ABSTRACT
The word ‘medieval’, derived from ‘the Middle Ages’, that is, the period betweenClassical Antiquity and the Renaissance, only really has any meaning (how much is debatable) with reference to Europe. But what is Europe? The contributions in Part I address that question, directly or indirectly, from many different angles. First and foremost, European culture was based on that of Rome which in many ways incorporated that of Greece. The existence of the Roman Empire between the first century BC and the fifth century AD ensured that classical forms and norms were spread and rooted throughout much of geographical Europe. In, say, 400, urban civilisation, with its aqueducts, theatres, forums, temples, looked similar whether you were in Bordeaux or Brindisi, Tarragona or Thessaloniki. Roman citizens using the same law could make contracts that were standard in form, and equally valid, in London and Lyons, Nantes and Naples. Latin was the language of the military and of the educated in Cologne or Corinth, Seville or Syracuse. Surveyors and engineers worked to the same rule-books in Galicia and Calabria. Over all these aspects of social life brooded the Roman state, with its tax system, its armies, its vast public works.
