History Main / TheLowMiddleAges

* ''Film/TheWarLord1965'' is set right after the Norman conquest of England, and so also fits in the early [[TheHighMiddleAges High middle Ages]].

* ''{{Series/Kaamelott}}'': The AnachronismStew is PlayedForLaughs: the setting is officially the 5th century AD, but knights wear Renaissance plate armor, Arthur is a Briton but was raised by the Romans, Vikings, Huns and Burgonds regularly invade...

The Roman Empire itself didn't collapse entirely, as some of its institutions survived and evolved. The power of the Emperor was largely preserved with the Papacy, as the Pope still held central authority over the kings of Europe and, as head of the Bishops, technically held control over the cities scattered across the continent. Although the secular kingdoms still fought each other and retained ''de facto'' independence, the Pope could still manipulate them and command them in some way, acting as an incredibly marginalized Emperor. This power however would not truly emerge until after a couple of centuries after a particular issue was settled: the Arian Christians. Although the Franks adhered to the Chalcedonian Church of the Roman Empire, the Visigoths and Ostrogoths remained faithful to the Arian heresy until the latter's fall to the resurgent Eastern Roman Empire and by the conversion of King Reccared to Chalcedonian Christianity in the year 587 AD.

* DropTheHammer

Yes, their boats. The Viking longship was perfectly suited for traversing both deep and shallow waters, allowing them to sail to anywhere within reach of a body of water. That just happened to include the vast majority of major cities, villages, and monasteries in Europe. The Vikings used their ships to sail as far as Vinland to west, being the first known Europeans to reach American shores. They also used it to conquer parts of Britain and Ireland. To the east, Vikings made incursions into the Dniepr and Volga rivers, reaching as far as the Black Sea itself.

The arrival of the Normans in England in 1066 is as good a cut-off point as any, especially since they were the ones who really started building castles with a vengeance. Normans also began invading other parts of Europe (everywhere from Ireland to Italy) after they took England. After that, see TheHighMiddleAges.

Ditching all the HollywoodHistory, the Low Middle Ages, which here will cover the periods of the Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages proper, are generally considered to have started around the fall of UsefulNotes/TheRomanEmpire. [[note]]or more fittingly the Western Roman Empire, for as you will find out the East was still thriving[[/note]] Although since the collapse of the Empire is not really an "event" but more of a gradual decline, it is hard to pinpoint ''where'' exactly this fall occurs. Most would likely say that the deposing of Romulus Augustus, the last Western Roman Emperor, by the Germanic warlord Odoacer in 476 alongside the fall of Ravenna, then capital of the Western Roman Empire, marks the end of the Empire in the West but in truth the western half of the Empire was so far gone by that point that it had been reduced to the region of Italy (and Illyria, but because the region was absorbed within the Eastern Roman Empire it will be omitted) before the conflict with the Herulian Odoacer, if anything, this event would mark the PointOfNoReturn for what remained of the Empire as a whole and the death of all vestiges of Classical Antiquity in the Mediterranean.

Around this time, we start to see the often exaggerated and mythical "dark ages" in which supposedly scientific advancement, social advancement, and learning came to a crushing halt. So what happened? With the breakdown of the centralized Roman government in the West and further hits by the Justinian Plague and the Rise of Islam, trade and communication began grinding to a halt. The complex, urban metropolises once supported by Greco-Roman civilization would fall to pieces under the management of German administrators who had no concept of cities. Aqueducts fell into disrepair and were often deconstructed to be used as building materials, and famous Roman relics like the Colosseum became the ruins they are today.

But, contrary to popular belief, the Low Middle Ages was not a period of immense stupidity or total collapse of all that is good in the world. In fact, some things improved. Generally speaking, you were less likely to go to war and get killed in the Low Middle Ages than in Roman times, and previous knowledge was still preserved by monks and scholars. The nutritional situation improved. Taxes were ''far'' lower than in the Roman age. The Roman chattel slavery gradually disappeared and was superseded by serfdom, which was a ''vast'' improvement. Yes, things were certainly ''worse'' when compared to the Pax Romana, but it wasn't the abysmal time most history teachers love to paint it as. And from what sources we have, it appears very little actually changed between the Western Roman Empire's collapse and the conquest by the Germanic kingdoms as far as living standards.

