ABSTRACT
It is an oversimplification but perhaps a helpful guide to divide the Middle Ages, as is sometimes done, according to social groupings: thus, the Early Middle Ages is described as the period of the monks, the High (middle period) as the period of the knights, and the Late as the period of the townsmen. Such a view of the centuries usually called, though again not uncontentiously, “the Middle Ages” may provoke scholarly objections, but it does provide some kind of focus and assist in the attempt to define the principal influences which colored the whole period. It does, however, raise another vexing question, for it implies, quite erroneously, that there is a degree of unanimity about the chronological division of a timespan of six or seven centuries.
