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The Middle Ages is a very broad concept in historical terms. Usually the history of the medieval West, the Catholic world, is divided into two periods: Dark Ages, which lasted approximately from the 5th to the 10th century, and the High Middle Ages, which began at the turn of the millennium and ended in different countries of Western Europe at different times, from the 13th to the 17th centuries. Another important intermediate period is often distinguished - the Early Middle Ages, the time of the formation of the structures of feudal society, which lasted approximately from the 10th to the 12th centuries.

Almost five hundred years in the history of Europe after the fall of the Western Roman Empire is traditionally referred to as the Dark Ages. The name is partly fair, although it deliberately sets a certain negative attitude towards this historical period.

Dark Ages- this is the period from the 5th to the 10th centuries, the time when a new Christian society was born slowly and hard, with huge losses and suffering, on the ruins of the Roman Empire.

This is the time of the Great Migration of Peoples, when the expanses of Europe were filled with hordes of nomadic tribes - young barbarian peoples seeking a new life in new lands. This is the time of instantly arising and rapidly disintegrating kingdoms, held by the power and power of the rulers - military leaders. Such was the leader of the Mongol tribe of the Huns, Attila, whose horse hordes mercilessly tormented the lands of the former Empire. Such was Charlemagne, founder of the mighty Frankish Empire, heir to the greatness of Rome. Such were many other tribal leaders and kings - some more, some less successful on the battlefield and in politics.

The Dark Ages are an era of strength, not wisdom, war, not diplomacy.

Dark Ages- historical period in Western Europe in the V - X centuries.

The Great Migration of Peoples - the movement of various tribes in the IV - VII centuries. from the periphery of the Roman Empire to the center, as well as within the Empire itself

Attila is one of the most powerful military leaders of the 5th century. The leader of the union of the Hunnic tribes since 434. Died in 453. He also entered European legends under the name of Etzel

Charlemagne (742 - 814) - king and emperor of the Franks, creator of the first empire in Europe

During this period, the foundations of the society of previous centuries were completely destroyed, the "construction site" was cleared for the construction of a new civilization - the Christian world. A new factor has appeared in history, the significance of which has never before been so great in all spheres of society - religion. Christianity in the Dark Ages was not just one of the components of public life - faith was the main engine of all human life. It is unlikely that another culture will be found where the role of the personal faith of each person, on the one hand, and religious institutions, on the other, would be so comprehensive.

Why is the name "Dark Ages" as justified as it is unfairly cruel? As far as the material side of life is concerned, it was really a time of complete decline, when society as such actually ceased to exist. The economy and trade found themselves in the deepest crisis, production stopped in its development and technically even rolled back compared to the era of antiquity. Agriculture could not fully meet the need for food, and Europe was constantly shaken by epidemics of hunger and disease. Plague - a terrible scourge of medieval Europe - mowed down entire settlements and regions. Construction, communications, art, literature - all this fell into decay for a long time.

But in terms of spirituality, the Dark Ages are the period of the birth of a new type of personality, a new mentality, both individual and collective. At a time when collecting earthly treasures proved impossible, people, following the commandment of Christ, began to collect heavenly treasures. The Christian religion turned out to be the only support that helped a person not to lose heart and endure with humility all the trials that fell to his lot. Hunger, attacks by barbarians, diseases - all this seemed to the Christian to be God's test, sent down to prepare believers for the "thousand-year kingdom of Christ" promised in the Gospel. Thinkers turned not to the nature of man - a transient phenomenon, but to the nature of the divine. Theological science, which flourished in the High Middle Ages, began in the monasteries of the Dark Ages. All knowledge of the medieval man about the world was based on knowledge about God. By the 11th century, the unique spiritual baggage accumulated in the Dark Ages and the Early Middle Ages turned out to be quite comparable with the cultural heritage of the ancient era. Medieval society developed its own view of the world and the place of man in it. This self-determination, along with objective economic reasons, made it possible to start an economic, and after it, a cultural upsurge.

It was in the era of the Dark Ages that new nations were formed, united according to the territorial and linguistic principle. Before the emergence of nation-states, one of the first examples of which was France in the Middle Ages, it was still far away, but society had already taken the first steps in this direction by the 8th century.

