How did the word medieval come into being, and why is it a derogatory term today? No one who lived in the Middle Ages thought of himself or herself as “medieval.” People did not say they lived in the “Middle Ages.” The whole idea of the Middle Ages began in the sixteenth century. At that time, writers decided that their own age, known as the Renaissance (French for “rebirth”), and the ancient Greek and Roman civilizations were much alike. They dubbed the period in between—from about 600 to about 1400—with a Latin term: the medium aevum, or the “middle age.” It was not a flattering word. Renaissance writers considered the medium aevum a single unfortunate, barbaric, and ignorant period.

Only with the Romantic movement of the nineteenth century and the advent of history as an academic discipline did writers begin to divide that middle age into several ages. Often they divided it into three periods: Early (c. 600–1100), High (c. 1100–1300), and Late (c. 1300–1400). Today there is no hard-and-fast rule about this terminology: Chapter 11 of this book, for example, covers the period 1150–1215 as the High Middle Ages.

The period before the High Middle Ages was sometimes called the Dark Ages, a term that immediately brings to mind doom and gloom. However, recent research disputes this view of the period, stressing instead its creativity, multiethnicity, and localism.

Newspaper reporters and others still sometimes use medieval as a negative term: for example, by calling a primitive prison system “medieval.” Little do they know that when they do that, they are stuck in the sixteenth century.