Comment by orthoganol
10 years ago
> The Roman Empire did fall, and was followed by the Dark Ages
Rome didn't "fall", the "Dark Ages" weren't "dark." Those are oversimplifications from historians centuries ago, a point emphasized in most introductory history classes.
> the "Dark Ages" weren't "dark."
I don't know. With the cognitive relativism of our times, we want to make sure each civilisation, and each of its ages, are "equal". They certainly can be equally interesting for studies, but if we take a simple way to measure its effect on the human race by checking out how many books that are still read today have been written during these periods, you'll see that ancient Greece and Rome (and ancient China, and French enligthment) have been periods of great fertility, while for the normally educated man it is hard to find more than 2 or 3 books from the Middle Age that are still read and having influence nowadays.
So, at least following a few similar criteria, the Dark Ages were "dark". And it is not very surprising: when all the intelligensia spend almost all its brain power in obscure religious debates, you get very few results.
Really how many works from Greece and Rome are still widely read today? The Aeneid, Odyssey are as obscure as Beowulf or Canterbury Tales in terms of who actually reads them certainly if your standard is the "normally educated man". Plus writing off Augustine, Aquinas et al as having "obscure religious debates" is rather churlish. The morality developed during that period, combined with governmental changes formed the basis for the political / legal system which now governs most of the world. I'd much rather their debates happened rather than live under Greek, Roman or Chinese systems.
If by obscure, you mean that tens if not hundreds of thousands of high school and college students read all or part of them every year, and that their themes and motifs permeate our culture and still underly our understanding of governance, mathematics, and even Science, then yeah...they're obscure.
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The basis of political and legal system in Latin Europe is Roman jurisdiction, as far as I know.
I don't think your claim that "all the intelligensia spend almost all its brain power in obscure religious debates" is very realistic. For one thing, the concept of university is clearly a medieval invention.
Lots and lots of innovation was done during Middle Ages, as was interesting philosophy. Ancient Rome and Greece get the attention because they are the oldest stuff that is somewhat preserved, not because they would not have been surpassed in the following centuries.
Not sure I agree. In many domains of science, politic and arts, not only middle ages didn't surpass the ancient times, they were even a regression. Some domains that come to mind: sculpture, architecture, mathematics, theater, law, philosophy, poetry...
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It's a bit of a myth that mediaeval philosophers spent all of their time discussing obscure points of religious doctrine.
Well they did spend quite some time discussing the trinity and the virginity of Mary. Also there was this problem with stillborn babies: but baptised, they wouldn't go to the paradise, but how could they go to hell if they didn't have time to commit their first sin? Big debates... So they invented the limbo, just for this special corner case. (As a developer I see this as very smelly, the abstraction was leaking too much)
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There is a bit of a selection bias at play. The selection of ancient Greece and Rome are in a large part due to those dark-age intelligentsia; they and their successors picked those books to be the basis of knowledge.
Most of these classics, especially the Greek ones, were forgotten in Western Europe of the middle ages. They were preserved in the Byzantine and Muslim cultures and were reintroduced to the West starting from the 12th Century, a process which culminated in the Renaissance.
when all the intelligensia spend almost all its brain power in obscure religious debates, you get very few results.
What's great about this sentence is how it brings the whole narrative full circle, back to fascism and Germany.
The Papacy in the middle ages was basically a fascist institution - ridiculing and condemning anyone that didn't agree with it.
But it wasn't till the 16th century that a German named Martin Luther dealt that fascist regime a serious blow by nailing some thoughts to a Cathedral door.
Luther wasn't the first to have those thoughts, though. He was simply the first credible mind to have those thoughts outside the sphere of influence of the Pope. The German politics Luther lived under enabled him to contradict the Papacy without fear of punishment.
> the Dark Ages were "dark".
In Europe perhaps, but there's a whole world out there.
Certainly, for example Tang dynasty was a golden age in China.
