400-1300 Medieval Era

The Middle Ages (careful—the adjective "medieval" is really tricky to spell!) was a period of about a thousand years, and lasted from the end of the Roman empire at about 400 C.E. to the beginning of the Renaissance around 1400. So the Middle Ages comes in the MIDDLE of Ancient Greece and Rome and the Renaissance.

Like this:
Classical Antiquity 500 B.C.E. - 400 C.E.
The Middle Ages 400 C.E. - 1300s
The Renaissance 1300s - 1500s

The people who lived during this period did not know that they lived in the middle of anything! It was the people of the Renaissance who named it the Middle Ages—as a way of calling it an unimportant period that came between them (they liked themselves very much!) and the Ancient Greeks and Romans.

Petrarch (a writer and philosopher who lived in the early 1300s) described this period as the "Dark Ages," because to him it seemed to be a period of decline for human achievement, especially when he compared it to the vast cultural wealth of the Ancient Greeks and Romans. Even the name "middle ages" has a pejorative feeling to it! After all, if you were the middle child in a family, how would you like to be called "Middle," instead of having your own name?

Of course, the period of the Middle Ages was not without its great works of art and literature, but they were different than what Petrarch valued. The works of art created in the Middle Ages were almost exclusively focused on the teachings of the Church. It was during the Middle Ages that Christianity spread among the migrating groups of people who began to settle in Europe.

It is important to remember that during the Middle Ages, the clergy (the monks and priests) were the only ones who could read and write. Almost every work of art created during this period was religious in nature. And although many beautiful works of art were created during the Middle Ages, we know the names of the artists only rarely. This is because it would have been considered sinful to take pride in something you created as an individual, when it was, after all, considered created with the help of God, for the Church itself.