None of this, however, straightforwardly characterises the period from 500 to 1500. Whereas the modern world is global, secular, meritocratic and tolerant, the Middle Ages are seen as isolated, deeply religious, hierarchical and intolerant. The Middle Ages are often defined by what the modern world is not – or, what we would like to believe the modern world is not. If we seek a global definition of the medieval, we cannot look to particular events rather, we must identify a distinctively medieval character. But most of these events took place in western Europe and do not work as chronological boundaries for the rest of the world. The conventional chronological markers used to define them are deeply problematic: a start date of about AD 500, with the ‘fall’ of the western Roman Empire, and an end date of roughly 1500, with the cultural developments of the Renaissance, the European ‘discovery’ of the Americas and the religious dynamism of the Reformation. The Middle Ages are a chimera, a fantasy, all but impossible to define or date, at least at a global level. Lucy Parker, postdoctoral researcher at Christ Church, Oxford ‘We cannot associate bigotry and credulousness with a vanished medieval past’ In this age of global history perhaps we need, therefore, to worry not about when the medieval period ended, but rather about whether it ever existed at all. Within Europe the division between medieval and early modern was unclear and, beyond Europe’s borders, markers such as ‘the Reformation’ and ‘the Renaissance’ meant nothing. Ultimately, periodisation is merely a device used by historians to structure their research and teaching. As Lord Blackadder memorably quipped to his servant: ‘To you, Baldrick, the Renaissance was just something that happened to other people, wasn’t it?’ But how much did the Renaissance really transform society? Bound by traditional social and economic structures, the lives of most of Europe’s inhabitants changed little. Renaissance monarchs introduced new styles of kingship and there was a remarkable flourishing of art, architecture and music. Humanist scholars certainly thought themselves to be living in a new age, set apart from the period of darkness that had followed the fall of Rome. The intellectual and cultural movement known as the Renaissance perhaps constituted another watershed. And it was not the newly formed Protestant churches but Catholic religious orders that shaped the other defining event of the age: European exploration and conquest. The deeply conservative Luther did not challenge the social or political status quo that was left to his unruly spiritual offspring, the radical reformers. Luther’s protest crystallised resentments that had been brewing for decades and there was much about his Reformation that was profoundly medieval. Moreover, the German Reformation came of age alongside the printing press. Luther’s protest against the practices of the Catholic Church led to the splintering of western Christendom, to more than a century of religious warfare and, via some very circuitous routes, to the rise of religious toleration. ‘Humanist scholars certainly thought themselves to be living in a new age’īridget Heal, Professor of Early Modern History at the University of St AndrewsĪs a historian of Reformation Germany, I’m duty bound to say that the medieval period ended on 31 October 1517, the day on which Martin Luther supposedly nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg. ‘The medieval persists’: stained glass depicting two minstrels c.1885, attributed to James Egan, a former employee of William Morris.
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