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European Ages

The European Middle Ages is commonly understood as a northward expansion of classical culture, primarily through the means of Christianity. At best, the Middle Ages are regarded as an innovative and energetic recreation of classical culture-a kind of preface to modernity. At worst, the period is regarded as a cultural setback from the high point of classical culture in Greece and Rome, an often poor and superstitious descendant of that culture. In the least friendly assessments of the European Middle Ages, the period is a kind of holding pattern, a temporary bathroom break on the way to the revival of classical culture in the fourteenth century.'

'''In reality, however, this picture of the European Middle Ages is founded on several, deeply held fallacies. The first and foremost is that the European Middle Ages is a single thing that can clearly be identified by the label. However, when you try to get people to define the start or end of the Middle Ages, there's some problems. Did the Middle Ages start at the final sack of Rome? What about the continuation of the Roman Empire in Constantinople until the conquest of that city by the Ottomans in 1453? Were the Byzantine's not a part of European culture? When does the "Renaissance" start? Do people wake up one day and say, whew!, today the Middle Ages ended? What's the date? 1400? 1350? 1200? 1100?'

'''Not only is the historical category of the Middle Ages a somewhat shaky fiction, the most enduring fallacy about the Middle Ages, and European history in general until the close of the Middle Ages, is that Europeans throughout this period and before are a single culture which we can safely call "European culture." Of all the fallacies about the Middle Ages and before, this is the hardest one to shake. For there really is no such thing as European culture, at least no such thing as a single entity, until the close of the Middle Ages. European history until the 1300's or 1400's is largely characterized by two main...