The Dark Ages and the Early Middle Ages, like no other era, is a time of opposites in the spiritual, religious sphere. Disagreements between the Old Testament and the New Testament gave rise to the most severe internal conflict in the soul of a medieval person, and at the same time, both Testaments coexisted perfectly with each other. Below we will consider in more detail various aspects of the specific spiritual experience of the Middle Ages, which fully manifested itself already in the Dark Ages.

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The Middle Ages, the "dark times"... Many people associate this era with the fires of the Inquisition, cruel internecine wars, bloody crusades, terrible epidemics, ignorance and fanaticism. However, we should not forget that it was in that distant era, from which we are separated by almost a millennium, that Dante Alighieri created The Divine Comedy, recognized by the descendants of the pearl of world literature, the magnificent St. Peter's Cathedral was erected, universities were opened in large cities, including Oxford and Cambridge.

But even this is not the main thing. In the Middle Ages, slowly, with great difficulty, science and technological progress entered the lives of ordinary people, radically changing their usual way of life. Horseshoes, invented by the Romans, are now attached to the hooves of animals with nails, a more advanced plow, which became widespread during this period, gives impetus to the development of agriculture. After all, now it is possible to cultivate rocky, clayey plots of land, to receive generous harvests. For the peasants, who made up the majority of the population of Europe, a rich harvest was the only way to survive, to feed their families. Guilds of artisans were created in the cities, which, by the standards of their contemporaries, worked wonders. It was then that for the first time it was possible to produce sheet glass. During this era, workshops were organized for the production of Venetian glass, which is still highly valued in the world. For quite a long time, glass beads were equated with jewelry made of semi-precious stones.

For the first time, cast iron was smelted, which very quickly found wide application: cast iron guns were stronger, pipes were more reliable, dishes were more convenient and cheaper. Together with gunpowder, the invention of which is attributed to the monk Berthold Schwarz, these achievements led to the creation of small arms. Ships sheathed with iron sheets conquered the oceans, the trade borders of states began to expand rapidly, heralding the era of the Great Geographical Discoveries.

It was during these difficult times that Copernicus created his heliocentric theory of the world, and Paracelsus, Ibn Sina and Vizaly tried to understand what processes take place in the human body and looked for new ways to treat various diseases.

And, finally, it was the Middle Ages that gave us the brilliant Renaissance, the great da Vinci, Botticelli, Giotto, Raphael, Michelangelo...

The heyday of art came at the end of the Middle Ages. The beginning of the era, called the Early Middle Ages in historical science, is considered by Russian and world medieval studies to be the collapse under the onslaught of the Germanic tribes of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century BC. n. e. This period lasted about five centuries (approximately from 500 to 1000) and was marked by a grandiose migration of peoples: numerous Germanic tribes settled on the lands of the Romans, which subsequently led to a confrontation between cultures, religions, languages ​​and resulted in numerous bloody conflicts. As a result of the resettlement, the northern Gothic tribes ended up in southern Europe, the Asians, the Huns, settled in present-day France and on the western coast of the Black Sea, and the Vandals from Germany reached the territories of present-day Algeria and Tunisia, and from there migrated to Italy and Corsica.

The peoples of the Iberian Peninsula, almost completely conquered by the Moors, began to fight against the enslavers. The continuous strife of the Christian rulers significantly interfered with the liberation movement, but, in spite of everything, in 1492 the Moors were finally expelled from the Iberian Peninsula.

At the same time, after the withdrawal of the Roman legions, German attacks on the British Isles became more frequent. Anglo-Saxon troops landed in Kent and by the 10th century. became absolute masters of Britain.

In the south of Europe, the Byzantine Empire gained more and more influence. The vast territory of Western and Central Europe was occupied by the Frankish kingdom, whose influence on the course of history was very significant.

Without exaggeration, the High Middle Ages can be called the era of the Crusades and the power of the Church. This period lasted from about 1000 to 1300. The flourishing of agriculture, trade and crafts led to a population explosion - the population of Europe increased markedly. Naturally, this entailed significant changes in politics, economics, spiritual life and art. Kievan Rus held back the invasion of the Mongol hordes with all its might, but many states of Eastern Europe were conquered and plundered by the Asians.

The late Middle Ages began with terrible disasters: the Great Famine of 1315-1317. and the plague epidemic, which wiped out more than half of Europe's population. These disasters caused numerous peasant uprisings. The bloody and brutal Hundred Years War claimed thousands more lives.

A series of terrible events of the era was crowned by the Renaissance, which gave the exhausted peoples the light of science and culture, new knowledge and the opening of trade routes.

