: Rijnlandse Rijmbijbel ; German: Rheinische Reimbibel ). The verse translation of biblical histories is attested only in a series of fragments from different writers. It contains Old Dutch (Low Franconian), Low German (Low Saxon) and High German (Rhine-Franconian) elements. It was likely composed in the northwest of Germany in the early 12th century, possibly in Werden Abbey , near Essen . Phonologically, Old Dutch stands in between Old Saxon and Old High German , sharing some innovations with

6600-513: The Salic law code (the Malberg glosses ) contain several Old Dutch words and this full sentence written in the early 6th century, which is likely the earliest in the language. It translates as "I tell you: I am setting you free, serve". The phrase was used to free a serf . A lito (English: half-free ) was a form of serf in the feudal system , a half-free farmer, who was connected to the land of

6720-442: The Third Century the military, political and economic demands made by the Empire made the service in local government to be an onerous duty, often imposed as punishment. Harassed urban dwellers fled to the walled estates of the wealthy to avoid taxes, military service, famine and disease. In the Western Roman Empire especially, many cities destroyed by invasion or civil war in the 3rd century could not be rebuilt. Plague and famine hit

6840-424: The Wachtendonck Psalms, the e and i merged in unstressed syllables, as did o and u . That led to variants like dagi and dage ("day", dative singular) and tungon and tungun ("tongue", genitive, dative, accusative singular and nominative, dative, accusative plural). The forms with e and o are generally found later on, showing the gradual reduction of the articulatory distinction, eventually merging into

6960-517: The absence or presence of the Second Germanic consonant shift . With the exception of Dutch, modern linguistic research has challenged the direct diachronical connection to Old Frankish for most of the varieties grouped under the broader "Franconian" category. Nevertheless, the traditional terminology of the West Germanic varieties along assumed Late Classical tribal lines, typical of 19th and early 20th century Germanic linguistics, remains common. Within historical linguistics Old Low Franconian

7080-496: The aforementioned terms. Old Low Franconian , derives from the linguistic category first devised by the German linguist Wilhelm Braune (1850–1926), who used the term Franconian as a wastebasket taxon for the early West Germanic texts that he could not readily classify as belonging to either Saxon , Alemannic or Bavarian and assumed to derive from the language of the Franks . He subsequently further divided this new grouping into Low , Middle and High Franconian based on

7200-417: The ancestor of the modern Dutch verb root gun , through the addition of the prefix ge- . (An English cognate probably survives in to own (up) in the sense of 'to acknowledge, concede'.) Its modern meaning is roughly "to think someone deserves something, to derive satisfaction from someone else's success", and it is commonly translated as "grant" or "bestow". Maltho thi afrio lito Glosses to

7320-434: The apocalypticism of Islamic theology and in the way the Quran seems to react to contemporary religious and cultural issues shared by the late antique world at large. Further indication that Arabia (and thus the environment in which Islam first developed) was a part of the late antique world is found in the close economic and military relations between Arabia, the Byzantine Empire and the Sassanian Empire. In recent years,

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7440-450: The beauty and movement of the body, but rather, hints at the spiritual reality behind its subjects . Additionally, mirroring the rise of Christianity and the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, painting and freestanding sculpture gradually fell from favor in the artistic community. Replacing them were greater interests in mosaics, architecture, and relief sculpture. As the soldier emperors such as Maximinus Thrax (r. 235–238) emerged from

7560-422: The book never left the abbey, it cannot be regarded as the start of a Dutch literature and did not influence later works. Hebban olla vogala nestas hagunnan hinase hic enda thu, uuat unbidan uue nu. Arguably the most famous text containing Old Dutch, the fragment is translated as "All birds have started making nests, except me and you, what are we waiting for?" The text is dated from around 1100 and written by

7680-451: The building is not architecturally a basilica. In the former Western Roman Empire almost no great buildings were constructed from the 5th century. A most outstanding example is the Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna constructed c.  530 at a cost of 26,000 gold solidi or 360 Roman pounds of gold. City life in the East, though negatively affected by the plague in the 6th–7th centuries, finally collapsed due to Slavic invasions in

