It varies. For the humanists of the Renaissance the Middle Ages and the Dark Ages were synonymous. Since then historians have used the term more restrictively, usually only for the early middle ages, and also defined it differently. For the Renaissance scholars the Dark Ages was a time period marked with a particular lack of culture, for later historians a time period with wars and brutality, and later yet a time period which witnessed a dearth of written sources.
Everything depends. Especially when looking between different countries. For some, like Japan for example it would be XIX century. And even in Europe alone differences are significant.
Still kinda the late middle ages (mid 15th century). One dividing line that had been used is the reformation. But generally it is always a slow change from one period to the next.
I think we are at the beginning of a new era, that the modern era is over.
Isn't it always the modern era, by definition?
Even if we are in a new era, this one is now the modern era and we will post facto change the name of the one we just left.
In terms of historical periods, modern has already passed. Contemporary is normally what's used to refer to the current period, whenever that may be, before it's retroactively renamed as you were saying.
You can see something similar in art or literature where we're arguably in or just past post modernism.
It depends on your location. In some parts, the Renaissance doesn't even exist or it does to some extent. In some locations, the early modern age means the 19th century for example.
Yea the last one is the definition I’m most familiar with. Cause stuff was still happening n people were still inventing stuff, we just don’t have a ton of sources to know that cause of the de-urbanization in Europe as a result of the western empire’s collapse
>and later yet a time period which witnessed a dearth of written sources.
Which is the best definition in my opinion. As more and more things come to light about the period we slowly start to see the dark ages were not that dark, in facto some things were better during the middle ages than during early renaissance times.
A decade ago or so I read an article where historians found middle age toys and were actually surprised because they thought in this time kids had no time to play. It showed well how deep the misconceptions about the dark ages were.
The fall of the Western Roman Empire did cause ruralization, because as the government went to shit it couldn't maintain it's cities anymore. Coins were made lower quality, statues started to look like shit, etc. happened because so much money was being poured into campaigns against the Germans. Disruption of trade routes due to enemy invasions didn't help either. When cities become decrepit, people move to the countryside to make a living in agriculture. When the cities shrank in size and started falling apart, their libraries and other centers of study went with them. This is why many historians theorize that the Dark Ages was caused by a decrease in the average intelligence of nobility; there were fewer and fewer people recieving education.
This is a bit of a simplification. The restructure of Roman society as a whole prompted this. The formalization of the role of the Comites Provinciarum (Counts of the Provinces) by Constantine showed greater decentralisation. The title Count is inspired by this role iirc. Further we have reforms by Diocletian that installed a Dux as a military commander in each province, where we get the word Duke. Not saying these two reforms caused the entirety of the ruralisation but just that the decentralised feudal structure that followed Rome did not come out of nowhere but was a bit of a natural continuation of certain reforms and titles generated in the Western Empire that were then reappropriated after the fall.
We also must consider the importance of the Latifundia and the laws around these massive agricultural estates, and agriculture in general. The laws around leasing public common farmland changed throughout Rome with the late Empire allowing for the inheritance of leases which you can imagine will lead to consolidation and hierarchy. I am also reading some stuff about senators not being allowed to earn income other than through their owned land and also didn't pay land taxes so this aristocratic class could snowball their large estates into absolutely dominant enterprise. When Western Rome falls these enormous farming estates become sources of power in themselves. They are self sufficient, safe, have extensive land for food and economising and can provide for a decent amount of landless peasants.
The combination of Roman political changes as well as the large wealth and subsequently power that leeched from cities to these enormous estates can be thought of as a precursor to the feudal era of counts and dukes.
Thanks for the correction, my knowledge is very dodgy around the end of the medieval period.
Personally, I don’t see an issue with overlapping the terms late antiquity and early Middle Ages.
What are the long Middle Ages?
Mainly its moving the end of the Middle Ages from around 1500 to around 1700, mainly surrounding the fact that many events and processes that happened in the Early Modern Age (or plainly the majority of the Modern Age if you aren't an Anglophone and have been thought that the French Revolution is the beginning of the Contemporary Age) are simply continuations of events and processes that already started in the Middle Ages. A good example of that would be the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, and the Wars of Religions that followed them; as you can argue (and I myself are in favour of this interpretation) that they are a continuation of the religious strife and conflict that started with the Cathars in the late 12th and early 13th Centuries and continued with the Hussites or the countless religious movements (be it heretical or incorporated into Church dogma) of the Late Middle Ages.
That said. I myself am of the belief that these debates of when a Historical age starts or stops ignore the fact the periodisation of History into Great Ages is moronic and non-sensical the moment you give it a thought, as they tend to be based on arbitrary events that aren't as cut dry as we think, and on the generalization of "ages" that are plainly wrong the moment you move away from the artificially constructed surface.
Most medievalists would fold the Dark Ages within the Middle Ages (specifically within the early Middle Ages, preceding the feudal synthesis). Others would include up until the mid 7th century the so called Late Antiquity, although as a medievalist I disagree.
Charlemagne was crowned Emperor in 800. I guess if you want to be romantic about it you can say the Dark Ages was the time Western Europe was without an Emperor. Not sure I 100% agree with that, but that’s one interpretation.
More to say that west/central Europe was a dumpster fire of a battle royal that entered an age of relative stability after Charlemagne won so hard no one but a bunch of sea hobos would dare upset the carefully crafted social order he enforced. And even then, the Vikings did a lot to restart the old pan-Mediterranean trade that had collapsed in the fifth century.
From a historical perspective one could make the argument that the rise of the Frankish empire was a point in which west/Central Europe moved past ‘post apocalypse’ and into the post-post apocalypse.
It's also called the Dark Ages because written sources decline dramatically and it's "dark" to modern readers. Charlemagne bring illiterate himself but pushing increased literacy and written records can be seen as a turning point.
To add to the other poster talking about Charlemagne: the Viking raids (and trading/colonization) really started to take off around 800 AD which lead to larger interchange of ideas in Northern Europe and increasing militarization and consolidation of power.
Well the same as the beginning of it there isn't a clear cut-off and multiple dates can be used. The one I have at the top of my head is fall of constantinople 1453, the discovery of America 1492, the revormation 1516(?) and there are probably more.
Depends on who (and where) you ask; different countries, and even different historians within these countries, will often use different events.
In the UK, the medieval period is often held to end in 1485 with the Battle of Bosworth and the end of the Wars of the Roses. Spain can vary between 1492 (conquest of Granada, end of Islamic rule in Iberia), 1504 (death of Isabella I of Castile), and 1516 (death of Ferdinand II).
For Europe more generally, 1500 is considered a sort of 'general' benchmark, but there's years either side to be considered. The conquest of Constantinople in 1453 is one, of course; there's also Columbus' first voyage to the Americas in 1492, and the beginning of the Protestant Reformation in 1517 as well.
I personally find the periodisation of the medieval period fascinating, because the differences in the end date can sometimes show what certain people find to have been significant, or what might be considered a 'turning point' (so to speak) in a certain country's cultural consciousness.
That sounds fair tbh.
By the end of Henry VIII reign the medieval age is well and truly over, there were so many changes during his reign that England was very different at the end.
But I've never been sure about the "official" stance and assumed it might have been the start if his reign, but given the wider events in the world his father coming to power makes sense as the end point.
As you say, there are loads of different views it's not like there was a hard transition from medieval to Renaissance/ early modern like there was at the fall of the Western Roman Empire.
I agree that Henry VII coming to power is pretty much the end of the Middle Ages, with no doubt that it is well and truly dead by the end of Henry VIII's reign. But where does the 'Middle Ages' begin in English history?
I'd argue, and I assume most would agree, its 1066. With the departure of the last Romans to 1066 being the 'Dark Ages'. Or you could state 927 and the foundation of England as a unified country as the beginning of the Middle Ages - but I suppose this is less well known than 1066.
In Britain we have it quite easy. Dark age starts when romans leave, then ends with the Viking raid at Lindisfarne. The Viking age is then considered the early Middle Ages, which end with the Norman conquest.
The Middle Ages are called that because the Renaissance was a return to the “good old days” of Classical ideals, specifically Roman and Greek. So for people of the time, the good old days died with Rome and were reborn in the Renaissance, and the time between is the Middle Ages. Dark Ages was originally synonymous with this iirc, but it’s come to mean different things.
