Church History in Plain Language

Era 4 · 590 – 1517

The Christian Middle Ages

Nearly a thousand years in which the church shaped every part of life in Europe, while Islam reshaped the Christian world's map.

Shelley's fourth age, "the Christian Middle Ages," runs from Gregory the Great (590) to Martin Luther (1517). That is nearly a thousand years, as long as all the other eras since put together. It is easy to imagine it as a single, gloomy "Dark Ages." In fact it was full of change, conflict and creativity.

A few big stories run through it:

  • A new map. In the 600s Arab armies inspired by Islam conquered the Christian heartlands of Syria, Palestine, Egypt and North Africa. Meanwhile missionaries converted the peoples of northern and eastern Europe: English, Germans, Scandinavians, Slavs and Russians. Christianity's center of gravity shifted north and west.
  • East and West drift apart. The Greek-speaking Byzantine church and the Latin church of Rome grew apart in language, culture and theology. The mutual excommunications of 1054 became a lasting schism.
  • Christendom. In the West, church and society merged into "Christendom." Popes and emperors fought over who held supreme authority. Monks and friars renewed spiritual life. Cathedrals and universities rose. Crusaders marched east.
  • Crisis. The 1300s and 1400s brought the Black Death, popes in Avignon, rival popes, and reformers like Wyclif and Hus. These set the stage for the Reformation.

Two of our sources treat this period with special care. MacCulloch devotes long sections to the Latin West, which he sees as "unpredictable" in its rise, and to Orthodoxy. The Oxford Illustrated History of Christianity has chapters by Henry Mayr-Harting on the conversion of the West, Kallistos Ware on Eastern Christendom, Jeremy Johns on Christianity and Islam, and Colin Morris on Christian civilization from 1050 to 1400.

Timeline: The Christian Middle Ages (590 – 1517)

600700800900100011001200130014001500563 Columba founds Iona589 Council of Toledo adds the filioque to the C…610 Muhammad's first revelations (Muslim traditi…635 Aidan founds Lindisfarne642 Alexandria and Egypt fall680 Sixth Council condemns Monothelitism732 Charles Martel defeats Muslim raid near Poit…772 Wars against and forced conversion of the Sa…843 "Triumph of Orthodoxy": icons restored for g…850 Martyrs of Córdoba910 Abbey of Cluny founded962 Otto I crowned emperor: beginning of the Hol…1000 Iceland accepts Christianity by vote1049 Leo IX begins papal reform1054 Mutual excommunications in Constantinople1071 Seljuk Turks defeat Byzantines at Manzikert1078 Anselm's Proslogion (the ontological argumen…1147 Second Crusade fails1150 Hildegard of Bingen founds Rupertsberg1150 Peter Lombard's Sentences1170 Thomas Becket murdered in Canterbury Cathedr…1277 Bishop of Paris condemns 219 philosophical p…1291 Fall of Acre, last crusader stronghold1303 Boniface humiliated at Anagni1309 Papacy moves to Avignon1340 Gregory Palamas defends hesychast prayer1395 Julian of Norwich writes Revelations of Divi…1409 Council of Pisa adds a third pope1439 Council of Florence: reunion signed, then re…1498 Savonarola executed in Florence
Selected key dates from each chapter of this era. Click an event to read its chapter, or see every date in this era on the master timeline.

Chapters in this era

  1. 1Gregory the Great and the Conversion of EuropeGregory the Great, the Celtic and Roman missions, Boniface, and the slow conversion of Europe's peoples.
  2. 2The Challenge of IslamThe rise of Islam, the Arab conquests, life for Christians under Muslim rule, and the shifting map of Christianity.
  3. 3Byzantium and the IconsThe Byzantine church, the iconoclasm controversy, the Triumph of Orthodoxy, and the mission to the Slavs.
  4. 4Charlemagne and ChristendomThe Frankish–papal alliance, Charlemagne's empire and reforms, the Carolingian Renaissance, and the Viking age.
  5. 5The Great Schism of 1054The causes of the East–West schism: language, culture, papal claims, the filioque, and the crusaders' sack of Constantinople.
  6. 6Popes Against KingsGregory VII versus Henry IV, Canossa, Becket, Innocent III and Boniface VIII: who rules Christendom?
  7. 7The CrusadesWhy the Crusades happened, what they achieved, their victims, and how they are remembered.
  8. 8Monks and FriarsMonastic reform movements, the mendicant friars, beguines and mystics, and heretical movements like the Waldensians and Cathars.
  9. 9Cathedrals, Universities and ScholasticsAnselm, Abelard, the rise of universities, the rediscovery of Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, and Gothic architecture.
  10. 10The Late Medieval CrisisThe Black Death, the Avignon papacy, the Great Western Schism, conciliarism, Wyclif, Hus, and the fall of Constantinople.