7800-435: The chair in the apse reserved in secular structures for the magistrate—or the Emperor himself—as the representative here and now of Christ Pantocrator , the Ruler of All, his characteristic late antique icon . These ecclesiastical basilicas (e.g., St. John Lateran and St. Peter's in Rome) were themselves outdone by Justinian's Hagia Sophia , a staggering display of later Roman/Byzantine power and architectural taste, though

7920-500: The city of Vitoria , though a 12th-century (re)foundation for this city is given in contemporary sources; Lugo id est Luceo in the Asturias , referred to by Isidore of Seville , and Ologicus (perhaps Ologitis ), founded using Basque labour in 621 by Suinthila as a fortification against the Basques, modern Olite . All of these cities were founded for military purposes and at least Reccopolis, Victoriacum, and Ologicus in celebration of victory. A possible fifth Visigothic foundation

8040-412: The coast of North Holland , spoke Old Frisian , and some in the east ( Achterhoek , Overijssel , and Drenthe ) spoke Old Saxon . Within the field of historical philology, the terminology for the oldest historical phase of the Dutch language traditionally includes both Old Dutch as well as Old Low Franconian . In English linguistic publications, Old Netherlandic is occasionally used in addition to

8160-433: The deeds and words of the devil, Thunear, Wōden and Saxnōt, and all those fiends that are their companions". It mentions three Germanic pagan gods of the early Saxons which the reader is to forsake: Uuôden (" Woden "), Thunaer and Saxnōt . Scholar Rudolf Simek comments that the vow is of particular interest because it is the sole instance of the god Saxnōt mentioned in a religious context. One of many baptismal vows, it

8280-418: The disruptions in the former Western Roman Empire caused by the creation of Germanic kingdoms within her borders beginning with the foedus with the Goths in Aquitania in 418. The general decline of population, technological knowledge and standards of living in Europe during this period became the archetypal example of societal collapse for writers from the Renaissance . As a result of this decline, and

8400-432: The earliest texts written in the Netherlands were written in Latin , rather than Old Dutch. Some of the Latin texts, however, contained Old Dutch words interspersed with the Latin text. Also, it is hard to determine whether a text actually was written in Old Dutch, as the Germanic languages spoken at that time were not standardised and were much more similar to one another. Several words that are known to have developed in

8520-425: The easternmost Dutch dialects, such as Limburgish . Before the advent of Old Dutch or any of the Germanic languages, Germanic dialects were mutually intelligible . The North Sea Germanic dialects were spoken in the whole of the coastal parts of the Netherlands and Belgium. Old Frisian was one of these dialects, and elements of it survived through the Frisian language , spoken in the province of Friesland in

8640-410: The emperors or imperial officials. Attempts were made to maintain what was already there. The supply of free grain and oil to 20% of the population of Rome remained intact the last decades of the 5th century. It was once thought that the elite and rich had withdrawn to the private luxuries of their numerous villas and town houses. Scholarly opinion has revised this. They monopolized the higher offices in

8760-616: The end of classical antiquity to the local start of the Middle Ages , from around the late 3rd century up to the 7th or 8th century in Europe and adjacent areas bordering the Mediterranean Basin depending on location. The popularisation of this periodization in English has generally been credited to historian Peter Brown , who proposed a period between 150 and 750 AD. The Oxford Centre for Late Antiquity defines it as "the period between approximately 250 and 750 AD". Precise boundaries for

8880-484: The end of classical Roman art and the beginnings of medieval art . As a complicated period bridging between Roman art and later medieval styles (such as that of the Byzantines ), the late antique period saw a transition from the classical idealized realism tradition largely influenced by ancient Greek art to the more iconic, stylized art of the Middle Ages. Unlike classical art, late antique art does not emphasize

9000-503: The essential truth of his statement. Classical antiquity can generally be defined as an age of cities; the Greek polis and Roman municipium were locally organised, self-governing bodies of citizens governed by written constitutions. When Rome came to dominate the known world, local initiative and control were gradually subsumed by the ever-growing Imperial bureaucracy; by the Crisis of

