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My friend and Housemate Sevenn began a wonderful thread on the VR interest in the period known as the Dark Ages - that period covering the fall of the Roman Empire in the West in 476 AD to the birth of the Renaissance in Italy in the 14th century AD.
What began as a post turned into this article. This is an edited - slightly - version of that post. I hope you find it interesting.
Note to all: I do not claim to be an authority on this subject.
The term Dark Ages comes to us from Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) whome many historians and literary critics label the Father of Humanism. He was born in Firenze (Florence) in 1304. It was his family's hope that he would become a lawyer. Petrarch however had developed and unquenchable love for the ancient texts of the great Greek and Roman writers, historians, and philosophers. Petrarch, like many of his contemporaries believed that ancient Greece and Rome were the ideal of the human condition. They believed that these great humanistic cultures would return to lighten the world.
The following quotes should illustrate Petrarch's thoughts on antiquity and also the times in which he lived. Essentially, Petrarch looked backward to the future.
"What else, then, is all history, but the praise of Rome?"
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"Each famous author of antiquity whom I recover places a new offence and another cause of dishonour to the charge of earlier generations, who, not satisfied with their own disgraceful barrenness, permitted the fruit of other minds, and the writings that their ancestors had produced by toil and application, to perish through insufferable neglect. Although they had nothing of their own to hand down to those who were to come after, they robbed posterity of its ancestral heritage."
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"My fate is to live among varied and confusing storms. But for you perhaps, if as I hope and wish you will live long after me, there will follow a better age. When the darkness has been dispersed, our descendants can come again in the former pure radiance."
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While the general assessment of parts of Dark Ages is true, it is not a complete picture. Rather, the term Dark Ages has come down to us from Petrarch - an Italian held in great esteem by nobility, through later historians who did not fully understand nor have knowledge of the condition of the known world - i.e. what WAS the Roman Empire. I shall, for the purpose of this discussion coin a word "westerncentric".
I define westerncentric thus: Criticism and interpretation that fails to account for any and all events and progress of the east - in this case the Eastern (Byzantine) Roman Empire.
In addition, I want to give a few examples of the fallacious term Dark Ages and show why historians have been systematically moving away from this prejudicial term. It is also important to bear in mind that it is a mistake to believe that belief in God and adherence to Christianity denoted darkness ESPECIALLY in the Byzantine Empire.
By the 5th century the great Roman Empire had divided into East and West. The dividing line was roughly drawn through the Adriatic Sea just east of modern Italy. Whilst Rome hel a position of primacy she was in steady decline due to decadence. The excesses of these later emperors such as Diocletian and most notoriously Caligula show a darkness much worse than the so called Dark Ages. In the East, the Empire flourished. Rome was sacked in 410 AD by Alaric and in 476, the puppet emperor Honorius came to the purple. Historians mark 476 AD as the end of the Western Roman Empire.
I offer some material from Washington State University studies of the Byzantine Empire:
" It is not possible to effectually distinguish between the later empire in Rome and the Byzantine empire centered around Constantinople. For the Byzantines were the Roman Empire, not simply a continuation of it in the East. The capital city, Constantinople, had been founded as the capital of Rome by the Emperor Constantine, but a uniquely Greek or Byzantine character to the Roman Empire can be distinguished as early as Diocletian. When Rome was seized by Goths, this was a great blow to the Roman Empire, but it didn't effectively end it. Although Rome was under the control of foreigners who themselves claimed to be continuing the empire, the Byzantine empire continued as before, believing themselves to be the Roman Empire.
Over the centuries, however, Byzantium evolved into a very different civilization. The eastern Empire had always had a predominately Greek character, but the Byzantines through the course of the first millenium AD had to deal with cultural influences and political threats from European cultures, Asian cultures and, primarily, Islam after the seventh century.
Through the later Middle Ages, however, Byzantium both gradually declined politically and became more isolated from the rest of Europe. While the last centuries of the European Middle Ages saw the consolidation of the idea of Europe and the incorporation of European cultures into a larger, overarching European monoculture, Byzantium was left out of this new European concept. By the beginning of the modern period, when "Europe" had become a solid, cultural idea, Byzantine had come to an end with the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople.
Byzantine history, then, stretches in a continuous line from the latter centuries of Rome to the very beginning of the modern period. It transmited the classical culture of Greece and Rome but it also developed a unique historical and cultural character based on a synthesis of Greek, Roman, European, and Islamic elements.
JUSTINIAN Most historians consider the reign of Justinian (527-565) as marking a significant break with the Roman past. This is difficult to support—Justinian not only considered himself the emperor of all of Rome, including the territories occupied by the Goths, but also spoke Latin as his primary language.
After the fall of Rome, the Byzantine emperors never gave over the idea of reconquering Rome. They did, however, take a lesson from the fall of Rome and all throughout the fifth century, the Byzantine emperors wrought a series of administrative and financial reforms. They produced the single most extensive corpus of Roman law in 425 and reformed taxation dramatically. Most importantly, however, they did not entrust their military to German generals—this had been the downfall of the Latin portion of the empire. They could not, however, maintain a powerful military—the loss of territory in the west had dramatically shrunk their financial resources.
