Online Encyclopedia
Search over 40,000 articles from the original, classic Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th Edition.
THE MIDDLE AGES
Online EncyclopediaEncyclopedia Home :: MIC-MOL
del.icio.us it!
|
THE See also:MIDDLE AGES
.
This name is commonly given to that See also:period of See also:European See also:history which lies between what are known as See also:ancient and See also:modern times, and which has generally been considered as extending from about the See also:middle of the 5th to about the middle of the 15th centuries
.
The two See also:dates adopted in old textbooks were 476 and 1453, from the setting aside of the last See also:emperor in the See also:West until the fall of See also:Constantinople
.
In reality it is impossible to assign any exact dates for the opening and See also:close of such a period
.
The trend of See also:recent See also:historical re-See also:search leads one even to doubt the validity of the very conception of any definite See also:medieval period
.
The See also:evolution of modern European society has been continuous
.
Progress has not been See also:uniform
.
There was much retrogression with the intrusion of new See also:barbarian races; but from their absorption by the loth See also:century until the loth there is not a century in which some notable gain was not made towards the attainments of modern See also:civilization
.
The correct See also:perspective places between the summits of modern and ancient times, not a See also:long level stretch of a thousand years, with mankind stationary, spell-See also:bound under the authority of the See also: In political history, the epochal fact which marks the close of ancient times is the decline of the See also:Roman See also:Empire . This was a process extending over three or four centuries, in which no one date lends itself to the historian . The deposition of See also:Romulus Augustulus, the last Roman emperor in the West, in 476, was certainly not one of those events upon which the history of the Western See also:world depends . Outwardly it did not See also:mark the end of the Empire, but the restoration of imperial unity . The See also:throne in See also:Italy had been vacant before, and the restoration of unity was realized in fact under Justinian . There is no See also:reason why the date 476 should stand out in European history more strongly than See also:half a dozen other such dates . Yet we may say that the 5th century did See also:witness the actual dismemberment of the Roman Empire . The new nations in See also:Spain, See also:Gaul, parts of Italy and See also:Britain were forming the See also:rude beginnings of what were to become See also:national states in the centuries following . Western See also:Europe was taken out of the imperial See also:mould and broken up . This is a revolution of sufficient magnitude to be regarded as politically the opening of a new era . It had been long preparing in the economic and administrative decline of the Empire, and in the steady influx of Germanic peoples into Roman territory for over two centuries; but the See also:power of the old civilization to absorb the new races was exhausted by the 5th century, and the political history of Europe was turned into a different path . That path, however, was not destined to end blindly in a " middle See also:age." The See also:line of political development marked out in the 5th century —that of the national See also:state—still continues .
The revolution in which See also:Alaric, See also:Theodoric and See also:Clovis figured did not set the problem for the middle ages only, as is frequently stated; its full meaning did not appear until the See also:Peninsular War, the See also:Prussia of See also:Stein and See also:Scharnhorst, and even See also:Solferino and See also:Sedan
.
Thus the 5th century politically introduces not so much the history of the middle ages as that of modern Europe
.
The immediate introduction, however, was a long one—so long and so distinct from the later development as to constitute in itself a distinct phase
.
For five or six centuries—from the 5th until about the r 1th—comparatively little permanent progress was made
.
The Germanic tribes were still adjusting themselves and slowly learning to combine their See also:primitive institutions with the remains of those of See also:Rome; the premature See also:union under See also:Charlemagne gave way before new invasions, and anarchy be-came crystallized in See also:feudalism
.
It was not until the 12th and 13th centuries that modern national states really took shape: See also:England with its trial by See also:jury, See also:circuit courts, Magna Charta and See also:parliament; See also:France under the strong See also:hand of the Capetians
.
A political middle age certainly See also:lay between See also:Theodosius and See also:
The See also:great age of the Empire began slightly earlier, and continued until the fall of the See also:Hohenstaufen in the middle of the 13th century
.
One cannot now deny the term middle ages to the period of these two institutions
.
It has been consecrated to this use too long
.
Yet when we include under a See also:common name two eras so distinct as this and that preceding, our term becomes so vague as to be almost valueless
.
Moreover, it is doubtful if this second period is really as " medieval " as it has seemed
.
Papal monarchy and Holy Roman Empire were not the only political phenomena of their age, and it is possible that their vast pre-tensions have somewhat blinded historians as to their realimportance
.
While they were struggling to enforce their claims to universal See also:sovereignty, the royal power, less extravagant but more real, was See also:welding together the feudal states of France and moulding the England of to-See also:day
.