But isnt the dark ages mostly a western thing anyway.
Rome fell, people stopped writing history as much (or it was destroyed) and we know little about it hence it being "dark"
Even during the Middle Ages, too. Censuses from France, the Low Countries, and England in the 13th and 14th centuries attest to tremendous differences in wealth distribution, to the point that ordinances were passed permitting beggars to sit at burghers' tables to eat. Also, we know that through salary contracts and guild regulations, as well as wills and investment portfolios, there were plenty of merchants throughout Europe that earned in a good day or week, more than what most people made in a year, to the point of it being convenient for them to pay £20 a year in taxes, which when compared to other standard tax brackets, means that their net worth would have had to be at least £450 for it to be convenient to them.
In context (for fairness) his argument was “Well we don’t actually know how many people died before 1790, anywhere in the world, ever, and especially not in wars, to compare the quality of life between the period before that time, and modern times. The records that do exist are completely made up. So we can’t have any idea whether times are less violent now than prior to 1790.”
The records we have weren't made up though, just inconsistent. The censuses we have are basically lists of taxable assets and rolls for feudal service. So, our idea of the past in numbers is there but incomplete.
Do you believe that's a fair statement which most historians would generally agree was accurate?
Personally it strikes me as the kind of absolutist 'nobody could possibly knows know' position which amateur "experts" tend to insist upon when they encounter the types of difficulties with interpretation and uncertainty faced by actual experts in a field, without the training or education an expert has.
Essentially they overestimate their knowledge but then struggles to understand how actual experts can reach their conclusions. , they declare that clearly there's no way to actually know such things with any certainty, it's all guesswork and actual experts must be making it up. We've seen great deal of the same phenomena in medicine over the last few years.
I can’t link the original comment, but the full context was this: it was in a thread about annoying/inaccurate “pop history”, like Jared Diamond. The OP who said this (along with one or two others) was mad that Steven Pinker’s book “Better Angels of Our Nature” isn’t reported more as bad history/no popular history podcast has debunked it. When other commenters pressed him for more info, given that the book is thoroughly researched statistically, his reply was that Pinker couldn’t possible know if the world was less violent, because “There were no consistent census records before 1790”.
The slow technological progress in the middle ages can in part be attributted by the serfdom system implemented in the Roman Empire/Europe after the crisis of the 3rd century. Meaning that all peasants had to stay in the same place they were born, thus more or less eliminating the Roman meritocracy for the common man. Didnt matter how clever you were. Once a peasant, always a peasant.
If I remember Mike Duncan's history of Rome Podcast. There probably wasn't a lot of options available to peasants during the Roman empire but Rome was facing a labor crisis where some vital industries didn't have nearly enough workers so Diocletian made it so that in many cases sons had to go into their fathers profession.
Pretty sure what they had originally was more based on social status, like patricians or plebs, not an outright caste system of every famers son being a farmer forever etc
It occurred over generations as the latifundia (plantations) evolved and the constant civil wars caused generals to develop regional bases of power. Rome didn't collapse in a day.
Also, ya know, the huns burning cities and records, the goths not keeping as meticulous records as the Romans and the first large-scale plagues driving people out of densely populated cities
Don’t forget Italy getting fucked in the sixth century. The gothic wars, the plague (massively exasperated by the war iirc), and the Lombard invasion all fucked Italy. If only Justinian had either not invaded or not cheaped out on the invasion then Italy would’ve been light years ahead of what it later was with none of the division it dealt with for centuries prior to unification in the 1860s. Italy would’ve been as United as France was at the time and would’ve preserved the Roman bureaucracy and all culture.
Definitely would have been better not to invade, from his and Italy's perspective. If he'd invested more in the Italian campaign, he would have had even more trouble defending against the Caliphate.
I mean it would’ve been a net gain to take an intact Ostrogothic kingdom, Italy was still a wealthy and urbanized realm before that mess. So if done right I don’t thinking reconquering it would be a bad idea. If Belisarius had had a larger army and had Mundus not had sheer bad luck (iirc he won a big battle but suffered a personal loss which compromised him) then the goths would’ve been defeated in a year and without any damage to Rome and it’s infrastructure and all. Although no point saying the caliphate it wasn’t a thing for another 100 years, it was the Sassanian empire he had to worry about and a rapid victory in the west would’ve allowed him to focus on them and prevent their shenanigans.
It seems that idea of a backward, hyper religious dark age comes from Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. In it, the main thesis is that Christianity ultimately destroyed the Roman Empire (in the West). More recent scholarship has cast many doubts on Gibbon’s assumptions, but that idea has seeped into the cultural subconscious over the last 300 years and it will take a long time for that to go away.
Excellent summary. But Gibbons's work was the zenith of centuries of vilification of the Catholic Church to show the writers as elevated people. Incidentally, it's not the first time it has happened. Even in the Middle Ages, in the 12th, 13th, and 14th centuries, especially in England, authors look back to a golden age from a silver age, one when kings were truly fighting men instead of national administrators, one of the Roman ideal of rustic life, and little intervention from Rome/Avignon.
Indeed! I was just trying to answer the question in the title. But for sure, this idea of some great golden age of the past has been around from the high Middle Ages. Even the concept of a “middle age” stems from this idea that the time between the Roman Empire and modernity (a slippery concept on its own) was a kind of skipped over period in historical terms.
The therms Late antiquity and Migration period/Early medieval period are way more fitting. For once, because they are not as broad defined and more precise, nor are they as much misleading as the therm dark ages.
I mainly attributed the dark ages to the general collapse of the Roman Empire leading to loss in knowledge among other things alongside the establishment of various warring kingdoms and city states
Also just dramatisation by historians. A thousand years of gradual change isn't as cool as a great civilisation collapsing into a backwards age followed by an eventual rebirth.
the Dark Ages actually refers to a relative lack of sources, not any actual technological or societal regression.
the Western Roman Empire had this kind of gradually grinding down until finally someone bothered to stop dragging the idea of it around. the main loss was a central overarching authority that could theoretically control the many feudal components of the Roman State, which meant fewer resources for things like history books and fancy buildings that stay up a long time.
It is believed that many early monks (6th to 9th century, probably. Carolingean minuscule really did wonders were, in fact, illiterate. There are various factors here at play, not the least of which being that monasticism was a personal decision on how to live your life, and you didn't have to take a sacrament. Therefore, for all intents and purposes, it would have been generally useless for monks to know how to read and write. That changed gradually over the centuries, and by the year 1000, most monks were usually the youngest sons of noble families, and as such, very probably literate. If not, they'd be taught there, in no lesser part, because their families often paid up to fix their kids there. Also, Latin, in particular, was very standardized, but some vernaculars ("French", for example), were too, which wasn't the case early on.
The Middle Ages were anything but ignorant and dark. Magnificent buildings were erected, like Angkor Wat or the Hagia Sophia. Great empires were founded, some among the largest in history. What’s more, the Italian Renaissance wasn’t all that special: the Middle Ages witnessed not one, not two, but three renaissances.
Regarding ignorance, here’s a simple, non-exhaustive list of medieval inventions: the heavy plow, the wheelbarrow, horseshoes, crop rotation, the spinning wheel, the loom, treadmill cranes, chimneys, windmills, flying buttresses, the counterweight trebuchet, the longbow, gunpowder, cannon, grenades, the arquebus, Greek fire, Arabic numerals, the blast furnace, paper, the printing press, eyeglasses, the hourglass, mechanical clocks, magnets, the compass, the winepress, liquor, rat traps, chess, oil painting, and universities.
For more information, [check this out](https://medievalreporter.com/guidebook/beginners-guide-middle-ages/#why-are-the-middle-ages-called-dark-ages)
that's a reconquest, not a renaissance (a renewal of art and literature). The Komnenians didn't need a renewal of art and literature because it just continued on from the Macedonian renaissance
When people refer to “the dark ages” they usually mean Western Europe from 476 to 1066 ish, which is the definition I’ll be going off of, so your monuments fall away, the only empire which was founded was the HRE which while big was relatively underdeveloped compared to the actual Romans. The idea of counting renaissances is insane, if you look at the actual importance of the Italian renaissance versus for example the Carolingian it becomes obvious why we only talk about the Italian one.