The Middle Ages gave us magnificent buildings, canvases, sculptures, poetic and philosophical treatises, knightly ballads, and also ... tea, chocolate, tobacco, potatoes ... This era presented descendants with hundreds of mysteries, some of which have not yet been answered . It is about them that will be discussed in the book that you hold in your hands. Here the inquisitive reader will find many interesting, sometimes paradoxical facts about the past and will be able to draw parallels with modern life. After all, history, as you know, moves in a spiral.

From the Stone Age to the Space Age, every era in human history has striven for progress. Well, almost every era. The Dark Ages are an exception to the rule - everyone knows that after the fall of Rome, the world stopped developing and "plunged into darkness" that lasted for centuries. It was a period of intellectual and economic darkness, where everyone turned into either a brutal warrior or a dirty ragamuffin.

Yes, maybe you are sitting and want to play an online game on the theme of the Middle Ages and also waiting there for the usual dirt, poverty and devastation, maybe it's just a flash and not a full-fledged 3D game, but just online gaming, but maybe it's all fiction and you better play a fantasy saga? Historical games, like the story itself, in fact, a story that has come down to us in the form of old books, stories of great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-witnesses... And is it worth believing?

At least that's what we're told. Although the Dark Ages were definitely darker than the modern ones (just like in the Bronze Age, no one knew what a telephone was yet), they were by no means too hopeless, as they are usually made out to be. In the name of correcting some of the popular misconceptions about this period, let's look at the myths that you probably believe.

#1 Society was brutal and living conditions abhorrent

The reasons why this period of time was called the Dark Ages:
The society had very few commodities and virtually no infrastructure. Warlords and barbarians roamed the land, every surface was covered with a layer of mud, and the average life expectancy of the main part of the population was very short.

Meanwhile, the church widely used torture on people so that they began to believe in Christ, and, perhaps even after that, continued to mock them on any occasion. Honestly, try searching for a movie or book about this era and we guarantee you won't find a bunch of smiling kids on any cover.

Reality:

In fact, the standard of living was quite good even if the person was very poor. In fact, at that time, mankind managed to achieve a better level in philanthropy and health care, as well as to introduce a new kind of charity performed on an almost daily basis.

For example, during the Dark Ages, slavery ceased to be very popular. The Romans are known to have loved some of their slaves, but improvements in farming technology and better trained draft animals gradually made forced human labor less necessary. Instead, the classes that were probably previously enslaved became mostly either unpaid workers or, at worst, serfs. The latter were not yet technically free (they could not leave the land without the permission of their Master), but they enjoyed much more freedom than slaves.

Also, it must be admitted that, despite the large number of cases of burning people at the stake, Christianity began to develop at that time, and there was also a sharp increase in charitable organizations. Almost immediately after the representatives of the church established themselves in Europe, they began to form a widespread system of charitable organizations that distributed food, clothing and money to the needy. It may not be coincidental that the first forms of hospices, hospitals, and shelters for the poor were invented during the Dark Ages, setting the stage for the creation of a public health system.

Don't get us wrong, if you were to go back to the Middle Ages in a time machine, you would hate this time because it would only take the locals five minutes to kill you for witchcraft. But the term "dark ages" is generally not used by scientists, because there is not much evidence that that life was worse than in the periods before or after that age (but more on that later). It has been used because popular culture only remembers the violent parts of it, where it is said that people were going to watch men beat each other with horses just for fun. And while we're on the subject...

#2 Entertainment in the Middle Ages consisted of jousting and sword fighting.

If you have been to a restaurant in medieval times, then you know that when medieval people wanted to relax after a hard day's work of shedding blood, their most preferred form of entertainment was to shed more blood.

Therefore, when Europe was not engulfed in another war, the subjects of various kingdoms found other ways for themselves to satiate their notorious bloodthirstiness and thirst for battle. Naturally, they preferred games that resembled war as much as possible - jousting was obviously the most popular, but various duels and "clubbing" also became widespread.

Reality:

Tournaments (one can mentally imagine what the historical blood sport looked like) in reality simply could not be held during this period. Real knightly stirrups were not yet known in most European countries, so the lack of support for the legs led to the fact that the participants in the battles were easily knocked down (or rather, from horses) like sacks of potatoes with the lightest blows. In fact, jousting tournaments were, in fact, military training until the end of the 11th century.

