Most important facts about the middle ages?

Question: Most important facts about the middle ages!?
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One of the most notorious events of the middle ages is the bubonic plague, an epedimic starting in the 1300s known commonly as the black death!.
The end of the 8th century found the former western Roman empire an overwhelmingly rural and decentralized region that had lost its privileged position as the centre of a great power!. Between the 5th and 8th centuries, new peoples and powerful individuals filled the political void left by Roman centralized government!. Germanic tribes established regional hegemonies within the former boundaries of the Empire, creating divided, decentralized kingdoms like those of the Ostrogoths in Italy, the Visigoths in Hispania, the Franks and Burgundians in Gaul and western Germany, the Angles and the Saxons in Britain, and the Vandals in North Africa!. The social effects of the fracture of the Roman state were manifold!. Cities and merchants lost the economic benefits of safe conditions for trade and manufacture, and intellectual development suffered from the loss of a unified cultural and educational milieu of far-ranging connections!.

The breakdown of Roman society was dramatic!. As it became unsafe to travel or carry goods over any distance, there was a collapse in trade and manufacture for export!. The major industries that depended on long-distance trade, such as large-scale pottery manufacture, vanished almost overnight in places like Britain!.

The Muslim conquests of the 7th and 8th centuries, which conquered the Persian Empire, Roman Syria, Roman Egypt, Roman North Africa, Visigothic Spain and Portugal, and other parts of the Mediterranean, including Sicily and southern Italy, increased localisation by halting much of what remained of seaborne commerce!.[dubious – discuss] Thus, whereas sites like Tintagel in Cornwall (the extreme southwest of modern day England) had managed to obtain supplies of Mediterranean luxury goods well into the 6th century, this connection was now lost!.

The patchwork of petty rulers was incapable of supporting the depth of civic infrastructure required to maintain libraries, public baths, arenas and major educational institutions!. Any new building was on a far smaller scale than before!. Roman landholders beyond the confines of city walls were also vulnerable to extreme changes, and they could not simply pack up their land and move elsewhere!. Some were dispossessed and fled to Byzantine regions, others quickly pledged their allegiances to their new rulers!. In areas like Spain and Italy, this often meant little more than acknowledging a new overlord, while Roman forms of law and religion could be maintained!. In other areas where there was a greater weight of population movement, it might be necessary to adopt new modes of dress, language and custom!.

The Catholic Church was the major unifying cultural influence, preserving its selection from Latin learning, maintaining the art of writing, and a centralised administration through its network of bishops!. Some regions that were populated by Catholics were conquered by Arian rulers, which provoked much tension between Arian kings and the Catholic hierarchy!. Clovis I of the Franks is a well-known example of a barbarian king who chose Catholic orthodoxy over Arianism!. His conversion marked a turning point for the Frankish tribes of Gaul!. Bishops were central to Middle Age society due to the literacy they possessed!. As a result, they often played a significant role in governance!. However beyond the core areas of Western Europe there remained many peoples with little or no contact with Christianity or with classical Roman culture!. Martial societies such as the Avars and the Vikings were still capable of causing major disruption to the newly emerging societies of Western Europe!.

The Early Middle Ages also witnessed the rise of monasticism within the west!. Although the impulse to withdraw from society to focus upon a spiritual life is experienced by people of all cultures, the shape of European monasticism was determined by traditions and ideas that originated in the deserts of Egypt and Syria!.[5] The style of monasticism that focuses on community experience of the spiritual life, called cenobitism, was pioneered by the saint Pachomius in the 4th century!. Monastic ideals spread from Egypt to western Europe in the 5th and 6th centuries through hagiographical literature such as the Life of Saint Anthony!.[5] Saint Benedict wrote the definitive Rule for western monasticism during the 6th century, detailing the administrative and spiritual responsibilities of a community of monks led by an abbot!.[5] Monks and monasteries had a deep effect upon the religious and political life of the Early Middle Ages, in various cases acting as land trusts for powerful families, centres of propaganda and royal support in newly conquered regions, bases for mission and proselytization, or outposts of education and literacy!.

