“We’re back to the Dark Ages” or “What is
this? The Dark Ages?” These expressions have become a part of the common talking points
for many languages around the world. Indeed, the idea that a good chunk of Europe’s middle ages
was spent in social, technological, and political stagnation, an era of darkness if you will, is a
well-enduring idea in our collective imaginations. However, is this rooted in the reality of
how historians have come to understand the medieval era? What are these famous Dark
Ages? And did they even exist? Today, we will explore historiography in an attempt
to shed some light on this commonly heard, but rarely understood period of history. Welcome to
our video where we explore the question: what were the dark ages, and how dark were they, really?
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off. Go to establishedtitles.com/kings to get yourself a title or give it as
a gift, and help support the channel. The Medieval era is as fascinating as it
is complex: a time when burgeoning trade coexisted with bloody conflicts, and
deadly plague coexisted with brilliant literary works. An age characterized
by moments of technological stagnation, yet constellated with remarkable innovations
in many fields. With this complexity, comes the challenging task of dividing and categorizing
the Middle Ages into different phases. While there is no definitive date to signify the
beginning of this historical chapter, the most popular one is the year 476 A.D, which coincides
with the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The moments picked to signify the Middle Ages’ end
also vary: from the Fall of Constantinople in 1453 to the more classic discovery of the Americas
in 1492. Whatever the preferred date might be, it is clear that this massive, millennium-long
period as a whole needs to be fractured into different phases. Historians from Romance-speaking
countries typically divide the Middle Ages into two periods: the "High" and the "Low."
English-speaking historians, on the other hand, commonly split the Middle Ages into three
time periods: “Early”, “High”, and “Late”, or, in some cases, four, with the “Low Middle
Ages” added between “High” and “Late”. All of this leads us back to our original question:
where do the “Dark Ages” fit into all this? In the 1330s, the Tuscan scholar Petrarch was the
first to introduce the theory of a “Dark Age”. Writing some nine centuries after the fall of
western Rome, he stated: “Amidst the errors there shone forth men of genius; no less keen
were their eyes, although they were surrounded by darkness and dense gloom”. Christian writers,
including Petrarch, had long employed classical metaphors such as “light versus darkness” to
express “good versus evil” in spiritual matters. Petrarch, however, was the first to give the
metaphor secular significance. He saw classical antiquity, the era of Caesar and Augustus, in
the “light” of its cultural achievements, whereas Petrarch's own time, allegedly without such
artistic triumphs, was regarded as a “dark” age. Petrarch considered classical antiquity
to be an expression of splendor, especially since he was a native of the Italian
peninsula, once the beating heart of what had been the greatest ancient civilization in
Europe. As an itinerant scholar, Petrarch traveled extensively across Europe, uncovering and
republishing classical Latin and Greek writings. These volumes influenced him into believing that
ancient times were “enlightened” when compared to the relative scarcity of surviving literary
works from more recent centuries. In 1343, Petrarch would solidify his concept of a “Dark
Age” in the conclusion of his epic, Africa: “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.”
The trend set by Petrarch would continue throughout the centuries by way of other authors’
works. In the 15th century, Italian historians Leonardo Bruni and Flavio Biondo established
a three-tier model of history. They defined history using Petrarch's two ages: the enlightened
antique era and the dark, ignorant middle ages, while also adding on a new age, a current, “better
age”, which they thought their world had entered. The word “Middle Ages,” derived from the
Latin media tempestas, storm of the middle, was used to denote that period of apparent
decline between the enlightenment of the ancient Romans and the rediscovery of their
glory in the 1400s: the so-called ‘renaissance’. During the 16th and 17th centuries, as
Europe was thrown into bloody religious wars, the birth of Protestantism and the subsequent
Catholic Counter-Reformation gave rise to new interpretations of the “Dark Ages”. Although
Protestant thinkers generally held views comparable to humanists such as Petrarch, they
added an anti-Catholic stance. They saw classical antiquity as a golden age, not just for its Latin
literature, but also since Christianity began in that era, the ancients witnessed the faith
of Jesus in its purest, most sincere form. The Protestants pushed the notion that the Middle
Ages were a period of darkness due to corruption inside the Catholic Church, such as pope's
ruling as kings, worship of saints' relics, a debauched priesthood, and institutionalized
moral hypocrisy. In reaction to the Protestants, the Catholics created a counter-image
that portrayed the High Middle Ages in particular as a period of social and religious
stability in contrast to the religious schisms and ensuing wars that plagued the 16th and 17th
centuries, rather than a period of “darkness”. At the center of this movement was Italian
cardinal and historian Cesare Baronio (Baronius). His widely acclaimed Annales Ecclesiastici
was published in twelve volumes between 1588 and 1607 and covered the first twelve centuries of
Christian history up to the year 1198. The epithet “dark age” was coined by Baronius in his Annales
to describe the period between the collapse of the Carolingian Empire in 888 and the first stirrings
of Gregorian Reform under Pope Clement II in 1046: “The new age (saeculum) that was beginning, for
its harshness and barrenness of good could well be called iron, for its baseness and abounding
evil leaden, and moreover for its lack of writers [could be called] dark (obscurum)”.
