What are the characteristics of middle age?

Answer 1

Many people would say the characteristics of the Early Middle Ages were war, brutality, illiteracy, and superstition. I would disagree.

The Middle Ages began at a low point of learning, communication, trade, and government. They are remembered for these things. But the decline in these things were not the result of the fall of the West Roman Empire; they were the cause. Literacy had already begun to decline badly in the third century, and the government was in a constant state of civil war for decades. The recovery under Diocletian and Constantine was only partial at best, and the empire was too weak to counter the invasions of Germanic tribes in the fourth and fifth centuries.

The low point had already been reached when the West Roman Empire fell, and within only a few years of that time, the Germanic kingdoms that replaced the old empire were already trying to organize themselves, and this meant increasing trade, formalizing laws, and increasing literacy. This meant that in the West, there was a slow improvement, beginning perhaps during the fifth century, and barely discernible in the sixth, or seventh, which became much clearer in the eighth and thereafter, making it possible for Charlemagne to put together an Empire that rivaled the West Roman Empire in size, in which such things as literacy and trade were actively fostered by the government.

The situation in the East was very different from what it was in the West. The empire that fell in 476 was only the western half of the Roman Empire. In the East it lasted, mostly in a state of very slow decline, for another thousand years, during which time it continued to call itself the Empire of the Roman People, though today we call it the Byzantine Empire. Part of the reason it lasted was much better organization, and part was the fact that the Byzantines valued literacy during the fifth century in a way that the leaders of the West Roman Empire did not. The Byzantines began a system for primary education in 425 AD, and continued to operate it until 1453. Their intent was that all military personnel be able to read.

There were three areas of learning that were important during this period. One was the Byzantine Empire, centered in Constantinople. Another was Britain from the fifth century to about the ninth, which provided tutors to the court of Charlemagne, among other things. And another was Spain, after the year 800 or so, as a result of the confluence Muslims who brought Arabic translations of ancient Greek texts and their own science and mathematics, Jews who provided work in areas of science and philosophy, and the local Christian populations, who translated much of this material into Latin.