The Dark Ages is a term, now deprecated by most historians, for the Early Middle Ages (–10th centuries), or occasionally the entire Middle Ages (–15th centuries), in Western Europe after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, which characterises it as marked by economic, intellectual, and cultural decline.
The concept of a "Dark Age" as a historiographical periodization originated in the 1330s with the Italian scholar Petrarch, who regarded the post-Roman centuries as "dark" compared with the "light" of classical antiquity.. Reprinted from: The term employs traditional light-versus-darkness imagery to contrast the era's supposed darkness (ignorance and error) with earlier and later periods of light (knowledge and understanding). The phrase 'Dark Age(s)' itself derives from the Latin saeculum obscurum, originally applied by Caesar Baronius in 1602 when he referred to a tumultuous period in the 10th and 11th centuries.Baronius, Caesar. Annales Ecclesiastici, Vol. X. Roma, 1602, p. 647 The concept thus came to characterize the entire Middle Ages as a time of intellectual darkness in Europe between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance, and became especially popular during the 18th-century Age of Enlightenment. Others, however, have used the term to denote the relative scarcity of written records regarding at least the early part of the Middle Ages.
As the accomplishments of the era came to be better understood in the 19th and the 20th centuries, scholars began restricting the 'Dark Ages' appellation to the Early Middle Ages; today's scholars maintain this posture. The majority of modern scholars avoid the term altogether because of its negative connotations, finding it misleading and inaccurate.. In explaining his approach to writing the work, Snyder refers to the "so-called Dark Ages" and notes, "Historians and archaeologists have never liked the label Dark Ages... there are numerous indicators that these centuries were neither 'dark' nor 'barbarous' in comparison with other eras."; Same volume, Freedman, Paul, "Medieval Studies", pp. 383–389. "The stereotype of the Middle Ages as 'the Dark Ages' fostered by Renaissance humanists and Enlightenment philosophes has, of course, long since been abandoned by scholars." Despite this, Petrarch's pejorative meaning remains in use, particularly in popular culture, which often oversimplifies the Middle Ages as a time of violence, backwardness, and intellectual restriction.*
History
Petrarch
The idea of a Dark Age originated with the Tuscan scholar Petrarch in the 1330s. Writing of the past, he said: "Amidst the errors there shone forth men of genius; no less keen were their eyes, although they were surrounded by darkness and dense gloom".Petrarch (1367). Apologia cuiusdam anonymi Galli calumnias (Defence against the calumnies of an anonymous Frenchman), in Petrarch, Opera Omnia, Basel, 1554, p. 1195. This quotation comes from the English translation of Mommsen's article, where the source is given in a footnote. Cf. also Marsh, D, ed., (2003), Invectives, Harvard University Press, p. 457. Christian writers, including Petrarch himself, had long used traditional metaphors of 'light versus darkness' to describe 'good versus evil'. Petrarch was the first to give the metaphor secular meaning by reversing its application. He now saw classical antiquity, so long considered a 'dark' age for its lack of Christianity, in the 'light' of its cultural achievements, while Petrarch's own time, allegedly lacking such cultural achievements, was seen as the age of darkness.
From his perspective on the Italian peninsula, Petrarch saw the Roman period and classical antiquity as an expression of greatness. He spent much of his time traveling through Europe, rediscovering and republishing classic Latin and Greek texts. He wanted to restore the Latin language to its former purity. Renaissance humanists saw the preceding 900 years as a time of stagnation, with history unfolding not along the religious outline of Saint Augustine's Six Ages of the World, but in cultural (or secular) terms through progressive development of classical ideals, literature, and art.
Petrarch wrote that history had two periods: the classic period of Greeks and Romans, followed by a time of darkness in which he saw himself living. In around 1343, in the conclusion of his epic Africa, he wrote: "My fate is to live among varied and confusing storms. But for you perhaps, if as I hope and wish you will live long after me, there will follow a better age. This sleep of forgetfulness will not last forever. When the darkness has been dispersed, our descendants can come again in the former pure radiance."Petrarch (1343). Africa, IX, 451-7 (ed. Festa, p. 278):... Michi degere vitamImpositum varia rerum turbante procella.At tibi fortassis, si – quod mens sperat et optat –Es post me victura diu, meliora supersuntSecula: non omnes veniet Letheus in annosIste sopor! Poterunt discussis forte tenebrisAd purum priscumque iubar remeare nepotes.(This quotation and its English translation is from Mommsen's article, p. 240. The typographical error of inbar instead of iubar has been corrected.) In the 15th century, historians Leonardo Bruni and Flavio Biondo developed a three-tier outline of history. They used Petrarch's two ages, plus a modern, 'better age', which they believed the world had entered. Later, the term 'Middle Ages' – Latin media tempestas (1469) or medium aevum (1604), was used to describe the period of supposed decline.Albrow, Martin, The global age: state and society beyond modernity (1997), p. 205.
