The Middle Ages: Civilizations of Europe

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Crusades

From 1096 until the end of the Middle Ages, Christian warriors from Europe undertook a series of military campaigns, or Crusades, designed to take back from the Muslims control of the Holy Land (in the region of Palestine). After centuries of wars of expansion, Muslim powers had conquered some two-thirds of the ancient Christian world, including Palestine, Syria, Egypt, and Anatolia. Christian Crusading expeditions were also undertaken against Muslims in Spain, pagans in eastern Europe, and perceived enemies of the church in Christian Europe.

During the Crusades, Christian warriors from Europe fought Muslims to take back control of the Holy…

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Many Christians thought that by participating in the Crusades they would atone fully for their sins. On the breast of their tunics thousands of knights, soldiers, merchants, and peasants wore a cross of blood-red cloth to show they were going on Crusade. Those who returned wore the cross on their backs during the long voyage home. The Latin word for cross is crux, and from this word comes the words crusade and crusader.

Even though only the First and Third Crusades were successful in reclaiming parts of the Holy Land, the Crusades played an important role in the expansion of Europe. Historians have written about the excesses of the Crusades for centuries, and the Crusades remain today a fascinating and controversial subject in world history. Origins of the Crusades

The Crusading movement was the result of a number of important factors. By the end of the 11th century the countries of Europe had become major powers. Their populations as well as their economies had grown dramatically, and their governments had become better organized, enabling European leaders to raise and command large armies. Such improvements in European society provided the necessary foundation upon which to build the Crusading movement.

The nature of religious belief at the time was another important factor. According to the idea of holy war, which took shape in the 11th century, Christian warriors had a duty to do God’s work by fighting for the church. The practice of pilgrimage to holy sites and the shrines of saints also influenced the Crusades. Before the year 1000

most Christian pilgrims journeyed to the holy sites of Europe, but after the year 1000 journeys to Jerusalem became increasingly popular, as a greater focus was given to the human Jesus and on the places associated with him. Some people believed that they were living at the end of time, and they thought it best to be in Jerusalem when Jesus returned at the Last Judgment. Finally, in the late 11th century a series of popes reorganized the church and exercised greater influence over Christians than had their predecessors.

These developments were affected by changes in the Holy Land and in the Byzantine Empire. In 1071 the Seljuq Turks defeated Byzantine armies at the battle of Manzikert (now Malazgirt, Turkey) and extended their control over much of Asia Minor (now in Turkey). They also seized control of Jerusalem from the Muslim authority there. The previous rulers had allowed Christian pilgrims to visit the Holy City, but the Turks, who were recent converts to Islam, did not. They also persecuted Christians and attacked Christian holy places.

As the power of the Turks spread, Alexius Comnenus, the Byzantine emperor, sent a plea for aid to Pope Urban II at Rome. The pope called a council at Clermont, France, in 1095. Speaking with ringing eloquence, he urged his audience to undertake a Crusade to rescue the Holy Land. Fired with religious zeal, clergy, knights, and common people alike shouted, “God wills it!” The First Crusade

Urban’s speech inspired the First Crusade (1096–99). Many people were so deeply stirred that they would not wait until the time set by the council for the Crusade to begin. At least four separate bands started for the Holy Land early in 1096. One of them, a group of knights and peasants known as the People’s Crusade was led by Peter the Hermit and a knight named Walter Sansavoir. Peter was a brilliant preacher who caused thousands of people to join the Crusade. In Germany his preaching inspired other groups of Crusaders, one of which massacred the Jews in several cities. His main body of followers was not well supplied and was a rather unruly group. They reached the capital of the Byzantine Empire, Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey), where they caused the emperor some difficulties. Most of the Crusaders, including Walter Sansavoir, were killed in an ambush by the Turks east of the city.

In August 1096 the first real armies of knights and nobles, but of no kings, began their march to Jerusalem. There were four main companies. Their leaders included Godfrey of Bouillon, Robert of Normandy, Raymond of Toulouse, and Bohemond, a Norman from southern Italy.

The Crusaders went first to Constantinople, where their leaders met the Byzantine emperor and unwillingly swore an oath to restore imperial land to him. They then made a dangerous march across Asia Minor to Antioch (now in Turkey). For seven months they besieged the city, suffering almost as much as the people inside the city walls. After the Crusaders at last captured Antioch, they themselves were besieged by a Turkish army. In some three weeks, disease and famine killed many. The courage of the Crusaders faltered.

The Crusaders’ almost hopeless situation changed in a strange way. A visionary, Peter Bartholomew, told the leaders of the Crusade that St. Andrew had revealed to him the location of the lance that had pierced Jesus’s side. Many were skeptical, but Peter found the spear. His discovery, real or feigned, and other heavenly visions fired the Crusaders with valor. They decided to fight the Turks outside the city and won a great victory. Many Crusaders believed that they were helped by an army of angels and the ghosts of dead Crusaders.

The Crusaders siege of Jerusalem in 1099 is depicted in a miniature from Descriptio Terrae Sanctae…

The Crusaders departed Antioch for Jerusalem in January 1099. A much reduced Crusading army reached the Holy City on June 7, 1099. They then besieged the well-supplied and well-fortified city. While the siege proceeded, a Muslim army set out from Egypt to attack the Crusaders. Meanwhile, to assist their cause, the Crusaders made a religious procession around Jerusalem on July 8, 1099. The Crusaders finally took the city on July 15. Then they engaged in a shameful massacre of all the city’s men, women, and children. After the slaughter, the Crusaders walked barefooted and bareheaded to kneel at the Holy Sepulchre. One week later, they defeated the army from Egypt.

Many Crusaders returned home, but many stayed and were joined by new companies of Crusaders. Those who stayed chose Godfrey of Bouillon as ruler. They built castles and established Crusader states in the Holy Land. Special orders of knighthood, including the Knights Hospitallers, the Knights Templars, and, later, the Teutonic Knights, were also created to protect the Holy Land.

Second Crusade and the Fall of Jerusalem

An altarpiece of the 1500s depicts St. Bernard of Clairvaux, an influential monk whose preaching…

Staatliche Museen zu Berlin—Preussischer Kulturbesitz

The Cistercian monk Bernard of Clairvaux was a strong supporter of the Second Crusade.

Contunico © ZDF Enterprises GmbH, Mainz

The loss of the important Crusader city Edessa (now Sanliurfa, Turkey) and the renewed spread of Muslim power in Asia Minor inspired the Second Crusade (1147–49). The pope proclaimed the Crusade in 1145, and the preaching of St. Bernard of Clairvaux inspired many to take up the cross. Unlike the First Crusade, the Second was led by Europe’s greatest rulers, Emperor Conrad III of Germany and King Louis VII of France, who was joined by his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine. The Crusade was a disaster. It was poorly managed and succeeded only in worsening relations between the Crusaders and the Byzantine Empire and in encouraging Muslim leaders.

For the next several decades the Crusader states enjoyed relative stability. In the 1180s the situation worsened because of internal problems and the rise of a new Muslim leader, Saladin. In 1187 he won two great victories against the Crusaders. In July he wiped out a Crusader army at the Battle of Hattin in northern Palestine and executed 200 Knights Hospitallers and Knights Templars who survived the battle. In October he seized Jerusalem. Unlike the Crusaders in 1099, he did not slay his defeated foes. He permitted many to go free, some even without ransom.

Third Crusade Gains a Treaty for Pilgrims

Frederick I is depicted as a Crusader, with a cross on the breast of his tunic. At right, a man…

Courtesy of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana

Richard I of England, called the Lion-Hearted, was a Crusader king.

Contunico © ZDF Enterprises GmbH, Mainz

Saladin’s conquest inspired the Third Crusade (1189–91). The leaders were Richard the Lion-Hearted of England; Philip Augustus of France; and the powerful emperor of Germany, Frederick I, or Frederick Barbarossa, so called because of his red beard. The German expedition collapsed when Frederick drowned while trying to swim in a mountain stream in Asia Minor in June 1190.

Richard and Philip took their armies by sea, sailing from the French Mediterranean coast. When they reached the Holy Land, they joined the Christians besieging Acre. After a siege of 23 months, Acre fell in July 1191. Philip and Richard then quarreled, and Philip returned to France. Richard stayed but could not capture Jerusalem from Saladin. However, he did recapture several other cities and arranged a three-year truce with Saladin in 1192. The truce permitted pilgrims to visit the holy sites. The Fourth Crusade © 2020 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. 7 of 124 Britannica LaunchPacks | The Middle Ages: Civilizations of Europe

The Fourth Crusade

In 1198, the new pope, Innocent III, proclaimed a new Crusade, and four years later it was launched. The Fourth Crusade (1202–04) was aimed at Egypt because of the general opinion at the time that the Holy Land could be protected only by attacking Muslim power centers. The Venetians were commissioned to provide the fleet the Crusaders would use to cross the Mediterranean Sea. But fewer Crusaders than expected arrived, and they could not raise the amount of money promised to the Venetians. The leader of Venice said they could have ships if they would help to capture Zara (now Zadar, Croatia), a commercial city that was a rival of Venice. Even though it was a Christian city, the Crusaders seized it in November 1202.

Afterward, Alexius, a rival of the Byzantine emperor, offered to assist the Crusaders if they helped overthrow the emperor. They did so, and Alexius became emperor. When he could not uphold his end of the bargain, however, the Crusaders seized Constantinople. They not only pillaged the magnificent city but also divided the lands of the emperor. They then set up the Latin Empire of Constantinople, which lasted from 1204 to 1261. The Byzantines eventually regained control of their empire, but the Crusader conquest seriously weakened them. The Children’s Crusade

In 1212 the religious enthusiasm that led knights to go on Crusade touched the common people, including many young people. The Children’s Crusade involved many kinds of people, including the elderly, women, and the poor as well as young adults and children. It emerged in France and Germany without papal approval. It revealed that many in the Middle Ages were inspired by the idea of rescuing the Holy Land.

The French phase of the Crusade was led by Stephen, a shepherd boy from an area near Cloyes. In the spring of 1212 he said that Jesus had appeared to him in a vision and given him a letter for King Philip Augustus of France (presumably encouraging the king to go on Crusade again). Stephen led his large band of followers to Paris to deliver the letter. The king graciously received Stephen and then ordered him and his followers to return home.

News of Stephen’s preaching spread into Germany. It inspired the young man Nicholas of Cologne to band German children and others together to free the Holy Land. He believed that God would open up the Mediterranean Sea to allow them to walk there. Nicholas led his many followers over the Alps into Italy. They reached Genoa, where the sea did not part. Some of them then went to Rome, and Pope Innocent III gently ordered them home. Few apparently ever reached their homes in Germany. Some accounts indicate that merchants sold many of the children into slavery. It is also likely that many found jobs in Italy. Later Crusades

In the 13th century Crusades were launched against new enemies of the Christian church. Pope Innocent III approved the Albigensian Crusade against heretics in southern France. Northern French knights helped suppress heresy in the south and restored the king’s control of that region. The Teutonic Knights began to shift their Crusading efforts from the Holy Lands to eastern Europe, where they fought pagans and converted them to Christianity. The pope also used the Crusade to undermine his political rivals in the Holy Roman Empire.

Crusades to the East also continued in the 13th century. The Fifth Crusade (1218–21) took place in Egypt and failed because of disagreements among its leaders. The Crusade of Emperor Frederick II (1228–29) differed from all the other Crusades in two ways: the pope had excommunicated the emperor rather than supported him, and Frederick freed Jerusalem by peaceful negotiation instead of military conquest. In 1244 the Turks seized Jerusalem. This led to the first (1249) of two Crusades headed by Louis IX of France. The Crusaders tried to take

Egypt as the western key to Palestine, but Louis was captured and forced to pay a “king’s ransom.” Further Muslim successes against the Crusaders inspired Louis’s second Crusade (1270). Louis died of plague shortly after he landed in North Africa, and the Crusade failed.

In 1291 the Muslims took Acre, the last Crusader stronghold, and the Crusaders were finally expelled from the Middle East. Despite this loss and the failures of the earlier Crusades, the ideal of Crusading remained important. Crusades were called to protect Constantinople and southeastern Europe in the 15th century, though these efforts ultimately failed. The Christian reconquest of Spain that had begun in the 11th century ended successfully in 1492 when Granada, the last Muslim outpost in Spain, fell to Christian knights. Results of the Crusades

The Crusades formed an important part of the transformation of European society in the 12th and 13th centuries. They were part of the expansion of Europe and laid the foundation for the Age of Discovery. The Crusades also introduced new ideas and goods to Europe.

By the late 11th century the population of Europe had grown significantly. Over the next two centuries large numbers of people would need to find more living space. They found this in Europe and in the Middle East. The Crusades opened up trade contact with the East, and new foods and textiles began to appear in the markets and fairs of Europe. The new products included spices, cane sugar, buckwheat, rice, apricots, watermelons, oranges, limes, lemons, cotton, damask, satin, velvet, and dyestuffs. Europeans also learned the art of papermaking from Muslims.

The Crusades introduced western Europe to the great civilizations of the Islamic and Byzantine worlds. The reconquest of Spain helped introduce Western Christians to Arabic science and philosophy. Crusades to the East exposed Europeans to the great cities and culture of Islam and to new forms of castle building, and contact with the Byzantine Empire provided access to ancient Greek learning. The Fourth Crusade, however, also seriously worsened relations between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches.

The Crusades ultimately failed to regain the Holy Land, but they succeeded in creating new religious orders and shaping religious practices in Europe. They also prepared the way for a later wave of European expansion in the 15th and 16th centuries and the European discovery of the New World.

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Europe

Britannica Note:

Content on this topic is available in the section "History: Middle Ages."

The second smallest continent on Earth, after Australia, is Europe. It is the western part of the enormous Eurasian landmass, containing Europe and Asia. In the last 500 years Europe moved from playing a marginal role to a central role in world affairs. This shift was brought about by global trade and European conquests of lands around the world. Until the mid-20th century, countries in western Europe ruled, controlled, or powerfully influenced vast tracts of territory overseas. Although European countries no longer have empires, Europe’s international influence remains strong. To lovers of its achievements and its support for the human spirit, Europe is a beacon of hope. Critics, however, emphasize the great violence and damage Europeans did in the past in order to subdue and profit from other peoples. Those praising Europe’s contributions to education, technology, culture, and (recently) human rights can nevertheless acknowledge its destructive history.

Europe.

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Europe.

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The Castel Sant'Angelo, on the banks of the Tiber River in Rome, Italy, was built about ad 135 as a…

Robert Frerck/Odyssey Productions

Europe is more of a cultural and historical zone than a physical one, so its borders are difficult to define. Indeed, in some parts of the world Eurasia (Europe and Asia) is considered one continent, with Europe representing just one section. Europe is bordered on the north by the Arctic Ocean and on the west by the Atlantic Ocean. Far to the west of the mainland, Iceland is usually considered part of Europe. However, the physical geography of this island is unique. Geologically, Iceland straddles the border between North America and Europe, because it stands atop a ridge where the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates diverge.

Europe’s eastern borders, which separate it from Asia, are vaguer. A portion of western Russia is typically included in Europe, but few geographers place all of Russia within Europe’s boundaries. One might draw the boundary along the Ural Mountains of Russia and then continue south to the Ural River and the shore of the Caspian Sea. From there, some geographers draw a line to the Black Sea via a low area known as the Kuma- Manych Depression. Others trace the crest of the Caucasus Mountains (where Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Russia’s Mount Elbrus are located).

A small part of Turkey, called Thrace, is also in Europe, divided from Asia by the waters of the Bosporus, the Sea of Marmara, and the Dardanelles. The southern European border follows the Aegean and Mediterranean seas westward to the Strait of Gibraltar, just north of Africa. However, some Greek, French, Italian, and Spanish islands in the Aegean and Mediterranean seas are also considered part of Europe. The island of Cyprus is sometimes included in Europe and sometimes in Asia.

In this article, western Russia, Turkish Thrace, Iceland, and Cyprus are considered part of Europe. Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, however, are treated in the article on Asia. Thus defined, Europe covers some 4 million square miles (10 million square kilometers), nearly one-fifteenth of the world’s land area. It is home to more than 700 million people, nearly one-tenth of the global population.

The countries of the European Union.

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Europe is larger than the European Union (EU), a confederation of 28 European countries sharing economic, political, and ecological standards. However, the EU has continued to expand. Its members are more unified and centralized than the United Nations (UN) but do not act as a single country. Land and Climate

Land

A map of Europe shows the continent's major physical features.

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A waterfall plunges into Geiranger Fjord, one of many inlets from the sea along Norway's western…

Kirkendall—Spring Photographers

Europe has several major peninsulas jutting into the sea. They include Scandinavia and the Jutland portion of Denmark in the north and the Iberian Peninsula of Spain and France in the west. In the south are the Italian and Balkan peninsulas. At the continent’s coasts, much of the land is indented by bays, seas, and fjords, or narrow inlets the sea. These indentations give Europe a long and highly irregular coastline. The western part of the continent has a high proportion of coastline with good maritime access. Europe also comprises many islands. Some of the islands—notably the Faroes and Iceland—are located at a distance from the mainland.

The Vym' River flows through the Komi republic of Russia, in the northeastern part of the European…

Borealis55

More than half of the continent’s land—including much of western and eastern Europe—consists of fairly flat, low plains. The plains stand mostly below 600 feet (180 meters) in elevation. The European Plain is one of the greatest uninterrupted expanses of plain on Earth’s surface. It sweeps from the Pyrenees Mountains on the border between Spain and France across northern Europe to the Ural Mountains in Russia. In western Europe the plain is comparatively narrow, rarely exceeding 200 miles (320 kilometers) in width. As it stretches eastward it broadens steadily. The plain reaches its greatest width in western Russia, where it extends more than 2,000 miles (3,200 kilometers). The flatness of this enormous lowland, however, is broken by hills, particularly in the west.

Northwestern Europe has many highland areas, including in parts of Great Britain, Ireland, Iceland, and Scandinavia. Europe also has areas of central uplands and plateaus, with landscapes of rounded summits, steep slopes, valleys, and depressions. Examples of these areas are found in parts of Scotland, France, Spain, and the Czech Republic.

The Dolomites are a section of the Italian Alps.

Europe’s tallest mountains are found in the south. The continent’s highest peaks are in the rugged Alps, which dominate south-central Europe. The Pyrenees form a high barrier between Spain and France. The mountains of Scandinavia are lower, as are the Ural Mountains, which form the continent’s eastern boundary.

The Seine River flows through Paris, France.

The continent has many rivers but few large lakes. The major rivers include the Rhine, Seine, and Rhône in the west, the Po in the south, and the Danube, Elbe, Oder, Vistula, Volga, and Don in the center and east.

Longest, Highest, and Largest

The colorful domes of the Cathedral of Saint Basil tower over Red Square in Moscow, Russia.

Europe’s largest countries by area—in order—are Russia, Ukraine, France, Spain, and Sweden. Russia is the largest European country by far, its territory west of the Urals being six times the size of Ukraine and seven times that of France. Russia is also the most populous country in Europe, followed by Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and Italy. The smallest European countries are Vatican City, Monaco, San Marino, Liechtenstein, Malta, and Andorra. Moscow, Russia, is the largest city in Europe, followed by London, England, and St. Petersburg, Russia. The next largest (the precise order varying according to how metropolitan areas and city populations are counted) include Berlin, Germany; Paris, France; Madrid, Spain; Rome, Italy; Warsaw, Poland; Kiev, Ukraine; Bucharest,Romania; Budapest, Hungary; Hamburg, Germany; Minsk, Belarus; Belgrade, Serbia; Vienna, Austria; Kharkiv, Ukraine; Barcelona, Spain; and Amsterdam, Netherlands. The large city of Istanbul, Turkey, straddles the boundary between Europe and Asia.

Mont Blanc, a mountain in the French Alps, is the highest peak in Europe. Alpine ibex are at the…

The highest point in Europe is Mont Blanc, rising to 15,771 feet (4,807 meters) in the French Alps. (If the peaks of the Caucasus mountains are included within Europe, the highest point is Russia’s Mount Elbrus, at 18,510 feet, or 5,642 meters.) The high average elevations of the Alps, Pyrenees, and Caucasus mountains make them formidable barriers, in contrast to the Urals.

The lowest terrain in Europe is found in Russia at the head of the Caspian Sea. There the Caspian Depression reaches some 95 feet (29 meters) below sea level. The lowest points in the western part of Europe are each about 23 feet (7 meters) below sea level and close to the sea: Lammefjord, in Denmark, and Prins Alexander Polder, in the Netherlands. (Polders are tracts of seafloor that have been “reclaimed” by the Dutch.)

Szechenyi Chain Bridge stretches over the Danube River in Budapest, Hungary.

The longest rivers in Europe are the Volga, Danube, Rhine, Elbe, and Rhône. The famous Thames River in England is only 205 miles (330 kilometers) long. Europe’s southernmost points (not counting colonies and unresolved claims to slices of Antarctica) are Cyprus and the Greek island Gávdos, which lies south of Crete.

Seville, Spain, recorded the highest European temperature at 122 °F (50 °C) in 1881. Northern Russia (near Siberia) and the mountains of Scandinavia have the European continent’s lowest temperatures. The lowest European temperature ever recorded was −67 °F (−55 °C), at Ust’-Shchuger, Russia (but the exact date is unknown). The sunniest place in Europe is the Greek island of Rhodes, which records about 3,480 hours of sunlight annually.

Climate

Average annual precipitation in Europe and the Caucasus.

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Vegetation zones of Europe and the Caucasus.

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Europe stretches from midlatitudes (about 35° N) to high, polar latitudes (81° N). In longitude, it extends from about 60° E (the Ural Mountains) to 10° W. Europe’s range of climates, as determined by precipitation and temperature averages, changes with latitude, elevation, and distance from the Atlantic Ocean. Prevailing westerly winds blow from the Atlantic across the continent. These winds bring a marine west coast climate, including milder conditions in winter and frequent rains, to Ireland, the United Kingdom, and the western coast of the mainland, especially Norway. The rainiest areas of Europe are the west coast of Norway; the west coasts of

Ireland and Scotland; and the high slopes of the central Alps, the Pyrenees, and the Dinaric Alps in the Balkans. The Alps separate humid central and northern Europe from the drier south. Southern Europe has a Mediterranean climate, with hot, dry summers but mild, rainy winters.

Eastern Europe is far enough from the ocean to have a true continental climate, especially in Russia. This climate type brings bitterly cold winters and hot, humid summers. Average precipitation levels also drop off inland, contributing to the grasslands of Ukraine and southwestern Russia. Storms and weather fronts come from shifting high- and low-pressure systems and air masses in conflict between polar and midlatitude zones. Regions of Europe

Since Europe is made up of more than 45 independent countries and various physical features, it is useful to place them into groups or regions, such as western, central, southern, southeastern, eastern, and northern Europe (as used in this article). Other writers sometimes prefer to group the countries into eastern, western, northern, and southern Europe. During the Cold War from 1949 to 1991, Europe was divided between Western Europe—led largely by France, the United Kingdom, and West Germany—and Eastern Europe, made up of countries dominated by the Soviet Union, including East Germany and Poland.

Western Europe: Ireland and the British Isles

The British Houses of Parliament stand on the bank of the Thames River in London, England. The tower …

Adrian Pingstone

Western Europe is formed by Ireland, the United Kingdom, France, the “Benelux” countries (Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg), and tiny Andorra, in the Pyrenees Mountains between France and Spain. Warm summers and mild winters characterize the climate of western Europe. This climate occurs in large part because of the nearness to the ocean and the warm waters of the North Atlantic Current (an extension of the Gulf Stream).

Bantry Bay is an inlet of the Atlantic Ocean in County Cork, southwestern Ireland.

Ireland is called the Emerald Isle for its green scenery. However, its western fields produce little more than grass for grazing sheep. This is the case especially amid the hills and crags of Counties Galway and Kerry, ending at the westernmost point in Ireland, Dingle (An Daingean) peninsula. More of the people live in Dublin, Cork, and other cities in the east. Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom and has a large Protestant population, whereas the rest of the island is majority Roman Catholic. English is spoken nearly everywhere on the island, despite concerted efforts to revive Irish (Gaelic) in the western counties.

