The Middle Ages; A Revision

Alternatively to the Middle Ages, we know this period as the Dark Ages and even more to the point of the modern ethos, the Age of Faith. A great age of Faith it was, as advertised, but not dark like the Twentieth century. Peasants and their associations, the village council and guilds, replaced slaves. The Byzantine ethos, Greek and Roman culture conserved under Christian administration, became the common culture. Feudalism was itself arguably Byzantine and like Byzantium, not quite civilized.
There were books, a Byzantine invention, and libraries, private and monastic but above all there was trade. Bismarck's famous observation that war was diplomacy by other means easily extends to trade being war by other means and business was discouraged as injurious to Christian values as there is little room for those values in war.
The grand triumph of economics as the centerpiece of the modern ethos comes obviously at the expense of an extraordinary Byzantine exercise in civilizing barbarians. As the United States, singularly well suited to it, has repeatedly had the role of modernist Byzantium thrust upon it, it is interesting that that description, while encompassing a thousand years of the history of civilization, won't quite fly. It describes the role but omits the philosophical differences.
Just some thoughts marking a personal intellectual journey. I am become revisionist.
Do Well and Be Well.