Real Nature of This Period
The most important historic features of the Middle Ages were certain peculiar forms of society, rather than the development of great nations. Indeed, the modern nations as such were only in their beginnings, and these characteristic social peculiarities were common to all of them. Thus, all the nations of Europe were under that peculiar form of society called feudalism; all bore certain relations to the papal power; all participated in the Crusades and in the spirit of Chivalry; and all passed through the period named the Dark Ages, and shared in the intellectual revival which marked the latter part of the Middle Ages.