Tourism plays an important role in Ireland’s economy. American Irish from Boston, Chicago, and all over the United States make up much of the tourist traffic to the island. Ireland’s cultural exports have ranged from the touring Riverdance show and rock bands as varied as the Pogues, Keywest, and U2 to such literary greats as James Joyce, William Butler Yeats, and Seamus Heaney. Ireland’s contributions to the international film industry have included actors such as Richard Harris, Peter O’ Toole, Maureen O’Hara, Colm Meaney, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Colin Farrell.

The geological formation known as the Giant's Causeway, on the northern coast of Northern Ireland,…

Irish legends and myths abound, with fairies always rewarding or punishing people who interact with them. Fairies are said to be normally social, and thus solitary fairies are especially feared—for example, the selkie (a mysterious seal woman), the pooka (a trickster taking the shape of a horse, pig, or dog), and the leprechaun (a

tiny old shoemaker who cleverly guards his treasure). The coastal rock formations in Northern Ireland called the Giant’s Causeway, one of the great geological oddities of Europe, were once believed to have been built by a giant. Similar legends are told in parts of Scotland, Wales, and England, especially around archaeological sites.

Eilean Donan Castle is located in the Scottish Highlands.

The island of Great Britain includes Wales in the west, Scotland in the north, and England in the center and south. Wales and Scotland are known for the fog-shrouded Cambrian and Grampian highlands, respectively. Gently undulating hills cover most of England, which has extensive tracts of farmland and wooded urban landscapes. The vast majority of the population is urban, with the London area leading the way. Picturesque crags meet the sea at several points, including the white chalk cliffs of Dover (on the English Channel) and at Land’s End, the westernmost point of England. (More about Great Britain’s influential history and culture is included in the history and literature sections of this article.)

Western Europe: France and Its Neighbors

The Louvre Museum, which houses one of the world's great art collections, is a top tourist…

The low-lying, humid area around Paris, France, is known as the Paris Basin. To the northeast it connects with Belgium and the Netherlands. The Paris Basin is part of the vast European Plain. This lowland plain sweeps from the border between France and Spain across northern Europe to the Ural Mountains in Russia. In western Europe the European Plain is comparatively narrow.

The Paris Basin forms the heartland of France, and it is drained mainly by the Seine River. Parisians congregate on the banks of this river. The Somme, Loire, and Garonne rivers link the rest of northern and western France

with the sea. Southern France’s elevations rise into an upland area called the Massif Central, which is gouged out by the Rhône River. The Massif Central joins the Alps in the east. In the southwest, the high ridges of the Pyrenees Mountains divide France from Spain.

The cultural and historical influence of France has been great since the Middle Ages and resonates in “high” art and architecture and popular culture alike—as well as in international politics. French influence goes far beyond France’s long love-hate relationship with Britain. The two lands were often in conflict or uneasy alliance from the time of the Norman Conquest of Britain in 1066. France also had contentious interactions with Germany in the 19th and 20th centuries. In earlier times, France gave the world important democratic ideals in the age of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. Moreover, France once had colonies in every corner of the globe.

France has continued to offer influential viewpoints on world affairs. In more recent times, it has had various governments that promoted the European Union, business interests, and socialist reforms and allowed massive street protests against U.S.-led wars and occupations. Meanwhile, French cultural exports have inspired audiences in North America and the world, with innumerable French musicians, directors, and actors making names for themselves in Hollywood.

The Old Port is a natural harbor at Marseille, France.

Paris is one of the most visited cities in the world, with tens of millions of annual tourists filling its museums, hotels, sidewalk cafés, and even Notre-Dame Cathedral. Alongside the English Channel, cemeteries in the Normandy region are visited by those paying homage to D-Day (June 6, 1944), the launch of an important campaign in World War II. Tourists also flock to the southern coast of France, which is home to the city of Marseille and Mediterranean resorts. Resorts are found where the city of Nice and the French Riviera link up with Monaco and Italy.

Bruges, Belgium, is noted for its picturesque buildings, which reflect the era when it was a rich…

Klaus Hackenberg/Stone

To the northeast of France lie the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg, which are known as the Low Countries. They are so named because much of their land along the North Sea coast and for some distance inland is either below sea level or just slightly above it. An extensive network of shipping canals and waterways links the region’s major rivers. These rivers include the Schelde, Meuse (Maas), and branches of the lower Rhine. The population density of the Low Countries is among the highest in Europe and in the world. All three countries are highly urbanized, with the vast majority of the population living in cities or towns.

Central Europe and the Alps

Central Europe encompasses Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Liechtenstein, Slovakia, Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, and Slovenia. The landscape has been altered by millennia of farming and town building. However, hints of the prehistoric forests remain in southwestern Germany’s Black Forest (Schwarzwald), in the Bohemian Forest of the Czech Republic, and even on the pine-shaded ski slopes of Switzerland and Austria.

The Hohenzollern rail and pedestrian bridge is one of several bridges over the Rhine River in…

The Danube River crosses Bavaria, a state in southeastern Germany. The river then runs east through Austria, Slovakia, and Hungary before passing into southeastern and eastern Europe. The Rhine River is the principal watercourse of western Germany, and the Elbe River dominates the northeastern part of Germany. Several other rivers, including the Oder and the Vistula, cross Czech and Polish farmlands. Northern Germany and Poland lie within the European Plain, which was a historic invasion route for horses and, later, for trucks and tanks. Germany has rougher terrain in the central Harz Mountains and in southern Bavaria, the foothills to the Swiss and Austrian Alps.

Bridges span the Vltava River in Prague, Czech Republic.

Much of the region’s population lives in large cities, including Berlin, Hamburg, and Bremen, Germany; Warsaw, Poland; Prague, Czech Republic; Vienna, Austria; and Budapest, Hungary. Their bustling streets and nightlife compete for tourist attention with old cathedrals, museums, art galleries, and palaces. Many of the region’s cities were repaired or rebuilt completely after World War II, just as modern subway and highway systems emerged from the widespread ruin. Small towns and charming villages still dot much of the countryside of central Europe, especially in eastern Germany, Poland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic. These areas were only lightly affected by urban sprawl until the 1990s.

The Matterhorn, a mountain peak in the Alps, overlooks a valley in Switzerland.

The Alps are the divider between central and southern Europe. They are the continent’s highest and most densely populated mountains. Most rivers in central and western Europe originate in or near the Alps, and modern rail and highway tunnels run through these mountains. The cities and towns cover parts of fertile valleys. Far above, the Alpine ski slopes—accessible via high-strung cable cars—offer the prospects of crisp cold air, sporting fun, and spectacular views.

Southern Europe: Iberia and the Mediterranean Coast

Limestone cliffs surround a beach in the Algarve region of southern Portugal. The region's warm…

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Southern Europe is usually said to include Spain and Portugal (on the Iberian Peninsula), Italy, two enclaves within Italy—the countries of San Marino and Vatican City—and Malta. Greece is sometimes also included in the region (though in this article it is considered part of the Balkans of southeastern Europe).

Spain’s Meseta Central is a large plateau in the country’s interior. It has been irrigated for millennia. Despite the refrain from the American musical comedy My Fair Lady, “the rain in Spain” does not actually stay “mainly in the plain,” because this is a semiarid plateau, receiving only light rainfall. Yet Spain’s climate varies greatly, from the green hills of Galicia, a region in the northwest, to the Mediterranean sands (beaches) of Barcelona, a city in the northeast. Iberia’s major rivers are the Ebro and Douro in the north, the Guadalquivir and Guadiana in the south, and the Tagus, which rises on the Meseta and pours into the Atlantic Ocean at Lisbon, Portugal. The high, snowcapped peaks of the Sierra Nevada mountain range rise in southeastern Spain. Spain’s southernmost tip leads to the famous Rock of Gibraltar, a longtime British possession. On the peninsula of Gibraltar is a British military base that guards the Strait of Gibraltar—the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea from the Atlantic Ocean. Off Spain’s Mediterranean coast are the tourist-trammeled Balearic Islands.

The walls that enclose the medieval center of Ávila, Spain, were constructed for defensive purposes…

Spain’s capital, the historic city of Madrid, is centrally located on the Meseta. It is the largest population center in Spain, followed by Barcelona. Likewise, Portugal’s capital, Lisbon, which lies on the west coast, is that country’s most populous city. Since Iberia escaped the devastation of World War II, many of its cities have districts dating

from medieval and Classical times. Particularly stunning are Ávila’s nearly pristine medieval walls and Granada’s Moorish (Spanish Muslim) architecture, both in Spain. The route to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, site of the supposed tomb of the apostle St. James, has drawn large numbers of Christian pilgrims since the Middle Ages.

The Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore (the Duomo) is a landmark in Florence, Italy. The cathedral's …

Italy occupies a peninsula that is shaped like a boot. This elegant “boot” extends far into the Mediterranean Sea from the northern lowland regions of Piedmont, Lombardy, and Veneto, which are washed by the Po River. Lombardy is home to Milan, a major fashion capital. In Veneto, the city of Venice preserves a historic canal system and a thriving modern nightlife. The Apennine Mountains run through most of the boot, including Tuscany and Umbria, regions in central Italy. The hills of these regions are dotted with vineyards and ancient Roman aqueducts. Tuscany’s Florence is famed for its great Renaissance art and architecture. Magnificent Rome rests along the Tiber River in central Italy. So too does Vatican City, home of the pope. Farther south, Naples gazes across its bay to the remnant of Mount Vesuvius. An eruption of this volcano buried and preserved the

ancient cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum in AD 79.

Irrigated olive groves and vineyards cover some of Italy’s countryside, where the natural plant life includes water-retaining scrub trees. In towns and villages, irrigated gardens support fruits and flowering plants. Millennia of human habitation and the overgrazing of goats, sheep, and other livestock have thinned the Mediterranean soils. Many of Italy’s valleys and hillsides are covered in rich volcanic soils, however, a legacy of past eruptions.

The village of Positano, Italy, is nestled on the cliffside of the Amalfi coast.

The sections of the Mediterranean Sea facing western Italy are called the Ligurian and Tyrrhenian seas. The Adriatic Sea lies to Italy’s east, and the Ionian Sea is on the country’s southeast. The turquoise bays of a World Heritage site called the Amalfi coast offer some of the more stunning views of the Mediterranean. At this site, located on the southern edge of the Sorrento peninsula near Naples, the road curves alongside whitewashed terraces, bluffs, and pastel-colored homes. Corsica (a French island) and Sardinia (an Italian island) lie west of Italy’s western coast. Sicily, a large triangular island of Italy, rests off the toe of the boot. On Sicily, volcanic Mount Etna rises to roughly 11,000 feet (3,350 meters), its height varying with its eruptions.

Southeastern Europe: The Balkans

The Iskur River flows through the Balkan Mountains in Bulgaria.

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The countries of southeastern Europe are nearly synonymous with the Balkan Peninsula. On this peninsula are located Greece, a small part of Turkey (Turkish Thrace, or Trakya), Albania, North Macedonia, Bulgaria, Serbia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and (when not included in central Europe) Slovenia. (Romania and Moldova, which are also on the peninsula, are considered part of eastern Europe.) The Balkans are a zone of many different ethnic and religious groups, often divided by the rough terrain of the Dinaric Alps, the Balkan Mountains, and the Rhodope Mountains. On a world map, southern and eastern Greece seems to have fractured into hundreds of islands in the Aegean Sea. The island of Cyprus, which shares cultural affinities with Greece and Turkey, is often included in southeastern Europe.

The island of Thera, Greece, is the remaining portion of an exploded volcano in the Aegean Sea. It…

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Major tourist attractions in southeastern Europe include the cities of Athens, Greece, and Sofia, Bulgaria, and the numerous picturesque islands of the Aegean. The region has a long, rich history. In prehistoric and ancient

times, southeastern Europe was a crossroads for populations migrating between Europe, Asia, and Africa. Ancient Phoenicians, Minoans, and Mycenaeans settled Crete and other Aegean islands. Ruins of ancient Greece and Rome are scattered throughout the region, from the temples on Greek hilltops to the palace of the Roman emperor Diocletian in Croatia.

The region once served as a buffer zone between the great powers of Rome and Byzantium. During the 15th and 16th centuries, the Balkans became an area of contention between the Muslim Ottoman Empire and Christian states to the west and north. During the 20th century, many Balkan states had communist dictatorships and secret police forces. Civil wars in the 1990s tore apart the countries that once formed Yugoslavia. Most of the countries of southeastern Europe wish to solidify relationships with the rest of Europe. However, the political, civil, and economic strife of recent decades raises challenges for their current or future membership in the European Union.

Eastern Europe

St. Petersburg, Russia, is one of the largest cities in Europe.

During its existence from 1922 to 1991, the Soviet Union was the world’s largest country, with Russia at its core. Eastern Europe consists of several countries that were part of the Soviet Union and one (Romania) that was its ally. The region includes the Baltic states (Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia), Belarus, Moldova, Romania, Ukraine, and the western part of Russia. (Poland is sometimes included in eastern Europe but is often counted instead as being part of central Europe.) No stranger to trouble in the 19th and 20th centuries, eastern Europe since the 1990s has struggled with corruption and with economic instability and the power of entrenched elites as well as with emigration.

Small-scale farming is carried out in garden plots near Turka, in the Carpathian foothills of…

The European Plain extends throughout the northern part of the Eastern region. The plain gives way to the Pripet Marshes of Belarus and Ukraine and the hills of the Central Russian Upland. Eastern Europe is watered by the Danube, Don, Volga, and Dnieper rivers. In the Ukrainian and Russian southern plains, drier conditions thin out the trees until steppe (grasslands) dominate the landscape; this is a major grain-growing area. Tundra and taiga (boreal forest) are typical in the north. The region’s continental climate brings major shifts between hot, humid summers and cold, bitter winters.

The medieval architecture of the Three Brothers building complex in the Old Town of Riga, Latvia,…

Eastern Europe still has fairly large rural farming populations. Nevertheless, professionals, blue-collar workers, and tourists alike are attracted to the region’s cities, especially historic centers of power and culture such as Moscow and St. Petersburg, Russia; Riga, Latvia; Minsk, Belarus; and Kiev, Ukraine. The Black Sea is a traditional tourist destination for Russians despite the heavy pollution that has flown into it in recent decades, both during the Soviet period and afterward. To supply western and central Europe’s demands for energy, petroleum and natural gas pipelines were planned from the Caspian shores and Caucasus region through Eastern Europe in the early 21st century. Pipelines have long delivered oil and gas from Russia’s Siberia region to eastern Europe and beyond.

Northern Europe: Norse Lands

An aerial view shows remote lakes and forests in Finland.

The Norse, or Nordic, lands are the countries of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and, far to the west, Iceland. Together, these countries make up the region of northern Europe known as Scandinavia. Norway and Sweden occupy the Scandinavian peninsula. Denmark sits on the Jutland peninsula, separated from Sweden by the Skagerrak waterway linking the Baltic and North seas. Finland is also part of northern Europe; it is not usually called Scandinavian, however, because the Finns have a distinctive language and ethnic heritage.

A fjord, or sea inlet, winds deep into the mountainous coast of western Norway.

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Much of the Scandinavian peninsula is mountainous. In Norway rugged mountains meet the coast beside steep- walled fjords—glacier-carved valleys “drowned” thousands of years ago by the sea. The inland Kjølen (Kölen)

Mountains of northern Norway form the border with Sweden. Northern Europe’s tallest peaks are in the Lang Mountains of Norway, which reach elevations of more than 8,000 feet (2,450 meters) at Galdhø Peak (Galdhøpiggen) and Glitter Mountain (Glittertinden). Flatlands are found in southern and eastern Sweden, in western Finland, and in Denmark, which lies on the European Plain. Northern Europe has large areas of taiga (boreal forest), with many lakes and rivers. Tundra covers the northernmost parts of the region. Tundra soils are frozen in winter but waterlogged in summer. Reindeer in the tundra dig through ice and snow to feed on moss and lichen below, and some reindeer herders still subsist among them. However, most of the population of northern Europe lives in large cities. In Norway, Sweden, and Finland, the large urban centers are concentrated along the southern coasts.

A tourist boat docks on a canal in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Among the chief tourist draws are the region’s natural beauty and sites in the major cities. Copenhagen, Denmark, for example, attracts visitors to Tivoli Gardens, Amalienborg palace district, and, in Copenhagen’s harbor, the bronze statue of the Little Mermaid of Hans Christian Andersen fame. Despite the secular nature of much of the Scandinavian population today, legends persist about elves (alfar) or “hidden folk” (huldufólk in Iceland), the forest spirits (skogsrå) of Sweden, and the waterfall haunts (fossegrim) of Norway. Old Norse myths involving dwarfs, giants, the trickster god Loki, and the hammer-wielding god Thor, inspired many of the “Middle- earth” characters of England’s J.R.R. Tolkien as well as more recent literary and cinematic works. People and Culture

Population density of Europe and the Caucasus region.

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Europe is home to more than 700 million people, including western Russia. Germany dominates central Europe, while the United Kingdom and France are the chief powers farther west. In terms of quality of life, as ranked by the UN Human Development Index, Europe (including much of eastern Europe) ranks higher than most areas of the world. A high quality of life has been achieved thanks to widely available (and mostly government- supported) health care, educational opportunities, and advanced water and sanitation systems, among other factors.

Most Europeans live in cities. In Belgium and Iceland more than 90 percent of the population is urban. Several other countries of western and northern Europe are more than 80 percent urban. Urbanization rates in southeastern and eastern Europe are lower, with the most rural populations in Liechtenstein, Kosovo, Moldova, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Slovenia. The downtown (central) areas of many towns and cities are centuries old. Many cities have laws limiting skyscrapers, so that the gray spires of medieval cathedrals remain the tallest buildings for miles around. European cities have sprawled but not usually as rapidly as U.S. metropolitan areas.

Languages

Distribution of the Romance languages in Europe.

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Most European languages are in the Romance, Germanic, and Slavic branches of the Indo-European language family. The Romance languages developed from the Latin of ancient Rome. Words from Latin, as well as from the ancient (“dead”) Greek language, are still used in medicine, science, and the arts. Romance languages are spoken predominantly in western and southern Europe. The main languages of this group are Portuguese, Spanish (Castilian), French, Italian, and Romanian. Lesser spoken are the Romance languages and dialects of Walloon, Moldovan, Romansh, Occitan (Provençal), Catalan, and Galician.

Distribution of the Germanic languages in Europe.

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Germanic languages were influenced by various ancient peoples in northern Europe. They are now spoken throughout northern, northwestern, and central Europe. Germanic languages include English, German, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, and Icelandic.

Distribution of the Slavic languages in Europe.

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The Slavic languages are spoken mainly in eastern and southeastern Europe and in Russia. They include Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Serbo-Croatian, Bulgarian, and Macedonian.

Many other languages are spoken in Europe that do not belong to the three main divisions of the Indo-European family. The Baltic languages (Lithuanian and Latvian) are in the Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European family. Greek is another language of this family.The Uralic language family’s Finno-Ugric branch includes Finnish, Sami (Lapp), and Estonian, spoken in northern and northeastern Europe. Much farther south are speakers of Hungarian, another Finno-Ugric language. Turkic languages are spoken in parts of the Balkans and in southern Russia as well as in Turkey.

Educated Europeans are expected to speak three or more languages. The most important second language is English, followed by French, German, and Russian. Those languages are learned by minority speakers of, for example, Celtic languages (including Welsh, Breton, Irish, and Scottish Gaelic), Yiddish, Hebrew (which has been revived among Jewish communities in many cities), Ladin, Faroese, Basque, and Upper and Lower Sorbian. Bilingual or trilingual signs are common. However, travelers may be confused by city names displayed in native tongues: Florence is Firenze, Venice—Venezia, Vienna—Wien, Cologne—Köln, and Munich—München.

Religion and Mythology

European spiritual practices cover a wide spectrum. Europeans range from secular atheists (who do not believe in a god) and other nonreligious people to those practicing Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and many other religions. Some Europeans follow local, traditional religions that are practiced by only one ethnic group. Freedom from religious persecution is now the norm in Europe. Unlike in the United States, which strives to maintain “separation of church and state,” European governments tend to support state churches through taxes. Most Europeans belong to one of three divisions of Christianity: Roman Catholicism,Protestantism, and Eastern Orthodoxy. The highest percentages of Roman Catholics are in southern and central Europe. Protestants are more numerous in northern Europe, and Eastern Orthodox Christians are found primarily in eastern Europe and Greece. Many European Muslims live in the Balkans, lands that were once under the rule of the Muslim Ottoman Empire, and in Russia. Large Muslim communities also exist in many western European cities. Most European Jews live in Paris, Moscow, and elsewhere in France and Russia as well as in Ukraine and the United Kingdom.

The largest nonreligious and atheist populations are in Russia and Ukraine. Additional millions of nonreligious people live in Germany, France, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Italy, the United Kingdom, and other European countries.

Pre-Christian mythology persists in some corners despite the prevalence of secular scientific and mainstream Christian worldviews. In Denmark, Norway, and Iceland are told old stories of dangerous mermaids, trolls, ghost- children who died of exposure (útburdir), and water horses (nykur) that steal children. In Ireland and elsewhere, dawn, dusk (twilight), and midnight are considered magical in-between times. Though they call their stories folklore, few Irish will entirely deny the existence of spirits and magical beings, or they may claim that such tales are “true enough.”

People sing and dance around a maypole during Midsummer's Eve celebrations in Edsbro, Sweden.

Pieter Kuiper

Holidays and festivals in Europe are generally associated with Christianity—especially Christmas, Easter, and the Feast of Corpus Christi—though several holidays have pre-Christian roots. Christmas markets bring cheer, hot drinks, tourists, and shoppers to the central squares of many German cities. High-latitude lands such as Scotland, Finland, and Scandinavia suffer short winters’ days but extended daylight in summer. In these lands, Midsummer’s Day festivals are celebrated about the time of the solstice, June 20–26. And in Scotland, the Hogmanay (New Year) midwinter fire festivals hint of pre-Christian history. To celebrate Hogmanay in the Scottish town of Stonehaven, dozens of men and women swing “fireballs” made of burning wood and paraffin (kerosene) around their heads on the main street at midnight.

Young people wear masks and costumes for Carnival season in Venice, Italy.

European towns and villages continue to sponsor annual feast days for Christian saints with street processions and Passion plays (about the capture, death, and resurrection of Jesus). But not all these occasions are solemn. A comical, irreverent spirit accompanies the satirical plays and sermons of the St. Anthony feast in the Catalonia

region of Spain. Carnival—the merrymaking before the fasting period called Lent—is a huge celebration throughout Italy. It is celebrated in more traditional style in villages and in “modern” fashion in Viareggio (Tuscany) and Venice—where revelers wear ornate masks to conceal identities. In Cologne, Germany, Carnival season is known as the “Crazy Days” (Tolle Tage). Carnival ends on the day before Ash Wednesday (the start of Lent). Shrove Tuesday, the final day of Carnival, is called Mardi Gras (literally “Fat Tuesday”) in French. The Lenten season in France is so solemn that church bells are not supposed to be rung on Good Friday. Instead, a legend says they “fly to Rome” to be with the pope. When they fly back on Easter Sunday, they drop chocolate coins into gardens.

The Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, in Galicia, Spain, is a major Christian pilgrimage site.

Metéora is a group of Eastern Orthodox Christian monasteries in Thessaly, Greece.

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In Europe pilgrimages remain major events for Roman Catholics in France and Spain, especially the one honoring St. James on the route to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Pilgrims also journey to sites of visions of the Madonna (Virgin Mary) such as at Lourdes (in France) and at Caravaggio, Loreto, and Pompeii (in Italy). In Greece the Orthodox monasteries of Metéora are preserved atop sheer-walled pinnacles as religious sites and tourist attractions.

Daily Life and Food

The daily lives of Europeans vary immensely according to differences in income, age, gender, ethnicity, and family connections. Discrimination on the basis of ethnicity, race, and gender remains a problem in some areas. However, women have more access to education and employment in Europe than in other parts of the world.

The rhythms of European country life are sometimes idyllic or pleasing in natural simplicity—as if taken from the pages of a novel or a travel brochure. In reality, country life can sometimes be loud and difficult, especially for farmers, construction crews, and emergency responders. The pace of city life can be very rapid and may be

especially hectic for drivers in some areas. Urban living is improved by open parks, efficient public transportation, and historic architecture.

A plate is filled with foods from a smorgasbord, a Swedish buffet offering a variety of fish,…

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Tapas are foods served as appetizers in Spain.