But the reality is even less amazing: even in the darkest ages of the Middle Ages, there were innocent family fun. Compared to the eras before and after them, the sports and games of the Dark Ages were decidedly less militant. Many of the things that people from the Middle Ages did for fun are very similar to what we still do today (when we don't spend all day on the Internet). In fact archery, boxing and rugby were either invented or perfected during the Dark Ages.

Oh, and how do you like this: in the Scandinavian sagas, starting from the ninth century, they describe terrible Vikings frolicking merrily on ice rinks and participating in ski races. And let's not forget the really popular games of the time like bowling, dancing, tag games and horseshoe tossing. Yes, horseshoe throwing was in vogue in the Middle Ages. Compare this to the gladiatorial slaughter that took place during Roman times or the tournaments that emerged during the late Middle Ages. So which century deserves the nickname "dark"?

No. 3. At this time, cruel wars were constantly going on

The reason the Dark Ages were so named was because then, after the fall of the glorious Roman Empire, the dismal years supposedly began. When the Roman Empire was destroyed by numerous attacks from the barbarian hordes in 476 AD, there was an instant shortage of a nation that could easily evade the attacks of the popular militias. Upon discovering the sudden absence of such a large state, various leaders from all over Europe immediately breathed a sigh of relief and began, in a chaotic manner, to fight against each other.

Soon the entire continent was in an endless state of total war, with princes and warlords vying for control of each other's dominions.

Reality:

Of course, then there was a struggle. It's very possible. But what people tend to forget is the scale of that fighting.
If you compare the battles during the Dark Ages to, say, the Roman Wars, it's like comparing a fight between two toddlers to a bandit fight: in both cases, the warriors were trained to fight, but in the first of them, everything looked as if millions of people just argued among themselves.

Let's be clear: Rome was great when it came to large-scale battles. During the first war with Carthage, a Roman fleet of 100,000 men was lost in one day. Rome responded to this catastrophic loss calmly by sending more troops to fight and continuing the war for another decade and a half. During the second Carthaginian War, Rome lost 400,000 soldiers without blinking an eye. The Roman Empire was not interested in outmaneuvering its opponents, it simply held out longer. If Rome had any problems, she sent troops to solve them, and did not withdraw back until they had completed their task.

As the Roman Empire was broken, Europe's economy became more and more localized. Without an intercontinental tax and a sensible division of labor, the gigantic standing army has become an artifact of a bygone era. This sudden lack of financial infrastructure allowed dozens of kings and princes to fill the vacant seats in Roman power with limited funds. Of course, they would probably want to bring a million men with them across the continent, like a legion, but they simply did not have the money to pay for the services of such a huge army.

Most leaders responded to this problem by introducing a feudal system, they divided their land holdings, allocating separate plots of land for military forces. Since very few of them took possession of large tracts of land from the very beginning, this forced them to keep their armies relatively small (even the most massive military forces in the last stages of the era, well, if they numbered 20,000 soldiers). Most of the armies were like big bands. Thus, wars in the Dark Ages took place as short skirmishes between tiny forces. There were no big campaigns, no ten years of fighting, no hellish life in the war-torn lands, just short skirmishes between two gangs of guys who then returned to herd cattle and plow their fields.

But that brings us to another of the most common myths, that...

#4 The Dark Ages Were in the "Intellectual Abyss"

Say what you like, but the Dark Ages would not be so called just because a few barbarians looted their way through Europe. The real reason why this era was devoid of any light is because the people, for the most part, were very illiterate and superstitious as well. Scientists (not to mention people who could read) were few and far between, and any desire for literature was actively suppressed, since it had no use in agricultural work. In fact, writing any story would result in you probably being burned as a witch.

Reality:

The reason why this century was practically erased from the history of mankind is that no one took into account everything that happened during this period. The image of the Middle Ages is no different from the transitional intellectual period. Of course, the general population did not know how to read and write, but such examples can be found in every era up to modern history. On the other hand, scientists were simply having fun in the Dark Ages.

The Carolingian Minuscule became the standard cursive script introduced by Emperor Charlemagne in the eighth century and revolutionized the whole concept of reading and writing. Before the Carolingians, minuscules and the writing of most scribblers were illegible and conducted without any rules. Upper case mixed with lower case and random placement of separating characters were quite common, and some scholars expressed the rules of spelling and alphabet only as a polite suggestion. The standardized, fast, and efficient minuscule of the Carolingians introduced revolutionary concepts such as cases, punctuation, and spaces between words. This greatly speeded up both writing and reading, because it made it faster, because now it was not necessary to peer at absurd squiggles for hours for a long time.

