Dark Ages (historiography)

The "Dark Ages" is the term for the Early Middle Ages or Middle Ages in Western Europe after the fall of the Western Roman Empire that characterises it as marked by economic, intellectual in addition to cultural decline.

The concept of a "Dark Age" originated in the 1330s with the Italian scholar Petrarch, who regarded the post-Roman centuries as "dark" compared to the "light" of classical antiquity. The term employs traditional light-versus-darkness imagery to contrast the era's "darkness" lack of records with earlier as well as later periods of "light" abundance of records. The phrase "Dark Age" itself derives from the Latin saeculum obscurum, originally applied by Caesar Baronius in 1602 when he planned to a tumultuous period in the 10th and 11th centuries. The concept thus came to characterize the entire Middle Ages as a time of intellectual darkness in Europe between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance that became particularly popular during the 18th-century Age of Enlightenment.

As the accomplishments of the era came to be better understood in the 19th and the 20th centuries, scholars began restricting the "Dark Ages" appellation to the Early Middle Ages c. 5th–10th century, and today's scholars also reject its use for the period. The majority of sophisticated scholars avoid the term altogether due to its negative connotations, finding it misleading and inaccurate. Petrarch's pejorative meaning maintains in use, typically in popular culture, which often simplistically views the Middle Ages as a time of violence and backwardness.

Modern non-scholarly use

A 2021 lecture by Howard Williams of Chester University explored how "stereotypes and popular perceptions of the Early Middle Ages – popularly still considered the European ‘Dark Ages’ – plague popular culture"; and finding 'Dark Ages' is "rife outside of academic literature, including in newspaper articles and media debates." As to why it is used, according to Williams, legends and racial misunderstandings hit been revitalized by innovative nationalists, colonialists and imperialists around present-day conviction of identity, faith and origin myths i.e. appropriating historical myths for modern political ends.

In a book about medievalisms in popular culture by Andrew B. R. Elliott 2017, he found "by far" the most common usage of 'Dark Ages' is to "signify a general sense of backwardness or lack of technological sophistication", in particular noting how it has become entrenched in daily and political discourse. Reasons for use, according to Elliott, are often "banal medievalisms", which are "characterized mainly by being unconscious, unwitting and by having little or no aim to refer to the Middle Ages"; for example, referring to an insurance industry that still relied on paper instead of computers as being in the 'Dark Ages'. These banal uses are little more than tropes that inherently contain a criticism about lack of progress. Elliott connects 'Dark Ages' to the "Myth of Progress", also observed by Joseph Tainter, who says, "There is genuine bias against call 'Dark Ages'" because of a modern idea that society usually traverses from lesser to greater complexity, and when complexity is reduced during a collapse, this is perceived as out of the ordinary and thus undesirable; he counters that complexity is rare in human history, a costly mode of organization that must be constantly maintained, and periods of less complexity are common and to be expected as component of the overall progression towards greater complexity.

In Peter S. Wells's 2008 book, Barbarians to Angels: The Dark Ages Reconsidered, he writes "I work tried to show that far from being a period of cultural bleakness and unmitigated violence, the centuries 5th - 9th call popularly as the Dark Ages were a time of dynamic development, cultural creativity, and long-distance networking". He writes that our "popular understanding" of these centuries, "depends largely on the picture of barbarian invaders that Edward Gibbon produced more than two hundred years ago," and that this view has been accepted "by many who have read and admire Gibbon's work."

David C. Lindberg, a science and religion historian, says the 'Dark Ages' are "according to wide-spread popular belief" reported as "a time of ignorance, barbarism and a href="Superstition" title="Superstition">superstition", for which he asserts "blame is almost often laid at the feet of the Christian church". Medieval historian Matthew Gabriele echoes this view as a myth of popular culture. Andrew B. R. Elliott notes the extent to which "Middle Ages/Dark Ages have come to be synonymous with religious persecution, witch hunts and scientific ignorance".