Renaissance humanists gave the name Middle Ages to the period between the end of the Roman Empire and their own time, which they believed was a rebirth of the civilization of Greece and Rome. In the 15th century the Italian historian Flavio Biondo regarded the sack of Rome by the Visigoths in AD 410 as the end of ancient civilization and the beginning of the modern period as 1410. A popular German textbook of the 17th century dated the end of ancient times the deposition of Romulus Augustulus as Western emperor in AD 476 and the beginning of the modern age in 1453 with the fall of Constantinople to the Turks. BASIC PERIODS Within the thousand years of the Middle Ages, historians have recognized subperiods; the Early Middle Ages, to 900 or 1000; the High Middle Ages, from then to about 1300; and the Later Middle Ages, the 14th and 15th centuries. The Middle Ages, especially the early period, were also known as the \TDark Ages\t, but historians today generally reject that term. The Early Middle Ages The Early Middle Ages was the period of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, the invasions of the barbarians, and the triumph of Christianity. The Western Empire was broken up into barbarian kingdoms, until on Christmas Day, 800, the Frankish king, \TCharlemagne\t, was crowned emperor of the West by the pope. His empire had a fundamental weakness, however, in that it depended on the personal rule of the emperor, who could not successfully delegate authority or levy direct taxes. By 900 the empire had broken up into a myriad of duchies, counties, margravates, bishoprics, abbacies, and other lordships whose rulers exercised more power than kings and emperors. At that same time the frontiers of Western Europe were being devastated from the north by Vikings, from the south by Muslims, and from the east by Magyars. The High Middle Ages In the 10th century Europe began to revive. Organized according to the rules of \Tfeudalism\t, the Western Europeans were able to drive off the invaders and gradually to take the offensive. In 1099, the Crusaders captured the Holy Land from the Muslims, and in 1204 they seized the Eastern Empire from the Byzantines. Both were lost again by 1291, but more lasting was the Christian reconquest of Spain from the Moors. The hegemony of the Mediterranean Sea and its islands also was won by Western Christians, and missionaries brought the kingdoms of Scandinavia as well as of Poland, Bohemia, and Hungary into the orbit of Western civilization. Meantime, the economy and the society recovered and achieved heights unknown even under the Roman Empire. The church was reformed and revitalized. Splendid Romanesque art developed into glorious Gothic, and many great works of literature like the Song of Roland and the Romance of the Rose were written. Rediscovery of the works of Greek and Hellenistic philosophers, especially Aristotle, provided the spark for \Tscholasticism\t, the great philosophic system of the Middle Ages. The Later Middle Ages In the 14th and 15th centuries, Europe suffered great famines, the catastrophic Black Death (see \Tbubonic plague\t), and the \THundred Years\t' War. Those who survived, however, often had a better life, especially the peasants of Western Europe, who won both greater freedom and greater prosperity. The nobles built palaces instead of castles, and the newly rich townspeople aped the nobility. The classic style dominated Italian art while the north of Europe developed Flamboyant Gothic. Among the great writers of the period were Giovanni \TBoccaccio\t and \TDante Alighieri\t; Geoffrey \TChaucer\t and Thomas \TMalory\t; and Guillaume de \TMachaut\t and Francois \TVillon\t. POLITICAL STRUCTURE The Imperial Idea Despite the failure of the Carolingian empire the imperial idea remained strong in medieval Europe. In 961, \TOtto I\t, king of Germany, made himself king of Italy and obtained papal coronation as emperor. In the next century the kingdom of Burgundy was bequeathed to \TConrad II\t, and the emperors thereafter held the three realms. To the east the Poles, Bohemians, and Hungarians would sometimes admit that their kings were vassals of the emperor; but the kingdoms of France, Spain, England, and Scandinavia were never more than nominal members of this \THoly Roman Empire\t. Rather, their kings exercised imperial rights in their own kingdoms--naming dukes, counts, bishops, and abbots; promulgating laws; and coining money. The emperor was the most dignified of all lay rulers in medieval Europe but not always the most powerful. Both empire and kingdoms were ruled by elected monarchs in the 10th century; only gradually were hereditary monarchies established and then not everywhere and always subject to dynastic failure. Feudal Powers The authority of the emperor and the kings was thought to derive from God as symbolized by coronation by the pope or another prelate. Power, however, had largely escaped from their hands into those of lesser lords. Effective government in medieval Europe depended heavily on the cooperation of these lords, and that cooperation was achieved by making their power over their territories and subjects hereditary as long as they performed the political and military services due from their fiefs. This feudal contract provided Europe with a system of political relationships fundamentally different from the imperial system. The vassals who held fiefs of an emperor or king could claim that that ruler was bound by the feudal contract not to disturb their rights in their fiefs. Thus the English barons obtained from