State and Society in the Early Middle Ages: The Middle Rhine Valley, 400–1000 (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series Book 47)

by Matthew Innes

The intervening period cannot satisfactorily be reduced to either a hangover from antiquity or a melting-pot out of which high medieval society emerged. In both schemes there is more than a hint of the Dark Ages paradigm which has not quite been exorcised yet - for is not the characterisation of five centuries of gradual synthesis an effective writing off of any independent value to those centuries? Historical development cannot be seen as a simple progression from chaos to order, irrational to rational. Unless we recognise that the early middle ages have their own legitimacy as a historical period we fall victim to a self-fulfilling teleology, describing it in terms of what came before and after and thus positing a natural and seamless transition from one to the other.