The introduction of the Carolingian minuscule made it possible to start producing documents and books. And also, perhaps the most important reason why so many ancient texts survived was that Carolingian scholars and translators found all the incorrectly written books, plays, and documents, carefully corrected the errors in them, copied and reproduced them using their new super handwriting.

In terms of major innovations in the history of information transmission, the writing of documents in a human-readable form and their relatively rapid production should probably be compared to the Gutenberg printing press and the Internet. But no one ever remembers the Carolingian minuscule, because it was in the Dark Ages.
But in the end it leads us to...

In fact, thanks to the workers of the "Dark Time", we sometimes read medieval manuscripts

#5 The Dark Ages Were a Real Thing

Well, maybe there were some unusual events in the Dark Ages, but even in the most terrible eras, there was always something like that. All in all, there must be a very good reason for christening an entire era with that name. So historians must have had some good reason to come up with the term "dark ages", right?

Reality:

Ha, of course not! Here's a shocking twist: historians have never had anything to do with the use of the term "Dark Ages", just some of them have been misled into accepting the term. As we mentioned earlier, in those days, medieval historians tried to avoid this name, preferring to use more neutral terms, such as "migration of peoples", "Early Middle Ages" or simply "Middle Ages" depending on what the centuries-old meant "Dark Ages". ".

And all because the Dark Ages never existed. The general notion of them is a complete and utter fabrication, a hackneyed, bewildered writer. The term "Dark Ages" was first used in the 14th century by Petrarch, an Italian poet with a penchant for Roman nostalgia. Petrarch used it to describe just about every event that took place after the fall of Rome. He didn't make arguments about the "darkness" that was over hundreds of years of human achievement by virtue of the fact that there was enough historical evidence about whatever events happened then. He built all his arguments on the basis of the general opinion that life has become bad since Rome was destroyed.
Petrarch believed that the only way to improve the world was to imitate the ancient Romans and forget about the barbarian years that threw his contemporaries from Rome into the past. Of course, he safely forgot a few more things. Namely, mass slavery, slaughter and over-taxation of the ancient Romans, they cannot be found in his fictional images, as well as the numerous achievements of the “age of darkness”, which he so happily denigrated.

And this is the funniest thing in history. Anyone can rewrite it under certain circumstances, and all it takes is some idiot with a catchy term and his fans to defile an entire era. So when you finally finish building a time machine and want to check the future, don't be surprised if, in a randomly chosen 26th century, fetishists from Victorian England call our time the "Information Age."

So, dear friends, we finally got to the "gloomy Middle Ages". By the way, do you know why the Middle Ages are called "gloomy"? After all, the very word "Middle Ages" was invented only when this era was drawing to its end. And they understood this word something like this: like there were bright times of Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, when education, culture, and reason reigned. And then the barbarians came and everything was gone. In fact, those who know history and mythology well are aware of what these “bright” times were like. To put it mildly, extremely contradictory. In the 16th century, humanity again becomes incredibly educated, cultured and intelligent. What's in the middle? And in the middle lie the gloomy centuries of general savagery, the general decline of Europe, the triumph of religious and other prejudices. In short, a terrible time. Well, let's figure it out.

It is believed that the term "Middle Ages" (lat. ævum medium - middle age) was first introduced by the Italian humanist Flavio Biondo (1453). Before Biondo, the main term for the period from the fall of the Western Roman Empire to the Renaissance was Petrarch's concept of the "dark ages".

Maybe these "dark" and later became "gloomy", who knows. And by the way, note that the “dark ages” from the point of view of Petrarch continued until the Renaissance, and this era, from the point of view of modern history, is within the framework of the “Middle Ages”. So let's assume that the "dark Middle Ages" is what it was before the Renaissance. And then - immediately enlightenment. But first of all, dear readers, we must understand that whatever these centuries are, it still concerns only the history of Europe.

But I will not burden you any more, I will only inform you that the history of the portrait in this contradictory time really slowed down somewhat. In the period from the 6th to the beginning of the 15th century, this genre practically did not develop. Almost a hundred years is no joke.

