The Super Summary of World History (19 page)

Knowing how to administer urban environments was also lost, resulting in many urban centers heading for nonexistence due to terrible living conditions. Civilization was collapsing. Cities of the Dark Ages were profoundly different from the cities of Rome. With no efficient removal of trash and human waste, disease was common. The inability to bring fresh water and food into large urban areas, such as the city of Rome, resulted in the collapse of urban populations as people moved to the rural areas to find food and work. As cities disintegrated, trade fell apart completely changing everything. Until the return of cities Europe was stuck fast in the doldrums. Some good news seemed to appear about AD 800, when a warming period began in Europe, and more cereal crops sprouted in northern climates; thus, for a while the population expanded. Even in the best of times, the peasant lived on the edge of starvation, but abundant food crops at least allowed healthier living. Then the climate changed bringing disaster. The cold of the
Little
Ice
Age
set in about 1300, dramatically cutting food production, and leading to widespread famines throughout Europe.

The shattering of the Western Roman Empire was forever. Today the effects are obvious. Germans cannot speak to Frenchmen, Italians, Englishmen, etc., without an interpreter. You get the picture. The tribes overrunning Europe could not speak to one another, and eventually nations developed that could not speak to one another. The money, cultures, traditions, and languages became different all over Western Europe.
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All this was a direct result of the cataclysmic fall of Rome in the West.

Events
of
the
Dark
Ages

Worse yet, between the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the year 1453 (or so), the following events fell upon Europe in addition to the problems of dissolution and economic collapse:

o
The
Black
Death
: Numerous plagues swept over Europe starting first in about 452 and ending with the last plague (named the Black Death) which began in about
1346.
The Black Death ended around 1350. These plagues killed about 25,000,000 to 100,000,000 people by some estimates. (Figures from this time are very rough). Some experts think about fifty percent of the population died during the last great plague; others put the death toll at one third. The huge variations in death figures stems from the lack of reliable statistics from the era. What we do know is enormous numbers of people died.

o
The
Little
Ice
Age
: The Little Ice Age was a 500 year period of cold and rainy weather that descended on the world about 1300 AD and stayed until 1800. Prior to the Little Ice Age there was a 400 year medieval warming period in Europe starting about AD 800 and lasting until about AD 1200, during which crops fared much better because of healthier growing conditions. Grapes were being grown as far north as England, and Viking explorers settled Greenland. A climatic reversal set in by
1300
, and in 10 years the average temperatures dropped by 4 degrees. This cold hit Europe especially hard, and was responsible for numerous crop failures, famines, and hardships killing millions because of the extreme cold. In 1315, unusually heavy rains began, lasting until 1320, destroying the cereal crops that were the foundation of medieval society. The ice age drove the Vikings out of Greenland as well as putting end to grape growing in England. Famine caused 1.5 million deaths by 1320. The worst cold hit between 1605 and 1680 when the temperature averaged 7 degrees cooler.

o
The
Muslim
Invasion
of
Spain:
Beginning about AD
711
when the Muslims entered Iberia and involving constant warfare until 1492 when the Muslim expulsion was complete.

o
The
Mongol
Invasions
: The Mongols devastated Hungary and Poland in
1241
, and the threat went on for decades as the Mongols kept returning. The Mongols slaughtered people by the hundreds of thousands as they turned cities into empty villages, murdering, raping, and plundering their way across the globe.

o
The
Viking
(Northman)
Raids
: Starting about
793
and continuing for centuries, the raids grew in size and consequence until the raiders became settlers. The result was regular warfare between the Vikings and the peoples already on the land. The Viking raids were so fierce they kicked Europe back into the Dark Ages for many extra decades.

o
The
Crusades
: From
1095
to
1291
, Christian Europe waged a series of campaigns to win back the Holy Land from the forces of Islam. Islam conquered Jerusalem in 638, going on to conquer vast areas in North Africa and Spain annihilating Christians throughout their areas of conquest. Eventually, the Eastern Roman Empire fell to Islam after Constantinople fell in 1453. These were religious wars of astonishing brutality. After these wars ended, Europe was unable to regain Christian territory except for Spain, but it gained knowledge of the ancient Roman and Greek world that had been lost for centuries. This knowledge was essential for the future growth of Europe as it led to the European Renaissance.

o
The
Hundred
Years
War
: Commencing in
1346
and lasting through 1453, France and England engaged in endless battles for control of France (the war was in France) and destroyed a large part of the French countryside and its economy. Peasants suffered needlessly as armies trampled and burned crops, destroyed villages, and battered the peasant’s meager existence decade after decade.

o
The
Fall
of
Byzantium
and
the
Muslim
Invasions
of
Europe
: After the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire in
1453
(the Byzantine Empire with its capitol at Constantinople), the Muslims pushed into Eastern Europe threatening to overrun Vienna. These were religious offensives that resulted in massive casualty tolls. The Fall of Byzantium is often used as a milestone to mark the end of the Dark Ages.

o
The
Growth
of
Cities
finally pulled Europe out of the morass of feudalism, disunity, economic isolation, and local tyranny. After the Black Plague finished killing off nearly everyone in 1350, the population began to recover, the discovery of better farming techniques made farming more productive, new foods arrived from the New World to supplement the Old World’s crops, and competence began to return to city administration. As the trade routes opened up, the cities began to increase in size and power. It was this slow but steady improvement in urban development, coupled with the ideas of the Renaissance, which was pulling Europe out of its perpetual darkness.