At the time of the rise of the Carolingian dynasty to the Frankish throne, the Merovingian kings and their vassals had attained territory beyond the borders of what used to be Roman territory into what is southwestern German territory. Under their leader Charlemagne, the Franks achieved their highest extent, taking over the Kingdoms of Bavaria, overthrowing the Lombards, making headway into northern Spain and even conquering the territory of old Saxony. A cultural revolution was sparked, there was a key revival in literature, art, architecture, and other things that Charlemagne loved, there were previous revivals in the last centuries in the Visigothic realm and then in the newly converted Anglo-Saxon realms but the Frankish push was the most influential overall. Charlemagne himself is most remembered for being the king that "held the post-Roman world together". He also spread Christianity "by the cross and sword", meaning he forced his enemies to convert or to die with their gods. This coincided with better harvests and a string of military victories as the ideas of feudalism, knights, and a warrior caste began to take root in the Medieval world. By the end of Charlemagne's rule, and as thanks for saving the Papacy from being attacked by the Lombards years ago, the Pope crowned Charlemagne as Roman Emperor, thus beginning a new era that would see Western Europe grow out of the shadow of the Eastern Roman Empire.

Things were also going strong in the new Muslim world. By the time of Charlemagne's rule, the Umayyads had been overthrown, and the Abbasids had taken over. The Abbasids had fought a revolution, starting in Northeastern Persia and eventually killing most of the Umayyad royal family. The remaining Umayyads escaped to Spain, where they set up an independent emirate. Despite the conflict, the Abbasids would oversee a golden age in Islam. There are too many scholarly works from the Muslim world in this time to even count, and numerous sources were translated and many books and theses were written. Schools were being established, as were hospitals. Being right along the largest trade route (the Silk Road) at the time helped the Islamic world progress. After all, to have writers, philosophers, and scientists, you need money to pay them.

Beyond that, the Islamic world had a curious mixture of faith and reason that contrasted the deeply religious lifestyle of Europeans. Although Muslims were deeply faithful at heart, they rarely let it get in the way of the march of progress. Also unlike Europeans, the Muslims were surprisingly tolerant of the other Abrahamic faiths. Jews and Christians were allowed to live in Islamic society, so long as they paid some extra taxes. As a trade-off, they weren't required to go to war, so therefore they didn't have to go get killed. All in all, the Muslim world was excelling by leaps and bounds at this time, and the Abbasids were at the top of their game. (Eventually, the majority of Christians and Jews in that region determined that the lower tax rates and the opportunities for advancement afforded to Muslims outweighed the benefits of keeping their religion, and converted. It also helped that by this point, the local Christians and Jews had spent decades if not centuries heavily influenced by Arab Muslim culture. This is the main reason the Middle East of today is so heavily Muslim.)

Meanwhile in the Eastern Roman Empire, which we will call the Byzantine Empire at this point, things were still in turmoil after the rise of Islam, although the Byzantines had managed to secure the region of Anatolia, new invaders in the form of the Slavs kept challenging their authority in the Balkans, moreover, the Iconoclasm controversy, which had plagued the Isaurian dynasty, had lead to a divided society that would only begin to recover with the ascension of the Macedonian dynasty in the middle of the Ninth Century AD. Nevertheless, the Byzantine Empire proved to be resilient enough to not break in the face of so many losses and setbacks.

