Introduction


Many people think of the Middle Ages in terms of romance and chivalry: kings, castles, and knights battling over the hand of a fair maiden.

A bronze sculpture of Charlemagne, king of the Franks, on horseback.

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The phrase "Middle Ages" is a nondescript name for over 1,000 years of dynamic European history. During this period, the foundations of modern Western civilization were laid and the center of the European world moved north from the Mediterranean to the developing states of France, Germany, and England. Often called the Age of Faith, the period was dominated by the Roman Catholic Church, whose regulations permeated daily life and even reached significantly into the political and economic arenas of the developing nation states. Usually known for its knights, jousts, and feasts, the Middle Ages also saw the development of universities, the middle classes, and national governments. It was a vibrant period whose population ingeniously and steadfastly handled the challenges it faced.

Essential Facts

  1. The Middle Ages lasted from 500 AD to 1500 AD—or from the fall of the last Roman emperor in 476 AD to the invention of the printing press in the mid-1450s.
  2. Most of medieval society was based on a network of formal personal relationships of honor and fealty between the king and his lords, between the lord and his knights, and between the lord and his serfs who were tied to the land.
  3. One of the key conflicts in the medieval world was between the Christian West and the Muslim East. Beginning with the rise and spread of Islam in the seventh century and continuing throughout the Crusades, Western Christendom and Muslims saw each other as the enemy, although as trade and contact increased, Europeans learned much from Muslim civilization.
  4. Charles the Great, or Charlemagne, created an empire covering most of modern day France and Germany. He was crowned emperor on Christmas Day in the year 800 AD. Charlemagne was immortalized as the ideal Christian ruler in the epic poem Song of Roland.
  5. In 1347, Italian ships brought more than cargo with them as they returned from Asia: they also brought the plague. Called the Black Death, its symptoms included black and blue swellings on the body. It swept through Europe, leaving death and enormous social and economic change in its wake. Historians estimate that one-third to one-half of the population of Europe died by 1350.