The Middle Ages, the medieval period of European history between the fall of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the Renaissance, are sometimes referred to as the "Dark Ages." Knights Templar. © A&E Television Networks, LLC.
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Known respectively as a 'bad' king and a 'good' king, is this really a fair view of the two monarchs? An overview of the prolonged conflict over the English claims on the French throne. How did a 'squalid disease' induce massive social change that transformed Britain? He came to power as a boy and presided over revolt, pestilence and the outbreak of civil conflict in England.
Pit your wits against the remorseless Artificial Intelligence engine of the Academy in the 'Wars of the Roses' mission. The glorious excesses of the cathedrals peaked in the Middle Ages, but the tradition continues to the present day. This page is best viewed in an up-to-date web browser with style sheets CSS enabled. While you will be able to view the content of this page in your current browser, you will not be able to get the full visual experience.
The church, in turn, not only owned cities and armies but often attempted to regulate affairs of state.
Middle Ages - Wikipedia
This tension would reach a breaking point in the late 11th and early 12th centuries during the clash between Emperor Henry IV and Pope Gregory VII over the question of lay investiture. During the 12th century a cultural and economic revival took place; many historians trace the origins of the Renaissance to this time.
The balance of economic power slowly began to shift from the region of the eastern Mediterranean to western Europe. The Gothic style developed in art and architecture. Towns began to flourish, travel and communication became faster, safer, and easier, and merchant classes began to develop. Agricultural developments were one reason for these developments; during the 12th century the cultivation of beans made a balanced diet available to all social classes for the first time in history.
The population therefore rapidly expanded, a factor that eventually led to the breakup of the old feudal structures. The 13th century was the apex of medieval civilization. The classic formulations of Gothic architecture and sculpture were achieved. Many different kinds of social units proliferated, including guilds, associations, civic councils, and monastic chapters, each eager to obtain some measure of autonomy.
The crucial legal concept of representation developed, resulting in the political assembly whose members had plena potestas —full power—to make decisions binding upon the communities that had selected them. Intellectual life, dominated by the Roman Catholic Church, culminated in the philosophical method of Scholasticism , whose preeminent exponent, St. Thomas Aquinas , achieved in his writings on Aristotle and the Church Fathers one of the greatest syntheses in Western intellectual history.
The breakup of feudal structures, the strengthening of city-states in Italy , and the emergence of national monarchies in Spain , France , and England , as well as such cultural developments as the rise of secular education, culminated in the birth of a self-consciously new age with a new spirit, one that looked all the way back to Classical learning for its inspiration and that came to be known as the Renaissance. We welcome suggested improvements to any of our articles. You can make it easier for us to review and, hopefully, publish your contribution by keeping a few points in mind.
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ADDITIONAL MEDIA
Learn More in these related Britannica articles: Christian myth and legend were adapted to new traditions as the faith expanded beyond its original cultural milieu of the Mediterranean into northern Europe. New saints and martyrs emerged during the process of expansion, and their miracles and other pious deeds were recorded….
Expectations of the Kingdom of God in the medieval and Reformation periods. It was a powerful undercurrent throughout much of the Middle Ages , shaping numerous movements in that period. Charlemagne and his advisors…. Scandinavians also expanded and colonised throughout Europe. Besides the settlements in Ireland, England, and Normandy, further settlement took place in what became Russia and in Iceland.
Swedish traders and raiders ranged down the rivers of the Russian steppe, and even attempted to seize Constantinople in and Commerce revived and the emperors oversaw the extension of a uniform administration to all the provinces. The military was reorganised, which allowed the emperors John I r. The imperial court was the centre of a revival of classical learning, a process known as the Macedonian Renaissance. Writers such as John Geometres fl. These conversions contributed to the founding of political states in the lands of those peoples—the states of Moravia , Bulgaria , Bohemia , Poland , Hungary, and the Kievan Rus'.
Few large stone buildings were constructed between the Constantinian basilicas of the 4th century and the 8th century, although many smaller ones were built during the 6th and 7th centuries. By the beginning of the 8th century, the Carolingian Empire revived the basilica form of architecture.
Carolingian art was produced for a small group of figures around the court, and the monasteries and churches they supported. It was dominated by efforts to regain the dignity and classicism of imperial Roman and Byzantine art , but was also influenced by the Insular art of the British Isles.
