In his masterful work The Condition of Man (1944) Lewis Mumford beautifully describes European life in the Early Middle Ages (aka the Dark Ages):
The past was a faded dream: the present a nightmare: the future a golden illusion. In that subjective atmosphere the Christian personality formed itself and spread its way of life over the greater part of Europe.
For at least half a millennium daily life was ruled less by intelligence than by habit. The best one could hope for was that today would be like yesterday and tomorrow like today. To remember the customs of the past. was to know the rules for the present. Even irrational practices will wear the appearance of reason if one continues them long enough, and illusions will dominate reality if everyone participates in the same hallucinations at the same time. Yet invention and ordered intelligence were not altogether excluded from this life, even at its lowest level: water mills became more common and the tide-mill was invented, the horse-shoe came into general use, a correct harness for horses, which put the load against the chest, was finally devised, the folding camp-stool was in use as early as the time of Charlemagne, and steam was even used to pump an organ— the invention of Pope Sylvester II. The "rise of chivalry" is only a poetic paraphrase for the "increase of horsepower."
Nevertheless, life was hard, oppressive, difficult: provision for bare physical survival became all important. When the time for spring plowing comes, even the animals, half starved through the winter, will hardly have enough strength for the task; half a dozen oxen may be necessary to make the plow cleave the shallow topsoil. To make the stock of salt meats, barley, or rye last through the winter required ingenuity; few were rich enough to escape the need for parsimony, for the richer one was, the bigger the number of household dependents. A stunted life: many underfed bodies, many undernourished minds. If anyone lives well outside the monasteries, it is the hunter-warrior who adds to the trophies of the hunt the dues of the peasants he protects.
Animal hardships alternating with a muzzy, dreamful routine: this made up the sentient existence of Romanesque man. All his dominating institutions, monasticism, manorialism, Christian dogma, bore the sign of his period-protection. It was more important that there should be some continuity than that there should be rational criticism of the habits and values continued. Every hour lived in peace was a gain. To widen the span between birth and death, to punctuate the grievous days with repetitious tasks, to live like one's ancestors, obeying one's overlord and the priest, to look no farther than the close horizon, to remember Christ in one's prayers and always to make the sign of the cross against demons and magicians, to stand by one's neighbor in his trouble and to know that trouble is never far away, to keep one's station and be contented with one's lot-here was the essence of this life.