'''The Second Wave: The Slavs, the Vikings, the Magyars, the Bulgars and the Khazars'''

It should be noted that the Middle Ages are characterized by the movement of peoples from one area to another to settle, with chiefs and kings rising and falling in the span of a lifetime. Although the Germanic successors were the most prominent amongst the Barbarian peoples for conquering territory from the Western Roman Empire, there were others who also followed and settled in what we call Central and Eastern Europe. The most notable of these peoples were the Slavs, who settled the land left behind by the migrating Germanic tribes. The three most prominent groups were the Wends, the Sclavenians and the Ruthenians, with the former settling in the area east of the Elbe river, in the territories that would later on become Poland, Czechia and Slovakia; the Sclavenians on the other hand took residence in the Balkans, taking over the land of Illyria and Thracia from the Byzantine Empire; finally, the Ruthenians settled in the area between the Baltic and Black Sea, neighboring the Turkic Khazar Khaganate to the east and with their Wendian cousins to the southwest.

Back in Western Europe, things weren't going so well. Following the death of Charlemagne's son, Pepin the Short, his Empire was divided in three, one for each of his sons by right of what we call gavelkind inheritance. There was the Kingdom of West Francia, which would become the Kingdom of France; the Kingdom of East Francia, that would morph into the Kingdom of Germany; and separating those two was the Kingdom of Middle Francia, which held the region of Lotharingia and Italy, as well as the Imperial title. The first two would survive well into the Main/TheHighMiddleAges, while most of the latter would fall to East Francia as the three brothers began to quarrel over their inherited territory.

Then it goes FromBadToWorse, as the [[HornyVikings Vikings]] start looting and pillaging Europe. It is unknown as to why the Vikings suddenly started going on an obscene murder frenzy (though the warming of the European region in the time period may have had something to do with it, as previously the northern seas froze over in winter- meaning the Vikings could now send their ships out all year round), but everybody has ''sure heard of them since'', and for good reason. The Vikings were skilled warriors, but what made them truly scary were their boats.

Yes, their boats. The Viking longship was perfectly suited for traversing both deep and shallow waters, allowing them to sail to anywhere within reach of a body of water. That just happened to include the vast majority of major cities, villages, and monasteries in Europe. The Vikings used their ships to sail as far as Vinland to west, being the first known Europeans to reach American shores. They also used it to conquer parts of Britain and Ireland. To the east, Vikings made incursions into the Dniepr and Volga rivers, reaching as far as the Black Sea itself.

Yet, as many historians are keen to point out, the Vikings did more than just [[Main/RapePillageAndBurn pillage and rape]] their way across Europe. They had a genuine interest in settling in foreign lands, indicating perhaps a food shortage or a power struggle back in Scandinavia. Whatever the case, the Vikings would settle throughout Europe. First they came to the British Isles, where they successfully set up several independent fiefdoms, the most famous being the Danelaw. They would rule these lands for a while before being forced out by the dominant Kingdom of Wessex. They also invaded Ireland and came to settle in what is now France,[[note]]after an attempt to take Paris[[/note]] in the province of Normandy. This province -whose name obviously derives from the term "Norseman" for its Scandinavian settlers- would go on to be highly influential. Despite being subjects of the Carolingian crown, the Normans would continue to conquer and settle across Europe. As previously mentioned, the Vikings also went east to the land of the Slavs and settled around the river banks of the rivers of Eastern Europe, thus creating the foundations of the UsefulNotes/KievanRus principalities. In fact, their incursion to the east also created the conditions for trade to flourish in the northern seas of Europe, as the scandinavian princes linked up with Constantinople and the Khazars and brought up goods across the river, creating an alternative commercial network to the ever conflicted Mediterranean Sea and bringing much wealth to the Kievan Rus states.

The raiding wasn't just restricted to the Vikings. The Magyars, Bulgars, and Khazars, all of whom came from the East, started raiding territory, usually Eastern Roman but also that of the West. The first of these to invade were the Bulgars, a people that at the height of its power managed to conquer part of the Eastern Roman Empire and form the First Bulgarian Empire, namely parts of Thracia and Greece and parts of modern day Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Moldavia. The Byzantines would later on manage to expel them from their territory and lock them out from the Macedonian region while the Magyars would take from them the territory of modern day Hungary. The Bulgars would still manage to carve out their own state and even enter into the sphere of influence of Constantinople later on as Orthodox Christians, becoming a centre of learning and culture for the Slavs as the Bulgars left their old language behind and adopted what is known as old church slavonic, eventually giving rise to the famed Cyrillic alphabet.

