Middle Ages

In one schematic rappresentazione of History of Europe that it previews three ere, classic, medioevale and modern, Middle Ages (coined term gives Blond Flavio) it is the intermediate period, whose beginning comes placed, for entire Europe, in 476, that is in the year that it marks, according to one fixed convention from the historians, the end ofRoman Empire of the West. Various, the conclusion of this was comes placed in every country in various dates, that they coincide with the birth of the respective ones national monarchies and the period rinascimentale. Some dates commonly used are 1453, with the fall of Costantinopoli in hand to i Turks or the end of War of the Cent' Years between England and France, 1492, with the end of period Muslim in Spain and the discovery of Americas from part of Cristoforo Columbus, and 1517, with Reform protestant.

A subdivision commonly used of the Middle Ages is between:

• "High Middle Ages"(from someone said of the" centuries oxen"), that it goes from V to X century and it is characterized from disagiate economic conditions and continuous invasions from part of Slavs, Arabs, Vichinghi and Magiari;
• "Low Middle Ages", an intermediate period, that it sees the development of shapes of government based on lordships and vassallaggio, with the construction of castles and the rebirth of the life in the cities; then an crescent to be able real and the rebirth of interests trades them, species after plague of XIV century.

From the social point of view, after the collapse ofRoman empire of the West, first phase with the fight between the populations of the north and the European east for the reconstruction to local level of the administrative organization was assisted to one, military, legal economic and; this phase was then continuation, towards the end of the Middle Ages, from one new phase of centralization of the powers to national level. Crucial in this organization it was the structure feudale that, if on one side it allowed to a sure stability thanks to the continental organization of the system, it was not never sufficiently fort to remove completely autonomy to the local truths, that therefore they could manage the transition between the uniformità ofRoman empire and the birth of national states.

A truth in a position to giving uniformità to the European panorama was the common religious root based on Christianity, inherited from the last roman and continued period until IX the century with the separation of Orthodox church from Catholic church in 1054. This common root carried from a side to a commistione between being able temporal and religious that it had in Reform protestant the expression of acute dissent, but from the other it allowed to maintain a cultural identity to continental level that allowed of the cohesion moments, like in the case of crusades.

Philosophically, the Evo Mean characterizes for one great confidence in the human reason, that it is expressed in the current of scholastic, whose greater exponent is Tommaso d' Aquino. The crisis of this philosophical current, with authors like Duns Scoto and above all Guglielmo di Occam, marked from a landslide of confidence in the reason and from consequent an increasing fideismo, it carried to the end of the medioevale thought and to the birth of the modern thought.

Correlated voices

• The medieval West from the 500 to 1500
• History, Ancient History, Modern History
• Sacred Roman empire
• Directory of the Papi