Great Gothic Cathedrals of Europe Stand As Monuments to the Age of Faith and Belief

Average lives were so short and brutal that humans needed inspiration to endure

The Middle Ages, the 10 centuries between the fall of the Roman Empire in 475 and the beginning of the Renaissance in the 1400s, may at first glance seem like a dark time in Europe because life was so short — people typically died in their early 30s — and the Black Plague in the 1300s wiped out half the population.

There was a great split in Christianit…