Why did the Middle Ages get its name? The Middle Ages were not a "dark age". The Church suppressed science and progressive thinking, burned scientists at the stake, and thus set us back hundreds of years.
The Middle Ages are often considered a dark spot on the pages of history, a realm of obscurantism: witches were burned at the stake, and fear and ugliness reigned in the streets. The name itself emphasizes the facelessness of this era, which is overshadowed by two neighboring ones: antiquity and the Renaissance, richer in the aesthetic and cultural sense.
If you have ever turned to texts created more than five centuries ago, then you will agree that the events described in them are presented in a completely different way than we are used to. Perhaps this is due to the fact that at that time the world was still presented to people in a wonderful dress of mystery, and European society had not yet lost faith in the supernatural. Let's try to figure out in what light life appeared when humanity and the world were younger.
Brightness and sharpness of life
Human feelings were expressed more directly. The soul did not hide feelings, and the mind did not try to suppress them. Joy and sorrow, laughter and tears, poverty and wealth were demonstrated publicly without hesitation or fear. The ritual permeated every action or deed, "elevating them to another extraterrestrial lifestyle."
This applied not only to the most important events of a person’s life (birth, marriage and death, reaching the brilliance of mystery), but also to public events: a solemn meeting of the king or an execution, which became not only moralizing, but also a vivid spectacle.
Of course, the life of a medieval person was not distinguished by beauty in itself. Living conditions without electricity, sewerage and heating were far from being called beautiful, and therefore beauty had to be created artificially.
Pursuit of a wonderful life
In the Middle Ages, the aesthetic worldview prevailed over the logical and ethical. The forms of the way of life were transformed into artistic ones, and the society became more and more playful, to such an extent that any action turned into a ritual.
The art of the Renaissance did not appear in world history from scratch. Culture at the end of the Middle Ages - "the coloring of aristocratic life with ideal forms of life, flowing in the artificial lighting of knightly romance, this is a world disguised in the clothes of the times of King Arthur."
Such an artificial, aesthetic coverage of all events created a strong tension, shaping the thoughts and customs of a medieval person.
The life of the courtiers was imbued with aesthetic forms to the point of obscenity, the diversity of colors blinded the townspeople here, which once again proved and substantiated the power of the upper class. Dirty beggars, merchants and rednecks saw the true proof of noble birth in the beauty of noble robes and court decorations.
Formalization of life
Earthly life, clothed in aesthetic forms, not only attracted attention, but also acquired a dimension previously unknown to mankind. Formalism in relationships sometimes prevented natural communication between people, however, it gave them the greatest aesthetic pleasure, occupying an intermediate position between sincerity and etiquette.
There is something touching in the fact that the "beautiful forms", developed in the bitter struggle of a generation of people of ardent disposition, sometimes turned into endless polite bickering.
A visit to the temple turned into a kind of minuet: when leaving, rivalry arose for granting a person of a higher rank the right to cross a bridge or a narrow street before others. As soon as anyone reached his house, he had - as the Spanish custom still requires - to invite everyone to come to his house for something to drink, such an offer everyone had to politely refuse; then the others had to be seen off a bit, and all this, of course, was accompanied by mutual bickering.
Johan Huizinga
Loud suffering for show was considered not only appropriate, but also beautiful, which turned everyday life into a genuine dramatic art.
Pain takes on a rhythm
Funeral rites were also accompanied by a celebration of suffering, in which grief was clothed in beautiful and even sublime forms.
Reality moved into the realm of the dramatic. In more primitive cultures, funeral rites and poetic funeral laments are still one; mourning, with its splendor, was intended to emphasize how grieved the afflicted with grief.
Johan Huizinga
Dutch philosopher, historian, cultural researcher
In such forms, real experiences are easily lost. Here is an excerpt from the notes of Eleanor de Poitiers about the widowed Isabella of Bourbon: “When Madame remained on her own, she did not at all stay in bed, just as in the chambers.” Which indicates a conscious desire for drama, the cause of which was social customs.
People liked it when everything that had to do with the realm of the ethical took on aesthetic forms.