Compared with this obscure process—this spread of the See also: The one great economic See also:change brought about by the decline of the Roman Empire was the lessening of See also:urban See also:life throughout the greater See also:part of Europe, the closing up of avenues of communication and the predominance of isolated agricultural communities . This phase began to give way in the 11th century to a commercial and See also:industrial See also:renaissance, which received a great impetus from the crusading movements—themselves largely economic—and by the 14th century had made the See also:Netherlands the factory of Europe, the See also:Rhine a vast artery of See also:trade, and See also:north Italy a hive of busy cities . The See also:discovery of See also:America and the expansion of See also:commerce merely readjusted conditions already highly See also:developed . The period of isolated See also:economy which we may term medieval lasted only from about the 5th to the 12th centuries . As for manufactures, the See also:antique methods survived until the 18th and 19th centuries . In religious history—to be distinguished from that of the political organization referred to above as the papal monarchy—the See also:official recognition of the See also:Christian Church by See also:Galerius in 311 serves as a convenient starting-point for what we know as universal Christendom, though the slow disappearance of paganism, as distinct from See also:Christianity, stretches over at least a century more . The See also:Reformation of the 16th century has long been regarded as the close of the period . The real close, how-ever, is the See also:present day—as the result of the See also:rationalism and science of the 18th and 19th centuries . The heroes of the Reformation, judged by modern See also:standards, were reactionaries . Unconsciously and to its own ultimate damage the Reformation forged the weapons of progress; but it was itself in no sense, except the institutional and political, the end of that religious history inaugurated before the See also:Council of See also:Nicaea . The real change in attitude which marks the See also:dawn of a new era came in the See also:generation of See also:Voltaire . And " medievalism " is only now on the See also:defence against " modernism," both See also:Catholic and See also:Protestant .
In legal history there was a distinct medieval period, when Germanic customs superseded Roman law, that most splendid of Rome's legacies
.
But the renaissance of law began relatively See also:early; by the 12th century it had created a university, by the 13th it was helping to organize national states and laying the basis for that See also:order which the economic renaissance was already demanding
.
In science there was no great product in antiquity to be lost
.
Compared with See also:art or law, literature or See also:philosophy, ancient science (in our sense) was almost insignificant
.
The promise in See also:Aristotle of such See also:production remained unfulfilled
.
The 17th century is not so much a renaissance here as a See also:mere beginning
.
No one can deny the See also:general unscientific, uncritical nature of " medieval " thought
.
A single See also:Roger See also: But these men were not all busy over the problem of how many angels could stand on a See also:needle-point; nor were they all dominated by the religious spirit of faith or intellectual cowardice . They were searching for truth with scientific eagerness . Their very failure made possible the modern era . It is perhaps unnecessary to point out how small a proportion of the " intellectuals " were scholastics even in the 13th century . In the See also:realm of art the " middle ages " had already set in before See also:Constantine robbed the See also:arch of See also:Titus to decorate his own, and before those museums of antiquity, the temples, were plundered by Christian mobs . The victory of Christianity—iconoclastic in its primitive spirit—was but a single See also:chapter in the See also:story of decline . The process was completed by the misery of the decaying empire, and by the Germanic invasions . The barbarians, however, destroyed less than has been commonly supposed . Destruction was more the product of See also:necessity than of wantonness . Thus public monuments became fortresses, and antique See also:sculpture was built into See also:city walls . Such art as continued was almost wholly religious; for in the See also:wilderness of the times the churches formed oases of See also:comparative prosperity and peace, and, even in the darkest times, wherever such oases existed there the seeds of art took See also:root . The Church See also:architecture of the " middle ages," then developed naturally and without a break, through the See also:Byzantine and Romanesque styles, out of the See also:secular and religious architecture of See also:Greece and Rome . 
And, with the return of comparatively settled and prosperous conditions, not only architecture but the other arts also blossomed under the See also:influence of what was later stigmatized as the " See also:Gothic" spirit into new and See also:original forms
.
Down to the Reformation the churches continued to be, as the temples of the ancient world had been, the See also:main centres of the arts; yet the arts were not confined to them, but flourished wherever, as in castles or walled cities, the conditions essential to their development existed
.
With the revival of civilized conditions in secular life, secular ideals in art also revived; the ecclesiastical traditions in See also:painting and sculpture, which always tend to become stereo-typed, began in the West to be encroached upon long before the period of the " Renaissance." The 12th and 13th centuries, which witnessed the great struggle between the secular and spiritual See also:powers in the state, witnessed also the rise of a literature inspired by the lay spirit, and of an art which was already escaping from the thraldom of the stereotyped ecclesiastical forms
.
Gothic sculpture was not incidentally decorative, it was an essential See also:element in the See also:harmony of the architectural See also:design
.
The elongated See also:kings that guard the See also:door of See also:Chartres See also:Cathedral, or the portals with the Last See also:Judgment, are a necessary element in the See also:facade
.
