These dark centuries of material and spiritual domination of feudal lords saw the development of cities, the most striking, in the figurative expression of Marx, the flower of the Middle Ages, the birth of their new bourgeois culture, new classes and new forms of class struggle, the great geographical discoveries, an unusually extended the mental horizon of Europeans, and cruel deeds of the conquistadors in the New World, political and religious battles Reformation undermined the power of the Catholic world, the first steps of capitalism, marked by the ruin and impoverishment of the working masses for the glory of 'primitive accumulation', a bourgeois revolution in Germany and the Netherlands. this. The Middle Ages have left us a legacy of not only the monuments of feudal violence and monastic bigotry, ignorance and traditional theological-scholastic 'wisdom'. From this dark era in general have come to us and poetry, in which the people embodied their genius, the magnificent Gothic cathedrals of the huge, wonderful, wonderful art repeatability and poetic creation of the Renaissance, the first successes of awakening scientific and political thought, which gave a string of great men and great martyrs, which boasts good memory of mankind: the founders of utopian socialism, Thomas More and Campanella, bold thinkers Giordano Bruno, Galileo and Copernicus, the leaders and ideologues of the revolutionary masses, heralds of the more obscure communist idea Dolcino, John Ball, Thomas Munzer – all these and many other people, their lives, activities, and often martyrdom prepare and accelerate the progress of mankind, its future release of all darkness, oppression, violence and suffering, yet belong to the Middle Ages. Thus, the Middle Ages made their own – and considerable – share in the common treasury of material and spiritual values. Before turning to the study of the Middle Ages, you must determine, first, that makes our science distinguish thirteen centuries of human history into a single historical epoch, in other words, the essence of the Middle Ages and, secondly, why do we call this the era of the Middle Ages, where did the term 'Middle Ages'. Division of world history in ancient, middle and formed a new even in XV-XVI centuries., in the Renaissance. Humanists, the first representatives of modern literature, more and more to develop and enhance the class – the urban bourgeoisie, are beginning to devote his time as a 'new', brings it closer to Antiquity and in the same time to oppose it directly precedes it the era to which they give the name of the 'Middle Ages', 'middle age' (medium aevum).
If modernity was represented humanists XV-XVI centuries. 'Revival' of ancient culture, the 'middle age' appeared to them since the fall of culture, a rough time of feudal barbarism, deeply hostile to the new culture. This periodization is reflected in the XVII century philologists. in their views on history Latin: in their image after a period of 'clean', 'classical' Latin was followed after the fall of the Roman Empire and the barbarian conquest era 'corrupt', 'barbaric', the so-called 'middle' and 'low' Latin (media latinitas, infima latinitas).