Middle Ages
Middle Ages
Centuries between ancient and modern times, according to some from the downfall of the Roman Empire to the Renaissance, from the 5th to the 15th century, others preferring to call the first six centuries of this period Dark Ages, and limiting the Middle Ages proper to four. The Dark Ages then would be the time of the barbarian, Islam, and northern invasions, causing eventually the downfall of the Roman Empire and the destruction of the ancient civilizations, the time of the growing ascendancy of Christianity occasionally favored by those in power, though more often hindered and even persecuted because of the ambition of worldly rulers to subordinate religion to the state and of their alliance with heretical Christians, such as the Arians in the West, the Iconoclasts in the East; the time also of the conversion, by Apostolic men like Patrick, Martin, Augustine, Boniface, of the barbarous invaders and other more peaceful nations, bringing them gradually under the influence of Christian civilization. If we consider the centuries it took to do this as closing just prior to the year one thousand, and then study the achievement of the four following centuries, we find that it consisted in establishing law, developing cities, promoting culture, as W. E. Brown proves in “The Achievement of the Middle Ages”; or, as shown in “The Legacy of the Middle Ages,” in preparing for the modern age a legacy of Christian life, art in all its forms, particularly architecture, literature, philosophy, education, law growing out of sacred customs, civil and Roman law also, the dignification of womanhood, economit activity and political thought, organization of government, peace, union of Christendom. To these precious heirlooms Godefroid Kurth would add the independence of the papacy, the celibacy of the clergy, the gradual extirpation of slavery, liberty generally and the rights of the individual citizen, the foundation of charitable institutions, of monasticism; in a word, all the most saving elements of civilization. Indeed, he styles his work on the MiddIe Ages: “The Origin of Modern Civilization.”
Among the founders of these Ages, as Rand ranks them in his work on this subject, are men like,
Ambrose
Augustine of Hippo
Boethius
Cassiodorus
Gregory I , Saint
Jerome , Saint
Lactantius
Prudentius
There were great popes,
Adrian I
Agapetus I , Saint
Gregory I , Saint
Gregory II , Saint
Gregory V
Hormisdas , Saint
John VIII
John X
John XIII
Leo III , Saint
Leo IV , Saint
Sylvester II
Symmachus
Among the kings were
Alfred the Great
Charlemagne
Charles Martel
Edmund the Martyr , Saint
Edward the Confessor , Saint
Edward the Martyr , Saint
Heraclius
Justinian I
the Ottos
William the Conqueror
Among the churchmen were,
Alcuin , Saint
Aldhelm , Saint
Anschar , Saint
Becket
Bede
Columba , Saint
Gregory of Tours , Saint
Hugh of Cluny
Isidore of Seville , Saint
John Scotus
Peter Damian
Roger Bacon
Institutions owing to this period are feudalism in transition, guilds, markets, military orders, chivalry, Crusades, pilgrimages, bridge-and road-building brotherhoods, troubadours, wandering scholars, universities, inquisition, and the perfection of the liturgy. Fortunately the study of these ages is more and more occupying scholarly historians in England and America , and they are discovering that just because they were the ages of faith, their history had been perverted to throw discredit on the Catholic Church . Men like Charles Homer Haskins in his “Renaissance of the Twelfth Century” and “Studies in the History of Mediaeval Science” are doing eminent service in this respect and the medieval society has organized a body of scholars who are bent on uncovering the truth about ages from which moderns have so much to learn.