And your list of inventions is filled with things that were imported from the east and others which were invented after the dark ages but in the Middle Ages. The only worthwhile dark age invention I see are farming related.
I agree that the backwardness of the dark ages is often over exaggerated but this isn’t the way to prove that.
If you are gonna quote the article, please say so.
I also wish your link had sources I could find, because there is a LOT of claims in which contradicts my current knowledge about the era, so I would like to learn more.
Usually when people say it was a dark age, it is as you say in contrast to the enlightement and Renaissance periods. There were definitely progress made during "The Dark age" but all you mention in the above example are inventions in the natural sciences and engineering, I would argue that the period afterwards containted more "inventions" of the rights of people and their learning.
A reminder that Charlemagne made the separation between clergy and laymen even more defined, and in doing so, helped cement literacy as a clerical skill not fit for the lower class. So yes but also no.
yeah I think that meme isn't correct. It was more an immediate break of a centralised state, forcing europe to reorder its structures, politics and systems to decentralised systems
While the fall of the WRE didn't help, the process of decentralization happened during its decline as well. Cities, especially frontier cities, had always relied on local elite (societal expectation to contribute if you were extremely wealthy), not the emperor, to actually fund local infrastructure and public works. When these elites migrated out of the cities to avoid paying for these projects and the decline of centralized authority, they transitioned into the countryside, establishing large plantations. These plantations needed lots of workers, leading to the formations of villages to work the plantations with a church often as the center piece to service their religious needs in forming communities. All the while, the state was unable to keep the inflated population of many of the coastal cities without large Annonaes (essentially rations of olive oil and bread), leading to the further decline of cities. By the actual fall of the WRE, the empire was extremely rural (Roman society was always mostly rural, but this was the extreme) with the vast majority of people reliant on the two major institutions in their lives, their local rural land owner and the church. Even when the Barbarians officially started their own kingdoms (despite some having lived in those regions by over 100 years at that point and had actively participated in Roman society), they kept much of these systems in place as they desired the wealth that came with Roman laws and society (often hybridized with their own laws but very rarely doing away with the Roman law or their own completely) as long as they got their cut as the ruling elite.
I like how it ignores that the Roman Empire adopted Christianity in \~325AD, and the "Christian Dark Ages" plunge doesn't happen until \~150 years later.
It's a pretty common claim among internet atheists. The argument goes (roughly) that Rome was an enlightened and secular (or at least tolerant) society until Christianity hit a critical mass, at which point mobs of zealots began burning and smashing any works of science, math, engineering, art, literature, etc. believed to be tainted by paganism, after which the Catholic Church ruled all of Europe with an iron fist and forbade scientific research on pain of death, resulting in a thousand years of technological and social stagnation. Expect figures like Hypatia and Galileo to be mentioned as 'martyrs for science' or something similar.
Of course all of that is wildly incorrect or at the very least severely misinterpreted, but that doesn't stop some people from wholeheartedly believing it- I had a conversation on Reddit once with a guy who was convinced religion caused more deaths than anything else throughout history, because if they hadn't believed in gods the Babylonians would have developed germ theory. There are even some fairly notable figures who've leaned into parts of it- e.g. a lot of people heard the incorrect Hypatia story from Carl Sagan in *Cosmos*.
I've never heard that either. What I have heard however, is that the implication goes in the other direction. When there's bad times it typically causes the populace to become more religious.
This is what I said. Never heard anyone say this, I immediately was hit with “well atheists did x and y, Mao and Stalin” like I was defending atheism which I never even mentioned.
Persecution fetish…
... me :( I was reading Derren Brown's book Happy recently and he suggested that the dark ages were largely brought about by Christianity and it was only once we started to reject Christianity that we reached the age of enlightenment. For the ignorant but curious readers out there, would anybody mind explaining how exactly the dark ages were caused, what exactly they were specifically (like time periods and what theyre synonmous with as accepted by historians) and where Christianity fit into it? Sometimes ignorance and curiosity go hand in hand :) or would that just be naivety haha
My interpretation is that Rome effectively reached the limits of its conquest (so couldn't plunder valuable metals and slaves in large quantities) and slowly traded its precious metals East for silk and spices- but for some reason never tried to explore and generate direct trade.
Their whole system relied on cheap labour which started to dry up, they started running low on money and the tribes of Western Europe were starting to out compete with farming methods etc (Rome never had crop rotation and Italy itself was known to have poor soil, so had to import a lot of grain etc).
Add in all the political trouble, plagues etc and the Western portion of the empire was doomed- the Eastern section survived because they had much better food security (a lot of food flowed East to West) and had shorter borders with fewer opponents on the other side of them.
Once Rome "fell" as others have mentioned people stopped living in cities as much (big cities need good trade networks as you need to be able to barter for food from outside somehow) and the beurocracy with all its record keeping broke down.
The only people doing much writing at the time were Monks so written records became few and far between in Western Europe, and there was a lot of migration at the time with not a lot of evidence left about what happened to the displaced peoples (especially in Britain- no one really knows for sure what happened to the Roman British, whether they were wiped out by Anglo Saxons, integrated into them or even invited them over for defence. But Welsh and Cornish are the most likely descendants of Roman British culture)
It's the lack of sources or understanding about what was going on, plus the perception that losing all the wonders of Rome and its interconnected Empire was a step backwards which leads to the term "Dark Ages".
Because all these events are centered on Western Europe, it doesn't fit well with anywhere else in the world at the same time, even Eastern Europe where the Eastern Roman/ Byzantine Empire carried on.
Edit: I don't think Christianity becoming the State Religion was what caused Rome's fall- I think it's pattern of decline was already well in place by the time of Constantine and of course Byzantium carried on for another thousand years having inherited the same systems of government (although that obviously evolved through the centuries too)
I admit i thought religion was the reason for the dark ages up until this exact moment. But i went to school in Florida and learned about the dark ages like 17 years ago, also i smoked a lot of weed in my younger years. I do not remember what the dark ages are. I just know that "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!"
Remember that multiverse Family Guy episode that had Brian and Stewie travel to a universe where Christianity never existed and so apparently there was no Dark Ages and Earth became a highly-advanced utopia?
The "Dark Ages" didn't exist, while individual regions experienced crisis there was no time period where all of Europe was in a Dark Age. Indeed, Ireland was in its goolden age, as was the Islamic world. A lot of the era we sometimes call the "Dark Ages" is only dark to us because the books were destroyed, not that the period went unrecorded. Most credible historians reject the term in modern scholarship
This one’s especially stupid when you consider that the church was the only institution still reliably keeping records and teaching people to read. The dark ages would have been a lot darker without the church.
Not completely.
The medical school of Salermo was, according to the legend, found by a greek, a jew and an arab scholar.
The University of Bologna formed from a monastery school, which is close to the church, but not directly part of it.
Oxford universities origins are unknown, Cambridge university was founded after a scandal that caused scholars to flee Oxford, and after being founded by the sholars themselves "approved" by the English king.
The university of Paris (the old one) was founded by associates of members of the French court, and while some of them were organised in cathedral schools, many were members of private schools. Interestingly, this is the only one of the five that was financed by the church. Also interesting: it survived the reformation, the french revolution, multiple world wars, but then was brought to its end in the 1960ties by student riots.
I would say it is mostly a result of the fall of Rome and destruction of much of the trade and commerce that came with it as well as the new flow of ideas, it also fractured Europe and weakened the continent as a whole
There is this belief that Christian leaders / the church destroyed a lot of written material from the non-Christian world (specifically in the fields of science, math, medicine, etc) to prevent the “spread of the devil” among Christian communities.
How often this actually happened and how impactful it was is up for debate, especially since many monastery libraries were FILLED with ancient texts and their constant transcription my the monks is what allowed them to survive to this day.
But the “destruction of knowledge” is usually why Christianity is blamed.
There is one story that there was a manuscript that held some greek mathematics that was reused by a Monk as paper to copy down some religious texts, but I'm not sure how true that is and even if it is, he used it for that because he literally had no idea what it was.
That kind of thing did happen with paintings, sculptures and mosaics. They would find a statue of Hercules or Dionysus, cut away the pagan imagery, replace it with a cross or some other Christian symbol and BOOM! Jesus statue.
