El concepto de Edad Media en Henri Pirenne. Transición histórica y choque de civilizaciones entre la antigua Roma y la Europa cristiana

Abstract

The stages of History are creations to give a chronological beginning and end to the various phases of our collective evolution, delimiting great civilizing periods with dates and events, theoretically didactic but sometimes with ideological reasons. Pirenne questioned, in this regard, the traditional division, and its specific foundations, on the occasion of the birth of the Middle Ages. For the Belgian historian, one of the great medievalists of the 20th century, the processes of decline and genesis are of greater significance and duration, as his thesis demonstrated: for several centuries Romania, or the Roman sociocultural civilization between antiquity and Christianity, it survived the German invasions and the fall of the "Eternal City", giving way to the true Middle Ages after the incredible impact of Islam in the Mediterranean and the new stage opened by the Carolingian Empire. Between Muhammad and Charlemagne, Christian, medieval and feudal Europe emerged, which would mark the destiny of the West until the beginning of the Renaissance.