Books and Resources:
The History of the Ancient World, From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome, Bauer, Susan Wise, 2007, WW Norton & Company. Great book, easy reading, fun stories.
With Arrow, Sword, and Spear, A History of Warfare in the Ancient World, Bradford, Alfrred, 2001, Fall River Press. Excellent accounts of ancient world, and goes far beyond warfare.
The NIV Study Bible, Zondervan Press, 2002. Good historical information.
The New Penguin History of the World, Roberts, 2007 Penguin Books. One of the best histories around. You can’t go wrong with Roberts.
The Outline of History, The Whole Story of Man, Wells, H.G., revised by Raymond Postgate, 1956, Doubleday & Company. Great maps and illustrations.
The War Chronicles, From Chariots to Flintlocks, Cummins, J., 2008, Fair Winds Press.
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Gibbon, Edward, 2005, Phoenix Press (Abridged Edition). Hard to read, but a classic none-the-less.
Guns, Germs, and Steel, The Fates of Human Societies, Diamond, Jarad, 20005, WW Norton.
Books and References on Philosophy
The Essential Philosophy, Everything You need to Understand the World’s Great Thinkers, Mannion, 2006, Adams Media Corporation. (The title is overdone, but the book is excellent)
Philosophy For Beginners, Osborne, 1992, Writers and Readers Publishing. (Philosophy in cartoon form, a lot of fun and one can actually learn a thing or two).
Chapter 3
The Dark Ages 455 to 1400
Figure 13 Barbarian Invasions of Rome 100-500 AD
Ancient history has reached its end. This is the start of a new era. As pointed out above, most scholars think these times, between the fall of the Western Roman Empire (about AD 455) and the Renaissance (about AD 1400 to 1500) should not receive a pejorative moniker.[56] The Middle Ages is a neutral term resulting in a non-judgment of the times. Medieval is another term we apply to this epoch, but I think we should stick with the term Dark Ages; and you will see why after discovering what was going on. In this section, we will consider only Western Europe. The Dark Ages can be easily divided into two parts: the early Middle Ages, and the High Middle Ages. About 1000 AD is the turning point from the early to the High Middle Ages. The High Middle Ages began with a population gain, and new agricultural techniques that increased crop yields. The population increase led to growing towns and a new class of people—the city businessman or burgher. This new merchant class gained power as the High Middle Ages moved on and brought prosperity to the townsfolk. By 1200 the future looked bright, and then a triple whammy brought the good times to an end. The Black Plague (1346), the Little Ice Age (1300), and the Hundred Years War (1346) hit and effectively destroyed the future. The Mongol invasions (1241) did not help Eastern Europe either because they also denuded the area of people. The Mongols really liked killing.
Total Loss Of Roman Culture
The fall of the Western Roman Empire shattered Europe. Unity evaporated, and isolation of the various towns and villages returned. Cities disappeared, trade collapsed, the population decreased, culture was gone, quality in the crafts vanished, language changed (Latin was no longer universal), thus, people from different areas could not understand each other), and safe travel was a distant memory. Walls started going up around the towns and villages because the regional government’s protection buckled. Isolation, economic and social, had returned to the land. The need for Protection became a vital problem.
Another feature of the Dark Ages was the loss of knowledge. In the ancient world, the Romans, Egyptians, Hittites, and others, knew how to make frame and panel doors, light wheels with spokes, and other rather simple but effective craft works. After the fall of Rome, these methods of construction were lost. This is especially hard to understand because this kind of knowledge commonly passes from father to son, or one can learn from looking at the construction itself. This knowledge could only be lost if all the people knowing these crafts were dead or had left the area. For example, if only one craftsman knew how to construct a frame and panel door, the usefulness of the technique was so obvious it would rapidly spread to others in the same line of work. Instead, we have the baffling total loss of these craft skills. To speculate on almost no information, the craftsmen probably left for the Eastern Roman Empire on those wonderful Roman roads. The result of this loss of knowledge was slab doors, solid wood wheels, and a lack of medical techniques, illiteracy and other problems for Europe.
Knowing how to administer urban environments was also lost, resulting in many urban centers heading for nonexistence due to terrible living conditions. Civilization was collapsing. Cities of the Dark Ages were profoundly different from the cities of Rome. With no efficient removal of trash and human waste, disease was common. The inability to bring fresh water and food into large urban areas, such as the city of Rome, resulted in the collapse of urban populations as people moved to the rural areas to find food and work. As cities disintegrated, trade fell apart completely changing everything. Until the return of cities Europe was stuck fast in the doldrums. Some good news seemed to appear about AD 800, when a warming period began in Europe, and more cereal crops sprouted in northern climates; thus, for a while the population expanded. Even in the best of times, the peasant lived on the edge of starvation, but abundant food crops at least allowed healthier living. Then the climate changed bringing disaster. The cold of the Little Ice Age set in about 1300, dramatically cutting food production, and leading to widespread famines throughout Europe.
