Monasticism And Intellectual L

IT WASN’T EASY LIVING IN THE MIDDLE AGES. In the middle ages 400 AD thru 1300 AD, there was a system call the hierarchy. The hierarchy was the feudalism system that was based on mutual obligations.The highest person in the royalty system would be the king, the king has all power and control over everyone. The next in the hierarchy would be the clergy, the clergy is filled with Popes, bishops, archdeacons, abbot, priors, deans, priests, and monk. You wouldn’t think their would be any other people under the monks, but they were. After the monks there were friars, clerics, vicars, barber surgeons, chaplains, confessors, scribes, and culdees. The people on the bottom of the hierarchy were the system of peasantry. Some peasants had more rights than others such as, the vallien was the wealthy class of peasants. Serfs and commoner lived in small communities, they couldn't leave or marry without their lord's permission. Next in line came the smallholder, they were the middle class peasants who farmed more than a cottager, but less land than a vallien. Some people owned the farms and worked on it. In the middle ages there were women and men who practiced being trappist. People chose to give their life to the churches because they found it a more appealing way to get closer to God. For the women, they gave up everything to become a nun because they weren’t able to be educated. Once the women became nuns they were able to learn how to read and write. As for men, they became monks because they were being offered a peaceful quiet place to escape from the violence in the world and get more close to their god. Women and men in the middle ages preferred to devote their lives to churches, because they found it a better lifestyle.

The Middle Ages can also be stated as the Age of Faith because the main center of attention and one’s purpose in life was to serve God and live righteously. More than one title can be assigned to the Middle Ages due to the overlapping of events but the Age of Faith applied almost continuously to the lives of people throughout the Middle Ages while other labels such as the Dark Age and the Age of Feudalism represented certain periods of it.

Palmer, R. R., Joel Colton, and Lloyd S. Kramer. "The High Middle Ages: Secular Civilization." A History of the Modern World. 10th ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2007. 28-37. Print.

The history of the modern world derives from thousands of years of human history. Embedded in its history are the many eras of man which have constructed our modern learning, art, beliefs, and order. The middle ages, although represented as “dark”, backwards, and idle, were in fact a bridge linking the classical and modern world. Medieval society may not have been in a sense glorious, but the era of itself was a prime foundation of the modern world’s newfound stability, a revival of the law and teachings from the classical era, a reinvestment and reform in the church, and a precursor to the golden age of art.

For centuries now, Europe had been a place of great hardship. The Black Death had killed over two-thirds of the population, leading to soaring labor costs and a heavy sense of sadness. In the Catholic Church, the Great Schism between the eastern and western halves of the Church created a loss of faith and questions about religious authority. Seemingly endless wars, such as the Hundred Year’s War between France and England, were just now coming to an end, finally giving the population time to stop and reflect on what had gone on in the past. When they began to mull over things, more inquiries about the state of their current mindset came up. Was religion truly that important? Why should they hold themselves back from their potential? These questions led to the Renaissance.

Writing about the years following the fall of Rome, Petrarch asserted, “amidst the errors there shone forth men of genius, no less keen were their eyes, although they were surrounded by darkness and dense gloom.” Petrarch’s negative view of the Early Middle Ages from Rome’s fall in 410 to Charlemagne’s crowning in 800 reflected the opinions of many humanists and historians, and the idea that this was a time of backwardness continues to influence people today. However, Petrarch was wrong to characterize the Early Middle Ages as “dark.” While this wasn’t the most peaceful time in human history, there were plenty of aspects to justify its importance and necessity. Considering the strength of the economy and trade, new technology and codes of law, as well as a focus on education through the rise of Christianity, the Dark Ages were a benign part of human history that slowly paved the way for the future.

To the extent that one takes the values of Renaissance and Enlightenment as positive developments in human history, the Middle Ages will be viewed as “dark.” From another perspective, in order to dismiss the negative image of the Middle Ages, one has to deconstruct the wholly positive image of the Enlightenment, thereby questioning the presuppositions behind these descriptions. According to the Encylopedia Britannica, the post-Medieval world can be considered to have “invented the Middle Ages in order to distinguish themselves from it.” (2014) The description of the Middle Ages as Dark Ages can therefore be understood according to the shift of values that occurred from the Middle Ages to the post-Medieval world.

Religion is never been ignored when historians discuss what factors have the most influence on medieval age. Religion was extensively spread in Europe because of its inflammatory speech and strict creed. The pope and monastery started to play an essential role in communities’ management, even more essential than what king and government does.

The era of the Middle Ages does not paint a bright picture for many people because it was a dark time in history. The Middle Ages were a terrible time to live in with the grime, debauchery, and disease. The rich were very well off while the poor made it through a hard life. The decline of the Middle Ages was at the end of the fourteenth century because of, “crop failures, famine, population decline, plagues, stagnating production, unemployment, inflation, devastating warfare, abandoned villages, and violent rebellions by the poor and weak of towns and countryside, who were ruthlessly suppressed by the upper classes.”1 Even though the Middle Ages were a time of adversity it did have great growth...

The period of the Renaissance was an important era of development in the world religiously, artistically, and scientifically. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, important technologies such as the printing press contributed greatly in helping advance the intelligence of all humans. A broad humanistic sense began to expand throughout Europe, giving a new vision of the human being as the center of the universe and not as something mystical or divine. With a combination of the technological and social changes taking place at the same time, the Renaissance’s advancements placed the driving force for the protestant reformation to occur. The Protestant reformation was a new era of religious revolution that brought radical changes in the vision that society had of the Catholic Church. During this period, not only did the religion change, other areas such as the economy and the development of social interactions were reformed and