How 'Dark' were the Dark Ages? (Short Animated Documentary)

we've all heard of the term Dark Ages that medieval period in which all learning stops and everything became terrible it's a term attributed to Patrick who likely to Renaissance thinkers thought that the Middle Ages were a period of darkness in comparison to the Classical period from before and the Renaissance after so just to let you know the definition of Dark Ages has changed since the days of pet rock nowadays it's a very specific term but be aware the Dark Ages isn't synonymous with Middle Ages it refers exclusively to Western Europe in the couple of centuries following the collapse of the Roman Empire of course the question is how true is the commonly held vision of this period where the Dark Age is really that dark and unenlightened well in a word no in a sentence not really but also a little bit of ending and where and where you're talking about so Western Europe had largely been united under the rule of the Roman Empire and after its collapse it was divided into competing realms there's obviously too many to speak of in any sort of detail so we'll pick two extremes and compared them the former province of Italia and that of Britannia whose experiences of the Dark Ages are proof that they weren't quite as awful as is often made out to be so in Britannia after the Romans left things went really well just kidding they fell apart almost immediately things like a coin based economy urban living and literacy died out there within a generation whereas in places like the ostrogothic kingdom which occupied the former province of italia and then some very little changed and whilst yes it did now have a germanic ruler King Theodoric he swore fealty to the Roman Emperor in the East the Senate continued to meet in Rome in the Pope's rights were respected although the official Church of the Ostrogoths was centered in Ravenna as for urban living the number of people in towns and cities had declined massively in most places Rome's population had declined from roughly a million people in the third century to about 50,000 during the ostrogothic period but what about the peasantry how did life change for them after Rome had gone well frankly not very much most people were born lived and died working as agricultural laborers on the same farm as their forebears had localized families were also much more common and couldn't be alleviated by a centralized Authority meaning that local starvation was much more common this largely went away in ostrogothic Italy when it was conquered in the 6th century by the eastern Roman Empire now known as the Roman Empire which undermines pet rocks notion of the post Roman world being an unenlightened one because the Romans never went away the Dark Ages did see many intellectual achievements though monasteries like Lindisfarne and monk worm of chero produced great historians like bead in the ostrogothic kingdom Boethius wrote the consolation of philosophy which is one of the most important medieval texts ever written and in terms of architecture buildings like Theodoric's mausoleum a testament to the fact that in the Dark Ages things weren't as dark as they may seem I hope you enjoyed this episode and thank you for watching with extra thanks to my patrons that you see on screen now and a special thanks to James Bissonnette izalco flash mark H party-boy Co David archaeologist Rob Waterhouse Chris wicker Michael Reynolds Gustav Swan onion duck David Silverman Paul Maggie packs Kowski Winston K word vasily era vedas christian check hey Anthony Beckett Skye Chappell Adam Harvey and Ike

Channel: History Matters

Views: 589,165

Rating: 4.9136262 out of 5

Keywords: History, Matters, Short, Animated, Documentary, Rome, Roman Empire, Eastern, Western, Fall of, Dark Ages, Middle Ages, Medieval, Church, Renaissance, Philosophy, Learning, Italy, Britain, Bede, Boethius, Ostrogoths, Justinian

Id: gnTMu4Ba17o

Length: 2min 59sec (179 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 10 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/mjl_7]

Yeah. Love this channel as well, been following for a while

[u/soataster]

I’m a huge fan of this channel! The earlier 10 minute ones included a set specifically on British history, including the early periods BHP has covered. Lately he’s been jumping around in mostly Euro history with the newer shorter ones. Thanks for bringing it up here!