Insular art integrated the energy of Irish Celtic and Anglo-Saxon Germanic styles of ornament with Mediterranean forms such as the book, and established many characteristics of art for the rest of the medieval period. Surviving religious works from the Early Middle Ages are mostly illuminated manuscripts and carved ivories , originally made for metalwork that has since been melted down.
There are survivals from the large brooches in fibula or penannular form that were a key piece of personal adornment for elites, including the Irish Tara Brooch. Emmeram , which is one of the few to retain its " treasure binding " of gold encrusted with jewels. During the later Roman Empire, the principal military developments were attempts to create an effective cavalry force as well as the continued development of highly specialised types of troops.
The creation of heavily armoured cataphract -type soldiers as cavalry was an important feature of the 5th-century Roman military.
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The various invading tribes had differing emphases on types of soldiers—ranging from the primarily infantry Anglo-Saxon invaders of Britain to the Vandals and Visigoths, who had a high proportion of cavalry in their armies. The importance of infantry and light cavalry began to decline during the early Carolingian period, with a growing dominance of elite heavy cavalry. The use of militia-type levies of the free population declined over the Carolingian period.
A technological advance that had implications beyond the military was the horseshoe , which allowed horses to be used in rocky terrain. The High Middle Ages was a period of tremendous expansion of population. The estimated population of Europe grew from 35 to 80 million between and , although the exact causes remain unclear: Many were no longer settled in isolated farms but had gathered into small communities, usually known as manors or villages.
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There remained a few free peasants throughout this period and beyond, [] with more of them in the regions of Southern Europe than in the north. The practice of assarting , or bringing new lands into production by offering incentives to the peasants who settled them, also contributed to the expansion of population.
The Open-field system of agriculture was commonly practiced in most of Europe, especially in "northwestern and central Europe. Other sections of society included the nobility, clergy, and townsmen. Nobles, both the titled nobility and simple knights , exploited the manors and the peasants, although they did not own lands outright but were granted rights to the income from a manor or other lands by an overlord through the system of feudalism.
During the 11th and 12th centuries, these lands, or fiefs , came to be considered hereditary, and in most areas they were no longer divisible between all the heirs as had been the case in the early medieval period. Instead, most fiefs and lands went to the eldest son. Control of castles allowed the nobles to defy kings or other overlords. Beneath them, lesser nobles had authority over smaller areas of land and fewer people. Knights were the lowest level of nobility; they controlled but did not own land, and had to serve other nobles.
The clergy was divided into two types: The local parish priests were often drawn from the peasant class. During the 12th and 13th centuries, the ranks of the townsmen expanded greatly as existing towns grew and new population centres were founded. Jews also spread across Europe during the period. Communities were established in Germany and England in the 11th and 12th centuries, but Spanish Jews , long settled in Spain under the Muslims, came under Christian rule and increasing pressure to convert to Christianity.
Women in the Middle Ages were officially required to be subordinate to some male, whether their father, husband, or other kinsman. Widows, who were often allowed much control over their own lives, were still restricted legally. Women's work generally consisted of household or other domestically inclined tasks. Peasant women were usually responsible for taking care of the household, child-care, as well as gardening and animal husbandry near the house. They could supplement the household income by spinning or brewing at home. At harvest-time, they were also expected to help with field-work.
What trades were open to women varied by country and period. The only role open to women in the Church was that of nuns , as they were unable to become priests. In central and northern Italy and in Flanders , the rise of towns that were to a degree self-governing stimulated economic growth and created an environment for new types of trade associations. Commercial cities on the shores of the Baltic entered into agreements known as the Hanseatic League , and the Italian Maritime republics such as Venice , Genoa , and Pisa expanded their trade throughout the Mediterranean.
New forms of commercial contracts emerged, allowing risk to be shared among merchants. Accounting methods improved, partly through the use of double-entry bookkeeping ; letters of credit also appeared, allowing easy transmission of money. The High Middle Ages was the formative period in the history of the modern Western state.
