The barbarians preserved classical civilization and the empire effectively survived under new management.
He shows that the barbarian invasions and fall of Rome in the fifth century didn’t cause the Dark Age. In Mohammed and Charlemagne Revisited (2012), Emmet Scott affirms Pirenne with a firm eye on archaeological data. It was a bold and well-argued thesis that received little support. Without the Islamic example of slavery, contact with Indians in the new world would have probably unfolded differently, not to mention Europe’s relations with sub-Saharan Africa. The Viking raids wouldn’t have occurred, nor would there have been crusades or inquisitions. Western Europe would have remained fairly Roman under the continued influence and communication from Constantinople. There would have been no “Holy” Roman Empire.
What he meant was that without the Islamic invasions of the seventh century, the medieval world as we know it would not have appeared. Henri Pirenne wrote those words 80 years ago, against a flood of contemporary wisdom. “Without Muhammad, Charlemagne is inconceivable.”
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