Nonetheless, the Germanic tribes brought into Europe their own tribal institutions, ethnic patterns, and oral and artistic traditions, including a highly developed epic poetry. Their influence was strongest in central Europe, where the Romans had had the least impact; less marked in the northern and western parts, where Romano-British and Gallo-Roman cultures were established; and weakest in the highly Romanized southern regions. Linguistically, Old High German developed in the first zone and Anglo-Saxon in Britain, while farther south medieval Romance languages developed from their common Latin inheritance.
In the southern zone, imperial traditions were reinforced by the reconquest, albeit brief, of North Africa, Italy, and parts of Spain by forces from Constantinople under Justinian’s general Belisarius. Despite the restoration of Roman administration between 533 and 554 (celebrated in the mosaics of Ravenna and the Pragmatic Sanction of 554), imperial forces could not prevent the Lombards from moving inexorably into northern Italy, which they occupied in 568. The reconquered parts of the Western Empire were thus reduced to a narrow strip of territory from the head of the Adriatic to Ravenna, the exarchate, Rome—now governed effectively by its bishop—plus small duchies. In addition, Sicily, Bruttium, and Calabria remained subject to Constantinople and were Greek-speaking for many centuries.
In contrast to previous invaders, from the 6th century onward, newly arrived barbarian forces clung to their pagan culture and resisted assimilation. The Saxons established themselves east of the Rhine in the north. The Avars and their Slav allies, who moved steadily westward from the Vistula and Dnepr river basins, disrupted weak imperial defenses at the Danube and pressed south and west into the Balkans and central Europe. By 567 the Avars established control over the Hungarian plain, where they remained until their defeat by Charlemagne in 796. After successfully besieging Sirmium and Singidunum in the 580s, the eastern Slavs infiltrated the Balkans, while others moved north and west to settle eventually along the Elbe beside the Saxons. The failure of the combined Avaro-Slav siege of Constantinople in 626 ended this pagan expansion. Although Slavs occupied the Balkan Peninsula for two centuries or more, disrupting east-west communication along the ancient Via Egnatia, they were eventually evangelized and absorbed into the Eastern Empire. Judith Eleanor Herrin The Middle Ages
The period of European history extending from about 500 to 1400–1500 ce is traditionally known as the Middle Ages. The term was first used by 15th-century scholars to designate the period between their own time and the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The period is often considered to have its own internal divisions: either early and late or early, central or high, and late.
Calendar illustration for April from the Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry, manuscript illuminated by the Limbourg brothers, 1416.Photos.com/Jupiterimages
Although once regarded as a time of uninterrupted ignorance, superstition, and social oppression, the Middle Ages are now understood as a dynamic period during which the idea of Europe as a distinct cultural unit emerged. During late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, political, social, economic, and cultural structures were profoundly reorganized, as Roman imperial traditions gave way to those of the Germanic peoples who established kingdoms in the former Western Empire. New forms of political leadership were introduced, the population of Europe was gradually Christianized, and monasticism was established as the ideal form of religious life. These developments reached their mature form in the 9th century during the reign of Charlemagne and other rulers of the Carolingian dynasty, who oversaw a broad cultural revival known as the Carolingian renaissance.
In the central, or high, Middle Ages, even more dramatic growth occurred. The period was marked by economic and territorial expansion, demographic and urban growth, the emergence of national identity, and the restructuring of secular and ecclesiastical institutions. It was the era of the Crusades, Gothic art and architecture, the papal monarchy, the birth of the university, the recovery of ancient Greek thought, and the soaring intellectual achievements of St. Thomas Aquinas (c. 1224–74).
It has been traditionally held that by the 14th century the dynamic force of medieval civilization had been spent and that the late Middle Ages were characterized by decline and decay. Europe did indeed suffer disasters of war, famine, and pestilence in the 14th century, but many of the underlying social, intellectual, and political structures remained intact. In the 15th and 16th centuries, Europe experienced an intellectual and economic revival, conventionally called the Renaissance, that laid the foundation for the subsequent expansion of European culture throughout the world.
Many historians have questioned the conventional dating of the beginning and end of the Middle Ages, which were never precise in any case and cannot be located in any year or even century. Some scholars have advocated extending the period defined as late antiquity (c. 250–c. 750 ce) into the 10th century or later, and some have proposed a Middle Ages lasting from about 1000 to 1800. Still others argue for the inclusion of the old periods Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Reformation into a single period beginning in late antiquity and ending in the second half of the 16th century. Edward Peters Michael Frassetto The idea of the Middle Ages The term and concept before the 18th century
From the 4th to the 15th century, writers of history thought within a linear framework of time derived from the Christian understanding of Scripture—the sequence of Creation, Incarnation, Christ’s Second Coming, and the Last Judgment. In Book XXII of City of God, the great Church Father Augustine of Hippo (354–430) posited six ages of world history, which paralleled the six days of Creation and the six ages of the individual human life span. For Augustine, the six ages of history—from Adam and Eve to the Flood, from the Flood to Abraham, from Abraham to King David, from David to the Babylonian Exile, from the Exile to Jesus Christ, and from Christ to the Second Coming—would be followed by a seventh age, the reign of Christ on earth. World history was conceived as “salvation history”—the course of events from Creation to the Last Judgment—and its purposes were religious and moral. Thus, all the references by Augustine and other early authors to a “middle time” must be understood within the framework of the sixth age of salvation history. Early Christian interpretations of the biblical Book of Daniel (Daniel 2:31–45, 7), especially those of the Church Father Jerome (c. 347–419/420) and the historian Paulus Orosius (flourished 414–417), added the idea of four successive world empires—Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome. Late writers in this tradition added the idea of the translatio imperii (“translation of empire”): from Alexander the Great to the Romans, from the Romans to the Franks under Charlemagne in 800, and from Charlemagne to the East Frankish emperors and Otto I. A number of early European thinkers built upon the idea of the translation of empire to define European civilization in terms of scholarship and chivalry (the knightly code of conduct). All these ideas were readily compatible with the Augustinian sequence of the six ages of the world.
The single exception to this trend was the work of the late 12th-century Calabrian abbot and scriptural exegete Joachim of Fiore (c. 1130–c. 1201). According to Joachim, there were three ages in human history: that of the Father (before Christ), that of the Son (from Christ to an unknown future date, which some of Joachim’s followers located in the late 13th century), and that of the Holy Spirit (during which all Christendom would turn into a vast church with a universal priesthood of believers). But Joachim’s view was also firmly expressed in terms of salvation history. Many chroniclers and writers of histories, of course, wrote about shorter periods of time and focused their efforts on local affairs, but the great Augustinian metanarrative underlay their work too. From several confessional perspectives, this view still survives.