MEDIEVAL PERIOD

Medieval Period is also known as the ‘middle ages’. The mediaeval or medieval period in history which lasted for round about a millennium, begins from the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century to the beginning of the Early Modern Period in the 16th century.

The term 'Medieval Period' was developed in the 18th and 19th centuries to refer to the period of European history between the decline and fall of the Roman empire and the Renaissance: approximately 500 to 1500.

The Middle Ages are subdivided into an early period called "Dark Ages", the High Middle Ages and a Later Middle Ages of growing royal power, the rise of commercial interests, and weakening customary ties of dependence, particularly after the 14th century plague.

The Middle Ages saw a gradual convergence of philosophical and theological concerns. The great thinkers of this age were theologians first and philosophers second. Augustine (354–430) held firm to the Christian notions of the human predicament. For many medieval thinkers, Plato's thinking provided the necessary philosophical groundwork for belief in an afterlife. For the most part, the medieval theologian/philosophers welded Platonism

to Christianity so firmly that criticism of the synthesis was nearly tantamount to heresy.

The Medieval Theologians: An Introduction to Theology in the Medieval Period. Edited by G. R. Evans. Oxford: Blackwell, 2001. xx + 383 pp. $76.95 (cloth); $39.95 (paper).
This collection of twenty-two essays covering major medieval theologians, movements, and issues appropriately begins and ends with reflections on St. Augustine. For as the writers of these essays (Rist and Rorem) rightly observe, one could scarcely make sense of medieval theology apart from that fifth-century bishop of Hippo. It is fitting, therefore, that the cover of this handsome volume features Gozzoli's famous fifteenth-century fresco, "Augustine baptized by St. Ambrose." Yet as Rist makes quite clear in the opening essay, the Augustine of the Middle Ages, through whom much of the classical world was filtered to succeeding generations, was not necessarily the 11 authentic" Augustine. Many of the rough edges were smoothed out in the quest for consistency; many questions Augustine still continued to struggle with were treated as thoroughly resolved. But that is ultimately beside the point: "Augustine's legacy is both what he did, said, and intended, and what he was assumed to have meant" (p. 22).
This volume is broken into five major sections, each of which is comprised of several essays penned by some of the foremost authorities in historical theology: Louth, Kannengiesser, Colish, just to name a few. The first section is "The End of the Ancient World," followed by "The Carolingians "A Medieval Renaissance?," "The High Medieval Debate," and "Dissent." A conclusion with essays by Evans and Rorem points the way to the Reformation, itself the topic of Blackwell's latest volume of essays within its Great Theologians series.

Institute for Medieval StudiesUniversity of Leeds - International Medieval Bibliography - leeds.ac.uk/ims/imb/index.html
Introduction: The International Medieval Bibliography (IMB), established in 1967, is the leading interdisciplinary bibliography of the Middle Ages.
The IMB is produced by an Editorial team at the University of Leeds and some 30 contributors word wide. It covers periodical literature and miscellany volumes published in Europe, North America, Australasia, Brazil, Japan and South Africa.