Thus fettered, even the See also:realism of the Gothic sculptors failed, except in rare instances, of its full expression
.
The plastic arts were left for Italy, where antique See also:models were at hand, and the See also:glory of its achievement in the 15th and 16th centuries was so great as to obscure in men's eyes what had been done before
.
But this Italian renaissance was not the only one
.
It was but one of many; and it was concerned with the two subjects which perhaps least deeply influence the lives of the See also:mass of men —See also:literary See also:humanism and art
.
It is obviously absurd, in the See also:face of the foregoing facts, to regard it as the end of a middle age in anything but in its own See also:
An organic study of the past reveals a more rational picture of the process which produced the Europe of to-day
.
See also:Cataclysm and See also:special creation here as elsewhere give way to evolution
.
The new See also:synthesis reveals a universaldecline from the 5th to the See also:roth centuries, while the Germanic races were learning the rudiments of culture, a decline that was deepened by each succeeding See also:wave of See also:migration, each tribal war of See also:Franks or See also:Saxons, and reached its See also:climax in the disorders of the 9th and roth centuries when the half-formed civilization of Christendom was forced to face the migration of the Northmen by See also:sea, the raids of the Saracen upon the See also:south and the onslaught of Hungarians and Slays upon the See also:east
.
That was the dark age
.
It left Europe bristling with feudal castles, and already alert for the See also:
The monks of See also:Cluny were at work
.
The Capetians had begun
.
The great monastery of Bec was See also:drawing the sons of See also:northern sea-robbers to the service of that greatest-civilizing force, the Church
.
The progress made through even this darkest age may be measured by the difference between the See also:army of Rollo and that which William the Conqueror gathered for the invasion of England
.
There is a See also:legend, current among historians from the days of See also:Robertson and See also:Hallam, that as the See also:year r000 approached See also:man-See also:kind prepared for the Last Judgment; that the See also:earth "clothed itself with the See also: The 12th century stands beside the 18th as one of the greatest creative centuries in human history . The 13th like the rgth applied these creations in the transformation of society . The century of See also:Dante was also that of the first See also:English parliament; its vast economic expansion enabled the national state to See also:triumph in both England and France, and furnished the grounds for the overthrow of Boniface VIII . Into the complex history of this momentous age it is impossible to go in any detail . Sufficient to say that in the opening See also:quarter of the 14th century England and France at least stood on the brink of " modern times." Then these two nations entered upon that long tragedy of the See also:Hundred Years' War, a calamity absolutely immeasurable to both . But during its massacres, jacqueries, plagues and famines, the cities of Italy, growing See also:rich with trade and manufactures, were in their turn the centres of progress, this time in a new direction, toward the recovery of the antique past and the development of art . This is the so-called Renaissance (q.v.) . The humanists which it produced, interested only in its splendid revelations, forgot or ignored the achievements of the period which intervened between See also:Cicero and See also:Petrarch . Then by the See also:genius of their work they fastened their mistaken perspective upon historians and the cultured world at large . They struck upon the unfortunate and opprobrious term " middle ages " for that which stood between them and their classic ideals . The term was first used in this sense by Flavio Biondo, whose " decades " was an See also:attempt to See also:block out the See also:annals of history from 410 to 1410 . His treatment See also:fell in admirably with the ideas of his age and of that following . To Protestants the age of the papal monarchy was like the reign of See also:Anti-Christ . Then, after the indifference of humanists and Protestant polemic, came the disgust of men of science at the scholastic philosophy—an attitude best exhibited in Bacon's See also:Advancement of Learning . The ,8th century was thus trebly barred from a knowledge of genuine medieval history . Romanticism, that reaction in which See also:Sir See also:Walter See also:Scott, the Schlegels and See also:Victor See also:Hugo so largely figured, was as far from understanding what it admired as classicism had been from what it hated . Its extravagant praise of all that savoured of the middle ages was still See also:blind to their real progress and work . They were, for it, the ages of See also:romance and chivalry . The view of the romanticists was as one-sided as any that had gone before . It is only with the introduction of a wider outlook in the scientific study of history that it has been possible to straighten the perspective and modify the traditional See also:scheme . In the purely intellectual See also:sphere it is certainly true that the recovery of the antique world was of great importance; that it made possible genuine See also:criticism by presenting new points of contrast and opening up See also:fields that led away from theological quibbles . But it did not mean the " See also:double discovery of the See also:outer and inner world." Mankind did not, as See also:Burckhardt and J . A . See also:Symonds See also:lead one to imagine, suddenly throw off a See also:cowl that has blinded the eyes for a thousand years to the beauty of the world around, and awaken all at once to the mere joy of living .
If any one was ever awake to the joys of living it was the minnesinger, troubadour or See also:goliard, and the world had to wait until See also: |