Research Paper on:
The Middle Ages by Morris Bishop

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
of the thousand year period between the fall of the Roman Empire and the Renaissance-encompassing the rise and fall of kings and emperors, the flowering of chivalry and knighthood, the  economic development of Europe, the increasing power of the Church and the advent of the middle class (Bishop, 1987). In so doing, Bishop provides a fascinating, comprehensive overview that  provides the perfect introduction to this period for the novice history student. Bishop begins his narrative of the Middle Ages with the Fall of the Roman Empire, describing how  Germanic tribes, such as the Visigoths, Angles, Jutes, and Saxons swept down from northern Europe. These invasions eventually fragmented the Roman Empire into many smaller kingdoms. The unity of the  old empire was lost as the barbarian tribes felt loyalty only towards their own chieftain. Each tribe kept its own laws and customs (Bishop, 1987). Barbarian superstitions replaced Roman law.  Customs such as trial by ordeal replaced the former system of Roman justice. Trade between regions disintegrated, and without trade, money went stopped circulating, and the economies of  the various regions became strictly agrarian. Towns lost their importance as large estates, or "manors," became the principle division of property and an intricate part of the agrarian economy  (Bishop, 1987). As this brief synopsis of the beginning of Bishops test indicates, the beauty of this volume is that Bishop not only relates facts and dates, but  he also demonstrates how those facts and dates interconnect-how one development inevitably had repercussions that altered other aspects of society. In so doing, Bishop take his account of his period  out of the realms of dry historical fact and succeeds in making the period come alive for the reader. One of the ways that Bishop does this is to