Preachers and ascetics were a special category of people to whom the townsfolk had a genuine interest. Amazement before the humility and mortification of the flesh of the holy ascetics, before the repentant renunciation of sins reached the highest degree of admiration and admiration. Any personal experience, excitement and achievement had to find the necessary public form of expression, fixed in culture.
Love and friendship
A special form of friendship appears, called a minion - it lasted until the 17th century. Every self-respecting courtier had a close friend whose habits, dress, and appearance had to necessarily repeat his own. Minions were taken with them on dates, walks, work. Such friendship had an exclusively aesthetic meaning and was designed to dilute loneliness and boredom, as well as add symmetry to life.
Courtesy and etiquette were directly related to clothing, which had certain meanings.
For example, if a girl wanted to declare allegiance to her lover, then she wore blue clothes, while green clothes testified to love.
In love, for those who did not break with all earthly joys in general, the purpose and essence of enjoying the beautiful as such was manifested. The feeling of falling in love was valued much more than relationships, and even more so marriage. It often happened that a young married woman remained the lady of the heart of many knights who shouted her name on the battlefield.
Everything beautiful - every sound or flower - adorned love. Literature, fashion, customs streamlined the attitude towards love, created a wonderful illusion that people dreamed of following. Love has become a form of fantastic desire. The jousting tournament offered the game of love in its most heroic form. The winner got a special gift in the form of a handkerchief or a kiss from his beloved.
Short circuit
It is important to understand that medieval man lived in a completely different world than we do. His life was permeated with divine mystery, and therefore any phenomenon was regarded as a sign from above.
He lived in a semiotically saturated world. Full of semantic references and higher meanings of manifestations of God in things; he lived in nature, which constantly spoke the language of heraldry.
Umberto Eco
philosopher, specialist in semiotics and medieval aesthetics
Lion, eagle, snake - not only real animals, but symbols that show a person the path to truth, which meant more than objects in themselves. Allegorism extended to all phenomena of life and even served as calls to action.
Often, when the sound of rain is trance-like, or the light of a lamp is refracted in a certain way, we too can experience a different range of feelings, usually hidden in everyday life and affairs. This gives us a sense of the infinite mystery of the world and can make us a little happier, return to the state that medieval man has always experienced.
The Dark Ages are the cause of the light of the Renaissance
The beauty of everyday life was considered sinful, due to which it acquired a double attraction, and if they surrendered to it, then they enjoyed it more passionately than ever.
In art, the religious plot saved beauty from the seal of sin. If in the Middle Ages music and visual arts were seen as meaningful only if they were part of the veneration of Christ, and outside the church it was reprehensible to engage in art, then the Renaissance, having overcome the outdated idea of the joys of life as sinful, "strives to enjoy the whole of life."
All life becomes art, and even the most unaesthetic forms are transformed into the highest evidence of beauty and admiration.
In the era of the New Time, people begin to enjoy art in isolation from life, it begins to rise above it, and life itself loses its aesthetic dimension. With this loss is connected the longing for the Middle Ages, an era in which the sky was higher and the grass greener.
1. What is the Middle Ages?
- Consider the name of the era "Middle Ages": how and why did it arise, what is its modern meaning?
The history of the ancient world continued for several millennia. With the fall of the Western Roman Empire at the end of the 5th century, it was replaced by a new era of world history, which lasted until the end of the 15th century. This thousand-year era is usually called the Middle Ages or the Middle Ages.
- Among scientists, there are other opinions about when the Middle Ages ended. Thus, the point of view is quite widespread that the Middle Ages ended in the middle of the 17th century.
The name "Middle Ages" at first seems a little strange: why are the centuries "middle"? It is clear that the people of that time themselves could not consider that they were living in the Middle Ages. In order for such a name to arise, this era had to be replaced by the next. In the XV-XVI centuries, many educated people admired the achievements of antiquity, and the centuries that followed the fall of Rome were considered a time of cultural decline, when nothing of value was created, but only the heritage of Greece and Rome was destroyed.
Medieval monastery of Mont Saint-Michel. France
- Name the most important achievements of the culture of Greece and Rome.
