The 15 Most Important Middle Ages Events

Some of the Most important events of the Middle Ages Were the fall of the Roman Empire, the Battle of Hastings or the Magna Carta, among others.

Most scholars consider the Middle Ages, or the medieval period, as the time since the fall of Rome in 476 BC. To the birth of the Modern Age, beginning around the fifteenth or sixteenth century.

The 15 Most Important Middle Ages Events

Throughout the Middle Ages, the influence of the Catholic Church was very important. In many ways, this institution had more power than the nations. Often, kings and queens were forced to act in accordance with the wishes of the clergy and corruption in the Catholic Church was common.

Civil authority was often determined by the Pope. In 800 AD, the Pope Leon III Crowned the Franciscan King Charlemagne , Emperor of the Sacred Roman Empire, title that goes back to the times of the imperial Rome.

Besides the power of the Church, there were other events that marked the Middle Ages. The Battle of Hastings established the feudal system in England and gave way to feudalism in other parts of the continent.

The Declaration of the Magna Carta was also a very relevant event, but better to see one by one the most important events of the Middle Ages. You can also see the 19 most important characteristics of the Middle Ages .

List of the 15 most important events of the Middle Ages

1- The fall of the Roman Empire of the West (476 AD)

The 15 Most Important Middle Ages Events 1 Gold Coins of the Empire of Julius Nepos

The fall of the Western Roman Empire is considered as the beginning of the Middle Ages. The last Roman emperor was Julius Nepos , Which was nominated by the Eastern Emperor Zeno.

Nepo's rebellion dethroned Julius Nepos and declared to his own son, Romulus Augustus , As the new emperor of the Roman Empire of the West.

Nevertheless, Odoacar Invaded Italy and defeated Orestes And deposed Romulus Augustus on September 4, 476. He then invited Zeno to be the emperor of the Eastern and Western Empire. Zeno accepted the invitation while Julius Nepo was killed by his own soldiers in the year 480.

2- Charles"The Hammer"and the Battle of Tours (732 AD)

Charles Martel , Also known as Charles"The Hammer", was a French-speaking political and military leader who worked under the orders of the Merovingian kings As mayor of the palace.

In AD 732, he defeated the Moorish invaders at the Battle of Tours, which permanently ended the Islamic invaders and their expansion into Western Europe.

Charles Martel is considered as one of the founding fathers of the feudalism And of the cavalry of Europe. He prepared the grounds for the establishment of the Carolingian Empire. It was Charlemagne's grandfather.

3- Charlemagne, the Emperor of the Romans (800 AD)

The 15 Most Important Middle Ages Events 2

Charlemagne or Charles the Great was a Frankish king who enlarged his kingdom and covered most of western and central Europe. He was declared the emperor of the Romans in AD 800 and enjoyed the empire until his death.

He associated his political steps with the Church and encouraged the revival of art, religion and culture also with the help of the Church.

4- Treaty of Verdun (843 AD)

Luis the Pious Was declared the successor, who ruled as the Emperor of the Romans. However, after his death, the Carolingian Empire faced a civil war due to the internal struggle between the three surviving sons of Louis the Pious who fought for the Empress.

Finally, the Carolingian empire was divided into three parts in August AD 843 through the Treaty of Verdun, which ended a three-year civil war.

5- The Holy Roman Empire of Germany (962 AD)

The 15 Most Important Middle Ages Events 3

Otto I Was the successor of Henry the Fowler, the Duke of Saxony who became the first Saxon emperor. Like his father, Otto I managed to protect the Germans against the Magyar invaders.

He chose to create a German monastery. This natural loyalty to the German Church and kingdom helped him gain control over the dukes of the rebellion and establish his empire.

In 962 AD, the papacy of Italy invited him and declared him as the Emperor of Italy and established his Holy Roman Empire.

6- The Battle of Hastings (1066 AD)

The 14 of October of 1066, William the Conqueror , Duke of Normandy, defeated the last Anglo-Saxon king: Harold II .

William the Conqueror thus established the Norman Empire and to protect it rewarded all his Norman supporters who fought for him in war with large portions of England land.

In this way, he divided the whole English land into mansions and established the feudal system and manorialism.

7- Declaration of the Magna Carta (1215 AD)

The 15 Most Important Middle Ages Events 4

The Magna Carta Libertatum, or the Great Charter of the Freedoms of England, was originally issued in 1215 AD. This letter is considered as the first step towards the constitutional government of England. The Magna Carta restricted the power of the Emperor and demonstrated the importance of a Constitution.

8- The Great Famine (1315-1317 CE)

All of northern Europe suffered the Great Famine, which began in 1315 and lasted for two years, until 1317. During this period a large part of the population died of hunger and disease.