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Borscht (or borsch), a beet soup, is prepared in Ukraine. Cooks in Poland and Russia also serve…

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Traditional food dishes create a culinary geography in Europe. France, for example, is renowned for an elaborate and elegant style of cooking known as haute cuisine. Appetizers called tapas are popular along Spain’s Mediterranean coast. Traditional Scandinavian fare includes open-faced sandwiches (smørrebrød) and a holiday dish of dried cod soaked in lye (lutefisk). Beet soup (borscht) is a common dish in Russia, Ukraine, and Poland. Smoked beef strips (Bündnerfleisch) are often served in Germany and Switzerland, even for breakfast. Fast foods and processed snacks are also widely available. These compete with street foods such as sausages (Wurst) in Germany and grillimakkara (grilled sausage) in Finland. A popular street food in England is fish and chips, fish deep-fried in batter served with deep-fried potato slices. Overall, however, Europeans tend to be more health- conscious consumers of “slow food” than many North Americans.

The customary drinks of many countries, offered hot and cold by street vendors, now compete with soft drinks (sodas), bottled juices, and carbonated and spring-bottled water. European attitudes regarding consumption of alcoholic beverages are varied. In some places these attitudes are relaxed, while in other areas, alcohol sales are strictly limited. Southern Germany is famous for its Hofbräuhaus (a beer hall in Munich). England and Ireland are known for their pubs. However, the world’s heaviest beer consumption per person is in the Czech Republic. France is world famous for wine, especially the sparkling variety from that country’s Champagne province. The biggest coffee consumption, averaging more than four cups per day, is in chilly Finland. Italians may be the most ardent drinkers of the coffee drinks macchiato and cappuccino, as they are prepared for standing room only in many a neighborhood coffee shop. Most Europeans prefer thick coffee; the English, however, traditionally favor tea.

Art, Music, and Dance

The Hermitage is an art museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, with a rich collection of European…

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Tate Modern is an art gallery in London, England, located in a refurbished power station. It houses…

The museums and galleries of Europe display a wide variety of works. Among their treasures are rare prehistoric as well as Classical and medieval sculptures; religious paintings and manuscripts; and Renaissance masterworks. Museums and galleries also exhibit recent creations covering myriad styles. European artists have reached the world while also having been profoundly influenced by art from other cultures. Indeed, the governments of former European colonies and conquests have demanded the return of “appropriated” (some say “stolen”) artwork.

Holidays and weddings allow for the dusting off of traditional songs and dances. These range from the German drinking songs of Oktoberfest to the carols of England’s Christmas holidays. Among the Roma (Gypsies) of the Balkans and Romania, musicians accompany every part of a wedding feast. Music is played from the ritual shaving of the groom to the placing of the veil on the bride, and from the church ceremony to the post-wedding banquet and dancing in the streets.

Johann Sebastian Bach, in a portrait by Elias Gottlieb (Gottlob Hausmann) dated 1746. The painting…

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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

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For many young people in Europe, dancing is less for holiday celebrations than for weekend “clubbing” (going to nightclubs), which can be an all-consuming pastime. London, Moscow, and the other major cities of Europe are known for their club scenes, especially on Friday and Saturday nights. Such elements of pop culture contrast with the “high culture” celebrated in the music of European composers such as Johann Sebastian Bach, Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms, and Igor Stravinsky. Yet some forms of folk music, including Spanish flamenco, are seen as a union of popular and classical interests. European contributions in high culture have been immense. In addition to Western classical music, both ballet and traditional Western opera developed in Europe. For coverage of European achievements in the visual arts, see painting; sculpture.

Literature

Coverage of the more influential works of literature of Europe, which fill most lists of the “Great Books of the Western World,” cannot be done justice in this limited space. (See also articles on the literature of European countries and languages—for example, English literature, German literature—and biographies of individual writers.)

Dante Alighieri.

William Shakespeare.

European literature began with oral traditions, such as the myths and legends of Germanic and Slavic tribes and the peoples of ancient Greece and Rome. Some of the first epics recorded in writing were the Iliad and the Odyssey of the Greek poet Homer. Among the famous works of the Middle Ages are the long poems the Romance of the Rose (from France), the Song of the Nibelungs (Germany), the Song of the Cid (Spain), and Dante’s The Divine Comedy (Italy). The late 1500s and early 1600s were a “Golden Age” for both English and

Spanish literature, a time of Miguel de Cervantes, William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Lope de Vega, and Pedro Calderón de la Barca. Their works were followed shortly afterward by John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost and the plays of the French writer Molière.

T.S. Eliot.

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Leo Tolstoy.

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In recent centuries English literature has given the world writers such as Jonathan Swift, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and George Eliot, as well as William Wordsworth, Percy Bysshe Shelley, T. S. Eliot, and numerous other poets. The greats of German literature have ranged from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller to the Brothers Grimm, Heinrich Heine, Bertolt Brecht, and Günter Grass. Among the numerous other important writers of European literature are Italy’sC. Collodi (author of Pinocchio), Alessandro Manzoni, and Luigi Pirandello; Spain’s Clarín (Leopoldo Alas), Miguel de Unamuno, and Federico García Lorca; Norway’sHeinrich Ibsen; and France’sVictor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, and Marcel Proust. Russian

literature includes the works of such towering figures as Anton Chekhov, Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, whose The Gulag Archipelago reveals the horrors of Soviet political prisons.

Franz Kafka, about 1910.

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Threats posed by propaganda, secret police, and totalitarianism have brought the words Orwellian and Kafkaesque into our vocabularies, referring to conditions in society suggestive of the works of George Orwell and Franz Kafka. Orwell’s novels include Animal Farm and—above all others—Nineteen Eighty-Four. Kafka is best known for The Trial, The Metamorphosis, and his insights on thought control—such as “A cage went in search of a bird.”

J.K. Rowling.

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Among Europe’s bestselling authors since the mid-20th century are J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Arthur C. Clarke, Dorothy Sayers, Václav Havel, Simone de Beauvoir, Hannah Arendt (who became a U.S. citizen in midlife), Umberto Eco, and J.K. Rowling. (Other authors are noted in this article’s section on European history.)

Media

A screenshot shows the online home page of Le Monde, a newspaper published in Paris, France. It is…

Europe is one of the world’s more Internet-friendly regions, with high-speed wireless connections in many public places. Hundreds of magazines and newspapers are published, among which are Germany’s Der Spiegel; Britain’

s The Guardian, The Times of London, The Telegraph, and Financial Times; France’s Le Monde; and Spain’s El País . The major TV networks, including the government-sponsored British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), produce Web-based news programming and entertainment as well.

Despite a reputation for high quality, European cinema has long struggled against Hollywood film imports. The same is true for television, though American television has often copied European TV series, such as the original BBC version of The Office (starring Ricky Gervais) and the Machiavellian political drama House of Cards (starring Ian Richardson).

Sports

Soccer striker Fernando Torres (number 9) scores a goal for Spain as they beat Italy in a match in…

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The most popular sport in Europe is soccer (football), driven by intense rivalries among different “clubs” and cities. Cricket, basketball, track and field, swimming, gymnastics, boxing, rugby, rowing, skiing, and volleyball also hold great interest. Some sports are mainly followed during the Olympic Games. Top-tier tennis matches are held in France on clay courts and in Britain on the sometimes slick grass courts at Wimbledon in London.

Europe has long seen itself as a world leader in sports. The Olympics began at the ancient Greek site of Olympia

in 776 BC. They were intended to train young men for war and to gain the favorable “eye” of the god Zeus. The earliest games were races. Events such as chariot racing were added later. Not all Greeks were fans of the Olympics, however. The philosopher Xenophanes said that wisdom and civic responsibility should trump physical strength. The ancient physician Galen wrote that athletes ate and slept excessively, and Euripides also mocked them in his play Autolycus.

In Roman times gladiators, exotic animals, and prisoners were sent into the bloody arenas of coliseums throughout the empire. Arena means “sand”—which soaked up the blood and gore of the contests. The taste for blood-sport was further satisfied throughout the ages by bearbaiting and public executions. Even today, sports and spectacles raise ethical questions, from “doping” (taking of performance-enhancing drugs by athletes) to sports gambling. Some sports and spectacles involving animals continue to raise ethical concerns. Fox hunting was banned in Britain by 2005, while bullfighting was banned in Spain’s Catalonia region in 2010. Economy

Overall, Europe’s gross national product (GNP) or gross national income (GNI) per capita is among the highest in the world. Incomes tend to be much lower in eastern and southeastern Europe than in other regions of the European continent. Income inequality is less of a problem in northern, western, central, and southern Europe

than in Russia, Turkey, China, and the United States—and far less of a problem than in Latin America and South Africa. In 2008 Russia had 87 billionaires and more than 100,000 millionaires (as figured in U.S. dollars), yet about a sixth of Russia’s people lived below the subsistence poverty level. Massive corruption accompanied the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, as “instant millionaires” arose from formerly communist societies.

Western and central Europe have been leaders in global capitalism for some 200 years. Since capitalism leaves economies vulnerable to severe market swings—boom-and-bust cycles—however, many countries have adopted regulations to oversee investments, business enterprises, and labor unions. Social safety nets, including health- care systems, are designed to protect the poor, unemployed, and injured. By 2002 a new European Union (EU) currency, the euro, completely replaced the national currencies of most EU countries. EU countries can also trade among one another without customs checkpoints and tariffs.

Agriculture, Fishing, and Forestry

France's vineyards produce many varieties of wine.

European farmers are great producers of such crops as grains (cereals), sugar beets, olives, oilseeds, and citrus and other fruits. The major grain crops grown include wheat, oats, rye, and barley. The Mediterranean climate in Spain, France, Greece, and Italy favors the production of olives, grapes, and wine. Climate also figures in the growing of potatoes in Ireland and grains and sugar beets in Russia, Ukraine, the Baltic states, and other eastern European countries. Eastern Europe has more farmers—and more poor farmers—than western Europe. In addition to growing crops, Europe produces large amounts of milk, meat, eggs, and livestock. In the farm herds of Europe are hundreds of millions of hens, cattle, pigs, goats, and sheep.

The EU opposes genetically modified (GM) foods—a position that has placed it in conflict with U.S.-based agribusiness. At the same time, the EU promotes biodiversity, conservation, and the survival of farms. EU policy argues that farmers provide “public goods” such as care of soils and biodiversity. Thus, the EU provides financial aid to farmers because the “market does not pay for these public goods.” In farming and other pursuits, European policy allows for capitalism and free markets within limits, because the public good may conflict with market forces.

A worker harvests trees at a forest plantation in Finland.

Courtesy of the Embassy of Finland

Europeans and Russians, combined, take in nearly one-tenth of the world’s fish catch. Aquaculture (fish farming) has increased Europe’s supply of mollusks, crustaceans, freshwater fish such as trout and eels, and saltwater fish such as salmon. Forestry is most important in northern Europe and Russia, where evergreen forests are largest, but forest conservation has become a priority.

Industry and Energy

One of the world’s largest energy consumers, the European Union (which excludes Russia and other countries) has few of its own energy resources. The EU must import about half its energy, though it uses energy more efficiently (with less waste) than the United States. Petroleum and natural gas from the North Sea and from Russia are vital. Important supplies of oil also come to the EU via pipelines from Central Asia and via tanker ships from Southwest Asia (the Middle East). Additional natural gas is provided by Norway and Algeria, as well as the Netherlands and Denmark. Poland has large coal mines, but European coal production began to decrease markedly in the late 20th century.

Offshore windmills are used to generate electricity in Denmark.

About four-fifths of the EU’s electricity comes from fossil fuels (including petroleum, natural gas, and coal). Burning fossil fuels for electricity accounts for about a third of the EU’s carbon dioxide emissions, with slightly fewer emissions coming from automobiles and other transportation. The use of alternative sources of electricity is growing, though progress has been slower than initially planned. Hydropower (electricity produced by waterpower) is important in Austria, Norway, Russia, Sweden, Finland, Latvia, Portugal, and the Balkans. Geothermal energy—using heat from within Earth, such as at hot springs—is paramount in Iceland. Solar,

biomass, and tidal energy generation is expanding. Windmill farms generate power in several countries, including Germany, Spain, and Denmark. Many European countries use nuclear power plants to generate electricity. France relies the most on nuclear power, which accounts for roughly three-fourths of the country’s electricity.

European manufacturing jobs remain important, despite pressure to move factories to low-wage areas such as India or China. In the EU, manufacturing and support services account for about half of nongovernment employment, three-fourths of exports, and more than three-fourths of research and development. Among Europe’ s main products are chemicals, plastics, food products, beverages, and machinery. Europe builds about one- tenth of the world’s ships. It also produces a significant portion of the world’s supply of iron ore and steel. Germany, France, and the United Kingdom are world leaders in the production of automobiles, appliances, and pharmaceuticals.

Services

Services are a major economic sector in Europe, with banking, tourism, retail trade, health care, education, and government activities included. Tourism alone employs about five percent of the EU labor force. City streets in town centers are lined with small stores, and there are fewer automobile-serving retail strip malls than in the United States and Canada. Universities, government bureaucracies, and scientific institutions such as CERN provide higher-paying service jobs.

Transportation

Europe has well-developed highways, mass transit and railway systems, and interconnected rivers and canals. However, many of the railroads of eastern Europe are in poor condition. The Rhine River is the most important inland waterway. A high-speed rail tunnel under the English Channel links London, England, to Paris, France, and Brussels, Belgium; the London-to-Paris trip can be made in about 2.5 hours. City buses, light rail, and subways are used far more than in North America, even in smaller European cities. Automobile traffic and pollution can be a problem in European cities, however.

International air travel relies on hubs such as London’s Heathrow Airport. Among Europe’s other busiest airports are those at Frankfurt am Main, Germany; Paris, France; Madrid, Spain; Amsterdam, Netherlands; Munich, Germany; and Rome, Italy. The European Space Agency (ESA) launches satellites from French Guiana (South America) and collaborates with the Russian and U.S. space agencies. Government and Social Services

European countries are largely democracies with parliamentary forms of government. Unlike in the United States, where the electoral system is heavily weighted in favor of only two political parties, in Europe elections tend to see the participation of several parties. Following elections, coalitions of parties form (as a temporary alliance) in order to govern a country. The European systems have their pitfalls but allow for the representation of a wide range of political views, from far-right to far-left. It this way they differ from the U.S. system, which is essentially limited to a narrower, more conservative spectrum (of Democrats and Republicans). The European systems allow for many political stances and strategies. Unlike Americans, Europeans associate the term liberal with free markets (traditionally championed by conservatives) rather than civil rights (traditionally a left-wing political concern). Moreover, many conservative Europeans support national health systems and trade unionism. Women hold key posts in right-wing, moderate, and left-wing European political parties.

Europe’s health standards are higher than in much of the world, though southern and eastern Europe are not as advanced in this respect as western and northern Europe. In western and northern Europe, life expectancies are higher than in the United States and obesity, heart disease, and malnutrition are less prevalent. Europe’s high health standards are linked to medical care that both workers and the poor receive, because most European countries have national health-care systems for all residents. (The wealthy can still seek additional treatments, but the poor are not excluded from basic health care.) The medical systems of the Nordic countries are extensions of their “social-welfare states.” In these countries, spending on public health care, rather than being viewed as a negative cost, is seen as helping to create a social safety net encouraging confidence in the future among citizens and investors alike.

The European Parliament building is in Strasbourg, France.

Lukas Riebling

The European Union (EU) provides for free trade and travel within its borders. It attempts to balance power among various countries, though France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom significantly influence the rest. These four countries make up half of the influential Group of Eight (G8), an organization of eight of the world’s richest industrialized countries. (Russia, also a G8 country, is not a member of the EU.) Some EU funds support cultural and educational programs, investments sorely needed in countries with struggling economies.

EU members have reduced military expenses, though many remain members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Russian leaders have objected to the expansions of the EU and NATO to include Eastern European countries of the former Soviet Union. People in those countries have struggled, meanwhile, for authentic democracy in the face of corrupt and powerful elites (sometimes called oligarchs) in the 21st century. Membership in principal European organizations History

Early ancestors of modern humans such as Homo erectus arrived in Europe hundreds of thousands of years ago. Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) inhabited Europe and parts of Asia from about 200,000 to 30,000 years ago. However, anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens) reached Europe only between 45,000 and 35,000 years ago. Archaeologists have excavated tools made of stone, antler, and ivory from sites throughout Europe, especially at rivers and lakes. Early Europeans numbered perhaps only a few thousand individuals. They scavenged and hunted, sometimes by driving rhinoceroses and elephants over cliffs or into bogs. Humans may have competed with Neanderthals for resources, and DNA analyses suggest that a limited number of humans and Neanderthals interbred.

Images of bison were painted on the ceiling of a cave at Altamira, Spain, more than 13,000 years…

A fertility figure found at Willendorf, Lower Austria, was created about 30,000 to 25,000 bc. This…

By 35,000 to 30,000 years ago and possibly much earlier, the first art objects in Europe were created. Among these were paintings and engravings on cave walls at Lascaux, in southwestern France, and Altamira, in northern Spain. Early human art also included small figurines of animals and so-called Venus figurines of human females. These paintings, engravings, and small sculptures indicate symbolic and artistic thinking as well as the early development of religious and magical beliefs.

As the Ice Age ended in Europe about the 8000s BC, many large animals became extinct. Reindeer herds shifted northward in search of the tundra they needed to survive. Melting glaciers caused sea levels to rise, cutting off islands in the North and Mediterranean seas. The island of Great Britain was finally separated from the mainland

in the 6000s BC.

About that time, humans developed many domesticated plants in Europe and her regions. In Europe farming communities thrived first in Greece and southern Italy because of climate and nearness to Southwest Asia,

where large-scale cereal (wheat and barley) agriculture seems to have developed first. (Farms did not appear in northern Europe for a few thousand years.) Dogs were domesticated, partly for their meat and fur, followed by goats, sheep, and cattle. In addition to growing crops and raising domesticated animals, humans adapted hunting, gathering, and fishing tactics to the new climatic conditions. Pottery and religious icons also became more common. Even with these changes, however, the population of Europe remained small. The European continent had perhaps only a few hundred thousand people, while the global population was no more than 5 or 6 million.

A clay model of a wheeled cart came from an ancient grave at Szigetszentmárton, Hungary. The model…

Copper and gold were being mined in Europe by the early 4000s BC. By 3000 BC animal-drawn plows and wheels were in use, as evidenced by wheel marks found below burial mounds and a clay model of a cart found in a grave. In the following centuries, irrigation systems were built on the semiarid plateaus of Spain. By about 3200

BC Greece’s population grew large enough to support powerful cities, as the Aegean Bronze Age began. As metalworking technologies spread, other parts of Europe also entered into periods called Bronze Ages, followed by Iron Ages. Ruins and remains from these periods still dot the countryside, from earthen mounds to burial sites honoring the dead. In northern and western Europe, scientists have discovered the remains of victims of violence preserved (inadvertently) within bogs now covered over by farm fields.

Sheep graze amid the massive stones at Avebury, in Wiltshire, England.

Sarah Bossert—iStock/Thinkstock

Two of the most famous archaeological sites in the world are Stonehenge and Avebury in Great Britain. The

stone circles at Avebury were built about 2850 BC and were altered various times until about 2200 BC. Avebury was part of a larger “sacred landscape” joined by stone paths to nearby Stone Age and Bronze Age sites now called the Sanctuary, West Kennet Long Barrow, Windmill Hill, and Silbury Hill. Some miles away, an earthwork

enclosure was eventually (about 2500 BC) used as a foundation to build the stone circle now called Stonehenge. It includes a circular arrangement of massive stone pillars capped by horizontally laid stones. Stonehenge too was altered over the centuries, even as people continued to build sacred sites and burial mounds in the

surrounding area until about 1500 BC.

Near Stonehenge, in Amesbury, archaeologists discovered the burial of the so-called Amesbury Archer, who died

about 2300 BC. Evidence from the grave site indicates that he was from central Europe and that people of the time may have engaged in long-distance travel or pilgrimages for religious purposes.

A glimpse of daily life 5,300 years ago is provided by the glacier-preserved body called Ötzi the Iceman. Discovered in the Italian Alps, the man was likely a herder of sheep and goats who died in the spring from wounds after a fight, battle, or other violence. In his mid-40s (an advanced age for that time), Ötzi had arthritis and a probably painful whipworm infection. However, his last meals—sloe (a plumlike fruit), meat, and wheat, possibly bread—suggest that he ate a balanced diet. He had a haircut and several simple tattoos. Below a grass- woven cape, Ötzi wore goat-hide leggings, a bearskin cap, and shoes of deerskin and bearskin lined with moss and grasses. He carried tools and possible medicines, a bow and arrows, a copper axe head, and a knife. Whatever details of Ötzi’s life one might imagine, it is clear that people of his time were capable of many activities and technologies based on expert work with stone, metals, animals, and plants. In contrast, most people today could not make even one of his tools, weapons, or shoes by hand.

The Classical Age

The Colosseum in Rome was completed in ad 82 under the Flavian emperor Domitian. It was built as an…

Robert Frerck/Odyssey Productions

The ancient Greek and Roman civilizations are at the heart of what is called the Classical Age, though ancient Greece followed in the footsteps of the Phoenicians, Minoans, and other Mediterranean cultures. Rome, in turn, conquered Greece but was profoundly influenced by its culture. (Limited discussion of this period is included below; See alsoAegean civilization; ancient Greece; ancient Rome; Byzantine Empire.)

There were many admirable and grand aspects of the Classical Age. Western (often Europe-biased) educations tend to focus on these positive features. However, this was not a utopian time. Ancient Greece may have been the “cradle of democracy,” for instance, but only a small percentage of landowning men—and no women—were voting citizens. The Classical civilizations were slave-owning and often militaristic societies, with Spartans, Athenians, or Romans overrunning their neighbors. One of the founding myths of Rome—immortalized later in Giambologna’s sculpture Rape of the Sabines—glorified horrific violence. The arena of the Roman Colosseum would soak in the blood of gladiators and their victims. Mark Antony and Cleopatra are dramatized as a union of

love and beauty. However, when Mark Antony had Cicero killed in 43 BC, he ordered his head and hands cut off and displayed in the Roman Forum to warn those who would speak openly to the people.

Despite its considerable drawbacks, the Classical Age handed down a legacy of learning to the entire Mediterranean region. This occurred partly because Greco-Roman scholars were placed in contact with their counterparts in Persia and North Africa. Greek and Roman contributions included the mathematics of Pythagoras, Euclid, and Archimedes and the astronomy, mathematics, and geography of Ptolemy. Medical learning was advanced by Hippocrates (originator of the Hippocratic oath, an oath still taken by doctors today) and by Greek-born Egyptian-raised Galen. Among the Classical historians were Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon. Also notable were the biographer and moralist Plutarch and that symbol of civic duty and political life Cicero. Western philosophy, science, and ethics owe a debt to Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.

The ancient Greek and Roman religions are remembered as myths that continue to influence European culture, even as simple names and images. Sculptures of Athena (Minerva) grace institutes of science and art, for example, while Mars, the Roman god of war, is recalled in the name of Mars (the red planet), the month of March (when armies marched off), and other “martial” (war-related) terms. Writers and artists may wish for inspiration, or a muse—a notion referring to the nine Muses. The Muses were goddesses of epic poetry, history, love poetry, music, tragedy, sacred music, dance, comedy, and astronomy. Some people still believe in fate, which originated in the Greco-Roman belief in the Three Fates, or the Moirai sisters. The Three Fates were the goddesses Clotho, who spun the thread of life; Lachesis, who measured its length; and Atropos, who cut it and thus determined the time of death.

The Parthenon was the main temple to the goddess Athena on the hill of the Acropolis at Athens,…

The footprint of ancient Greece can be seen in a number of ruins, notably the (reconstructed) Parthenon, the chief temple of the goddess Athena, atop a hill in Athens, Greece. Architectural echoes of ancient Greece can be found in the innumerable “copycat” colonnades, murals, and columns of Neoclassical style throughout the world. The grandeur of ancient Roman architecture still stuns visitors to Italy. Even at the fringes of its reach, Roman civilization left its mark. In England, for example, Romans built a showy bathhouse complex at Bath—with hot mineral springs—that is partly preserved. The Roman bulwark against northern barbarians, Hadrian’s Wall, still stretches across northern England beside a string of once-fortified sites including Housesteads, Birdoswald, and Chesters.