Kings in France, England, and Spain consolidated their power, and set up lasting governing institutions. During the early High Middle Ages, Germany was ruled by the Ottonian dynasty , which struggled to control the powerful dukes ruling over territorial duchies tracing back to the Migration period. In , they were replaced by the Salian dynasty , who famously clashed with the papacy under Emperor Henry IV r. A period of instability followed the death of Emperor Henry V r. His court was famous for its scholars and he was often accused of heresy. Mongols first shattered the Kievan Rus' principalities and then invaded Eastern Europe in , , and This led to dissension among the English nobility, while John's financial exactions to pay for his unsuccessful attempts to regain Normandy led in to Magna Carta , a charter that confirmed the rights and privileges of free men in England.
Under Henry III r. In Iberia, the Christian states, which had been confined to the north-western part of the peninsula, began to push back against the Islamic states in the south, a period known as the Reconquista. In the 11th century, the Seljuk Turks took over much of the Middle East, occupying Persia during the s, Armenia in the s, and Jerusalem in The Turks were then free to invade Asia Minor, which dealt a dangerous blow to the Byzantine Empire by seizing a large part of its population and its economic heartland.
Although the Byzantines regrouped and recovered somewhat, they never fully regained Asia Minor and were often on the defensive. The Turks also had difficulties, losing control of Jerusalem to the Fatimids of Egypt and suffering from a series of internal civil wars. The crusades were intended to seize Jerusalem from Muslim control. Urban promised indulgence to anyone who took part.
Tens of thousands of people from all levels of society mobilised across Europe and captured Jerusalem in These were especially brutal during the First Crusade, [78] when the Jewish communities in Cologne , Mainz , and Worms were destroyed, and other communities in cities between the rivers Seine and the Rhine suffered destruction.
The crusaders consolidated their conquests into crusader states.
Middle Ages
During the 12th and 13th centuries, there were a series of conflicts between those states and the surrounding Islamic states. Appeals from those states to the papacy led to further crusades, [] such as the Third Crusade , called to try to regain Jerusalem, which had been captured by Saladin d. The Byzantines recaptured the city in , but never regained their former strength. Popes called for crusades to take place elsewhere besides the Holy Land: Although the Templars and Hospitallers took part in the Spanish crusades, similar Spanish military religious orders were founded, most of which had become part of the two main orders of Calatrava and Santiago by the beginning of the 12th century.
These crusades also spawned a military order, the Order of the Sword Brothers. Another order, the Teutonic Knights , although founded in the crusader states, focused much of its activity in the Baltic after , and in moved its headquarters to Marienburg in Prussia. During the 11th century, developments in philosophy and theology led to increased intellectual activity. There was debate between the realists and the nominalists over the concept of " universals ".
Philosophical discourse was stimulated by the rediscovery of Aristotle and his emphasis on empiricism and rationalism. Scholars such as Peter Abelard d. In the late 11th and early 12th centuries cathedral schools spread throughout Western Europe, signalling the shift of learning from monasteries to cathedrals and towns.
This movement tried to employ a systemic approach to truth and reason [] and culminated in the thought of Thomas Aquinas d. Chivalry and the ethos of courtly love developed in royal and noble courts. This culture was expressed in the vernacular languages rather than Latin, and comprised poems, stories, legends, and popular songs spread by troubadours , or wandering minstrels.
Often the stories were written down in the chansons de geste , or "songs of great deeds", such as The Song of Roland or The Song of Hildebrand. Legal studies advanced during the 12th century. Both secular law and canon law , or ecclesiastical law, were studied in the High Middle Ages. Secular law, or Roman law, was advanced greatly by the discovery of the Corpus Juris Civilis in the 11th century, and by Roman law was being taught at Bologna. This led to the recording and standardisation of legal codes throughout Western Europe.
Canon law was also studied, and around a monk named Gratian fl. Among the results of the Greek and Islamic influence on this period in European history was the replacement of Roman numerals with the decimal positional number system and the invention of algebra , which allowed more advanced mathematics. Astronomy advanced following the translation of Ptolemy 's Almagest from Greek into Latin in the late 12th century. Medicine was also studied, especially in southern Italy, where Islamic medicine influenced the school at Salerno. In the 12th and 13th centuries, Europe produced economic growth and innovations in methods of production.
Major technological advances included the invention of the windmill , the first mechanical clocks, the manufacture of distilled spirits , and the use of the astrolabe. The development of a three-field rotation system for planting crops [] [Z] increased the usage of land from one half in use each year under the old two-field system to two-thirds under the new system, with a consequent increase in production.
