This Very Short Introduction will offer two approaches to a fruitful engagement with the long period of European history known as the Middle Ages, ranging from around 500 to around 1500.
The term Middle Ages—the French Moyen Âge or the Italian medioevo—speaks of a sole ‘Age’, and this is misleading. The concept of an ‘age’ fails to capture the fact that we are dealing with a vast territory over a long period in constant transformation. As we explore continuity and change we will find that Europe did not live to a single rhythm over this period. While there was vibrant city life in Italy, Iberia, and southern France from early in the period, substantial urban centres and commerce developed in England and France only in the 12th century, in Bohemia in the 13th, and in the Baltic regions only in the 14th. Similarly, Europe’s regions became Christian at different times: Rome with its ancient Christian communities, the Franks from c.500, Iceland c.1000, and Livonia in the Baltic region, in the 1300s. If we think of religious change, then the parish system reached most Europeans after 1200; if the rhythms of agrarian life are considered, then many aspects of our period remained in place until the 18th century.
As we shall see, during our period several cultures and peoples came into contact—always learning from each other; they sometimes clashed, and ultimately blended. There was the heritage of the Roman Empire with its city life, its Christian intellectual heritage, its concept of citizenship, its trade, and its principles of election to public office in service of the common good—res publica. And there was the growing influence of the values and capacities of the kin-based societies of the Germanic peoples—barbarians, literally ‘bearded ones’—who at the beginning of our period were already long-standing neighbours and even members of the Roman Empire. Add to that the impact of the spread of Islam in the Mediterranean countries from the 7th century, and the role played by Islamic Europe in shaping politics and disseminating whole areas of knowledge, and our period emerges in its complexity. As these forces were at play European lives were shaped through all manner of human exchange and interaction: conquest, conversion, imitation, legislation, and persuasion.
Even the word Europe is far from fixed. I shall use it to describe the westernmost part of a vast continental mass, an area in which a shared Christian culture came to prevail among an ever growing group of polities and their people, and whose genealogy is linked to the later Roman Empire. Its kingdoms and peoples formed an interlocking commonwealth based on an integrated economy, a universal framework for religious life, with an intellectual elite that communicated in Latin, and a secular elite bound by marriage, diplomacy, war, and lifestyle.
Europe’s people and places interest us above all. Since the early-20th century historians have sought to make history more inclusive, to reach people and phenomena largely ignored by previous historians. French historian Marc Bloch (1886–1944) has taught us how to study agrarian societies in their great variety and dynamism; Jacques Le Goff (1924–2014) showed how rich was the intellectual and commercial life of cities. In their wake many other historians have helped make these centuries of European history diverse and challenging. Alongside kings and queens, bishops and nobles we now consider intellectuals and peasants, merchants and women, Jews and nuns. We also attend to the materials they used and the shape and sounds of their environments. From these arise norms and transgressions, continuity and change, the constraints and vulnerabilities of people’s lives, alongside opportunity and aspiration.
If you are about to study history at university, or have become interested in the European past through travel, film, or fantasy literature, then you will have come across the term Middle Ages; hence we use it here. But we should not do so without testing its origins and assumption. That is how we will begin this Very Short Introduction.