About AD 1, when the Roman Empire was at its height, the population of Europe may have reached 35 million. The population remained, by and large, at this level for nearly 1,000 years owing to recurring epidemics and high infant mortality—reason enough to look on Classical times as a “golden age.” During the same period, the world population remained at roughly 250 million. Modern knowledge of daily life in ancient Roman times is aided by surviving literature and hundreds of excavations, especially at Pompeii and Herculaneum. These cities

were buried by lava—and thus incredibly preserved—by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79.

Although it was long considered illegal under ancient Roman law, Christianity spread as far north as Scotland,

England, and Wales by the 3rd and 4th centuries AD. In the year AD 313 the Roman emperor Constantine ended the persecution of Christians and legalized the religion. Constantine also converted to Christianity himself. The Roman Empire was divided in two by Diocletian, and Theodosius the Great made the split formal in 395. Rome was the capital of the Western Empire, and Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey) led the Byzantine, or Eastern, Empire. Invaders overran the west, sacking Rome in 410 and 455, but the Eastern Empire carried on for centuries.

Beyond the borders of the Roman Empire were numerous other Europeans, including Celts in the British Isles, Germanic peoples in Scandinavia, and Slavs in the east. When Huns from Central Asia invaded the lower Danube, the Germanic Goths there pushed westward and invaded Gaul (now largely France) in 375. Other parts of Europe were invaded by different Germanic tribes. Spain was invaded by Vandals and Visigoths and Italy by Visigoths, Ostrogoths, and Lombards. After the Romans abandoned Britain in 410, it was raided by Angles and Saxons (Germanic tribes from the mainland), some of whom settled there.

The Middle Ages

The medieval era, or Middle Ages, followed the decline of the Roman Empire but without a precise “start” and “end” date. People began calling medieval times “the Dark Ages” later, during the Renaissance, in reference to a supposed lack of learning and abundance of suffering and superstition. Kingdoms, ethnic groups, and religious groups in Europe repeatedly clashed during this time, with much cruelty and bloodletting. However, learning and creative explorations in art and architecture also occurred during the Middle Ages.

Europe emerged from the waves of Germanic invasions only to see the deaths of millions—perhaps half the population—from 541 to the 700s, from an infectious disease called the plague. The epidemic was named the Plague of Justinian after the emperor of Byzantium, where the plague started. The great loss of life during this period may explain, in part, why the Byzantines had trouble subduing neighboring peoples such as the Bulgars. The Bulgars merged with Slavs in the late 600s to form the first Bulgarian state. In succeeding centuries, Bulgaria struggled with the Byzantines in the Balkans. After the plague epidemic was over, Europe’s population grew again, reaching 29–39 million in 1000 and 50–75 million in the 14th century. At that point the Black Death, another plague epidemic, struck Europe.

Pope Leo III crowns Charlemagne emperor on December 25, 800.

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Meanwhile, in 771 the ruler Charlemagne united two kingdoms in what are now France, Belgium, and western Germany. He then undertook more than 50 military campaigns to expand his empire throughout much of western Europe. Such an attempt to unite Europe had not been tried since ancient Roman times and would not be attempted again for 1,000 years. Charlemagne co-opted many rulers by respecting local customs. He also

encouraged scholarship and a new style of architecture—the Carolingian style. This style was later fused with other architectural traditions to create the Romanesque style. The empire that Charlemagne established lasted, in varying extent, for 10 centuries in central and western Europe. This empire later became known as the Holy Roman Empire.

The Vikings plundered, traded, and settled in several regions of Europe from the 8th to the 11th…

Contunico © ZDF Enterprises GmbH, Mainz

From about 789 through the 800s, Vikings (Danes, Norwegians, and Swedes) began to raid the coasts of Britain, the Netherlands, and France. They came to rule parts of England, and a Viking army threatened Paris itself. Some Vikings reached into eastern and southern Europe. In the 900s a Viking leader named Rollo took Normandy (now northern France). About 150 years later, his great-great-great grandson William the Conqueror crossed the English Channel—in the Norman Conquest of 1066—and became king of England.

Joan of Arc.

Photos.com/Jupiterimages

In southeastern Europe the Pechenegs and the Bulgars attacked the Magyars, who then migrated over the Carpathian Mountains to the Hungarian Plains. The country now called Ukraine was the center of a Slavic state

called Kievan Rus. This state grew to considerable strength and size during the 900s and 1000s. Europe was also invaded by the Mongols (Tatars) under Genghis Khan (who lived 1162–1227) and Timur, or Tamerlane (1336– 1405). Meanwhile, England and France engaged in the Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453). During this war French heroine Joan of Arc, the “Maid of Orléans,” was convicted of heresy and was executed by the English.

Religious thought and magical thinking were inseparable from the European worldview. Royal families claimed the “divine right of kings”—asserting that kings derived their authority from God—by referring to Christian and pre-Christian myths. A medieval legend held, for instance, that the French monarchy descended from Melusina (Mélusine), an accursed, winged serpent-mermaid who fled from the ramparts of the castle of Lusignan.

In Europe bloodshed accompanied the spread of Christianity. Some conversions to Christianity occurred peacefully, but others were linked with political and dynastic schemes. For example, in the late 10th century, Prince Vladimir I of Kiev made Christianity his state’s religion to encourage the Byzantines to hire 6,000 of his soldiers. In Sweden a century-long civil war was fought between pagans and Christians. In western Germany and elsewhere in Europe, Christians who believed there were demons burned many people at the stake on suspicion of witchcraft.

A band of Crusaders sets off for the Holy Land.

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European Christians shed even more blood from 1096 to 1270, when European kingdoms launched a series of invasions of the Holy Land in the Middle East (Southwest Asia). The main aims of these Crusades were to halt the spread of Islam and to return the Holy Land from Muslim to Christian control. Although some of the Crusades resulted in long but costly occupations of Jerusalem and other lands, others were disasters. In the early 1200s the Fourth Crusade even turned aside to massacre Christians in Constantinople. Other invasions by the Crusaders were undermined by plagues, storms, drowning, a lack of supplies, military incompetence, and poor discipline. Even today in Muslim countries, the word crusade conjures images of murder and rape. A “holy war” was also fought in Spain, where a Christian army ended 781 years of Muslim residence there in 1492. The Spanish moral attitude—with an insistence on religious uniformity—was akin to that of the Crusaders. The Spanish soon brought that intolerant mentality to the Americas.

The Black Death (bubonic and pneumonic plagues) arrived in Europe in 1347–51 from Asia and returned various times to Europe. It killed at least one-third of Europe’s population, as many as 25 million out of a total of 50 to 75 million people. Rather than seeing these horrific plagues as infections from rat fleas or bacteria (about which people of the time knew nothing), Europeans blamed demons and the “end of the world,” or the apocalypse. On a positive note, after so many European settlements were abandoned, labor shortages that resulted allowed craftspeople and peasants to demand higher wages and better living conditions.

Geoffrey Chaucer.

The British Library (Public Domain)

From 1200 to 1450, medieval Christianity helped produce great works of architecture and art. Printing had not yet reached Europe from China, but European monks hand-copied manuscripts “illuminated” with beautiful illustrations in the margins. Bibles, biographies of saints, and other sacred writings received such illustration. In the Middle Ages many narratives of love and chivalry were written (seeromance). Geoffrey Chaucer’s entertaining The Canterbury Tales reflected on the religious pilgrimages of the time. Some of the period’s greatest writers, including Petrarch, Giovanni Boccaccio, and Dante, are seen as precursors to the Renaissance.

Stained glass beautifies the windows at the Sainte-Chappelle, a Gothic cathedral in Paris, France.…

The architectural style known as Gothic was developed in Europe starting in the 12th century. The Gothic style was grander than the Romanesque style—especially in the French Gothic cathedrals of Paris, Chartres, Reims, Amiens, and Beauvais. Gothic cathedrals in France and elsewhere featured flying buttresses, arches that buttressed (supported) the roof by transferring weight to columns outside the main wall. Additional stonework was placed atop to ensure that the column would not be pushed out—sideways—by the force from the roof. Ceilings had rib vaulting (interlocking stone arches) or weblike fan vaulting. All these innovations allowed architects to build much larger and taller buildings, with very high ceilings, thinner walls, and large windows. Stained-glass rose windows (round decorated windows) awed visitors, especially at the cathedrals of Chartres, Bourges, and Sainte-Chapelle. Massive bell towers were built, as were spires such as that of Salisbury Cathedral (England) and Freiburg Cathedral (Germany), which features open-air stonework. Stonemasons typically worked off and on for centuries to complete a cathedral—for example, the cathedral constructed from 1230 to 1601 in the city of Palma (Majorca, Spain).

The medieval social system known as feudalism was not seen everywhere in Europe and did not develop fully until about 1000. It was a hierarchical system, or one with different social orders or ranks. At the bottom were the serfs, peasants who acted as vassals (or as dependents) to lords (knights and landlords). The vassals were under the protection of their lord and had to serve him in various ways, such as fighting for him in wars. The lords in turn served dukes and kings, and the kings served emperors. Knights sought status through chivalry— honorable and courteous behavior—and the tradition of courtly love.

The Renaissance

The Pietà is a marble sculpture by Michelangelo from 1499. The sculpture is in St. Peter's Basilica, …

The period known as the Renaissance followed the Middle Ages in European history, lasting generally from about the mid-14th century into the 16th century. Scholars disagree, however, on the precise dates of this period. Italy transitioned into the Renaissance by the 1300s, but other areas—such as Spain—abandoned the Middle Ages more slowly. Renaissance is a French word meaning “rebirth,” in reference to a rebirth of interest by artists and scholars in ancient Greek and Roman art, architecture, learning, and values. Renaissance scholars promoted humanism, a movement that emphasized the development of human virtues and abilities to their fullest extent. In a demographic sense as well, Europe was slowly being “reborn,” replacing population lost to the Black Death. By 1500 the population of Europe had returned to between 48 and 67 million people (depending on the estimate) —lower or perhaps equal to the population in 1340.

The Mona Lisa is an oil painting by Leonardo da Vinci from about 1503–06. The painting is in the…

The Renaissance enabled the flourishing of genius in painters such as Titian, Raphael, Giorgione, Tintoretto, El Greco, Botticelli, and others. Leonardo da Vinci is regarded as the ideal “Renaissance man” (one accomplished in many fields) because of his varied talents as a painter, sculptor, architect, and inventor. Under the patronage of the powerful Medici family, Michelangelo created his David statue and other works, including the ceiling paintings of the Sistine Chapel at Vatican City.

Not merely an artistic age, the Renaissance was also a time of political intrigue. Niccolò Machiavelli, for example, wrote The Prince (1513), a guide for rulers. It gave advice such as the following: “It is necessary for a prince to have the people friendly, otherwise he has no security in adversity”; and “A prince ought to inspire fear in such a way that, if he does not win love, he avoids hatred; because he can endure very well being feared whilst he is not hated.”

The Age of Exploration

Christopher Columbus's fleet of three ships sets sail from Spain in 1492.

Kean Collection/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

In the 1400s and 1500s European explorers undertook numerous long-distance sea voyages, initially in search of new trade routes. Their search brought them into contact with peoples and lands that were new to them. The resulting Age of Exploration led to the European conquest and colonization of much of the world. These long- distance voyages were partly products of the Middle Ages and partly causes of the Renaissance. Yet they were also a separate phenomenon—a coming together of events aiding global conquest. Voyages of exploration, or “discovery,” shaped European politics and culture. However, the term “discovery” is placed in quotation marks because indigenous peoples had already explored their own lands. Their knowledge was either co-opted in the service of conquest, ignored, or destroyed by Europeans.

A painting by Canaletto from about 1740 shows one side of St. Mark's Square in Venice (Italy). The…

Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Gift of Mrs. Barbara Hutton, 1945.15.3

Explorers in southwestern Europe began to seek new trade routes because the known trade routes were dominated by other powers. Access to the eastern Mediterranean Sea was barred by the fleets of Byzantium (the Seljuq Turks) and after 1453 by those of the Ottoman Turks. The other known trade routes from Europe were

monopolized by Venice and Genoa (now in Italy). Portugal and Spain thus looked southward and westward for trade connections and riches. Within a relatively short time, the Portuguese rounded the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa (1488) and reached India (1497–99), Brazil (1500), Southeast Asia (1513), and China (1517). The Spanish soon learned to compete in such exploration, followed by the Dutch and the English.

The Spanish kingdoms of Castile, León, and Aragon were united in the 1400s as one kingdom. After defeating the Muslims in Spain (the Moors) at their last stronghold in 1492, the Spanish monarchs allowed Christopher Columbus to sail under the Spanish flag. He accidentally “discovered” the Americas. Soon Spanish conquistadors (conquerors) occupied the Caribbean and crossed Panama (1510). They overran the Aztec (1519) and Mayan (1524) civilizations, took Peru (1529–32), and explored what is now the southeastern United States (1539). The Spanish also occupied the Philippines (1564). In Florida they founded the city of St. Augustine in 1565. The Spanish thus settled in North America decades before the English. The English settled Roanoke Island (Virginia) in 1585, but the settlement was soon mysteriously abandoned. The English then established colonies at Jamestown (Virginia) in 1607 and at Plymouth (Massachusetts), where the Pilgrims disembarked from the Mayflower in 1620. The Dutch also competed economically and militarily in Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia.

European exploration of the Americas in the 15th and 16th centuries brought the so-called Old and…

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Rather than viewing all such “discoveries” as advances for civilization, many modern scholars see in them criminal acts such as kidnapping, murder, and the devastation of populations. Yet the Conquest of the Americas is also called the Great Exchange or Columbian Exchange because it led to the exchange of numerous plants, animals, diseases, products, and ideas across continents. Europeans brought technologies such as steel, firearms, and oceangoing ships to the Americas. They also introduced to the Americas crops such as wheat, oranges, bananas, and coffee and domesticated animals such as horses, donkeys, cattle, goats, pigs, and war dogs. To the great misfortune of the American Indians, the Europeans accidentally brought to the Americas many diseases, including smallpox, measles, malaria, influenza, and leprosy.

Meanwhile, the Americas provided Europe with domesticated corn (maize), cacao (the source of chocolate), avocados, and tomatoes, all from Mexico; potatoes from Bolivia and Peru; tobacco; and shiploads of treasure.

American crops expanded Europeans’ access to a vitamin-rich diet, helping give them a rising population and strength to dominate future colonies. European plantations of sugarcane, tobacco, bananas, and cotton in the Americas and Africa also generated immense wealth.

Between 1503 and 1660 a flood of American gold and silver arrived in Seville, Spain, but at a terrible cost. Millions of native Americans (in Latin America and North America) were dying from epidemics brought by the Europeans as well as from forced labor and other abuses. The riches flowing into Europe arguably did more harm than good to Europe as well. The Spanish king spent his gold and silver, plus loans that eventually bankrupted him, on equipment and supplies to wage war in Europe and elsewhere. The pinnacle of waste was the Spanish Armada, a naval invasion fleet sent to the ocean floor by a cyclone and English naval tactics in 1588. Other Spanish nobles spent treasure from the Americas on imported luxury goods, hurting local manufacturers as inflation brought suffering to the poor.

Catherine II the Great, empress of Russia, in a portrait by Dmitry Levitsky dated 1782.

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Russia, meanwhile, expanded to the Black Sea. It invaded Constantinople in 1453 and defeated the Tatars in 1480. The last male in the Russian (Rurik) ruling dynasty died in 1598. Russia then experienced a political crisis and period of foreign invasions known as the Time of Troubles. This period ended in 1613 with the crowning of Tsar Michael Romanov, whose dynasty would not end until 1917. While western and southern Europe focused efforts on conquering “new worlds,” Russia established an inland empire in Eurasia. Russia expanded across Siberia, and Tsar Peter I (Peter the Great) extended his reach to the Baltic Sea in the late 1600s and early 1700s. He imported aspects of European culture and technology to Russia. So too did Catherine the Great, who was born in Germany and ruled Russia in the late 1700s. Although the elites of Moscow and St. Petersburg increased their contact with “the West,” they cared little for improving the lives of peasants—the vast majority of the Russian population.

The Reformation and Counter-Reformation: The Wars of Religion

Martin Luther, oil on panel by Lucas Cranach,1529.

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The religious revolution known as the Reformation swept through Europe in the 16th century. By the…

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A religious revolution known as the Reformation took place in Europe in the 16th century. The Reformation began through protests against corruption and excess in the Roman Catholic Church as well as objections to the humanistic focus of the Renaissance. In 1517 Martin Luther, a Roman Catholic priest, called for reforms in the church by posting a document called the Ninety-five Theses at the Schlosskirche (Castle Church) in Wittenberg, Germany. Charles V, emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, summoned Luther to the Diet of Worms, an assembly at the town of Worms, Germany, in 1521. However, Luther refused to apologize. Intending to reform the Roman

Catholic Church, Luther found himself instead at the head of a new denomination called Protestantism or Lutheranism. Various other Protestant denominations were soon founded by more radical reformers. From Germany, the Reformation spread to other European countries.

Johannes Gutenberg developed the first printing press in the mid-1400s, making it possible to…

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The Reformation was aided by new technology: the movable-type printing press. This invention was developed by Johannes Gutenberg in Germany. It allowed for the widespread distribution and reading of the Bible—which Gutenberg printed about 1455—as well as the eloquent writings of Luther himself.

Luther could not foresee the wars that were to come between 1517 and 1648. These religious and political wars were fought between various Roman Catholic and Protestant powers and factions in Europe. They were fueled by religious fanaticism, dynastic and political ambitions, and cruelty on all sides.

Charles V with his hunting dog, oil on wood by Jakob Seisenegger, 1532; in the collection of the…

As revolts against Roman Catholicism spread, in 1529 Charles V attempted to ban Lutheranism in the Holy Roman Empire. Warfare intensified. The pope’s Council of Trent, a meeting of Roman Catholic bishops to rule on questions of church doctrine and reform, first met in 1545. It debated for 15 years before finally accepting the reforms that Protestants had once demanded. The Peace of Augsburg (1555) temporarily ended warfare in Germany. However, the years of bloodshed, terror, political intrigue, and theological differences made it too late to pacify Europe.

King Henry VIII of England.

In England, meanwhile, King Henry VIII supported Protestantism for personal and political reasons. He was motivated largely by the pope’s refusal to grant him a divorce. England broke away from the Roman Catholic Church, and in 1534 Henry made himself head of the Church of England. His Tudor family line ruled until 1603.

Beginning in 1618, the Thirty Years’ War killed nearly six million people, including one-third of the German population. It was fought throughout much of Europe between various European powers. In 1648 the war ended when nearly 200 rulers signed the Peace of Westphalia. This peace settlement declared that religious minorities in each area would be tolerated, be they Protestant or Roman Catholic. Yet the Peace of Westphalia was undermined by opportunists and extremists, and the pope called it “null, void, invalid, unjust, damnable, reprobate, inane, empty of meaning and effect for all time.”

Elsewhere in Europe during the 17th century, the English Civil Wars killed perhaps nearly 200,000 people (though some estimates put the loss at as many as 500,000 people). Given the small British population of the time, this was proportionately greater than British deaths in World War I. Struggles based on class, politics, and religion were tearing England apart, and war with Scotland and Ireland followed. Eventually, the English

Parliament arrayed forces commanded by Oliver Cromwell against King Charles I, who was executed in 1649. In 1653 Cromwell was named lord protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland. However, in the 1660 “Restoration” of the monarchy, England crowned Charles II as king. A generation later the landowning elites undertook the Glorious Revolution (1688–89), in which King James II was deposed, or forced to give up the throne. An English Bill of Rights was written, and William and Mary were then made the new monarchs of England.

Suspected Protestants are tortured as heretics during the Spanish Inquisition.

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Not all the religious violence of this period was Protestant versus Roman Catholic. Catholics also attacked one another. To punish heretics, the pope in 1542 created the Inquisition, a tribunal that became synonymous with terror and torture. Portugal and Spain increased the climate of fear with Inquisitions under their control. Across Europe, Protestants and Catholics alike accused tens of thousands of people of witchcraft. Following torture, many of the accused were burned, drowned, or hanged. In 1627, for example, a shaman of the Sami community was sentenced to death for allegedly having called up a storm that killed a sailing crew—an incident of irrational scapegoating by a village reeling from disaster. Older women were especially vulnerable to accusations of witchcraft. This was partly because the European society of the time left these women with little financial support, and some turned to selling herbs and traditional remedies for income.

The Scientific Revolution, Enlightenment, and Agricultural Revolution

Isaac Newton uses a prism to separate sunlight into a band of colors, in an experiment to study…

Scientific thought underwent a revolution in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries, bringing great advances in many fields. This Scientific Revolution began during the Renaissance with the astronomical studies of Nicolaus Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, and Johannes Kepler. In the early 1600s Galileo observed sunspots and Jupiter’s major moons through a telescope. He was arrested for heresy, however, by the Inquisition in Rome for supporting Copernicus’s theory that Earth revolves around the Sun. Further scientific advances of the period included William Harvey’s theory of blood circulation and René Descartes and Isaac Newton’s research on mathematics. Newton also established the basic laws of motion and gravity in physics and laid the foundation for modern optics. Christiaan Huygens invented the pendulum clock in 1654. John Harrison’s timepiece, or chronometer, developed in the 1700s, allowed navigators to determine longitude (east-west position) at sea.

Voltaire, 1718.

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In the 17th and 18th centuries, a European intellectual movement known as the Enlightenment celebrated the use of reason, or logical thought. The movement was inspired by faith in the possibility of a better world and in the capacity of reason to achieve it. Enlightenment thinkers objected to the absolute power of rulers and the Roman Catholic Church. Montesquieu is credited as a “father of Enlightenment” because his book Persian Letters (1721) made veiled criticisms of French nobles and their despotic rule. Many other writers, scientists, philosophers, and encyclopedists—for example, Voltaire, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Jeremy Bentham, Jean- Jacques Rousseau, and Denis Diderot—also made major contributions during the 1700s.

Meanwhile, the traditional agricultural system of Britain was being transformed. This agricultural revolution in Britain had many causes. Communications improved with the building of new roadways, ports, and canals. Selective breeding (animal husbandry) became widespread in Britain following the examples of the Netherlands and Germany. Gentlemen-farmers such as Thomas Coke and Jethro Tull invented agricultural machinery. Tragically, the agricultural revolution was also linked to landlessness. Villagers had once shared lands called “commons” for animal grazing, but greedy British landlords fenced off these lands. This so-called enclosure movement yielded larger harvests for the landlords but impoverished Britain’s rural populations by the late 1700s. One critic (the English farmer and poet John Clare) wrote “Inclosure came and trampled on the grave/ Of labours rights and left the poor a slave.”

Workers became desperate for any wages that factories might offer. Of the total British labor force, only one- fourth worked in agriculture by 1850, and one-tenth by 1900. Similar changes occurred on mainland Europe, though with more resistance to the practice of enclosures than in Britain. Greater percentages of French and Russian farmers remained on their land.

Edward Jenner, the discoverer of the smallpox vaccination, inoculates his child against the disease.

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As agricultural and scientific changes heralded the Industrial Revolution, populations increased because of high birth rates and immigration. Between 1750 and 1789, France’s population grew from about 22 million to 26 million; perhaps one million people lived in Paris. Great Britain had about 6.5 million people in 1760. The British population grew to 9 million in 1801 and 14 million in 1831, of which London, England, housed a large share. Berlin (Germany) and Rome (Italy) were also growing apace. Smallpox vaccinations helped tens of millions of children survive into adulthood after 1800. This was roughly the year in which the world population first surpassed one billion.

However, European emigration to the Americas increased by the millions because Europe offered little economic support, and almost no social “safety net,” for its growing population. This lack was often the result of deliberate government decisions, based on extreme laissez-faire (free market) policies. Such policies dictate that government involvement in economic affairs should be avoided as much as possible. Such government decisions were also based on a distortion of the scientific theory of evolution (Darwin’s theory) to justify modern inequalities—that is, “social Darwinism,” which Darwin never proposed. Social Darwinism held that inequality was natural and beneficial in society, as it would result in the survival of the strong rather than the weak. Government inaction based on such policies could have tragic consequences, as when the British refused to send food to Ireland during the Irish Potato Famine of 1845–49.

The Industrial Revolution and Political Turmoil

Workers make bottles at a glass factory in Lancashire, England, in the mid-1800s.

