Middle Ages

In European history, the Middle Ages or medieval period (also spelled mediaeval or mediaeval) lasted from roughly AD 500 to 1500. It is the second of three traditional divisions of Western history: ancient, medieval, and modern. Major developments include the economic predominance of agriculture, the exploitation of the peasantry, the slowness of interregional communication, the importance of personal relationships in power structures, and the weakness of state administration. The period is sometimes subdivided into the Early Middle Ages, Late Middle Ages, and High Middle Ages, with the early medieval period alternatively known as the Dark Ages.

Key events Fall of the Western Roman EmpireSpread of IslamTreaty of VerdunEast-West SchismCrusadesMagna CartaHundred Years' WarBlack DeathFall of ConstantinopleExploration of North America Chronology Antique Late Antiquity Early modern period Renaissance The age of discovery

Population decline, counter-urbanization, the collapse of centralized authority, mass migration of tribes (mainly Germanic peoples), and Christianization, which had begun in Late Antiquity, continued into the Early Middle Ages. The movement of people led to the disintegration of the Western Roman Empire and the rise of new kingdoms. In the post-Roman world, taxes declined, the military was financed by land grants, and the intermingling of late Roman civilization and the traditions of the invaders is well documented. The Eastern Roman Empire (or Byzantine Empire) survived, but lost the Middle East and North Africa to Muslim conquerors in the 7th century. Although the Carolingian dynasty of the Franks reunited many of the Western Roman lands in the early 9th century, the Carolingian Empire quickly disintegrated into competing kingdoms that then fragmented into autonomous duchies and lordships.

During the Early Middle Ages, which began after 1000, Europe's population increased greatly as the Medieval Warm Period allowed crop yields to rise and technological and agricultural innovations introduced a "commercial revolution". Slavery all but disappeared, and peasants were able to improve their status by colonizing distant regions in exchange for economic and legal concessions. New towns developed from local trading centers, and urban artisans banded together in local guilds to protect their common interests. Western church leaders accepted papal supremacy to throw off secular influence, hastening the separation of the Western Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches and triggering the Investiture Controversy between the papacy and secular powers. With the spread of heavy cavalry, a new aristocracy stabilized its position through strict inheritance customs. In the system of feudalism, noble knights owed military service to their lords in return for the lands they had received in fief. Stone castles were built in regions where central authority was weak but state power was on the rise by the end of the period. The settlement of peasants and aristocrats from western Europe to the eastern and southern peripheries of Europe, often spurred by the crusades, led to the expansion of Latin Christianity. The spread of cathedral schools and universities stimulated a new method of intellectual discussion, with an emphasis on rational argument, known as scholasticism. Mass pilgrimages prompted the construction of huge Romanesque churches, while structural innovations led to the development of the more delicate Gothic architecture.

Calamities including a great famine and the Black Death, which reduced the population by 50 percent, began the Late Middle Ages in the 14th century. Conflicts between ethnic and social groups intensified, and local conflicts often escalated into full-scale wars such as the Hundred Years' War. By the end of the period, the Byzantine Empire and the Balkan states were conquered by a new Muslim power—the Ottoman Empire; in the Iberian Peninsula, Christian kingdoms won their centuries-long war against their Muslim neighbors. The prominence of personal faith is well documented, but the Western Schism and dissident movements condemned as heresies presented a significant challenge to traditional power structures in the Western Church. Humanist scholars began to emphasize human dignity, and early Renaissance architects and artists revived various elements of classical culture in Italy. During the late medieval century, naval expeditions in search of new trade routes ushered in the Age of Discovery.

The Roman Empire reached its maximum territorial extent during the 2nd century AD, and the next two centuries saw the slow decline of Roman control of its outlying territories. Runaway inflation, external pressure on the borders, and outbreaks of plague combined to create the Crisis of the Third Century. The army doubled in size, and military expenditures rose steadily, largely in response to the war with the Sassanid Empire. The need for revenue led to increased taxes, a more centralized and bureaucratic state administration, and a decline in the number of the curial (landowner) class. The Emperor Diocletian (r. 284–305) divided the empire into separately administered eastern and western halves in 286. This system, which eventually had two upper and two lower co-emperors (known as the Tetrarchy) stabilized imperial rule for about two decades. After a period of civil war, Constantine the Great restored internal peace and refounded the city of Byzantium as the eastern capital of Constantinople in 330.

