How do we go from late antiquity to middle ages ?

[Barnabas]

the years 400 500 600 with Saint Augustine, Pope Gregory the great, Saint Jerome, Saint Isidore of Seville, Gregory of Tours etc still look (or feel) very roman to me (at least roman-christian like in the orient).

But you go to the year 800 with Charlemagne and it is definitely the middle ages.


Does the islamic expansion on north africa and spain explain largely this? Or am I completely wrong and those are just my sensations/feelings?

[Imran Siddiqui]

Pope Gregory is considered to be a middle age Pope. In fact, he's the one who brought the Cluniac reforms to the church after somewhat of a perceived fall after the Western empire collapsed, and the church was far more under the sway of kings than the Pope.

[Will9]

The Dark Ages and the Middle Ages are different time periods. The Viking invasion Period is deffinatly part of the Dark Ages. Charlemagne lived in a a gap in the Dark Ages. The chaos of the Fall of Rome had ended and the chaos of the Vikings hadn't started.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Will9
The Dark Ages and the Middle Ages are different time periods. The Viking invasion Period is deffinatly part of the Dark Ages. Charlemagne lived in a a gap in the Dark Ages. The chaos of the Fall of Rome had ended and the chaos of the Vikings hadn't started.

Not really... there is an overlap. The Dark Ages are the early middle ages, prior to Gregory's (I prefer Hildebrand myself ) Papal Revolution.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Catastrophe theory bridges the gap. After 535AD, the poo hits the fan absolutely everywhere, and it's believed to be all due to one volcanic eruption causing massive climatic upheaval.

[lord of the mark]

Re: How do we go from late antiquity to middle ages ?

Originally posted by Barnabas
the years 400 500 600 with Saint Augustine, Pope Gregory the great, Saint Jerome, Saint Isidore of Seville, Gregory of Tours etc still look (or feel) very roman to me (at least roman-christian like in the orient).

But you go to the year 800 with Charlemagne and it is definitely the middle ages.


Does the islamic expansion on north africa and spain explain largely this? Or am I completely wrong and those are just my sensations/feelings?

Yours and Henri Pirennes ("Mohammed and Charlemagne")

But I suspect we may be a little biased by oure sources, who are writing in Latin, and are more part of the gallo (or hispano) Roman population, and the literate part thats able to maintain more of tie to the old ways. And of course churchmen are still living in an institution modeled after the empire in many ways. I suspect at ground level, it would feel somewhat more medieval earlier. In some ways even before the fall of the western empire.

And of course in the med, esp in Italy (but also Iberia and southern France) things are NEVER entirely de-romanized.

Im reading Hugh Thomas on the Slave Trade. Im also quite cognizant (MB having quoted it like a hundred times) that slavery was held to have no place in English common law. So its interesting to read in Thomas how chattel slavery declined in northern europe as the area became more completely feudalized, and serfdom more established. In the Med, where roman law was more important, where cities and trade survived to a degree, slavery survived. (of course the muslim-christian wars which added to the supply of slaves played a role as well)


All of which raises questions of what we mean by "medieval"? A state that compensates officials with land instead of money? Or that goes on to make the office AND land hereditary, before the state fades away? Or is it manorialism? Or deurbanization? Or the germanic cult of the warrior?

[Wernazuma III]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Pope Gregory is considered to be a middle age Pope. In fact, he's the one who brought the Cluniac reforms to the church after somewhat of a perceived fall after the Western empire collapsed, and the church was far more under the sway of kings than the Pope.

You're confusing Gregor VII with Gregor the Great

[molly bloom]

Re: How do we go from late antiquity to middle ages ?

Originally posted by Barnabas

But you go to the year 800 with Charlemagne and it is definitely the middle ages.

In what sense ?

He's still battling very pagan Saxons who are worshipping at the Irminsul and giving praise to Wotan and fending off the pagan semi-nomadic Avars camped on the Magyar plains.

Also, none of his cities can compare with Byzantine or Islamic cities, and wars are still continuing against the Lombards in northern Italy and Lombard allies in southern Italy.


All a long way from the High Gothic culture of the Middle Ages or the urbane world of Boccaccio.

[Mercator]

Huh? That's practically the Renaissance... Well, late Middle Ages.

Or do you see the Middle Ages as an era separate from and following the Dark Ages, rather than a broader term encompassing it?

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Mercator
Huh? That's practically the Renaissance... Well, late Middle Ages.

Or do you see the Middle Ages as an era separate from and following the Dark Ages, rather than a broader term encompassing it?

I think they're all rather vague terms, dependant upon the person using them, or the argument being proposed.


Clearly there were carry-overs from the Graeco-Roman world in the Frankish empire of Charlemagne, and in the Cordoban Caliphate and Byzantium and the Abbasid Empire and Anglo-Saxon England.

Not just attacks from marauding migrating barbarians, but things like canon law, like the administrative system in Gaul/France, like the learning of the Venerable Bede.