Middle Ages

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Middle Ages.

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In the history of Europe,

The Middle Ages or Medieval Period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries,

Aligning with the post-classical period of global history.

It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD and ended with the fall of Constantinople in 1453 AD,

Before transitioning into the Renaissance and then the Age of Discovery.

The Middle Ages is the middle period of the three traditional divisions of Western history—Antiquity,

Medieval,

And Modern.

The Medieval Period is itself subdivided into the Early,

High,

And Late Middle Ages.

Late medieval scholars at first called these the Dark Ages,

In contrast to Classical Antiquity.

Population decline,

Counter-urbanization,

The collapse of centralized authority,

Invasion,

And the mass migration of tribes,

Which had begun in Late Antiquity,

Continued into the Early Middle Ages.

The large-scale movements of the Migration Period,

Including of Germanic peoples,

Led to the rise of new kingdoms in Western Europe.

In the 7th century,

The Middle East and North Africa came under caliphal rule with the Arab conquests.

The Byzantine Empire survived in the Eastern Mediterranean and advanced secular law through the Code of Justinian.

In the West,

Most kingdoms incorporated extant Roman institutions,

While the influence of Christianity expanded across Europe.

The Carolingian dynasty of the Franks established the Carolingian Empire during the later 8th and early 9th centuries in Western Europe,

Before it succumbed to internal conflict and external invasions from the Vikings from the North,

Magyars from the East,

And the Muslims from the South.

In the High Middle Ages,

Which began after 1000,

The population of Europe increased greatly as technological and agricultural innovations allowed trade to flourish and the medieval warm-period climate change allowed crop yields to increase.

Manorialism,

The organization of peasants into villages that owed rent and labor services to the nobles and feudalism,

The political structure whereby knights and lower-status nobles owed military service to their overlords in return for the right to rent from lands and manors,

Were two of the ways society was organized in the High Middle Ages.

This period also saw the formal division of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches with the East-West Schism of 1054.

The Crusades,

Which began in 1095,

Were military attempts by Western Europe Christians to regain control of the Holy Land from Muslims,

And also contributed to the expansion of Latin Christendom in the Baltic region and the Iberian Peninsula.

Kings became the heads of centralized nation-states,

Producing crime and violence,

But making the ideal of a unified Christendom more distant.

In the West,

Intellectual life was marked by scholasticism,

A philosophy that emphasized joining faith to reason,

And by the founding of universities.

The theology of Thomas Aquinas,

The paintings of Giotto,

The poetry of Dante and Chaucer,

The travels of Marco Polo,

And the Gothic architecture of cathedrals such as Chartres marked the end of this period.

The late Middle Ages was marked by difficulties and calamities,

Including famine,

Plague,

And war,

Which significantly diminished the population of Europe.

Between 1347 and 1350,

The Black Death killed about a third of Europeans.

Controversy,

Heresy,

And the Western Schism within the Catholic Church paralleled the interstate conflict,

Civil strife,

And peasant revolts that occurred in the kingdoms.

Intellectual and technological developments transformed European society,

Concluding the late Middle Ages and beginning the early modern period.

The Middle Ages is one of the three major periods in the most enduring scheme for analyzing European history,

Antiquity,

The Middle Ages,

And the modern period.

A similar term first appears in Latin in 1469 as media tempestus,

Middle season.

The adjective medieval,

Meaning pertaining to the Middle Ages,

Derives from medium evum,

Middle age,

A Latin term first recorded in 1604.

Leonardo Bruni was the first historian to use tripartite periodization in his History of the Florentine People,

1442,

And it became standard with 17th-century German historian Christoph Silarius.

Several writers divided history into periods,

Such as the Six Ages or the Four Empires,

And considered their time to be the last before the end of the world.

In their concept,

Their age had begun when Christ had brought light to mankind,

Contrasted with the spiritual darkness of previous periods.

The Italian humanist and poet Petrarch,

Died 1374,

Turned the metaphor upside down,

Stating that the age of darkness had begun when emperors of non-Italian origin assumed power in the Roman Empire.

