This article is about Medieval Europe. For a more global outlook, see Postclassical Era.In
European history, the
Middle Ages, or
Medieval period, lasted from the 5th to the 15th century. It began with the
collapse of the
Western Roman Empire, and was followed by the
Renaissance and the
Age of Discovery. The Middle Ages is the middle period of the traditional division of Western history into Antiquity, Medieval, and Modern periods. The period is subdivided into the
Early, the
High, and the
Late Middle Ages.
Depopulation, deurbanization, and
barbarian invasions, which had begun in
Late Antiquity, continued in the Early Middle Ages. The barbarian invaders formed new kingdoms in what remained of the Western Roman Empire. In the 7th century,
North Africa and the
Middle East, once part of the Eastern Roman Empire (the
Byzantine Empire), became an
Islamic Empire after conquest by
Muhammad's successors. Although there were substantial changes in society and political structures, the break with
Antiquity was not complete. The still sizeable Byzantine Empire survived and remained a major power. The empire's law code, the
Code of Justinian, was widely admired later in the Middle Ages. In the West, most kingdoms incorporated extant Roman institutions, while monasteries were founded as Christianity expanded in Western Europe. The
Franks, under the
Carolingian dynasty, established an empire covering much of Western Europe; the
Carolingian Empire endured until the 9th century, when it succumbed to the pressures of invasion—
Vikings from the north,
Magyars from the east, and
Saracens from the south.
During the High Middle Ages, which began after AD 1000, the population of Europe increased greatly as technological and agricultural innovations allowed trade to flourish and crop yields to increase.
Manorialism, the organization of peasants into villages that owed rent and labour services to the
nobles, and
feudalism, the political structure whereby
knights and lower-status nobles owed military service to their overlords in return for the right to rent from lands and
manors, were two of the ways society was organised in the High Middle Ages. The
Crusades, first preached in 1095, were military attempts by Western European Christians to regain control of the Middle Eastern
Holy Land from the
Muslims. Kings became the heads of centralised nation states, reducing crime and violence but making the ideal of a unified
Christendom more distant. Intellectual life was marked by
scholasticism, a philosophy that emphasised joining faith to reason, and by the founding of
universities. The philosophy of
Thomas Aquinas, the paintings of
Giotto, the poetry of
Dante and
Chaucer, the travels of
Marco Polo, and the architecture of
Gothic cathedrals such as
Chartres are among the outstanding achievements of this period.
The Late Middle Ages were marked by difficulties and calamities, such as famine, plague, and war, which much diminished the population of Western Europe; between 1347 and 1350, the
Black Death killed approximately a third of the European population. Controversy,
heresy, and
schism within the
Church paralleled the warfare between states, civil wars, and peasant revolts occurring in the kingdoms. Cultural and technological developments transformed European society, concluding the Late Middle Ages and beginning the
early modern period.