The Middle Ages in Europe

The Middle Ages usually means the period in Europe from the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century to roughly 1500. The name itself was coined by Renaissance writers who saw their own age as a revival of classical culture and the centuries before it as a gap.

Modern historians reject the idea of a thousand dark years. The early medieval period did see smaller cities, less trade and fewer written records in the West. But the same era produced Charlemagne's revival of learning, Romanesque and Gothic cathedrals, the first universities, mechanical clocks, eyeglasses and the legal and parliamentary traditions that later states grew from.

When Roman authority in the West dissolved, Germanic kingdoms took its place: Franks in Gaul, Visigoths in Spain, Ostrogoths and later Lombards in Italy, Anglo-Saxons in Britain. Many kings kept Roman law and Latin administration where they could, and the Christian church became the most important institution that survived across borders.

In the East the Roman Empire did not fall. Historians call it the Byzantine Empire, but its people called themselves Romans, and its capital Constantinople remained one of the largest and richest cities in the world until 1453.

The word feudalism is a later label and historians argue about how useful it is, but it describes some real arrangements. Kings and great lords granted land to warriors in return for military service and loyalty. Those vassals in turn relied on the labour of peasants.

Most people were peasants, and many were serfs: legally tied to a manor, owing labour on the lord's land and payments in produce or coin, but not the property of the lord in the way enslaved people were. Village life followed the agricultural year and the church calendar of feasts and fasts.

The Latin church shaped education, law, charity and time itself. Monasteries following rules such as that of Saint Benedict copied manuscripts, ran schools and farms, and cared for travellers and the sick. Bishops were often powerful political figures as well as religious leaders.

Conflict between popes and kings over who controlled appointments to church office, most famously the Investiture Controversy of the eleventh century, helped establish a lasting idea in European politics: that religious and secular authority are separate powers.

• From about 1000 to 1300 the population of Europe grew strongly, helped by a warmer climate and better farming methods such as the heavy plough and three-field rotation.
• Towns revived and won charters that gave merchants and craftsmen self-government, often organised through guilds.
• Universities appeared at Bologna, Paris and Oxford, teaching law, theology, medicine and the liberal arts.
• In 1215 English barons forced King John to accept Magna Carta, which stated that even the king was bound by law.
• The Crusades, beginning in 1095, sent armies to the eastern Mediterranean and deepened contact, and conflict, with the Byzantine and Islamic worlds.

The fourteenth century brought a run of disasters. The Great Famine of 1315 to 1317 followed years of cold, wet weather. Then the Black Death arrived in 1347 and killed perhaps a third or more of Europe's population within a few years.

The survivors lived in a changed world. Labour was scarce, so wages rose and many peasants gained better terms or left the land. Revolts broke out in England and France. By the fifteenth century printing, new ships, stronger monarchies and a renewed interest in classical texts were pulling Europe toward what we now call the early modern period.