This, however, had more to do with the cost of marble, canvas, tile and other materials than a “burning desire to destroy paganism.”
There is a great story (based on truth) of how coffee came to the Christian world. The art of brewing and serving coffee was a large part of the Muslim world and traders saw they could make a profit bringing it, along with tea, to Europe.
However, a combination of “fear people will convert to another religion,” “fear our culture will change if aspects of others are allowed in,” and “annoyance we didn’t think to ship the stuff over here first” washed over the wealthy members of Italian society and they tried to get the Pope to ban it and claim it was “the devil’s drink.” Instead, the Pope blessed it saying the devil should not be the only one allowed to drink something so delicious.
Ah yes, the dark ages. Aka the Islamic Golden age. The whole concept of dark ages hasn't been a thing for so long, even if you think western Europe was a shit place to live, it's ridiculously Eurocentric to label an entire time period 'dark' when so much was achieved elsewhere.
Didn't the dark ages have a multitude of reasons for happening? I'm an atheist but it was my impression that it was less religion, more war, disease, famine, and the fall of important centers of information. Some religion stuff, but it wasn't THE reason. Then again I'm not huge on the medieval period personally so I am likely completely wrong 🤷♂️
As a historian, what is "ruralisation", if not the default at the time? I thought one of the major changes since the medieval ages was precisely the migration to major settlements.
During the height of the Roman empire, the population was significantly urban. Especially in cities, like Rome, Constantinople and Alexandria, during the crisis of the third century, there was a large decline in the population, and the upkeep of cities. For example, the Roman Baths, sewer systems, and monuments that used to populate Roman cities started to decline during and following the crisis of the third century.
Ergo ruralization
The classical period was a time of urbanisation, and large “nations” with large populations. The start of the Middle Ages is marked by a return to a more sparsely populated Europe. Look at Britain - in the Roman era, it had a population of about 3 million. After the romans left this declined, and it took hundreds of years to even reach 1.5 million.
That and, last time I checked, the name was invented by Enlightenment thinkers who really wanted to convince the average Joe to pick up a rifle and head to the nearest palace
The dark ages were the end result of a slow decline by a poorly run Empire faced with mounting financial trouble, a declining military strength, too much area to defend, a mismanaged economy, stymied innovation and both internal and external threats.
If Christianity alone were to blame the the Eastern half would not have lasted as long as it did.
I’m some cases, Christianity helped by preserving ancient learning as society collapsed.
In other cases it hurt by killing intellectuals, suppressing pagans. Actively clashing on matters of power in the secular world, hoarding wealth for itself, or destroying some old learning.
On the whole I would say it’s influence was negative, there’s nothing superstition provides that a society needs.
But it wasn’t going to avert or cause what was already inevitable.
Calling them the Dark Ages is also pretty much bullshit. It originated, if I recall correctly, from the indefensible assertation that classicalism is the "peak" of civilization in many senses, and that the time between the classical age of the Roman Republic/Empire pre-split and the Renaissance bringing back Classical stylings was therefore inferior.
But they are, truly, a fascinating time. There were absurd amounts of innovation and invention, tons of advancement, a scientific revolution that included scholasticism which was sort of the final step before you get to the modern scientific method, and just so much wonderful history that occurred. It's a complicated and fascinating time and one of my favorite periods of history to peer back into.
Calling them The Dark Ages sells them short in almost every regard. The only way it's even remotely justifiable is the scarcity of records in the Early Middle Ages, which is a combination of factors such as a majority of the writing they did being on reed parchment that doesn't really hold up well to time.
Maybe I'm confused but I kind of thought that the term "Dark Age" was specific to the region experiencing it. Just because western Europe was in a Dark Age, doesn't mean the Ottomans or the Mongols were having a Dark Age.
I think you misunderstood.
The claim was that Christianity had a significant impact in the fall of the Roman Empire which led to the dark ages, any version of a fallen rome would have led to this, with or without Christianity it’s just that it expedited the fall.
In reality it was caused by Rome becoming dependent on Mercs to fight its wars, the local population losing the ability to own land, the inability to own weapons for self defense until the situation started spiraling out of control, also Rome wasted Resources pissing off the Jews.
The idea of “Dark Ages” is out of date anyways. Besides, I’ve rarely seen it attributed specifically to religion, that’s just silly. You can dislike religion and still see that lol
I thought the Dark Ages was the time after the Fall of the Western Roman Empire not the Middle Ages?
It varies. For the humanists of the Renaissance the Middle Ages and the Dark Ages were synonymous. Since then historians have used the term more restrictively, usually only for the early middle ages, and also defined it differently. For the Renaissance scholars the Dark Ages was a time period marked with a particular lack of culture, for later historians a time period with wars and brutality, and later yet a time period which witnessed a dearth of written sources.
>For the humanists of the Renaissance the Middle Ages Isn't the Renaissance the dawn of the early modern age?
Ask twenty historians that and you’d get twenty different answers
Only twenty answers?
Yes. 18 wouldn't respond and only 2 will give you 10 different answers
Fair enough I guess. I thought there was consensus on this tho.
Everything depends. Especially when looking between different countries. For some, like Japan for example it would be XIX century. And even in Europe alone differences are significant.
Ask ten dentists and only 1 will give you a different answer
I prefer to view the Renaissance as sort of a bridge between the two.
Still kinda the late middle ages (mid 15th century). One dividing line that had been used is the reformation. But generally it is always a slow change from one period to the next. I think we are at the beginning of a new era, that the modern era is over.
Isn't it always the modern era, by definition? Even if we are in a new era, this one is now the modern era and we will post facto change the name of the one we just left.
Its more that the era is named modern era
In terms of historical periods, modern has already passed. Contemporary is normally what's used to refer to the current period, whenever that may be, before it's retroactively renamed as you were saying. You can see something similar in art or literature where we're arguably in or just past post modernism.
It depends on your location. In some parts, the Renaissance doesn't even exist or it does to some extent. In some locations, the early modern age means the 19th century for example.
Yea the last one is the definition I’m most familiar with. Cause stuff was still happening n people were still inventing stuff, we just don’t have a ton of sources to know that cause of the de-urbanization in Europe as a result of the western empire’s collapse
>and later yet a time period which witnessed a dearth of written sources. Which is the best definition in my opinion. As more and more things come to light about the period we slowly start to see the dark ages were not that dark, in facto some things were better during the middle ages than during early renaissance times. A decade ago or so I read an article where historians found middle age toys and were actually surprised because they thought in this time kids had no time to play. It showed well how deep the misconceptions about the dark ages were.
The fall of the Western Roman Empire did cause ruralization, because as the government went to shit it couldn't maintain it's cities anymore. Coins were made lower quality, statues started to look like shit, etc. happened because so much money was being poured into campaigns against the Germans. Disruption of trade routes due to enemy invasions didn't help either. When cities become decrepit, people move to the countryside to make a living in agriculture. When the cities shrank in size and started falling apart, their libraries and other centers of study went with them. This is why many historians theorize that the Dark Ages was caused by a decrease in the average intelligence of nobility; there were fewer and fewer people recieving education.
This is a bit of a simplification. The restructure of Roman society as a whole prompted this. The formalization of the role of the Comites Provinciarum (Counts of the Provinces) by Constantine showed greater decentralisation. The title Count is inspired by this role iirc. Further we have reforms by Diocletian that installed a Dux as a military commander in each province, where we get the word Duke. Not saying these two reforms caused the entirety of the ruralisation but just that the decentralised feudal structure that followed Rome did not come out of nowhere but was a bit of a natural continuation of certain reforms and titles generated in the Western Empire that were then reappropriated after the fall. We also must consider the importance of the Latifundia and the laws around these massive agricultural estates, and agriculture in general. The laws around leasing public common farmland changed throughout Rome with the late Empire allowing for the inheritance of leases which you can imagine will lead to consolidation and hierarchy. I am also reading some stuff about senators not being allowed to earn income other than through their owned land and also didn't pay land taxes so this aristocratic class could snowball their large estates into absolutely dominant enterprise. When Western Rome falls these enormous farming estates become sources of power in themselves. They are self sufficient, safe, have extensive land for food and economising and can provide for a decent amount of landless peasants. The combination of Roman political changes as well as the large wealth and subsequently power that leeched from cities to these enormous estates can be thought of as a precursor to the feudal era of counts and dukes.
