During these centuries, often considered part of the High Middle Ages, crucial events in history took place:
The advance of Christianity.
The gradual disintegration of the Western Roman Empire.
Emperor Justinian (527-565) tried to regain the Empire.
The Germanic kingdoms emerged.
The expansion of Islam.
In the Iberian Peninsula, this period is closely linked to the Visigothic kingdom of Toledo (6th to the 8th centuries). It was not until the Muslim conquest from 711 onwards, with the end of this kingdom, that we can speak of a real break with Antiquity and the beginning of the Middle Ages. This thesis is defended by Henri Pirenne who, in his book “Mohammed and Charlemagne”(1937), maintains that after the decomposition of the Western Roman Empire, there was a continuity of the economic forms of the ancient Mediterranean (Pirenne, 1937). The real break occurred in the 8th century, coinciding with the Islamic expansion (Pirenne, 1937).
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Alfonso García Sánchez
