European Middle Ages

This article may be Western-centric in its focus. You can help by adding details about the medieval history of Eastern Europe.

Europe in the year 814 CE at the death of Charlemagne.

In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period is the name used since the Renaissance to refer to the period between late antiquity and early modernity, spanning about ten centuries from approximately 500 AD, after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, to 1500 AD, after the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire. The Middle Ages is the middle period of the three traditional divisions of Western history: antique, medieval, and modern. The medieval period is itself subdivided into the Early, High, and Late Middle Ages.

Marxist historiography understands the medieval era to be one dominated by the feudal mode of production which manifested in a variety of peasant economies, including but not limited to the serf relation, rather than the previous slave system and characterized by the inching regrowth of market relations after their collapse in most of Europe along with the Roman Empire. The gradual expansion of the bourgeoisie, fed by conspicuous consumption by noble elites, accelerated in the 16th century due to the discovery and exploitation of the Americas, leading ultimately to the explosive conflicts of the 17th century such as the Thirty Years' War and the English Civil War. The bourgeois French Revolutionaries referred to the absolutist system they had overthrown as "feudal", which became a customary term to refer to the political system of medieval Western Europe; this analysis, and the use of the term "feudal" itself, has been questioned since the mid-20th century among mainstream historians.

Periodization

Early Middle Ages

The Early Middle Ages (c. 500–1000), also known as the Dark Ages (see below), are marked by a continuation of the trends of late antiquity: declining population, weakening trade and intellectual life, poor central authority, and mass migration and assimilation of peoples from the east. While some of the economic and political relations of the Late Roman Empire, including slavery, survived for a time under the Eastern or Byzantine Empire, the economies of Western states took on new forms which were adapted to the end of the slave trade, Roman expansion, and arguably, Roman economic superiority over the rest of Europe. The Carolingian dynasty of the Franks established the Western European Carolingian Empire during the later 8th and early 9th centuries, culminating in the reign of Charlemagne, who oversaw the short-lived "Carolingian Renaissance" before the empire succumbed in the 9th century to internal conflict and external invasions. In the 7th century, the Islamic Arab conquests spread throughout the Middle East and North Africa, but were prevented from spreading into Western Europe after their defeat at the Battle of Tours in 732.

High Middle Ages

The High Middle Ages (c. 1000–1300) are marked by a return to Roman-era levels of trade, urbanization, and social development. The population of Europe increased as new technological and agricultural innovations allowed trade to flourish and the Medieval Warm Period allowed crop yields to increase. This period also saw the widening of a split between Eastern and Western churches which had existed since the Roman period, culminating in a formal break, the East-West Schism, in 1054. The Crusades, which began in 1095, were a series of "military pilgrimages" by Western European Christians, ostensibly in order to regain control of the Holy Land from Muslims but ultimately to bolster the Byzantines against the Muslims after the crushing loss at Manzikert in 1071. In fact, the Fourth Crusade would instead lead to the Sack of Constantinople in 1204, terminally weakening the empire until its fall to the Ottomans in 1453. In the West, intellectual life was marked by scholasticism, a philosophy that emphasised 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 mark the end of this period.

Late Middle Ages

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. Cultural and technological developments transformed European society, concluding the Late Middle Ages and beginning the early modern period.

Historiography

"Dark Ages"

The term Dark Ages in its modern usage properly refers to the relative paucity of written records and histories during the Early Middle Ages. In English history, for example, the era of Germanic colonization is a mostly unknown, or "dark", period in history; such gaps in history also occur in Byzantine records and elsewhere. This darkness is even more evident when studying the histories of Southern and Eastern European languages such as Albanian, not found in writing until 1462, and Romanian, not attested until 1521. The cultural and economic poverty of the era also meant that core religious and philosophical texts were preserved and copied rather than secular and mundane ones, often through the practice of writing over existing documents, resulting in a further loss of information concerning the period.

Originally, the term Dark Ages was used by 19th-century Whig historians to grossly mischaracterize the entire medieval period as thoroughly backward by comparison to either its classical predecessor or bourgeois modernity. This understanding of the period persists to the present day and notably incorporates stereotypes, such as witch-hunting, religious inquisitions, and misogynist practices such as the scold's bridle or ducking stool, which in fact became widespread amid the turmoil of the "enlightened" early modern and Renaissance periods. In addition, archaeologists and historians have developed a greater understanding of the ways in which Middle and Late periods were more culturally and artistically advanced than previously was thought.

Modern historians and scholars often eschew the term "Dark Ages", or even the concept, altogether. This has resulted in a reaction from some scholars, such as Bryan Ward-Perkins, who have argued for the existence of a palpable decline in human development and knowledge after the 6th century.