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Aftermath of the Decline of the Roman Empire

The widespread and long-term social disarray and insecurity following the decline of the Roman Empire and the gradual affiliation of masses of people with military overlords who could protect them constitutes the big picture of medieval society in Europe from the 10th to 15th centuries. Baldwin makes the point that classical education basically "dissolved" and that for several centuries the only repositories of learning were the monks, whose physical plants, isolated from "the confusion of the times" (35), were suited to the task of preserving ancient texts. Thus it should be no surprise that, among those who were learned at all, there was remarkable unity of belief and intellectual method, just as there was remarkable similarity in medieval iconography and the placement of windows and doors in Romanesque, then Gothic, cathedrals from and to the proper direction, e.g., at Chartres (Baldwin 110-111).

Southern (16) says that the church was identified with "the whole of organized society [and] is the fundamental feature which distinguishes the Middle Ages from earlier and later periods of history." That would explain the strength of the scholastic culture that emerged in the 11th century. It would explain the alarm with which the churchmen viewed Abelard's systematic use of the scholastic method to pose contradictions that he would not resolve, as for example in "Sic et Non," which invites scholars to draw their own conclusions as long as they are rigorous in their interpretive method (Abelard 262). It would explain, too, why the methods of medieval scholasticism survived (at least in the Church) even after the 15th century, when secularism was challenging the Church.

The Crusades of the period saw many Western Europeans travel east either overland or by sea and in the process expand commerce and trade. The principal European beneficiary of the Crusades was Italy, which reinvigorated ancient trade routes with the Levant that survive...

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Aftermath of the Decline of the Roman Empire. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 06:55, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1682718.html