What was it about? The fact is that the entire culture of the Middle Ages was aimed at overcoming the sinful essence of man. Everything bodily was discarded as useless, mortal, devoid of an eternal beginning, tempting a person. The priority of spiritual life is reflected in the art of the Middle Ages, which is most clearly embodied in cathedral architecture and religious painting and sculpture.

If the sculptors of Ancient Greece sculpted a person as they saw him ideally - harmoniously developed spiritually and physically, then Gothic artists depicted a person conditionally, schematically. The fine art of the Middle Ages was supposed to strengthen the human spirit, and not distract it from lofty thoughts. In medieval sculptures, a person is devoid of gender, and women and men are equally flat, narrow-shouldered, shapeless.

In icon painting, the spiritual principle was accentuated, a flat image was used, and a disproportion often appeared so that the viewer's attention was focused on the spiritual, heavenly, and not earthly. To do this, they resorted to the following methods: a large forehead was depicted on the icon - it meant the receptacle of the divine mind, large eyes - the focus of the spiritual in man. The attention of the viewer was focused on the hand of the depicted (the hand blesses, the hand overshadows with a cross).

Giotto di Bondone - Madonna Enthroned (Ognisanti Madonna)

Almost devoid of individuality, impassive, medieval images of people could hardly be called portraits. Perhaps you consider it natural, how can an icon be a portrait? Who could see the Mother of God? She herself did not pose for the artists! We will talk about who could pose for the artists for this holy image a little later. Follow me, dear readers, in the bright era of the Renaissance!

Cimabue. "Madonna"

The time from the 5th to the 10th centuries is the era when Europe was a giant bubbling cauldron. New states arose and collapsed, the Christian religion spread farther and farther, peoples moved from place to place. Why is the term "Dark Ages" firmly attached to this period of European history? Were they really "dark"?

If you take a closer look at this period of European history, you have to admit: yes, there were. The destruction of the ancient slave system and the formation of a new feudal society proceeded extremely slowly and painfully. The fragile internal ties of the Roman world at the end of the Imperial era were very quickly destroyed by barbarian invasions, and the main blow fell on the economy. Trade almost froze - there were few buyers, and merchants, as a rule, became victims of robbers or conquering armies. The only constant factor in the life of medieval man was instability. At any moment, a peasant cultivating his allotment could be driven into slavery, and there was no need to wait for protection from the local baron or from the city authorities. The city, around which agricultural land has long been grouped, itself was locked behind decaying walls, hoping to escape from a sudden raid.

There is famine in Europe. It is hard to imagine, but chronic malnutrition has become the norm throughout Christendom. Neither hunting nor fishing could compensate for the lack of bread and meat. Throughout Europe at this time, the authors of monastic chronicles noted that cannibalism covered entire regions. Mothers killed and boiled their own children. Following famine and war, disease was bound to come. Epidemics mowed down entire cities and villages, sometimes there were practically no survivors in the once flourishing region. In the time that has elapsed from the fall of the Roman Empire to the rise of the Carolingian Empire, the population of Western Europe has more than halved. In the 6th century, the first major plague epidemic began, raging in Italy, Gaul and Spain for more than fifty years.

All the technical achievements of antiquity were forgotten. In the 5th - 8th centuries in Europe, they practically stopped building from stone. Most of the stone churches of this era are Roman temples, slightly rebuilt in accordance with the requirements of Christian symbolism. What could not be rebuilt was destroyed in order to get the building stone. The Romans considered the tree a symbol of barbarism - but after the fall of Rome, no one began to think so, and the tree turned into the main building material.

And in agriculture, the barbarian peoples were far behind the ancient farmers. Tools of labor, for the most part borrowed from the Romans, were not improved, the land was cultivated poorly and unevenly. The crafts that the barbarians once brought to the lands of the Empire gradually faded away. Glassmakers from the Rhine lands lost the soda that had previously come to them from the Mediterranean regions. The demand for jewelry has fallen, and the samples of jewelry art of the barbarians of the 2nd - 3rd centuries that have survived to this day are artistically much higher than the rough crafts of the 6th - 7th centuries.

But the most terrible was the decline in morals, which can be judged not only by the monastery chronicles, but also by court documents. At a time when the ancient barbaric “truths” gradually faded into the background, when Roman law meant very little, and the church could not keep track of the flock, the so-called penitentiaries became widespread - collections that described in detail punishments for various sins. Human life has become a commodity - nothing else but monetary fines could punish the criminal. The worst thing about these penitentiaries is scrupulousness. Fines varied depending on, for example, whether the victim's entire arm was torn off or dangling on a piece of skin (in the latter case, the fine was almost halved). Any two torn off fingers on the hand "cost" as much as one torn off index finger.

