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The "Dark Ages" is a concept invented in the early 14th Century by the poet Petrarch who used it to describe the preceding 900 years in Europe, beginning with the fall of the western Roman Empire in 410 through to the renewal embodied in the Renaissance. Before the conceptual term was invented, contemporaries did not see themselves as part of a Dark Age, and to understand why the period is called "Dark", with its negative connotations, it is helpful to know when, how and why the term was invented, how the term has been variously used in the 700 years since its creation.
Note: For other labels of the Dark Ages see also Late Antiquity, Early Middle Ages, Great Migrations, Middle Ages and the "Other labels for the Dark Ages" section below. For a general discussion of attempts to categorize or divide historical time into discrete named blocks, see Periodization.
Origin and history of Dark Ages concept
In order to understand the origin of the concept of the Dark Ages it is helpful to understand how the people of the time saw their own place in history. Most scholars of Late Antiquity followed St. Augustine (5th Century) who believed history had 6 stages and that they were living in the sixth and final phase of history in which the end of earthly man was coming after Christ returned to earth, and that the events of Revelation and the "End of Days" could happen at any time. This idea was prevalent for nearly 900 years.
Origin of the Dark Ages concept
How did the concept of the "Dark Ages" come about and why? It is generally accepted that the term was invented by the 14th Century Italian Renaissance humanist Petrarch in the 1330s. Petrarch, who spent much of his time traveling through Europe rediscovering and re-publishing the classic Latin and Greek texts, desired to restore the classic Latin language, art and culture to the original Roman ways and any changes that had happened since the fall of Rome in 410 was not worth studying. Humanists saw the 900 year period of Classics stagnation as the "Age of Darkness". Humanists saw history not on the religious terms of St. Augustine, but along social ones, through the progressive developments of Classical culture, literature and art. Petrarch wrote history has two periods: the Classic period of the Romans and Greeks, and an "Age of Darkness". Humanists believed one day the Roman Empire would rise again and restore the Classic culture purity. Later in the late 14th and early 15th Century humanists believed they had achieved a new age. A 3rd Modern Age had started and a "Middle Age" logically created. The first use of the term "Middle Age" appears with Flavio Biando in 1410.
"Each famous author of antiquity whom I recover places a new offence and another cause of dishonor 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
History of the Dark Ages concept
Historians since the humanists have viewed the Dark Ages or Middle Ages mostly with a negative view.
During the Protestant Reformation of the 16th and 17th Century, Protestants wrote about it as a period of Catholic corruption. In response to these attacks Catholic reformers developed a counterimage, depicting it as a period of social and religious harmony, and not "dark" at all.
During the 17th and 18th Century, in the age of Enlightenment, religion was seen as against reason, which by definition was therefore against 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 "Dark Ages" come from the Enlightenment authors.
In the early 19th Century the Romantics reversed this negative trend and created an idyllic image of the period being full of social and environmental harmony living close to the earth. This image was in reaction to a world dominated by Enlightenment rationalism in which reason trumped emotion, and the environmental destruction and pollution of the emerging Industrial Revolution created a romantic desire for a more natural time. The Romantic view of the Dark Ages can still be seen in modern day fairs and festivals that celebrate the period with costumes and events.
After the Romantics there have been advancements in archaeology and a flowering of historial research and interest, starting in the later half of the 19th century, which have made available additional material not available to previous scholars.
Other labels for the Dark Ages
Historians today use the terms "Late Antiquity" and "Early Middle Ages" or "Great Migrations" specifically, or Middle Ages generally, to characterize this passage in European history. The negative connotations of the word "dark" in Dark Ages have made it a less popular working term among modern professional historians. In the English-speaking world, the Sutton Hoo treasure of ca 625, which was uncovered in 1939, as well as advancements by medieval scholars such as Charles Haskins, made the darkness of a "Dark Ages" seem inappropriate. After the Second World War, "Dark Ages" faded from professional discourse in English.
There are no internationally accepted starting or ending points for the Dark Ages, though in most English speaking countries historians consider the roughly half-millennium period from the Visigoth sack of Rome (410CE) to the year 1000CE as commonly accepted. Some consider Charlemagne in 800 to represent the end of the Dark Ages, while others take it up to the start of the Modern Age in 1500. Historically, the concept as created by Petrarch covers the entire Middle Age period.
Depending on country of origin, historians will call the Dark Ages different things. For example in English, Russian and Icelandic speaking countries it is called the Middle Ages (plural), meaning there are sub-groups such as the Late Middle Ages, High Middle Ages and Early 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 sub-groups. This creates confusion on what the timeline 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 3-period view of history (Antiquity, Middle, Modern) the period would end in 1500.
Other Dark Ages
In the Ancient Near East there are consistent gaps in structures, writing or works of art at many urban sites between 1200 and 850 BCE, the "Dark Ages" of the Ancient Near East.
The term "Dark Ages" is also used for the period in the history of Ancient Greece between the 11th and 8th century BC from which no records, and only scant archaeological evidence, survive.
In cosmology's Big Bang theory, the term dark ages refers to periods of comparatively little starlight emission, during the early formation of the universe. This would have occurred after decoupling and before the first burst of star formation.
fr:Siècles obscurs
ja:暗黒時代
zh:黑暗时代
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