Roman society stabilised in a new form that differed from the preceding classical period, with a widening gap between rich and poor and a decline in the vitality of smaller towns. Another change was the Christianisation of the Roman Empire accelerated by the conversion of Constantine, although Christianity emerged as the dominant religion of the empire only in the late 4th century. Debates over Christian theology intensified, and those who persisted with theological views condemned at ecumenical councils faced persecution. Heretical views survived through proselytising campaigns outside the empire or because of support from local ethnic groups; examples include Arianism among the Germanic peoples and Monophysitism in Egypt and Syria. Judaism continued to be tolerated, although legislation limited Jewish rights.

Civil wars between rival emperors diverted soldiers from the empire's frontier forces, allowing invaders to overrun the empire beginning in the mid-4th century. Although these movements of people have been described as "invasions", they were often not just military expeditions but mass migrations into the empire. In 376, hundreds of thousands of Goths fleeing the Huns were given permission by the Emperor Valens to settle on Roman territory in the Balkans. Settlement was not easy, and when Roman officials mishandled the situation, the Goths began raiding and pillaging. Valens, trying to quell the disorder, was killed fighting the Goths at the Battle of Adrianople. Alans, Vandals, and Suebi crossed into Gaul in 406 and into present-day Spain in 409; a year later, the Visigoths (a Gothic group) sacked the city of Rome. The Franks, Alemanni, and Burgundians ended up in Gaul; the Germanic groups now collectively known as the Anglo-Saxons settled in Britain, and the Vandals conquered the province of Africa. The Hunnic king Attila led invasions of the Balkans in 442 and 447, Gaul in 451, and Italy in 452, but his Hunnic confederation disintegrated after his death.

To cope with the migrations, Eastern Roman elites combined the deployment of armed forces with gifts and grants of offices to tribal leaders; Western aristocrats did not support the army and refused to pay tribute to prevent invasions by tribes. These invasions led to the division of the western part of the empire into smaller political units, ruled by the invading tribes. Fifth-century emperors were often controlled by military strongmen such as Stilicho (d. 408), Aetius (d. 454), Ricimer (d. 472), or Odoacer (d. 493), who were partly (or wholly) non-Roman. Odoacer deposed Romulus Augustulus (r. 475–76), the last Western emperor, assumed the title of rex (king), and took full control of Italy, although in theory he ruled as a representative of the Eastern emperor Zeno (r. 474–91). The Eastern Roman Empire (known as the Byzantine Empire after the fall of its western counterpart) had little ability to control the lost western territories, but its emperors maintained a claim to them.

It was certainly not until the 19th century that germ theory overtook the concept of humors and "miasmas" that could harm human health. But the common image of medieval people as unkempt, untidy, and unhygienic is false. In fact, both indoor and outdoor bathing were highly prized in Europe. People not only made and used soap at home, but frequented bathhouses—some public, some private, and others mere fronts for brothels. There were even elaborate rituals surrounding handwashing before meals, especially in aristocratic circles. Although peasants also washed their hands, members of the aristocracy used luxurious washrooms where they washed their hands while minstrels serenaded them. If they dined with the king, they waited for him to publicly bathe his hands before sitting down—proof of their powerful status. Modern historians believe that handwashing only disappeared during the supposedly more enlightened 16th century, when the fork began to replace the washed fingers of diners at Renaissance tables.

The myth persists that in the Middle Ages, unenlightened people believed the Earth was flat and feared that ships would fall off the edge of the planet. This is completely false: already in ancient Greece (12th to 9th centuries BC) it was known that the planet was a sphere, and when Christopher Columbus made his voyage to America in 1492, relatively complex astronomical and planetary knowledge was available. Why does the myth persist? Blame Washington Irving, a 19th-century American writer whose fantastic biography of Columbus was so highly regarded that the medieval Flat Earth myth was maintained.

Although travel was rudimentary compared to the modern era, racial, gender, and even sexual diversity could be found throughout medieval society. A 2019 study, for example, used DNA from bones in a plague cemetery in London to reveal a more diverse city than previously thought. Analysis of 41 people revealed seven different places of origin, people of African descent, and people with dual white European and black African heritage. Gay people were not absent from medieval societies either. Although the Catholic Church taught that homosexuality was a sin, attitudes toward same-sex desire varied. Historians point to evidence of gender nonconformity and close same-sex relationships in medieval works of art and literature. And not all medieval women were confined to domestic duties. In fact, some women became war leaders, musicians, scientists, scribes, and political power players, although education was still off-limits to most women.