The shattering of the Western Roman Empire was forever. Today the effects are obvious. Germans cannot speak to Frenchmen, Italians, Englishmen, etc., without an interpreter. You get the picture. The tribes overrunning Europe could not speak to one another, and eventually nations developed that could not speak to one another. The money, cultures, traditions, and languages became different all over Western Europe.[57] All this was a direct result of the cataclysmic fall of Rome in the West.
Events of the Dark Ages
Worse yet, between the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the year 1453 (or so), the following events fell upon Europe in addition to the problems of dissolution and economic collapse:
o The Black Death: Numerous plagues swept over Europe starting first in about 452 and ending with the last plague (named the Black Death) which began in about 1346. The Black Death ended around 1350. These plagues killed about 25,000,000 to 100,000,000 people by some estimates. (Figures from this time are very rough). Some experts think about fifty percent of the population died during the last great plague; others put the death toll at one third. The huge variations in death figures stems from the lack of reliable statistics from the era. What we do know is enormous numbers of people died.
o The Little Ice Age: The Little Ice Age was a 500 year period of cold and rainy weather that descended on the world about 1300 AD and stayed until 1800. Prior to the Little Ice Age there was a 400 year medieval warming period in Europe starting about AD 800 and lasting until about AD 1200, during which crops fared much better because of healthier growing conditions. Grapes were being grown as far north as England, and Viking explorers settled Greenland. A climatic reversal set in by 1300, and in 10 years the average temperatures dropped by 4 degrees. This cold hit Europe especially hard, and was responsible for numerous crop failures, famines, and hardships killing millions because of the extreme cold. In 1315, unusually heavy rains began, lasting until 1320, destroying the cereal crops that were the foundation of medieval society. The ice age drove the Vikings out of Greenland as well as putting end to grape growing in England. Famine caused 1.5 million deaths by 1320. The worst cold hit between 1605 and 1680 when the temperature averaged 7 degrees cooler.
o The Muslim Invasion of Spain: Beginning about AD 711 when the Muslims entered Iberia and involving constant warfare until 1492 when the Muslim expulsion was complete.
o The Mongol Invasions: The Mongols devastated Hungary and Poland in 1241, and the threat went o
n for decades as the Mongols kept returning. The Mongols slaughtered people by the hundreds of thousands as they turned cities into empty villages, murdering, raping, and plundering their way across the globe.
o The Viking (Northman) Raids: Starting about 793 and continuing for centuries, the raids grew in size and consequence until the raiders became settlers. The result was regular warfare between the Vikings and the peoples already on the land. The Viking raids were so fierce they kicked Europe back into the Dark Ages for many extra decades.
o The Crusades: From 1095 to 1291, Christian Europe waged a series of campaigns to win back the Holy Land from the forces of Islam. Islam conquered Jerusalem in 638, going on to conquer vast areas in North Africa and Spain annihilating Christians throughout their areas of conquest. Eventually, the Eastern Roman Empire fell to Islam after Constantinople fell in 1453. These were religious wars of astonishing brutality. After these wars ended, Europe was unable to regain Christian territory except for Spain, but it gained knowledge of the ancient Roman and Greek world that had been lost for centuries. This knowledge was essential for the future growth of Europe as it led to the European Renaissance.
o The Hundred Years War: Commencing in 1346 and lasting through 1453, France and England engaged in endless battles for control of France (the war was in France) and destroyed a large part of the French countryside and its economy. Peasants suffered needlessly as armies trampled and burned crops, destroyed villages, and battered the peasant’s meager existence decade after decade.
o The Fall of Byzantium and the Muslim Invasions of Europe: After the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire in 1453 (the Byzantine Empire with its capitol at Constantinople), the Muslims pushed into Eastern Europe threatening to overrun Vienna. These were religious offensives that resulted in massive casualty tolls. The Fall of Byzantium is often used as a milestone to mark the end of the Dark Ages.
o The Growth of Cities finally pulled Europe out of the morass of feudalism, disunity, economic isolation, and local tyranny. After the Black Plague finished killing off nearly everyone in 1350, the population began to recover, the discovery of better farming techniques made farming more productive, new foods arrived from the New World to supplement the Old World’s crops, and competence began to return to city administration. As the trade routes opened up, the cities began to increase in size and power. It was this slow but steady improvement in urban development, coupled with the ideas of the Renaissance, which was pulling Europe out of its perpetual darkness.
This is NOT an exhaustive list, but displays how especially rough life was for common people in this era. Life during this period was awful due to appalling weather after 1300, numerous crop failures, constant hunger, warring armies trampling fields of crops, plagues and sickness everywhere, and foreign raiders killing everyone in sight (Muslims, Vikings, Mongols and others). In the late medieval period groups of clerics traveled around accusing people of being witches or warlocks, [58] killing them if they failed certain ridiculous tests (like being boiled alive). Life was austere, to put it gently. This justifies the Dark Ages label for this era because the common person suffered a terrible hammering for centuries.
Of course, not everything was bad. The age saw important agricultural advances such as the iron-tipped plow, three field crop rotation, and other “delights” making farming much more productive; however, remember who would get almost all the additional crop production—everyone but the peasant growing the crops.