The most commonly given starting point for the Middle Ages is around 500,

With 476,

The year the last Western Roman emperor was deposed,

First used by Bruni.

For Europe as a whole,

1500 is often considered to be the end of the Middle Ages.

But there is no universally agreed-upon end date.

Depending on the context,

Events such as the fall of Constantinople in 1453,

Christopher Columbus' first voyage to the Americas in 1492,

Or the Protestant Reformation in 1517 are sometimes used.

English historians often used the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 to mark the end of the period.

Historians from Romance-language-speaking countries tend to divide the Middle Ages into two parts,

An earlier high and later low period.

English-speaking historians following their German counterparts generally subdivide the Middle Ages into three intervals,

Early,

High,

And late.

In the 19th century,

The entire Middle Ages were often referred to as the Dark Ages.

But with the adoption of these subdivisions,

Use of this term was restricted to the early Middle Ages in the early 20th century.

The Roman Empire reached its greatest territorial extent during the 2nd century AD.

The following two centuries witnessed the slow decline of Roman control over its outlying territories.

Runaway inflation,

External pressure on the frontiers,

And outbreaks of plague combined to create the crisis of the 3rd century,

With emperors coming to the throne only to be rapidly replaced by new usurpers.

Military expenses steadily increased,

Mainly in response to the war with the Sasanian Empire.

The army doubled in size,

And cavalry and smaller units replaced the legion as the main tactical unit.

The need for revenue led to increased taxes and a decline in numbers of the curial,

Or land-owning class.

More bureaucrats were needed in the central administration to deal with the needs of the army,

Which led to complaints from civilians that there were more tax collectors in the empire than taxpayers.

The Emperor Diocletian split the empire into separately administered eastern and western halves in 286.

This system,

Which eventually encompassed two senior and two junior co-emperors,

Hence known as the Tetrarchy,

Stabilized the imperial government for about two decades.

Diocletian's further governmental,

Fiscal,

And military reforms bought the empire time but did not resolve the problems it was facing.

In 330,

After a period of civil war,

Constantine the Great refounded the city of Byzantium as the newly renamed eastern capital,

Constantinople.

For much of the 4th century,

Roman society stabilized in a new form that differed from the earlier classical period,

With a widening gulf between the rich and poor,

And a decline in the vitality of the smaller towns.

Another change was the Christianization or conversion of the empire to Christianity.

The process was accelerated by the conversion of Constantine the Great,

And Christianity emerged as the empire's dominant religion by the end of the century.

Debates about Christian theology intensified,

And those who persisted with theological views condemned at the ecumenical councils faced persecution.

Such heretic views survived through intensive proselytizing campaigns outside the empire or due to local ethnic groups' support in the eastern provinces,

Like Arianism among the Germanic peoples,

Or Monophysitism in Egypt and Syria.

Judaism remained a tolerated religion,

Although legislation limited Jews' rights.

Civil war between rival emperors became common in the middle of the 4th century,

Diverting soldiers from the empire's frontier forces and allowing invaders to encroach.

Although the movements of peoples during the period are usually described as invasions,

They were not just military expeditions,

But migrations into the empire.

In 376,

Hundreds of thousands of Goths fleeing from the Huns received permission from Emperor Valens to settle in Roman territory in the Balkans.

The settlement did not go smoothly,

And when Roman officials mishandled the situation,

The Goths began to raid and plunder.

Valens attempted to put down the disorder,

But was killed fighting the Goths at the Battle of Adrianople on 9 August 378.

The Visigoths,

A Gothic group,

Invaded the Western Roman Empire in 401.

The Alans,

Vandals,

And Suevi crossed into Gaul in 406 and into modern-day Spain in 409.

A year later,

The Visigoths sacked the city of Rome,

The Franks,

Alamanni,

And the Burgundians all ended up in Gaul while the Angles,

Saxons,

And Jutes settled in Britain,

And the Vandals conquered the province of Africa.

The Hunnic king Attila led invasions into the Balkans in 442 and 447,

Gaul in 451,

And Italy in 452.

