![[Pasted image 20250201172055.png]] The fall of the [Roman Empire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Empire) (476 CE) and the beginning of the European Renaissance in the late fourteenth century roughly bookend the period we call the [Middle Ages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Ages). Without a dominant centralized power or overarching cultural hub, European culture became organized around village farming and small communities. In some places peasants worked common lands; in others they worked for feudal lords who offered protection from other lords in exchange for taxes.  Few people traveled more than ten miles from the place they were born. The Christian Church remained intact, however, and emerged from the period as a unified and powerful institution. Priests provided leadership for peasant communities and monks kept knowledge alive by collecting and copying religious and secular manuscripts. While monasteries generally focused on preserving Christian documents, Muslim scholars in the expanding Islamic empires preserved and continued the work of classical philosophy, science, medicine, and mathematics. Social and economic devastation arrived in 1340s, however, when merchants returning from the Black Sea unwittingly brought with them a highly contagious disease known as the bubonic plague. Within a decade the Black Death had killed nearly a hundred million people, about a third of Europe’s population. The loss of so many workers made labor much more valuable and may have awakened some workers to the fact that the ruling class badly needed the food and goods they produced. A high birth rate coupled with bountiful harvests helped the European population rebound  during the next century. By 1450, a newly rejuvenated European society was on the brink of tremendous change. **FOR MORE INFO:** Visit [EyeWitness to History](http://openstax.org/l/plague) to learn more about the Black Death. --- Next: [[1.23 Islam]] Back: [[1.21 Northeastern Woodlands]]