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1. Middle Ages
   The Middle Ages is the term applied by Renaissance writers to the time between the glorious ancient world and their own brilliance. Dates vary simply because the Middle Ages happened at different times in different parts of Europe. The term medieval may apply to anything from the Fall of Rome, which itself is a messy date, to the start of the Renaissance. Italy is a good place to mark as the centre of Europe during this time, because Europe became medieval as the Roman Empire fell back to Rome, and the Renaissance began in the city states of northern Italy and spread outwards. Thus England, being far from Italy, was medieval for much longer than Florence or Venice.
2. Middle Ages -- European Middle Ages
   The High Middle Ages was a period of great religious movements. The Crusades, which have already been mentioned, have an undeniable religious aspect. Monastic reform was similarly a religious movement effected by monks and elites. Other groups sought to participate in new forms of religious life. Landed elites financed the construction of new parish churches in the European countryside, which increased the Church's impact upon the daily lives of peasants. Cathedral canons adopted monastic rules, groups of peasants and laypeople abandoned their possessions to live like the Apostles, and people formulated ideas about their religion that were deemed heretical.
3. Middle Ages -- Late Middle Ages
   The Late Middle Ages were a period initiated by calamities and upheavals. During this time, agriculture was affected by a climate change that has been documented by climate historians, and was felt by contemporaries in the form of periodic famines, including the Great Famine of 1315-1317. The Black Death, a bacterial disease that spread among the malnourished populace like wildfire, killed as much as a third of the population in the mid-14th century, in some regions the toll was as high as one half of the population. Towns were especially hard-hit because of the crowded conditions. Large areas of land were left sparsely inhabited, and in some places fields were left unworked. As a consequence of the sudden decline in available labourers, the price of wages rose as landlords sought to entice workers to their fields.
4. Middle Ages -- Early Middle Ages
   The Middle Ages is like no other period in The Norton Anthology of English Literature in terms of the time span it covers. Caedmon's Hymn, the earliest English poem to survive as a text (NAEL 8, 1.25-27), belongs to the latter part of the seventh century. The morality play, Everyman, is dated "after 1485" and probably belongs to the early-sixteenth century. In addition, for the Middle Ages, there is no one central movement or event such as the English Reformation, the Civil War, or the Restoration around which to organize a historical approach to the period.
5. Middle Ages -- High Middle Ages
   During the High Middle Ages the church, organized into an elaborate hierarchy with the pope as its unequivocal head, was the most sophisticated governing institution in western Europe. Not only did the papacy exercise direct political control over the domain lands of central and northern Italy, but through diplomacy and the administration of justice in the extensive system of ecclesiastical courts it ... exercised a directive power throughout Europe. In addition, the monastic orders grew and flourished, and they, too, became fully involved with the secular world. The old Benedictine houses were embedded in the network of feudal alliances; new orders such as the Cistercians were famous as drainers of marshland and clearers of forest. Even such movements as the Fransciscans, dedicated to voluntary poverty and renunciation, soon became thoroughly engaged in the newly emergent urban life. No longer did the church see itself as the heavenly city in exile; it was at the center of existence.
6. Dark Ages -- Middle Ages
   The Dark Ages were anything but dark in other parts of the world. The Muslims in the Middle East and North Africa studied and improved on the works of the ancient Greeks while civilization flourished in sub-Saharan Africa, China, India, and the Americas.
7. Age of Enlightenment -- Middle Ages
   The invention of the printing press and the reformation led by Martin Luther were the beginning of the end for the Dark and Middle Ages. The Renaissance had begun. The idea of liberty, freedom and individualism was its driving force. A nation based on the inalienable rights of individuals was born-The United States of America.
8. Manorialism -- Middle Ages
   Manorialism describes the basic economic unit in the feudal society of the middle ages. The manor's function was to provide a living for a knight while he fulfilled his military obligations to his overlord.
9. Middle Ages -- Periods
   The Middle Ages were a period in Europe dating from the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West, around the 5th century. However, the fixing of dates for the beginning and end of the Middle Ages is arbitrary. According to the Norton Anthology, "Medieval social theory held that society was made up of three 'estates': the nobility, composed of a small hereditary aristocracy,...,the church, whose duty was to look after the spiritual welfare of that body, and everyone else..."( Norton 76).
10. Middle Ages -- Life
    The Medieval Village For most peasants in the Middle Ages, life centered around the village. The village was usually part of a manor run by a lord or someone of noble birth or a church or an abbey. Most peasants never ventured out of the village during their lifetime.

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