ABSTRACT
The decline and fall of the Roman Empire in the West was a slow process. The revival of interest in antiquity was also somewhat protracted. It is therefore a broad-brush convenience to label the gap between the Classical civilisation of Greece and Rome and that of the Renaissance, roughly speaking the centuries between the fourth and the fifteenth, as the ‘Middle Ages’. To some historians this medieval period is little better than a black hole, a dark age of superstition and regression, of no importance in the great tradition of human progress. To others, much to the delight of writers of fiction, it is an age of faith and romance, full of colour and splendour with a perfectly balanced communal society based on co-operation and benevolence. This book makes neither assumption, but hopes that its documentation will allow the Middle Ages to speak for themselves and their claim to be the bedrock of modern European society.
