Question: What date is usually given as the beginning of the Middle Ages?
Answer: 476

Question: Who was the first writer to date the Middle Ages from 476?
Answer: Bruni

Question: When is the Middle Ages generally considered to have ended?
Answer: 1500

Question: In what year did the Turks conquer Constantinople?
Answer: 1453

Question: When did Ferdinand II die?
Answer: 1516

Question: In what century did the Roman Empire achieve its greatest extent?
Answer: the 2nd century AD

Question: In what century did the revival of Persia occur under the Sassanids?
Answer: 3rd century

Question: How much did the size of the Roman army increase in the 3rd century?
Answer: doubled

Question: What did the need for increased revenue to pay for the Roman army lead to an increase in?
Answer: taxes

Question: What is another term for the Roman landowning class?
Answer: curial

Question: In what year did Diocletian begin his reign?
Answer: 284

Question: When was the Roman Empire split into western and eastern administrative divisions?
Answer: 286

Question: What was the name of the city previously located on the site of Constantinople?
Answer: Byzantium

Question: During what century was the Roman conversion to Christianity considered complete?
Answer: 5th

Question: When did the rule of Constantine end?
Answer: 337

Question: In what year did the Ostrogoths settle in the Roman Empire?
Answer: 376

Question: Who invited the Ostrogoths to settle in the Roman Empire?
Answer: Valens

Question: In what province did the Ostrogoths settle?
Answer: Thracia

Question: At what battle was the Emperor Valens killed?
Answer: the Battle of Adrianople

Question: When did the Battle of Adrianople occur?
Answer: 9 August 378

Question: Who was the last Western Roman Emperor?
Answer: Romulus Augustus

Question: When did the reign of the last Western Roman Emperor end?
Answer: 476

Question: What is another name for the Eastern Roman Empire?
Answer: Byzantine Empire

Question: What Eastern Roman Emperor reconquered Italy?
Answer: Justinian

Question: When did Justinian's reign end?
Answer: 565

Question: When did Aspar die?
Answer: Aspar

Question: What year saw the death of Gundobad?
Answer: 516

Question: What notable Roman figure died in 408?
Answer: Stilicho

Question: The loss of what led to the differentiation between the Western Roman Empire and the new kingdoms?
Answer: tax revenue

Question: Rather than taxes, what did the new kingdoms use to support their armies?
Answer: land or rents

Question: In what century did the Ostrogoths arrive in Italy?
Answer: 5th

Question: What Ostrogothic leader led his people into Italy?
Answer: Theoderic

Question: Who destroyed the Burgundian kingdom in 436?
Answer: the Huns

Question: In what part of Europe did the Burgundians settle?
Answer: Gaul

Question: Who was the first notable king of the Franks?
Answer: Childeric

Question: People of what ethnicity settled in the Balkan Peninsula?
Answer: Slavic

Question: In what geographic region did most of the invaders settle in Gaul?
Answer: north-east

Question: What is the collective name for languages derived from Latin?
Answer: Romance languages

Question: What language was spoken in the Byzantine Empire?
Answer: Greek

Question: What languages were spoken by the Slavs?
Answer: Slavonic

Question: In what century did the economic revival in the Eastern Roman Empire end?
Answer: 7th

Question: In what century was there peace with one of Rome's traditional enemies?
Answer: 5th

Question: Where did most of the invasion in the Eastern Roman Empire take place?
Answer: the Balkans

Question: What year saw the completion of the Theodosian Code?
Answer: 438

Question: Who was Emperor when the Corpus Juris Civilis was compiled?
Answer: Justinian

Question: Who defeated the Eastern Roman Empire near Adrianople in 551?
Answer: Slavic tribes

Question: What tribe received tribute from the Eastern Roman emperors in the 6th century?
Answer: the Avars

Question: Near what river were the Avars originally based?
Answer: the Danube

Question: During the reign of what Emperor did the Persians occupy Egypt?
Answer: Heraclius

Question: In what year did the reign of Maurice end?
Answer: 602

Question: What author would Jerome rather read than the Bible?
Answer: Cicero

Question: In what year did Jerome die?
Answer: 420

Question: In what century did Gregory of Tours live?
Answer: 6th

Question: Along with art, how was religious instruction commonly received in the late 6th century?
Answer: music

Question: When was the death of Sidonius Apollinaris?
Answer: 489

Question: What was the focus of aristocratic culture during this period?
Answer: great feasts

Question: Along with gold, what luxury was present on the clothes of the elite?
Answer: jewels

Question: Along with loyalty and honor, what virtue did the elite value?
Answer: courage

Question: In what society did women have status as abbesses?
Answer: Anglo-Saxon

Question: In what country did Gregory of Tours live?
Answer: Merovingian Gaul

Question: How many people might live in a large peasant settlement?
Answer: 700

Question: What was a way in which a free peasant might become an aristocrat?
Answer: military service

Question: In what century did written records of peasant life begin to appear?
Answer: 9th

Question: Along with aristocratic writers, where do contemporary written descriptions of peasants come from?
Answer: law codes

Question: What field produces most of the finding about peasants from this era?
Answer: archaeology

Question: About how many people lived in Rome at the end of the 500s?
Answer: 30,000

Question: What new use was found for Roman temples?
Answer: Christian churches

Question: What group was notably persecuted after the Roman Empire converted to Christianity?
Answer: Jews

Question: What was the ethnicity of a leader who converted to Judaism in this era?
Answer: Arab

Question: What was the dominant religion of Persia before Islam?
Answer: Zoroastrianism

Question: In what yer did Muhammad die?
Answer: 632

Question: In what period did Islamic armies conquer Syria?
Answer: 634–635

Question: In what century did Muslims conquer North Africa?
Answer: 7th

Question: In what year did the Battle of Poitiers take place?
Answer: 732

Question: What Islamic dynasty followed the Umayyad?
Answer: Abbasid

Question: What was the capital of the Abbasid state?
Answer: Baghdad

Question: What dynasty ruled Egypt in this period?
Answer: Tulunids

Question: What group conquered southern France from Muslim forces?
Answer: the Franks

Question: Along with Naples, what city still traded African goods in the 7th century?
Answer: Rome

Question: What event led to African goods no longer being traded in Western Europe by the end of the 7th century?
Answer: Muslim conquests

Question: What non-local goods have archaeologists typically found in Britain of this era?
Answer: luxury goods

Question: During what century did gold coinage cease?
Answer: 7th

Question: Coinage from what metal replaced gold coinage?
Answer: silver

Question: What was the Anglo-Saxon silver coin called?
Answer: penny

Question: What was another name for the denarius?
Answer: denier

Question: In what part of Europe were gold coins still minted?
Answer: Southern Europe

Question: What language was used by the eastern church?
Answer: Greek

Question: What language did the western church use?
Answer: Latin

Question: When did the eastern and western churches split?
Answer: 1054

Question: Over what issue did the eastern and western churches split?
Answer: papal supremacy

Question: What was the eastern church subsequently known as?
Answer: the Orthodox Church

Question: When did Gregory the Great become pope?
Answer: 590

Question: About how many of Gregory's letters were concerned with Constantinople or Italy?
Answer: 850

Question: In what region of Western Europe did the pope have influence?
Answer: Britain