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This was all very confusing for the common person. The mainstays of their world, the Catholic Church and the feudal system, were coming undone. The church bowed before the Black Death; there were popes aplenty; and the wars were destroying crops, towns, and livelihoods. The local feudal lords argued with the kings who wanted ever-increasing amounts of money and loyalty. The king and his army increased in power. Local towns were growing into cities with a lot of economic power, and they rejected feudal lords telling them what to do. They did not need the lords any longer. The townspeople were amassing power and wealth all their own, and it was enough to match any feudal lord. In Italy, the trading towns of Venice and Florence grew so powerful they were fielding large armies and navies.

Continuous wars diminished the feudal lords’ powers while destroying the feudal system. If a government cannot provide protection it is worthless, and the feudal lords could no longer raise the money and manpower to protect the people. As a result, the powerful new cities began to protect themselves, and rural folks began to turn to the king for protection. The nation state was being born in Europe.

Change was in the air by the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (the years 1301 to 1500), and today we call this sweeping period of change the Renaissance. It started in Italy, but quickly spread to Europe and then the world.

Let Us Learn

Can the Dark Ages tell us anything of worth for our daily lives? Recall that hard times do come into the best of worlds, and people can survive them. Governments come and go, but the foundations of life come from the individual’s struggle to carry on and overcome all obstacles. Understand how religion can hold people together in bad times. Remember that progress, no matter how slow, is still progress. One small step forward (the iron plow) leads to others. So keep going forward, no matter how slowly, and the Renaissance will arrive. The Dark Ages also teach us the importance of unity. Disunity made the age so much worse. Stay unified in your home, workplace, church, school, or whatever. Say and do things that add to unity, not disunity.

Books and Resources

Great Rivals in History, When Politics Gets Personal, Cummins, J., 2008, Metro Books. P 50 starts William the Conquer and Harold Godwineson—the conquest by the Normans of England.

The Middle Ages, Bishop, M., 2001, Mariner Books. Probably the most readable short history of the Middle Ages.

The New Penguin Atlas of Medieval History, Revised Ed, McEvedy, C., 1992, Penguin Books. I love Penguin Atlases. Of course, The Penguin Atlas of World History Volume 1, From Prehistory to the Eve of the French Revolution, Kinder & Hilgemann, 1978, Penguin Books, contains chapters on the Middle Ages, and EVERYTHING in this book is wonderful. Kinder & Hilgemann’s Atlas starts the Medieval period on page 111, “Early Middle Ages, the Slavs,” and ends on page 211, “Late Middle Ages/China (1264-1368, India (999-1526). Super small print, great coverage.

Lost to the West, The Forgotten Byzantine Empire that Rescued Western Civilization, Brownworth, Lars, 2009, Crown Publishers. Wonderful book on the Eastern Roman Empire at Constantinople. Easy to read and full of good stories.

Chapter 4

The Renaissance 1300 to 1500

As the Dark Ages were stumbling along their plague-ridden way, the Renaissance (means rebirth) finally put an end to them. After all the problems of the Dark Ages, light began to pour into the Western world. A flowering of human knowledge and inventiveness began in Italy in 1300 or so, and it never stopped. Historians like to end things; so for the purposes of history, the Renaissance ended about 1500. In reality, it did not end because the ideas and attitudes of the Renaissance never die in the Western world. The mind-set of the Dark Ages (Medieval mind-set—whatever) focused on the afterlife and the worship of God as the center of life. After the Renaissance, the mind-set looked to this life and what a person could accomplish here on earth as the center