Why were the Middle Ages disorganised and chaotic?

Answer 1

The idea that the Middle Ages were disorganized and chaotic is a misconception. The period lasted about 1000 years, and included all of Europe. During the earliest part of the Middle Ages, western Europe was still going through a time called the Age of Migrations, in which Germanic tribes such as the Vandals, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Franks, Burgundians, Suebi, and others, overran the empire, and settled down.

But you might consider comparing the Middle Ages with the Roman Empire for stability. Between the Death of Commodus, in 192, and the beginning reign of Diocletian, in 284, the median life expectancy of people who claimed to be Roman Emperors, who had armies supporting them, and who operated mints making coins with their images, was less than two years. In fact, we do not know exactly how many such people there were, but we do know there were coins minted for people who claimed to be emperors, with the coins being the only records of their existence.

During this time, only one Roman Emperor died of natural causes as an old man. The other emperors who died of natural causes included two who died of plague and one who was struck by lightning. Most were murdered. During the Crisis of the Third Century (235-285), which was the later half of this time, the empire was in a constant state of civil war.

After about the year 380, things became just as bad once more, and remained so for most of the time. It was about the year 380 that the worst parts of the Age of Migrations began. These culminated with the fall of the West Roman Empire about a hundred years later, but by that time, the worst of them was already over in the area of the Roman Empire.

While there were some similarly chaotic times in the Middle Ages, there were few, if any, worse than Crisis of the Third Century or the Roman period of the Age of Migrations.

There were times that approached the stability of nearly any time of the Roman empire, excepting, possibly, the reigns of the five adoptive emperors. These better medieval times included the periods our historians refer to as the Justinian Dynasty (518-578, in the Byzantine Empire), the Carolingian Renaissance (750-840, in the Carolingian Empire), the Macedonian Renaissance (867-1056, in the Byzantine Empire), the Ottonian Renaissance (936-1002, in the Holy Roman Empire), the Renaissance of the 12th century (about 1070-1300, through much of Western Europe), and those parts of the Italian Renaissance that happened during the Middle Ages (1300 to 1450, spreading from Italy to much of the rest of Western Europe).