Now, as they believed, a new era is coming, when antiquity is being revived. And in the interval between antiquity and their own time, they saw only savagery and superstition, invasions and wars, when they even almost forgot how to speak Latin. It was this millennium that they began to call the "Middle Ages."
This name itself contained a negative assessment of the Middle Ages, which later had supporters. Thus, the image of the “dark ages”, the time of endless wars, destruction, and cruelty, was entrenched in history. Even now, sometimes you can hear the definition of "medieval" in the meaning of "wild", "cruel", "ignorant". Indeed, there was enough cruelty and ignorance then - as, indeed, in any other era.
But let's note something else. The Middle Ages were the time of hardworking peasants, noble knights, wise sovereigns, inspired poets. In the Middle Ages, people built majestic cathedrals, wrote wonderful books, made great discoveries. There was no less beautiful and wise in that era than in any other. And therefore, scientists have long abandoned the one-sided idea of the Middle Ages as something only bad or only good. After all, at that time, as in any other, good and evil, light and shadow were inseparable from each other.
There is no agreement among historians on the question of whether the concept of "Middle Ages" and the definition of "medieval" can be extended beyond Western and Central Europe (only in relation to which they were originally applied). On the one hand, the development of each part of the world has unique features, and there was no such Middle Ages as in Europe, neither in Asia, nor in Africa, nor in America. On the other hand, there were important common features in their development. Therefore, many scientists believe that the East also had its Middle Ages, which coincided in time with the Western Middle Ages.
Rogier van der Weyden. Triptych of the Marriage family. Fragment. Scenery. About 1452
The era of the Middle Ages turned out to be much shorter than the era of the Ancient World already known to you. But still, a millennium is a long period during which important changes took place in people's lives. To better understand them, historians distinguish three periods in the Middle Ages. First, on the ruins of antiquity, a new structure of society is gradually taking shape. This is the early Middle Ages, which lasted from the end of the 5th to the end of the 11th century. Then comes the heyday of the Middle Ages. The mature Middle Ages lasted more than two centuries, until about the beginning of the XIV century. Finally, the XIV-XV centuries are the late Middle Ages, its "autumn", the threshold of the era that replaced it - the New Age.
The beginning of the Middle Ages, or in other words - the Early Middle Ages, is attributed to the time of the decline of the Roman Empire, that is, to the III-V centuries of our era, and the end, that is, the Late Middle Ages, to the time of the Renaissance (XIV-XVI centuries). Many kings dreamed of resurrecting the Great Roman Empire, but they never really succeeded.
However, the Renaissance, if not of the empire, but of the greatness of the human spirit, nevertheless took place, and this highest rise became at the same time the crown, determining the end of the Middle Ages.
By the 16th century, languages were formed in Europe, in which Europeans still speak, states and nations with their characteristics were formed, religious teachings gained completeness, moral and philosophical values were determined. Great scientific and geographical discoveries have changed ideas about the world, and the world itself has become different!
And then the Middle Ages were replaced by the era of the New Age.
However, a person does not name the time in which he lives. He just lives. Even you and I, enlightened people of the twenty-first century, do not repeat every now and then: we are people of the era of great scientific discoveries, the era of space exploration, people who have penetrated the secrets of the microworld. We do not know how the historians of the coming centuries will call our time, but they will definitely call it somehow.
The ancient Greeks, who lived in the era of Antiquity and created masterpieces of world culture, of course, were proud of them, but it never occurred to them to call these masterpieces antique, as is customary today. Could not, for example, the famous sculptor Phidias (5th century BC), having completed work on the statue of Zeus, exclaim in a fit of admiration for his own genius: “Oh, what an amazing antique statue I created!”
Because the word “antiquity” in Greek means antiquity, and only a thousand years later people called the history of Ancient Hellas and Ancient Rome the Antique era, that is, the era of Antiquity.
And a man of the Middle Ages simply lived as best he could: he fought, traded, worked, raised children. He cried when it was bad, sang when he had fun. And therefore, probably, I would be very surprised to learn that later, after many centuries, these times will be called the era of the dark ages!