9120-408: The expense of amphitheaters, temples, libraries, porticoes, gymnasia, concert and lecture halls, theaters and other amenities of public life. In any case, as Christianity took over, many of these buildings which were associated with pagan cults were neglected in favor of building churches and donating to the poor. The Christian basilica was copied from the civic structure with variations. The bishop took

9240-498: The far-away centralized administration (in concert with the great landowners ), and those who did not; although they were well-born and thoroughly educated, a classical education and the election by the Senate to magistracies was no longer the path to success. Room at the top of late antique society was more bureaucratic and involved increasingly intricate channels of access to the emperor; the plain toga that had identified all members of

9360-512: The first outbreak of the centuries-long first plague pandemic took place. At Ctesiphon , the Sasanians completed the Taq Kasra , the colossal iwan of which is the largest single-span vault of unreinforced brickwork in the world and the triumph of Sasanian architecture . The middle of the 6th century was characterized by extreme climate events ( the volcanic winter of 535–536 and

9480-529: The former allowing for quicker access to key materials and easier portability than the fragile scroll, thus fueling the rise of synoptic exegesis , papyrology . Notable in this regard is the topic of the Fifty Bibles of Constantine . Within the recently legitimized Christian community of the 4th century, a division could be more distinctly seen between the laity and an increasingly celibate male leadership. These men presented themselves as removed from

9600-549: The framing of Middle Dutch , Old East Low Franconian did not contribute much to Standard Dutch , which is based on the consolidated dialects of Holland and Brabant . During the Merovingian period, the Central Franconian dialects were influenced by Old Low Franconian (Old Dutch), resulting in certain linguistic loans which yielded a slight overlap of vocabulary, most of which relates to warfare . In addition

9720-436: The imperial administration, but they were removed from military command by the late 3rd century. Their focus turned to preserving their vast wealth rather than fighting for it. The basilica , which had functioned as a law court or for imperial reception of foreign dignitaries, became the primary public building in the 4th century. Due to the stress on civic finances, cities spent money on walls, maintaining baths and markets at

9840-500: The latter, and others with the former. The table below lists the consonantal phonemes of Old Dutch. For descriptions of the sounds and definitions of the terms, follow the links on the headings. Notes: Final-obstruent devoicing of Proto-Germanic [β] to [f] occurred across the West Germanic languages, and thus also in Old Dutch. Old Dutch spelling also reveals final devoicing of other consonants, namely: Final devoicing

9960-484: The lord for whom he worked but not owned by that lord. In contrast, a slave was fully owned by the lord. The Old Dutch word and the Modern Dutch counterpart laat are both etymologically and in meaning undoubtedly related to the verb root laat (English: 'let go', 'release'), which may indicate the fairly free status of such person in relation to that a slave. The Old Dutch word lito is particularly recognisable in

10080-541: The medieval period. Justinian rebuilt his birthplace in Illyricum , as Justiniana Prima , more in a gesture of imperium than out of an urbanistic necessity; another "city", was reputed to have been founded, according to Procopius ' panegyric on Justinian's buildings, precisely at the spot where the general Belisarius touched shore in North Africa: the miraculous spring that gushed forth to give them water and

10200-458: The most important transformations in late antiquity was the formation and evolution of the Abrahamic religions : Christianity , Rabbinic Judaism and, eventually, Islam . A milestone in the spread of Christianity was the conversion of Emperor Constantine the Great (r. 306–337) in 312, as claimed by his Christian panegyrist Eusebius of Caesarea , although the sincerity of his conversion

10320-409: The most renowned representatives. On the other hand, authors such as Ammianus Marcellinus (4th century) and Procopius of Caesarea (6th century) were able to keep the tradition of classical Hellenistic historiography alive in the Byzantine empire. Due to several factors of the era, among them the political instability and the constant military threats, treatises on war became a popular genre with

10440-449: The new style, shows the contrast especially clearly. In nearly all artistic media, simpler shapes were adopted and once natural designs were abstracted. Additionally hierarchy of scale overtook the preeminence of perspective and other classical models for representing spatial organization. From c.  300 Early Christian art began to create new public forms, which now included sculpture , previously distrusted by Christians as it

