Definitions for Middle Ages
mid·dle ages

Princeton's WordNetRate this definition:4.3 / 8 votes

1. Middle Ages, Dark Agesnoun

   the period of history between classical antiquity and the Italian Renaissance

WiktionaryRate this definition:3.2 / 10 votes

1. Middle Agesnoun

   The period of time in Europe between the decline of the Roman Empire and the revival of letters (the Renaissance) or, according to Henry Hallam, the period beginning with the sixth and ending with the fifteenth century.

WikipediaRate this definition:2.0 / 2 votes

1. Middle Ages

   In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or Medieval Period lasted from the 5th to the late 15th century. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and merged into the Renaissance and the Age of Discovery. The Middle Ages is the middle period of the three traditional divisions of Western history: classical antiquity, the medieval period, and the modern period. The medieval period is itself subdivided into the Early, High, and Late Middle Ages. Population decline, counterurbanisation, collapse of centralized authority, invasions, and mass migrations of tribes, which had begun in Late Antiquity, continued in the Early Middle Ages. The large-scale movements of the Migration Period, including various Germanic peoples, formed new kingdoms in what remained of the Western Roman Empire. In the 7th century, North Africa and the Middle East—once part of the Byzantine Empire—came under the rule of the Umayyad Caliphate, an Islamic empire, after conquest by Muhammad's successors. Although there were substantial changes in society and political structures, the break with classical antiquity was not complete. The still-sizeable Byzantine Empire, Rome's direct continuation, survived in the Eastern Mediterranean and remained a major power. The empire's law code, the Corpus Juris Civilis or "Code of Justinian", was rediscovered in Northern Italy in the 11th century. In the West, most kingdoms incorporated the few extant Roman institutions. Monasteries were founded as campaigns to Christianise pagan Europe continued. The Franks, under the Carolingian dynasty, briefly established the Carolingian Empire during the later 8th and early 9th centuries. It covered much of Western Europe but later succumbed to the pressures of internal civil wars combined with external invasions: Vikings from the north, Magyars from the east, and Saracens from the south. During the High Middle Ages, which began after 1000, the population of Europe increased greatly as technological and agricultural innovations allowed trade to flourish and the Medieval Warm Period climate change allowed crop yields to increase. Manorialism, the organisation of peasants into villages that owed rent and labour services to the nobles, and feudalism, the political structure whereby knights and lower-status nobles owed military service to their overlords in return for the right to rent from lands and manors, were two of the ways society was organised in the High Middle Ages. The Crusades, first preached in 1095, were military attempts by Western European Christians to regain control of the Holy Land from Muslims. Kings became the heads of centralised nation-states, reducing crime and violence but making the ideal of a unified Christendom more distant. Intellectual life was marked by scholasticism, a philosophy that emphasised joining faith to reason, and by the founding of universities. The theology of Thomas Aquinas, the paintings of Giotto, the poetry of Dante and Chaucer, the travels of Marco Polo, and the Gothic architecture of cathedrals such as Chartres are among the outstanding achievements toward the end of this period and into the Late Middle Ages. The Late Middle Ages was marked by difficulties and calamities including famine, plague, and war, which significantly diminished the population of Europe; between 1347 and 1350, the Black Death killed about a third of Europeans. Controversy, heresy, and the Western Schism within the Catholic Church paralleled the interstate conflict, civil strife, and peasant revolts that occurred in the kingdoms. Cultural and technological developments transformed European society, concluding the Late Middle Ages and beginning the early modern period.

ChatGPTRate this definition:0.0 / 0 votes

1. middle ages

   The Middle Ages, also known as the medieval period, is a historical era in Europe that lasted from the 5th to the 15th century, beginning with the collapse of the Roman Empire and ending with the dawn of the Renaissance. It is characterized by feudalism, the rise of Christianity and Islam, and significant periods such as the Dark Ages and the Crusades.

WikidataRate this definition:3.6 / 11 votes

1. Middle Ages

   In European history, the Middle Ages, or Medieval period, lasted from the 5th to the 15th century. It began with the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, and was followed by the Renaissance and the Age of Discovery. The Middle Ages is the middle period of the traditional division of Western history into Antiquity, Medieval, and Modern periods. The period is subdivided into the Early, the High, and the Late Middle Ages. Depopulation, deurbanization, and barbarian invasions, which had begun in Late Antiquity, continued in the Early Middle Ages. The barbarian invaders formed new kingdoms in what remained of the Western Roman Empire. In the 7th century, North Africa and the Middle East, once part of the Eastern Roman Empire, became an Islamic Empire after conquest by Muhammad's successors. Although there were substantial changes in society and political structures, the break with Antiquity was not complete. The still sizeable Byzantine Empire survived and remained a major power. The empire's law code, the Code of Justinian, was widely admired later in the Middle Ages. In the West, most kingdoms incorporated extant Roman institutions, while monasteries were founded as Christianity expanded in Western Europe. The Franks, under the Carolingian dynasty, established an empire covering much of Western Europe; the Carolingian Empire endured until the 9th century, when it succumbed to the pressures of internal civil wars combined with external invasions—Vikings from the north, Magyars from the east, and Saracens from the south.

The Nuttall EncyclopediaRate this definition:3.0 / 3 votes

1. Middle Ages

   is a term used in connection with European history to denote the period beginning with the fall of the Roman Empire in 476, and closing with the invention of printing, the discovery of America, and the revival of learning in the 15th century.

Military Dictionary and GazetteerRate this definition:2.0 / 1 vote

1. middle ages

   The ages or period of time about equally distant from the decline of the Roman empire and the revival of letters in Europe, or from the 8th to the 15th century of the Christian era.

Matched Categories

1. • Historic Period

How to pronounce Middle Ages?

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How to say Middle Ages in sign language?

Numerology

1. Chaldean Numerology

   The numerical value of Middle Ages in Chaldean Numerology is: 6

2. Pythagorean Numerology

   The numerical value of Middle Ages in Pythagorean Numerology is: 7

Examples of Middle Ages in a Sentence

1. Jerome K. Jerome:

   I attribute the quarrelsome nature of the Middle Ages young men entirely to the want of the soothing weed.

2. Hubert Nienhoff:

   Now we're bringing in multiple uses for stadiums again, like shops and conference halls, in the future they will not be outside the city but, something like the cathedrals of the Middle Ages, they will be a vital part of city life.

3. Lisa Ensinger:

   Once you say you can’t do one piece of music because of a text – you open a door that will basically shut out large quantities of music and music history, you take out Bach’s work, most of Mozart’s work, you take out everything from the Middle Ages because it’s all sacred.

4. Vilhjlmur Stefnsson:

   The philosophers of the Middle Ages demonstrated both that the Earth did not exist and also that it was flat. Today they are still arguing about whether the world exists, but they no longer dispute about whether it is flat.

5. Andre Maurois:

   We owe to the Middle Ages the two worst inventions of humanity - gunpowder and romantic love.

References

1. ^ Princeton's WordNet
   http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=Middle Ages
2. ^ Wiktionary
   https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Middle_Ages
3. ^ Wikipedia
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Ages
4. ^ ChatGPT
   https://chat.openai.com
5. ^ Wikidata
   https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?search=Middle Ages
6. ^ The Nuttall Encyclopedia
   https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/12342/pg12342-images.html#MiddleAges
7. ^ Military Dictionary and Gazetteer
   https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/59563/pg59563-images.html