Significantly, it was mainly because of the scarcity of written records that Baronius referred
to the period as “dark.” There was a “dark age”, in the sense of a “shortage of writings”,
between the Carolingian Renaissance in the 9th century and the beginnings of what has been
dubbed the Renaissance of the 12th century. Furthermore, there was a “shortage of writings”
period in the 7th and 8th centuries too. As a result, two “dark ages” can actually be
traced in Western Europe, separated by the luminous but short Carolingian Renaissance of the
9th century. Baronius' “dark age” appears to have inspired historians, as the term began to spread
to various European languages in the 17th century, with his original Latin name saeculum obscurum
reserved for the period he had applied it to. However, although some, like Baronius, used the term neutrally to refer to a lack of
written records, many others used it negatively. The first British historian to adapt Baronius’
term probably was Scottish bishop Gilbert Burnet, in the late 17th century. In his works, his
usage of the term was universally negative and tinged in the worldview of a Protestant thinker
with anti-Catholic views. In 1679 he writes: “The design of the [Protestant] 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,” Thus once more invoking the Protestant view of the
dark ages as an era of debauched church corruption in the middle ages. He again uses the term a few
years later, dismissing the legend of St. George fighting the dragon as “a legend formed in the
darker ages to support the humor of chivalry”. So far we have covered the story of how the
idea of a “Dark Age” progressed throughout time up until the 17th century, but it would be
in the centuries after this that the term took on its most pessimistic meaning. In the 18th
century, the advent of “Enlightenment” brought with it a general air of hostility toward
religion and “irrationality” in academic and philosophical circles all over Western Europe.
Many thinkers of the period saw religion as antithetical to reason. For them, the Middle
Ages, or “Age of Faith” as they called it, was the polar opposite of the Age of Reason they
currently lived in, and something to be deplored, as it embodied the despotic, priest-infested
world they were working to change. Spinoza, Kant, Thomas Jefferson, Rousseau, and Diderot
among others, were extremely blunt in their critique of the Middle Ages as a period of social
regress driven by religion and superstition. In trying to explain why the Middle Ages were
the way they were, German philosopher Immanuel Kant came up with the idea that humankind had lost
its mind during the Middle Ages. He claimed that a time of collective insanity had halted the onward
march of development and reason, which had only been restarted with himself and the Enlightenment.
This meant that even the period between the Middle Ages and the Enlightenment was now considered
part of the “Dark Ages”. Voltaire, meanwhile, went so far as to encourage contemporaries to
study medieval history just to find more things to mock and better ridicule the period. Even
an English member of Parliament and historian, Edward Gibbon, expressed contempt for what
he called the “rubbish of the Dark Ages”. As we have seen, Enlightenment thinkers
were condemning centuries before their own, feeling themselves on the verge of a “new age”,
just like Petrarch had done four centuries before. Knowing all this, we can see that, by the 18th
century, the concept of a “dark age” had changed significantly over time. Petrarch's original
metaphor of light versus darkness has evolved. Even the later humanists of the 15th and 16th
centuries, who did not see themselves as living in a dark age, were not enlightened enough for
18th-century writers who considered themselves as living in the true Age of Enlightenment,
while the period to be condemned extended up to what we now call Early Modern times.
Furthermore, Petrarch's metaphor of darkness, which he primarily used to lament what
he viewed as a lack of secular progress, was sharpened to take on an explicitly
anti-religious and anti-clerical significance. In the early 19th century, things would shift.
The opinion on the Middle ages would flip on its head and take a surprisingly positive turn. In
contrast with the Enlightenment thinkers, a new growing movement, the Romantics, held a particular
attraction to the remote and the mysterious, and a strong resentment toward the emerging
Industrial revolution. They liked to portray the Middle Ages as a time of great social harmony when
everyone accepted his or her place in society. They described the Middle Ages as an aesthetically
attractive age. The water was clear, and the green fields that were now being supplanted by grey
factories dominated the landscape. They also saw it as a time when emotion was allowed
to run wild, not dominated by cold reason. Again, in contrast with the Englightenment.
