The “Dark Ages” is one of the best-known labels applied to medieval Europe, yet most historians avoid using it today. So why did the term become so popular, and what did it originally mean?
History is full of people describing their own era as a ‘Dark Age’ or an ‘Age of Light’. It is an easy metaphor for explaining whether times are perceived as good or bad. The 14th-century Italian poet Petrarch used this very comparison. A great admirer of the ancient Romans and Greeks, he contrasted their achievements with his own age and found the present wanting. In one of his works he writes:
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 for ever. When the darkness has been dispersed, our descendants can come again in the former pure radiance.
How Renaissance thinkers spread the idea
Petrarch’s ideas were taken up by other Italian scholars – by the late 14th and 15th centuries they were having an intellectual and artistic flowering, and began seeing themselves as following in the footsteps of the ancients. Janet Nelson explains that, at least in their minds, they were “confidently believing theirs was a time of reborn classical culture, they rescued Greek from near-oblivion, removed errors from Latin, cleared fog from philosophy, crassness from theology, crudeness from art.”
These writers began to see history as divided into three phases – there was the Classical Age, a time of Greek wisdom, Roman power, and when Jesus Christ walked in this world; and their own time, a Renaissance when things were getting better. Meanwhile, there were all those centuries in between – from the fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century to just before their own time. Eventually this period acquired the name “Middle Ages” (or Medium Aevum in Latin). The Italian writers viewed it as an era when everything was in decline, when the great buildings of Rome like the Colosseum were slowly crumbling and when no one was producing great works of literature.
The idea of the ‘Middle Ages’ would spread to other historians around Europe. However, the term ‘Dark Ages’ became particularly common in English-language writing. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, writers such as Edward Gibbon referred to this era as “the darkness of the middle ages” and portrayed it as a time of uncultured barbarians, evil tyrants and superstitious peasants. By the nineteenth century, “Dark Ages” and “Middle Ages” had largely become synonymous.
Why historians rarely use “Dark Ages” today
Since then, historians have developed a much more positive view of the medieval period and its achievements, and the label “Dark Ages” has fallen out of favour in academic writing.
Some English historians will still say if there is any kind of ‘Dark Ages’ in medieval history, it is during the earliest part of the Middle Ages, right after the fall of Roman power in Britain around the fifth and sixth centuries. This is mostly because it is a period that has few surviving written sources, so historians have largely been left in the dark about what happened at that time.
While medievalists might roll their eyes when they hear the phrase “Dark Ages”, it is likely to remain part of popular culture for years to come. Still, we can be thankful that other labels once applied to the medieval period—including the Barbarous Ages, the Obscure Ages, the Leaden Ages, the Monkish Ages and the Muddy Ages—never caught on.
The “Dark Ages” is one of the best-known labels applied to medieval Europe, yet most historians avoid using it today. So why did the term become so popular, and what did it originally mean?
History is full of people describing their own era as a ‘Dark Age’ or an ‘Age of Light’. It is an easy metaphor for explaining whether times are perceived as good or bad. The 14th-century Italian poet Petrarch used this very comparison. A great admirer of the ancient Romans and Greeks, he contrasted their achievements with his own age and found the present wanting. In one of his works he writes:
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 for ever. When the darkness has been dispersed, our descendants can come again in the former pure radiance.
How Renaissance thinkers spread the idea
Petrarch’s ideas were taken up by other Italian scholars – by the late 14th and 15th centuries they were having an intellectual and artistic flowering, and began seeing themselves as following in the footsteps of the ancients. Janet Nelson explains that, at least in their minds, they were “confidently believing theirs was a time of reborn classical culture, they rescued Greek from near-oblivion, removed errors from Latin, cleared fog from philosophy, crassness from theology, crudeness from art.”
These writers began to see history as divided into three phases – there was the Classical Age, a time of Greek wisdom, Roman power, and when Jesus Christ walked in this world; and their own time, a Renaissance when things were getting better. Meanwhile, there were all those centuries in between – from the fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century to just before their own time. Eventually this period acquired the name “Middle Ages” (or Medium Aevum in Latin). The Italian writers viewed it as an era when everything was in decline, when the great buildings of Rome like the Colosseum were slowly crumbling and when no one was producing great works of literature.
The idea of the ‘Middle Ages’ would spread to other historians around Europe. However, the term ‘Dark Ages’ became particularly common in English-language writing. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, writers such as Edward Gibbon referred to this era as “the darkness of the middle ages” and portrayed it as a time of uncultured barbarians, evil tyrants and superstitious peasants. By the nineteenth century, “Dark Ages” and “Middle Ages” had largely become synonymous.
Why historians rarely use “Dark Ages” today
Since then, historians have developed a much more positive view of the medieval period and its achievements, and the label “Dark Ages” has fallen out of favour in academic writing.
Some English historians will still say if there is any kind of ‘Dark Ages’ in medieval history, it is during the earliest part of the Middle Ages, right after the fall of Roman power in Britain around the fifth and sixth centuries. This is mostly because it is a period that has few surviving written sources, so historians have largely been left in the dark about what happened at that time.
While medievalists might roll their eyes when they hear the phrase “Dark Ages”, it is likely to remain part of popular culture for years to come. Still, we can be thankful that other labels once applied to the medieval period—including the Barbarous Ages, the Obscure Ages, the Leaden Ages, the Monkish Ages and the Muddy Ages—never caught on.
Further Readings:
Theodor Ernst Mommsen, ‘Petrarch’s Conception of the ‘‘Dark Ages’’’, Speculum Vol. 17 (1942)
Janet L. Nelson, ‘The Dark Ages,’ History Workshop Journal, Vol. 63:1 (2007)
Top Image: BNF MS Français 938 fol. 93v
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