- Not true! he would have exclaimed. - I lived in a wonderful time! .. After all, no matter how difficult life was, it is still beautiful!
Where, then, did the concept of “Middle Ages” come from and what does it mean?
The name "Middle Ages", as well as the definition of "Ancient era", were invented by humanists during the Renaissance. The Renaissance itself (or Renaissance) arose at the junction of the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the era of the New Age. One of the external motivations for the emergence of the Renaissance was the desire to return to classical Latin, the language in which ancient Roman poets and historians wrote, to the highest examples of ancient culture, literature and art, to everything that was lost after the collapse of the Roman Empire. Hence the name - Resurrection!
But between Antiquity and the Renaissance, according to humanists, there was a huge temporal gap of almost ten centuries! Moreover, humanists considered these centuries to be extra time, wasted by people on empty disputes and wars. Although, of course, there is no extra time for History. But for the humanists (for that time, people, of course, advanced!) These centuries seemed to be an era of complete ignorance, obscurantism and spiritual desolation. That is why they dubbed the thousand-year period, which separated their own time from their beloved antiquity, with a clear hint of disdain: “The Middle Age! ..” Like, so-so - a century, they say, a middle time, and nothing good in it! Incidentally, this contemptuous assessment is firmly embedded in the minds of people. “Ah, the Middle Ages!” - still sometimes they talk about some phenomenon or, for example, about a first-generation computer.
But the point is not only in the centuries that separate the time of knightly duels from our time, the point is in the mind of a medieval person. Indeed, a medieval person, like a child, willingly believed in any, sometimes utter miracles, lived in constant expectation of God's punishment or the coming of the Antichrist, and, I must say, indeed, he was not at all like us!
Imagine what would happen if a motorcyclist rode through medieval London on a rumbling, spewing puff of “devilish” smoke “iron horse”! His consciousness would hardly have withstood such a test!.. Agree, today we are much more ready for the appearance of aliens on Earth than a medieval city dweller for a meeting with an ordinary motorcyclist. We are even glad to meet the unknown! But in order for us to become so enlightened and calm, humanity had to go through the “childish” fears and superstitions of the Middle Ages….
So what is the Middle Ages?
The Middle Ages is the history of Europe, which lasted more than a thousand years. The story is cruel, merciless - and at the same time permeated with a passionate search for the Ideal. The Middle Ages is a struggle between Christianity and paganism and, at the same time, a split in the Christian church itself. The Middle Ages is a plague, wars, crusades and fires of the Inquisition.
The Middle Ages is the time of knights and magnanimous robbers, blasphemous monks and holy martyrs. The Middle Ages are gallows in the central squares of cities and resilient schoolchildren. The Middle Ages is a mystical carnival in which the Face of Death dances in an embrace with the invincible Human Spirit to the jester's pipe...
In a word, the Middle Ages is a huge world!
It is known that the Medieval West was born on the ruins of the Roman Empire. It is known that the Roman Empire was destroyed by the barbarians. But how did it happen that some barbarians were able to destroy a civilization that for a thousand years was the center of the whole world? It is unlikely that there is a simple answer to this question, because the fall of Rome had not one, but many reasons, and it happened ...
We will not describe these murders in detail, we will only say that thirty-seven people were proclaimed emperors in thirty-five years! That is, on average, each Caesar reigned for less than a year. The bloody leapfrog of guards coups stretched for almost a hundred years! In a word, anarchy reigned in the army, chaos reigned in the empire, because, buying power for money, the Caesars, like ...
“The traces of the departing gods were visible on the forum,” the unknown author remarked with nostalgic sadness. Of course, this is just a beautiful poetic metaphor, but it captures with amazing clarity the process of gradual decrepitude and dying of paganism. The ancient Romans were pagans. They once borrowed their gods, along with culture, from the Greeks, only they called them differently. Greek Zeus became...
One of the brightest personalities of the end of the II century. - early 3rd century - the first Byzantine emperor Constantine the Great (306-337). True, under him, Byzantium was still called the Eastern Roman Empire, but this does not change the essence - it was he who founded a new powerful state, which for the next millennium was assigned a special role in the history of medieval Europe. Konstantin was the son of...
