I recently heard a politician on TV refer to the “Dark Ages.” I’ve often heard of the Dark Ages, but I guess I never really knew when they were, or how long they lasted, or really, what made them “dark.”
Yep,, you guessed it — a topic for some of my extensive research.
Not surprisingly, not even the experts agree on “when,” or even “what” about the “Dark Ages.”
To get right to the point, the Dark Ages started around the late 5th century, when Rome fell and ended sometime between the 8th and 11th centuries, when the Middle Ages kind of semi-officially started.
There are two main reasons that period is called the Dark Ages:
1. Less is known about this time than other eras, because fewer books and writings survived, so we’re in the dark about the age.
2. That era always seemed barbaric and chaotic to historians. Most of the folks living then were illiterate and half-starved. The phrase “Dark Ages” describes the way people were living — in the dark.
The first person to coin the term “Dark Ages” was Francesco Petrarch, an Italian scholar of the 14th century — he called it the Dark Ages because he was disturbed at the lack of good literature at that time.
To put things in perspective, remember that Rome had ruled most of Europe for about 800 years. When it collapsed, so did all the organizations that ruled Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa in its name. With no more administrators, or armies, to keep order, everything just came apart. Food couldn’t be distributed and most money was pretty much worthless. Barbarian invaders saw easy pickings and moved in. Now if barbarians weren’t bad enough, a plague started in Constantinople, spread throughout Europe and killed half the population. People moved away from the cities, abandoning the niceties like roads, baths, sewage systems and other municipal services.
They spent most of their time scrambling for food, and didn’t have time for learning or art or any of the finer things in life.
Most scholars today prefer “Early Middle Ages” to describe the period, because calling such a big chunk of time “dark” implies that nothing worthwhile was going on. That’s not true. Christianity was spreading, monasteries and churches were being built, feudalism was forming, and of course various invasions, plagues and famines occurred.
It will take time if “Dark Ages” ever falls out of use even though it’s probably an outdated and derogatory term for a period of time when art, culture and literature did flourish across Europe.
I guess I should be more optimistic, but maybe in time the so-called Dark Ages will be thought of as including our own.
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