The Medieval Ages that descended upon the Europeans following the deconstruction and devolution of the formerly grand institutions of the Roman Empire left a world darkened to the eyes of history. The world lost touch with simple concepts to a modern history student of writing, economy, culture, and government—the mainstay of that which we cannot see ourselves without—civilization. What was left of Europe was a state of chaos. In all other periods of human history I have studied there were similarities among them from which I could draw conclusions upon the condition of the respective times. The Text helped to give order to the progression of European history from the ancient to the modern drawing from the former to explain the thoughts and traditions that carried through the dark times as the only ruminants of civilization. The dark ages didn’t come to dominate the era for which it is named like the flip of a switch or by the sacking of Rome by Alaric, or any other German Chief. It wasn’t a single force; such as the struggle with the Germans or the ineptitude of Roman Emperors or the breakdown of political processes it was all of these influences and more combining to strangulate the social institutions of their Stability. Without stability security is harder to maintain and both are needed to promote profitable economic activity. Roman society in the western Empire had slowly developed into a subsistence plantation society comparable to the American antebellum southern society of the 19th century. Government institutions slowly died out, as did any form of an economic market. The majority of the population was enslaved. There was little civilization save the aristocracy for the Germans to destroy even when they came to the area.Rome had become a corrupt political center, to become Emperor was to sign your own death warrant, therefore the only people interested were the most unskilled the empire had ...
