The Middle Ages

Traditionally, the Middle Ages began in 476 AD, after the fall of the Roman Empire, and ended around 1400 AD. It represents almost a thousand years of continuous political, social, and religious change, including a schism in the Christian faith between Catholic and Orthodox, the crusades with the development of organized military orders, feudalism and the medieval model of government in which people had access to land and worked in return for that access, and the construction of castles used by rulers to demonstrate their wealth and power with the help of knights, soldiers raised to a new high-ranking military status.