Dark Ages

:This article is about the term "Dark age(s)" as a characterisation of the (Early) Middle Ages in Europe. For other uses of the phrase, see Dark Ages (disambiguation).

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 pejorative 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.

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When the term "Dark Ages" is used by historians today, it is intended to be non-pejoritive, 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, a period roughly 300-1000 AD. 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 compared with either the Roman era before or with the centuries following. 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.

Related Topics:
High - Late Middle Ages - Early Middle Ages - 6th century - Saxon - Dacia - Slavs - Avars - Bulgars

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Meanwhile, the Byzantine Empire and the Abbasid Caliphate experienced Ages that were Golden rather than Dark. Consequently, while usage of these terms varies, including from one place to another (see below), one trend has been for the two terms, Dark Ages and Middle Ages, that were once synonymous in the minds of early humanists to be differentiated and applied to two distinct (if consecutive) periods. Ironically, while Petrarch's concept of a "Dark Age" corresponded to a mostly "Christian" period following pagan Rome, what most users of the term label the "Dark Ages" today are those least Christianized, when events in parts (though not all) of Europe were dominated by the activities of pagan tribes.

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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.

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Depending on country of origin, historians will call Petrarch's "Dark Age" different names. For example in English, Russian and Icelandic speaking countries it is called the Middle Ages (plural), meaning there are sub-groups such as the Early Middle Ages, High Middle Ages and Late Middle Ages. By contrast, in most major European languages—French, German, Spanish, Italian—where a large majority of research of the period originates, it is spoken of in the singular, Middle Age, and not broken into subgroups. This creates confusion on what the time line of the period is, so it is often safe to assume, without other context, it means the entire period from the fall of Rome in 410 through to the start of the Italian Renaissance in the 14th Century. In a three-period view of history (Antiquity, Middle, Modern) the period would end in 1500.

Related Topics:
Early Middle Ages - High Middle Ages - Late Middle Ages - 410 - 14th Century - 1500

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