10560-507: The original he translated, and a confused orthography heavily influenced by the Old High German original. For instance, the grapheme <z> is used after the High German tradition where it represents Germanic t shifted to /ts/. The Leiden Willeram contains 136 words with the oldest date in Dutch. A digital version of the manuscript can be consulted via Leiden University Libraries ’ Digital Collections. Old Dutch Old Dutch

10680-501: The period are a continuing matter of debate. In the West, its end was earlier, with the start of the Early Middle Ages typically placed in the 6th century, or even earlier on the edges of the Western Roman Empire . The term Spätantike , literally "late antiquity", has been used by German-speaking historians since its popularization by Alois Riegl in the early 20th century. It was given currency in English partly by

10800-472: The period of late antiquity has become a major focus in the fields of Quranic studies and Islamic origins. The late antique period also saw a wholesale transformation of the political and social basis of life in and around the Roman Empire . The Roman citizen elite in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, under the pressure of taxation and the ruinous cost of presenting spectacular public entertainments in

10920-738: The provinces in the 3rd century, they brought with them their own regional influences and artistic tastes. For example, artists jettisoned the classical portrayal of the human body for one that was more rigid and frontal. This is markedly evident in the combined porphyry Portrait of the Four Tetrarchs in Venice . With these stubby figures clutching each other and their swords, all individualism , naturalism , Roman verism , and Greek idealism diminish. The Arch of Constantine in Rome, which re-used earlier classicising reliefs together with ones in

11040-468: The psalms. They were named after a manuscript that has not survived but was the source from which scholars believe the surviving fragments must have been copied. The manuscript was once owned by Canon Arnold Wachtendonck. The surviving fragments are handwritten copies made by the Renaissance scholar Justus Lipsius in the sixteenth century. Lipsius made a number of separate copies of what appeared to be

11160-449: The public thoroughfare, a transformation that was to result in the souk (marketplace). Burials within the urban precincts mark another stage in dissolution of traditional urbanistic discipline, overpowered by the attraction of saintly shrines and relics. In Roman Britain , the typical 4th- and 5th-century layer of dark earth within cities seems to be a result of increased gardening in formerly urban spaces. The city of Rome went from

11280-457: The region and ground type that is now known as the Wadden Sea . However, since the word existed long before Old Dutch did (and even before its parent language, Frankish ), it cannot be considered part of the vocabulary of Old Dutch but rather of Proto-Germanic . Haþuþȳwas. Ann kusjam logūns. This sentence has been interpreted as "Haþuþyw's. I/He grant(s) a flame (i.e. brand, sword) to

11400-482: The relative scarcity of historical records from Europe in particular, the period from roughly the early fifth century until the Carolingian Renaissance (or later still) was referred to as the " Dark Ages ". This term has mostly been abandoned as a name for a historiographical epoch, being replaced by "Late Antiquity" in the periodization of the late Western Roman Empire, the early Byzantine Empire and

11520-465: The rise of Islam, two main theses prevail. On the one hand, there is the traditional view, as espoused by most historians prior to the second half of the twentieth century (and after) and by Muslim scholars. This view, the so-called "out of Arabia"-thesis, holds that Islam as a phenomenon was a new, alien element in the late antique world. Related to this is the Pirenne Thesis , according to which

11640-491: The rise of literary cultures in Syriac , Armenian , Georgian , Ethiopic , Arabic , and Coptic . It also marks a shift in literary style, with a preference for encyclopedic works in a dense and allusive style, consisting of summaries of earlier works (anthologies, epitomes) often dressed up in elaborate allegorical garb (e.g., De nuptiis Mercurii et Philologiae [The Marriage of Mercury and Philology] of Martianus Capella and

11760-723: The rural population that straightway abandoned their ploughshares for civilised life within the new walls, lend a certain taste of unreality to the project. In mainland Greece, the inhabitants of Sparta , Argos and Corinth abandoned their cities for fortified sites in nearby high places; the fortified heights of Acrocorinth are typical of Byzantine urban sites in Greece. In Italy, populations that had clustered within reach of Roman roads began to withdraw from them, as potential avenues of intrusion, and to rebuild in typically constricted fashion round an isolated fortified promontory, or rocca ; Cameron notes similar movement of populations in

