Explanation:
The period of European history extending from about 500 to 1400–1500 CE is traditionally known as the Middle Ages. The term was first used by 15th-century scholars to designate the period between their own time and the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The period is often considered to have its own internal divisions: either early and late or early, central or high, and late.
Although once regarded as a time of uninterrupted ignorance, superstition, and social oppression, the Middle Ages are now understood as a dynamic period during which the idea of Europe as a distinct cultural unit emerged. During late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, political, social, economic, and cultural structures were profoundly reorganized, as Roman imperial traditions gave way to those of the Germanic peoples who established kingdoms in the former Western Empire. New forms of political leadership were introduced, the population of Europe was gradually Christianized, and monasticism was established as the ideal form of religious life. These developments reached their mature form in the 9th century during the reign of Charlemagne and other rulers of the Carolingian dynasty, who oversaw a broad cultural revival known as the Carolingian renaissance.
In the central, or high, Middle Ages, even more dramatic growth occurred. The period was marked by economic and territorial expansion, demographic and urban growth, the emergence of national identity, and the restructuring of secular and ecclesiastical institutions. It was the era of the Crusades, Gothic art and architecture, the papal monarchy, the birth of the university, the recovery of ancient Greek thought, and the soaring intellectual achievements of St. Thomas Aquinas (c. 1224–74).
It has been traditionally held that by the 14th century the dynamic force of medieval civilization had been spent and that the late Middle Ages were characterized by decline and decay. Europe did indeed suffer disasters of war, famine, and pestilence in the 14th century, but many of the underlying social, intellectual, and political structures remained intact. In the 15th and 16th centuries, Europe experienced an intellectual and economic revival, conventionally called the Renaissance, that laid the foundation for the subsequent expansion of European culture throughout the world.
Many historians have questioned the conventional dating of the beginning and end of the Middle Ages, which were never precise in any case and cannot be located in any year or even century. Some scholars have advocated extending the period defined as late antiquity (c. 250–c. 750 CE) into the 10th century or later, and some have proposed a Middle Ages lasting from about 1000 to 1800. Still others argue for the inclusion of the old periods Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Reformation into a single period beginning in late antiquity and ending in the second half of the 16th century.
Edward Peters
Michael Frassetto
The idea of the Middle Ages
The term and concept before the 18th century
St. Augustine
St. Augustine
© Lanmas/Alamy
From the 4th to the 15th century, writers of history thought within a linear framework of time derived from the Christian understanding of Scripture—the sequence of Creation, Incarnation, Christ’s Second Coming, and the Last Judgment. In Book XXII of City of God, the great Church Father Augustine of Hippo (354–430) posited six ages of world history, which paralleled the six days of Creation and the six ages of the individual human life span. For Augustine, the six ages of history—from Adam and Eve to the Flood, from the Flood to Abraham, from Abraham to King David, from David to the Babylonian Exile, from the Exile to Jesus Christ, and from Christ to the Second Coming—would be followed by a seventh age, the reign of Christ on earth. World history was conceived as “salvation history”—the course of events from Creation to the Last Judgment—and its purposes were religious and moral. Thus, all the references by Augustine and other early authors to a “middle time” must be understood within the framework of the sixth age of salvation history. Early Christian interpretations of the biblical Book of Daniel (Daniel 2:31–45, 7), especially those of the Church Father Jerome (c. 347–419/420) and the historian Paulus Orosius (flourished 414–417), added the idea of four successive world empires—Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome. Late writers in this tradition added the idea of the translatio imperii (“translation of empire”): from Alexander the Great to the Romans, from the Romans to the Franks under Charlemagne in 800, and from Charlemagne to the East Frankish emperors and Otto I. A number of early European thinkers built upon the idea of the translation of empire to define European civilization in terms of scholarship and chivalry (the knightly code of conduct). All these ideas were readily compatible with the Augustinian sequence of the six ages of the world.
