The Middle Ages: A historical period
Introduction
The Middle Ages is the historical period of Western civilization between the 5th century and the fifteenth century. Its beginning is usually placed in the year 476 with the fall of the Roman Empire of the West and its end in 1492 with the discovery of America, although it is also located in 1453 with the fall of Constantinople, date that has the uniqueness of coinciding with The invention of the printing press by Gutenberg and also with the end of the 100 -year war, a war that actually lasted 116 years between the kingdoms of France and England.
Developing
In the ideological and cultural there was a miscegenation of classical culture with Christian and Islamic monotheistic cultures, each in their space. In the Middle Ages the slave mode of production was replaced by a feudal servitude production mode. There was also a decomposition of the centralized structures of the Roman Empire that gave way to a dispersion of power, the Middle Ages is usually divided into two great periods: early or high middle age, centuries V at x and low middle ages, in those thousand years many things happened.
On the one hand, in the East we have the history of the Roman Empire of the East, nicknamed as the Byzantine Empire, with the capital in Constantinople, where Greek was spoken. From here the Slavic peoples such as the Serbs, the Bulgarians and the Russians will be Christianized. On the other hand, in Western Europe we have a lot of Germanic, barbarian villages for the Romans, from northern Europe, which were descending in successive smells to the south and were settling forming kingdoms.
These peoples assured and merged with their culture many traits of Greek and Latin civilization, adopting Roman law and Christianity as an official religion. In the year 620 in Mecca the figure of Muhammad arises, which creates a monotheistic religion: Islam. At his death, in 632, the Arabian Peninsula was already mostly Muslim. His followers took the title Caliph and expanded from the Iberian Peninsula to India. The presence of Muslims as rivals as an alternative rival civilization.
Settled in the southern half of the Mediterranean basin whose maritime traffic goes on to control, forced the closure in itself of Western Europe for several centuries. In 732, in the battle of Poitiers, with Carlos Martel at the head of an army, the recoil of Muslim forces in Europe begins. The grandson of that Carlos Martel, Carlomagno, expanded the different Frankish kingdoms until they were transformed into an empire, the Carolingian empire, to which it incorporated much of Western and Central Europe.
In the year 962 the German king Otón I, called El Grande, is crowned emperor. After the disintegration of the Carolingian Empire and the failure of the Carlomagne Centralizer Project the weakness of the kings became evident. His successors were forced to assign much of his authority to the counts and marquises to obtain their support to ensure the loyalty of these nobles the monarchs gave them land: the fiefs. At that time there were invasions of Vikings, Saracenos and Hungaros that increased insecurity.
Forcing the kings to entrust the nobles the defense of their territories. The figure of the gentleman was born, feudalism reached maturity in the eleventh century and had its peak in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. By feudalism we understand the system based on a series of ties and obligations that support commitments that support commitments, generally military, between a free man, the vassal and other free men in a superior situation, the Lord.
The vassal swore fidelity to his lord and promised to comply. This is known as vassalage. The vassalage was confirmed through two ceremonies: the tribute and investiture the possibility that a vassal would take under his protection to other men who became his vassals of his established a pyramid network of vasaltical relations.
We have just seen how it went from a Roman State based on the central power and a vast territory to a state based on personal ties fragmented in the different feuds. In them the Lord monopolizes the functions of the State, such as legislating, imposing taxes and administering justice. A characteristic fief was made up of a village surrounded by land to grow protected by a castle run by a man. This castle is also called ‘Burgo’.
By extension the name of ‘Burgo’ was applied to the populations that develop around these constructions. This is how the big medieval cities emerged. The land acquires enormous economic importance by decreasing trade and monetary circulation. Therefore, agriculture is the basis of the feudal economy, an economy of self-consumption. The inhabitants of these nascent cities were called ‘bourgeois”, born the term ‘bourgeois’.
These centers attended the peasants to sell their surpluses also bought everyday items made by the artisans, new neighborhoods of artisans and merchants were created that were also grouped in guilds also in this city the Gothic style was born, an evolution of the Romanesque. These cities saw the lifting of prodigious cathedrals and the cities saw the birth of universities in them were learned the seven liberal arts composed of the "trivium and quadrivium".
And in them specialized studies could be studied as law, medicine, theology and philosophy. The dominant philosophy was that of Aristotle, whose texts had arrived in Europe through Arabic teaching centers. Medieval, scholastic philosophy, was fundamentally proposed to systematize the Christian conception of the world in Aristotelian terms. The most famous representative of this current was Santo Tomás de Aquino.
Majestic cathedrals. The monasteries were also civilization islands. From them not only emanated, spirituality, culture and Christianity, they were also the ones that introduced the breakage of the fundamentally large desks where they were saved, copied and preserved the manuscripts that we have inherited from ancient times. These civilization islands were not common within medieval society. The majority of the population was illiterate.
conclusion
Here the minstrels and troubadours played a very important role. They were musicians and poets who orally disseminated the epic feats of heroes. The Middle Ages is the era of the great gentlemen and the great songs of Gesta these poets also told us about Cortes love. Trovadoresca poetry was mostly of love, but could also focus on political, moral, religious aspects, and so on. Another of the issues could be that of the Crusades, a series of military campaigns with the aim of restoring Christian control over the Holy Land.
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