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The Industrial Revolution began in England in the late 1700s and then spread to the United States and continental Europe. It radically changed the economy. The traditional economy was based on agriculture and

handicrafts. It was replaced by an economy dominated by manufacturing and the mass production of goods by machine. The Industrial Revolution involved many new developments in technology. Among these were the use of iron and steel, new energy sources, and the invention of machines that increased the production of goods. Animals, wind, and streams had turned grain mills for centuries, and waterpower factories were common for years before the wide acceptance of wood- and coal-fired steam engines. England had few native forests to burn, so coal was desirable. However, before the invention of water pumps, most of England’s mines were often flooded. One advance led to another; for example, weaving machines were built to keep pace with new spinning machines. Important developments in transportation and communications included the railroad and the telegraph.

Among the drawbacks of the Industrial Revolution were poor urban living conditions and the aggressive tactics used by factory owners against small competitors. The fast output of British textile factories increased demand for cotton from slave plantations overseas. By 1807 more than 60 percent of the cotton bales arriving in London and Liverpool, England, and Glasgow, Scotland, originated in the American South. Britain maintained demand for Southern cotton through the American Civil War (1861–65), decades after having ended slavery in the British crown colonies. Thus, the “free-market liberalism” of English capitalists was steeped in the blood of slaves. In other words, these capitalists made themselves wealthy through the poverty of others, especially landless peasants and slaves.

During the Industrial Revolution, more and more people moved to the rapidly growing cities, where factory jobs were available. Daily life in the British cities involved sweating under a pall of coal-generated smoke, not only from factories but from the hearths of cottages, apartments, and mansions. Cities developed some advantages over rural conditions, even for the poor—such as housing of brick and slate rather than vermin-infested thatch and wood. However, the cities were filled with rats, filth, and disease. Sewage gushing from factories and apartments into alleys, rivers, and wells contributed to outbreaks of the diseases cholera and typhoid. Smoke, dust, and crowding made the disease tuberculosis rampant.

The artist John Martin said he “could not imagine anything more terrible” than the industrial Midlands of England that inspired his end-of-the-world painting The Great Day of His Wrath (1851–53). Manchester, England, as viewed by Alexis de Tocqueville in 1835, was a “dark, dank maze” and “stinking drain” awash in smoke and noise: “The steps of scurrying crowds, the cranking of wheels grinding…the scream of steam…the heavy roll of wagons” without “shouts of joy or sounds of pleasure, nor the music of instruments which announce a holiday anywhere.” At the same time, a kind of internal “colonization” saw Irish working in the dirtiest, most disgusting jobs, risking life and limb for low wages. Working families kept streaming into Manchester, England, however, swelling the city to more than 300,000 people by 1851.

A woman operates a spinning jenny, a machine for spinning cotton or wool, in a factory during the…

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Women, men, and children in the middle and working classes participated in social changes affecting their homes and earnings. Some factories specifically recruited young women out of the belief that they were more docile and easier to control in the workplace. Other women had to raise families while also working as street cleaners or maids or in low-pay “sweating” industries making clothing.

Mary Wollstonecraft appears in an oil on canvas painted by John Opie about 1797. The painting is in…

Frustrated at the lack of civil rights for women in Europe, Mary Wollstonecraft wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1792. In this work, she argued that giving women equal access to education, political power, and socioeconomic opportunities would bring “rational fellowship instead of slavish obedience,” so women would become “more observant daughters, more affectionate sisters, more faithful wives, and more reasonable mothers—in a word, better citizens.” Women could then show “true affection,” because they would learn to respect themselves rather than being limited by superficial concerns, “idle vanity,” and irrational ignorance. Wollstonecraft inspired later feminists to gain access for women to universities (starting in the late 1800s) and to win for women the right to vote (in the 1900s). She also inspired women to advocate for full respect and economic equality—goals not fully realized even in the early 21st century, more than 200 years later.

The French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars (1789–1815)

An armed mob of Parisians storm the Bastille on July 14, 1789, at the start of the…

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The aristocracy of France enjoyed a golden age in the 1600s and 1700s. This age yielded the excesses and foolishness satirized in Voltaire’s novel Candide (1759). The poor in France were entirely lacking in power. Amid mass starvation a myth spread that France’s queen, Marie-Antoinette, had said for those without bread “Let them eat cake.” The French Revolution fed on the people’s suffering and on the idealism of French soldiers who had witnessed the American Revolution. After a French mob stormed the infamous Bastille prison in Paris in 1789, revolutionaries captured the French monarchs. A few years later the monarchs were beheaded at the guillotine, as were countless others during the period of the French Revolution known as the Reign of Terror. The Terror revealed that the revolution was spinning out of control.

The Emperor Napoleon in His Study at the Tuileries, an oil painting by Jacques-Louis David dated…

This map of Europe shows the greatest extent to which the Napoleonic empire reached (1812).

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Eventually a dictator emerged: Napoleon Bonaparte, who stretched his empire from Portugal to eastern Europe. However, he miscalculated horribly by invading Russia. His troops entered a burnt-out Moscow only to suffer an unrelenting Russian winter. After retreat from Moscow and costly battles elsewhere, Napoleon’s army was finally defeated by the British general Wellington at Waterloo, in Belgium.

These political events influenced art and literature. The Romantic movement followed the Enlightenment, partly in reaction against that “cold” Age of Reason. Romanticism emphasized individual aspirations, feelings, and intuition, as shown in the paintings of Francisco de Goya and J.M.W. Turner and in the poetry of William Wordsworth and Lord Byron. Examples of Romantic novels include Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s tragic The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774), and Madame de Staël’s Corinne (1807). But Romanticism did not require the discarding of science or reason. For example, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s novel Frankenstein (1818) is an exemplary Romantic and Gothic work, yet it is also arguably the modern world’s first science-fiction novel.

The Victorian Age and Colonial Militarism

Queen Victoria.

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During the 1800s European colonies and other dependencies filled world maps. Portugal, Great Britain, the Netherlands, and France controlled large parts of South and Southeast Asia. Their access to Asia was facilitated by the opening of the Suez Canal in Egypt in 1869. This canal linked the Mediterranean and Red seas, greatly reducing the travel time between Europe and Asia. Many other places, including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and much of Africa, were also under European control. During the reign of Britain’s Queen Victoria (1837–1901), it was said that “the sun never sets on the British Empire,” because British colonies stretched around the world (and it was thus always daytime somewhere in the empire). Victoria also reconnected the

bloodlines of Europe: She married her German cousin Prince Albert, and their four sons and five daughters married into other European royal families.

Much is written about the riches that empire building brought back to Europe. The conquests of other lands granted economic boons to Europe at the expense of the conquered. Much is also said (whether unjustly or not) of the “advances of civilization” that Europe brought to the rest of the world—such as horses, beef and dairy cattle, wheat, and technologies. It is also known that many Europeans, especially the British, were proud to be “masters” of the world—responsible for leading and teaching others. However, one reads less often of the enormous costs of European empires—the lives, livelihoods, and treasures sacrificed. In addition, great psychological damage resulted from “cultures of domination”—that is, a dominant culture engaging in acts of cultural or actual genocide, slavery, and other forms of dominance. The United Kingdom and France even used drug addiction as an imperial weapon, the importing of opium being forced on China during the Opium Wars of the mid 1800s.

Russian revolutionaries clash with cavalry forces during the Decembrist uprising of December 26,…

Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection, Brown University Library

A series of revolts against monarchies spread across Europe in the 1800s. They included Russia’s Decembrist uprising of 1825 and numerous revolutions in 1848. Though most were unsuccessful, they were stoked by growing interest in economic liberalism, nationalism, and hatred of absolute monarchs. It seems, however, that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’s The Communist Manifesto (1848) had few readers at the time.

Borders and alliances shifted rapidly, as Italy, Germany, and other modern nations began moving toward unification. This unification was achieved partly through violence, such as in the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71), which gave Germany control over valuable resources. Romania gained independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1878.

The character of daily life in the 1800s depended greatly on one’s social status, income, and gender. Members of the aristocracy kept up their lavish lifestyles despite the scorn heaped on them by reformers and writers. The British elites occupied themselves with hobbies, balls, and traditional English teatime—with imported tea leaves from India and sugar from the Caribbean colonies. Meanwhile, the poor ate bread soaked in tea for want of milk, meat, or honey. The downtrodden of England were seldom championed except in the novels of Charles Dickens and the poems of William Blake. Blake’s poem “London” testifies to the conditions of the day: “How the chimney- sweeper’s cry/ Every blackening church appals,/ And the hapless soldier’s sigh/ Runs in blood down palace-walls.”

Transportation in European cities left much to be desired. By the late 1800s the traffic jams of London kicked up a reek of horse urine and droppings. In addition, the coal-fired pollution of the 1800s continued well into the 1900s. The “pea-soup” London fog of Sherlock Holmes fame was not a natural phenomenon but the product of coal smoke. Even the subway in London was originally designed for steam locomotives. As the stench of animal excretions diminished, so the fumes of coal and petroleum increased.

The soldier’s life, if it lasted long, yielded less pay than pain, as expressed in a poem by W.E. Henley: “What if the best of our wages be/ An empty sleeve, a stiff-set knee,/ A crutch for the rest of life…/Let but the bugles of England play/ Over the hills and far away!” Large standing armies became the norm in many European countries. British soldiers were sent around the world, whether to a quiet post or to die in Afghanistan or southern Africa, where entire armies were lost. From 1779 to 1879 the Dutch and the British undertook a series of conflicts in southern Africa known as the Cape Frontier Wars. When Europeans engaged in the notorious “Scramble for Africa”—a series of colonial occupations from the 1880s—the death toll was even greater, as illustrated in Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness, set in the Belgian Congo (now Democratic Republic of the Congo). Africans did not accept the European invaders lightly, particularly when Ethiopia shocked the world by decisively defeating an Italian army.

A ship carrying convicts to a penal settlement in Australia departs from Britain in the 19th…

Capitalism brought disturbing boom-and-bust economic cycles. These included the downturn of 1826–47 and the grinding 1873 “great depression” (a term used long before the more famous Great Depression of the 1930s). During the 19th century millions of Irish, Italians, Germans, English, Scots, Poles, and others left Europe for the United States and Latin America. Others were exiled. For example, the British government sentenced many Irish dissidents (political dissenters) and English union organizers to “transportation”—that being exile to prison settlements in Australia.

The Early Twentieth Century

As the European population increased from 270 million in 1850 to 460 million in 1910, many new technologies and philosophies emerged. Cities saw improved sanitation, and new medicines saved lives. Mental problems

were treatable through Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis. But dreams of human progress in Europe gave way to disillusionment. Abuses of workers in factories and mines led to clashes between soldiers and strikers. International disputes intensified. Maintaining colonies in Africa and South Asia cost lives. The Russians were humiliated in war with Japan in 1904–05 (seeRusso-Japanese War). Northern Bulgaria gained autonomy from the Ottoman Empire in 1878, followed by independence for all of Bulgaria in 1908. However, the Balkans fell into a series of wars.

World War I (1914–18)

A British tank is employed at the Western Front (in western Europe) during World War I.

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In 1912 the Balkan states went to war with the Turkish Ottoman Empire (seeBalkan Wars). Later, Serbia desired to take Bosnia and Herzegovina, a part of Austria-Hungary that was closely related to Serbia ethnically, and make it part of Serbia. Serbian propaganda encouraged a Serbian man to assassinate Austria’s crown prince Francis Ferdinand in 1914. Russia defended Serbia because the Russian and Serbian peoples shared Slavic ethnic ties. An alliance of France, Russia, and Great Britain then faced Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire in World War I. Trench warfare, killing machines, and chemical weapons ended the lives of millions and caused widespread despair. The daily horrors experienced by soldiers in the trenches were memorably recounted in Erich Maria Remarque’s novel All Quiet on the Western Front (1929).

As a result of World War I, the borders of Europe changed dramatically.

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The Russian Revolution of 1917 caused Russia to withdraw from the war. The tsar and his family were murdered, and after a tumultuous period the communistVladimir Lenin seized power in Russia. With the end of World War I

in 1918, the maps of Europe, Africa, and Asia shifted. Germany lost its colonial possessions. The defeated Ottoman Empire fell apart, and Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk) used his war-hero status to help him become president of the new Republic of Turkey.

Between the World Wars

The influenza (flu) pandemic of 1918–19 swept across the globe immediately after World War I, killing perhaps 20 million people. Meanwhile, several countries formed the League of Nations, an international organization that helped arbitrate international disputes and promoted disarmament (the reduction of weapons). Yet it failed to stop the next world war.

Joseph Stalin, 1950.

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The vast Soviet Union was formed from Russia and its neighbors. This fledgling country saw democratic ideals twisted under a communist dictatorship. Soviet authorities killed more than 8 million people in the Soviet Union’s grain-growing areas, particularly Ukraine, by taking so much of the grain harvests that they caused two famines (1921–22 and 1932–33). The second of these famines occurred under the brutal dictator Joseph Stalin, who ruled the Soviet Union from 1928 to 1953. His centralization of power cost tens of millions of lives.

Adolf Hitler (right) with Benito Mussolini.

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In 1922 Benito Mussolini began his march toward fascism in Italy. Fascism is a form of government in which the strength and glory of the nation is considered more important than the well-being of its individual people. Under such a system, the people are expected to be wholly obedient to an all-powerful leader. Fascism also found adherents in Germany who resented the reparations payments required after World War I. Their anger increased during the Great Depression of the 1930s, and they supported Adolf Hitler as leader of the fascist Nazi Party. In 1933 Hitler became dictator of Germany. Germany withdrew from the League of Nations, and Mussolini and Hitler rapidly built up their military power. Soon Mussolini’s troops invaded Ethiopia (as revenge for the Italian defeat there in the 1800s). In 1936 Hitler sent troops into the Rhineland on Germany’s border with France.

General Francisco Franco's troops move through Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War.

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The Great Depression of the 1930s strained the resources of most governments around the world and encouraged violence and political intrigue in Europe. In the Spanish Civil War (1936–39), Francisco Franco led fascist rebels to overthrow the democratically elected government of the Spanish republic. The rebels were

called Nationalists, while supporters of the Spanish republic’s elected government were called Republicans. Fascist Germany and Italy supplied the Nationalists with airplanes and advanced weaponry. Despite the arrival of volunteer brigades from other countries to fight for the Republicans, Nationalist forces defeated the Republicans. The Nationalist bombing of one Spanish city is recalled in Pablo Picasso’s famous antiwar painting Guernica. The tragic fate of Republican fighters in Spain was depicted in Ernest Hemingway’s novel For Whom the Bell Tolls.

Meanwhile, Germany occupied Austria. Hitler also coerced Great Britain and France into allowing Germany to take the Sudetenland region from Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic and Slovakia). In 1939, however, Hitler took more of Czechoslovakia while Hungary and Poland seized the rest. Italy then invaded Albania.

World War II (1939–45)

World War II began when Hitler ordered the German army to invade Poland on September 1, 1939. Two days later Britain and France declared war on Germany. Stalin’s Soviet Union, meanwhile, invaded the eastern half of Poland, honoring a secret pact with Germany. Decried as treachery, Stalin’s move caused fissures among communist sympathizers throughout the world.

The German flag flies from the top of the Arc de Triomphe during the German occupation of Paris,…

Children sit outside the bomb-damaged remains of their home in the suburbs of London, England,…

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In the spring of 1940, German planes and armored units used the military tactic blitzkrieg (“lightning war”) to sweep through Belgium into France. Hundreds of thousands of British and French troops barely escaped at the beaches of Dunkirk, France. Soon afterward, Hitler ordered massive air attacks of Great Britain, now

remembered as the Battle of Britain. However, his bombers faced a fierce defense aided by a new technology: radar.

A group of prisoners were liberated from the Nazi concentration camp in Ebensee, Austria.

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Through a plan called the “Final Solution,” the Nazis used machine-guns, poison gas, and concentration camps to massacre two-thirds of the Jews in Europe, along with large numbers of political dissenters, Roma (Gypsies), and homosexuals. (SeeHolocaust.) In addition to genocide, Germany’s greatest military mistake was its June 1941 invasion (aided by Italy, Bulgaria, Romania, and others) of the Soviet Union. The invaders fell victim to the brutal Russian winter. Thus, Hitler repeated Napoleon’s strategic mistake of 1812. After Germany’s invasion, the Soviet Union joined Britain, France, and other “Allied” powers against the “Axis” countries of Germany, Italy, and Japan.

The United States dropped a nuclear bomb on Nagasaki, Japan, on August 9, 1945. Japan agreed to…

U.S. Department of Defense

The United States sent supplies to British and Soviet forces. However, the United States did not declare war until Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941. The United States then fought with the Allies. A U.S.-

led invasion of Italy in 1943 defeated Mussolini’s troops. After losing pivotal battles and millions of lives, in May 1945 Germany surrendered to the Allied onslaught. After U.S. atomic bombs devastated the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan surrendered in August 1945.

Much of Europe was left shattered after the war. In addition to the scores of people who had been killed or wounded, tens of millions of people had been left homeless. Buildings, roads, bridges, railroads, ports, canals, farms, and utilities had been wrecked, and European economies were at a standstill.

The United Nations (UN) was formed near the end of the war, but the Soviet Union vetoed dozens of proposed UN actions. Independent of the UN, the United States offered Europe the Marshall Plan to provide economic aid to the devastated continent. The Organization for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC) was formed in 1948 to collaborate in the program. The Soviet Union forbade its communist allies from joining.

The Cold War

At the end of World War II, the armies of the Soviet Union liberated the countries of central and eastern Europe from Nazi rule. Determined to maintain control of the region, the Soviet Union installed communist governments in those countries. The Cold War was a long conflict between the United States and its democratic allies in Western Europe and the Soviet Union and the communist countries it dominated in Eastern Europe. Western Europe included the regions of western, northern, and southern Europe, while Eastern Europe included eastern, central, and southeastern Europe. Each side tried to prevent the other from gaining too much power. This conflict was called the Cold War because the hostility did not erupt into actual direct warfare (a “hot” war) between the United States and the Soviet Union. Motivated by Cold War rivalry, however, the two sides did fight and support wars in other countries.

During the Cold War that developed after World War II, the countries of Europe were divided along…

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Some historians say the Cold War began in 1945 as World War II was ending. Many scholars, however, trace it from 1949 when the Soviet Union tested its first atomic weapon. The United States, Canada, and their Western European allies then formed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a military alliance for mutual defense. In 1955 the Soviet Union formed a similar alliance, known as the Warsaw Pact, with its Eastern European allies. Refusing to join either NATO or the Warsaw Pact, Switzerland declared neutrality, as did Sweden, Finland, Austria, Ireland, and Spain. The heavily guarded border between the Soviet-controlled communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the countries of Western Europe was nicknamed the Iron Curtain. Germany was divided into two countries—democratic West Germany and communist East Germany—with the city of Berlin split between them. Berlin was ultimately divided by a wall.

Czechs confront Soviet soldiers invading Prague in 1968. Soviet-led Warsaw Pact troops squelched the …

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The Cold War often became a “hot” war, with conflicts fought in developing countries and in buffer countries between Soviet and NATO zones of control. In 1950–53 several European countries sent troops into the Korean War. France, meanwhile, became embroiled in the Indochinese War (the precursor to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War). In 1956 the Soviet Union brutally crushed a revolt in Hungary, and in 1968 it invaded Czechoslovakia. For decades, the opposing sides in the Cold War backed opposing factions in “proxy wars” in Latin America, Africa, and Southwest Asia, supporting coups, revolts, and civil wars. With the United States, the Soviet Union, and other countries possessing nuclear weapons, Europeans lived under the awful threat of nuclear war. Germany was seen as a potential central battleground.

Secret police forces were established in the countries of Eastern Europe, notably the Soviet Union and East Germany, to suppress dissent. The Stasi, the secret police of East Germany, turned much of the population into informants who spied on their friends, colleagues, and neighbors. The informants denounced those who were not loyal to the government.

Violence linked to a number of terrorist groups occurred in Europe during this period. In Spain, the Basque separatist group ETA (“Basque Homeland and Liberty”) used terrorism in its campaign to achieve an independent country for the Basque people. A left-wing militant group known as the Red Brigades carried out terrorist campaigns in Italy. The Irish Republican Army (IRA), which sought to end British rule in Northern Ireland, planted several bombs in England. Periodic violent clashes erupted in Northern Ireland, inspired by religious (Protestant–Roman Catholic) and political differences.

The town of Pryp'yat, Ukraine, was evacuated after an accident at a nuclear power plant at Chernobyl …

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Several forces converged to end the Cold War, including the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, which cost the Soviets too many lives and resources. In 1986 an accident at a nuclear power plant at Chernobyl, Ukraine (then part of the Soviet Union), showed the incompetence of the Soviet bureaucracy. The growth of the Solidarity labor union in Poland also contributed to the end of the Cold War. The labor union was allowed to run against Poland’s official communist party in free elections in 1989, and Solidarity won nearly all the contested seats. Moreover,

the Soviet Union was strained by the huge costs of maintaining a military capable of facing NATO. The Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev attempted to modernize the Soviet Union by initiating reforms called glasnost (“openness”) and perestroika (“restructuring”). Instead, however, these changes hastened the Soviet Union’s demise.

People climb on the Berlin Wall to celebrate the opening of the border between East and West Germany …

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A wave of democratization spread through Eastern Europe. At midnight on November 9, 1989, the East German government suddenly allowed the gates along the Berlin Wall to be opened. Civilians joyfully climbed to the top of the Berlin Wall and started to break chunks away, and the process of Germany’s reunification began. Also in 1989, revolution deposed Nicolae Ceausescu, who had ruled Romania as dictator since 1965, and the Soviet- dominated peoples of Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria moved toward reforms or revolt. In 1991 the Soviet Union splintered into more than a dozen independent countries.

Europe After the Cold War

After 1991 the whole of Eastern Europe contemplated adopting market economies and democratic reforms, attempting to follow the changes occurring in eastern Germany. However, corruption and boom-and-bust economic cycles made the transitions difficult. The sudden dissolution of dictatorships and secret police forces encouraged nationalist movements. In Yugoslavia, a Serbian-led country in the Balkans, nationalism was stoked by decades of simmering ethnic, religious, and socioeconomic tensions.

In 1992–95 warfare devastated Yugoslavia, shocking observers who had assumed such carnage was no longer possible in Europe. A series of bloody civil wars resulted in the breaking-up of Yugoslavia into several independent countries—Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia (now North Macedonia), Bosnia and Herzegovina, and

Serbia and Montenegro. The new countries emerged only after repeated massacres, “ethnic cleansing” (forcible removal of entire populations), and other horrible human-rights abuses. As war-crimes tribunals were started and mass graves uncovered, Serbians witnessed more unrest, plus confrontations with NATO. Serbia and Montenegro broke apart further: Serbia lost Montenegro in 2006 and Kosovo in 2008.

The rest of Europe was spared such a fate. In 1993 Czechoslovakia split peacefully into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. A relative peace was also established in Northern Ireland in 1998. However, ETA remained an active terrorist group in Spain. Terrorist attacks in Europe were also linked to Chechen rebels (from southern Russia) and the militant Islamist organization al-Qaeda and its affiliates. Additional violence was carried out by repressive military and paramilitary units sometimes acting on behalf of European national governments.

21st-Century European Union

Flag of the European Union.

The European Union (EU) started as a series of economic agreements in the late 20th century. The dream of a truly unified Europe grew as the Cold War ended. EU membership expanded quickly in the early 2000s as a European Parliament and other elements of shared government were established. The EU government adopts common economic, social, and security policies, but each member country continues to maintain its own national government. EU expansions in eastern and southeastern Europe often occurred despite Russian objections.

At the same time this pan-European effort was underway, however, local and regional movements gained strength within individual European countries. For example, Scotland established a separate parliament, and people in the Basque region (northern Spain and southern France) sought cultural and political recognition. Minorities elsewhere also sought EU funding or legal protection.

Stresses between poorer and wealthier countries have made the EU’s problems more severe, as have gaps between the rich and poor within each country. When also considering the rising costs of climate change and energy supplies in the future, the EU faces difficult social and economic decisions. This is true whether or not immigration keeps Europe’s population from slowly declining in the coming decades.

For centuries Europeans tended to see the world through racist and “ethnocentric” lenses, feeling that they were innately superior to people of other races and ethnicities. Most educated individuals disavowed racism and discrimination after World War II. Some people, however, had difficulty abandoning the notion that their own European culture was better than other cultures. Some far-right-wing groups continue to combine this view with racism, scapegoating minority groups rather than seeking meaningful political and economic changes. While

some people worry that religious extremists might instigate terrorist attacks, others see more cause to watch out for right-wing gangs who hate foreigners. Such a gang roamed streets in Greece in 2012, for example, attacking immigrants and defenseless passersby.

