That is very interesting. Can you provide couple examples?
Well in regards to Italy, for one thing, naming conventions of the upper class changed quite significantly and presumably the rural population were also adopting names for which we would call Germanic. As close to the city of Rome as the House of Segni in the Middle Ages, we have reports from said family of primarily Germanic names such as:
-Rainier
-Tharasmund
-Sinibald
-Richard
-Ronald
-Henry
-Aldwin
etc...
Lombard kings and nobility near universally used Germanic names, long after their speech patterns had become Latin based with Germanic influence. Even the clergy were using these new names, that would have been unheard of in Italy during the years 100-200 CE when Germanic peoples would be more likely to take Latin names. In all lands, customary law dominated over older types of law. Petitions and codes of custom were deriving more from post-Germanic customs and European military codes of conduct such as chivalry and the associated ideals for what warriors were to embark upon, hold more in common with that of what could be described of the Germanic warriors for whom Rome utilized. Rather than the disciplined mores maiorum and the codes of conduct originally displayed for warriors employed by the Romans. Indeed, discipline was no virtue it seems among the warrior elite of Medieval Europe in any area until quite some time later. Looting and plunder alongside massed heavy cavalry usage also carried the day.
Indeed, we can graph as many have done, the influence of northern European, both Scythic and Germanic influence upon the Roman Empire in terms of military matters in terms of the rapidly changing repertoire and style. Roman armies increasingly were using displays such as war cries, heavy cavalry in the Germanic style of lance holdings (couched and over the shoulder), wearing of pants and boots, improved metallurgy of swords (of which the Germanic cultures even before interaction with Rome, were seen to have better or more sophisticated production than in Rome), introduction once again of a caste based society into Italy and Europe as a whole, rejection of most types of commerce related to currency as the Germanic elites had little interest or knowledge of the idea of profits and so forth.
Even just the custom of Medieval Europe of constructing shrines wherein massive amounts of precious metals and other items of great wealth were stored would be incredible. Not due to the fact that they are placed there, but because these items were not used for monetary gains and instead were transferred into simple objects of societal display in shrines used by the public. From what we know, this custom derived from more traditional Germanic traditions that are linked with general Eurasian burial and wealth practices surrounding the hoarding of wealth. In a society and culture that does not possess the appropriate currency and notion of a profit based system of 'money' then the appropriate place of wealth was in the form of hoarding items of wealth (including people or livestock) and these were often not inherited and were instead interred into a burial of said person. In Germanic culture prior to the periods that we discuss, we find the people therein favoured a wealth display of jewelry, elaborate hairstyles and of possession of bovines. Their wealth that they possessed, was then, if of kings and lords, sacrificed and then interred with the person and some of their attendants.
This interring of vast quantities of wealth was common across Eurasia at the time and in Bronze Age Europe, however was unheard of in Roman Europe. However, beginning in the II century, we begin to see the push westward and southward of burials of men alongside important objects of jewelry. This increases over the years until it is very common for the peoples inhabiting Gaul, Noricum, Pannonia and of course Germania Inferior. Generally the opinion is that the Church affected a sharp change in the Germanic noble customs surrounding treasure and hoarding. Rather than treasure and hoarding revolving around the immediate display and then interment with the dead in elaborate graves, the hoarding of treasure gained via looting was transferred to elaborate rural shrines which accumulated massive amounts of wealth from the looting of their Germanic overlords, most importantly the Franks.
If a Roman from the year 100 CE or from 35 BCE were to have seen such customs flourishing in Medieval Italy, Gaul or so forth, they would be thoroughly shocked. Roman usage of gold and silver resources is readily known as a form of specie and also used for exchange in importation of goods from the east, including items from the Germanic world such as amber or fine furs. Whereas, when gold was discovered in medieval Europe, the gold was taken and distributed either into a shrine, turned into jewelry and worn or redirected into the creation of temples and or palaces. This places an interesting frame thus around the notion and 'sin' of Greed in European framework, as less derived from that of Biblical mandates and more from the influence of a Germanic cultural mores that itself was derived from older non-profit based systems in Eurasia who preferred grand displays and other uses of wealth than in its profit or accumulation as converted into money.
There is manifold ways to describe the situation and as such, I am not hitting all points. Anyway, I hope that at least gives some examples.