King \TJohn\t the \TMagna Carta\t of 1215, guaranteeing to them the preservation of their rights and liberties. The potentiality for conflict between the imperial idea and the feudal contract was great, but in general the two lived side by side in feudal monarchies. Strong rulers like King \TWilliam I\t (the Conqueror) of England and Holy Roman Emperor \TFrederick I\t (Barbarossa) actually encouraged feudalism to obtain power for their states. The Papacy More dangerous to the authority and the power of medieval monarchs were the claims of churchmen, particularly the increasing secular power of the \Tpapacy\t. If popes and prelates crowned emperors and kings, why should not the churchmen claim superiority as vicegerents for God? Pope \TNicholas I\t did so as early as the 9th century, but it was Pope \TGregory VII\t in the 11th century who precipitated a great quarrel with Emperor \THenry IV\t over the relative authority and dignity of popes and emperors (see \Tinvestiture controversy\t). In the 12th and 13th centuries the popes won the leadership of Europe by preaching the \TCrusades\t, first against the Muslims, then against such heretics as the \TAlbigenses\t, and finally against Emperor \TFrederick II\t, whose 30-year reign (1220-50) was a constant battle with the papacy. Papal power reached its zenith under the reign (1198-1216) of \TInnocent III\t, whose political power was almost as great as his churchly power. When Pope \TBoniface VIII\t tried (1296-1302) to forbid lay taxation of the clergy of France and England without papal consent, he was unsuccessful. The papacy reached its lowest point during the so-called Babylonian Captivity (1309-78), when the popes were removed to Avignon and were under the domination of the French kings. As successor to Saint Peter the pope claimed jurisdiction over all Christians, but his claim was recognized only in the Western, or Latin, church and then only in matters of \Tcanon law\t. Since 1059 the popes had been elected by a college of cardinals--certain designated clergy of the Roman province--who also came to be regarded as papal counselors and advisors in the Roman curia, or court. The hierarchy of the church had been organized with metropolitan archbishops, diocesan bishops, archdeacons, rural deans, and parish clergy. The pope could send orders down through this chain of command, and cases in ecclesiastical law could be appealed up through it to Rome. An astounding amount of judicial business was dealt with because canon law claimed to deal with all cases affecting the clergy, wills and testaments, marriage and divorce, and contracts secured by oaths. In addition to the secular clergy in the hierarchy, members of religious orders--monks, nuns, canons, friars, teaching or nursing brothers and sisters--constituted the regular clergy, those who lived by a rule (regula). Theoretically subject to supervision by bishops, they were, in fact, largely exempt from local jurisdiction and subject only to papal discipline. The Towns In addition to popes and emperors and kings and barons, yet another contestant for power appeared with the rise of the towns and the townspeople. Their wealth made it possible for them to buy arms, and their town levies became important military forces everywhere. With such wealth and military might, all of them sought increased liberties and became as self-governing as possible. The wealthiest and most powerful towns--those in Flanders, south Germany, and northern Italy--became independent \Lcommune\ls, although their territorial lords put up a long struggle. The most aggressive then set about conquering their neighbors and establishing city-states--Venice, Milan, and Florence were the most successful. The internal governments of the towns were generally oligarchic republics, but those of the Italian city-states tended to become despotisms in the Later Middle Ages. Representative Institutions During the 12th and 13th centuries the towns and the religious orders developed representative institutions. By 1300 princes were making use of representatives of towns and churchmen to add strength to their feudal councils. In England the king summoned representatives of each shire and borough to Parliament and proctors of the clergy in each diocese to meet in convocation. In France the States General, in Spain the Cortes, and in Germany the Diet all had similar representatives in their membership. Their principal power lay in consent to taxation, and when in the Later Middle Ages they found it easier to give such consent in advance, the kings lost much of their reason for calling these representative assemblies into session. The way was then open for the age of absolutism. SOCIETY AND ECONOMY The Court The courts of princes and siegneurs were the natural centers for the social life of the noble class. There they thronged for the great feasts of the Christian year: Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost. There they came for military expeditions, whether it be war, tourney, or Crusade. There they were summoned for judgment in their own cases or those of their peers. And there they gave counsel to their lords. Because they fought exclusively on horseback, they became the cavalry, the \Tchivalry\t of Europe. Prowess, loyalty, generosity, and courtesy were the basic values of their social code, but in time the church added its rites and goals, and the ladies demanded \Tcourtly love\t. By the Later Middle Ages only a few of the greater nobles went through the increasingly complex and costly ritual of becoming a \Tknight\t, but