High Middle Ages

The High Middle Ages, roughly 1000 to 1300, were an era of demographic growth, agricultural expansion, urban revival, the Crusades, the reform and rise of the papacy, and a cultural flowering in law, learning, and architecture.

Definition

The High Middle Ages is the central of the three conventional medieval subdivisions, characterized by sustained expansion in population, economy, and territory, the consolidation of ecclesiastical and royal power, and a marked intensification of intellectual and cultural life.

Scope

This area covers western and central Europe from about 1000 to 1300: population and economic growth, the maturation of feudal and lordly relations, the Investiture Controversy and papal monarchy, the Crusades, the rise of towns and universities, and the intellectual and artistic achievements often called the twelfth-century renaissance.

Sub-topics

• feudalism and lordship
• medieval papacy and church reform
• the crusades
• twelfth century renaissance

Core questions

• What drove the demographic and economic expansion of the period?
• How did relations of lordship and dependence structure society?
• How did the reform papacy assert authority over secular rulers?
• What motivated and resulted from the Crusades?
• Why did learning, law, and architecture flourish so markedly?

Key theories

First European Revolution

R. I. Moore's thesis that the period around 970–1215 saw a transformative reordering of European society — in lordship, literacy, religious life, and the persecution of minorities — that laid the institutional foundations of later Europe.

Expansion and colonization model

Robert Bartlett's argument that high-medieval Europe expanded through internal colonization and frontier conquest, exporting a relatively uniform package of institutions, law, and culture across the continent.

History

Building on a generation of growth after 1000, the High Middle Ages saw the Gregorian reform and Investiture Controversy redefine Church–state relations, the launching of the Crusades from 1095, and the emergence of universities, scholasticism, Gothic architecture, and increasingly centralized monarchies, before the strains of the early fourteenth century.

Debates

Revolution or evolution

Historians dispute whether the high-medieval transformation was a sharp 'revolution' around the year 1000 or a more gradual and uneven development, and how much weight to give legal, religious, and economic change.

Key figures

• R. I. Moore
• Robert Bartlett
• R. W. Southern
• Malcolm Barber

Seminal works

• barber2004
• moore2000
• bartlett1993

Frequently asked questions

When were the High Middle Ages?

Conventionally from about 1000 to 1300, between the Early Middle Ages and the crises of the Late Middle Ages.

What were the period's main achievements?

Population and economic growth, the rise of towns and universities, the reform and ascendancy of the papacy, the Crusades, and a flowering of law, philosophy, and Gothic art and architecture.