The Middle Ages: Castles, Black Death, Universities

The end of an empire in the West

The picture opens on a rain-dark landscape, and a crown is lifted away. In AD 476 the Germanic commander Odoacer removed the teenage Romulus Augustulus, the last emperor in the Western Roman Empire, and did not name a successor. Historians use this date as a convenient marker, not as one sudden crash. The West had been weakening for generations through civil wars, migrations, lost taxes and defeats. Village life changed slowly, and Latin, Roman law and the Church survived. We know the story from chronicles, letters, coins and the ruins of villas that were gradually abandoned.

The empire that stayed

Now the view lifts east to a city of gold domes on the Bosporus. The eastern half of the empire lasted almost another thousand years, until 1453. We call it the Byzantine Empire, a name later historians gave it, while its people simply called themselves Romans. Emperor Justinian rebuilt Hagia Sophia after riots burned the old church, and it was finished in 537 by the architects Anthemius of Tralles and Isidore of Miletus. Its dome is about 31 metres wide and seems to float on a ring of windows. The building still stands, and visitors can look up at the same dome today.

From wooden fort to stone castle

Watch a mound rise, a wooden tower appear on top, a fence close around the yard below. This is a motte-and-bailey, the quick castle that Norman lords built after 1066, and the Bayeux Tapestry shows one being raised. Later, stone walls, towers and a keep replace the timber, because stone does not burn and is hard to batter. A castle was a home, a storehouse and a base for the lord’s soldiers as well as a fortress. Archaeologists dig up postholes, ditches and kitchen waste to learn how people lived there. Building one could take years and the labour of whole villages.

The feudal pyramid

Next, small figures line up in four layers. Historians use the word feudalism for a system of land and loyalty. At the top stood the king, who gave land to great lords. They shared it with knights in return for military service, and at the bottom peasants farmed the fields and owed their lord labour, grain or rent. Many were serfs, tied to the estate. The pyramid is a simplification, because rules differed between countries and centuries, and some historians doubt the tidy picture. It still explains why land, not money, meant power. Records such as the Domesday Book of 1086 list who held what.

A dark ripple across the map

A shadow now spreads along sea and river routes. The Black Death reached Sicily in 1347 and crossed Europe by 1351. The usual explanation is that the bacterium Yersinia pestis travelled in fleas on rats aboard ships and carts, and then passed between people. DNA taken from teeth in medieval plague graves, for example in London, has confirmed the germ. Estimates say a third to a half of Europe’s people died, though the figures differ by region and remain uncertain. Villages emptied and workers became scarce, so survivors could ask for higher wages. Doctors knew nothing of germs, and in some places frightened crowds blamed and attacked Jewish neighbours.

Schools and cathedrals

The last picture shows tall pointed arches, stone ribs and slim props leaning on the walls. Those props are flying buttresses, and they let Gothic builders raise high walls full of stained glass, as at Notre-Dame in Paris, begun in 1163. Nearby, students gather around teachers. The University of Bologna dates its start to 1088, Oxford was teaching by 1096, and Paris grew into a university around 1150. They taught law, medicine, theology and the liberal arts in Latin. These centuries were not simply dark: they gave us the university, mechanical clocks and a lasting taste for towers. We learn about them from manuscripts, seals and the buildings themselves.

The Middle Ages