Medieval History Index
Medieval history is usually seen as the period between the fall of Rome (in the mid fifth century of the current era) and the fall of Constantinople (in the mid fifteenth century). It is sometimes referred to as the Middle Ages or, wrongly, as the Dark Ages and is, essentially, a Eurocentric reckoning of history.
It was, for me, the principle area of my study in the completion of my BA at the University of New England and a constant source of fascination for me. It is the era in which the Roman Empire in the West disappeared but Roman (and the Greek values it had absorbed) remained strong in the East. The Islamic empires rose and spread west, threatening Christendom. The era witnessed the end of the great mass migrations from Asia. These migrations had driven peoples east to the Americas, south to Oceania and west, rewriting, several times, the map of Europe. (The Vikings were a personification of the last gasp of these mass movement.)
The medieval era saw the rise and perfection in Europe of the feudal system and witnessed its decline and death.
But it was not an era of 'darkness'. There were several renaissances before the Italian renaissance of the fifteenth century. The Carolingian court of Charlemagne and his successors, for example, or the era of the 'High Middle Ages' in the mid twelfth century. Learning did not die in Europe nor did history stop for a thousand years. It is a vibrant and multi-hued landscape and one worth looking at, principally for the resonances it evokes in the modern era.
And the medieval period did not end with a sudden halt at the Ottoman capture of Constantinople. It ended at different times in different countries. In many ways Russia remained medieval until the mid-nineteenth century. If there were any one cause for the end of the medieval period and for the changes that resulted in the modern world, and such matters are usually more complex than a single cause would suggest, then that cause was the Black Death in the late fourteenth century. The death of up to one-third of all Europeans in a short period destroyed the economic base of western society and resulted in massive social dislocation and rapid change.
The medieval era is also fascinating because we are still rediscovering it as more primary source material is disinterred and re-examined. Myth is being destroyed and a sober light of reality being shone on the era. Even tens of thousands of furlongs from Europe and half a millennium away, the medieval era draws my fascinated attention.
Medieval History Index
Ethelred "Unraed"
The 1381 Peasants' Revolt
Richard III
Also in
in History the Future
Modern History
I'm primarily interested in the 'why' of history and in the resonances of the modern world found in the past. In the medieval history section you can find three articles. All relate primarily to English history, two to fascinating characters almost universally maligned by historians and the third at a pivotal event in the decline of the feudal system. They are
- a defence of Ethelred, called the "Unready";
- a look at the 1381 Peasants' Revolt in England; and
- an analysis, using some recently rediscovered eyewitness accounts, of Richard III's usurpation.
For your interest, I have also included a links section to some of the medieval resources I have found on the 'Web.