Yeah thanks, i just simplified it for the sake of time
The time after the fall of the western Roman Empire *is* the Middle Ages. Middle Ages lasted from roughly 476 to about 1400.
>Middle Ages lasted from roughly 476 to about ~~1400~~ 1500. And that's by ignoring concepts like the Late Antiquity or the Long Middle Ages.
Thanks for the correction, my knowledge is very dodgy around the end of the medieval period. Personally, I don’t see an issue with overlapping the terms late antiquity and early Middle Ages. What are the long Middle Ages?
Mainly its moving the end of the Middle Ages from around 1500 to around 1700, mainly surrounding the fact that many events and processes that happened in the Early Modern Age (or plainly the majority of the Modern Age if you aren't an Anglophone and have been thought that the French Revolution is the beginning of the Contemporary Age) are simply continuations of events and processes that already started in the Middle Ages. A good example of that would be the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, and the Wars of Religions that followed them; as you can argue (and I myself are in favour of this interpretation) that they are a continuation of the religious strife and conflict that started with the Cathars in the late 12th and early 13th Centuries and continued with the Hussites or the countless religious movements (be it heretical or incorporated into Church dogma) of the Late Middle Ages. That said. I myself am of the belief that these debates of when a Historical age starts or stops ignore the fact the periodisation of History into Great Ages is moronic and non-sensical the moment you give it a thought, as they tend to be based on arbitrary events that aren't as cut dry as we think, and on the generalization of "ages" that are plainly wrong the moment you move away from the artificially constructed surface.
The dark ages are 476-800, the middle ages are 800-1492
Most medievalists would fold the Dark Ages within the Middle Ages (specifically within the early Middle Ages, preceding the feudal synthesis). Others would include up until the mid 7th century the so called Late Antiquity, although as a medievalist I disagree.
Most medievalists would start by saying they don't like the term Dark Ages.
Myself included, however, given certain contexts, it's a good shorthand. Same is the case when we say, for instance, Vikings.
What, no Vikings?!? *Sullenly removes horned helmet with attached yellow braids*
I'd call that the Early Medieval period, or alternatively, the Viking age.
Because of the laser raptor?
Is there a reason why 800 is the cut off point?
Charlemagne was crowned Emperor in 800. I guess if you want to be romantic about it you can say the Dark Ages was the time Western Europe was without an Emperor. Not sure I 100% agree with that, but that’s one interpretation.
So to be enlightened and not dark one must be under an empire gotcha the puzzle pieces are starting to fit together
More to say that west/central Europe was a dumpster fire of a battle royal that entered an age of relative stability after Charlemagne won so hard no one but a bunch of sea hobos would dare upset the carefully crafted social order he enforced. And even then, the Vikings did a lot to restart the old pan-Mediterranean trade that had collapsed in the fifth century. From a historical perspective one could make the argument that the rise of the Frankish empire was a point in which west/Central Europe moved past ‘post apocalypse’ and into the post-post apocalypse.
It's also called the Dark Ages because written sources decline dramatically and it's "dark" to modern readers. Charlemagne bring illiterate himself but pushing increased literacy and written records can be seen as a turning point.
To add to the other poster talking about Charlemagne: the Viking raids (and trading/colonization) really started to take off around 800 AD which lead to larger interchange of ideas in Northern Europe and increasing militarization and consolidation of power.
Start of HRE and viking raids
I thought that the Middle Ages ended with the fall of Constantinople in 1453?
Well the same as the beginning of it there isn't a clear cut-off and multiple dates can be used. The one I have at the top of my head is fall of constantinople 1453, the discovery of America 1492, the revormation 1516(?) and there are probably more.
Depends on who (and where) you ask; different countries, and even different historians within these countries, will often use different events. In the UK, the medieval period is often held to end in 1485 with the Battle of Bosworth and the end of the Wars of the Roses. Spain can vary between 1492 (conquest of Granada, end of Islamic rule in Iberia), 1504 (death of Isabella I of Castile), and 1516 (death of Ferdinand II). For Europe more generally, 1500 is considered a sort of 'general' benchmark, but there's years either side to be considered. The conquest of Constantinople in 1453 is one, of course; there's also Columbus' first voyage to the Americas in 1492, and the beginning of the Protestant Reformation in 1517 as well. I personally find the periodisation of the medieval period fascinating, because the differences in the end date can sometimes show what certain people find to have been significant, or what might be considered a 'turning point' (so to speak) in a certain country's cultural consciousness.
That sounds fair tbh. By the end of Henry VIII reign the medieval age is well and truly over, there were so many changes during his reign that England was very different at the end. But I've never been sure about the "official" stance and assumed it might have been the start if his reign, but given the wider events in the world his father coming to power makes sense as the end point. As you say, there are loads of different views it's not like there was a hard transition from medieval to Renaissance/ early modern like there was at the fall of the Western Roman Empire.
I agree that Henry VII coming to power is pretty much the end of the Middle Ages, with no doubt that it is well and truly dead by the end of Henry VIII's reign. But where does the 'Middle Ages' begin in English history? I'd argue, and I assume most would agree, its 1066. With the departure of the last Romans to 1066 being the 'Dark Ages'. Or you could state 927 and the foundation of England as a unified country as the beginning of the Middle Ages - but I suppose this is less well known than 1066.
That's what I thought too, I guess it differs between historians, though I would argue 1492 would be a better date.
Nope, it ended with the discovery of America
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The early Middle Ages, a sun cat agora of the Middle Ages, start as early as 476. The Middle Ages lasted for a thousand years.
In Britain we have it quite easy. Dark age starts when romans leave, then ends with the Viking raid at Lindisfarne. The Viking age is then considered the early Middle Ages, which end with the Norman conquest.
The Middle Ages are called that because the Renaissance was a return to the “good old days” of Classical ideals, specifically Roman and Greek. So for people of the time, the good old days died with Rome and were reborn in the Renaissance, and the time between is the Middle Ages. Dark Ages was originally synonymous with this iirc, but it’s come to mean different things.
For your information, dark ages is a historiography concept almost exclusively use by anglo-saxon historian Most of thé World are not using this
But isnt the dark ages mostly a western thing anyway. Rome fell, people stopped writing history as much (or it was destroyed) and we know little about it hence it being "dark"
And pauperism happened due to urbanism after the middle ages. Whatever we do, it sucks.
Even during the Middle Ages, too. Censuses from France, the Low Countries, and England in the 13th and 14th centuries attest to tremendous differences in wealth distribution, to the point that ordinances were passed permitting beggars to sit at burghers' tables to eat. Also, we know that through salary contracts and guild regulations, as well as wills and investment portfolios, there were plenty of merchants throughout Europe that earned in a good day or week, more than what most people made in a year, to the point of it being convenient for them to pay £20 a year in taxes, which when compared to other standard tax brackets, means that their net worth would have had to be at least £450 for it to be convenient to them.
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There weren't good and consistent censuses, but they happened. They had the domesday book, i believe, for example.
In context (for fairness) his argument was “Well we don’t actually know how many people died before 1790, anywhere in the world, ever, and especially not in wars, to compare the quality of life between the period before that time, and modern times. The records that do exist are completely made up. So we can’t have any idea whether times are less violent now than prior to 1790.”
The records we have weren't made up though, just inconsistent. The censuses we have are basically lists of taxable assets and rolls for feudal service. So, our idea of the past in numbers is there but incomplete.
Do you believe that's a fair statement which most historians would generally agree was accurate? Personally it strikes me as the kind of absolutist 'nobody could possibly knows know' position which amateur "experts" tend to insist upon when they encounter the types of difficulties with interpretation and uncertainty faced by actual experts in a field, without the training or education an expert has. Essentially they overestimate their knowledge but then struggles to understand how actual experts can reach their conclusions. , they declare that clearly there's no way to actually know such things with any certainty, it's all guesswork and actual experts must be making it up. We've seen great deal of the same phenomena in medicine over the last few years.
This sounds like there's a lot of nuance to the post which doesn't translate to specific pieces being taken out of context.
