Antecedents: the early Middle Ages, c. 500–c. 1100

Abstract

THE CHARACTER OF THE PERIOD 11 The Roman empire had been the political form of the ancient Mediterranean civilization of southern and western Europe, North Africa and Asia Minor. When it fell, three new civilizations grew up: the Graeco-Christian Byzantine empire (in which the ancient Roman empire scarcely survived); the Arab-Islamic world; and the Latin-Christian West, made up of the old Roman population and the Germanic peoples who had just settled there. In western Europe, imperial authority had declined in the fifth century, and the old Roman state had been divided among several Germanic tribal kingdoms. In the centuries which followed, the Frankish kings of the Carolingian dynasty, the Germanic kings of the Saxon dynasty and their successors all made attempts to restore the previous supranational authority of Rome. But these were without exception in vain. The differences between the new Roman-Germanic society of the West and the ancient world were not just political. The upheavals which had brought about the fall of the Roman state had also affected the economy. In the western societies of the early Middle Ages, urbanization and the circulation of money had hardly begun, and agriculture remained more or less at subsistence level. The new culture of the West was different too. It was dominated by the Roman church and the Latin language; it did borrow from the remnants of Antiquity, but it simplified them drastically. The early Middle Ages, which were a primitive period in European history, lasted until about 1100. At that point a new movement radically transformed society and allowed it to attain the level of the two other great cultures, Byzantium and Islam.