A term once used to describe the period of Western European history from c.500 to c.1000, but misleading because of its negative implications, probably due to the fall of the Roman empire, the subsequent migrations and invasions by Goths and other peoples, and the supposed lack of learning during the period. Knowledge from the ancient Romans survived only in a few monasteries and cathedral schools, while knowledge acquired from ancient Greek almost disappeared. Many of the artistic and technical skills (such as road- and bridge-building) were neglected. Nevertheless, the Dark Ages left a rich legacy of Ottonian and Celtic art and scholarship in N and W Europe, while in the E and S of the continent Byzantine and Arab civilizations flourished. Historians usually describe the whole period c.500c.1500 as the Middle Ages.
In historiography, the term Dark Ages or Dark Age most commonly refers to the European Early Middle Ages, the period encompassing (roughly) 476 to 1000.
This concept of a "Dark Age" was created by the Italian scholar Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) and was originally intended as a sweeping criticism of the character of Late Latin literature. Popular culture has further expanded on the term as a vehicle to depict the Middle Ages as a time of backwardness, extending its pejorative use and expanding its scope. Other terms of periodization have come to the fore: Late Antiquity, the Early Middle Ages and the Great Migrations, depending on which aspects of culture are being emphasized.
Most modern historians dismiss the notion that the era was a "Dark Age" by pointing out that this idea was based on ignorance of the period combined with popular stereotypes: many previous authors would simply assume that the era was a dismal time of violence and stagnation and use this assumption to prove itself.
In Britain and the United States, the phrase "Dark Ages" has occasionally been used by professionals, with severe qualification, as a term of periodization.
Petrarch and the "Dark Ages"
It is generally accepted that the term was invented by Petrarch in the 1330s. Classical Antiquity, so long considered the "dark age" for its lack of Christianity, was now seen by Petrarch as the age of "light" because of its cultural achievements, while Petrarch's time, lacking such cultural achievements, was now seen as the age of darkness. They saw history unfolding not along the religious outline of St. Augustine's Six Ages of the World, but in cultural (or secular) terms, through the progressive developments of Classical ideals, literature and art.
Petrarch wrote that history had had two periods: the Classic period of the Romans and Greeks, followed by a time of darkness, in which he saw himself as still living. The concept of the European Dark Ages thus began as an ideological campaign by humanists to promote Classical culture, and was therefore not a neutral historical analysis.
By the late 14th and early 15th century, humanists such as Leonardo Bruni believed they had attained this new age, and a third, Modern Age had begun. The age before their own, which Petrarch had labeled "Dark," had thus become a "Middle" Age between the Classic and the Modern.
The Dark Ages concept after the Renaissance
Historians prior to the 20th century wrote about the Middle Ages with a mixture of positive and negative, but mostly negative sentiment.
Reformation
During the Protestant Reformation of the 16th and 17th century, Protestants wrote of it as a period of Catholic corruption. In response to these attacks Roman Catholic reformers developed a counter image, depicting the age as a period of social and religious harmony, and not "dark" at all .
Enlightenment
During the 17th and 18th century, in the Age of Enlightenment, religion was seen as antithetical to reason. Because the Middle Ages was an "Age of Faith" when religion reigned, it was seen as a period contrary to reason, and thus contrary to the Enlightenment. Immanuel Kant and Voltaire were two Enlightenment writers who were vocal in attacking the religiously dominated Middle Ages as a period of social decline.
Yet just as Petrarch, seeing himself on the threshold of a "new age," was criticizing the centuries up until his own time, so too were the Enlightenment writers criticizing the centuries up until their own. Even if the early humanists after him no longer saw themselves living in a "dark" age, their times were still not "light" enough for 18th century writers who saw themselves as living in the real "age of Enlightenment," while the period covered by their own condemnation had extended and was focused also on what we now call Early Modern times.
In spite of this, the term "Middle" Ages, used by Biondo and other early humanists after Petrarch, was the name in general use before the 18th century to denote the period up until the Renaissance. The term "Dark Ages" was also in use, but by the 18th century tended to be confined to the earlier part of this "medieval" period. Starting and ending dates varied: the "Dark Ages" were considered by some to start in 410, by others in 476 when there was no longer an emperor in Rome itself, and to end about 800 at the time of the Carolingian Renaissance under Charlemagne, or to extend through the rest of the first millennium up until about the year 1000. The word "Gothic" had been a term of opprobrium akin to "Vandal," until a few self-confident mid-18th century English "goths" like Horace Walpole initiated the Gothic Revival in the arts, which for the following Romantic generation began to take on an idyllic image of the "Age of Faith." The Middle Ages were seen with romantic nostalgia as a period of social and environmental harmony and spiritual inspiration, in contrast to the excesses of the French Revolution and most of all to the environmental and social upheavals and sterile utilitarianism of the emerging industrial revolution. However, the period idealized by the Romantics focused largely on what we now call in English the High Middle Ages, extending into Early Modern times. To many users of the term, the scope of the "Dark Ages" was becoming divorced from this period, now denoting mainly the earlier centuries after the fall of Rome.
Modern academic use
When modern scholarly study of the Middle Ages arose in the 19th century, the term "Dark Ages" was at first kept, with all its critical overtones. Although it was never the more formal term (universities named their departments "medieval history", not "dark age history"), it was widely used, including in such classics as Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, where it expressed the author's contempt for "priest-ridden", superstitious, dark times. However the early 20th century saw a radical re-evaluation of the Middle Ages, and with it a calling into question of the terminology of darkness.
When the term "Dark Ages" is used by historians today, it is intended to be neutral, namely to express the idea that the events of the period often seem "dark" to us, due to the paucity of historical records compared with later times. However, since there is no shortage of information on the High and Late Middle Ages this required a narrowing of the reference to the Early Middle Ages. Late 5th and 6th century Britain for instance, at the height of the Saxon invasions, might well be numbered among "the darkest of the Dark Ages," with the equivalent of a near-total news blackout, in terms of historical records, compared with either the Roman era before or the centuries that followed. However, at this time the Byzantine Empire and the Abbasid Caliphate experienced Ages that were Golden rather than Dark; Ironically, while Petrarch's concept of a "Dark Age" corresponded to a mostly "Christian" period following pagan Rome, the neutral use of the term today applies mainly to those cultures least Christianized, and thus most sparsely covered by the Church's historians. Firstly, it is questionable whether it is possible to use the term "dark ages" effectively in a neutral way; Secondly, the explosion of new knowledge and insight into the history and culture of the Early Middle Ages which 20th-century scholarship has achieved means that these centuries are no longer dark even in the sense of "unknown to us".
Modern popular use
In modern times, the term "Dark Ages" is still used in popular culture. Petrarch's ideological campaign to paint the Middle Ages in a negative light worked so well that "Dark Ages" is still in popular use nearly 700 years later. While the classics programs remain strong, students of the Middle Ages are not nearly as common: for example the first medieval historian in the United States, Charles Haskins, was not recognized until the early 20th century, and the number of students of the Middle Ages remains to this day very small compared to the classics. Film and novels often use the term Dark Age with its implied meaning of a time less civilized than our own.
Historians today consider the negative connotations of the word "dark" in "Dark Ages" negates its usefulness as a description of history. Yet Petrarch's concept of it, like that of other early humanists after him, as a discrete period distinct from our "Modern" age, has endured, and the term still finds use, through various definitions, both in popular culture and academic discourse. When the darkness has been dispersed, our descendants can come again in the former pure radiance."—Petrarch "The Middle Ages is an unfortunate term.
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