Fuente: New Catholic Dictionary
Middle Ages
A term commonly used to designate that period of European history between the Fall of the Roman Empire and about the middle of the fifteenth century. The precise dates of the beginning, culmination, and end of the Middle Ages are more or less arbitrarily assumed according to the point of view adopted. The period is usually considered to open with those migrations of the German Tribes which led to the destruction of the Roman Empire in the West in 375, when the Huns fell upon the Gothic tribes north of the Black Sea and forced the Visigoths over the boundaries of the Roman Empire on the lower Danube. A later date, however, is sometimes assumed, viz., when Odoacer deposed Romulus Augustulus, the last of the Roman Emperors of the West, in 476. Others, again, begin the Middle Ages with the opening years of the seventh century and the death (609) of Venantius Fortunatus, the last representative of classic Latin literature. The close of the Middle Ages is also variously fixed; some make it coincide with the rise of Humanism and the Renaissance in Italy, in the fourteenth century; with the Fall of Constantinople, in 1453; with the discovery of America by Columbus in 1492; or, again, with the great religious schism of the sixteenth century. Any hard and fast line drawn to designate either the beginning or close of the period in question is arbitrary. The widest limits given, viz., the irruption of the Visigoths over the boundaries of the Roman Empire, for the beginning, and the middle of the sixteenth century, for the close, may be taken as inclusively sufficient, and embrace, beyond dispute, every movement or phase of history that can be claimed as properly belonging to the Middle Ages.
A great part of THE CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA is devoted to the movements, ecclesiastical, intellectual, social, political, and artistic, which made up European history during this period so fertile in human activities, whether sacred or profane. Under the titles covering the political divisions of Europe, past and present (e.g., ALSACE-LORRAINE; ANHALT; AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN MONARCHY; BADEN; BAVARIA; BELGIUM; BOHEMIA; BREMEN; BULGARIA; CASTILE AND ARAGON; CROATIA; DENMARK; ENGLAND; FRANCE; GERMANY; GREECE; HAMBURG; HESSE; HUNGARY; IRELAND; ITALY; KARINTHIA; KRAIN; LEÓN; LIPPE; LÜBECK; LUXEMBURG; MECKLENBURG; MONACO; MONTENEGRO; NAVARRE; NETHERLANDS; NORWAY; OLDENBURG; PAPAL STATES; PORTUGAL; REUSS; ROME; RUMANIA; RUSSIA; SAXE-ALTENBURG; SAXE-COBURG AND GOTHA; SAXE-MEININGEN; SAXE-WEIMAR; SAXONY; SCHAUMBURG-LIPPE; SCHWARZBURG; SCOTLAND; SERVIA; SICILY; SPAIN; SWEDEN; SWITZERLAND; VENICE; WALDECK; WALES; WÜRTEMBERG), are given in detail their respective political and religious developments throughout the Middle Ages. Under articles of a wider scope (e.g. EUROPE; CHRISTENDOM; POPE) is found a more general and synthetic treatment. Particular aspects and movements peculiar to different portions of it are found in such articles as CHIVALRY; CRUSADES; ECCLESIASTICAL ART; FEUDALISM; GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE; INQUISITION; CONFLICT OF INVESTITURES; LAND-TENURE IN THE CHRISTIAN ERA; MONASTICISM; ECCLESIASTICAL MUSIC; PAINTING; PILGRIMAGES; SCULPTURE; in the articles upon the great religious orders, congregations, and institutions which then came into existence; in the biographies of the popes, rulers, historical personages, scholars, philosophers, poets, and scientists whose lives fall within this period; in the accounts of the universities, cities, and dioceses which were founded and developed throughout Europe from the fall of the Roman Empire to the time of the Reformation, and in innumerable minor articles throughout the work.
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Transcribed by Steve Fanning
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XCopyright © 1911 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, October 1, 1911. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York
Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia
Middle Ages
The barbarism of this period may be said to have begun about A.D. 510, when the barbarians had made an eruption into the West very prejudicial to the interests of literature. Learning was preserved in the bishops’ schools and monasteries: the works of ancient authors were kept in the libraries of the monasteries, but the libraries of monks and churchmen were composed chiefly of ecclesiastical and ascetic works. Greek literature was generally neglected, Latin but poorly cultivated; rhetoric was turned into bombast, the liberal arts comprised within a few rules, and the study of philosophy abandoned and decried. This barbarism almost extinguished the light (hence the name Dark Ages) and life of Christianity, as the influence of the Church in the course of its previous corruption had already suppressed ancient literature. See Riddle’s Eccl. Chronicles; Eden, Theol. Dict.; Farrar, Eccles. Dict.