Outside of Italy, building in stone was rarely attempted – until the 8th century, when a new form of architecture called the Romanesque, based on the Roman form of the arch, gradually developed!. Roman brick and stone buildings were heavily robbed for their materials!. Celtic and Germanic barbarian forms were absorbed into Christian art, although the central impulse remained Roman and Byzantine!. High quality jewellery and religious imagery were produced throughout Western Europe, Charlemagne and other monarchs provided patronage for religious artworks such as reliquaries and books!. Some of the principal artworks of the age were the fabulous Illuminated manuscripts produced by monks on vellum, using gold, silver and precious pigments to illustrate biblical narratives!. Early examples include the Book of Kells and many Carolingian and Ottonian Frankish manuscripts!.

The High Middle Ages were characterized by the urbanization of Europe, military expansion, and intellectual revival that historians identify between the 11th century and the end of the 13th century!. This revival was aided by the conversion of the raiding Scandinavians and Magyars to Christianity, as well as the assertion of power by castellans to fill the power vacuum left by the Carolingian decline!. The High Middle Ages saw an explosion in population!. This population flowed into towns, sought conquests abroad, or cleared land for cultivation!. The cities of antiquity had been clustered around the Mediterranean!. By 1200 the growing urban centres were in the centre of the continent, connected by roads or rivers!. By the end of this period Paris might have had as many as 200,000 inhabitants!.[9] In central and northern Italy and in Flanders the rise of towns that were self-governing to some degree within their territories stimulated the economy and created an environment for new types of religious and trade associations!. Trading cities on the shores of the Baltic entered into agreements known as the Hanseatic League, and Italian city-states such as Venice, Genoa, and Pisa expanded their trade throughout the Mediterranean!. This period marks a formative one in the history of the western state as we know it, for kings in France, England, and Spain consolidated their power during this time period, setting up lasting institutions to help them govern!. The Papacy, which had long since created an ideology of independence from the secular kings, first asserted its claims to temporal authority over the entire Christian world!. The entity that historians call the Papal Monarchy reached its apogee in the early 13th century under the pontificate of Innocent III!. Northern Crusades and the advance of Christian kingdoms and military orders into previously pagan regions in the Baltic and Finnic northeast brought the forced assimilation of numerous native peoples to the European entity!. With the brief exception of the Mongol invasions, major barbarian incursions ceased!.

During the early Middle Ages and the Islamic Golden Age, Islamic philosophy, science, and technology were more advanced than in Western Europe!. Islamic scholars both preserved and built upon earlier traditions and also added their own inventions and innovations!. Islamic al-Andalus passed much of this on to Europe (see Islamic contributions to Medieval Europe)!. The replacement of Roman numerals with the decimal positional number system and the invention of algebra allowed more advanced mathematics!. Another consequence was that the Latin-speaking world regained access to lost classical literature and philosophy!. Latin translations of the 12th century fed a passion for Aristotelian philosophy and Islamic science that is frequently referred to as the Renaissance of the 12th century!. Meanwhile, trade grew throughout Europe as the dangers of travel were reduced, and steady economic growth resumed!. Cathedral schools and monasteries ceased to be the sole sources of education in the 11th century when universities were established in major European cities!. Literacy became available to a wider class of people, and there were major advances in art, sculpture, music and architecture!. Large cathedrals were built across Europe, first in the Romanesque, and later in the more decorative Gothic style!.

During the 12th and 13th century in Europe there was a radical change in the rate of new inventions, innovations in the ways of managing traditional means of production, and economic growth!. The period saw major technological advances, including the invention of cannon, spectacles, and artesian wells; and the cross-cultural introduction of gunpowder, silk, the compass, and the astrolabe from the east!. There were also great improvements to ships and the clock!. The latter advances made possible the dawn of the Age of Exploration!. At the same time huge numbers of Greek and Arabic works on medicine and the sciences were translated and distributed throughout Europe!. Aristotle especially became very important, his rational and logical approach to knowledge influencing the scholars at the newly forming universities whicWww@QuestionHome@Com

The key words to look up are feudalism, manorialism, and serfs!. You can do a net search and get more info than you'll need!.Www@QuestionHome@Com