Next to it we must place a distinction of another kind. These were the physical limitations whose disappearance differentiates the medieval from the modern. In short, the entire civilised world as known to Christendom meant Europe west of what is now Russia, Asia west of the Euphrates, and the Mediterranean coast of Africa. To the inhabited world as known to the Romans was added during the Middle Ages so much of Europe as lies between the Baltic Sea and the Danube, together with Norway and Sweden.
All that lay beyond was either a sheer blank or a region of travellers' tales and nothing more. The first and most obvious fact is that Western Christendom was practically acquainted with only quarter of the Eastern Hemisphere, one-eighth of the world known to us today, namely, the western quarter lying north of the Equator. The political structure of Western Christendom was changed the boundaries of the known world were expanded the fetters by which intellectual progress had been bound were broken and we may pause to inquire what were the characteristic features of what we call the Middle Ages which distinguish them from what we call modern times. But in the hundred years or so of which 1485 is approximately the central point, events occurred and movements culminated which differentiate the medieval from the modern world. There was, in fact, no sudden and violent change at that particular moment. The landmark which British historians select as setting the boundary between the medieval and the modern is the accession of the house of Tudor.
#Information and facts on feudalism in the middle ages full#
An English knight in full caparison, 1375, Sir Godfrey Luttrell and his wife, from the Luttrell Psalter
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