The Hunnic threat remained until Attila's death in 453,

When the Hunnic confederation he led fell apart.

When dealing with the migrations,

The Eastern Roman elites combined the deployment of armed forces with gifts and grants of offices to the tribal leaders,

Whereas the Western aristocrats failed to support the army,

But also refused to pay tribute to prevent invasions by the tribes.

These invasions led to the division of the Western section of the empire into smaller political units,

Ruled by the tribes that had invaded.

The emperors of the 5th century were often controlled by military strongmen such as Stilicho,

Aetius,

Aspar,

Richemar,

Or Gundabad,

Who were partly or fully of non-Roman ancestry.

The deposition of the last emperor of the West,

Romulus Augustulus,

In 476,

Has traditionally marked the end of the Western Roman Empire.

The Eastern Roman Empire,

Often referred to as the Byzantine Empire after the fall of its Western counterpart,

Had little ability to assert control over the lost Western territories,

Although the Byzantine emperors maintain a claim over the territory.

In the post-Roman world,

The fusion of Roman culture with the customs of the invading tribes is well documented.

Popular assemblies that allowed free male tribal members more say in political matters than had been common in the Roman state developed into legislative and judicial bodies.

Material artifacts left by the Romans and the invaders are often similar,

And tribal items were often modeled on Roman objects.

Much of the scholarly and written culture of the new kingdoms was also based on Roman intellectual traditions.

Many of the new political entities no longer supported their armies through taxes,

Instead relying on granting them land or rents.

This meant there was less need for large tax revenues,

And so the taxation systems decayed.

The Germanic groups,

Now collectively known as Anglo-Saxons,

Settled in Britain before the middle of the 5th century.

The local culture had little impact on their way of life,

But the linguistic assimilation of masses of the local Celtic Brightons to the newcomers is evident.

By around 600,

New political centers emerged,

Some local leaders accumulated considerable wealth,

And a number of small kingdoms such as Wessex and Mercia were formed.

Smaller kingdoms in present-day Wales and Scotland were still under the control of the native Brightons and Picts.

Ireland was divided into even smaller political units,

Perhaps as many as 150 tribal kingdoms.

The Ostrogoths moved to Italy from the Balkans in the late 5th century under Theoderic the Great.

He set up a kingdom marked by its cooperation between the Italians and the Ostrogoths until the last years of his reign.

Power struggles between Romanized and Traditionalist Ostrogothic groups followed his death,

Providing the opportunity for the Byzantines to reconquer Italy in the middle of the 6th century.

The Burgundians settled in Gaul,

And after an earlier realm was destroyed by the Huns in 436,

Formed a new kingdom in the 440s.

Elsewhere in Gaul,

The Franks and Celtic Brightons set up staple polities.

Francio was centered in northern Gaul,

And the first king of whom much is known is Kilderic I.

Under Kilderic's son Clovis I,

The founder of the Merovingian dynasty,

The Frankish Kingdom expanded and converted to Christianity.

Unlike other Germanic peoples,

The Franks accepted Catholicism which facilitated their cooperation with the native Gallo-Roman aristocracy.

Brightons fleeing from Britannia,

Modern-day Great Britain,

Settled in what is now Brittany.

Other monarchies were established by the Visigoths in the Iberian Peninsula,

The Suebi in the northwestern Iberia,

And the Vandals in North Africa.

The Lombards settled in northern Italy in 568 and established a new kingdom composed of town-based duchies.

Coming from the Asian steppes,

The nomadic Avars conquered most Slavic,

Turkic,

And Germanic tribes in the lowlands along the lower and middle Danube by the end of the 6th century,

And they were routinely able to force the eastern emperors to pay tribute.

In 670,

Another steppe people,

The Bulgars,

Settled at the Danube delta.

In 681,

They defeated a Byzantine imperial army and established the first Bulgarian empire of the lower Danube,

Subjugating the local Slavic tribes.

The settlement of peoples was accompanied by changes in languages.

Latin,

The literary language of the Western Roman Empire,

Was gradually replaced by vernacular languages which evolved from Latin,

But were distinct from it,

Collectively known as Romance languages.

