A/N: Just a little thing I did for english about the first chapter of a history book we are reading.

A World Lit Only By Fire is a novel describing the lives of the people who have lived during the Middle Ages. The novel goes into detail

about the lives of the tribes of people who where doing there daily jobs to the people who drastically changed the world

and the people who live in it. The first chapter, “The Medieval Mind,” discusses what the people during this thought, believed, worked,

lived, and communicated. This is what I will be explaining in this essay.

The Middle Ages took place between 400 A.D. and 1000 A.D., and are widely known as the Dark Ages. The time was called this

because of the belief that the people were unable to think and live as we do today, but as I saw in this chapter, that is not

necessarily the case. There was a tribe that came from Mongolia and were known as the Hsiung-nu or Huns, who were expert warriors.

They traveled through Russia and into the scattered cities of Europe. Through-out that time, the Huns fought and defied the

Ostrogoths (East Goths) in the Ukraine, and then the Visigoths (West Goths) near Romania. After years of fighting the Huns and the now

Gothic allies swept through Rome and the once Eternal City fell to an enemy army. Even though they had virtually conquered all of Europe,

the small towns were very spread apart and not much news came between one town to the next.

The people during this time were heavily influenced by the Pagans and lived the lives similar to the Pagans before them. Even though this

was true, they also were Christian. The Christians during this time were very different and conflicted with the teachings of that of Jesus had

preached in the Middle East. They enjoyed fighting, gore, violence, and death; reminisces of the gladiators before them; these ‘sports’

were contrary to what the disciples had taught. The same came with the so called Christian rulers such as Charlemagne and Constantine,

as well the cardinals and the Pope. All these men allowed violence, cheating, and intellectual stupidly while claming it to be in the name of

Christ.

As I had stated earlier, the towns were spaced far apart, miles and miles apart. It was difficult to find out where the next town was was,

and then to figure out how the other people of that town speaks. The people of the towns rarely knew what was going on around them,

such as a war, what the king did, or what the Pope said. Even the town religious leader rarely knew what was happening in Rome. There

lives were limited to what they knew about the town and each other. They dared not leave what they knew because there was a possibility

they would die in the wilderness or another group of people would kill an unwanted intruder. But some remarkable people in this time

brought some world braking changes in how people think, communicate, travel, and work. Each event was a chain reaction to another

event that made some drastic changes that made live very different.

The people in the Middle Ages were limited in many ways, but some people from that age did remarkable things despite the challenges had

for people. Life spans ended at the age of 25, people had children young, and there was a lot more incurable illnesses; it was amazing that

some of these people did so many great things in there lifetime. In many ways, though, life from them is not much different than life know.

In many ways we are just as ignorant as the people of the small villages. Words and people may be able to move around more, but if you

do one wrong thing in another country, such as a wrong word or mannerism, you could get yourself in a lot of trouble, or worse, killed.

This is why I believe it is important to learn about these things so we can change the way we live and think.