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Dark Ages

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: General history

   Petrarch, who conceived the idea of a European "Dark Age". From Cycle
   of Famous Men and Women, Andrea di Bartolo di Bargillac, c.1450
   Enlarge
   Petrarch, who conceived the idea of a European "Dark Age". From Cycle
   of Famous Men and Women, Andrea di Bartolo di Bargillac, c.1450

   In historiography, the term Dark Ages or Dark Age most commonly refers
   to the European Early Middle Ages, the period encompassing (roughly)
   476 to 1000.

   This concept of a "Dark Age" was created by the Italian scholar
   Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) and was originally intended as a sweeping
   criticism of the character of Late Latin literature. Later historians
   expanded the term to include not only the lack of Latin literature, but
   a lack of contemporary written history and material cultural
   achievements in general. Popular culture has further expanded on the
   term as a vehicle to depict the Middle Ages as a time of backwardness,
   extending its pejorative use and expanding its scope. The rise of
   archaeology and other specialities in the 20th century has shed much
   light on the period and offered a more nuanced understanding of its
   positive developments. Other terms of periodization have come to the
   fore: Late Antiquity, the Early Middle Ages and the Great Migrations,
   depending on which aspects of culture are being emphasized.

   Most modern historians dismiss the notion that the era was a "Dark Age"
   by pointing out that this idea was based on ignorance of the period
   combined with popular stereotypes: many previous authors would simply
   assume that the era was a dismal time of violence and stagnation and
   use this assumption to prove itself. The term is now widely considered
   to be pejorative.

   In Britain and the United States, the phrase "Dark Ages" has
   occasionally been used by professionals, with severe qualification, as
   a term of periodization. This usage is intended as non-judgmental and
   simply means the relative lack of written record, "silent" as much as
   "dark."

Petrarch and the "Dark Ages"

   "Triumph of Christianity" by Tommaso Laureti (1530-1602), ceiling
   painting in the Sala di Constantino, Vatican Palace. Images like this
   one celebrate the destruction of ancient pagan culture and the victory
   of Christianity. See also iconoclasm
   Enlarge
   "Triumph of Christianity" by Tommaso Laureti ( 1530- 1602), ceiling
   painting in the Sala di Constantino, Vatican Palace. Images like this
   one celebrate the destruction of ancient pagan culture and the victory
   of Christianity. See also iconoclasm

   It is generally accepted that the term was invented by Petrarch in the
   1330s. Writing of those who had come before him, he said that "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 had traditional metaphors of "light versus darkness"
   to describe "good versus evil." Petrarch was the first to co-opt the
   metaphor and give it secular meaning by reversing its application.
   Classical Antiquity, so long considered the "dark age" for its lack of
   Christianity, was now seen by Petrarch as the age of "light" because of
   its cultural achievements, while Petrarch's time, lacking such cultural
   achievements, was now seen as the age of darkness.

   Why did Petrarch call it an age of darkness? An Italian, Petrarch saw
   the Roman Empire and the classical period as expressions of Italian
   greatness.. He spent much of his time traveling through Europe
   rediscovering and republishing the classic Latin and Greek texts. He
   wanted to restore the classical Latin language to its former purity.
   Humanists saw the preceding 900-year period as a time of stagnation.
   They saw history unfolding not along the religious outline of St.
   Augustine's Six Ages of the World, but in cultural (or secular) terms,
   through the progressive developments of Classical ideals, literature
   and art.

   Petrarch wrote that history had had two periods: the Classic period of
   the Romans and Greeks, followed by a time of darkness, in which he saw
   himself as still living. Humanists believed one day the Roman Empire
   would rise again and restore Classic cultural purity. The concept of
   the European Dark Ages thus began as an ideological campaign by
   humanists to promote Classical culture, and was therefore not a neutral
   historical analysis. It was invented to express disapproval of one
   period in time, and the promotion of another.

   By the late 14th and early 15th century, humanists such as Leonardo
   Bruni believed they had attained this new age, and a third, Modern Age
   had begun. The age before their own, which Petrarch had labeled "Dark,"
   had thus become a "Middle" Age between the Classic and the Modern. The
   first use of the term "Middle Age" appears with Flavio Biondo around
   1439.

The Dark Ages concept after the Renaissance

   Historians prior to the 20th century wrote about the Middle Ages with a
   mixture of positive and negative, but mostly negative sentiment.