11880-600: The same material, but the versions do not always agree. In addition, scholars conclude that the numerous errors and inconsistencies in the fragments point not only to some carelessness or inattentiveness by the Renaissance scholars but also to errors in the now-lost manuscript out of which the material was copied. The language of the Psalms suggests that they were originally written in the 10th century. Thes naghtes an minemo beddo vortheroda ich minen wino. Ich vortheroda hine ande ne vand sin niet. This example sentence taken from

12000-507: The select". It was discovered on a sword sheath mounting , excavated in 1996 in the Dutch village of Bergakker and is perhaps better described as Frankish than Old Dutch (Frankish was the direct parent language of Old Dutch). The text however, shows the beginning of Old Dutch morphology. The word ann , found in the partially-translated inscription is coined as the oldest Dutch by linguists Nicoline van der Sijs and Tanneke Schoonheim from Genootschap Onze Taal . They attribute that word to

12120-593: The shared cultural horizon of the late antique world explains the character of Islam and its development. Such historians point to similarities with other late antique religions and philosophies—especially Christianity—in the prominent role and manifestations of piety in Islam, in Islamic asceticism and the role of "holy persons", in the pattern of universalist, homogeneous monotheism tied to worldly and military power, in early Islamic engagement with Greek schools of thought, in

12240-494: The six cases of Proto-Germanic: nominative , accusative , genitive and dative . A fifth case, the instrumental , could have also existed. The -s ending in the masculine plural was preserved in the coastal dialects, as can be seen in the Hebban Olla Vogala text where nestas is used instead of nesta . Later on, the -s ending entered Hollandic dialects and became part of the modern standard language. During

12360-565: The smaller cities of the Greek East is a moot subject among historians. The urban continuity of Constantinople is the outstanding example of the Mediterranean world; of the two great cities of lesser rank, Antioch was devastated by the Persian sack of 540, followed by the plague of Justinian (542 onwards) and completed by earthquake, while Alexandria survived its Islamic transformation, to suffer incremental decline in favour of Cairo in

12480-403: The start of Dutch literature , were it not for the fact that the manuscript probably never left the abbey, so it couldn't have influenced later works. Until recently, based on its orthography and phonology the text of this manuscript was believed by most scholars to be Middle Franconian , that is Old High German, with some Limburgic or otherwise Low Franconian admixtures. But in 1974,

12600-419: The terms Old Low Franconian or West Frankish to specifically refer to the (very sparsely attested) varieties of Old Dutch spoken prior its assimilation of the coastal dialect. Old Dutch itself is further divided into Old West Dutch and Old East Dutch, with the descendants of Old West Dutch forming the dominant basis of the Middle Dutch literary language and Old East Dutch forming a noticeable substrate within

12720-429: The text could equally well be Old English , more specifically Old Kentish . nu saget mir einen kuning other greven, the an uren got wille gelouven, that se sagent, that ist gelogen, thes ist thaz arme volc bedrogen. Translated as "Mention one king or earl who wants to believe in their god, what they say is a lie, that's how the people are being deceived", this fragment comes from an important source for Old Dutch:

12840-424: The three different verb endings in the plural ( -on , -et and -unt ) while the more northern languages have the same verb ending in all three persons. However, like Old Saxon, it had only two classes of weak verb, with only a few relic verbs of the third weak class, but the third class had still largely been preserved in Old High German. Late Classical Late antiquity is sometimes defined as spanning from

12960-485: The traditional cursus honorum , had found under the Antonines that security could be obtained only by combining their established roles in the local town with new ones as servants and representatives of a distant emperor and his traveling court. After Constantine centralized the government in his new capital of Constantinople (dedicated in 330), the late antique upper classes were divided among those who had access to

13080-406: The traditional Roman motivations of public and private life marked by pride, ambition and kinship solidarity, and differing from the married pagan leadership. Unlike later strictures on priestly celibacy , celibacy in late antique Christianity sometimes took the form of abstinence from sexual relations after marriage, and it came to be the expected norm for urban clergy . Celibate and detached,