The Catholic Church
Very few institutions can directly trace its dress, organization, rituals, and a lot more to the age of knights, castles, and courtly ladies. Nevertheless, when men were still hacking away with swords while puffing around in armor, the Catholic Church was fully formed and a key part of the feudal world. It is still with us in 2010, and still running very much as it ran in AD 1,000. Some details changed, but when attending Catholic Church services one is experiencing a tiny slice of medieval culture firsthand.
The Catholic (meaning universal) Church, centered at Rome, developed as the Western Roman Empire fell becoming a mainstay of life in the Dark Ages. The Roman Catholic Church grew from the ashes of the Western Roman Empire, and its boundaries approximated those of the Western Empire. The Church held together the various cultures growing in Europe, it was the repository of learning, and it was uniform in its language (Latin—the same as the Roman Empire). Often its monasteries were centers of commerce. The Church alone set forth a moral code embodied in Christian teachings. The Catholic Church tried to limit the impact of the constant fighting between the various warlords in Europe. The knights serving the lords were often hired thugs who galloped about oppressing the peasants and clergy as well as attacking other knights. Many of these heavily armed men were recruited to battle the Vikings; but as the raids subsided, the warlords went back to local skirmishing. The Catholic Church tried to establish the “Truce of God,” where the knights vowed to avoid killing the innocent (peasants, clergy, and townsfolk for example), and the “Peace of God”, where knights promised to refrain from waging war during certain times of the year (Christmas for example). How well this worked is unknown, but at least the Catholic Church was trying to bring a moral order into people’s lives.
The Church built immense cathedrals, monuments dedicated to the worship of the Christian God. These shrines of the High Middle Ages (1400 to 1500) became wondrous examples of architecture’s response to the age. Early cathedrals were of the Romanesque style, with thick walls and smallish windows; however, they remain imposing monuments. Later cathedrals, termed Gothic, were taller with very detailed carved stone interior decorations, and flying buttresses that allowed thinner walls with stain glass windows. At the very top of these impressive structures, in places unseen, are stone gargoyles fabricated with great skill, even though cloistered. The mindset was one of creating for God, who could see all, and not man, who would probably never see them.
The Christian Church split in half in AD 1054, after the Western and Eastern churches had enough of one another and formally diverged onto their own paths. The Eastern Church (Orthodox—or true) maintained control in Byzantium, Eastern Europe, Russia, the Ukraine, and Greece. The Western Church (Roman Catholicism—or universal) maintained sway in Western Europe. The split centered on cultural and political considerations, although doctrine was different. The sack of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade in 1204 was key to widening the split. The Eastern Church saw Latin Christians destroy their beautiful city and slaughter its inhabitants. Meanwhile, the West thought the East was recalcitrant in not recognizing the primacy of Rome. The failure of the West to help defend Constantinople in 1453 during the Ottoman Turk attacks made the split even worse. Just to make things even on all sides, the leaders of each church, the pope in the west and the Patriarch of Constantinople in the east, excommunicated the followers of the other. Thus, at least one-half of Christianity will burn in hell—according to the other half. Interestingly, a similar thing happened in Islam. After the death of Mohammad, their spiritual founder, Islam split in two (Shea and Sunni sects), each side saying the other was bound for hell. (It seems many people are hell bound, according to people claiming to be heaven bound . . .)
Feudalism
A foundation point for the age was the institution of feudalism, a system of governance that included economic relationships as well as social and legal undertakings. The local king (normally the top warlord in the area) owned all the land, but the warlord needed people to farm the land. Therefore, the warlord allowed the serfs to farm his land for a portion of the crops. In times of war, the serfs could form part of the army protecting their warlord’s land. As time progressed, some of the warlords gave their land to the Catholic Church, thereby establishing the Catholic Church as a major power in economic and spiritual realms.
How all this came about is guesswork, because when the Western Roman Empire fell learning was lost and little was written down. What we can discern are the results, warlords—often called kings�
��ruling over small areas coming under their protection. (Sounds like modern Los Angeles gangs) Warlords built large castles for protection (walls again) and for internecine warfare, each trying to better his lot by battering his neighbors.
The Guild System
The important institution of guilds grew up during the Dark Ages. Under the guild system, a craftsman applied to join a group of skilled workers doing his type of work (building with bricks or stone for example), and if accepted, he would agree to keep the methods taught confidential and otherwise obey the guild’s rules. Guilds were social as well as professional organizations. The guild would test and assign certain categories of work skill to their members and set payment guidelines for that level of skill. The category of apprentice might be the entry-level skill group, then journeyman, and finally master. The guilds would impart knowledge regarding the craft to their members and encourage study to advance the group’s knowledge; however, this knowledge was secret. The guilds were powerful and important groups. It is said that in Paris even the prostitutes had a guild.
The problem was guilds imparted additional rigidity to the economic system hindering trade and industry growth. Some people might be able to do the job for less, but the guilds were powerful; thus, those with money (the ones doing the construction or buying the goods) wanted to maintain good relations. As bad as the plagues were in Europe, they did accomplish one important economic benefit, they created a real labor shortage and in those conditions the guild’s power to limit commerce diminished.
The Super Summary of World History Page 11