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dk:Middelalder The Middle Ages was a period in European history (see also History of Europe) commonly considered as having lasted from the end of the Western Roman Empire (5th century) until the rise of national monarchies and the beginnings of demographic and economic renewal after the Black Death, European overseas exploration and the cultural revival known as the Renaissance around the 15th century.

As the later Roman Empire changed its form and collapsed in the West, several Germanic and later Slavic peoples and the still-powerful regional noble families of the later Empire competed for power in different parts of Europe with one another and with the surviving eastern portion of the Roman Empire (commonly called the Byzantine Empire by modern Europeans).

The period is marked in western Europe by the greatly reduced power of centralised administration and the consequent alienation of government authority and responsibility for military organisation, taxation and law and order at successive levels to provincial and local lords supported directly from the proceeds of a portion of the territories over which they held military, political and judicial power.

This hierarchy of reciprocal obligations binding each man to serve his superior in return for the latter's protection made for a confusion of territorial sovereignty (as allegiances were subject to change over time), but the resulting ability of local arrangements to function in the absence of a strong royal power provided some resiliency in a political order distinguished by its lack of uniformity.

The spread of Christianity from the Mediterranean area and from Ireland and Scotland throughout Europe and the absence of any firm alternative ideological basis for power meant that ecclesiastics became deeply involved in government, and provided the basis for a first European "identity" in the form of a religion common to most of the continent from at least the 9th century until the the separation of the Catholic and Orthodox churches (1054).

An example of this identity at work is the period loosely identified as the Crusades, during which Popes, kings, and emperors tried to draw on Christian unity to wage war on Islam, which was spreading along Europe's southern and eastern borders. Political unanimity in Europe was largely illusory, and the military support for most crusades was drawn from limited regions of Europe. Substantial areas of northern Europe also remained outside Christendom until the twelfth century or later.

Periodization

It is extremely difficult to decide when the Middle Ages ended, and in fact scholars assign different starting dates for the Renaissance in different parts of Europe. Most scholars who work in 15th century Italian history, for instance, consider themselves Renaissance or Early Modern historians, while anyone working on England in the early 15th century is considered a medievalist. Others choose specific events, such as the Turkish capture of Constantinople or the end of the Anglo-French Hundred Years War (both 1453), or the fall of Muslim Spain or Columbus's voyage to America (both 1492), to mark the period's end.

Similar differences are now emerging in connection with the start of the period, some dating its beginning from the division and Christanisation of the Roman Empire (4th century) while others see the period to the rise of Islam (7th century) as "late Classical".

The Middle Ages in the West are often subdivided into an early period (sometimes called the "Dark Ages", at least from the fifth to eighth centuries) of shifting polities, a relatively low level of economic activity and successful incursions by non-Christian peoples (Slavs, Arabs, Scandinavians, Magyars); a middle period (the High Middle Ages) of developed institutions of lordship and vassalage, castle-building and mounted warfare, and reviving urban and commercial life; and a later period of growing royal power, the rise of commercial interests and weakening customary ties of dependence, especially after the 14th-century plague.

Life in medieval Europe :

• arts and medieval cultural life
  • medieval literature
  • medieval poetry
  • medieval dance
  • medieval architecture and sculpture
  • medieval European music
  • medieval murals and paintings
  • medieval tapestry, and handicraft
  • medieval books, manuscripts, scribes and the art of making books
• monastic orders
  • Benedictines
  • Carthusians
  • Cistercians
• mendicant friars
  • Dominicans
  • Franciscans
  • Carmelites
• the Plague and health of populations
• politics and religion
  • crusades
  • papacy
  • medieval Inquisition
  • heresy e.g John Wyclif
• everyday life in Middle Ages
  • guilds of craftsmen

See also: medieval warfare, medieval fortification, medieval siege weaponry, medieval Inquisition, medieval European music, medieval dance, Pilgrimage, Romanesque Architecture