The Middle Ages were allegedly described as 'The Dark Ages' by none less than Petrarch, and the quotation has ever since been used out of context to describe this very long era as a period of decline in culture. This has brought about a rationale which has influenced our exploration of the Middle Ages enormously. Still, the most common perception of the period is one of 'cultural darkness'. That is the consequence of biased historiography. Only recently, Medievalists have started to challenge this notion.
Back to the great poet: he described his times as dark in comparison with the Classical Era, not as an absolute statement. Oddly enough, the Ancient Greeks would have described their own time in similar ways, as they believed the world had had a Golden Age (which Archeology is finally starting to uncover, with cities under the waters that must be about 12,000 years old, and with the discovery that writing was not invented by the Sumerians, on the contrary, there is evidence that the whole planet, from the Americas to East Asia, used a common writing much before the Sumerians, on the other hand, Plato tells us so, and to ignore Plato is always a cultural capital crime).
Certainly, for a person in the Middle Ages, especially in Italy, the evidence of a 'superior' civilisation was all around them: the Mother of the World, Rome, Urbs, The City, had shrunk from a colossal metropolis (don't listen to the 1,000,000 people I have read around, the census said 1.5 million, and that excludes slaves, who were not people, but the simplest of things escape scrutiny) to a town, ruins were everywhere. Architecturally and financially, the world seemed in decline. Yet, we must remember that the concentration of power in one place brings about colossal engineering works: London would not be the huge metropolis it is if Britain had not had an empire. The world had de facto fragmented, smaller principalities could not measure up to the might of Rome. This 'inferiority complex' was also made stronger by the collapse of the road system and the establishment of the feudal system, which prevented people from travelling.
Yet, the Midfle Ages did have a proliferation of culture: the proble I'm that this happened in monasteries, and was not available to many. While Rome recycled some of her power to 'appease the masses', while Rome wanted to stun the masses with her engineering and architectural might, monasteries wanted to 'preserve' culture. Here, preservation had two meanings, one being the 'keeping' the other, 'keeping for themselves'. With a political system that could not stand up to the rise of new ideas and ideologies among the masses, culture was was seen as dangerous when spread. But it did continue to develop. Certainly not at the rate of the heyday of the Roman Empire, and not in the same direction, but it did.
Another ridiculous idea we have of the Middle Ages is, for example, that they believed the world was flat. How many of us have been told this stupid lie? It's become a common phrase. No way: the world was always represented as a sphere in the Middle Ages, look at any painting of Christ holding the world, and you will see that it is a sphere. The misconception that the world was flat comes from maps (but maps were not so much navigational tools as spiritual ones), which were (oddly enough as they are nowadays) flat, but also included countries and islands that we insisted on thinking they did not know of.
Both the beginning and the end of the Middle Ages are marked precisely, but with incorrect dates. The Roman Empire did not fall in 476 AD: on the contrary, the coronation of the first German Emperor, Theodoric, in 476, was followed by a rise in living standards, restoration of infrastructure and revival of culture: the Roman Empire, in fact, technically never fell, we shall remember that the Pope simply took over as Roman Emperor, and the empire was replaced by the Church (even if falsifying documents). Inreality though, the Western Roman Empire did disintegrate and faded away between the 6th and the 9th Centuries, almost imperceptibly. If you had asked anyone in Europe where they lived, they would have said in the Roman Empire. But things had changed.
The end of the Middle Ages is set with an ironic date, the Discovery of America, 1492 AD. Odd: the Americas had already been discovered and partly colonised by the Templars almost two centuries before. Odd, that date sets the beginning of the Renaissance, yet Leonardo, the face (the mind) of the Renaissance, was an old man by then... The Renaissance had already started, bit only, by 1492, most of what the Renaissance brought to the world, had already been discovered.
The Middle Ages, are dark because our mind is filtered with a dark screen when describing them.
Back to the great poet: he described his times as dark in comparison with the Classical Era, not as an absolute statement. Oddly enough, the Ancient Greeks would have described their own time in similar ways, as they believed the world had had a Golden Age (which Archeology is finally starting to uncover, with cities under the waters that must be about 12,000 years old, and with the discovery that writing was not invented by the Sumerians, on the contrary, there is evidence that the whole planet, from the Americas to East Asia, used a common writing much before the Sumerians, on the other hand, Plato tells us so, and to ignore Plato is always a cultural capital crime).
Certainly, for a person in the Middle Ages, especially in Italy, the evidence of a 'superior' civilisation was all around them: the Mother of the World, Rome, Urbs, The City, had shrunk from a colossal metropolis (don't listen to the 1,000,000 people I have read around, the census said 1.5 million, and that excludes slaves, who were not people, but the simplest of things escape scrutiny) to a town, ruins were everywhere. Architecturally and financially, the world seemed in decline. Yet, we must remember that the concentration of power in one place brings about colossal engineering works: London would not be the huge metropolis it is if Britain had not had an empire. The world had de facto fragmented, smaller principalities could not measure up to the might of Rome. This 'inferiority complex' was also made stronger by the collapse of the road system and the establishment of the feudal system, which prevented people from travelling.
Yet, the Midfle Ages did have a proliferation of culture: the proble I'm that this happened in monasteries, and was not available to many. While Rome recycled some of her power to 'appease the masses', while Rome wanted to stun the masses with her engineering and architectural might, monasteries wanted to 'preserve' culture. Here, preservation had two meanings, one being the 'keeping' the other, 'keeping for themselves'. With a political system that could not stand up to the rise of new ideas and ideologies among the masses, culture was was seen as dangerous when spread. But it did continue to develop. Certainly not at the rate of the heyday of the Roman Empire, and not in the same direction, but it did.
Another ridiculous idea we have of the Middle Ages is, for example, that they believed the world was flat. How many of us have been told this stupid lie? It's become a common phrase. No way: the world was always represented as a sphere in the Middle Ages, look at any painting of Christ holding the world, and you will see that it is a sphere. The misconception that the world was flat comes from maps (but maps were not so much navigational tools as spiritual ones), which were (oddly enough as they are nowadays) flat, but also included countries and islands that we insisted on thinking they did not know of.
Both the beginning and the end of the Middle Ages are marked precisely, but with incorrect dates. The Roman Empire did not fall in 476 AD: on the contrary, the coronation of the first German Emperor, Theodoric, in 476, was followed by a rise in living standards, restoration of infrastructure and revival of culture: the Roman Empire, in fact, technically never fell, we shall remember that the Pope simply took over as Roman Emperor, and the empire was replaced by the Church (even if falsifying documents). Inreality though, the Western Roman Empire did disintegrate and faded away between the 6th and the 9th Centuries, almost imperceptibly. If you had asked anyone in Europe where they lived, they would have said in the Roman Empire. But things had changed.
The end of the Middle Ages is set with an ironic date, the Discovery of America, 1492 AD. Odd: the Americas had already been discovered and partly colonised by the Templars almost two centuries before. Odd, that date sets the beginning of the Renaissance, yet Leonardo, the face (the mind) of the Renaissance, was an old man by then... The Renaissance had already started, bit only, by 1492, most of what the Renaissance brought to the world, had already been discovered.
The Middle Ages, are dark because our mind is filtered with a dark screen when describing them.