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The Middle Ages refers to the period in Europe dating from the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West, around the 5th century, to about the 15th century, or the beginning of the Renaissance. The term seems to have been first used during the Renaissance and implied a suspension of time and, especially, a suspension of progress between the glory of classical Greece and Rome and the rebirth of that glory in the beginnings of the Renaissance. It refers to a period of cultural stagnation (once referred to as the Dark Ages, which now is only used by historians to refer to the Early Middle Ages, if used at all). Modern scholarship generally divides the Middle Ages into three stages--the Early, High, and Late Middle Ages-- and is much more concerned with the diversity and unique cultural characteristics within each period than in comparing it critically with the ancient era that preceded it.
The Early Middle Ages (about AD 500 - 1000) . The traditional event marking the beginning of the Early Middle Ages is the "fall" of the Roman Empire in the West in 476. Modern historians interpret the beginning the of the Early Middle Ages as a culmination not of one dramatic event (476) but of several long-term trends, including the severe economic decline of the later Roman Empire and the invasions and settlement of Germanic peoples within the borders of the Western Empire. For the next 500 years, Western Europe remained essentially a primitive culture, but the complex, elaborate culture of the Roman Empire was never entirely lost or forgotten.
In addition to cultural decline, another significant characteristic of the Early Middle Ages, was the decline of a centralized government after the collapse of the Empire. Large kingdoms were virtually nonexistent, and there was nothing like the unified, centralized Empire of Rome. One exception to this rule was the remarkable kingdom put together by the Franks, the Germanic peoples that settled in the area of Roman Gaul (France). This kingdom reached its height around 800 under the powerful early medieval king, the remarkable Charles the Great, or Charlemagne. Crowned "Emperor of the Romans" by the Pope on Christmas Day, 800, he ruled over a kingdom that included most of modern-day France, Germany, and northern Italy. His kingdom did not long survive his death, however. The forces of fragmentation, so powerful in the Early Middle Ages took their toll. Within two generations after Charlemagne's death, his grandsons divided his empire into three smaller kingdoms under an agreement ratified in 843 called the Treaty of Verdun. And new invasions brought new stresses.
In the last two centuries of the early Middle Ages, new migrations and invasions—the Vikings from the north, the Magyars from the Asia, and Islamic invaders (the "Moors") from North Africa —weakened the forces of European unity and expansion. The resulting violence and dislocation caused lands to be withdrawn from cultivation, population to decline, and kings and their kingdoms to decline. Political and economic development was local in nature not broad-based. Long-distance trade had ceased almost entirely. In a chaotic world, people became bound to the land and dependent on landed nobles or lords for their living, for their protection, and for the crude administration of justice. It was a system that bound people together in small units: your world was the world of the lord's manor or estate. Such a system transformed Western Europe into a society of tens of thousands of tiny feudal "kingdoms" ruled by powerful lords at the end of the Early Middle Ages.
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