The quality of daily life in Europe in the early 21st century was affected by economic booms and busts, shifting demographics, climate change, and politics. Immigration became a contentious issue as tens of millions of migrants moved to Europe, coming especially from former European colonies in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean. In 2005 between 10 and 25 percent of the populations of Spain, France, Ireland, Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Ukraine, and Belarus were born abroad. About a fifth of Greater Paris’s people were born outside France, and about a third of London residents were nonwhite—changes that were viewed positively by many, despite the tensions to be resolved.

Stephen P. Davis Additional Reading

BLAUT, JAMES M. The Colonizer’s Model of the World: Geographical Diffusionism and Eurocentric History; Eight

Eurocentric Historians (Guilford, 1993; 2000).BOEHM, R.G., AND OTHERS.The World and Its People: Western

Hemisphere, Europe and Russia (Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, 2005).CLEMENTS, WILLIAM M., AND GREEN, THOMAS A., EDS., The

Greenwood Encyclopedia of World Folklore and Folklife, Vol. 3: Europe. (Greenwood Press, 2006).DAVEY, FRANCES

E. A Brief Political and Geographic History of Europe: Where Are Prussia, Gaul, and the Holy Roman Empire?

(Mitchell Lane, 2008).EUROPEAN COMMISSION. The EU in the World 2013: A Statistical Portrait (European Union,

2012), and Statistics Explained: Your Guide to European Statistics (European Union, 2013). FLINT, DAVID.Europe

(World Almanac Library, 2006).FORGENG, JEFFREY L., Daily Life in Medieval Europe (Greenwood Press, 1999).FRUCHT,

RICHARD.Eastern Europe: An Introduction to the People, Lands, and Culture (ABC-CLIO, 2005).FULBROOK, MARY, ED.

Europe Since 1945 (Oxford University Press, 2001).HOLMES, GEORGE, ED.The Oxford Illustrated History of Medieval

Europe (Oxford University Press, 2001). KERR, GORDON. A Short History of Europe: From Charlemagne to the

Treaty of Lisbon (Harpenden: Pocket Essentials, 2009).KERSHAW, STEPHEN. A Brief History of Classical Civilization:

From the Origins of Democracy to the Fall of the Roman Empire (Running Press, 2010).LANSKY, DOUG. The Rough

Guide to First-Time Europe (Rough Guides, 2013).MARSHALL CAVENDISH REFERENCE. World and Its Peoples: Europe

(Marshall Cavendish Reference, 2010).MORRIS, JAN. Heaven’s Command: An Imperial Progress (Harcourt, 1973),

and Pax Britannica: The Climax of an Empire (Harcourt, 1968).MUNTONE, STEPHANIE. European History Demystified

(McGraw-Hill, 2012).PAVLOVIĆ, ZORAN. Europe (Chelsea House, 2006).PEARSALL, DEREK.Gothic Europe, 1200–1450

(Pearson, 2001). STEINBERG, SHIRLEY R., ED. Teen Life in Europe (Greenwood Press, 2005).WOLF, ERIC R. Europe and the People Without History (University of California Press, 2010).

Citation (MLA style):

"Europe." Britannica LaunchPacks: The Middle Ages: Civilizations of Europe, Encyclopædia Britannica, 30 Oct. 2019. packs-ngl.eb.com.au. Accessed 5 Aug. 2021.

While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions.

feudalism

In the Middle Ages, before the rise of national states in western Europe, the people there lived under a system called feudalism. This was a social system of rights and obligations based on land ownership patterns.

Château Gaillard is a 12th-century castle built by Richard the Lion-Hearted on a cliff overlooking…

Each small district was ruled by a duke, count, or other noble. The noble’s power was based on the land he held “in feud,” or in return for certain services or payments to a greater lord or the king. The noble allowed tenants to use the land, and the tenants owed the noble services or payments in return. This peculiar system of landholding determined the pattern of government. It also gave rise to fortified castles, knights in armor, and chivalry. The term feudalism therefore describes an entire way of life.

The system of feudalism was established gradually, between the 8th and 11th centuries. France was the land of its earliest and most complete development, but in some form or other it was found in all the countries of western Europe. It flourished especially from the 11th century to the end of the 13th century. Some aspects of feudalism have survived in laws and social customs of modern European countries. Background: The Age of Disorder

Feudalism grew up in an age of disorder, when the central government was helpless to protect the people. Its beginnings can be traced to the breakup of the ancient Roman Empire. Various Germanic tribes, including Goths, Franks, Vandals, and others, began moving into Roman territory at the end of the 4th century, causing great confusion. The Romans called these tribes “barbarians,” and their movement into the empire’s lands has traditionally been called the barbarian invasions. In 410 Rome fell to Alaric, a Visigoth chieftain. In 476 the western Roman Empire came to an end. This date or 500 is commonly taken as marking the end of ancient times and the beginning of the Middle Ages.

On the ruins of the Roman Empire there arose small Germanic kingdoms. The kings warred constantly with one another. Charlemagne, king of the Franks, tried to build a Christian empire modeled on that of Rome. He was crowned emperor in 800 of what later became known as the Holy Roman Empire, but when he died there was no strong ruler to take his place.

The roads and bridges the Romans had built eventually fell into decay. Money almost disappeared, making it impossible for kings to pay their officials and soldiers. Moreover, the kingdoms had to deal with invasions and

raids. From the north came Scandinavian pirates—the Northmen, or Vikings. In the south Muslims invaded the coasts of Italy and France.

People were at the mercy of the various invaders and marauding bandits. Lacking a strong central government, each district had to look out for itself. People naturally sought the protection of their nearest powerful neighbor. In time of trouble his wooden blockhouse or stone castle served as a refuge for both the villagers and their flocks. Land Tenure—Basis of Feudalism

In an homage ceremony, a vassal puts himself under the protection of a lord by placing his hands…

Universitatsbibliothek, Heidelberg, Germany

People had to pay for their protection. Money was scarce, but the noble was very willing to take land instead. The former owner was allowed to use the land during his lifetime. At his death it passed into the hands of his protector.

Many nobles acquired more land than they could manage. They then began to grant land to tenants. Such land was said to be held in feud, and each holding was a fief. The tenant became a vassal of the lord and took an oath to follow him in war and perform other services. If a vassal failed to keep his promises, he was supposed to forfeit the land. In time the fief became hereditary, passing usually to the vassal’s oldest son.

In theory all land belonged to the king or emperor. He was the suzerain, or overlord, of the vassals who held land directly from him. Each of these tenants in chief parceled out most of his vast holdings to subtenants. He would then be suzerain over those to whom he granted fiefs, while remaining a vassal of the king. The subtenants in turn further subdivided the land. In addition to the person farming a fief, a half dozen people might have rights in it. Feudal Bonds and Feudal Powers

In the early feudal age, when a freeman gave up title to his land he became the lord’s “man” and promised him fealty (loyalty). This was called commendation. Out of it grew the ceremony called homage (from the Latin word homo, meaning “man”). The vassal swore to serve his lord, to fight for him, to furnish knights in proportion to

the size of his fief, and to give “aids” in the form of money on special occasions. Aids were generally demanded for the suzerain’s ransom, if he should be made a prisoner; on his departure for a Crusade; when his oldest son was knighted; and at the marriage of his oldest daughter.

In the confusion of the barbarian invasions, some feudal lords became so independent that they maintained soldiers, collected revenues, held courts, and coined money. These powers grew out of older customs and institutions. One of these was called immunity. As the difficulty of maintaining a strong central government increased, kings and emperors depended upon their vassals to keep order. Often they granted them freedom, or immunity, from central authority. Sometimes the immunity was bought.

A scene from the Luttrell Psalter, a 14th-century illuminated manuscript, show serfs operating a…

The British Library (Public Domain)

Strictly speaking, feudalism involved only the noble classes. The system rested, however, on the work of the serfs, or villeins, who supported the lords and their knights. Officially the serfs were “unfree.” They, however, were not the property of other people, like slaves. They were bound to the land and not to any particular lord who held it in fief. They could not leave the place where they were born, but neither could the lord send them away.

The serfs worked on large estates called manors. The lord’s residence was a strongly built manor house or a fortified castle. The serfs lived in a village close by. Each family had its own hut. In the village was the church, the center of religious and social life.

The farmland was divided into three large fields, and each field was divided into long narrow strips. Every serf had strips in each field so that no one person would have the best or the poorest land. The lord’s land was called the demesne. The serfs cultivated the lord’s land as well as their own. They also turned over to the lord part of the produce from their own land. The lord reserved to himself the woodland for his hunting and the pond or stream for his fishing. The serfs were allowed to pasture their cattle and other livestock in the meadow, called the common.

The manor was almost self-supporting. The miller ground the grain, and the smith welded and fashioned iron. The women spun linen and wool, wove fabrics, sewed, baked, and brewed. The chief materials that had to be brought in were salt and iron.

A knight rides on horseback, from the illustrated manuscript of poet Martial of Paris.

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The main business of the lord and his knights was warfare. His sons were trained in horsemanship and handling weapons and also in social skills. Their code of behavior was called chivalry. (See alsoArthurian legend.) Trial by Battle, Ordeal, and Compurgation

Among the duties of a vassal was the obligation to sit in his lord’s court to help render justice. The court made no attempt to get at the real facts by questioning witnesses. The usual procedure was to let the accuser and the accused face each other in a formal duel. It was believed that God would be on the side of the innocent. This was trial by battle, or combat.

Trial by ordeal required the accused to plunge his hand into boiling water or oil or to carry a piece of red-hot iron. If the wound healed properly after three days, it was assumed that he was in the right.

Compurgation was trial by oaths. The accuser or the accused was required to produce a number of knights of good reputation who would swear that they believed he was telling the truth. Decline of Feudalism

A vassal might take the oath of fealty to numerous overlords, who did not necessarily owe fealty to one another. Thus the system led to endless conflict. In spite of the incessant turmoil, there was progress in commerce and industry, and money came into increasing use. As towns grew in wealth and importance, the feudal system became intolerable. The new middle class, as well as the church, wanted law and order and supported the king. Larger revenues enabled kings to maintain national standing armies.

At the beginning of the Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453) armored knights on horseback yielded to foot soldiers armed with pikes and longbows. Then gunpowder came into general use, making the great stone castles conquerable. In the 14th century, before the Middle Ages ended, national states were taking the place of feudal governments. Additional Reading

ANDERSON, MERCEDES PADRINO. Feudalism and Village Life in the Middle Ages (World Almanac Library, 2006).

DAVENPORT, JOHN. The Age of Feudalism (Lucent, 2007).O’BRIAN, PLINY. Feudalism in Medieval Europe (Cavendish

Square, 2016).WOOG, ADAM. The Late Middle Ages (ReferencePoint Press, 2012).

Citation (MLA style):

"Feudalism." Britannica LaunchPacks: The Middle Ages: Civilizations of Europe, Encyclopædia Britannica, 1 May. 2017. packs-ngl.eb.com.au. Accessed 5 Aug. 2021.

While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions.

Middle Ages

The medieval period, or the Middle Ages, was a time in European history before the modern era. In the 4th

century ADGermanic peoples began crossing the frontiers of the Roman Empire, in part because of the advance of ferocious warriors from the east—the Huns. The movement of the Germanic peoples contributed to the so- called fall of the Roman Empire. Although violent clashes occurred between Romans and various Germanic tribes, the process also involved the more peaceful migration and settlement of Germanic peoples in the empire and their incorporation in Roman armies. The Germanic peoples themselves underwent important social and cultural changes as a result of their contact with Rome. They were gradually “Romanized,” adopting various Roman traditions—including Christianity—and they became more settled. The union of Germanic traditions and Roman religion and culture led to the emergence of the civilization of the Middle Ages.

The art of illuminating manuscripts—decorating a handwritten book—reached its height in the Middle…

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The Middle Ages cover about 1,000 years—from about AD 500 to about AD 1500. The change from ancient ways to medieval customs came so gradually, however, that it is difficult to tell exactly when the Middle Ages began.

The conventional date of the beginning of the Middle Ages is AD 476, when the Germanic general Odoacer defeated the Roman general Orestes and overthrew the emperor Romulus Augustulus, ending the Western Roman Empire. (The eastern part of the empire, called the Byzantine Empire, survived for about another thousand years.) Other historians give the year 410, when Alaric, king of the Visigoths, sacked Rome. Still others

say that the ancient world lasted until 750 or even 1000, when the extensive practice of slavery as in the classical world finally came to an end in western Europe.

It is equally hard to determine exactly when the Middle Ages ended, for decisive events leading to the modern age took place at different times. Historians say variously that the Middle Ages ended with the fall of Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, in 1453; with the European “discovery” of America, in 1492; with the beginning of the Reformation, in 1517; or with the coming of the French Revolution, in 1789.

The Middle Ages was first defined as a distinct historical period in the 15th century, by scholars who saw their own time as one of great cultural progress and the revival of the Classical learning of ancient Greece and Rome ( seeRenaissance). These scholars thus thought of the time between the fall of the Western Roman Empire and their own time as one of decline and then stagnation. The Middle Ages came to be seen as a long period dominated by ignorance and superstition.

The cathedral of Notre-Dame in Reims, France, is an example of Gothic architecture. The main…

Paul Almasy

Historians today, however, mostly do not accept this position. They emphasize the many important changes that occurred in society during the Middle Ages. New forms of political, social, cultural, and economic organization emerged. The monarchies that developed laid the foundations for the nation-states of the modern period. People also first began to consider Europe as a distinct cultural unit. The Roman Catholic Church became a significant part of medieval life. Later in this period, the population began to grow greatly, agriculture and trade flourished, and cities expanded. Medieval Europe gave the world the first universities, and medieval architects produced magnificent Gothic cathedrals. Fall of the Roman Empire

Even before the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476, life in Europe began to change. The Germanic peoples had long lived along the frontiers of the Roman Empire. In the 3rd century, during a period of near-anarchy

within the empire, they attempted to seize Roman territory. The Roman recovery of the late 3rd and 4th centuries restored the traditional balance. At the same time, the Romans began to welcome some of these people into the empire. Some were settled inside the Roman lines as farmers and defenders of the frontier, and others were recruited for the Roman army. The Germanic peoples in this way became part of the empire and learned Roman ways. In the later 4th century, however, this balance was upset by the appearance of another people, the Huns.

The Huns began moving westward from their homeland north of China in the 4th century, conquering everyone in their way and inspiring great fear. They achieved their greatest success in the 5th century under their leader Attila. As a result of the savage advance of the Huns, the Germanic peoples along the frontier began moving into Roman territory. This movement of the Germanic tribes has traditionally been called the barbarian invasions, since the Romans called foreigners from outside the empire “barbarians.”

The Romans themselves settled some of these Germanic peoples within the empire, while others invaded and conquered Roman territory. The arrival of the Germanic peoples occurred at a time, especially in the Western Empire, when Rome suffered economic and population declines that made it less able to turn back the invaders. From the 4th to 6th centuries Goths, Vandals, Lombards, Franks, Angles, Saxons, and other Germanic tribes entered the empire and created new kingdoms on the ruins of the old Roman world.

The early medieval period has sometimes been called the late antique period or the Dark Ages because it was believed to have been a time of violence and ignorance. This view has generally been rejected, however, and many historians now regard it as a time of significant transformation from one form of civilization to another. In fact, many changes took place during this period that laid important foundations for later developments. The Germanic peoples who settled in the empire did not possess the highly developed systems of law and government of the Romans. However, they followed long-standing customs that served as legal traditions and were organized in war bands led by warrior chiefs. These chiefs, partially as a result of contacts with Rome, evolved into powerful kings. The Germanic peoples adopted, if in simpler form, Roman administrative traditions, especially in the area of taxation. The new Germanic rulers also inherited the language of government and the practice of writing and codifying the law from the Romans.

The creation of new kingdoms out of the old Roman state yielded some dynamic cultures, especially those of the Ostrogoths (eastern Goths) of Italy and the Visigoths (western Goths) of Spain. Although the Germanic peoples enveloped Europe and drove into North Africa, only one group, the Franks, created a lasting state. Their first great leader was Clovis, who in 481–511 established in Gaul the kingdom that was to become France. Influence of Christianity

Clovis not only set the foundation for a long-lasting kingdom but he also converted to Christianity, probably in 496 but possibly later. Many Germanic peoples had become Christians earlier. Most of them had adopted the Arian doctrine, however, which was condemned as heresy (a doctrine contrary to church teachings) by the Roman Catholic Church. Clovis was one of the first of the Germanic kings to convert to Roman Catholic Christianity, and with him the entire kingdom accepted the faith.

When Clovis became a Roman Catholic, his Franks began to receive the support of the bishops and other religious figures in his kingdom. This opened to the Franks the residue of Roman culture sustained by the church. Its monks, living in retreats called monasteries, had preserved a knowledge of Roman arts, crafts, and industries. The monasteries were also important centers of book production and education, and they now began to spread this learning.

Pope Leo III crowns Charlemagne emperor on December 25, 800.

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Christianity’s influence widened when the great Charlemagne of the Carolingian dynasty became king of the Franks in 768. He brought the Lombards and pagan Saxons under his sway. Charlemagne was a great conqueror who sought to spread the faith as he expanded his kingdom throughout much of western Europe. He supported missionaries and strove to improve the religious life in his realm. He also worked to defend the church with his great army and to protect the pope from enemies in Italy. In 800 the pope crowned Charlemagne emperor to strengthen ties between pope and king.

Charlemagne also vigorously sought to provide his people with education. He founded schools in monasteries and churches for the poor as well as for the nobility. He invited the best scholars in Europe to join his court and form a palace school where they could teach and write. They also brought many books with them, and Charlemagne encouraged them to make more copies of these books.

Charlemagne’s empire faced many challenges after its founder’s death, when it was divided among all his sons. Later, Charlemagne’s grandsons and great-grandsons often engaged in civil war with one another in an attempt to rule the entire empire. To preserve the loyalty of their soldiers, the later Carolingian kings granted land to their supporters. At the same time that civil wars took place, Europe was terrorized by new invasions. Seagoing Vikings swept down on England and the west coast of Europe and darted up rivers to raid inland. Hungarians drove from the east into Germany, France, and Italy. Muslims from North Africa and Spain (regions that Muslim armies had conquered in the 7th and 8th centuries) slashed into southern Europe.

A typical medieval stone castle included a number of separate areas and buildings within the towered …

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

A medieval fortress overlooks the city of San Marino, in the country of San Marino.

Alaexis

The Carolingian military was ill-equipped to face these marauders, and local lords emerged to defend the region from attack. Many lords built fortified dwellings, or castles—strong points that could serve to defend the territory and to help the lord impose his will on the people living there. In the part of the empire that would emerge as the country of France, this process led to the almost complete collapse of royal authority. In its place, dukes, counts, and even lesser nobles assumed political and military authority before the king of France was able to establish his control of the kingdom during the 12th century. In the German territories of the Carolingian world, however, a new dynasty established itself in the 10th century and created a new empire that came to be called the Holy Roman Empire. It was the greatest power in medieval Europe for many generations, surviving in some form or other until 1806. The Peasant’s Life

About nine-tenths of the people were peasants—farmers or village laborers. A peasant village housed perhaps 10 to 60 families. Each family lived in a simple hut made of wood or wicker daubed with mud and thatched with straw or rushes. Layers of straw or reeds covered the floor; often the peasants’ home included their pigs, chickens, and other animals. The bed was a pile of dried leaves or straw, and they used skins of animals for cover. A cooking fire of peat or wood burned day and night in a clearing on the dirt floor. The smoke seeped out through a hole in the roof or the open half of a two-piece door. The only furniture was a plank table on trestles, a few stools, perhaps a chest, and probably a loom for the women to make their own cloth. Every hut had a vegetable patch.

A scene from the Luttrell Psalter, a 14th-century illuminated manuscript, show serfs operating a…

The British Library (Public Domain)

Only a very small number of the peasants were free, independent farmers who paid a fixed rent for their land. The vast majority were serfs, who lived in a condition of dependent servitude. A serf and his descendants were legally bound to work on a specific plot of land and were subject to the will of the lord who owned that land. (Unlike slaves, however, they could not be bought and sold.) Serfs typically farmed the land in order to feed

themselves and their families. They also had to work to support their lord. They gave about half their time to work in his fields, to cut timber, haul water, and spin and weave cloth for him and his family, to repair his buildings, and to wait upon his household. In war, the men had to fight at his side. Besides providing labor, serfs had to pay taxes to their lord in money or produce. They also had to give a tithe to the church—every 10th egg, sheaf of wheat, lamb, chicken, and all other animals. (See alsofeudalism.)

Outbreaks of the plague throughout the Middle Ages affected nobles and peasants alike.

Yale University Art Gallery

A town crier calls on the people to “bring out your dead” in a medieval street scene from the time…

Courtesy of the National Library of Medicine

Peasants suffered from famines. Plague outbreaks depleted the livestock. Frosts, floods, and droughts destroyed the crops. Bursts of warfare ravaged the countryside as the lords burned each other’s fields and harvests.

The peasants’ lot was hard, but most historians consider it little worse than that of peasants today. Because of the many holidays, or holy days, in the Middle Ages, peasants actually labored only about 260 days a year. They spent their holidays in church festivals, watching wandering troupes of jongleurs (jugglers, acrobats, storytellers, and musicians), journeying to mystery or miracle plays, or engaging in wrestling, bowling, cockfights, apple bobs, or dancing. Castle Life

Supported by the labor and taxes of the peasants, the lord and his wife would seem to have had a comfortable life. In many ways they did, even though they lacked many of the comforts of modern society.

Medieval castles were commonly built on hills to make the approach difficult for enemies. Wartburg…

The lords owned large self-sufficient estates called manors, which included the land worked by the serfs. The manor houses, where the lords lived, were often protected with defensive works. About the 12th century these palisaded, fortified manorial dwellings began to give way to stone castles. Some of these, with their great outer walls and courtyard buildings, covered perhaps 15 acres and were built for defensive warfare.

At dawn the watchman atop the donjon (main tower) blew a blast on his bugle to awaken the castle. After breakfast the nobles attended mass in the castle chapel. The lord then took up his business. He might first have heard the report of an estate manager. If a discontented or ill-treated serf had fled, doubtless the lord would order retainers to bring him back—for serfs were bound to the lord unless they could evade him for a year and a day. The lord would also hear the petty offenses of peasants and fine the culprits or perhaps sentence them to a day in the pillory (a wooden frame that secured a person’s head and arms, causing physical discomfort and exposing the person to public ridicule and abuse). Serious deeds, such as poaching or murder, were legal matters for the local court or royal “circuit” court. (See below “Crime and Punishment.”)

The lady of the castle, or chatelaine, had many duties. She inspected the work of her large staff of servants. She saw that her spinners, weavers, and embroiderers furnished clothes for the castle and rich vestments for the clergy. She and her ladies also helped to train the pages, well-born boys who came to live in the castle at the age of seven. For seven years pages were schooled in religion, music, dancing, riding, hunting, and some reading, writing, and arithmetic. At the age of 14 they became squires.

A knight rides on horseback, from the illustrated manuscript of poet Martial of Paris.

Photos.com/Getty Images

A 15th-century illustration shows crossbows and cannons used during a siege of a medieval castle.

The British Library (Public domain)

The lord directed the training of squires. They spent seven years learning the practices of chivalry and, above all, of warfare. At the age of 21, if worthy, they received the accolade of knighthood.

Sometime between 9 AM and noon, a trumpet summoned the lord’s household to the great hall for dinner. They ate soup, game, birds, mutton, pork, some beef, and often venison or boar slain in the hunt. Great, flat pieces of bread called trenchers served as plates and, after the meal, were flung to the dogs around the table or given to the poor. Huge pies, or pasties, filled with several kinds of fowl or fish, were relished. Metal or wood cups or leather “jacks” held cider, beer, or wine. Coffee and tea were not used in Europe until after the Middle Ages. Minstrels or jongleurs entertained at dinner.

King John of England and his hounds chase a deer.

Photos.com/Thinkstock

King Arthur meets with his Knights of the Round Table, in an illustration from a 15th century…

The nobles enjoyed hunting, games, and tournaments. Even the ladies and their pages rode afield to loose falcons at game birds (seefalconry). Indoors, in front of the great open fire, there were chess, checkers, and backgammon. A troubadour would often chant and sing of the storied deeds of Charlemagne, Roland, or Arthur and his Round Table.