The so-called “Middle Ages” is a myth that historians have been trying to debunk for years. The myth seems to stem from some authors’ use of the term “dark” to refer to everything from a 14th-century poet’s complaints about the quality of local literature to a 17th-century historian’s failed attempt to find historical sources from earlier centuries. Despite its dark reputation, everything from scholarship to art to technology flourished during the Middle Ages. This era saw the creation of everything from the first spectacles to mechanical timekeeping, the heavy plough and movable type – three inventions that would make the Industrial Revolution and the Age of Enlightenment possible. Gunpowder weapons revolutionised warfare forever, while cartographers managed to create astonishingly accurate maps of the world.

Meanwhile, the formation of guilds allowed artists to rise from the peasantry to become sought-after craftsmen, and everything from illuminated manuscripts to tapestries and sculpture thrived during the era. Heironymus Bosch, a Dutch painter known for his extravagant religious paintings, and Giotto di Bondone, whose frescoes and architecture added artistic cachet to Italian Gothic cathedrals, are just a few of the medieval artists who became famous during their time. In fact, the medievals paved the way for the Renaissance. They even had three of their own, creating an explosion of art, scientific innovation and a renewed academic world. And that's just in Europe. During the thousand years of the medieval period, China perfected the compass and invented navigation. African kingdoms, at the height of their power, engaged in complex trade, while civilizations flourished across the Americas. The Islamic world "was the envy of the world" for centuries for its advanced culture, science, medicine and statecraft, writes historian Rabia Umar Ali.

People in the Middle Ages, especially peasants, had something of a bad reputation for cleanliness. However, despite the general lack of running water and other modern conveniences, they had common expectations of personal hygiene, such as regularly washing with a basin, especially their hands, before and after eating – a matter of good manners in an age when cutlery was still a rarity for most. The better-off could bathe more frequently, and castles, manor houses, monasteries and towns offered their residents better toilets with better drainage and sometimes even had running water using the old combination of cisterns and gravity. Hygiene standards changed from time and place, and even between individuals, just as they do today. In this article we review hygiene habits and customs in medieval Europe.

In villages, water came from springs, rivers, lakes, wells and cisterns. Indeed, most settlements had developed where they did because of their proximity to a reliable water source. This reason also applied to the embankment of castles, which had additional water from masonry-lined wells sunk in their inner baileys, sometimes accessed from within the keep for added security in the event of attack. Of more than 420 castles studied in the UK, 80% had one well within them and a quarter had two or more. The well could be very deep: the well at Beeston Castle in England was 124 m deep. Some castles, such as Rochester in England, had the facility to draw water from the well at each level of the keep by a system of buckets and ropes running along the inside of the walls. Cisterns collected rainwater or natural seepage from the ground, and sometimes a system of lead, wooden or ceramic pipes carried water from a cistern to lower parts of the castle, such as the keep or kitchens, as at Chester Castle in England. Another system of collecting supplementary water involved pipes on the roof to drain rainwater into a cistern. Finally, sedimentation tanks were sometimes used to improve water quality by allowing sediment to settle before the cleaner water was drained away. Many monasteries also had these facilities, or at least some of them.

As cities grew in number and size across Europe from the 11th century onwards, hygiene became a daily challenge. Fortunately, many of the larger cities were often situated near rivers or coastlines to facilitate trade, so water supply and waste disposal were less of a problem. Canals, water pipes, wells and fountains provided (relatively) fresh water to the urban population. They were maintained by local councils, which also imposed sanitary measures on local businesses and the general population. For example, it was often mandatory to clean the part of the street directly in front of one's house or shop. Towns and cities might have public baths; Nuremberg, which appears to have been one of the cleanest cities in Europe thanks to its enlightened council, had 14. Local authorities also took emergency measures such as removing corpses in times of plague.

Since running water was so scarce, and considering the physical effort involved in fetching a bucket from a well or nearby water source, it is not surprising that taking a full bath every day was not a feasible option for most people. In fact, since baths were considered a luxury due to the cost of fuel to heat the water, monks, for example, were forbidden from taking more than two or three baths a year. For those who did bathe, it was most often done in a half barrel or wooden tub. It was not filled very much, with most “baths” being done by pouring a jug of hot water over the body, rather than full immersion. A gentleman might have a padded tub for comfort and often travelled with one, such was the uncertainty of finding comfort on the road. However, the vast majority of people were content with a quick bath with a basin of cold water. Since 80% of the population did physically demanding work on the land, they probably washed in some form every day.