Reformation

   During the Protestant Reformation of the 16th and 17th century,
   Protestants wrote of it as a period of Catholic corruption. Just as
   Petrarch's writing was not an attack on Christianity per se—in addition
   to his humanism he was deeply occupied with the search for God—neither
   of course was this an attack on Christianity, but the opposite: a drive
   to restore what Protestants saw as a "purer" Christianity. In response
   to these attacks Roman Catholic reformers developed a counter image,
   depicting the age as a period of social and religious harmony, and not
   "dark" at all .

Enlightenment

   During the 17th and 18th century, in the Age of Enlightenment, religion
   was seen as antithetical to reason. Because the Middle Ages was an "Age
   of Faith" when religion reigned, it was seen as a period contrary to
   reason, and thus contrary to the Enlightenment. Immanuel Kant and
   Voltaire were two Enlightenment writers who were vocal in attacking the
   religiously dominated Middle Ages as a period of social decline. Many
   modern negative conceptions of the age come from Enlightenment authors.

   Yet just as Petrarch, seeing himself on the threshold of a "new age,"
   was criticizing the centuries up until his own time, so too were the
   Enlightenment writers criticizing the centuries up until their own.
   These extended well after Petrarch's time, since religious domination
   and conflict were still common into the 17th century and even beyond,
   albeit diminished in scope.

   Consequently an evolution had occurred, in at least three ways.
   Petrarch's original metaphor of "light versus dark" had been expanded
   in time, implicitly at least. Even if the early humanists after him no
   longer saw themselves living in a "dark" age, their times were still
   not "light" enough for 18th century writers who saw themselves as
   living in the real "age of Enlightenment," while the period covered by
   their own condemnation had extended and was focused also on what we now
   call Early Modern times. Additionally Petrarch's metaphor of
   "darkness," which he used mainly to deplore what he saw as a lack of
   secular achievements, was now sharpened to take on a more explicitly
   anti-religious meaning in light of the draconian tactics of the
   Catholic clergy.

   In spite of this, the term "Middle" Ages, used by Biondo and other
   early humanists after Petrarch, was the name in general use before the
   18th century to denote the period up until the Renaissance. The
   earliest recorded use of the English word "medieval" was in 1827. The
   term "Dark Ages" was also in use, but by the 18th century tended to be
   confined to the earlier part of this "medieval" period. Starting and
   ending dates varied: the "Dark Ages" were considered by some to start
   in 410, by others in 476 when there was no longer an emperor in Rome
   itself, and to end about 800 at the time of the Carolingian Renaissance
   under Charlemagne, or to extend through the rest of the first
   millennium up until about the year 1000.

Romantics

   In the early 19th century, the Romantics reversed the negative
   assessment of Enlightenment critics. The word " Gothic" had been a term
   of opprobrium akin to " Vandal," until a few self-confident mid-18th
   century English "goths" like Horace Walpole initiated the Gothic
   Revival in the arts, which for the following Romantic generation began
   to take on an idyllic image of the "Age of Faith." This image, in
   reaction to a world dominated by Enlightenment rationalism in which
   reason trumped emotion, expressed a romantic view of a Golden Age of
   chivalry. The Middle Ages were seen with romantic nostalgia as a period
   of social and environmental harmony and spiritual inspiration, in
   contrast to the excesses of the French Revolution and most of all to
   the environmental and social upheavals and sterile utilitarianism of
   the emerging industrial revolution. The Romantics' view of these
   earlier centuries can still be seen in modern-day fairs and festivals
   celebrating the period with costumes and events (see " Renaissance
   fair").

   Just as Petrarch had turned the meaning of "light versus darkness" on
   its head, so had the Romantics turned the judgment of Enlightenment
   critics on its head. However, the period idealized by the Romantics
   focused largely on what we now call in English the High Middle Ages,
   extending into Early Modern times. In one respect this was a reversal
   of the religious aspect of Petrarch's judgment, since these later
   centuries were those when the universal power and prestige of the
   Church was at its height. To many users of the term, the scope of the
   "Dark Ages" was becoming divorced from this period, now denoting mainly
   the earlier centuries after the fall of Rome.

Modern academic use

   When modern scholarly study of the Middle Ages arose in the 19th
   century, the term "Dark Ages" was at first kept, with all its critical
   overtones. Although it was never the more formal term (universities
   named their departments "medieval history", not "dark age history"), it
   was widely used, including in such classics as Gibbon's The History of
   the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, where it expressed the
   author's contempt for "priest-ridden", superstitious, dark times.
   However the early 20th century saw a radical re-evaluation of the
   Middle Ages, and with it a calling into question of the terminology of
   darkness. A.T. Hatto, translator of many mediaeval works for the
   Penguin Classics series, exemplified this when he spoke ironically of
   "the lively centuries which we call dark". It became clear that serious
   scholars would either have to redefine the term or abandon it.

