The most prominent difference between Western and Eastern Europe during the Middle Ages was the persistence of the Roman Empire in the East and the Fall in the West. After the collapse of the Roman Empire in Western Europe during the early fifth century CE, life became far more decentralized. Political power returned to the hands of local warlords and people no longer sought to participate in the extensive Roman identity. We can observe the breakdown in Roman trade and material culture in Western Europe by a return to locally-produced goods and styles, as with pottery.
After the division of the Empire, religion and government were very closely tied in the East. Part of the reason the Roman Empire and Christianity survived in the East is due to the fact that in 330 CE, Emperor Constantine moved the capitol of the Empire from Rome to Constantinople. This relocation of the...
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capitol offered some stability against the invading forces of Goths and Lombards who dismantled the Empire in the West.
Linguistically (and so to some degree in all aspects of culture) the East was Greek, while the West favored Latin. After the fall of the Empire in the West, this cultural difference became far more pronounced due to the high degree of uniformity of culture preserved in the East, while the West transformed on a far more localized scale. Though they differed in language, both retained Christian identities-- Roman Catholicism in the West, and Eastern Orthodox in the East. Christianity became a little more ambiguous in the West until the founding of the Holy Roman Empire by Charlemagne.
While the Middle Ages in the West is sometimes referred to as the "Dark Ages," for a decline or pause in intellectual culture, the sciences and arts were still going strong in the East.
For all their differences, the East and West did retain some similarities in their daily life and means of subsistence. Most people participated in subsistence farming and relied on similar material culture-- cooking vessels, wine carafes, a plow, the hearth, and a space for communal worship.
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