In political history, the epochal fact which marks the close of
ancient times is the decline of the Roman Empire. This was a
process extending over three or four centuries, in which no one
date lends itself to the historian. The deposition of Romulus
Augustulus, the last Roman emperor in the West, in 476, was
certainly not one of those events upon which the history of the
Western world depends. Outwardly it did not mark the end of
the Empire, but the restoration of imperial unity. The throne
in Italy had been vacant before, and the restoration of unity was
realized in fact under Justinian. There is no reason why the
date 476 should stand out in European history more strongly
than half a dozen other such dates. Yet we may say that the
5th century did witness the actual dismemberment of the Roman
Empire. The new nations in Spain, Gaul, parts of Italy and
Britain were forming the rude beginnings of what were to become
national states in the centuries following. Western Europe was
taken out of the imperial mould and broken up. This is a
revolution of sufficient magnitude to be regarded as politically
the opening of a new era. It had been long preparing in the
economic and administrative decline of the Empire, and in the
steady influx of Germanic peoples into Roman territory for over
two centuries; but the power of the old civilization to absorb the
new races was exhausted by the 5th century, and the political
history of Europe was turned into a different path. That path,
however, was not destined to end blindly in a “middle age.”
The line of political development marked out in the 5th century—that
of the national state—still continues. The revolution in
which Alaric, Theodoric and Clovis figured did not set the problem
for the middle ages only, as is frequently stated; its full
meaning did not appear until the Peninsular War, the Prussia
of Stein and Scharnhorst, and even Solferino and Sedan. Thus
the 5th century politically introduces not so much the history
of the middle ages as that of modern Europe.
The immediate introduction, however, was a long one—so long and so distinct from the later development as to constitute in itself a distinct phase. For five or six centuries—from the 5th until about the 11th—comparatively little permanent progress was made. The Germanic tribes were still adjusting themselves and slowly learning to combine their primitive institutions with the remains of those of Rome; the premature union under Charlemagne gave way before new invasions, and anarchy became crystallized in feudalism. It was not until the 12th and 13th centuries that modern national states really took shape: England with its trial by jury, circuit courts, Magna Charta and parliament; France under the strong hand of the Capetians. A political middle age certainly lay between Theodosius and William the Conqueror, or at least between Justinian and Henry II. It is difficult to grasp its vastness. Few students of history realize that the period from the Saxon to the Norman Conquest of England would take us as far back as from George V. to Edward I.; or that from Theodosius to Philip Augustus there is an interval equal to that between the accession of Hugh Capet and the French Revolution.
This, however, is not the period most frequently termed the middle ages in political histories. It does not include those two institutions which more than any others stand in popular imagination as genuinely medieval—the papal monarchy and the Holy Roman Empire. The papacy received its full monarchical structure under Hildebrand (Gregory VII.) in the middle of the 11th century; its political decline set in suddenly after the pontificate of Boniface VIII. at the opening of the 14th. The great age of the Empire began slightly earlier, and continued until the fall of the Hohenstaufen in the middle of the 13th century. One cannot now deny the term middle ages to the period of these two institutions. It has been consecrated to this use too long. Yet when we include under a common name two eras so distinct as this and that preceding, our term becomes so vague as to be almost valueless. Moreover, it is doubtful if this second period is really as “medieval” as it has seemed. Papal monarchy and Holy Roman Empire were not the only political phenomena of their age, and it is possible that their vast pretensions have somewhat blinded historians as to their real importance. While they were struggling to enforce their claims to universal sovereignty, the royal power, less extravagant but more real, was welding together the feudal states of France and moulding the England of to-day. Compared with this obscure process—this spread of the king’s peace along the highways and through the distant forest lands of the 12th and 13th centuries—papal interdicts and jubilees, however impressive their spectacle, are but fleeting shows. The chivalry of Germany pouring through Alpine passes for an Italian campaign, or a coronation, left little trace in history except the lesson of their futility. There is much in the imperial and papal histories that is merely spectacular and romantic; much that appeals to the imagination and lends itself to myth; and since the sources are abundant—the papal archives inexhaustible and the German chronicles easily accessible—an undue emphasis has been placed upon them. It is at least evident that the political middle ages were already disintegrating during the period of papal monarchy and Holy Roman Empire.
In economic history there is a more definite line traceable. The one great economic change brought about by the decline of the Roman Empire was the lessening of urban life throughout the greater part of Europe, the closing up of avenues of communication and the predominance of isolated agricultural communities. This phase began to give way in the 11th century to a commercial and industrial renaissance, which received a great impetus from the crusading movements—themselves largely economic—and by the 14th century had made the Netherlands the factory of Europe, the Rhine a vast artery of trade, and north Italy a hive of busy cities. The discovery of America and the expansion of commerce merely readjusted conditions already highly developed. The period of isolated economy which we may term medieval lasted only from about the 5th to the 12th centuries. As for manufactures, the antique methods survived until the 18th and 19th centuries.
In religious history—to be distinguished from that of the political organization referred to above as the papal monarchy—the official recognition of the Christian Church by Galerius in 311 serves as a convenient starting-point for what we know as universal Christendom, though the slow disappearance of paganism, as distinct from Christianity, stretches over at least a century more. The Reformation of the 16th century has long been regarded as the close of the period. The real close, however, is the present day—as the result of the rationalism and science of the 18th and 19th centuries. The heroes of the Reformation, judged by modern standards, were reactionaries. Unconsciously and to its own ultimate damage the Reformation forged the weapons of progress; but it was itself in no sense, except the institutional and political, the end of that religious history inaugurated before the Council of Nicaea. The real change in attitude which marks the dawn of a new era came in the generation of Voltaire. And “medievalism” is only now on the defence against “modernism,” both Catholic and Protestant.
In legal history there was a distinct medieval period, when Germanic customs superseded Roman law, that most splendid of Rome’s legacies. But the renaissance of law began relatively early; by the 12th century it had created a university, by the 13th it was helping to organize national states and laying the basis for that order which the economic renaissance was already demanding.
In science there was no great product in antiquity to be lost. Compared with art or law, literature or philosophy, ancient science (in our sense) was almost insignificant. The promise in Aristotle of such production remained unfulfilled. The 17th century is not so much a renaissance here as a mere beginning. No one can deny the general unscientific, uncritical nature of “medieval” thought. A single Roger Bacon does not relieve his age of the charge. But the middle age in science must include much of antiquity, including Pliny.
Philosophy was the one subject which had, clearly and definitely, a medieval period. Scholasticism, which absorbed the attention of most thinkers from about the 11th to about the