The key word is "average". The average life expectancy was significantly reduced due to the high mortality of children. Poor hygiene, underdeveloped medicine and widespread infections contributed to the fact that about 40% of children died under the age of five. But if a child lived to 20, then nothing prevented him from living another 40 years. Only the most healthy and hardy babies survived, so the average life expectancy in that era did not mean at all that people died when they reached 35 years old.
Of course, only a few survived to a ripe old age. People 70-80 years old were quite rare and were the exception rather than the rule.
Studies conducted by historians and demographers have shown the characteristics of the life expectancy of the population of medieval Europe. They are distinguished from modern indicators, in particular, by the glaring small number of women compared to men, as well as their extremely high mortality at a young age. Despite the fact that the majority of men (especially from knightly families) took part in military affairs at a young age, the ratio of men and women between the ages of 14 and 40 was quite critical. There were 130 men for every 100 women. Thus, if in the Middle Ages someone lived to old age, then it was definitely not women.
The shift in the demographic balance between the male and female shares of the population, characteristic of the Middle Ages, was due to many reasons. Chief among them is the plight of women in society. Especially women from the lower classes who worked in the agricultural sector. Women only in especially exceptional cases had indulgences in field work. Very early marriages were also important. Girls were given in marriage from the age of 12-14, after which a period of constant childbearing began. Weather children are the most common phenomenon for the Middle Ages. And since, as already mentioned, medicine left much to be desired, childbirth was often complicated by various infections and diseases. In fact, the life of a woman was many times harder than the life of a man, even taking into account the fact that women did not fight.
Despite the fact that women constantly gave birth, population growth remained negligible. A rare family had more than five members. Even during the period of the demographic rise - in the 13th century - it was, according to scientists, only 36% with a birth rate of 42%.
The average life expectancy of a woman in the Middle Ages did not exceed 32 years, and for a man it was the norm to live from 40 to 50 years. Of course, the figures differ depending on the specific country and century of study, but in general, these data are valid for the entire period of the Middle Ages.
Scientists call the Middle Ages the period between the history of the ancient world and the history of modern times in Europe.
They began to be called Middle in the XIV-XVI centuries, that is, in the era of humanism. Thus the humanists, from Petrarch to Flavio Biondo, separated themselves from the previous time.
Philosophers and scientists of that time wanted to separate themselves from the previous generation, as well as the Middle Ages themselves from the already named Antiquity, the echoes of which fed the sharpest minds of the Renaissance.
There are many different divisions. In textbooks dating back to the Soviet tradition, the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 is considered the beginning of the Middle Ages. This period ends with the so-called English bourgeois revolution in the second half of the 17th century. But in the same textbooks it is stated that the 16th and 17th centuries are the early New Age, which turns out to be, as it were, included in. There is some confusion.
Those who study law will have their arguments in terms of law. The student of scholasticism and philosophy will divide the periods of the Middle Ages in his own way.
But, there is even a division of this historical period according to a special geographical feature.
For Byzantinists, the key date will be the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Those who study the economy and social relations are often inclined to put almost an equal sign between the Middle Ages and feudalism - one of the medieval socio-economic structures. Students of mentality find traces of the Middle Ages in the layers of scholarly and popular consciousness up to the 18th century and even today. And then the Middle Ages can drag on indefinitely.
Many scholars agree that the Middle Ages must be divided into early and late: earlier the Middle Ages - from the fifth to the tenth centuries, later - from the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries. In addition, there is another principle of division - into the early, High and late Middle Ages.
The High Middle Ages are called the period from 1000 to the beginning of the fourteenth century, this is the period from about 1000 to the beginning of the 14th century, that is, from Otto III to Dante. The XIV-XV centuries, according to the figurative expression of the historian Johan Huizinga, is the "autumn of the Middle Ages", or the late Middle Ages. If we continue the same game of metaphors, we get "spring", "summer" and "autumn". The Middle Ages did not have winter.
