The Early Middle Ages was an "age of transition" which extended from the late 5th century to the middle of the 11th century, as we read in Perry:
The humanist culture that characterized the Greco-Roman past had disintegrated, and a new civilization was emerging in Latin Christendom, which covered western and central Europe (Perry 198).
This period was shaped by three influences---the Greco-Roman culture, Germanic customs, and the Principles of Christianity. The most dominant factor was the Christian church. The greatest change which occurred in the West in the Early Middle Ages was this Christianization of life.
The cross-influences of these three forces can be seen in the results of Germanic and Christian cooperation beginning in the late sixth century. As we read in McKay, et al., "The Christian missionaries who were slowly converting the Germans to Christianity . . . encouraged German rulers to set down their customs in written form" (McKay 219). It was to the benefit of the Christians to know those customs to better convert the Germans. The Christian leaders in this era recognized that they could not suddenly impose Christian values and principles wholesale on people to whom those values and principles were at times incomprehensible. They accepted that they would adapt to the prevailing cultural and ethnic customs and beliefs, which they successfully did.
The Germans had migrated westward to conquer Roman Gaul. Charlemagne, for example, was a Germanic Frank who consolidated great areas of Europe, but could not have held any of it together without the continuing structure and influence of the civilization of the Romans:
Without Roman law, a professional civil service, and great cities serving as centers of trade, . . . Charlemagne's empire was only a pale shadow of the Roman Empire. . . . The crowning of a German king as emperor of the Romans by the pope signified . . . the intermingling of Germanic, Christian...