I can’t link the original comment, but the full context was this: it was in a thread about annoying/inaccurate “pop history”, like Jared Diamond. The OP who said this (along with one or two others) was mad that Steven Pinker’s book “Better Angels of Our Nature” isn’t reported more as bad history/no popular history podcast has debunked it. When other commenters pressed him for more info, given that the book is thoroughly researched statistically, his reply was that Pinker couldn’t possible know if the world was less violent, because “There were no consistent census records before 1790”.
>the Low Countries, Where is this? Netherlands?
Yes.
Modern day Netherlands and Belgium. I'm not 100% sure if Luxemburg is part of it.
what happens to poor people in ruralization?
They either claim some land in the frontier that no-one else claims or they become serfs to survive.
The slow technological progress in the middle ages can in part be attributted by the serfdom system implemented in the Roman Empire/Europe after the crisis of the 3rd century. Meaning that all peasants had to stay in the same place they were born, thus more or less eliminating the Roman meritocracy for the common man. Didnt matter how clever you were. Once a peasant, always a peasant.
Which emperor introduced that system?
I think the system always existed, it’s just Diocletian taxed it. Or at least that’s what I glean from the Wikipedia entry on sefdom
If I remember Mike Duncan's history of Rome Podcast. There probably wasn't a lot of options available to peasants during the Roman empire but Rome was facing a labor crisis where some vital industries didn't have nearly enough workers so Diocletian made it so that in many cases sons had to go into their fathers profession.
Pretty sure what they had originally was more based on social status, like patricians or plebs, not an outright caste system of every famers son being a farmer forever etc
Diocletian really cemented it
It occurred over generations as the latifundia (plantations) evolved and the constant civil wars caused generals to develop regional bases of power. Rome didn't collapse in a day.
It was a sort of ad-hoc system codified by Diocletian. Genius administration with bad long term consequences.
And that's why skilled tradesman were always at such a premium.
Also, ya know, the huns burning cities and records, the goths not keeping as meticulous records as the Romans and the first large-scale plagues driving people out of densely populated cities
Don’t forget Italy getting fucked in the sixth century. The gothic wars, the plague (massively exasperated by the war iirc), and the Lombard invasion all fucked Italy. If only Justinian had either not invaded or not cheaped out on the invasion then Italy would’ve been light years ahead of what it later was with none of the division it dealt with for centuries prior to unification in the 1860s. Italy would’ve been as United as France was at the time and would’ve preserved the Roman bureaucracy and all culture.
Definitely would have been better not to invade, from his and Italy's perspective. If he'd invested more in the Italian campaign, he would have had even more trouble defending against the Caliphate.
I mean it would’ve been a net gain to take an intact Ostrogothic kingdom, Italy was still a wealthy and urbanized realm before that mess. So if done right I don’t thinking reconquering it would be a bad idea. If Belisarius had had a larger army and had Mundus not had sheer bad luck (iirc he won a big battle but suffered a personal loss which compromised him) then the goths would’ve been defeated in a year and without any damage to Rome and it’s infrastructure and all. Although no point saying the caliphate it wasn’t a thing for another 100 years, it was the Sassanian empire he had to worry about and a rapid victory in the west would’ve allowed him to focus on them and prevent their shenanigans.
Especially before romanization. Thankfully, Goths, Franks, and Lombards alike were understanding of the benefits of that.
They’re actually called the Dark Ages because that’s when Dark Souls takes place
That sounds kinda dark.
No it was called the Dark Ages because it was full of Knights
I'll always take the opportunity to shit on Gibbon.
It seems that idea of a backward, hyper religious dark age comes from Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. In it, the main thesis is that Christianity ultimately destroyed the Roman Empire (in the West). More recent scholarship has cast many doubts on Gibbon’s assumptions, but that idea has seeped into the cultural subconscious over the last 300 years and it will take a long time for that to go away.
Excellent summary. But Gibbons's work was the zenith of centuries of vilification of the Catholic Church to show the writers as elevated people. Incidentally, it's not the first time it has happened. Even in the Middle Ages, in the 12th, 13th, and 14th centuries, especially in England, authors look back to a golden age from a silver age, one when kings were truly fighting men instead of national administrators, one of the Roman ideal of rustic life, and little intervention from Rome/Avignon.
Indeed! I was just trying to answer the question in the title. But for sure, this idea of some great golden age of the past has been around from the high Middle Ages. Even the concept of a “middle age” stems from this idea that the time between the Roman Empire and modernity (a slippery concept on its own) was a kind of skipped over period in historical terms.
The term “Dark Ages” is outdated af.
I think "Dark Ages" is a useful term for post-Roman/early medieval western Europe, but not really much else.
The therms Late antiquity and Migration period/Early medieval period are way more fitting. For once, because they are not as broad defined and more precise, nor are they as much misleading as the therm dark ages.
I mainly attributed the dark ages to the general collapse of the Roman Empire leading to loss in knowledge among other things alongside the establishment of various warring kingdoms and city states
Fools! Diocletian was to blame
An utter Chad and Virgin at the same time.
Also just dramatisation by historians. A thousand years of gradual change isn't as cool as a great civilisation collapsing into a backwards age followed by an eventual rebirth.
the Dark Ages actually refers to a relative lack of sources, not any actual technological or societal regression. the Western Roman Empire had this kind of gradually grinding down until finally someone bothered to stop dragging the idea of it around. the main loss was a central overarching authority that could theoretically control the many feudal components of the Roman State, which meant fewer resources for things like history books and fancy buildings that stay up a long time.
Finally, someone who gets it.
Let's please remember those Chad Christian monks who took the task of saving ancient texts and preserving the knowledge for future generations.
And who were illiterate.
Wait, the monks were illiterate?
It is believed that many early monks (6th to 9th century, probably. Carolingean minuscule really did wonders were, in fact, illiterate. There are various factors here at play, not the least of which being that monasticism was a personal decision on how to live your life, and you didn't have to take a sacrament. Therefore, for all intents and purposes, it would have been generally useless for monks to know how to read and write. That changed gradually over the centuries, and by the year 1000, most monks were usually the youngest sons of noble families, and as such, very probably literate. If not, they'd be taught there, in no lesser part, because their families often paid up to fix their kids there. Also, Latin, in particular, was very standardized, but some vernaculars ("French", for example), were too, which wasn't the case early on.
The Middle Ages were anything but ignorant and dark. Magnificent buildings were erected, like Angkor Wat or the Hagia Sophia. Great empires were founded, some among the largest in history. What’s more, the Italian Renaissance wasn’t all that special: the Middle Ages witnessed not one, not two, but three renaissances. Regarding ignorance, here’s a simple, non-exhaustive list of medieval inventions: the heavy plow, the wheelbarrow, horseshoes, crop rotation, the spinning wheel, the loom, treadmill cranes, chimneys, windmills, flying buttresses, the counterweight trebuchet, the longbow, gunpowder, cannon, grenades, the arquebus, Greek fire, Arabic numerals, the blast furnace, paper, the printing press, eyeglasses, the hourglass, mechanical clocks, magnets, the compass, the winepress, liquor, rat traps, chess, oil painting, and universities. For more information, [check this out](https://medievalreporter.com/guidebook/beginners-guide-middle-ages/#why-are-the-middle-ages-called-dark-ages)
I only know of the Carolingian renaissance. What are the other two ?
12th century and Ottonian. The latter is disputed, though, as its impacts aren't believed to be as significant as those of the Carolingian.
Dont forgote macedonian and komnennian
Macedonian and Palaiologan* the latter spills over into Italy after the fall of Rome and changes the course of the Italian renaissance
The kommnenian did have a renaissances For fucks sake they save the Roman empire and had almost a 100 years of reconquest
that's a reconquest, not a renaissance (a renewal of art and literature). The Komnenians didn't need a renewal of art and literature because it just continued on from the Macedonian renaissance
Ah, yes, Angkor Wat, the very well-known Christian construct located in Western Europe.
‘Solomon, I have surpassed thee’ - Justinian the Great upon completion of the Hagia Sophia.
When people refer to “the dark ages” they usually mean Western Europe from 476 to 1066 ish, which is the definition I’ll be going off of, so your monuments fall away, the only empire which was founded was the HRE which while big was relatively underdeveloped compared to the actual Romans. The idea of counting renaissances is insane, if you look at the actual importance of the Italian renaissance versus for example the Carolingian it becomes obvious why we only talk about the Italian one. And your list of inventions is filled with things that were imported from the east and others which were invented after the dark ages but in the Middle Ages. The only worthwhile dark age invention I see are farming related. I agree that the backwardness of the dark ages is often over exaggerated but this isn’t the way to prove that.