The literary works glorifying the Middle Ages produced in this time are many, but outside of
that, one particular example is the revival of Medieval-style Gothic Architecture. The word
"Gothic" had so far been a derogatory one, similar to "Vandal". But in the early 19th
century, Romantic enthusiasts of the Middle Ages gave the term a new meaning through the so-called
“Gothic Revival”. The Gothic Revival drew on medieval elements such as lancet windows, finials,
and ornamental patterns, and numerous Gothic cathedrals and basilicas started being built all
over Europe and beyond. By the mid-nineteenth century, Gothic had risen in popularity as the
dominant architectural style in the Western world. In the second half of the 19th century, especially
during what is known as the Victorian Era, the Romantic movement had died. With its fall
out of fashion, the Middle Ages started to be seen as a period of overall backwardness
again. But, surprisingly, the era of Knights and castles held an aura of mystery and charm
to the literate masses of the Victorian age. Most Victorians likely considered the Middle
Ages as a time of contrasts: of beauty, romance, and chivalry as well as oppression, ignorance,
and fanaticism. People of the time largely derived their opinions about the wonders of the Medieval
period from art, literature, and architecture, as well as from Enlightenment literature, which
carried preconceptions against Medieval ignorance. Unfortunately, the notions spread by the many
pieces of literature about the Middle Ages, like Tennyson’s “Idylls of the King”,
were more often than not born out of myth. The end result was a knowledge of the period
very low in historical accuracy, which birthed many misconceptions still alive today, but as
we’ve seen, it was still accompanied by general interest and fascination with the period.
This routes us back to our main point: that the meaning of the term “Dark Ages” has
changed over time. While Petrarch’s initial idea was that of an era lacking in cultural
achievements and literary works, the protestants of the 16th and 17th centuries warped it into a
critique of the church’s corruption; and their catholic counterparts, led by Baronius, shifted
the attention to a scarcity of written production. Then, in the 18th century, the Enlightenment
thinkers started a harsh condemnation of the past’s supposed superstitiousness and lack of
critical thinking, only for the Romantics a few decades later to start idealizing the period as a
hub of social harmony and lush natural landscapes, and for the Victorians to see it as an often
bleak yet fascinating phase of history. Within all these different and evolving
viewpoints, the timespan identifiable with these “Dark Ages” also changed depending on the period
and who you asked. Petrarch thought they extended from the Fall of Rome to his own times. The
counter-reformist historian Baronius completely changed things, claiming that the “Dark Ages” only
started with the fracturing of the Carolingian State in 888 and ended in 1046 with the first
Gregorian reforms. Finally, Enlightenment authors like Kant affirmed the period in question
lasted throughout the whole Middle Ages all the way up to the 18th century. As we can see,
it’s a very complicated subject. Luckily, modern historians have shed some light on the
confusing mess that is the notorious “Dark Ages”. The 20th century saw a major re-evaluation of
the Middle Ages, which called into doubt the word "dark" used to define the time up to that
point, or at least its more derogatory meaning. Denys Hay, a historian, exemplified the new
academic stance on Medieval times when he talked sarcastically in 1977 of "the
lively centuries which we call dark". Most modern historians don’t use the term “Dark
Ages” anymore, and while some still use it, they do so only referring to specific circumstances
and moments in history, inside and even outside of the Middle Ages. Others believe the term must be
instead used neutrally, claiming that periods like the Medieval one only appear dark to us because
of the scarcity of surviving written sources, which tends to cover the time’s reality in
mystery. However, beginning in the late twentieth century, other historians began to question
even this nonjudgmental usage of the term. The reason behind this stance is their belief in
the fact that the Medieval period is not “dark” to us any more thanks to the better understanding
we now have of its culture and history. While the scholarly debate is still open, the
whole period is now finally being looked at through a more objective lens, after centuries
of misconceptions, misinterpretations, and even ridicule. With modern studies, the Medieval age,
for so long classified as one of backwardness, was proven to have been one of vibrant colors,
flowering trade, intellectual liveliness, and innovations that range from the economic
field to the legal and manufacturing ones… But that is a story for another time.
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Ages’ fascinating history in the future, so make sure you are subscribed and have
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