Why Were They Called the “Dark Ages”?
The term “Dark Ages” conjures images of a bleak, backward world, a period of human history marked by ignorance, barbarity, and intellectual stagnation. The term is typically used to refer to the era spanning roughly from the fifth to 10th centuries, but at times has referred to the entire Middle Ages, from the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 CE all the way to the beginning of Europe’s Renaissance in the 15th century.
But were these centuries really so dark? Was the period — sandwiched between the advanced societies of classical antiquity and the cultural rebirth of the Renaissance — truly one of stark cultural regression? The reality of the “Dark Ages” is far more nuanced and complex than this pejorative label would suggest, and the term perhaps reveals more about the perspectives of later historians than the actual lived experiences of medieval people.
Who Called Them the “Dark Ages”?
The concept of the “Dark Ages,” if not the term itself, is associated with one name more than any other: Francis Petrarch, a 14th-century Italian scholar, poet, and humanist who was regarded as the greatest scholar of his time. He saw classical antiquity as an age of light due to its cultural achievements, while what followed — including the time in which he lived — was an age of darkness. “This sleep of forgetfulness will not last for ever,” he wrote. “When the darkness has been dispersed, our descendants can come again in the former pure radiance.”
Petrarch was so influential in his time that the humanist attitudes of 15th-century Italy — attitudes that led directly to the Renaissance — would not have been possible without him. It’s no surprise, then, that his concept of a long dark age took hold in both popular and academic circles, and remained a potent and widely accepted idea for centuries to come.
It’s worth noting that historians have also used the term “Dark Ages” to refer to something more specific and less pejorative. In his work Annales Ecclesiastici, the Italian cardinal Caesar Baronius (1538-1607) coined the term “Dark Ages,” albeit in its Latin form, saeculum obscurum. But Baronius was using the term to refer specifically to the scarcity of written documents around the 10th and 11th centuries relative to earlier periods.
This was not a moral judgment, but a statement of fact: There were indeed fewer written records from this period. The Romans were excellent record keepers, so when the empire fell there was a notable decline in historical texts and documents for several hundred years afterward. The Early Middle Ages have been seen by historians as “dark” simply because it’s difficult to know what happened.
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The Not-So-Dark Ages
Contrary to popular belief, the so-called “Dark Ages” were not a time of complete intellectual stagnation. In Rome’s absence, and with Europe lacking a large kingdom or other political structure as a centralizing force, the Christian church grew to fill the void. Monasteries became crucial centers of learning and literacy, and monks became patrons of the arts. Universities developed, and learning continued apace. In the Arab world, meanwhile, this period coincided with the Golden Age of Islam — around the eighth to 13th centuries — a time of significant scientific, economic, and cultural progress.
While later historians wrote of the “Dark Ages” as a time of intellectual and social decline in Europe, in reality the period saw many advancements. Innovations such as crop-rotation, the heavy plough, and the horse-collar changed agriculture forever, while power generation was revolutionized with the implementation of water and windmills. Gothic architecture emerged, musical notation was refined, and European battlefields saw the first use of cannons and heavily armored cavalry. Groundbreaking advances in mathematics, astronomy, and medicine were also made during these centuries.
New Terms for This Era
Most modern historians now reject the pejorative “Dark Ages” label, although it continues to be used in popular culture. Typically, the term “Early Middle Ages” is now used to describe the era, or, in a wider sense, the “medieval era.” Another term, “Migration Period,” is sometimes used to refer to the early medieval period of Western European history, when so-called “barbarian” peoples — including the Huns, Goths, Vandals, Bulgars, Alani, Suebi, and Franks — moved into the former Western Roman Empire.
Archaeological evidence continues to reveal a much more complex picture of early medieval life — one of innovation, cultural richness, and significant social development — further consigning the term “Dark Ages” to the pages of academic history. While the period certainly had its challenges, it was far from the uniformly bleak and intellectually barren time that historians once portrayed. It was, in fact, a crucial transitional era that bridged classical antiquity and the Renaissance, laying the groundwork for developments that shaped the future.
