Madonna and Child, Book of Kells (Leabhar Cheanannais), c. 800 CE
10 January 2023
The Dark Ages (sometimes found in the singular) is a deprecated term for the period in Europe from around the year 500 to about 1100 CE, that is the early medieval period. The name comes from the belief that it was a period of little intellectual or cultural enlightenment, a regression from the heights achieved under the Roman Empire.
As applied to c. 500–1100, the term is a misnomer and has largely been abandoned by professional historians. While it is true that knowledge of classical texts was diminished in northern Europe, the period saw advances in architecture, astronomy, philosophy, and theology; there was poetry and art. The Dark Ages is tied in with the myth of Rome’s “fall” and of the Renaissance of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It’s not to say that Rome wasn’t sacked in 472 or that the later cultural flowering in Italy didn’t happen, but rather that these weren’t unique or special events. Rome was sacked multiple times, and the Roman empire continued to exist throughout the medieval period. And renaissances had happened before and would happen after.
Over the centuries, the term dark ages has undergone a number of shifts and refinements in its meaning. It has referred to the early Middle Ages and the entire span of the Middle Ages (c. 500–c. 1500). In early Protestant writing, dark ages was often used to refer to the supremacy of the Roman Catholic Church prior to the Reformation. And the term is also used generically, referring to any period dominated by ignorance, superstition, or repression.
While he did not use the term dark ages itself, the concept of such a period was first promulgated by Petrarch in the mid fourteenth century. While he does not specify the time period with any precision, Petrarch was referring to what we today would call the early Middle Ages. In his poem Africa, c. 1343, he writes:
Michi degere vitam.
Impositum varia rerum turbante procella.
At tibi fortassis, si—quod mens sperat et optat—
Es post me victura diu, meliora supersunt
Secula: non omnes veniet Letheus in annos
Iste sopor! Poterunt discussis forte tenebris
Ad purum priscumque inbar remeare nepotes,(My fate is to live amid 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. This sleep of forgetfulness will not last forever. When the darkness has been dispersed, our descendants can come again in the former pure radiance.)
But the earliest use of the phrase dark ages itself is in reference to a vague period in the past when theological understanding was not as advanced and rote ritual took precedence. Protestant cleric John Rainolds uses it in a 1584 tract:
But to pray to God in wordes not vnderstoode, like popiniayes, or parrats, it is so absurd a matter in reason, so wicked in religion, so contrary to the expresse co[m]mandement of the Lord, & iudgement of the Apostle, and practise of the church, I say not of the church of the Iewes, or of the Syrians, or of the Greekes, or of the Latins, but the church generally, euen of all churches from the beginning of the world till the darke ages in which the Barbarians of late did ouerflow them: that such as doo vse it, may bee thought to doate; such as defende it, seeme to haue a lust to bee madd with reason.
Writing in Latin, Caesar Baronius would refer to the tenth century as a dark age in his volume ten of his Annales Ecclesiastici, published in 1603. He is the first to say the period was dark due to its lack of writing and scholarship:
En incipit annus Redemptoris nongentesimus tertia Indictione notatus, quo & nouum inchoatur saeculum, quod sui asperitate ac boni sterilitate ferreum, malique exundatis deformatate plumbeum, atque inopia scriptorium appellari con sueuit obscurum.
(Now begins the ninetieth year of the Redeemer marked by a third Indictment, and which begins a new age that is agreed to be called iron because of its harshness and sterility of good, called lead because of the deformity of the outpouring of evil, and called dark because of its lack of writings.)
Scottish scholar James Maxwell would use the phrase in 1611 The Golden Art to refer to an undefined past when theological understanding was less advanced:
Of such bagge-bearing I[u]dases, now a daies there is not a few, who will bestowe nothing vpon Christ and his seruants themselues, and yet grudge at the charitie and liberalitie of others, and blame the good and godly men of the former times, for bestowing of their goods, lands, and liuings, vpon the Church. Let a man talke with these bagge-bearing Church-banes, touching the great care the good men of old haue had to supply the wants, and relieue the necessities of Gods ministers, by their charitable donations, and liberall endowments; they will tell you againe, that they were silly simple idiots, that liued in the time of darkenesse and ignorance, and knewe not what they did. And yet S. Iohn saith, that hee that loueth his brother, abideth in the light; And who loued their brethren more then these, that were so charitable vnto the poore, and so beneficiall vnto the seruants of God?
But let it be so as they say, that they liued in a darke age, for so me thinketh it was in some respect, if it bee compared with ours, (wherein, to speake with a moderne Diuine, there is more science, and lesse conscience, then was in theirs).
A good example of a Protestant writer using dark ages to refer to the pre-Reformation Catholic Church is Daniel Featley’s 1624 The Romish Fisher Caught and Held in His Own Net:
Omnia naturae contraria legibus ibunt [All will go contrary to the laws of nature]; that so hee might the better lurke in the darke and muddy age next before Luther. Which the Opponent iustly suspecting, resolued to hold to the high way and fayre tracke of naturall method, intending thereby to draw him into the cleare streame of Antiquity, beginning at the fountaine in the first age. But this, Master Fisher would by no meanes indure, hoping, that hee might lye hid (tanquam Sepia in atramento suo, like the Scuttle-fish in her owne inke) in those darke ages next or neere before Luther: whereas being beaten vp into the cleerer streame of the first ages, hee would easily bee discerned, and soone caught.
The earliest use of the term in English to specifically refer to the early Middle Ages is Nathaniel Stephens’s 1656 A Plain and Easie Calculation of the Name, Mark, and Number of the Name of the Beast:
But passing by the multitude of examples that might be given, for their sakes who in these times do slight the Scriptures, and hang upon Revelations, we will come to a pregnant instance in the Tenth Century. This for the most part is called by Writers The dark age. Bellarmine and Baronius themselves do mourn over it, for the want of learning. But for my part, I do believe, it was not so much defective in these things, as it did abound in Revelations, Visions, Dreams, and such-like, by and through which Satan had a very great power in the Consciences of people.
One should avoid using dark ages to refer to the early medieval period. It’s arbitrary and inaccurate.
Sources:
Baronius, Caesar. Annales Ecclesiastici, vol. 10. Cologne: Ioan. Gymnici and Antonii Hierati, 1603, 741. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Featley, Daniel. The Romish Fisher Caught and Held in His Own Net. London: Humphrey Lownes and William Stansby for Robert Milbourne, 1624, 36. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Gabriele, Matthew and David M. Perry. The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe. New York: HarperCollins, 2021, 245–46.
Maxwell, James. The Golden Art. London: F. Kingston for William Leake, 1611, 193. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Mommsen, Theodor E. “Petrarch’s Conception of the ‘Dark Ages.’” Speculum, 17.2, April 1942, 226–242 at 240.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, December 2021, s.v. dark ages, n.
Petrie, Alexander. A Compendious History of the Catholick Church from the Year 600 untill the Year 1600 Shewing Her Deformation and Reformation. The Hague: Adrian Vlack, 1657, 210. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Rainolds, John. “Conclusions Handled in Divinitie Schoole, the III. of November 1579.” The Summe of the Conference Betwene Iohn Rainoldes and Iohn Hart Touching the Head and the Faith of the Church. London: George Bishop, 1584, 731. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Stephens, Nathaniel. A Plain and Easie Calculation of the Name, Mark, and Number of the Name of the Beast. London: Ja. Cottrel for Matth. Keynson, Nath. Heathcote, and Hen. Fletcher, 1656, 261–62. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Image credit: Dublin, Trinity College Library, MS 58, fol. 7v. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain as a mechanical reproduction of a public domain work.