Greek remained the language of the Byzantine Empire,

But the migrations of the Slavs expanded the area of Slavic languages in central and eastern Europe.

During this period,

The Eastern Roman Empire remained intact and experienced an economic revival that lasted into the early 7th century.

Here political life was marked by closer relations between the political state and Christian Church,

With doctrinal matters assuming an importance in Eastern politics that they did not have in Western Europe.

Political developments included the codification of Roman law.

The first effort,

The Codex Theodosianus,

Was completed in 438.

Under Emperor Justinian,

A more comprehensive compilation took place,

The Corpus Juris Civilis.

Justinian almost lost his throne during the Nica Riots,

A popular revolt of elementary force that destroyed half of Constantinople in 532.

After crushing the revolt,

He reinforced the autocratic elements of the imperial government and mobilized his troops against the Aryan Western kingdoms.

The general Belarusius conquered North Africa from the Vandals and attacked the Ostrogoths,

But the Italian campaign was interrupted due to an unexpected Sassanian invasion from the east.

Between 541 and 543,

A deadly outbreak of plague decimated the empire's population.

Justinian ceased to finance the maintenance of public roads and covered the lack of military personnel by developing an extensive system of border forts.

In a decade he resumed expansionism,

Completing the conquest of the Ostrogothic kingdom and seizing much of southern Spain from the Visigoths.

Justinian's reconquests and excessive building program have been criticized by historians for bringing his realm to the brink of bankruptcy,

But many of the difficulties faced by Justinian's successors were due to other factors,

Including the epidemic and the massive expansion of the Avars and their Slav allies.

In the east,

Border defenses collapsed during a new war with the Sassanian Empire,

And the Persians seized large chunks of the empire,

Including Egypt,

Syria,

And much of Anatolia.

In 626,

The Avars and Slavs attacked Constantinople.

Two years later,

Emperor Heraclius launched an unexpected counterattack against the heart of the Sassanian Empire,

Bypassing the Persian army in the mountains of Anatolia.

The empire recovered all of its lost territories in the east.

In western Europe,

Some of the older Roman elite families died out,

While others became more involved with ecclesiastical than secular affairs.

Values attached to Latin scholarship and education mostly disappeared.

While literacy remained important,

It became a practical skill rather than a sign of elite status.

By the late 6th century,

The principal means of religious instruction in the church had become music and art rather than the book.

Most intellectual efforts went towards imitating classical scholarship,

But some original works were created,

Along with now-lost oral compositions.

The writings of Sidonius,

Apollonarus,

Cassiodorus,

And Boethius were typical of the age.

Aristocratic culture focused on great feasts held in halls rather than on literary pursuits.

Family ties within the elites were important,

As were the virtues of loyalty,

Courage,

And honor.

These ties led to the prevalence of the feud in aristocratic society.

Most feuds seemed to have ended quickly with the payment of some sort of compensation.

Women took part in aristocratic society,

Mainly in their roles as wives and mothers,

With the role of mother of a ruler being especially prominent in Merovingian Gaul.

In Anglo-Saxon society,

The lack of many child rulers meant a lesser role for women as queen mothers,

But this was compensated for by the increased role played by abbesses of monasteries.

Women's influence on politics was particularly fragile,

And early medieval authors tended to depict powerful women in a bad light.

Women usually died at considerably younger age than men,

Primarily due to infanticide and complications at childbirth.

The disparity between the numbers of marriageable women and grown men led to the detailed regulation of legal institutions protecting women's interests,

Including their right to the morgingaba,

Or mourning gift.

Early medieval laws acknowledged a man's right to have long-term sexual relationships with women other than his wife,

Such as concubines,

But women were expected to remain faithful.

Clerics censured sexual unions outside marriage,

And monogamy became also the norm of secular law in the 9th century.

Most of the early medieval descriptions of the lower classes come from either law codes or writers from the upper classes.

As few detailed written records documenting peasant life remain from before the 9th century,

Surviving information available to historians comes mainly from archaeology.

Landholding patterns were not uniform.