   When the term "Dark Ages" is used by historians today, it is intended
   to be neutral, namely to express the idea that the events of the period
   often seem "dark" to us, due to the paucity of historical records
   compared with later times. The darkness is ours, not theirs. However,
   since there is no shortage of information on the High and Late Middle
   Ages this required a narrowing of the reference to the Early Middle
   Ages. Late 5th and 6th century Britain for instance, at the height of
   the Saxon invasions, might well be numbered among "the darkest of the
   Dark Ages," with the equivalent of a near-total news blackout, in terms
   of historical records, compared with either the Roman era before or the
   centuries that followed. Further east, the same was true in the
   formerly Roman province of Dacia, where history after the Roman
   withdrawal went unrecorded for centuries as Slavs, Avars, Bulgars and
   others struggled for supremacy in the Danube basin, and events there
   are still disputed. However, at this time the Byzantine Empire and the
   Abbasid Caliphate experienced Ages that were Golden rather than Dark;
   consequently, this usage of the term must also differentiate
   geographically. Ironically, while Petrarch's concept of a "Dark Age"
   corresponded to a mostly "Christian" period following pagan Rome, the
   neutral use of the term today applies mainly to those cultures least
   Christianized, and thus most sparsely covered by the Church's
   historians.

   However, from the mid-20th century onwards an increasing number of
   scholars began to critique even this non-judgmental use of the term.
   There are two main criticisms. Firstly, it is questionable whether it
   is possible to use the term "dark ages" effectively in a neutral way;
   scholars may intend it that way, but this does not mean that ordinary
   readers will understand it so. Secondly, the explosion of new knowledge
   and insight into the history and culture of the Early Middle Ages which
   20th-century scholarship has achieved means that these centuries are no
   longer dark even in the sense of "unknown to us". Consequently, many
   academic writers prefer not to use the phrase at all.

Modern popular use

   In modern times, the term "Dark Ages" is still used in popular culture.
   Petrarch's ideological campaign to paint the Middle Ages in a negative
   light worked so well that "Dark Ages" is still in popular use nearly
   700 years later. The humanists' goal of reviving and revering the
   classics of antiquity was institutionalized in the newly forming
   Universities at the time, and the schools over the centuries have
   remained true to their humanist roots. Students of education systems
   today are familiar with the canon of Greek authors, but few are ever
   exposed to the great thinkers of the Middle Ages such as Peter Abelard
   or Sigerus of Brabant. While the classics programs remain strong,
   students of the Middle Ages are not nearly as common: for example the
   first medieval historian in the United States, Charles Haskins, was not
   recognized until the early 20th century, and the number of students of
   the Middle Ages remains to this day very small compared to the
   classics. Film and novels often use the term Dark Age with its implied
   meaning of a time less civilized than our own. The movie Monty Python
   and the Holy Grail humorously portrays knights and chivalry, following
   the tradition begun with Don Quixote.

   Historians today consider the negative connotations of the word "dark"
   in "Dark Ages" negates its usefulness as a description of history. Yet
   Petrarch's concept of it, like that of other early humanists after him,
   as a discrete period distinct from our "Modern" age, has endured, and
   the term still finds use, through various definitions, both in popular
   culture and academic discourse.

Quotes

     * "What else, then, is all history, but the praise of Rome?"—Petrarch
     * "Each famous author of antiquity whom I recover places a new
       offence and another cause of dishonour to the charge of earlier
       generations, who, not satisfied with their own disgraceful
       barrenness, permitted the fruit of other minds, and the writings
       that their ancestors had produced by toil and application, to
       perish through insufferable neglect. Although they had nothing of
       their own to hand down to those who were to come after, they robbed
       posterity of its ancestral heritage."—Petrarch
     * "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. When the darkness has been dispersed, our
       descendants can come again in the former pure radiance."—Petrarch
     * "The Middle Ages is an unfortunate term. It was not invented until
       the age was long past. The dwellers in the Middle Ages would not
       have recognized it. They did not know that they were living in the
       middle; they thought, quite rightly, that they were time's latest
       achievement."— Morris Bishop, The Middle Ages (1968)
     * ". . . if it was dark, it was the darkness of the womb." — Lynn
       White

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