Two groups of knights clash in a mêlée, a contest of armed horsemen at a medieval tournament,…

Giraudon—Art Resource/Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

One of the most popular types of entertainment for the medieval aristocracy was the tournament, an extravagant contest of arms. The tournament originated as a staged battle between two groups of knights, with few rules. These battles were fought with blunted weapons to minimize injury, but knights still died in the fighting. In its most elaborate form, the tournament was a highly ritualized and regulated affair. Visiting knights and nobles set up their pavilions near the lists, or field of contest. Over each tent a banner fluttered to show the rank of a contestant—here a count, there a marquis or a baron (seetitles of nobility). The shield of each armor- clad warrior was emblazoned to identify the bearer (seeheraldry). The first day of the tournament was usually devoted to single combats, in which pairs of knights rode full tilt at each other with 10-foot (3-meter) lances. The tournament’s climax was the mêlée, when companies of knights battled in perilous mimic warfare. A tournament cost a lord a fortune for hospitality and rich prizes given to the victors.

Tournaments had a grim value as practice for medieval warfare. They also served as a substitute for warfare when internal conflict declined in the 12th century. Dangerous affairs, tournaments faced prohibitions at times by European rulers. The introduction of plate armor made tournaments less dangerous. They remained a popular form of entertainment even after the introduction of gunpowder began to transform the nature of battle. Children’s Lives

The understanding of childhood in the Middle Ages has undergone an important transformation since it was first studied seriously in the 1960s. The belief that children in the Middle Ages received little love from their parents, though still popularly held, has been shown to be false. The deep sense of bereavement at a child’s death, revealed in sources from the period, and the care involved in a child’s burial are only two examples to disprove this notion. Infant mortality was high in the Middle Ages, but that did not prevent parents from making an emotional investment in their children. The notion that childhood was not perceived as a distinct category of life has also been proved wrong. Drawing in part from the Roman legal tradition, people in medieval times believed that early childhood lasted to age 7, and adolescence lasted to age 12 for girls and age 14 for boys.

The experience of children varied somewhat according to social class and location, but in general infants and young children remained in the home. Infants were swaddled and breast-fed by their mothers or by a wet nurse and were given an adult’s diet by about age two. Young children were gradually given duties in the household, but children were also given the opportunity to play. Games included hopscotch, hide-and-seek, backgammon and chess, and ball games. A child’s toys included, among other things, miniature knights in armor, dolls, cups, plates, and boats. Children also had pets.

Interior of a 16th-century school from Science and Literature in The Middle Ages by Paul Lacroix,…

Classic Vision—age fotostock/Imagestate

At age seven, most children began their education. Girls were usually taught in the home, learning spinning, weaving, and household management. Boys were sent to local parish schools or grammar schools, where they learned the alphabet and some reading, writing, and arithmetic. They learned to read in their native language, with only a small number also learning Latin language and grammar. The school year lasted from mid-autumn until late spring, and the school day began at dawn.

In adolescence, children were apprenticed in the family business or sent as apprentices to other people’s homes. Children served as servants or learned a skilled craft from a master; contracts survive that clearly regulate the relationship between apprentice and master and outline the hours of labor and related matters. Some noble boys were sent to monasteries or into the clergy. Others were sent to castles to serve as pages to learn courtly ritual and how to be a knight.

Children were also given basic religious instruction. Soon after birth, they were baptized and assigned godparents. Parents and godparents were expected to teach their children the Apostles’ Creed and the Lord’s Prayer and to take them to church on holy days. The Church

The 13th-century Chartres Cathedral, in Chartres, France, is famed for its sculpture, stained-glass…

Top Photo Group/Thinkstock

One of the most important of all institutions in the Middle Ages was the Roman Catholic Church. Throughout the Middle Ages the church was a significant force in the arts and culture as well as in education and religion.

In the Middle Ages the church was organized into different groups, or orders: the clergy, including the monks and the priests, and the laity (ordinary believers). Each of these groups was assigned specific functions by the church. The exact responsibilities of each group evolved over time, and sometimes conflict between groups emerged in the process of defining their mutual responsibilities.

The Clergy

The power of the church was rooted in its spiritual authority. The priests were responsible for saying mass and performing the sacraments, especially baptism and communion (Holy Eucharist). The sacraments were thought to be essential for gaining salvation. The mass was a form of communal worship and religious instruction and was the ritual during which the Eucharist was celebrated. All Christians were expected to attend the mass.

The priesthood was increasingly organized in an ever more hierarchical fashion, and all clergy and laity were ultimately subject to the pope. The parish structure was fully worked out in the 11th century. Each parish was headed by a priest, and the parishes were organized in dioceses headed by bishops. The bishops were the leading spiritual and administrative figures in the diocese and were charged with overseeing all religious affairs in their territory. The archbishops oversaw more than one diocese.

The bishops ran the church courts, which controlled all cases involving the clergy and church property and many other cases, such as those of marriage, wills, and orphans. Bishops also exercised the power of excommunication. This excluded those guilty of serious crimes against the church from participating in church services or receiving the sacraments, and other Christians were forbidden from associating with them. Excommunication was intended not as a punishment but as a tool to encourage proper Christian behavior.

At the very top of the organization of the church was the pope. Before the 11th century, the authority of the pope was limited. He was understood to be the most important of the bishops in the Roman Catholic Church, but he was not always seen as the ruler of the church. He could claim special status as the successor of the apostle St. Peter—Catholics believe that St. Peter was the first bishop of Rome and that all popes are his heirs. Some popes of the early Middle Ages, such as Gregory I, the Great (590–604), were effective rulers who imposed their will on all of the church. Others exercised more limited powers. In the 11th century a series of popes, including Gregory VII (1073–85), transformed the church into a highly structured organization headed by the pope. Popes after the 11th century ruled almost as kings. They exercised authority over questions of religious faith and practice, intervened in political affairs, and were the superiors of all bishops and other clergy.

The church kept alive the spark of public education. True, in the lords’ castles pages went to their lessons, but pages were extremely few compared with the number of peasant boys. For them, the church looked to each village parish to supply a school and religious training. Each diocese was expected to maintain a cathedral school to educate the clergy.

An old graveyard is found among the stone huts built by monks on the island of Skellig Michael.…

Jibi44

The remains of a medieval friary (left) and a 19th-century Carmelite abbey are located in Loughrea,…

Andreas F. Borchert

The work of the church was supported by the work of monks and nuns, who retired from worldly distractions to live in monasteries and convents. They gave up earthly pleasures to prepare for salvation. For that, they accepted a life of prayer and labor and upheld the Christian precept of “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” Their example was bulwarked starting in the 13th century by the work of the friars, men of religious orders who went into the world to preach to the people of the growing towns and cities.

The most important and influential guideline for monastic life was the strict yet wholesome and practical Rule of Benedict of Nursia (480?–547?). The Benedictine Rule put upon the monks the double duty of prayer and work. Benedict sought to establish a balance in the daily life of his monks so that they did not indulge themselves in any one practice. The monks had to do some manual labor, such as clearing forests, draining swamps, nursing the sick, sheltering travelers, and serving the needy. In this way, the monks provided important services to society in addition to their spiritual duties. In the Middle Ages, though, it was their prayer that was most valued, and many people made donations to the monasteries so that the monks would pray for them.

Ruins of Villers Abbey, a medieval Cistercian abbey, stand near Villers-la-Ville, Belgium.

Of the contributions made by the monks’ manual labor, two were especially notable. The first directly helped people of the Middle Ages: it was farming skill. Monasteries were traditionally established in the countryside, and the monks were successful farmers. One group of monks, the Cistercians, have been called the best farmers of medieval days. They founded new monasteries far away from the towns and other population centers and brought more land into cultivation.

A medieval monk sitting in a scriptorium copies a text.

The Bettmann Archive

The monks’ second special service was producing manuscripts. Even before the downfall of Rome the church had begun to preserve the books of Roman and Greek knowledge. Neither the siege nor the sack of Rome found the church surrendering its full treasury of classical learning. Later, when the church came to power, monks spent hours in the scriptorium, or writing room. There they meticulously copied the scrolls, letter by letter. One monk wrote at the end of a manuscript: “He who does not know how to write imagines that it is no labor; but, though only three fingers hold the pen, the whole body grows weary.” Their labors preserved not only classical knowledge but also the works of Christian thinkers. Monks copied the books of the Bible, the writings of the Church fathers, and other works of theology and doctrine. The monks also wrote works of history, theology, poetry, law, and other disciplines.

The Laity

During the Middle Ages, the church played an ever-increasing role in the daily life of the laity, especially after the Gregorian Reform movement of the 11th century. The church assumed responsibility for guiding Christians from birth to death and presided over important rites of passage throughout their lives. All Christians were

expected to receive baptism as infants. This rite not only introduced the child into the community of the faithful but also strengthened relations within the earthly community. An important element of the baptismal rite was the identification of godparents who were bound to the newly baptized child and responsible for ensuring the child’s growth as a Christian.

The church also required that all Christians offer confession of sins to a priest and receive the sacrament of the Eucharist at least once a year. Medieval Christians turned to the church to confirm the rite of marriage as well. Originally, the priestly blessing of marriages took place outside the church. During the 11th and 12th centuries, however, the church defined marriage as one of the seven sacraments, and marriages were then consecrated inside churches. The church also declared that only those outside set limits of blood relation could marry, a rule that proved difficult to follow at the village level, where people tended to be fairly closely related. At life’s end, the church (a priest) would administer last rites and offer burial in the church’s graveyard. The powerful sometimes made donations to churches or monasteries to secure burial in consecrated ground there.

The religious calendar directly affected all Christians throughout the Middle Ages as they celebrated the holy feasts of the year. Christmas and Easter were great holy days of celebration and solemnity. Christians honored a series of fasts as well, notably in the 40 days before Easter (Lent), during which time they abstained from eating certain foods. They also celebrated saints’ days, which were cause for processions, masses, and feasting.

Saint Margaret of Antioch was one of the most venerated saints during the Middle Ages.

Photos.com/Jupiterimages

The saints, or the holy dead, and their relics—that is, their mortal remains or objects the saints had touched— were central facets in the religious life of the Middle Ages. Saints’ relics were collected and were venerated as the locus of the saints’ holy power on earth. The relics were thought to effect cures of the sick, lame, and blind and to cause other miracles, including the rescue of those unfairly imprisoned. The Holy Eucharist too was thought to effect miracles and was sometimes sown in peasants’ fields to secure a better harvest.

“The Angel with the Millstone” is a book illustration from about 1000–20. It appears in the “Bamberg …

Courtesy of the Staatsbibliothek Bamberg, Ger.

Angels were also important to both Christian popular belief and religious philosophy during the Middle Ages. Angels were believed to provide a vital link between God and humans. It was thought that angels transmitted prayers to God and thus helped people in gaining special graces or favors as well as salvation. Each person was believed to have a guardian angel watching over him or her throughout life. Images of angels were abundant in medieval art, especially in the decoration of cathedrals. Angels were also featured in the medieval dramas known as mystery plays and miracle plays.

The detail of St. Michael slaying the dragon is from Abraham and the Archangel Michael, a large…

Courtesy of the Institut fur Denkmalpflege, Halle, Germany

The archangel (or chief angel) Michael, who leads the angels to victory against Satan in the Book of Revelation, was a favorite of many people in the Middle Ages. A warrior angel, he was thought to protect knights in battle. Many churches and shrines were dedicated to St. Michael, and his feast day, Michaelmas, was a great religious holiday.

In the Middle Ages great emphasis was placed on the afterlife and whether one’s fate would be eternal salvation or damnation. Those who died in a state of grace would enter the bliss of heaven. Sinners who were beyond redemption would be sent to hell, where they would remain exiled from God for all time and would be punished with perpetual pain. It was thought that most lay people, however, would go to purgatory, a place for those who had sinned but could still be saved. Purgatory was considered a place of temporary punishment. There one’s soul was purified through suffering so that one could ultimately enter heaven. It was believed that the prayers of the living could shorten the time the dead spent in purgatory. For this reason, people would commonly pray for their dead relatives or leave money to the church so that prayers for their soul would be offered after death.

Throughout the Middle Ages, tales abounded of individuals who had witnessed the terrors of hell and the joys of the blessed in paradise before returning from the dead. They were sent back to warn the living of what lies in store and thus to encourage people to repent of their sins. These accounts included detailed descriptions of the gruesome tortures awaiting the damned. The most famous of such return-from-the-dead stories is Dante’s Divine Comedy. Many medieval paintings and sculptures also depicted the horrors of hell. Pilgrimages and Crusades

As religion touched nearly every facet of medieval life, people of all classes journeyed to shrines, or places of religious interest, on pilgrimages. The hallowed place might be the grave of a martyr or a church that sheltered the relics of a saint. Travel was hard, but discomfort was even welcomed as a kind of penance. The pilgrim who could not afford a horse plodded on foot, aided by a staff. The typical pilgrim garb was a cloak, girdled by a cord, and a brimmed felt hat.

Every country had its favorite shrines, but the great shrine for all Christians was the Holy City, Jerusalem. The Holy Land had been held by Muslim Arabs for centuries, but Christian pilgrims had been allowed to travel there unmolested. When the Holy Land fell in the 11th century to the Seljuq Turks, who had recently converted to Islam, they persecuted pilgrims.

The Crusaders siege of Jerusalem in 1099 is depicted in a miniature from Descriptio Terrae Sanctae…

Christian Europe then vowed to win the Holy Land from the Turk “infidels.” Pope Urban II declared in 1095, “God wills it. Christ Himself will be your leader when you fight for Jerusalem.” On that command he sent forth Europe to fight a series of religious wars called the Crusades that were designed to restore control of the Holy Land to the Christians.

There were eight major and many smaller expeditions, but only the First Crusade truly succeeded in its purpose of conquering Jerusalem. The remaining Crusades were designed to protect or restore the gains of the First Crusade. The main Crusading movement lasted from 1096 until 1291, when the last Crusader outpost, Acre, fell to Muslim armies. The ideal of Crusading, however, and attempts to launch another Crusade continued into the 16th century.

The marches into other lands —Christian armies fought Muslims in Spain as well as in the Holy Land—and the contact with other peoples showed the Crusaders a much higher level of civilization. They brought back new ideas, new customs, and new products. These innovations helped to stimulate business and to revive wide commerce, and they also stimulated intellectual and cultural growth in Christian Europe. Magic and Witchcraft

In the Middle Ages, many people believed in angels, demons, miracles, and magic.

Belief in magic, witchcraft, and good and evil spirits was widespread throughout medieval society. Indeed, the great number of magic formulas and books from the period suggests that magic was widely practiced in various forms. Witches, sorcerers, and other magicians worked in private to accomplish their own goals, as contrasted with the public practice of religion. Through magic, individuals sought to gain or preserve health, to get or keep property, to protect against natural disasters or evil spirits, to help friends, or to seek revenge. They used a variety of means, including blessings and chants, astrology and divination (to predict the future), amulets and charms (to ward off hostile spirits and harmful events), and potions and medicinal herbs.

Magic and witchcraft were widely condemned by authorities during the Middle Ages, for political, social, or religious reasons. In the early part of the Middle Ages, magic was strongly identified with “paganism”—the term Christian missionaries used for the religious beliefs of Celtic, Germanic, and Scandinavian peoples. Church leaders generally denounced magic as superstition. However, they also sometimes adopted native practices and beliefs, blending them with Christian ones. For example, some medicinal remedies found in monks’ manuscripts combined Christian formulas and rites with Germanic folk rituals. These remedies were intended to cure ailments caused by poisons, elf-attack, possession by demons, or other invisible forces. Medieval magic drew from mainstream Christian tradition as well. Magic thus survived in a complex relationship with the dominant Christian religion.

In the 11th century, attitudes toward witchcraft and other forms of magic began to change. From about 1050 to 1350, the battle between the church and magic occurred as the struggle against heresy—the church’s label for Christian belief that had been corrupted, or twisted away from the good or the true. In this period magicians and witches, like heretics, were believed to distort or abuse Christian rites to do the Devil’s work. During the Middle Ages, the Devil was deeply and widely feared by both common people and church leaders. The Devil and demons were thought to be keenly intent on destroying people’s souls, lives, families, and communities as well as the church and state. Demons were believed to cause a range of misfortunes, from disease and mental disorders to accidental deaths, famine, war, and earthquakes. By the late Middle Ages, witches were thought to get supernatural powers by being possessed by demons or by making pacts with them. Witches were thus considered the sworn enemies of Christian society.

It is important to note, however, that the European witch hunts—in which tens of thousands of purported witches were killed—did not take place in the Middle Ages. The witch hunts occurred afterward, in the era of the Renaissance, Reformation, and Scientific Revolution. There were scattered persecutions of witches starting in the late 14th century, at the end of the medieval period. The witch hunts became severe later and lasted until the 18th century. (See alsoSalem witch trials.) Crime and Punishment

The understanding of crime and its punishment evolved across the course of the Middle Ages and was shaped by both secular and church, or canon, law. In the early Middle Ages, from the 5th to 10th centuries, this understanding was molded by the customs and practices of the Germanic kingdoms that replaced the Roman Empire and its legal traditions in western Europe. Crimes were generally understood as offenses against families and not against the general community or state. Resolution of assault, murder, or property crimes sometimes involved the feud, a means of extracting vengeance through violence or negotiation. Early medieval legal codes

also established the practice of the payment of compensation called the wergild to resolve cases of murder. Individuals were assigned a specific monetary value depending on their gender, social status, and other conditions, and the murderer paid the victim’s family the determined amount.

As early medieval rulers established themselves, administration of justice was often assigned to local authorities. One method employed to determine guilt or innocence was trial by ordeal. This practice required the accused to hold a burning coal or red-hot poker in his hand; if the burn healed cleanly, then the accused was judged innocent. It was held that this was God’s judgment of the accused, but the procedure involved the consensus of the community as a whole.

Later in the Middle Ages, the understanding of crime and punishment was shaped in part by the rediscovery of Roman law. The increasing institutionalization of public power and the development of new national legal codes were also factors. Judicial procedures became more regularized and relied less and less on the trial by ordeal, which was formally forbidden by the papacy in the 13th century. The practice of inquisition, a process in which a magistrate collected and assessed evidence of criminal procedure, rather than private accusation, became more widespread during the late Middle Ages.

Roman law was less influential in England, where the legal system became centralized. In the early Middle Ages, each locality in England had its own laws based on custom and tradition. After the Norman Conquest of 1066, judges appointed by the king moved from one place to another to administer these local laws. As time passed, local laws gave way to judges’ interpretations of a broader system of laws accepted in more than one area. Eventually the decisions of the judges, constantly modified by later decisions, were accepted as the body of English common law (seelaw, “Common Law and Statute Law”).

Along with murder and theft, crimes against the community and against religion were prosecuted throughout Europe during the Middle Ages. Offenses in this latter category included blasphemy, heresy, witchcraft, gaming, treason, and counterfeiting. Capital crimes such as murder and theft were punished by hanging or decapitation, and heresy was punished by burning. Lesser punishments included whipping, exposure in the stocks or pillories, mutilation, banishment, fines, and the confiscation of property. Fears of a criminal underworld that public authority could not contain emerged by the 14th century and reinforced a trend toward criminalizing social deviance. The Rise of Towns

Medieval fortifications stand in Muhlhausen, Germany.

Michael Sander

By the beginning of the Middle Ages, urban life had begun to decline in Europe. The Roman Empire had encouraged the building of towns, but city life declined as the empire itself declined. The Germanic peoples

found fewer and smaller towns and established themselves on rural villas, manors, and castles. The reduction in the size and number of towns led to a drop in long-distance trade. Towns lost their right to self-government and became the property of the lords.

Peasants work the land outside a walled town, in artwork from the Grimani Breviary, a Flemish book…

North Wind Picture Archives

In the 11th century, however, the population began to increase dramatically, along with increases in the production of food. It is estimated that the population of Europe nearly doubled between the years 1000 and 1340. The rise in population contributed to the renewed growth of towns and trade. So too did the output of the farms, which allowed more people to work at nonagricultural labor. New towns were founded, and old ones were expanded. Traveling merchants established headquarters in places of safety, such as by the walls of a castle or monastery. Places accessible to main roads or rivers grew rapidly.

Wherever merchants settled, laborers and artisans came. Carpenters and blacksmiths made chests and casks for the merchants’ goods and carts to transport them. Shipbuilders turned out trading vessels. Butchers, bakers, and brewers came to supply food for the workers, and tailors and shoemakers came to supply clothes. Others came to make the wares of trade.

By the 13th century Europe was dotted with towns. Few had as many as 10,000 people. The towns were introducing a new kind of life into medieval Europe, however, for the townspeople now lived by the exchange of goods and services. They were no longer self-sufficient like the small groups of peasants on the manors were; they had to develop a lifestyle based on the idea of exchange. This organization laid the foundations for modern economic and social living.

An important part of urban life during this period was the guilds—associations of merchants and craftspeople that regulated their trades and protected their common interests. In each city, all the people who worked at a particular profession usually would belong to the city’s guild for that profession. The guilds kept the trade of the city in their own hands and made rules for each branch of the trade. Each guild helped its own needy members

and cared for widows and orphans. At first there were only merchant guilds. Then master workmen set up separate craft guilds for each trade—for weavers, blacksmiths, bakers, brewers, butchers, furniture makers, builders, painters, teachers, and so forth—and for different branches of the trades. Leatherworkers, for example, were split into many guilds, such as leather dressers, glovers, pocket makers, and slipper makers. Paris had some 350 craft guilds at the end of the 13th century. All guilds regulated the number of apprentices and workmen, hours of labor, and wages.

The medieval town of St. Emilion is located in the Bordeaux region of France.

As the cities grew rich and their guilds grew powerful, the cities sought the right to govern themselves. The first to free themselves from the power of the lords were in Italy—Venice, Pisa, Genoa, Florence, and others. Towns in France were next to gain power and then towns along the Rhine Valley and on the Baltic coast, where cities of the Hanseatic League grew to enormous wealth and strength. Some of the towns bought their freedom from the nobles and the church; others fought bitter battles to win it. A few were given it.

Medieval town walls stand in Montagnana, Italy. Such walls were built to protect medieval towns.

Dal Pra/M. Grimoldi

A walled pleasure garden is depicted in a miniature from a 15th-century French manuscript copy of …

The British Library (Public Domain)

A medieval drawbridge extends over the moat of a castle in Portugal. A moat was used to help protect …

Photos.com/Thinkstock

In the towns the houses were packed together because every town had to be a fortress, with stout, high walls and a moat or river to protect it from hostile nobles, pirates, and robber bands. The smaller the walled enclosure, the easier it was to defend. The only open places were the market square in the town center, the cathedral, and the few gardens of the rich. Main streets led like spokes of a wheel from the market to the few gates in the walls. Building room was so cramped that the houses were built in several narrow stories, with the upper floors jutting over the alleylike streets.

Houses were uncomfortable. Most of them had a mere framework of heavy timbers. The wall spaces were filled with woven reeds daubed with clay or plaster. Rushes or straw usually lined the floors. Fireplaces had chimneys, and the peril of sparks on the thatched roofs was one of the worst hazards of town living. The house of the average citizen served multiple functions as his dwelling, factory, and shop. Goods were made and sold on the ground floor. The owner and his family lived on the floor above. The upper stories of the house were storage rooms and sleeping lofts for the workmen.

At night the medieval city was dark and dangerous. The streets were not lighted. People who ventured out at night took along one or two workmen with lanterns and weapons as a protection against robbers. In some cities cables were strung across streets to hinder fleeing criminals.

Few working citizens, however, went out at night. The workday began at sunrise and ended at sunset. At 8 or 9

PM the cathedral bell tolled the curfew. This was the signal to cover all fires with ashes to lessen the peril of houses catching fire in the night.

The chief glories of the medieval towns were their churches and guildhalls. The Gothic cathedrals were especially splendid and represented the labor of every art and craft. They were the artistic monuments of the Middle Ages. Many still stand. The construction of Gothic churches began during the 12th century with such architectural masterpieces as the cathedrals at Chartres and Paris. They were typically built of stone. Advances in engineering made possible the greater use of wall space for stained-glass windows, thus enhancing the beauty of the churches. The skilled use of such architectural elements as the ribbed vault, the pointed arch, and the flying buttress also allowed architects to create much broader and taller buildings, with soaring interior spaces. (See alsoarchitecture, “Gothic”.)