Horses are faster than oxen and require less pasture, factors that aided the implementation of the three-field system. The construction of cathedrals and castles advanced building technology, leading to the development of large stone buildings. Ancillary structures included new town halls, houses, bridges, and tithe barns. Other improvements to ships included the use of lateen sails and the stern-post rudder , both of which increased the speed at which ships could be sailed.
In military affairs, the use of infantry with specialised roles increased. Along with the still-dominant heavy cavalry, armies often included mounted and infantry crossbowmen , as well as sappers and engineers. Cannon were being used for sieges in the s, and hand-held guns were in use by the s. In the 10th century the establishment of churches and monasteries led to the development of stone architecture that elaborated vernacular Roman forms, from which the term "Romanesque" is derived. Where available, Roman brick and stone buildings were recycled for their materials. From the tentative beginnings known as the First Romanesque , the style flourished and spread across Europe in a remarkably homogeneous form.
Just before there was a great wave of building stone churches all over Europe. Dodwell , "virtually all the churches in the West were decorated with wall-paintings", of which few survive. Romanesque art, especially metalwork, was at its most sophisticated in Mosan art , in which distinct artistic personalities including Nicholas of Verdun d.
Large illuminated bibles and psalters were the typical forms of luxury manuscripts, and wall-painting flourished in churches, often following a scheme with a Last Judgement on the west wall, a Christ in Majesty at the east end, and narrative biblical scenes down the nave, or in the best surviving example, at Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe , on the barrel-vaulted roof.
From the early 12th century, French builders developed the Gothic style, marked by the use of rib vaults , pointed arches , flying buttresses , and large stained glass windows. It was used mainly in churches and cathedrals and continued in use until the 16th century in much of Europe. During this period the practice of manuscript illumination gradually passed from monasteries to lay workshops, so that according to Janetta Benton "by most monks bought their books in shops", [] and the book of hours developed as a form of devotional book for lay-people.
Metalwork continued to be the most prestigious form of art, with Limoges enamel a popular and relatively affordable option for objects such as reliquaries and crosses. Monastic reform became an important issue during the 11th century, as elites began to worry that monks were not adhering to the rules binding them to a strictly religious life. It sought to maintain a high quality of spiritual life by placing itself under the protection of the papacy and by electing its own abbot without interference from laymen, thus maintaining economic and political independence from local lords.
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Monastic reform inspired change in the secular Church. The ideals that it was based upon were brought to the papacy by Pope Leo IX pope — , and provided the ideology of the clerical independence that led to the Investiture Controversy in the late 11th century. This involved Pope Gregory VII pope —85 and Emperor Henry IV, who initially clashed over episcopal appointments, a dispute that turned into a battle over the ideas of investiture , clerical marriage, and simony.
The emperor saw the protection of the Church as one of his responsibilities as well as wanting to preserve the right to appoint his own choices as bishops within his lands, but the papacy insisted on the Church's independence from secular lords. These issues remained unresolved after the compromise of known as the Concordat of Worms. The dispute represents a significant stage in the creation of a papal monarchy separate from and equal to lay authorities. It also had the permanent consequence of empowering German princes at the expense of the German emperors. The High Middle Ages was a period of great religious movements.
Besides the Crusades and monastic reforms, people sought to participate in new forms of religious life. New monastic orders were founded, including the Carthusians and the Cistercians. The latter especially expanded rapidly in their early years under the guidance of Bernard of Clairvaux d. These new orders were formed in response to the feeling of the laity that Benedictine monasticism no longer met the needs of the laymen, who along with those wishing to enter the religious life wanted a return to the simpler hermetical monasticism of early Christianity, or to live an Apostolic life.
Old pilgrimage sites such as Rome, Jerusalem, and Compostela received increasing numbers of visitors, and new sites such as Monte Gargano and Bari rose to prominence. In the 13th century mendicant orders —the Franciscans and the Dominicans —who swore vows of poverty and earned their living by begging, were approved by the papacy.
