A Definition of the Middle Ages

The Middle Ages conveys images of heavily armed knights jousting, minstrels playing instruments in a noble court, tall castles with thick walls, Gothic cathedrals with lofty ceilings soaring high above the nave, peaceful monasteries echoing with polyphonic chant, wheat fields attended by poorly clad peasants armed with scythes, and crowded city streets where narrow timber framed buildings almost lean against each other.  Important rituals involved visual, audible and olfactory elements, like the mass with colorful vestments, ringing bells, plainchant, and incense. 

Herr Kristan von Hamle is raised by his lover (Codex Manesse, Early 14th Century, Heidelberg)

This period is one of contrasts, especially regarding modern perceptions. One view of the Middle Ages presents people living in a pollution free organic environment with sentimental elements of a rural community in which everyone knew each other and celebrated numerous colorful festivals. Or there is the extravagant court with flowing dresses, colorful tunics, musicians, poetry, and "innocent" extramarital affairs. This more positive, romanticized, image of the Middle Ages, often free of disease or poverty, has been utilized by many modern fantasy stories. Or conversely there is the image of cruel torture, gallows, amputations as punishment, or people languishing in dark and damp dungeon. Most people know of substantial loss of life caused by famine and plague, such as what affected much of Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. And finally there is the notion of perpetual warfare, including ongoing conflicts between a king and his barons or rival claimants to the throne, temporal rulers and the Pope, bordering kingdoms like England and France in the Hundred Years War, or between Christian lords and the infidel in distant lands, such as the Crusades. 

All of these are a part of the Middle Ages. But such contrasts are not confined to this period. After all, Ancient Rome was known for spectacular homes with exquisite wall paintings, gardens and marble statues, but also for slavery, lethal gladiator contests, and crucifixion, like the thousands of slaves along the Appian Way after the Sparticus slave revolt in 71 BC. These contrasts are present in our own era as well. Despite our increased life expectancies, technological progress, and attention to human rights, some of the most appalling episodes of poverty, starvation or oppressive totalitarian regimes occurred in the twentieth century. Like any other time in history, the medieval period simultaneously lends itself to admiration and condemnation. We can legitimately marvel at the artistic accomplishment of the Codex Manesse (14th c. Heidelberg) or Strasbourg Cathedral while realizing that the many modern liberal traditions like basic human rights were simply not observed. 

The term Middle Ages, or "medieval" (from the Latin medium aevum, which simply translates to 'middle age'), implies that this period occurred between two other eras. Western history is conventionally divided three eras, Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Modern era, with the well entrenched connotation that the middle period is somehow a period of decline between the accomplishments of antiquity and the advances of the modern era. Of course during the Middle Ages people did not think of themselves as an intermediary period between antiquity and our own era; in fact most people believed that they were living at the end of time and that the Biblical Second Coming was at hand. However, during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, certain intellectuals began to make a distinction between the era that they lived in and antiquity. Later, as Greek and Roman culture was rediscovered on a large scale during the Renaissance, this evolved into a tripartite periodization, with the fall of Rome in the fifth century marking the end of the Classical period, and the Renaissance in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries representing its rebirth (renaissance literally means rebirth). For centuries the Middle Ages, the period in between, was viewed negatively as a lesser base culture of barbarians who ransacked and destroyed the highly renowned Classical culture. In the last thirty or forty years, the period has been revitalized as people began to see it it as an equally complex civilization worthy of study in its own right, rather than the cultural low point between the Classical and Modern eras.