The rulers, who felt completely unpunished in their possessions, did the most cruel arbitrariness over their subjects. The French historian J. Le Goff accurately noted that the tortures to which Christians subjected their fellow believers at that time many times exceeded everything that the pagan Romans did to the first Christians. People's hands were cut off, their faces were burned with a red-hot iron, after which they waited for the wounds to heal slightly, and resumed the torture. Often, only murder could stop a king or count who had entered into a taste of torture.
The Church during the Dark Ages was perhaps the only structure that retained some kind of order in its ranks. Skillfully seeking support from almost all the barbarian kings, the Catholic Church has accumulated enormous wealth and land. Thanks to this, the foundation was laid for the rapid rise of Christendom in the 11th century.
In the Dark Ages, the church was active not only in the spiritual, but also in the secular, in political life. The bishops of a number of large cities were in fact their full-fledged rulers, sometimes coming into conflict with kings and mayors, sometimes directing their aspirations in the right direction for the church. It was with the support of the Catholic bishops that the Frankish king Clovis began to expand the boundaries of his kingdom. The bishops themselves, coming from noble families, pursued their own political interests, albeit within the framework of the activities of the entire Church. This state of affairs inevitably led to the almost complete interpenetration of spiritual and secular authorities, church and kings.

In some countries, the church has come to the fore. This happened in Spain, where the spiritual authorities of the Gothic kingdom established the most severe laws, which aroused the sharp hostility of the population. The Spaniards met the Moors who came to the Pyrenees quite calmly precisely because the power of the Muslims turned out to be softer than the power of the Christian bishops. Almost everywhere, bishops acted as advisors to kings, drafting laws and approving taxes.

On the other hand, the kings, having been baptized and having acquired the support of the church, sought to introduce their people into its structure. Often the king appointed bishops from among his confidants to the cities of his country, and he himself supervised the work of church councils. Nothing good could come of such an alliance. The supreme leadership of the church fell victim to the same vices as the semi-barbarian secular nobility. It got to the point that a number of areas of the Christian world moved away from Christianity for a long time, returning to paganism, to ancient superstitions that the church simply could not cope with. This happened in England in the 6th century and in France in the 7th century.

The situation was different in the lower circles of the clergy. Since the time of the Great Migration, monasteries have been almost the only refuge for ordinary people. Barbarian invaders, as a rule, left monasteries and churches alone. Back in the 5th century, the Goths of Alaric, breaking into Rome, recognized the right of asylum for Christian churches. In the terrible era of the barbarian invasions, the monks, the only educated people, tirelessly engaged in healing the sick, acted as intermediaries between the population of the district and the leaders of the barbarian tribes. The saints and ascetics of that time did their best to strengthen faith in people and give them strength. Monasteries remained the last stronghold of culture. Manuscripts of ancient authors, scientific works and literary works were kept in monastic libraries, copied and copied.

The gloomy mood that took possession of the people, and the actual collapse of the higher circles of the clergy, threatened to destroy the church. But in 590, the papacy was occupied by a man whose policies determined the very spirit of medieval society for centuries to come - Gregory the Great.

Before being elected to the highest church position, Gregory was a monk. Having become the head of the Catholic Church, he did not change his earlier vow to renounce everything worldly. Gregory seemed to be returning the church to its origins - to those times when the first Christians, hiding in the catacombs from the Roman persecutors, were waiting for the new coming of the Messiah and the end of the world. Under Gregory, the theme of the end of the world sounded with renewed vigor. I must say that many things contributed to this - a terrible plague in Italy, which did not bypass Rome (the papal residence), famine, wars, complete discord in minds and souls. The Apocalypse, so colorfully described by John the Theologian, seemed very close. The Pope urged Christians to renounce everything earthly, repent and prepare for the Last Judgment. “What is the use of reaping if the reaper is not destined to live?” Gregory asked.

Gregory the Great was the first to pose with all its acuteness the main question of the Middle Ages: the relationship between the worldly and spiritual principles. In the days when the world was falling apart, the spirit had to be chosen. This idea turned out to be in tune with the mindset of most Christians. As a matter of fact, it is with Gregory the Great that the Middle Ages as a cultural era begins.