#dark_age

Hello strangers that to read my want blog, I’m trying not to make this introduction as weird as possible, so I can really write a blog in my way. I’m Tom and this is my blog about something that I don’t feel very interested of. It’s about “Europe in the Middle Ages: The big picture”. At first, I don’t know any shit about this topic *cough* cough*... But after 20 minutes of asking Mr. Google every single question that I can think of, I finally know what it is about (and with the help of Mr. Matt’s notes). And that is why I’m writing this blog, to share my thoughts, feelings and knowledge about this topic.  

Europe in the Middle Age is about the history of Europe, also known as the “Dark Age”. It's started from when the Eastern Roman fell in 476 C.E and ends in the beginning of the Renaissance which began in the 1300s. People believes that this is the times when art, science and philosophy stopped making progress and improvements. The “Dark Age” talks about these main topics:  

The Catholic Church

The rise of Islam

The Crusades

Art and architecture

Economics and society

The “Dark Age” started when the Western Roman fell, but the other half survived. I think that this is one of the best events happened in the “Dark Age” because the Roman Empire is very cool. But how the Roman Empire fell is even cooler, there’s so much ways it can fell just by the citizens or government of the empire. But that’s not one of our topics that we will be talking about. Instead, we will start with the topic about Catholic church

The Catholic Church:

Catholic church is the most powerful organization on the continent in that time. Kings, queens and other leaders had to rely on the protection of the Church in order to hold onto their power. Because of this, ordinary people across Europe had to donate 10 percent of their earnings each year to the Church, there’s a name for it called “tithing”. At the same time, European governments don’t get the tax from the Church because they rarely had to pay it. I think this make a lot of sense, cause the kings, queens and other leaders rely on the Church’s protection so they rarely had to pay their tax. If they need to pay it, then the Church will not have that much power in that time when they both use their money for protections and taxes. So as the result, the Catholic built up a great deal of both money, power and trust.

The rise of Islam:

Meanwhile the Catholic is still growing, the Islamic world was growing larger and more powerful over time. In class, I don’t really understand about this topic, so I asked Mr. Google a crap ton of questions about it. So basically, the prophet Muhammad who founded the religion of Islam had died in the year 632. In the following years, parts of the Middle East had been conquered by the Muslims armies. Because of this, they united them under the rule of a single leader, called a caliph. At its height, medieval Islamic world was three times bigger than the Christian world.

Under the caliphs, life and culture in great cities such as Cairo, Baghdad and Damascus blossomed. Poets, scientists and philosophers wrote thousands of books. Religious leaders even taught and interpreted the Quran, the holy book of Islam, and it spread it cross the Middle East to the readers or learners can spread the knowledge even farther. I don’t know if this is true because in the Dark and Middle Age, the art, science and philosophy don’t really have any improvements. But this proves that maybe one of these facts is wrong (or did I read the wrong website). But the madness didn’t stop there, Muslim thinkers translated Greek, Iranian and Indian texts into Arabic. They also developed the number system that we all use today. And it still didn’t stop there. Inventers even came up with technologies ideas like the pinhole camera, soap, windmills, surgical in instruments and the early flying machine. I don’t know if I can really trust Mr. Google anymore, I think I should use Firefox instead...

The Crusades:

Soon after that, the Christian and Islam worlds came into conflict. A series of military campaigns called the Crusades, was made by the Catholic church. They made it to force Muslims to leave Europe. Crusaders believed that their military service would guarantee that they could spend eternity in heaven. I don’t know why and how they would think like that, but I think I don’t want the answer for it so... The Crusades began in 1095, when Pope Urban summoned a Christian army to fight its way to Jerusalem, a city that is consider how in both Christianity and Islam. They continued and off until the end of the 1400s.  

Art and architecture:

The Catholic Church was busy building grand cathedrals and monasteries while the Crusaders were shipping of to battle. In the year 900 up to the 1200s, hundreds of cathedrals (large churches). Most of them is in the Romanesque, and it's very heavy with stone arches. But around the 1200, builders start to embrace Gothic architecture for the cathedrals. Compare to the Romanesque, the Gothic architecture seems almost weightless. Religious art started changing as well when artists were hiring to make fabulous creations. In the 1300s, city booksellers began to sell small illuminated manuscripts to wealthy individuals because many craftsmen start to make another important art form, which is bookmaking.

Economics and society:

In the feudal society, the king gave large piece of lands known as “fief” to nobles and bishops. And the landless peasants known as “serfs” work on those lands, so they can live for themselves and the fief owners. They also promised to get protection in case of an enemy invasion.

The feudal were also been introduced to new farming technologies like the heavy plow. With these new technologies, fewer farmers were needed but more food was produced. Because of this, the serf's populations grew, but there’s no more fief to work on so moved to new towns or cities.  

Meanwhile, Europeans merchants started to sell goods like mine, olive oil and fabric. Some also trade their goods by the seas with their boats. As a result, the populations in many cities grew very large over time. But then between 1347 and 1350 however, a strange disease known as the “Black Death” killed millions of people. It’s especially deadly in high population cities, because this is where people are crowded. This disease can spread from person to person just by walking near or interact with them.  

After the Black Death, a new era was born... The Renaissance. Many historians see it as a golden age that put Europe back on track after the “Dark Ages”, but it actually had things related to the Middle Ages.