Medieval peasants have long been the butt of jokes about hygiene, dating back to medieval clerical treatises which often described them as little more than brutish animals, although it was customary for almost everyone to wash their face and hands in the morning. An early wash was also desirable because fleas and lice were a common problem. Straw bedding, which was rarely changed, was a haven for vermin, even if some preventative measures were taken such as mixing herbs and flowers such as basil, chamomile, lavender and mint with the straw. SOMETIMES THEY USED SOAP AND WASHED THEIR HAIR WITH AN ALKALINE SOLUTION LIKE THE ONE OBTAINED BY MIXING LIME AND SALT. Since most people ate without knives, forks or spoons, it was also a common convention to wash their hands before and after eating. Sometimes they used soap and washed their hair with an alkaline solution such as that obtained by mixing lime and salt. They cleaned their teeth with twigs (especially hazel) and small pieces of woollen cloth. If they shaved, they did so once a week, except for monks, who shaved each other daily. Since medieval mirrors were not yet very large or clear, most people found it easier to go to the barber when needed.

For an ordinary peasant, washing was most likely just to wash off the grime of the day, but an aristocrat had to take care of a few more details to gain favor in polite society. Social gatherings, such as meals, where one could get close to one's peers, warranted special attention to hygiene, and there were even rules of etiquette drawn up as helpful guides for the unimaginative diner, as here, from Les Countenance de Table: ...and that the fingers are clean and the nails well cared for. Once a morsel has been touched, it should not be returned to the plate. You should not touch your ears or nose. Teeth should not be cleaned with a sharp iron while eating. It should be ordered by regulation that you do not put a plate in your mouth. He who wants to drink must first finish what he has in his mouth. And first wipe your lips. Once the table is cleared, wash your hands and drink. (Singman, 154) Monks had their own special areas for washing, including at Cluny Abbey in France, which had a large wash basin or sink where they washed their hands before meals. We know from records that they had towels, which were changed twice a week, while the water was only changed once a week. The great hall of a castle or manor house would often have a similar large sink for visitors to wash their hands in. In short, it can be said that the common image in modern films and books of dirty peasants for whom washing was a form of torture is not entirely accurate and people of all classes kept themselves as clean as their circumstances would allow. However, it is also true that when medieval Europeans, even those of the upper class, came into contact with other cultures, such as the Byzantines or the Muslims during the Crusades, the Europeans often lagged behind them in matters of hygiene.

In villages or on farms, peasants would use a cesspool for their excrement, which they would then collect and dump into the fields as manure. In some cases, there would be a small hut for some privacy and a wooden bench with a hole in it which provided some comfort (as well as reducing the chances of falling into the cesspool). Chamber pots were used at night and then emptied into the cesspool. People had to make do with a handful of hay, grass, straw or moss as there was no toilet paper or any other kind. Castle toilets, also known as outhouses or latrines, were much like those anywhere else, although waste was channelled through a hole into a cesspool at the foot of the castle walls or into the moat itself (an added defensive feature not often discussed in military history). Sometimes there were two adjoining privies, and these might empty into a channel which was regularly flushed with water from a diverted stream. Monasteries often had this same arrangement, with the privies grouped together. Cluny Abbey also had a bathhouse with twelve baths with 45 such cubicles. Castles might also have triangular urinals, particularly in the tower of the surrounding walls.

In cities, the better-off had their own toilet in the backyard or even in their own house, with a channel or chute to evacuate waste into the yard. Where the poorer classes lived in greater concentration, households often shared one or more outdoor toilets, the waste from which ended up in a common cesspool. Stone-lined, cesspools were also used to dump all kinds of household waste and were regularly emptied by a dedicated, unenviable worker. There were rules against dumping waste into the street, but these were often ignored, and a heavy rain or, worse still, a flood, could wreak havoc on the city's sanitation system and contaminate the water supply. Since there were also many horses and donkeys in the cities, and farm animals were transported to other places or to butcher shops, the streets were often dirty and this, combined with the ever-present rats, mice and other vermin, made urban centres the perfect breeding ground for disease.

The Black Death, which peaked between 1347 and 1352, was just one (albeit the deadliest) of many waves of plague and disease that swept through medieval Europe. Carried by fleas and rats, bubonic plague killed between 30% and 50% of the population wherever it took hold. Poor medieval hygiene undoubtedly contributed to its spread, but other factors, such as a complete lack of understanding of its causes and a lack of effective quarantines, were also at play. It is also important to note that many medieval towns, such as Milan and Bohemia, survived relatively unscathed, so it is not so easy to attribute the spread of the plague solely to poor hygiene and sanitation. In addition to the terrible plagues and epidemics that seemed to spring up out of nowhere with alarming regularity, there were often equally deadly dangers lurking in everyday places. Poor food preparation and storage posed a particular health risk. Epidemics of diarrhoea (ergotism), known in medieval times as St Anthony's fire, were caused by the consumption of rye poisoned by fungi. Skin diseases were also particularly common, although they may have been due as much to poor diet as to poor hygiene.