13200-541: The upper clergy became an elite equal in prestige to urban notables, the potentes or dynatoi . Islam appeared in the 7th century, spurring Arab armies to invade the Eastern Roman Empire and the Sassanian Empire of Persia , destroying the latter. After conquering all of North Africa and Visigothic Spain , the Islamic invasion was halted by Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours in modern France . On

13320-476: The urban class in greater proportion, and thus the people who knew how to keep civic services running. Perhaps the greatest blow came in the wake of the extreme weather events of 535–536 and subsequent Plague of Justinian , when the remaining trade networks ensured the Plague spread to the remaining commercial cities. The impact of this outbreak of plague has recently been disputed. The end of classical antiquity

13440-427: The verb's past tense lieten . End ec forsacho allum dioboles uuercum and uuordum, Thunær ende Uuôden ende Saxnôte ende allum thêm unholdum thê hira genôtas sint. The Utrecht Baptismal Vow , or Old Saxon Baptismal Vow , is a 9th-century baptismal vow that was found in a monastery library in the German city of Mainz but was written in the Dutch city of Utrecht . The sentence translates as "And I renounce all

13560-542: The writings of Peter Brown , whose survey The World of Late Antiquity (1971) revised the Gibbon view of a stale and ossified Classical culture, in favour of a vibrant time of renewals and beginnings, and whose The Making of Late Antiquity offered a new paradigm of understanding the changes in Western culture of the time in order to confront Sir Richard Southern 's The Making of the Middle Ages . The continuities between

13680-702: Was a key figure in many important events in Christian history , as he convened and attended the first ecumenical council of bishops at Nicaea in 325, subsidized the building of churches and sanctuaries such as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem , and involved himself in questions such as the timing of Christ's resurrection and its relation to the Passover . The birth of Christian monasticism

13800-592: Was constructed to supply it with water, and the tallest Roman triumphal columns were erected there. Migrations of Germanic , Hunnic , and Slavic tribes disrupted Roman rule from the late 4th century onwards, culminating first in the Sack of Rome by the Visigoths in 410 and subsequent Sack of Rome by the Vandals in 455, part of the eventual collapse of the Empire in the West itself by 476. The Western Empire

13920-608: Was countered by the syllable-initial voicing of voiceless fricatives, which made [v] and [f] allophones of each other. Final devoicing appears much earlier in Old Dutch than it does Old Saxon and Old High German. In fact, by judging from the find at Bergakker , it would seem that the language already had inherited this characteristic from Old Frankish whereas Old Saxon and Old High German are known to have maintained word-final voiced obstruents much later (at least 900). Notes: In unstressed syllables, only three vowels seem to have been reliably distinguished: open, front and back. In

14040-418: Was mit mi The Wachtendonck Psalms are a collection of Latin psalms , with a translation in an eastern variety of Old Dutch (Old East Low Franconian) which contains a number of Old High German elements. The example sentence above translates as "He will deliver my soul in peace from those who attack me, for, amongst many, he was with me." Probably based on a Central Franconian original, very little remains of

14160-567: Was placed on demonstrating a symbolic fact rather than on rendering a realistic scene. As time progressed during the late antique period, art become more concerned with biblical themes and influenced by interactions of Christianity with the Roman state. Within this Christian subcategory of Roman art, dramatic changes were also taking place in the Depiction of Jesus . Jesus Christ had been more commonly depicted as an itinerant philosopher, teacher or as

14280-571: Was replaced by the so-called barbarian kingdoms , with the Arian Christian Ostrogothic Kingdom ruling Rome from Ravenna . The resultant cultural fusion of Greco-Roman , Germanic, and Christian traditions formed the foundations of the subsequent culture of Europe . In the 6th century, Roman imperial rule continued in the East, and the Byzantine-Sasanian wars continued. The campaigns of Justinian

14400-571: Was so important in pagan worship. Sarcophagi carved in relief had already become highly elaborate, and Christian versions adopted new styles, showing a series of different tightly packed scenes rather than one overall image (usually derived from Greek history painting ) as was the norm. Soon the scenes were split into two registers, as in the Dogmatic Sarcophagus or the Sarcophagus of Junius Bassus (the last of these exemplifying

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