Justinian was perhaps the last emperor that seriously entertained notions of reconquering the west—the institution of the western emperor fell permanently vacant in 476 and the Byzantine emperors claimed as theirs. His expeditions against Italy, however, failed. Although he conquered North Africa and retook Italy from the Ostrogoths, this Gothic War drained the Byzantine Empire of much-needed resources. Most importantly, the Gothic War devestated Italy economically. The economic destruction of Italy was so total that it destroyed Italian urban culture for centuries. The great cities of Rome and her allies would be abandoned as Italy would fall into a long period of backwardness. The impoverishment of Italy and the drain on Byzantium made it impossible for the Byzantines to hold Italy—only three years after the death of Justinian, the Italian territories fell into the hands of another Germanic tribe, the "Long Beards," or Langobardi (Lombards)"
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What is important to bear in mind is that Byzantium, while having to deal with some measure of external conflict, did not have to bear the brunt of it. The opulence of Rome attracted the barbarian Huns, and various Gothic tribes. NOTE to our "Goths": the Goths of which I speak were NOT Goths in the modern sense. *Grins*
Byzantine culture flourished and because it was the Eastern Roman Empire, the conclusion is that the Roman Empire did not truly end until the fall of Byzantium to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 AD.
Christianity grew exponentially in the East and co-existed peacefully with Greek and Roman ideals. Indeed, to this day, the Orthodox Church recognises the importance of Socrates and Plato as progenitors of monotheism in Ancient Greece and in the oldest of Churches dating back to the time of Justinian one can frequently find mosaics and ikons of Socrates and Plato.
Byzantine architecture is STILL an area of study that draws many many academics. Byzantine art and music thrive to this very day and are the subjects of their own academic disciplines. In a very real sense then, Byzantium stands as a formidable and radiant example of the paucity of truth that grew out of the westerncentric historical exegesis.
Ok you say, but Vlad, what about the West? Was it is deplorable as historians have held? My answer is no.
Even a cursory reading of ANY history; American or European or Asian reveals quite clearly that when ANY great Empire or political entity falls there is ALWAYS a period of unrest, upheaval, and yes, even a time of relative darkness. Remember that in the West the greatest Empire ever known had collapsed through inner decadence and political corruption and external invasion. In the time of Christ up to the reign of Marcus Aurelius, Rome was in her Golden Age. After the death of Aurelius, the darkness actually began WITH Rome who in the West was still two centuries away from collapse.
Thus we return to Petrarch and the term Dark Ages. Remember that Petrarch and others believed that the ideal humanism of antiquity would rise again. Interestingly enough, the early Christians had believed that the return of Christ was imminent as well. I like the parallel.
So, what DID occur during the Dark Ages of the West? Let's do a short list, shall we?
Plague and war and famine of course. But what else might we find to lighent the Darkness culturally?
The 18 volume Instructionis Grammaticae by Priscian codifies Latin grammar and will be the source used throughout the Middle Ages. Misuse of grammar is referred to as "breaking Priscian's head.
The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius. This work uses poetry and prose to expound upon Neo-Platonism and Stoicism. "For in all adversity of fortune the worst sort of misery is to have been happy"
The completion of the great Hagia Sofia
Gildas's "De Excidio et Conquestu Brittaniae" is a history of Britain written by this 26 year old .
"The Ostrographia" by Flavius Magnus Cassiodorus is an account of Ostrogothic rule in Italia.
Incresed food production and a resultant population explosion due to this
The great classic Beowulf is completed circa 699 AD
The building of the architectural masterpiece Mont Saint-Michel begins in 709 AD
773 narks the beginning of British Literature by Bede with his "Historia Gentis Anglorum"
The rise of Charlemagne and the beginning of the Holy Roman Empire.
778 AD saw the rise of the French epic "Chanson de Roland" (Song of Roland). It is the beginning of a great body of medieval French literature.
"The Life of Alfred the Great" is written
Greenland and Iceland are discovered during the 9th century
Modern musical notation and form is developed during these Dark Ages, breaking away from the plainsong chant of the early Western church.
Troubadour music begins circa 1150.
I promised a short list, and there I shall stop. But let us include in closing the towering works of Chaucer, especially the Canterbury Tales (which were NOT a religious collection of tales. Ask me if you are interested), the "Brut" by Layamon which, along with other contemporary works continued to build upon the story of the 5th century Sarmatian warlord known as Artorius (King Arthur).
Finally, during ALL of this time in the West, the monastics were painstakingly preserving the great works of antiquity in beautifully illuminated manuscripts.
Historians now generally agree that the Dark Ages is a term of ignorance based upon the lack of knowledge of the time. There IS no denying that plagues and many wars swept through the West - and East during that time. But the ensuing Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment were even more bloody. The horrible murderous excesses of the protestant despot reformer and lawyer John Calvin did much more damamge in the Age of Reason than the excesses of princes and popes of the Dark Ages. Look at the 20th century if you want REAL darkness - at least in terms of bloodshed and ignorance. Two world wars, the Holocaust, the killing fields of Pol Pot, the unrelenting terror of Stalin and the 40 million who perished under his rule.
It is easy to blame religion as the cause of the ills of the early and middle post Roman era. But, as I have shown at least briefly, Byzantium refutes the notion that religion = ignorance.
If anything, history teaches us that reason has caused JUST as much misery.
So, a LONG treatise, and yet I too am fascinated by the trappings of the Medieval Era. There is so much richness to be studied. For those interested in learning more of the time, and of practices such as Chivalry, I can recomend no better source than Barbara Tuchman's masterful "A Distant Mirror".
Phew!! Thank you for bearing with me. I hope I have given some fodder for further discussion.
A suggested reading list is available if you message me.
Vlad.
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