📖 Quick review
The Middle Ages begin after the fall of the Roman Empire and feature political and military discord without a dominant centralized power. People often lived in walled cities and depended on powerful lords for protection, while the Christian Church stayed unified and influential. Knowledge was preserved through priests who copied manuscripts, but the 1340s brought the bubonic plague and other airborne deaths, together called the Black Death. Feudal society included lords, knights, and serfs, with work shaped by seasons and limited living conditions. Church authority affected daily life through sacraments, spiritual interpretations of sickness and crop failure, and the power to excommunicate. Later, Islam expanded across regions, and the Crusades began after European Christians decided to retake Jerusalem and conquer the Holy Lands.