The Magyars, on the other hand, settled in the Carpathian Basin after conquering territory from the First Bulgarian Empire and began to raid Western and Central Europe as far as the Iberian Peninsula. By this point, the Carolingian dynasty was in full decline as the kingship became elective and nobles began to choose their kings from other families aside from the Carolingians like the Capetians in the Kingdom of West Francia or to simply ditch the dynasty as the Kingdom of East Francia did, choosing from the Conradines and the Ottonian dynasties. Indeed, the Ottonian dynasty would be the one to check the power of the Magyars in the Battle of Lechfeld in 955 AD and create the foundations for the transformation of East Francia into the Holy Roman Empire as it incorporated parts of Middle Francia and Italy. The Magyars, despite their defeat, would eventually become christian under the Latin rite, giving rise to the Kingdom of Hungary with the ascension of their saint king Stephen I.

Finally, the Khazars, who unlike the other states of the time were Jewish instead of Christian or Muslim, had been a dominant power in the Pontic steppe as a buffer state against the invasion of the Islamic caliphates through the Caucasus mountains. Their control of the crossroads between Europe and Asia made them powerful through commerce between the Black and Caspian seas, yet their Khanate would later decline in the face of the ascension of the Kievan Rus and the invasion of the Alans and Pechenegs later on.

'''Setting the Stage: The end of the Early Middle Ages'''

If the Early Middle Ages were known for its dynamic nature, the period that would foreshadow its end would be characterised by the formation of more static borders and political situations that would later echo during the High Middle Ages and the Late Middle Ages.

As previously mentioned so far, most contemporary historians use term "Byzantine" to distinguish the Medieval Eastern Roman Empire from its Classical counterpart. Although, this term was not used during the time period, and was created in order to separate the Eastern Roman Empire that existed during Late Antiquity due to the changes it would see as the Middle Ages began. One of the first changes that the Eastern Roman Empire would see was the adoption of Greek as state language over Latin, along with the reorganisation of the Imperial legal code into what is known today as the Corpus Jurius Civilis, a cornerstone in the development of modern Civil Law. The other transformation would be seen with the loss of Egypt and Syria in the face of the Islamic conquest, which reduced the original pentarchy of Rome, Constantinople, Antioch, Jerusalem and Alexandria, to only the cities of Rome and Constantinople. This would later on fuel the gap between the Eastern Romans and the West as the language divide between the rites was but the first difference between the two churches. Rome and Constantinople were constantly in religious squabbles over whether or not the Pope or the Emperor had more authority, not made any better after the coronation of Charlemagne as Western Roman Emperor, which soured the relationship between the two centres even more. Finally, the military of the Eastern Roman Empire would be replaced by Byzantine Tagmata system, which would be supported by the various themes across the imperial holdings.

The old Carolingian states on the other hand had suffered various reversals that ultimately ended in the fall of the dynasty in favour of the Capetians in the Kingdom of Francia and the Ottonians in the Kingdom of Germania, the rise of the Ottonians and the establishment of the Holy Roman Empire would set the stage for the predominance of the German kings over its European peers centuries down the line. The Capetians, on the other hand, had to work with the practical independence of its various subjects as the king had become weak in the face of the various duchies of the land such as the Duchy of Aquitane and the Duchy of Normandy, a work that would take them years of continuous work but which would bear fruits later on.

The Italian Peninsula would remain divided between the Holy Roman Empire in the north, the Papal States that held the centre, and the south held by the Duchy of Benevento, the Byzantine Empire, and the fledgling Emirate of Sicily. The Iberian peninsula on the other hand would be divided between various christian kingdoms such as Leon, Gallicia, Castille, Navarre and Aragon and the implosion of the Umayyad Caliphate into its various taifas. Both peninsulas would be battlegrounds in the following centuries.