Many European cities have also preserved their old, ornate guildhalls, where the guilds assembled. The Grand Place in Brussels, Belgium, is surrounded on three sides by guildhalls, most of which date from the 17th century. Zürich, Switzerland, which was ruled by guilds until 1789, has several beautifully decorated guildhalls.

Michael FrassettoEd.

Citation (MLA style):

"Middle Ages." Britannica LaunchPacks: The Middle Ages: Civilizations of Europe, Encyclopædia Britannica, 19 Feb. 2021. packs-ngl.eb.com.au. Accessed 5 Aug. 2021.

While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions.

Britannica Note:

The Salic Law was the early Germanic law code of the Salian Franks. Originally dealing with criminal penalties and procedures, with some civil law included, the Salic Law evolved over the centuries. Over time it would be used in the rule barring women from inheriting the throne.

The Salic Law.

The following document is courtesy of Encyclopaedia Britannica's publishing partnership with the Lillian Goldman Law Library's Avalon Project at Yale Law School. The Salic Law.

(Gengler, "Germanische Rechtsdenkmaeler," p. 267.)

Title I. Concerning Summonses.

1. If any one be summoned before the "Thing" by the king's law, and do not come he shall be sentenced to 600 denars, which make 15 shillings (solid)).

2. But he who summons another, and does not come himself, shall, if a lawful impediment have not delayed him, be sentenced to 15 shillings, to be paid to him whom he summoned.

3. And he who summons another shall walk with witnesses to the home of that man, and, if he be not at home, shall bid the wife or any one of the family to make known to him that he has been summoned to court.

4. But if he be occupied in the king's service he can not summon him.

5. But if he shall be inside the hundred seeing about his own affairs, he can summon him in the manner explained above.

Title II. Concerning Thefts of Pigs etc.

1. If any one steal a sucking pig, and it be proved against him, he shall be sentenced to 120 denars, which make three shillings.

2. If any one steal a pig that can live without its mother, and it be proved on him, he shall be sentenced to 40 denars-that is, 1 shilling.

14. If any one steal 25 sheep where there were no more in that flock, and it be proved on him, he shall be sentenced to 2500 denars-that is, 62 shillings.

Title III. Concerning Thefts of Cattle.

4. If any one steal that bull which rules the herd and never has been yoked, he shall be sentenced to 1800 denars, which make 45 shillings.

5. But if that bull is used for the coves of three villages in common, he who stole him shall be sentenced to three times 45 shillings.

6. If any one steal a bull belonging to the king he shall be sentenced to 3600 denars, which make 90 shillings.

Title IV. Concerning Damage done among Crops or in any Enclosure.

1. If any one finds cattle, or a horse, or flocks of any kind in his crops, he shall not at all mutilate them.

2. If he do this and confess it, he shall restore the worth of the animal in place of it, and shall himself keep the mutilated one.

3. But if he have not confessed it, and it have been proved on him, he shall be sentenced, besides the value of the animal and the fines for delay, to 600 denars, which make 15 shillings.

Title XI. Concerning Thefts or Housebreakings of Freemen.

1. If any freeman steal, outside of the house, something worth 2 denars, he shall be sentenced to 600 denars, which make 15 shillings.

2. But if he steal, outside of the house, something worth 40 denars, and it be proved on him, he shall be sentenced, besides the amount and the fines for delay, to 1400 denars, which make 35 shillings.

3. If a freeman break into a house and steal something worth 2 denars, and it be proved on him, he shall be sentenced to 15 shillings

4. But if he shall have stolen something worth more than 5 denars, and it have been proved on him, he shall be sentenced, besides the worth of the object and the fines for delay, to 1400 denars, which make 35 shillings.

5. But if he have broken, or tampered with, the lock, and thus have entered the house and stolen anything from it, he shall be sentenced, besides the worth of the object and the fines for delay, to 1800 denars, which make 45 shillings.

6. And if he have taken nothing, or have escaped by flight, he shall, for the housebreaking alone, be sentenced to 1200 denars, which make 30 shillings.

Title XII. Concerning Thefts or Housebreakings on the Part of Slaves.

1. If a slave steal, outside of the house, something worth two denars, he shall, besides paying the worth of the object and the fines for delay, be stretched out and receive 120 blows.

2. But if he steal something worth 40 denars, he shall either be castrated or pay 6 shillings. But the lord of the slave who committed the theft shall restore to the plaintiff the worth of the object and the fines for delay.

Title XIII. Concerning Rape committed by Freemen.

1. If three men carry off a free born girl, they shall be compelled to pay 30 shillings.

2. If there are more than three, each one shall pay 5 shillings.

3. Those who shall have been present with boats shall be sentenced to three shillings.

4. But those who commit rape shall be compelled to pay 2500 denars, which make 63 shillings.

5. But if they have carried off that girl from behind lock and key, or from the spinning room, they shall be sentenced to the above price and penalty.

6. But if the girl who is carried off be under the king's protection, then the "frith" (peace-money) shall be 2500 denars, which make 63 shillings.

7. But if a bondsman of the king, or a leet, should carry off a free woman, he shall be sentenced to death.

8. But if a free woman have followed a slave of her own will, she shall lose her freedom.

9. If a freeborn man shall have taken an alien bondswoman, he shall suffer similarly.

10. If any body take an alien spouse and join her to himself in matrimony, he shall be sentenced to 2500 denars, which make 63 shillings.

Title XIV. Concerning Assault and Robbery.

1. If any one have assaulted and plundered a free man, and it be proved on him, he shall be sentenced to 2500 denars, which make 63 shillings.

2. If a Roman have plundered a Salian Frank, the above law shall be observed.

3. But if a Frank have plundered a Roman, he shall be sentenced to 35 shillings.

4. If any man should wish to migrate, and has permission from the king, and shall have shown this in the public "Thing;" whoever, contrary to the decree of the king, shall presume to oppose him, shall be sentenced to 8000 denars, which make 200 shillings.

Title XV. Concerning Arson.

1. If any one shall set fire to a house in which men were sleeping, as many freemen as were in it can make complaint before the " Thing; " and if any one shall have been burned in it, the incendiary shall be sentenced to 2500 denars, which make 63 shillings.

Title XVII. Concerning Wounds.

1. If any one have wished to kill another person, and the blow have missed, he on whom it was proved shall be sentenced to 2500 denars, which make 63 shillings.

2. If any person have wished to strike another with a poisoned arrow, and the arrow have glanced aside, and it shall be proved on him; he shall be sentenced to 2500 denars, which make 63 shillings.

3. If any person strike another on the head so that the brain appears, and the three bones which lie above the brain shall project, he shall be sentenced to 1200 denars, which make 30 shillings.

4. But if it shall have been between the ribs or in the stomach, so that the wound appears and reaches to the entrails, he shall be sentenced to 1200 denars-which make 30 shillings-besides five shillings for the physician's pay.

5. If any one shall have struck a man so that blood falls to the floor, and it be proved on him, he shall be sentenced to 600 denars, which make 15 shillings.

6. But if a freeman strike a freeman with his fist so that blood does not flow, he shall be sentenced for each blow- up to 3 blows-to 120 denars, which make 3 shillings.

Title XVIII. Concerning him who, before the King, accuses an innocent Man.

If any one, before the king, accuse an innocent man who is absent, he shall be sentenced to 2500 denars, which make 63 shillings.

Title XIX. Concerning Magicians.

1. If any one have given herbs to another so that he die, he shall be sentenced to 200 shillings (or shall surely be given over to fire).

2. If any person have bewitched another, and he who was thus treated shall escape, the author of the crime, who is proved to have committed it, shall be sentenced to 2500 denars, which make 63 shillings.

Title XXIV. Concerning the Killing of little children and women.

1. If any one have slain a boy under 10 years-up to the end of the tenth-and it shall have been proved on him, he shall be sentenced to 24000 denars, which make 600 shillings.

3. If any one have hit a free woman who is pregnant and she dies, he shall be sentenced to 28000 denars, which make 700 shillings.

6. If any one have killed a free woman after she has begun bearing children, he shall be sentenced to 24000 denars, which make 600 shillings.

7. After she can have no more children, he who kills her shall be sentenced to 8000 denars, which make 200, shillings.

Title XXX. Concerning Insults.

3. If any one, man or woman, shall have called a woman harlot, and shall not have been able to prove it, he shall be sentenced to 1800 denars, which make 45 shillings.

4. If any person shall have called another "fox," he shall be sentenced to 3 shillings.

5. If any man shall have called another "hare," he shall be sentenced to 3 shillings.

6. If any man shall have brought it up against another that he have thrown away his shield, and shall not have been able to prove it, he shall be sentenced to 120 denars, which make 3 shillings.

7. If any man shall have called another "spy" or "perjurer," and shall not have been able to prove it, he shall be sentenced to 600 denars, which make 15 shillings.

Title XXXIII. Concerning the Theft of hunting animals.

2. If any one have stolen a tame marked stag (-hound ?), trained to hunting, and it shall have been proved through witnesses that his master had him for hunting, or had killed with him two or three beasts, he shall be sentenced to 1800 denars, which make 45 shillings.

Title XXXIV. Concerning the Stealing of Fences.

1. If any man shall have cut 3 staves by which a fence is bound or held together, or have stolen or cut the heads of 3 stakes, he shall be sentenced to 600 denars, which make 15 shillings.

2. If any one shall have drawn a harrow through another's harvest after it has sprouted, or shall have gone through it with a waggon where there was no road, he shall be sentenced to 120 denars, which make 3 shillings.

3. If any one shall have gone, where there is no way or path, through another's harvest which has already become thick, he shall be sentenced to 600 denars, which make 15 shillings.

Title XLI. Concerning the Murder of Free Men.

1. If any one shall have killed a free Frank, or a barbarian living under the Salic law, and it have been proved on him, he shall be sentenced to 8000 denars.

2. But if he shall have thrown him into a well or into the water, or shall have covered him with branches or anything else, to conceal him, he shall be sentenced to 24000 denars, which make 600 shillings.

3. But if any one has slain a man who is in the service of the king, he shall be sentenced to 24000 denars, which make 600 shillings.

4. But if he have put him in the water or in a well, and covered him with anything to conceal him, he shall be sentenced to 72000 denars, which make 1800 shillings.

5. If any one have slain a Roman who eats in the king's palace, and it have been proved on him, he shall be sentenced to 12000 denars, which make 300 shillings.

6. But if the Roman shah not have been a landed proprietor and table companion of the king, he who killed him shall be sentenced to 4000 denars, which make 100 shillings.

7. But if he shall have killed a Roman who was obliged to pay tribute, he shall be sentenced to shillings.

9. If any one have thrown a free man into a well, and he have escaped alive, he (the criminal) shall be sentenced to 4000 denars, which make 100 shillings.

Title XLV. Concerning Migrators.

1. If any one wish to migrate to another village and if one or more who live in that village do not wish to receive him,-if there be only one who objects, he shall not have leave to move there.

2. But if he shall have presumed to settle in that village in spite of his rejection by one or two men, then some one shall give him warning. And if he be unwilling to go away, he who gives him warning shall give him warning, with witnesses, as follows: I warn thee that thou mayst remain here this next night as the Salic law demands, and I warn thee that within 10 nights thou shalt go forth from this village. After another 10 nights he shall again come to him and warn him again within 10 nights to go away. If he still refuse to go, again 10 nights shall be added to the command, that the number of 30 nights may be full. If he will not go away even then, then he shall summon him to the "Thing," and present his witnesses as to the separate commands to leave. If he who has been warned will not then move away, and no valid reason detains him, and all the above warnings which we have mentioned have been given according to law: then he who gave him warning shall take the mutter into his own hands and request the "comes" to go to that place and expel him. And because he would not listen to the law, that man shall relinquish all that he has earned there, and, besides, shall be sentenced to 1200 denars, which make 30 shillings.

3. But if anyone have moved there, and within 12 months no one have given him warning, he shall remain as secure as the other neighbours.

Title XLVL Concerning Transfers of Property.

1. The observance shall be that the Thunginus or Centenarius shall call together a "Thing," and shall have his shield in the "Thing," and shall demand three men as witnesses for each of the three transactions. He (the owner of the land to be transferred) shall seek a man who has no connection with himself, and shall throw a stalk into his lap. And to him into whose lap he has thrown the stalk he shall tell, concerning his property, how much of it- or whether the whole or a half-he wishes to give. He in whose lap he threw the stalk shall remain in his (the owner's) house, and shall collect three or more guests, and shall have the property-as much as is given him-in his power. And, afterwards, he to whom that property is entrusted shall discuss all these things with the witnesses collected afterwards, either before the king or in the regular "Thing," he shall give the property up to him for whom it was intended. He shall take the stalk in the "Thing," and, before 12 months are over, shall throw it into the lap of him whom the owner has named heir; and he shall restore not more nor less, but exactly as much as was entrusted to him.

2. And if any one shall wish to say anything against this, three sworn witnesses shall say that they were in the "Thing " which the "Thunginus" or "Centenarius" called together, and that they saw that man who wished to give his property throw a stalk into the lap of him whom he had selected. They shall name by name him who threw his property into the lap of the other, and, likewise, shall name him whom he named his heir. And three other sworn witnesses shall say that he in whose lap the stalk was thrown had remained in the house of him who gave his property, and had there collected three or more guests and that they had eaten porridge at table, and that he had collected those who were bearing witness, and that those guests had thanked him for their entertainment. All this those other sworn witnesses shall say, and that he who received that property in his lap in the " Thing " held before the king, or in the regular public " Thing," did publicly, before the people, either in the presence of the king or in public " Thing "-namely on the Mallberg, before the "Thunginus"-throw the stalk into the lap of him whom the owner had named as heir. And thus 9 witnesses shall confirm all this.

Title L. Concerning Promises to Pay.

1. If any freeman or feet have made to another a promise to pay, then he to whom the promise was made shall, within 40 days or within such term as was agreed when he made the promise, go to the house of that man with witnesses, or with appraisers. And if he (the debtor) be unwilling to make the promised payment, he shall be sentenced to 15 shillings above the debt which he had promised.

2. If he then be unwilling to pay, he (the creditor) shall summon him before the "Thing"; and thus accuse him: "I ask thee, 'Thunginus,' to bann my opponent who made me a promise to pay and owes me a debt." And he shall state how much he owes and promised to pay. Then the "Thunginus" shall say: " I bann thy opponent to what the Salic law decrees." Then he to whom the promise was made shall warn him (the debtor) to make no payment or pledge of payment to any body else until he have fulfilled his promise to him (the creditor). And straightway on that same day before the sun sets, he shall go to the house of that man with witnesses, and shall ask if he will pay that debt. If he will not, he (the creditor) shall wait until after sunset; then, if he have waited until after sunset, 120 denars, which make 3 shillings shall be added on to the debt. And this shall be done up to 3 times in 3 weeks. And if at the third time he will not pay all this, it (the sum) shall increase to 360 denars, or 9 shillings: so, namely, that, after each admonition or waiting until after sunset, 3 shillings shall be added to the debt.

3. If any one be unwilling to fulfil his promise in the regular assembly,-then he to whom the promise was made shall go the count of that place, in whose district he lives, and shall take the stalk and shall say: oh count, that man made me a promise to pay, and I have lawfully summoned him before the court according to the Salic law on this matter; I pledge thee myself and my fortune that thou may'st safely seize his property. And he shall state the case to him, and shall tell how much he (the debtor) had agreed to pay. Then the count shall collect suitable bailiffs, and shall go with them to the house of him who made the promise and shall say: thou who art here present pay voluntarily to that man what thou didst promise, and choose any two of those bailiffs who shall appraise that from which thou shalt pay; and make good what thou cost owe, according to a just appraisal. But if ho will not hear, or be absent, then the bailiffs shall take from his property the value of the debt which he owes. And, according to the law, the accuser shall take two thirds of that which the debtor owes, and the count shall collect for himself the other third as peace money; unless the peace money shall have been paid to him before in this same matter.

4. If the count have been appealed to, and no sufficient reason, and no duty of the king, have detained him-and if he have put off going, and have sent no substitute to demand law and justice: he shall answer for it with his life, or shall redeem himself with his "wergeld."

Title LIV. Concerning the Slaying of a Count.

1. If any one slay a count, he shall be sentenced to 2400 debars, which make 600 shillings.

Title LV. Concerning the Plundering of Corpses.

2. If any one shall have dug up and plundered a corpse already buried, and it shall have been proved on him, he shall be outlawed until the day when he comes to an agreement with the relatives of the dead man, and they ask for him that he be allowed to come among men. And whoever, before he come to an arrangement with the relative, shall give him bread or shelter-even if they are his relations or his own wife-shall be sentenced to 600 denars which make xv shillings.

3. But he who is proved to have committed the crime shall be sentenced to 8000 denars, which make 200 shillings.

Title LVI. Concerning him who shall have scorned to come to Court.

1. If any man shall have scorned to come to court, and shall have put off fulfilling the injunction of the bailiffs, and shall not have been willing to consent to undergo the fine, or the kettle ordeal, or anything prescribed by law: then he (the plaintiff) shall summon him to the presence of the king. And there shall be 12 witnesses who-3 at n time being sworn-shall testify that they were present when the bailiff enjoined him (the accused) either to go to the kettle ordeal, or to agree concerning the fine; and that he had scorned the injunction. Then 3 others shall swear that they were there on the day when the bailiffs enjoined that he should free himself by the kettle ordeal or by composition; and that 40 days after that, in the "mallberg," he (the accuser) had again waited until after sunset, and that he (the accused) would not obey the law. Then he (the accuser) shall summon him before the king for a fortnight thence; and three witnesses shall swear that they were there when he summoned him and when he waited for sunset. If he does not then come, those 9, being sworn, shall give testimony as we have above explained. On that day likewise, if he do not come, he (the accuser) shall let the sun go down on him, and shall have 3 witnesses who shall be there when he waits till sunset. But if the accuser shall have fulfilled all this, and the accused shall not have been willing to come to any court, then the king, before whom he has been summoned, shall withdraw his protection from him. Then he shall be guilty, and all his goods shall belong to the fisc, or to him to whom the fisc may wish to give them. And whoever shall have fed or housed him-even if it were his own wife-shall be sentenced to 600 denars, which make 15 shillings; until he (the debtor) shall have made good all that has been laid to his charge.

Title LVII. Concerning the " Chrenecruda."

1. If any one have killed a man, and, having given up all his property, has not enough to comply with the full terms of the law, he shall present 12 sworn witnesses to the effect that, neither above the earth nor under it, has he any more property than he has already given. And he shall afterwards go into his house, and shall collect in his hand dust from the four corners of it, and shall afterwards stand upon the threshold, looking inwards into the house. And then, with his left hand, he shall throw over his shoulder some of that dust on the nearest relative that he has. But if his father and (his father's) brothers have already paid, he shall then throw that dust on their (the brothers') children-that is, over three (relatives) who are nearest on the father's and three on the mother's side. And after that, in his shirt, without girdle and without shoes, a staff in his hand, he shall spring over the hedge. And then those three shall pay half of what is lacking of the compounding money or the legal fine; that is, those others who are descended in the paternal line shall do this.

2. But if there be one of those relatives who has not enough to pay his whole indebtedness, he, the poorer one, shall in turn throw the "chrenecruda" on him of them who has the most, so that he shall pay the whole fine.

3. But if he also have not enough to pay the whole then he who has charge of the murderer shall bring him before the " Thing," and afterwards to 4 Things in order that they (his friends) may take him under their protection. And if no one have taken him under his protection -that is, so as to redeem him for what he can not pay- then he shall have to atone with his life.

Title LIX. Concerning Private Property.

1. If any man die and leave no sons, if the father and mother survive, they shall inherit.

3. If the father and mother do not survive, and he leave brothers or sisters, they shall inherit.

3. But if there are none, the sisters of the father shall inherit.

4. But if there are no sisters of tile father, the sisters of the mother shall claim that inheritance.

5. If there are none of these, the nearest relatives on the father's side shall succeed to that inheritance.

6. But of Salic land no portion of the inheritance shall come to a woman: but the whole inheritance of the land shall come to the male sex.

Title LXII. Concerning Wergeld.

1. If any one's father have been killed, the sons shall have half the compounding money (wergeld); and the other half the nearest relatives, as well on the mother's as on the father's side, shall divide among themselves.

2. But if there are no relatives, paternal or maternal that portion shall go to the fisc.

Henderson's Note

The Salic Law-is particularly interesting from the fact that it illustrates a period conerning which we have almost no other contemporary information. A few charters, the scanty notes for this time of Gregory of Tours and the Roman writers, the contents of a few graves-the most important that of Childerich, father of Clovis (481-511), found at Tournay in 1663-are all that we would otherwise have had to show the extent of civilization under the earliest Merovingian kings.

The Salic Law was composed under Clovis. It concerns itself, as will be seen from the extracts here given, with the most manifold branches of administration. The system of landholding, the nature of the early village community, the relations of the Germans to the Romans, the position of the king, the classes of the population, family life, the disposal of property, judicial procedure, the ethical views of the time, are all illustrated in its sixty- five articles. Directly and indirectly we can gather from it a great mass of information. How clearly, for instance, does the title on insults show the regard paid for personal bravery and for female chastity! The false charge of having thrown away one's shield was punished as severely as assault and battery-and the person who groundlessly called a woman unclean paid a fine second only in severity to that imposed for attempted murder!

Source: Henderson, Ernest F. Select Historical Documents of the Middle Ages London : George Bell and Sons, 1896.

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Black Death: map

The reach of the Black Death in Europe from 1347 to 1351 can be seen as it spreads year by year.

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

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Charlemagne

Video Transcript

NARRATOR: Charlemagne was King of the Franks and Holy Roman Emperor. He was also a protector of the Church. Here on Piazza San Giovanni in Rome is the Lateran Palace, once home to the Pope. A mosaic shows just how important Charlemagne was to the Catholic Church. Christian and Crusader, Charlemagne united the worlds of politics and religion. In one scene, both the Church's spiritual leader Pope Leo III and the Church's secular protector Charlemagne sit at the feet of St Peter. LUTZ VON PADBERG: "He was someone you could call on to fight your battles, but he was also determined to be a model Christian who would spread the gospel, even if he did use military means to do it." NARRATOR: A gruesome example is the Massacre of Verden that took place in 782. Charlemagne was said to have put to death 4,500 Saxons in a single day. These memorial stones were laid by the Nazis, who used the historical event for their pro-pagan propaganda. Modern historians, however, have come to doubt the number of dead. PADBERG: "According to medieval accounts in the Royal Frankish Annals, 4,500 Saxons were beheaded on that day. But that's unimaginable. Just think how many soldiers you'd need to behead 4,500 people in a single day. Clearly, though, something horrific did happen here. But most researchers are now in agreement that an extra nought was added to the figure somewhere along the line." NARRATOR: This is the source of the River Pader in modern-day Paderborn. It was here that Charlemagne set up court and held the first Imperial Assembly on Saxon territory. It was a demonstration of his might. In 777, he founded St. Salvator's Church on what is now the site of Paderborn cathedral. The foundation stones of Charlemagne's castle are still visible today. Although Charlemagne wanted to spread the gospel, he was far from a model Christian himself. Historians believe he had five wives and just as many concubines. In total, he's said to have fathered 19 children. GABRIELE ISENBERG: "He was a very active and very capable ruler, but he occasionally flouted the rules. Having said that, some sources indicate that towards the end of his life, Charlemagne saw the light, so to speak. At least, he began to regret some of the things he'd done." NARRATOR: In 814, Charlemagne died in the city of Aachen. Entombed in the Palatine Chapel of the city's cathedral, his remains were later placed in a golden casket, which now stands at the cathedral's altar. The Catholic Church canonized Charlemagne in 1165.

Charlemagne, the first Holy Roman emperor, fought a long campaign against the Saxons, a Germanic tribe.

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spread of Christianity in the Middle Ages

Christianity spread throughout much of the Mediterranean area during the Middle Ages. Click on the boxes in the map key at upper right to see the expansion of Christianity and Islam in the area and the separation between Western and Eastern Christianity in 1054.

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc./Kenny Chmielewski

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Spread of Christianity in the Middle Ages. Interactive. Britannica LaunchPacks: The Middle Ages: Civilizations of Europe, Encyclopædia Britannica, 19 Feb. 2021. packs-ngl.eb.com.au. Accessed 5 Aug. 2021.

While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions.