The expression “the Middle Ages” dates from the XVII ^E century: it would be Christophe Kellner (Cellarius), died in 1707, professor of history at the university of Market, which would have employed it for the first time, in 1688 (Historia medii aevi). The definition, chronologically convenient, suggested that this period thousand years, antiquated, barbarian, having broken with the traditional models of the first (Antiquity), was not that obscure waiting of prestige of the second (the modern Time). Since the years 1930, the historians endeavor to return his identity at this long period of slow changes, during which opens out, in Occident, a complex company.

The chronological framework

The XIX ^E century had already rehabilitated this “Gothic” era, not without to have camped there some simplistic images, even some romantic caricatures, of the knight always valiant knight to the serf irremediably “attached to the glèbe”. The common language is still not free of the conventional images of the Middle Ages more mythical than real, still synonymous with return to the limbs, poor, unaccomplished. The meticulous studies made by the historical school of Annals, and in particular by Marc Bloch, Georges Duby, Jacques Le Goff, made it possible to finish some with these false ideas.

To delimit a chronological framework, one cannot refer on political dates. If 395 mark the end of the unit of the Roman Empire, with separation between and Western Empire Byzantine Empire, 476 sees the disappearance of the last Roman Emperor of Occident. At the other end of the period, the catch of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453 is especially significant for the East. On the other hand, the last “medieval” king would be Louis XI, died in 1483. But wasn't the voyage of Christophe Colomb in 1492 fuller of consequences?

The rupture with the periods which frame the Middle Ages is not as clear as one often makes it clear it, and, although the chronological reference marks are essential, the evolutions more surely take shape in the economic transfers and social which, in any field, were not brutal.