the values of chivalry persisted in the idea of the gentleman. Manorialism The great majority of the people lived in the country, where they were divided into two main classes: lords and villagers. The lords lived in manor houses, sometimes castles, near which stood the crofts of their villagers. The villagers, who might legally be either free or serf, cultivated the land--whether their own or their lord's. The lord often had rights to services as well as monetary rents. The tenants commonly owed him a specified number of days of labor each year. He collected inheritance taxes and commanded his villagers' use of his mill, oven, and winepress; above all, the tenants were subject to the jurisdiction of his manorial court. The system of relationships between a lord and his tenants is called \Tmanorialism\t. Because manorial services were not always reliable, some lords preferred to hire laborers from among the younger sons of the villagers, and frequently villagers were able to commute their personal services to a monetary payment. Serfs, who were bound to the land, might buy manumission, or if they fled to a town and lived there for a year and a day, they were free of all manorial claims. The example of the towns encouraged some villagers to form rural communes and obtain liberties of self-government from their lords; after the Black Death, the scarcity of labor enabled the villagers to obtain greater personal and economic freedom. Agriculture Agricultural techniques greatly improved during the Middle Ages. In most parts of Europe it was neither the lord nor the individual villager who determined the course of cultivation, but the village as a whole. During the Middle Ages, villages gradually discovered the advantages of crop rotation and increased their production by adopting the three-field system. By that system, one field was planted with a summer crop, one with a winter crop, and one was left fallow. The adoption of the horse collar and the horseshoe made possible replacement of the oxen by the more efficient horses. Use of the iron-tipped plowshare improved cultivation by aerating and draining the soil. The cultivation of field peas and beans provided a new source of protein for European diets, but the main crops remained the cereal grains--rye, barley, oats, and wheat--from which were made the staple bread and ale. (Potatoes were not to be introduced until the 16th century.) Cheese was made with milk from cows, goats, and ewes, and eggs were eaten. Most villagers had little meat, however; that was the privilege of the lords, who also reserved the venison and other game of the forests and heathlands for themselves. As the population grew in both country and town, forests were cleared and marshes drained to produce more food. By the end of the 13th century there were signs that too much marginal land was being cultivated, that pasturage was being plowed for cropping, and too few animals were being grown for the needed manure. Famine was the result. After the population decrease following the Black Death, cultivated fields were turned into pasturage because livestock required fewer hands than did crops. Trade, Industry, and the Towns The Roman world had known considerable trade and industry, but by the Early Middle Ages most of both had been destroyed. Livestock and the essential salt were traded in local markets, and Eastern merchants brought spices and other luxury articles to trade for slaves and precious metals. With the end of invasions in the 10th century, European merchants began to play a significant role in long-distance trade. Led by the Venetians, Italian merchants imported more and more goods from the East--spices, especially pepper, silks, and cottons. In return they needed goods the East would buy. They found them in amber, furs, and timber products bought mainly from the Baltic and North Sea region. The exchange of Mediterranean goods for northern European goods took place in the famous fairs of Champagne. In addition to leather and metal industries, largely producing goods for home consumption, a woolen industry developed in the Low Countries and in northern Italy, where fine cloths were made for the Eastern market. The merchant and the artisan needed freedom of movement, freedom from arbitrary demands for services or taxes, and protection from marauders. All these were found in the towns that were formed with remarkable rapidity during the High Middle Ages. There the merchants organized their \Tguilds\t as voluntary associations to provide help to each other in time of need and together to demand from the lords the freedoms they needed. The guilds monopolized their occupations and trained apprentices and journeymen. Some townsmen became as wealthy as the great landed lords, and some lords built town houses, where they spent part of the year. The majority of the townspeople were little better off materially than the country people, and many were as dependent economically on their employers as villagers were on their lords. They had greater legal freedom, however, and there were always plenty of migrants from the country to the town. The newcomers could not have felt completely estranged. No medieval town was very large, and beyond the walls stretched the fields surrounding it. CHURCH AND LEARNING Outside the walls of the towns lay the monasteries. \Tmonasticism\t came to Western Europe in the 4th century, and many people had fled to the cloisters before Saint \TBenedict\t of Nursia founded Monte Casino in southern Italy in 529. The rule of Saint Benedict was to spread throughout Latin Christendom, its only real competitor being the monasticism of Ireland. There the monks spent their summers in missionary activity far away from their cloisters. A new monastery founded in 910 at \TCluny\t in French Burgundy became the mother house of a reformed order that spread throughout Europe. In its turn it was succeeded by more radical reformers like the \TCistercians\t or the regular canons under a rule attributed to Saint Augustine (see \TAugustinians\t). In the 13th century the friars (see \TDominicans\t; \TFranciscans\t) abandoned the cloister entirely and with the healing and teaching orders of brothers and sisters entered into the service of the world, while still committed by vow to obedience, poverty, and chastity. During the collapse of the Roman Empire the monasteries had become the principal repositories of learning. When the barbarians were converted to Christianity, monasteries were founded by the missionaries to teach not only the faith but also the learning needful to Christians. That learning was considerable, including virtually all the extant classical Latin authors and the Fathers of the Church. It was increased from the 10th century onward by contact with the Arab scholars in Spain, Sicily, and North Africa and with the Greeks in Constantinople. More of the works of Aristotle were discovered along with their Arabic commentators; Greek and Arabic scientific works were translated for Western use; and above all, the Arabic mathematics including Hindu notation was imported. The new learning was brought into the classical curriculum taught in the schools: the seven liberal arts divided into the trivium of grammar, rhetoric, and logic, and the quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. Monastic schools primarily taught young monks. Boys aspiring to be secular clergy were taught first in parish and then cathedral schools, some of which became famous and attracted numerous students. Although there was some organized female education in convents, most of the education given to girls was received at home. As more and more students became concentrated in one place, there was demand for more teachers. In time a guild of teachers at Paris, a guild of students at Bologna, and a guild of doctors at Salerno called themselves universities and began to establish statutes and demand liberties from church and state alike, thus sowing the seeds of academic freedom. Soon other universities were founded at which a young man could become a master of arts and receive a license to teach. Or if he was impelled to further learning, he could go on to study theology, law, or medicine. In the Later Middle Ages students attended the universities for their intellectual and social life, whether or not they wished to become clergy or to teach or to practice a profession. This emphasis on knowledge for its own sake was a central strand of the \Thumanism\t that led to the \TRenaissance\t. Fred A. Cazel, Jr. Bibliography: Allmand, C. T., ed., War, Literature, and Politics in the Late Middle Ages (1976); Barraclough, Geoffrey, The Crucible of Europe (1976); Bloch, Marc L. B., Feudal Society, trans. by L. A. Manyon (1961); Coulton, George C., Life in the Middle Ages, 4 vols. (1928-30); Duby, Georges, Rural Economy and Country Life in the Medieval West, trans. by Cynthia Postan (1968), and as ed., Revelations of Private Life, vol. 2, Revelations of the Medieval World, trans. by Arthur Goldhammer (1988); Erickson, Carolly, The Medieval Vision: Essays in History and Perception (1976); Haskins, Charles, The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century (1933; repr. 1971) and Rise of Universities (1957); Heer, Friedrich, The Medieval World: Europe, 1100-1350, trans. by Janet Sondeheimer (1961); Herlihy, David, Medieval Households (1985); Holmes, George, ed., The Oxford Illustrated History of Medieval Europe (1988); Hoyt, Robert S., ed., Life and Thought in the Early Middle Ages (1967); Huizinga, Johan, The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924); Lopez, Robert S., The Birth of Europe (1966); Oakley, Francis, The Medieval Experience (1974); Painter, Sidney, French Chivalry (1940) and A History of the Middle Ages, 284-1500 (1953); Pirenne, Henri, Medieval Cities: Their Origins and the Revival of Trade, trans. by Frank D. Halsey (1925); Previte-Orton, C.W., The Shorter Cambridge medieval History, 2 vols. (1984); Southern, Richard, The Making of the Middle Ages (1953; repr. 1987); Stephenson, Carl, Medieval Institutions, ed. by Bryce D. Lyon (1967); Strayer, Joseph R., Western Europe in the Middle Ages, 3d ed. (1982), and, as ed., Dictionary of the Middle Ages, 12 vols. (1982-89); Stuard, Susan, Women in Medieval History and Historiography (1987); Tierney, Brian, The Middle Ages, 2 vols., 4th ed. (1982); Ullmann, Walter, The Individual and Society in the Middle Ages (1966) and Principles of Government and Politics in the Middle Ages (1961); White, Lynn, Medieval Technology and Social Change (1962); Wolff, Philippe, The Cultural Awakening, trans. by Anne Carter (1968). See also: \TByzantine art and architecture\t; \TByzantine Empire\t; \TEurope, history of\t; \TFrance, history of\t; \TGermany, history of\t; \TGothic art and architecture\t; \TGreat Britain, history of\t; \TItaly, history of\t; \TLow Countries, history of the\t; \Tmedieval drama\t; \Tmedieval music\t; \TPortugal, history of\t; \TRomanesque art and architecture\t; \TRussia/Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, history of\t; \TScandinavia, history of\t; \TSpain, history of\t.