What is Medieval Period or Middle Ages?
To define the medieval period or the middle ages, they are a period in European history that extends roughly 500 years and ends around 1400–1500 CE. Scholars in the 15th century invented the term to describe the time period between their time and the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Early and late, or early, central or high, and late, are often seen to be internal divisions of the time.
This is the simple explanation for what is medieval period. Let us understand more details about the medieval period in Europe and the other concepts associated with it from this article.
History of Medieval Period in Europe
The "Medieval" period of European history is generally thought to span the thousand years or so between the fall of the Roman Empire in the west (in the 5th century) and the Renaissance period in the 15th century. In actuality, the word "Middle Ages" was coined by later historians, and it refers to the period following the great civilizations of the Greeks and Romans and before the high civilization of the Renaissance: a period marked by barbarism, ignorance, illiteracy, and violence.
The ideas around the term "Gothic" — dark, gloomy, foreboding – still echo this. Modern historians, on the other hand, see these centuries as the cradle of the modern era, a period during which many of the values we hold dear — democracy, industrialization, science, and so on – had their origins. It was one of history's most fascinating and transformative periods.
The thousand-year period of western Medieval Europe may be divided into three different phases, each of which lasted a large amount of time. The Dark Ages, which lasted for more than five centuries after the fall of Rome (up to c.1000), saw a dramatic decline in the level of material civilization. Long-distance trade declined, the currency collapsed, the economy essentially reverted to barter, and the towns diminished. Literacy, and learning with it, had all but vanished.
With the advent of self-sufficient estates (or manors), horse-soldiers (knights), and finally feudalism, Western European civilization was reshaped. By the time the western Roman empire fell, the Christian Church had already established a hold over society.
The High Middle Ages, which lasted nearly from 1000 to 1350, were the height of mediaeval civilization, leaving a lasting legacy in the form of soaring cathedrals and massive castles, which sprang up all over Europe. The late Middle Ages, approximately from 1350 to 1500, were a period of change, with the rise of modern Europe.
It started with the Black Death, which swept through Europe, killing probably a third of the population and having a massive social impact. The Italian Renaissance, the fall of Constantinople, the Age of Discovery, and the spread of printing marked the end of the period.
The Feudal System
The feudal system (as it is now known) started in France in the 10th century and spread across Europe in the 11th century. The word feudal comes from the word fief, which refers to an area of land that is kept under specified rules. A person who granted a fief to another became the fief's lord, and the fief became the lord's vassal.
The vassal was usually required to offer the lord military service as well as money and counsel on a regular basis. The lord, on the other hand, had responsibilities to the vassal: he had to defend him and ensure that he was treated with respect in court.
Much of a king's territory was portioned out as large fiefs to nobles, who in turn granted smaller fiefs to lesser lords, and so on. In this way, a mutual support pyramid was built, stretching from the king to the lord of a single village.
The Middle Ages in Modern Historiography
The history of the Middle Ages was absorbed into academic curricula of history in Europe and the United States, and established in university survey courses and research seminars, owing to the extraordinary growth of the academic discipline of history in the 19th century. In Germany (1859), France (1876), England (1886), and the United States (1895), scholarly historical study journals started to appear, with regular studies of one aspect or another of the Middle Ages.
Historical sources were edited, and a large body of scholarly writing was produced, bringing Middle Ages history into line with other fields of history. The study of the Middle Ages began as a part of individual European countries' national histories, but it became a pan-European phenomena in the United States following World War I, with a focus on English and French history.
The Monumenta Germaniae Historica ("Historical Monuments of the Germans"), a research and publication institute founded in 1819 and still in operation in Munich, and the eight-volume collaborative Cambridge Medieval History or the medieval times (1911–36) reflected the growing influence and prestige of the new academic and professional field of middle ages. (The New Cambridge Medieval History or medieval times, which replaces the latter, was first released in 1998)
The Organization of Late Imperial Christianity
Many Roman provincials were members of the Christian clergy. Between Constantine's recognition of Christianity in 313 and the emperor Theodosius I's adoption of Christianity as Rome's formal religion in 380, Christian communities received huge donations of land, labour, and other gifts from emperors and wealthy converts. The Christian clergy, which began as a collection of community elders and managerial functionaries, gradually gained sacramental authority and aligned with imperial civil service grades.
A bishop (from the Latin episcopus, "overseer") was assigned to each civitas (community or city), an urban unit, and its surrounding district. There were more and usually smaller dioceses in the Italian and regional European areas since there were more Roman civitates in these areas than in the far north and east.
Herman Nieg's picture depicts Abbot Benedict of Nursia in the act of composing the Benedictine Rule, 1926; at the church of Heiligenkreuz Abbey near Baden bei Wien, Lower Austria.
Did You Know?
The kings of the new peoples ruled as much as they could in the Roman model, issuing laws in Latin for their own peoples and Roman subjects and striking coins that looked like imperial money. They also supported the writing of "ethnic" and genealogical histories that attributed to themselves and their peoples, however newly collected, an identity and antiquity equal to Rome's.
Conclusion
This is the detailed information on what is the medieval period. Students can also get the medieval history videos from different sources that helps them to understand much better about the middle ages history. There were a lot of events that happened in the past during the middle ages. These ages were said to have followed the modern period.
FAQs on Middle Ages
1. Explain the Hazards associated with medieval town’s life?
Life in mediaeval towns was dangerous regardless of one's status. As the population of towns grew, they became increasingly crowded. The streets were extremely narrow, as well as noisy and dirty. People threw trash (including human waste) out their windows onto the street below. An open sewer flowed along the middle of numerous streets.
As a result, the situation was totally unhealthy. The threat of disease was always present. Houses were composed of flammable, flimsy materials, and the threat of fire was always present. Medieval towns had significantly more crime than modern inner cities. Altogether, the death rate was frighteningly high.
2. Who are the bishops of Rome?
The bishops of Rome have traditionally been held in high respect due to the antiquity of their see, its historical orthodoxy, the relics of its martyrs (including Saints Peter and Paul the Apostles), and the imperial and Christian history of the city of Rome.
On the other hand, the material realities of the sixth and seventh centuries greatly limited any papal exercise of universal authority or influence, and popes produced almost no theory about papal authority over all Christians.
3. In how many parts middle ages can be subdivided?
The middles ages are said to have divided into three sub categories such as:-
Early Middles Ages
High Middles Ages
Late Middle Ages
Where the major events among these ages were the falling of the centralised authority and rise of Islam during early period, migration during the high period as well as occurence of famines during the late middle ages.
