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p Many scholars use the term Middle Ages for the period between the fall of the Western Roman Empire (476 A.D.) and the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium in 1453. Others regard Columbus’ discovery of America in 1492 as the event which marked the end of the period. However, all concur in placing the end of the Middle Ages not later than the last decades of the fifteenth century. The actual term Middle Ages took root in text-books and popular histories written by the humanists of the seventeenth century, who regarded their own time as the age of the rebirth of science and re-awakening of interest in the art of the classical period and called the interval between this Renaissance and classical times the Middle Ages (medium aevum), depicting it as a time of barbarian conquests, ignorance and superstition, a time of profound cultural decline.

p Soviet historians apply the term Middle Ages to the period characterised by a specific social structure—feudalism. Feudal society, like the slave-holding society that preceded it, was a class society: it was based on the exploitation of the working population. Feudalism differed from the preceding social structure in that now the working people were no longer slaves but economically dependent on their masters, or in less fortunate cases serfs bound to members of the ruling class, the feudal lords.

p Feudal society constituted a vital stage in the history of mankind, and in comparison with slave-holding society it was a progressive society. It is human labour that forms the basis of all material and spiritual culture and determines mankind’s development and advance towards a brighter future. During the era of slavery, physical labour, the essential prerequisite for the

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130 creation of the material conditions of existence, fell first and foremost to the lot of the slave, who hated his work and was kept at it only by means of the whip. During the crisis of the Roman Empire the slave-owners understood the need to interest the slaves in their work; they allowed them to have and till their own small plots and to have their own families. In this way the foundations were laid for the future feudal society.

In the feudal era the land belonged to the^feudal lords, but they distributed it in small parcels to their “men”, villeins or serfs who were obliged to work for their lord in return for their land or hand over to him a part of their produce. However, these serfs were always small farmers in their own right with their own families. Since in the majority of cases the amount of produce which the peasant owed his lord was laid down by custom, the serfs knew in advance that if they were to raise their level of productivity they would have more produce at their own disposal and thus be able to improve their family’s living conditions. Thus it followed that the serf, unlike his slave predecessor, had a vested interest in raising his productivity. Herein is to be found the progressive aspect of feudal society, later to pave the way for the transition to a still more advanced, capitalist economy.