The Vikings would later on become Christians as their age began to end, the kingdoms of Denmark, Sweden and Norway would embrace Catholic Christianity while their Kievan Rus cousins would embrace Orthodox Christianity and further intertwine with their slavic subjects. The Slavs themselves were divided between embracing Catholic Christianity or Orthodox Christianity: the Kingdoms of Poland and Croatia and the Duchy of Bohemia would adopt the former while the Despoty of Serbia, Bulgaria, and the aforementioned Kievan Rus states would choose the later.

The last major shift would occur in 1066 AD, as the Norman conquest of England marked the end of the Low Middle Ages. Although the conflict was minor at the time, it would have major ramifications in the future, as the English gradually came to be a dominant power in world affairs many centuries later. The roots of the conflict laid in the reconquest of the Danelaw by the kingdom of Wessex, started by Alfred the Great and culminated by his grandchildren, and this new kingdom of England faced a succession crisis. Harold Godwinson, the current King of England, had to fight two pretenders to his throne: the Norwegian Harald Hardrada (whose claim largely came from the aforementioned Danelaw) and the Norman Duke William, now known as ''the Conqueror'' after he won the war at the Battle of Hastings, to whom he had been promised the throne by the previous king Edward the Confessor, who had made both promises to William and Harold, therefore giving both of them a legitimate claim.

The Battle of Stamford Bridge, in which Harald Hardrada was killed, is considered to mark the end of the Viking era, and the final Battle of Hastings, in which Harold died and Duke William attained victory, is considered to be the end proper of the Early Middle Ages as the Kingdom of England was brought into the politics of mainland Europe through its conection to the Duchy of Normandy.

It was a transitory period for Europe, where kingdoms rose and fell in mere lifetimes and the social order shifted into a rigid class system. Although there was a serious lull in technological advancement, and indeed the medieval world was just a bit smaller than the Classical one, the Low Middle Ages were not as bad as they are often said to be. Our lack of first hand sources makes the time period seem dark and mysterious, but we know that only holds partially true for Western Europe, since the Muslim world was flourishing in a new age of prosperity.

* ''Film/{{The War Lord|1965}}'' (1965) is set right after the Norman conquest of England, and so also fits in the early [[TheHighMiddleAges High middle Ages]].
* ''Film/The13thWarrior''

* BladeOnAStick: What most fighters actually had to settle for, when they weren't stuck with [[SinisterScythe farming implements]] or just the stick.

Yet, as many historians are keen to point out, the Vikings did more than just [[Main/RapePillageAndBurn pillage and rape]] their way across Europe. They had a genuine interest in settling in foreign lands, indicating perhaps a food shortage or a power struggle back in Scandinavia. Whatever the case, the Vikings would settle throughout Europe. First they came to the British Isles, where they successfully set up several independent fiefdoms, the most famous being the Danelaw. They would rule these lands for a while before being forced out by the dominant Kingdom of Wessex. They also invaded Ireland and came to settle in what is now France[[note]]after an attempt to take Paris[[/note]], in the province of Normandy. This province -whose name obviously derives from the term "Norseman" for its Scandinavian settlers- would go on to be highly influential. Despite being subjects of the Carolingian crown, the Normans would continue to conquer and settle across Europe. As previously mentioned, the Vikings also went east to the land of the Slavs and settled around the river banks of the rivers of Eastern Europe, thus creating the foundations of the UsefulNotes/KievanRus principalities. In fact, their incursion to the east also created the conditions for trade to flourish in the northern seas of Europe, as the scandinavian princes linked up with Constantinople and the Khazars and brought up goods across the river, creating an alternative commercial network to the ever conflicted Mediterranean Sea and bringing much wealth to the Kievan Rus states.

* AuthorityGrantsAsskicking: Ditto.

* ''Film/{{Agora}}: Concerns the life of the scholar Hypatia who lived during the early part of this period.