In addition to the lack of food, the crime rate increased to the extreme and there were cannibalism, rape and infanticide.

The great famine caused unease in the peasants and even the members of the nobility suffered a setback. As a result, they became more bloodthirsty and gave up the cavalry oath.

9- The War of the Hundred Years (1337 AD)

The 15 Most Important Middle Ages Events 5

The Hundred Years War began in 1337, when the Kingdom of England waged war against the Kingdom of France.

While there were many periods of peace and ceasefire between England and France during the period, this war continued over and over again with different conflicts until 1453.

10- The Black Death (1348-1350 AD)

The Black Death or the Black Death Is the most threatening epidemic of the European Middle Ages, and significantly weakened the feudal system and the Church in Europe.

Huge masses of people suffered premature death due to this plague and significantly reduced the economic and political power of the kingdoms of Europe.

To take advantage of the situation, the peasants rebelled and asked for a better deal. The rest of the population became angry with the Church because no volume of prayers could save them. They also got upset with the government because the government could not help them either.

11- The Great Schism (1378-1417 AD)

The 15 Most Important Middle Ages Events 6 Chronicles of Jean Froissart

The Church suffered the first shake in 1054, when it was divided into the Eastern and Western Christian Church. The Eastern Orthodox Church believed that the Western Catholic Church was corrupt and exploitative.

Western Christendom suffered a much greater shake between 1378 and 1417, when there were three candidates for the papacy. This internal struggle for the supreme power of the papacy significantly reduced the influence and power of the Church over the secular population.

12- The Islamic Conquest

In 627 the Byzantine emperor Heraclius appeared triumphant. His forces had pushed the Persians from the very gates of Constantinople, and their advance toward Mesopotamia had inflicted a crushing defeat on their commander Rhahzadh in the battle of Nineveh.

However, less than a decade later, Heraclius' generals were beaten at the Battle of Yarmouk. His adversaries on this occasion were the Arab tribes, successfully united in a single political entity under the Prophet Muhammad.

Armenia fell to the Muslims followed by Egypt between 638 and 642. Under the Rashidun and the Umayyad Califatos the Muslims conquered an area of ​​perhaps 13 million square miles.

The expansion of the empire brought wealth, commerce and urbanization. By the tenth century Abbasid Baghdad was the largest city in the world and was home to banks, hospitals, schools and common societies in between mosques and city palaces.

13- The Rebirth of Learning in the West

In 711 the Muslims invaded Spain, transforming it into Al-Andalus. After 375 years of Islamic settlement the Christian forces in the Peninsula made substantial progress, capturing the important center of Toledo.

As a result, they came into contact with the Greco-Islamic scientific corpus and men like Gerard de Cremona and Robert de Ketton began translating it into Latin.

Curiously, not much of classical literature seems to have been translated into these particular movements (in contrast to the later renaissance in the thirteenth century).

Instead, the focus was primarily on logic and natural philosophy, indicating that there was a strong demand for them in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. There was a need to be filled by natural and philosophical works, a necessity nurtured by the schools begun by Charlemagne.

These schools developed as important centers of learning and quickly replaced the rural monastic centers as the center of intellectual study.

These gave birth to the university - corporations with separate legal personality that could set their own statutes and were not restricted in matters that could be taught or how they were organized.

14- The foundations of modern science

Modern science emerged as the triumph of three civilizations: Greek, Arabic and Latin Christian.

However, at the end of the Middle Ages (1400), the total mass of scientific knowledge was much greater than it had been at the end of the Roman Empire; An institutional home had been created for natural philosophy: the university. Scholasticism had created a kind of interrogative and curious intellectual culture; Important questions had been raised and progress had been made in its response.

Between 1150 and 1500, more literate Europeans had access to scientific materials than any of their predecessors in earlier cultures.

This allowed natural philosophy to evolve in ways that were previously unworkable and which led to the Scientific Revolution.

15- The birth of natural rights

The evolution of rights in European thought began with the"Renaissance of Law"in the late 11th and early 12th centuries.

During the 12th century there was a great resurgence of legal studies, centered around the city of Bologna in Italy. By presenting subjective definitions of Ius naturale , Canon lawyers came to see that an adequate concept of natural justice should include a concept of individual rights.

By the year 1300, lawyers in the Ius commune had developed a strong language of rights and created a series of rights derived from natural law.

During the period 1150 to 1300, they defined property rights, self-defense, non-Christians, marriage and procedure as rooted in natural law, not positive.

References

  1. Preface to the Spanish edition in The history of the world in the Middle Ages , Riu, Manuel, Madrid, Sopena, 1978.
  2. Were the Middle Ages Dark? , Anthony Esolen, Prager University, United States, 2013.


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