Communication in Europe and its Influence

The usually accepted date for the fall of the Roman Empire and dawn of the Middle Ages is 476 C.E., when the Teutonic prince Odoacer deposed the youthful figurehead Romulus Augustulus, thus ending the imperial succession. However, as the historian Henri-Jean Martin insists, the death throes of classical culture had begun before and continued for several centuries after that date. Earlier barbarian invasions, crippling taxes, corrupt administration, and, most likely, food shortages and epidemics all contributed to the collapse of Rome. In the fourth century, in the face of growing instability, the emperor Constantine had adopted Christianity, and Rome had eventually followed suit. Constantine had also established Constantinople as the capital of the Eastern (Byzantine) Empire, which would outlast the Western Empire by almost a thousand years.

The Middle Ages saw a more limited and ecclesiastical form of written communication than was the case in classical antiquity. The parchment codex, or pergamenum, displaced the papyrus scroll. Its form resembles that of the modern book, with facing pages written on both sides. The codex manuscript began appearing in the first century C.E., became common in the third and fourth centuries, and then established itself as the dominant medium for written knowledge until the advent of the printed book in the fifteenth century. The codex could compress more information into a smaller space than the scroll. Parchment is also far more durable than papyrus and has the advantage of reusability when washed, resulting in a palimpsest that often reveals traces of the original text; and although costly, it could be produced locally at a time when trade with Egypt was being curtailed.

The Roman Catholic Church assumed administrative leadership in postimperial Rome, with popes replacing emperors. Europe became a decentralized, largely nonliterate patchwork of feudal estates based on rural agriculture. The centuries that followed are usually seen as a period of cultural decline, often referred to as the Dark Ages—a term now dismissed, however, by many historians; Lynn White, for example, has argued that while classical learning may have been eclipsed, significant developments were occurring in agricultural practice (the plow and crop rotation), the mechanical arts (accurate clocks), and technology (multipurpose water-powered mills).