The Middle Ages

Paper Summary:

The paper looks at the dramatic period that was the Middle Ages, noting that the religious, economic, political, social and educational continuities and innovations of the period have been often unjustly dismissed by scholars. The paper looks at Bishop's discussion of how Roman and classical education re-asserted itself in the Middle Ages in the grammar schools while the old pagan rites did not fade away in the Age of Christianity. The paper also explores the rise to semi-respectability of women and the progression of certain disparate groups from tribal-hood to nation-hood. The paper concludes that Bishop's evidence of the dynamism of the age is convincing.

From the Paper:

"The middle ages were the continuation of "Old Rome" in matters such as "race, language, institutions, law, literature, (and) the arts" (Bishop, 7). In almost the next breath, Bishop writes that the middle ages were a continuation of cultures such as the Franks and Saxons, the Greeks and Arabs, and - not least of all - of an ancient peasant culture (Bishop, 7). At the same time, it was a period which saw the rise of the Christian church in the West and the epoch bore witness to the rise of the Church's institutions - such as the pilgrimage, the system of penance, the emergence of the modern-day liturgy. As an added note pertaining to the Old Rome of the classical period, Bishop writes that the language and institutions of the Ancients survived even with the arrival of barbarian domination (Bishop, 12 and 15)."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Bishop, Morris. The Middle Ages. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1968.

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• Comparison Essay # 5677 : "Ideals of the Middle Ages"
• Term Paper # 127354 : "Christian and Pagan Syncretism in the Middle Ages"

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