The central theme of the early Middle Ages

The early Middle Ages comprise that period of European history between the fifth and eleventh centuries in which the political unity of the Western Roman empire was replaced by the religious unity of the Church. Indeed, the latter encompassed broader areas of continental Europe than did the former.

The early Middle Ages were also a period of European history which saw the advent of substantially uniform legal rules, types of government, documentary forms and modes of trial.

In the last years of the fourth century, however, there began a sequence of events which subjected the various European territories to immigration, or at least to the seizure of power, by populations displaying conspicuous differences (in terms of religion, forms of government, language and law) both from their new subjects and among themselves. These waves of immigration and seizures of power occurred in territories whose political and economic features had long lost their homogeneity, and these latter differences combined with the former to individualise the institutional framework of each territorial unit at the beginning of the period.

The central theme of the early Middle Ages, therefore, is the process by which these two sets of differences were compounded into a unitary framework to produce the first system of European common law.

Boundaries and the birth of Europe

European common law demonstrated a marked capacity for expansion. It followed the boundaries within which lived the peoples obedient to the Holy See and in the course of, and as a consequence of, this expansion it acquired and developed its own distinctive features.