(MAR) Middle Ages Historical Events Lesson

Middle Ages Historical Events Lesson

The term Middle Ages encompasses about 1000 years of European history from 450 to 1450. This era begins with the fall of the Roman Empire and ends sometime in the early fifteenth century. This time period is also referred to as Medieval times. During the Middle Ages a very sharp division of social classes existed: the nobility, peasantry, and clergy.

In the Early Middle Ages, depopulation, deurbanization, and barbarian invasions, continued from earlier times. The barbarian invaders formed new kingdoms in the remains of the Western Roman Empire. In the 7th century North Africa and the Middle East, once part of the Eastern Roman Empire, became an Islamic Empire after conquest by Muhammad's successors.

Although there were substantial changes in society and political structures, the break with Antiquity was not complete. The Eastern Roman Empire - or Byzantine Empire - survived and remained a major power. Additionally, most of the new kingdoms incorporated many of the existing Roman institutions, while monasteries were founded as Christianity expanded in western Europe. In the 7th and 8th centuries the Franks established an empire covering much of Western Europe.

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 and crop yields to increase. Manorialism (the organization of peasants into villages that owed rent and labor services to the nobles) and feudalism (the political structure whereby knights and lower-status nobles owed military service to their overlords in return for the right to rent from lands and manors) were two of the ways society was organized in the High Middle Ages. The Crusades, first sparked in 1095 by Pope Urban II, were military attempts by western European Christians to regain control of the Middle Eastern Holy Land from the Muslims and succeeded long enough to establish Christian states in the Near East. Intellectual life was marked by scholasticism and the founding of universities; and the building of Gothic cathedrals, which was one of the outstanding artistic achievements of the High Middle Ages.

 

 

The Late Middle Ages were marked by difficulties and calamities such as famine, plague, and war, which much diminished the population of western Europe; in the four years from 1347 through 1350, the Black Death killed approximately a third of the European population. Cultural and technological developments transformed European society, concluding the Late Middle Age and beginning the Early Modern period.

 

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