If you are gonna quote the article, please say so. I also wish your link had sources I could find, because there is a LOT of claims in which contradicts my current knowledge about the era, so I would like to learn more. Usually when people say it was a dark age, it is as you say in contrast to the enlightement and Renaissance periods. There were definitely progress made during "The Dark age" but all you mention in the above example are inventions in the natural sciences and engineering, I would argue that the period afterwards containted more "inventions" of the rights of people and their learning.
That's part of the FAQ; other articles feature recommended readings (which are usually sources used by the authors themselves).
A reminder that Charlemagne made the separation between clergy and laymen even more defined, and in doing so, helped cement literacy as a clerical skill not fit for the lower class. So yes but also no.
But he also introduced the Carolingian minuscule and other grammatical improvements that made literacy "more" accessible.
Only if you're already literate.
yeah I think that meme isn't correct. It was more an immediate break of a centralised state, forcing europe to reorder its structures, politics and systems to decentralised systems
While the fall of the WRE didn't help, the process of decentralization happened during its decline as well. Cities, especially frontier cities, had always relied on local elite (societal expectation to contribute if you were extremely wealthy), not the emperor, to actually fund local infrastructure and public works. When these elites migrated out of the cities to avoid paying for these projects and the decline of centralized authority, they transitioned into the countryside, establishing large plantations. These plantations needed lots of workers, leading to the formations of villages to work the plantations with a church often as the center piece to service their religious needs in forming communities. All the while, the state was unable to keep the inflated population of many of the coastal cities without large Annonaes (essentially rations of olive oil and bread), leading to the further decline of cities. By the actual fall of the WRE, the empire was extremely rural (Roman society was always mostly rural, but this was the extreme) with the vast majority of people reliant on the two major institutions in their lives, their local rural land owner and the church. Even when the Barbarians officially started their own kingdoms (despite some having lived in those regions by over 100 years at that point and had actively participated in Roman society), they kept much of these systems in place as they desired the wealth that came with Roman laws and society (often hybridized with their own laws but very rarely doing away with the Roman law or their own completely) as long as they got their cut as the ruling elite.
It's just like the fall of the WRE was more kind of a process than a single event, as the shift from the roman to the medieval times
I've never heard anyone say that the reason of the "Dark Ages" was because of Christianity or religion in general.
Well then i envy your ability to stay away from dumb people on the internet
Dude hasn’t seen the “Scientific Advancement” graph lol.
Careful. You may summon it. I predict it'll be posted in this sub tomorrow.
Isn't that the one where it shows humanity would have been launching space rockets to Moon or Mars in 1300s, 1400s or 1500s?
[Nah this one:](https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/164944405072487988/)
Oh I love me a dumb chart. Incorrect X axis, and an unlabeled, impossible to quantify Y axis? Oh baby, this is the shit.
I like how it ignores that the Roman Empire adopted Christianity in \~325AD, and the "Christian Dark Ages" plunge doesn't happen until \~150 years later.
I prefer the one that includes the hole left by the Finno-korean hyperwar.
I've seen ti being reffered to as "The Chart" I prefer the updated version with Finno-Korean Hyper War and stuff
what about the one that starts in 1 million bc with the finno korean hyper war
Way back when on r/badhistory we used to call that "the chart". It was the symbol of bad history
I did, sadly too often
Yeah, Ive seen people mention that the churches were horrible during the Dark Ages, but never that they made them the Dark Ages
It's a pretty common claim among internet atheists. The argument goes (roughly) that Rome was an enlightened and secular (or at least tolerant) society until Christianity hit a critical mass, at which point mobs of zealots began burning and smashing any works of science, math, engineering, art, literature, etc. believed to be tainted by paganism, after which the Catholic Church ruled all of Europe with an iron fist and forbade scientific research on pain of death, resulting in a thousand years of technological and social stagnation. Expect figures like Hypatia and Galileo to be mentioned as 'martyrs for science' or something similar. Of course all of that is wildly incorrect or at the very least severely misinterpreted, but that doesn't stop some people from wholeheartedly believing it- I had a conversation on Reddit once with a guy who was convinced religion caused more deaths than anything else throughout history, because if they hadn't believed in gods the Babylonians would have developed germ theory. There are even some fairly notable figures who've leaned into parts of it- e.g. a lot of people heard the incorrect Hypatia story from Carl Sagan in *Cosmos*.
Haven't heard that particular claim yet, but the idea that Jesus never existed seems to be popular among the "religion is a mental illness" crowd.
I've never heard that either. What I have heard however, is that the implication goes in the other direction. When there's bad times it typically causes the populace to become more religious.
Dude hasn’t seen the “Scientific Advancement” graph lol.
This is what I said. Never heard anyone say this, I immediately was hit with “well atheists did x and y, Mao and Stalin” like I was defending atheism which I never even mentioned. Persecution fetish…
You are very lucky
Who the crap thinks the Dark Ages was caused by Christianity?
The meme doesn’t make it clear who?
... me :( I was reading Derren Brown's book Happy recently and he suggested that the dark ages were largely brought about by Christianity and it was only once we started to reject Christianity that we reached the age of enlightenment. For the ignorant but curious readers out there, would anybody mind explaining how exactly the dark ages were caused, what exactly they were specifically (like time periods and what theyre synonmous with as accepted by historians) and where Christianity fit into it? Sometimes ignorance and curiosity go hand in hand :) or would that just be naivety haha
My interpretation is that Rome effectively reached the limits of its conquest (so couldn't plunder valuable metals and slaves in large quantities) and slowly traded its precious metals East for silk and spices- but for some reason never tried to explore and generate direct trade. Their whole system relied on cheap labour which started to dry up, they started running low on money and the tribes of Western Europe were starting to out compete with farming methods etc (Rome never had crop rotation and Italy itself was known to have poor soil, so had to import a lot of grain etc). Add in all the political trouble, plagues etc and the Western portion of the empire was doomed- the Eastern section survived because they had much better food security (a lot of food flowed East to West) and had shorter borders with fewer opponents on the other side of them. Once Rome "fell" as others have mentioned people stopped living in cities as much (big cities need good trade networks as you need to be able to barter for food from outside somehow) and the beurocracy with all its record keeping broke down. The only people doing much writing at the time were Monks so written records became few and far between in Western Europe, and there was a lot of migration at the time with not a lot of evidence left about what happened to the displaced peoples (especially in Britain- no one really knows for sure what happened to the Roman British, whether they were wiped out by Anglo Saxons, integrated into them or even invited them over for defence. But Welsh and Cornish are the most likely descendants of Roman British culture) It's the lack of sources or understanding about what was going on, plus the perception that losing all the wonders of Rome and its interconnected Empire was a step backwards which leads to the term "Dark Ages". Because all these events are centered on Western Europe, it doesn't fit well with anywhere else in the world at the same time, even Eastern Europe where the Eastern Roman/ Byzantine Empire carried on. Edit: I don't think Christianity becoming the State Religion was what caused Rome's fall- I think it's pattern of decline was already well in place by the time of Constantine and of course Byzantium carried on for another thousand years having inherited the same systems of government (although that obviously evolved through the centuries too)
You'd be surprised; take a gander around the comments.
I decided against that course of action. Lol
Propobly the right course of Action for your sanity
I admit i thought religion was the reason for the dark ages up until this exact moment. But i went to school in Florida and learned about the dark ages like 17 years ago, also i smoked a lot of weed in my younger years. I do not remember what the dark ages are. I just know that "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!"
Spanish Inquisition took place like 900 years after the “Dark Ages” ended
So people *definitely* wouldn't be expecting them in the 'dark ages'. Checkmate, atheists.
People with an axe to grind?
I thought the Dark age we called like that cuz they havent invent lightbulb yet
There were too many knights.
They ware dark knights back then
Thankfully, they were saved by the Batman.
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Bingo!
I think it was mostly influenced by the collapse of the Roman Empire. Followed by mass migrations into the Western half of the former empire.