Some areas had greatly fragmented holdings,

But in other areas large contiguous blocks of land were the norm.

These differences allowed for a wide variety of peasant societies,

Some dominated by aristocratic landholders and others having a great deal of autonomy.

Land settlement also varied greatly.

Some peasants lived in large settlements that numbered as many as 700 inhabitants.

Others lived in small groups of a few families or on isolated farms.

Humanity made a clear distinction between free and unfree,

But there was no sharp break between the legal status of the free peasant and the aristocrat,

And it was possible for a free peasant's family to rise into the aristocracy over several generations through military service.

Demand for slaves was covered through warring and raids.

Initially the Franks' expansion and conflicts between the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms supplied the slave market with prisoners of war and captives.

After the Anglo-Saxons' conversion to Christianity,

Slave hunters mainly targeted the pagan Slav tribes,

Hence the English word slave from slavicus,

The medieval Latin term for Slavs.

Christian ethics brought about significant changes in the position of slaves in the 7th and 8th centuries.

They were no more regarded as their lord's property,

And their right to a decent treatment was enacted.

Roman city life and culture changed greatly in the early Middle Ages.

Although Italian cities remained inhabited,

They contracted significantly in size.

Rome,

For instance,

Shrank from a population of hundreds of thousands to around 30,

000 by the end of the 6th century.

In northern Europe cities also shrank,

While civic monuments and other public buildings were rated for building materials.

The Jewish community survived the fall of the Western Roman Empire in Spain,

Southern Gaul,

And Italy.

The Visigothic kings made concentrated efforts to convert the Hispanic Jews to Christianity,

But the Jewish community quickly regenerated after the Muslim conquest.

In contrast,

Christian legislation forbade the Jews' appointment to government positions.

Religious beliefs were in flux in the lands along the eastern Roman and Persian frontiers during the late 6th and early 7th centuries.

State-sponsored Christian missionaries proselytized among the pagan steppe peoples,

And the Persians made attempts to enforce Zoroastrianism on the Christian Armenians.

Judaism was an active proselytizing faith,

And at least one Arab political leader,

Du Nuwaz,

Ruler of what is today Yemen,

Converted to it.

The emergence of Islam in Arabia during the lifetime of Muhammad brought about more radical changes.

After his death,

Islamic forces conquered much of the Near East,

Starting with Syria in 634-35,

Continuing with Persia between 637-642,

And reaching Egypt in 640-641.

In the eastern Mediterranean,

The eastern Romans halted the Muslim expansion at Constantinople in 674-78 and 717-18.

In the west,

Islamic troops,

Conquered North Africa by the early 8th century,

Annihilated the Visgothic kingdom in 711 and invaded southern France from 713.

The Muslim conquerors bypassed the mountainous northwestern region of the Iberian Peninsula.

Here a small kingdom,

Asturias,

Emerged as the center of local resistance.

The defeat of Muslim forces at the Battle of Tours in 732 led to the reconquest of southern France by the Franks.

But the main reason for the halt of Islamic growth in Europe was the overthrow of the Umayyad Caliphate and its replacement by the Abbasid Caliphate.

The Abbasids were more concerned with the Middle East than Europe,

Losing control of sections of the Muslim lands.

Umayyad descendants took over Al-Andalus,

Or Muslim Spain.

The Aghlabids controlled North Africa,

And the Tulanids became rulers of Egypt.

Migrations and conquests disrupted trade networks around the Mediterranean.

The replacement of goods from long-range trade with local products was a trend throughout the old Roman lands.

Non-local goods appearing in the archaeological record are usually luxury goods or metal works.

In the 7th and 8th centuries,

New commercial networks were developing in northern Europe.

Goods like furs,

Walrus ivory,

And amber were delivered from the Baltic region to western Europe,

Contributing to the development of new trade centers in East Anglia,

Northern Francia,

And Scandinavia.

Conflicts over the control of trade routes and toll stations were common.

The various Germanic states in the west all had coinages that imitated existing Roman and Byzantine forms.

