Note 1 — Chapter IX · CHRISTENDOM IN THE MIDDLE AGES

This label has been applied by scholars to the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries. One writer, who supposes it to cover the period from 500 to 1400, and protests, is attacking only a misconception. (M. A. Lane, The Level of Social Motion, New York, 1902., p. 232.) The Renaissance is commonly reckoned to begin about the end of the fourteenth century (cp. Symonds, Age of the Despots, ch. i). But the whole period from the fall of the Roman Empire to the fall of Constantinople, or to the Reformation, is broadly included in the “Middle Ages.” ↑