This is NOT an exhaustive list, but displays how especially rough life was for common people in this era. Life during this period was awful due to appalling weather after 1300, numerous crop failures, constant hunger, warring armies trampling fields of crops, plagues and sickness everywhere, and foreign raiders killing everyone in sight (Muslims, Vikings, Mongols and others). In the late medieval period groups of clerics traveled around accusing people of being witches or warlocks,
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killing them if they failed certain ridiculous tests (like being boiled alive). Life was austere, to put it gently. This justifies the Dark Ages label for this era because the common person suffered a terrible hammering for centuries.

Of course, not everything was bad. The age saw important agricultural advances such as the iron-tipped plow, three field crop rotation, and other “delights” making farming much more productive; however, remember who would get almost all the additional crop production—everyone but the peasant growing the crops.

The
Catholic
Church

Very few institutions can directly trace its dress, organization, rituals, and a lot more to the age of knights, castles, and courtly ladies. Nevertheless, when men were still hacking away with swords while puffing around in armor, the Catholic Church was fully formed and a key part of the feudal world. It is still with us in 2010, and still running very much as it ran in AD 1,000. Some details changed, but when attending Catholic Church services one is experiencing a tiny slice of medieval culture firsthand.

The Catholic (meaning universal) Church, centered at Rome, developed as the Western Roman Empire fell becoming a mainstay of life in the Dark Ages. The
Roman
Catholic
Church
grew from the ashes of the Western Roman Empire, and its boundaries approximated those of the Western Empire. The Church held together the various cultures growing in Europe, it was the repository of learning, and it was uniform in its language (Latin—the same as the Roman Empire). Often its monasteries were centers of commerce. The Church alone set forth a moral code embodied in Christian teachings. The Catholic Church tried to limit the impact of the constant fighting between the various warlords in Europe. The knights serving the lords were often hired thugs who galloped about oppressing the peasants and clergy as well as attacking other knights. Many of these heavily armed men were recruited to battle the Vikings; but as the raids subsided, the warlords went back to local skirmishing. The Catholic Church tried to establish the “Truce of God,” where the knights vowed to avoid killing the innocent (peasants, clergy, and townsfolk for example), and the “Peace of God”, where knights promised to refrain from waging war during certain times of the year (Christmas for example). How well this worked is unknown, but at least the Catholic Church was trying to bring a moral order into people’s lives.

The Church built immense cathedrals, monuments dedicated to the worship of the Christian God. These shrines of the High Middle Ages (1400 to 1500) became wondrous examples of architecture’s response to the age. Early cathedrals were of the
Romanesque
style, with thick walls and smallish windows; however, they remain imposing monuments. Later cathedrals, termed
Gothic
, were taller with very detailed carved stone interior decorations, and flying buttresses that allowed thinner walls with stain glass windows. At the very top of these impressive structures, in places unseen, are stone gargoyles fabricated with great skill, even though cloistered. The mindset was one of creating for God, who could see all, and not man, who would probably never see them.

The Christian Church split in half in AD 1054, after the Western and Eastern churches had enough of one another and formally diverged onto their own paths. The Eastern Church (Orthodox—or true) maintained control in Byzantium, Eastern Europe, Russia, the Ukraine, and Greece. The Western Church (Roman Catholicism—or universal) maintained sway in Western Europe. The split centered on cultural and political considerations, although doctrine was different. The sack of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade in 1204 was key to widening the split. The Eastern Church saw Latin Christians destroy their beautiful city and slaughter its inhabitants. Meanwhile, the West thought the East was recalcitrant in not recognizing the primacy of Rome. The failure of the West to help defend Constantinople in 1453 during the Ottoman Turk attacks made the split even worse. Just to make things even on all sides, the leaders of each church, the pope in the west and the Patriarch of Constantinople in the east, excommunicated the followers of the other. Thus, at least one-half of Christianity will burn in hell—according to the other half. Interestingly, a similar thing happened in Islam. After the death of Mohammad, their spiritual founder, Islam split in two (Shea and Sunni sects), each side saying the other was bound for hell. (It seems many people are hell bound, according to people claiming to be heaven bound . . .)

Feudalism

A foundation point for the age was the institution of feudalism, a system of governance that included economic relationships as well as social and legal undertakings. The local king (normally the top warlord in the area) owned all the land, but the warlord needed people to farm the land. Therefore, the warlord allowed the serfs to farm his land for a portion of the crops. In times of war, the serfs could form part of the army protecting their warlord’s land. As time progressed, some of the warlords gave their land to the Catholic Church, thereby establishing the Catholic Church as a major power in economic and spiritual realms.

How all this came about is guesswork, because when the Western Roman Empire fell learning was lost and little was written down. What we can discern are the results, warlords—often called kings—ruling over small areas coming under their protection. (Sounds like modern Los Angeles gangs) Warlords built large castles for protection (walls again) and for internecine warfare, each trying to better his lot by battering his neighbors.

The
Guild
System

The important institution of
guilds
grew up during the Dark Ages. Under the guild system, a craftsman applied to join a group of skilled workers doing his type of work (building with bricks or stone for example), and if accepted, he would agree to keep the methods taught confidential and otherwise obey the guild’s rules. Guilds were social as well as professional organizations. The guild would test and assign certain categories of work skill to their members and set payment guidelines for that level of skill. The category of apprentice might be the entry-level skill group, then journeyman, and finally master. The guilds would impart knowledge regarding the craft to their members and encourage study to advance the group’s knowledge; however, this knowledge was secret. The guilds were powerful and important groups. It is said that in Paris even the prostitutes had a guild.