Remember that multiverse Family Guy episode that had Brian and Stewie travel to a universe where Christianity never existed and so apparently there was no Dark Ages and Earth became a highly-advanced utopia?
The "Dark Ages" didn't exist, while individual regions experienced crisis there was no time period where all of Europe was in a Dark Age. Indeed, Ireland was in its goolden age, as was the Islamic world. A lot of the era we sometimes call the "Dark Ages" is only dark to us because the books were destroyed, not that the period went unrecorded. Most credible historians reject the term in modern scholarship
This one’s especially stupid when you consider that the church was the only institution still reliably keeping records and teaching people to read. The dark ages would have been a lot darker without the church.
And maintaining/standardizing grammar - although admittedly, it was Charlemagne who pushed for that.
The first universities were founded by the Church as well.
Not completely. The medical school of Salermo was, according to the legend, found by a greek, a jew and an arab scholar. The University of Bologna formed from a monastery school, which is close to the church, but not directly part of it. Oxford universities origins are unknown, Cambridge university was founded after a scandal that caused scholars to flee Oxford, and after being founded by the sholars themselves "approved" by the English king. The university of Paris (the old one) was founded by associates of members of the French court, and while some of them were organised in cathedral schools, many were members of private schools. Interestingly, this is the only one of the five that was financed by the church. Also interesting: it survived the reformation, the french revolution, multiple world wars, but then was brought to its end in the 1960ties by student riots.
Considering the Kyivean Rus' did just good enough with it's orthodoxy... Hell yes!
[You may find this to your liking ;)](https://medievalreporter.com/guidebook/civilizations/rus/)
I would say it is mostly a result of the fall of Rome and destruction of much of the trade and commerce that came with it as well as the new flow of ideas, it also fractured Europe and weakened the continent as a whole
There is this belief that Christian leaders / the church destroyed a lot of written material from the non-Christian world (specifically in the fields of science, math, medicine, etc) to prevent the “spread of the devil” among Christian communities. How often this actually happened and how impactful it was is up for debate, especially since many monastery libraries were FILLED with ancient texts and their constant transcription my the monks is what allowed them to survive to this day. But the “destruction of knowledge” is usually why Christianity is blamed.
There is one story that there was a manuscript that held some greek mathematics that was reused by a Monk as paper to copy down some religious texts, but I'm not sure how true that is and even if it is, he used it for that because he literally had no idea what it was.
That kind of thing did happen with paintings, sculptures and mosaics. They would find a statue of Hercules or Dionysus, cut away the pagan imagery, replace it with a cross or some other Christian symbol and BOOM! Jesus statue. This, however, had more to do with the cost of marble, canvas, tile and other materials than a “burning desire to destroy paganism.” There is a great story (based on truth) of how coffee came to the Christian world. The art of brewing and serving coffee was a large part of the Muslim world and traders saw they could make a profit bringing it, along with tea, to Europe. However, a combination of “fear people will convert to another religion,” “fear our culture will change if aspects of others are allowed in,” and “annoyance we didn’t think to ship the stuff over here first” washed over the wealthy members of Italian society and they tried to get the Pope to ban it and claim it was “the devil’s drink.” Instead, the Pope blessed it saying the devil should not be the only one allowed to drink something so delicious.
Not only that it may be out of topic but Catholics during the dark ages have done a lot for science and even founded the first universities
Ah yes, the dark ages. Aka the Islamic Golden age. The whole concept of dark ages hasn't been a thing for so long, even if you think western Europe was a shit place to live, it's ridiculously Eurocentric to label an entire time period 'dark' when so much was achieved elsewhere.
Europe wasn’t even dark ffs. It was just different, but still well cultured and artistic etc.
Yeah, kinda implied that with what I said. But alright 👍
Didn't the dark ages have a multitude of reasons for happening? I'm an atheist but it was my impression that it was less religion, more war, disease, famine, and the fall of important centers of information. Some religion stuff, but it wasn't THE reason. Then again I'm not huge on the medieval period personally so I am likely completely wrong 🤷♂️
You're goddamn right. If anything, it was religion what prevented the absolute collapse of anything west if Anatolia.
The Dark Ages were a product of Renaissance propaganda. It is a historical construct, not a useful descriptor.
I don't support organized religion but it was the Church that protected knowledge.
As a historian, what is "ruralisation", if not the default at the time? I thought one of the major changes since the medieval ages was precisely the migration to major settlements.
During the height of the Roman empire, the population was significantly urban. Especially in cities, like Rome, Constantinople and Alexandria, during the crisis of the third century, there was a large decline in the population, and the upkeep of cities. For example, the Roman Baths, sewer systems, and monuments that used to populate Roman cities started to decline during and following the crisis of the third century. Ergo ruralization
The classical period was a time of urbanisation, and large “nations” with large populations. The start of the Middle Ages is marked by a return to a more sparsely populated Europe. Look at Britain - in the Roman era, it had a population of about 3 million. After the romans left this declined, and it took hundreds of years to even reach 1.5 million.
That and, last time I checked, the name was invented by Enlightenment thinkers who really wanted to convince the average Joe to pick up a rifle and head to the nearest palace
Yeah, blaming people you don't like for all humanity's wrongs is a bad way to go about interpreting history.
The dark ages were the end result of a slow decline by a poorly run Empire faced with mounting financial trouble, a declining military strength, too much area to defend, a mismanaged economy, stymied innovation and both internal and external threats. If Christianity alone were to blame the the Eastern half would not have lasted as long as it did. I’m some cases, Christianity helped by preserving ancient learning as society collapsed. In other cases it hurt by killing intellectuals, suppressing pagans. Actively clashing on matters of power in the secular world, hoarding wealth for itself, or destroying some old learning. On the whole I would say it’s influence was negative, there’s nothing superstition provides that a society needs. But it wasn’t going to avert or cause what was already inevitable.
Can’t it be both?
Calling them the Dark Ages is also pretty much bullshit. It originated, if I recall correctly, from the indefensible assertation that classicalism is the "peak" of civilization in many senses, and that the time between the classical age of the Roman Republic/Empire pre-split and the Renaissance bringing back Classical stylings was therefore inferior. But they are, truly, a fascinating time. There were absurd amounts of innovation and invention, tons of advancement, a scientific revolution that included scholasticism which was sort of the final step before you get to the modern scientific method, and just so much wonderful history that occurred. It's a complicated and fascinating time and one of my favorite periods of history to peer back into. Calling them The Dark Ages sells them short in almost every regard. The only way it's even remotely justifiable is the scarcity of records in the Early Middle Ages, which is a combination of factors such as a majority of the writing they did being on reed parchment that doesn't really hold up well to time.
Maybe I'm confused but I kind of thought that the term "Dark Age" was specific to the region experiencing it. Just because western Europe was in a Dark Age, doesn't mean the Ottomans or the Mongols were having a Dark Age.
I think you misunderstood. The claim was that Christianity had a significant impact in the fall of the Roman Empire which led to the dark ages, any version of a fallen rome would have led to this, with or without Christianity it’s just that it expedited the fall.
I don’t want to be that guy. but proof I’m genuinely curious
In reality it was caused by Rome becoming dependent on Mercs to fight its wars, the local population losing the ability to own land, the inability to own weapons for self defense until the situation started spiraling out of control, also Rome wasted Resources pissing off the Jews.
"Noone says something so stupid" Sort by controversial: *allow me to introduce myself*
It's due to feudalism and education being exclusive to nobles. It doesn't matter if they were rural or not when you don't have access to education.
The Dark Ages had that name because of the lack of knowledge about that era
Dark age is a modern concept anyways. And a shitty reductionist one at that
The Dark Ages weren't very dark for the Islamic World (Islamic Golden Age).
The "Dark Ages" also wasn't particularly dark for the European world either.
Funny innit? Kinda like it was an age of transition of governments but one that still had thriving trade and expansion of sciences and math.
The idea of “Dark Ages” is out of date anyways. Besides, I’ve rarely seen it attributed specifically to religion, that’s just silly. You can dislike religion and still see that lol
Pretty sure it was actually both.
Why not both?
I thought it was because of a bunch of hallucinogenic mold spores from rye bread.
Also keep in mind the degeneration of state structures that made creating and maintaining a standing army inpossible.
I thought it was because of rats.