Answer to Question 1
The Germanic peoples were a tribal folk who followed a migratory existence. Dependent on their flocks and herds, they lived in pre-urban village communities throughout Asia and frequently raided and plundered nearby lands for material gain, yet they settled no territorial state. Lacking the hallmarks of civilizationurban settlements, monumental architecture, and the art of writingthe Germanic tribes struck the Romans as inferiors, as outsiders, hence, as barbarians. As the tribes pressed westward, an uneasy alliance was forged: the Romans allowed the barbarians to settle on the borders of the Empire, but in exchange the Germanic warriors were obliged to protect Rome against other invaders. Eventually, this truce disintegrated and after repeated victories, the Visigoths fell Rome in 410.
Germanic culture differed dramatically from that of Rome: in the agrarian and essentially self-sufficient communities of these nomadic peoples, fighting was a way of life and a highly respected skill. In addition to introducing to the West superior methods of fighting on horseback, the Germanic tribes imposed their own long-standing traditions on medieval Europe. The bond of fealty, or loyalty, between the Germanic warrior and his chieftain and the practice of rewarding the warrior would become fundamental to the medieval practice of feudalism.
Answer to Question 2
From the Crusades emerged the medieval romance, a fictitious tale of love and adventure that became the most popular form of literary entertainment in the West between the years 1200 and 1500. The spice of the typical medieval romance was an illicit relationship or forbidden liaison between a man and woman of the upper class. During the Middle Ages, marriage among members of the nobility was usually an alliance formed in the interest of securing land. In such circumstances, romantic love was more likely to flourish outside marriage. Filled with bloody combat, supernatural events, and romantic alliances, medieval romances introduced a new and complex picture of human conduct and courtship associated with the so-called code of courtly love.
Courtly love, as the name suggests, was a phenomenon cultivated in the courts of the medieval nobility. Characterized by the longing of a nobleman for a (usually unattainable) woman, the courtly love tradition, with its rules of wooing and winning a lady, laid the basis for concepts of romantic love in Western literature and life. This romantic love was meant to have a purifying and ennobling influence on the lover; to suffer for true love was noble. The courtly love tradition contributed to shaping modern Western concepts of gender and courtship. It also worked to define the romantic perception of women as objects, particularly objects of reward for the performance of brave deeds. For although courtly love elevated the woman as worthy of adoration, it defined her exclusively in terms of the interests of men.
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