The flourishing Islamic economy's constant demand for fresh labor force and raw materials opened up a new market for Europe around 750.

Europe emerged as a major supplier of house slaves and slave soldiers for Al-Andalus,

Northern Africa,

And the Levant.

Venice developed into the most important European center of slave trade.

In addition,

Timber,

Fur,

And arms were delivered from Europe to the Mediterranean,

While Europe imported spices,

Medicine,

Incense,

And silk from the Levant.

The large rivers connecting distant regions facilitated the expansion of transcontinental trade.

Contemporaneous reports indicate that Anglo-Saxon merchants visited fairs at Paris,

Pirates preyed on tradesmen traveling on the Danube,

And eastern Frankish merchants reached as far as Zaragoza in Al-Andalus.

The idea of Christian unity endured although differences in ideology and practice between the eastern and western churches became apparent by the 6th century.

The formation of new realms reinforced the traditional Christian concept of the separation of church and state in the West,

Whereas this notion was alien to eastern clergymen who regarded the Roman state as an instrument of divine providence.

In the late 7th century,

Clerical marriage emerged as a permanent focus of controversy.

After the Muslims' conquest,

The Byzantine emperors could less effectively intervene in the West.

When Leo III prohibited the display of paintings representing human figures in places of worship,

The papacy openly rejected his claim to declare new dogmas by empirical edicts.

Although the Byzantine Church condemned iconoclasm in 843,

Further issues such as fierce rivalry for ecclesiastic jurisdiction over newly converted peoples and the unilateral modification of the Nicene Creed in the West widened to the extent that the differences were greater than the similarities.

Few of the western bishops looked to the papacy for religious or political leadership.

The only part of western Europe where the papacy had influence was Britain,

Where Gregory had sent the Gregorian Mission in 597 to convert the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity.

Irish missionaries were most active in western Europe between the 5th and 7th centuries.

People did not visit churches regularly.

Instead,

Meetings with itinerant clergy and pilgrimages to popular saint shrines were instrumental in the spread of Christian teaching.

Clergymen used special handbooks,

Known as penitentials,

To determine the appropriate acts of penance,

Typically prayers and fasts,

For sinners.

The early Middle Ages witnessed the rise of Christian monasticism.

Monastic ideals spread through hagiographical literature,

Especially the life of Anthony.

Most European monasteries were of the type that focuses on community experience of the spiritual life,

Called synobitism.

The Italian monk Benedict of Norcia developed the Benedictine rule,

Which became widely used in western monasteries.

In the East,

The monastic rules compiled by Theodore the Studite gained popularity after they were adopted in the Great Lavra and Mount Athos in the 960s,

Setting a precedent for further Athonite monasteries and turning the Mount into the most important center of Orthodox monasticism.

Monks and monasteries had a deep effect on religious and political life,

In various cases acting as land trusts for powerful families and important centers of political authority.

They were the main and sometimes only outposts of education and literacy in a region.

Many of the surviving manuscripts of the Latin Classics were copied in monasteries.

Monks were also the authors of new works,

Including history,

Theology,

And other subjects,

Written by authors such as Bede,

A native of northern England.

The Byzantine missionary Constantine developed Old Church Slavonic as new liturgical language,

Establishing the basis for flourishing Slavic religious literature.

Around 900,

A new script was adopted,

Now known for Constantine's monastic name as Cyrillic.

In western Christendom,

Lay influence over church affairs came to a climax in the 10th century.

Theocrats regarded the churches and monasteries under their patronage as their personal property,

And simony,

The sale of church offices,

Was a common practice.

Simony aroused a general fear about salvation,

As many believed that irregularly appointed priests could not confer valid sacraments,

Such as baptism.

Monastic communities were the first to react to this fear by the rigorous observance of their rules.

The establishment of Cluny Abbey in Burgundy in 909 initiated a more radical change as Cluny was freed from lay control and placed under the protection of the papacy.

The Cluniac reforms spread through the founding of new monasteries and the reform of monastic life in old abbeys.

Cluny's example indicated that the reformist idea of the liberty of the church could be achieved through submission to the papacy.