Reformation During the Reformations of the 16th and 17th centuries, Protestants generally had a similar view of history as Renaissance humanists such as Petrarch, but they added an anti-Catholic perspective. The Lutheran Magdeburg Centuries are a notable example of such a view. Protestants saw classical antiquity as a golden time, not only because of its Latin literature, but because it witnessed the beginnings of Christianity. They promoted the idea that the 'Middle Age' was a time of darkness because of corruption within the Catholic Church, such as popes ruling as kings, veneration of saints' relics, a licentious priesthood, and institutionalized moral hypocrisy.F. Oakley, The medieval experience: foundations of Western cultural singularity (University of Toronto Press, 1988), pp. 1-4.
Baronius In response to the Protestants, Catholics developed a counter-image to depict the High Middle Ages in particular as a period of social and religious harmony and not 'dark' at all.Daileader, Philip (2001). The High Middle Ages. The Teaching Company. . "Catholics living during the Protestant Reformation were not going to take this assault lying down. They, too, turned to the study of the Middle Ages, going back to prove that, far from being a period of religious corruption, the Middle Ages were superior to the era of the Protestant Reformation, because the Middle Ages were free of the religious schisms and religious wars that were plaguing the 16th and 17th centuries." The most important Catholic reply to the Magdeburg Centuries was the Annales Ecclesiastici by Cardinal Caesar Baronius. Baronius was a trained historian who produced a work that the Encyclopædia Britannica in 1911 described as "far surpassing anything before" and that Acton regarded as "the greatest history of the Church ever written".Lord Acton (1906). Lectures on Modern History, p. 121. The Annales covered the first twelve centuries of Christianity to 1198 and was published in twelve volumes between 1588 and 1607. It was in Volume X that Baronius coined the term "dark age" for the period between the end of the Carolingian Empire in 888Baronius's actual starting-point for the "dark age" was 900 (annus Redemptoris nongentesimus), but that was an arbitrary rounding off that was due mainly to his strictly annalistic approach. Later historians,m such as Marco Porri in his Catholic History of the Church (Storia della Chiesa) and the Lutheran Christian Cyclopedia ("Saeculum Obscurum") , have tended to amend it to the more historically significant date of 888 and often rounded it down further to 880. The first weeks of 888 witnessed both the final break-up of the Carolingian Empire and the death of its deposed ruler Charles the Fat. Unlike the end of the Carolingian Empire, however, the end of the Carolingian Renaissance cannot be precisely dated, and it was the latter development that was responsible for the "lack of writers" that Baronius, as a historian, found so irksome. and the first stirrings of Gregorian Reform under Pope Clement II in 1046:
+ Volumes of Patrologia Latina per centurySchaff, Philip (1882). History of the Christian Church, Vol. IV: Mediaeval Christianity, A.D. 570–1073, Ch. XIII, §138. "Prevailing Ignorance in the Western Church" Century Volumes of volumes 7th 80–88 8 8th 89–96 7 9th 97–130 33 10th 131–138 7 11th 139–151 12 12th 152–191 39 13th 192–217 25
Significantly, Baronius termed the age 'dark' because of the paucity of written records. The "lack of writers" he referred to may be illustrated by comparing the number of volumes in Migne's Patrologia Latina containing the work of Latin writers from the 10th century (the heart of the age he called 'dark') with the number containing the work of writers from the preceding and succeeding centuries. A minority of these writers were historians.
There is a sharp drop from 34 volumes in the 9th century to just 8 in the 10th. The 11th century, with 13, evidences a certain recovery, and the 12th century, with 40, surpasses the 9th, something that the 13th, with just 26, fails to do. There was indeed a 'dark age', in Baronius's sense of a "lack of writers", between the Carolingian Renaissance in the 9th century and the beginnings, sometime in the 11th, of what has been called the Renaissance of the 12th century. Furthermore, there was an earlier period of "lack of writers" during the 7th and 8th centuries. Therefore, in Western Europe, two 'dark ages' can be identified, separated by the brilliant but brief Carolingian Renaissance.
Baronius' 'dark age' seems to have struck historians, for it was in the 17th century that the term started to spread to various European languages, with his original Latin term being reserved for the period to which he had applied it. Some, following Baronius, used 'dark age' neutrally to refer to a dearth of written records, but others used it pejoratively and lapsed into that lack of objectivity that has discredited the term for many modern historians.
The first British historian to use the term was most likely Gilbert Burnet, in the form 'darker ages' which appears several times in his work during the later 17th century. The earliest reference seems to be in the "Epistle Dedicatory" to Volume I of The History of the Reformation of the Church of England of 1679, where he writes: "The design of the reformation was to restore Christianity to what it was at first, and to purge it of those corruptions, with which it was overrun in the later and darker ages."Burnet, Gilbert (1679). The History of the Reformation of the Church of England, Vol. I. Oxford, 1929, p. ii. He uses it again in the 1682 Volume II, where he dismisses the story of "St George's fighting with the dragon" as "a legend formed in the darker ages to support the humour of chivalry".Burnet, Gilbert (1682). The History of the Reformation of the Church of England, Vol. II. Oxford, 1829, p. 423. Burnet also uses the term in 1682 in The Abridgement of the History of the Reformation of the Church of England (2nd Edition, London, 1683, p. 52) and in 1687 in Travels through France, Italy, Germany and Switzerland (London, 1750, p. 257). The Oxford English Dictionary erroneously cites the last of these as the earliest recorded use of the term in English. Burnet was a bishop chronicling how England became Protestant, and his use of the term is invariably pejorative.
Enlightenment