Others joined the Cathars , another heretical movement condemned by the papacy. In , a crusade was preached against the Cathars, the Albigensian Crusade , which in combination with the medieval Inquisition , eliminated them. The first years of the 14th century were marked by famines, culminating in the Great Famine of — These troubles were followed in by the Black Death , a pandemic that spread throughout Europe during the following three years.
Towns were especially hard-hit because of their crowded conditions. Wages rose as landlords sought to entice the reduced number of available workers to their fields. Further problems were lower rents and lower demand for food, both of which cut into agricultural income.
Urban workers also felt that they had a right to greater earnings, and popular uprisings broke out across Europe. The trauma of the plague led to an increased piety throughout Europe, manifested by the foundation of new charities, the self-mortification of the flagellants , and the scapegoating of Jews. Society throughout Europe was disturbed by the dislocations caused by the Black Death.
Lands that had been marginally productive were abandoned, as the survivors were able to acquire more fertile areas. Partly at the urging of landlords, governments attempted to legislate a return to the economic conditions that existed before the Black Death. Jewish communities were expelled from England in and from France in Although some were allowed back into France, most were not, and many Jews emigrated eastwards, settling in Poland and Hungary. Many banking firms loaned money to royalty, at great risk, as some were bankrupted when kings defaulted on their loans.
Strong, royalty-based nation states rose throughout Europe in the Late Middle Ages, particularly in England , France , and the Christian kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula: Aragon , Castile , and Portugal. The long conflicts of the period strengthened royal control over their kingdoms and were extremely hard on the peasantry. Kings profited from warfare that extended royal legislation and increased the lands they directly controlled.
Throughout the 14th century, French kings sought to expand their influence at the expense of the territorial holdings of the nobility. Conversely, the Wars had a positive effect on English national identity , doing much to fuse the various local identities into a national English ideal.
The conflict with France also helped create a national culture in England separate from French culture, which had previously been the dominant influence. In modern-day Germany, the Holy Roman Empire continued to rule, but the elective nature of the imperial crown meant there was no enduring dynasty around which a strong state could form. The major power around the Baltic Sea was the Hanseatic League, a commercial confederation of city-states that traded from Western Europe to Russia. Although the Palaeologi emperors recaptured Constantinople from the Western Europeans in , they were never able to regain control of much of the former imperial lands.
They usually controlled only a small section of the Balkan Peninsula near Constantinople, the city itself, and some coastal lands on the Black Sea and around the Aegean Sea. The power of the Byzantine emperors was threatened by a new Turkish tribe, the Ottomans , who established themselves in Anatolia in the 13th century and steadily expanded throughout the 14th century. The Ottomans expanded into Europe, reducing Bulgaria to a vassal state by and taking over Serbia after its defeat at the Battle of Kosovo in Western Europeans rallied to the plight of the Christians in the Balkans and declared a new crusade in ; a great army was sent to the Balkans, where it was defeated at the Battle of Nicopolis.
During the tumultuous 14th century, disputes within the leadership of the Church led to the Avignon Papacy of —76, [] also called the "Babylonian Captivity of the Papacy" a reference to the Babylonian captivity of the Jews , [] and then to the Great Schism , lasting from to , when there were two and later three rival popes, each supported by several states. Further depositions followed, and in November the council elected Martin V pope —31 as pope.
Besides the schism, the Western Church was riven by theological controversies, some of which turned into heresies. Lollardy in England and Hussitism in Bohemia. The Hussite Church, although the target of a crusade, survived beyond the Middle Ages. The papacy further refined the practice in the Mass in the Late Middle Ages, holding that the clergy alone was allowed to partake of the wine in the Eucharist.
This further distanced the secular laity from the clergy. The laity continued the practices of pilgrimages, veneration of relics, and belief in the power of the Devil. Mystics such as Meister Eckhart d. Besides mysticism, belief in witches and witchcraft became widespread, and by the late 15th century the Church had begun to lend credence to populist fears of witchcraft with its condemnation of witches in and the publication in of the Malleus Maleficarum , the most popular handbook for witch-hunters. Their efforts undermined the prevailing Platonic idea of universals.
Ockham's insistence that reason operates independently of faith allowed science to be separated from theology and philosophy. The lone exception to this trend was in England, where the common law remained pre-eminent. Other countries codified their laws; legal codes were promulgated in Castile, Poland, and Lithuania. Education remained mostly focused on the training of future clergy.