MIDDLE AGES

INTRODUCTION

Middle Age is the period from fifth to fifteenth century from the collapse of Roman civilization in the 5th century to the Renaissance. It is variously interpreted as beginning in the 13th, 14th, or 15th century, depending on the region of European countries and on other factors.

The term and its conventional meaning were introduced by Italian humanists with invidious intent and the humanist were engaged in a revival of Classical learning and culture, and the notion of a thousand-year period of darkness and ignorance separating them from the ancient Greek and Roman world served to highlight the humanists’ own work and ideals. In a sense, the humanists invented the middle Ages in order to distinguish themselves from it. The middle Ages nonetheless provided the foundation for the transformations of the humanists’ own Renaissance.

THE DARK AGES

The Dark Ages were a period of great upheaval, constant war, horrendous plague, and stagnant cultural growth. However, through these difficult centuries new ideas and a new culture were born. In today’s world we still feel the effects of these changes that were brought about so long ago.

The Dark Ages were a period that is generally accepted as having begun in the year 410 CE with the fall of Roman Empire, and ending in 1095 CE with the launch of the first Crusades. The fall of Rome sets a good understanding for what the Dark Ages were all about because, for centuries, the Roman Empire was a unified force that brought stabilization to most of Europe. It had a vibrant trade and commerce industry that supported a reasonably secure lifestyle for millions of people. When Rome fell, this network of trade and commerce collapsed and the European World descended into chaos. It took seven hundred years of war, plague, and poverty before the continent emerged from turmoil and moved into the Renaissance.

Before it fell, Rome had been the center of the European world for centuries. The Emperor ruled over all, and when societal collapse struck, the concept of one man ruling the world remained. It was this aspiration to rule that perpetuated the darkness of the times. Lords from all over Europe were engaged with each other in battles for land and power. These conflicts lasted hundreds of years, and created a massive drain on natural resources and a period of cultural stagnation.

This constant struggle for power within Europe made it very easy for outside forces to penetrate the continent, leaving death and destruction in their wake. From the north, Vikings invaded and plundered many major cities, and from the south, Moorish invaders brought war and the word of their prophet. Europe was under siege--from the inside and the outside.

Throughout the first century of the Dark Ages, Europe made slow but tangible progress and Emperor Justinian was on the verge of reuniting the continent when the plague struck and killed tens of millions of people. This destroyed all hope of reunification and kept the continent in chaos for several more centuries.

Christianity was an ideal that rose to power during the dark ages and many warlords of the time embraced it. This had a unifying force on the entire European continent and even though there were many kingdoms they all swore allegiance under the pope. This brought an end to the internal fighting that had been going on for centuries and this unification was solidified with the launching of the Crusades beginning in 1095. This gave all the various warlords and kings a common religious goal and a foe they could join together and focus on.

The Crusades, while being for the most part a failure in that they held very little of the land they attempted to conquer, were a significant factor in the rebirth of Europe in that Europe was reunited under a common religion and returning crusaders brought back with them to Europe a wealth of new information in architecture, medicine, philosophy, mathematics and many other areas. This infusion of ideas, paired with the end of constant war within Europe set the stage for the Renaissance.

The Dark Ages were an extraordinarily difficult period in the story of humanity. It is estimated that hundred million people died at the hands of war, poverty, and plague. But during this time new ideas and ideals were born and much of the groundwork was laid for the world we know today.

THE MIDDLE ENGLISH

This age have two divisions in it, the high middle ages and late middle ages. During the High Middle Ages, which began after AD 1000, the population of Europe increased greatly as technological and agricultural innovations allowed trade to flourish. The organization of peasants into villages that owed rent and labor services to the patricians and  feudalists and the political structure whereby man at arms and lower-status nobles owed military service to their overlords in return for the right to rent from lands and mansions, were two of the ways society was organized in the High Middle Ages. The movement, first preached in 1095, where military attempts by Western European Christians to gain the considered holy land of Muslims. Kings became the heads of centralized nation states, reducing crime and violence but making the ideal of a unified society more distant. Intellectual life was marked by scholasticism, a philosophy that emphasized joining faith to reason, and by the founding of universities. The theology, the paintings, the poetry, the travels and the architecture of gothic cathedrals are among the outstanding achievements of this period.

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. Controversy, falsehood and indifference within the 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 of the early modern age.

THE RENAISSANCE

The Renaissance was a cultural and scholarly movement which stressed the rediscovery and application of texts and thought from classical antiquity, occurring in Europe c. 1400 – c. 1600. The Renaissance can also refer to the period of European history spanning roughly the same dates.

“Renaissance” can also refer to the period, c. 1400 – c. 1600. “High Renaissance” generally refers to c. 1480 – c. 1520. The era was dynamic, with European explorers finding new continents, the transformation of trading methods and patterns, the decline of feudalism and scientific developments. Many of these changes were triggered, in part, by the Renaissance, such as classical mathematics stimulating new financial trading mechanisms, or new techniques from the east boosting ocean navigation. The printing press was also developed, allowing Renaissance texts to be disseminated widely.

Across the fourteenth century, and perhaps before, the old social and political structures of the medieval period broke down, allowing new concepts to rise. A new elite emerged, with new models of thought and ideas to justify themselves; what they found in classical antiquity was something to use both as a prop and a tool for their aggrandizement. Exiting elites matched them to keep pace, as did the Catholic Church. Italy, from which the Renaissance evolved, was a series of city states, each competing with the others for civic pride, trade and wealth. They were largely autonomous, with a high proportion of merchants and artisans thanks to the Mediterranean trade routes.

At the very top of Italian society, the rulers of the key courts in Italy were all new men, recently confirmed in their positions of power and with newly gained wealth, and they were keen to demonstrate both. There was also wealth and the desire to show it below them. The Black Death had killed millions in Europe and left the survivors with proportionally greater wealth, whether through fewer people inheriting more or simply from the increased wages they could demand. Italian society, and the results of the Black Death, allowed for much greater social mobility, a constant flow of people keen to demonstrate their wealth. Displaying wealth and using culture to reinforce your social and political was an important aspect of life in that period, and when artistic and scholarly movements turned back to the classical world at the start of the fifteenth century there were plenty of patrons ready to support them in these endeavors to make political points.

The importance of piety, as demonstrated through commissioning works of tribute, was also strong, and Christianity proved a heavy influence for thinkers trying to square Christian thought with that of pagan classical writers.   

Some historians argue that the Renaissance ended in the 1520s, some the 1620s. The Renaissance didn't just stop, but its core ideas gradually converted into other forms, and new paradigms arose, particularly during the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century.

CONCLUSION

The middle age lasted from fifth to fifteenth century. It is considered from Western Roman Empire, to the renaissance. And it is divided into three stages, which are early middle age, high middle age and later middle age. During these ages revolutionary changes took place in the attitude and life of the Europeans.  The region entered into a new era. The new, modern age dawned upon the west. Many factors concentrated and caused for the birth of modern age. Developments, inventions, renaissance and reformation revolutionized the European mind and consequently the middle ages came into an end. In England this new era was opened during the Tudor reign and therefore we can say that the history of modern England begins almost with the advent of the Tudors. The main factors that brought about the end of the middle ages and ushered in the modern era are the geographical discoveries, ‘The Renaissance’.

BIBLIOGRAPHy

·                   Prof K.M. Abraham, ‘A Hand Book of British History’, Premier Printers Calicut 2.

·                    John Peck and Martin Coyle, ‘A Brief History of English Literature’, Replica Press Pvt.               Ltd. Kundli, 2004 Print.

·                     www.google.co.in

·                     En.wikipedia.org