Rome disintegrated, and if the sacking of a once glorious capital by the various tribes of Europe isn't a "fall", I'm not sure what is.
The Dark Ages weren't "dark" in the sense that many understand them, but they were a period of fragmented power, small empires, and warring dynasties - much as much of the Roman period was, but the fact that their structure disintegrated is undeniable.
In their case, it all tied back to lines of communication and an increasingly inefficient taxation system, which lead to declining revenues for Rome, rot at the fringes, and eventual atomisation.
Many will argue the Roman Empire just shifted to the East where it continued to have an impressive, long-lived empire. You certainly can argue the Western Roman Empire declined over a period of centuries, but that is nothing like a 'fall.'
The 'dark ages' witnessed the high mark of Western Christendom, which had its own fascinating form of 'international' unity and an impressive legacy of achievements, and it certainly shaped modern Europe. I mean, I think everyone knows that 'Dark ages' is a made up label from centuries ago during the Enlightenment era.
Either way, neither of those labels are endorsed by any serious modern historian as far as I know.
> The 'dark ages' witnessed the high mark of Western Christendom,
And quite a number of low marks in terms of industrial production, technical knowledge, public health, collective wealth, individual freedoms and so on. In fact, without the rising Arab civilization undertaking huge efforts to acquire and preserve what the Western countries were discarding as "unchristian", we would have lost even more knowledge than we did.
There are so many reasons the "dark" attribute stuck and survived for almost 700 years (it wasn't an Enlightenment construct but rather a Renaissance one, although technically coined even earlier). It might be too generic a term to survive the contemporary level of analytical debate of history, but ignoring it would be a disservice to the cause of science and progress.
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"I mean, I think everyone knows that 'Dark ages' is a made up label from centuries ago during the Enlightenment era."
Actually, the idea comes from Petrarch, who was a late Mediaeval writer who was upset at the disrespect paid to ancient Latin and Greek literature and culture during the Migration and Mediaeval periods. Of course, Renaissance, Reformation, and Enlightenment intellectuals all picked up on the idea for their own reasons.
> Many will argue the Roman Empire just shifted to the East where it continued to have an impressive, long-lived empire.
It is a historic fact that Constantine the Great moved the capital of the Roman Empire in 330 to Constantinople, where it remained the center of the Empire for the next 1100 years.
By the time Rome was sacked, the center of the Roman empire was for several hundred years already in the east.
To be more precise in Nova Roma or Constantinople (modern day Istanbul) and this since the 11th May 330.
It remained the center of the Roman empire until 1453, this was long after the Roman culture in the west was almost completely destroyed. (and with it western Christianity turned into a tool of oppression)
So while the West during these times faced oppression and feudalism, the Roman empire certainly did not.
Indeed. The only reason to still consider certain parts of the Middle Ages as "dark", particularity the early portion, is the due to the lack of contemporary sources. The Merovingian Kingdoms of the seventh century, for example, are genuinely hard to study because we've lost so much.
The term "dark" should not be used, as it still much too frequently is, as some negative value judgment that covers a thousand year period which encompassed hundreds of different societies and cultures spanning an entire continent.
It is understandable why people think this way, since European history (at least in the United States and Canada) is still largely taught in a way that skims over the Middle Ages: check out how awesome Greece and Rome were, then, well, the Middle Ages when they had these grand churches, but who cares because then came the Renaissance when everything was cool again.
I've taught European Medieval history survey courses at the university level and one of the most difficult challenges was getting this idea of a horrible "dark" age dispelled from the students' minds. This is not to say that everything was somehow great or that all ages are "equal" in "value" (whatever that really means), but you can not begin to study a period of history without facing your own preconceptions of it (and, really, your own society).
There's been a lot of recent interest in this topic. For example: http://www.amazon.com/The-Fall-Rome-And-Civilization/dp/0192...
Summary is that though Rome didn't fall overnight, there was a massive economic collapse first in the west and then several centuries later in the east (the latter coming on the heals of a devastating outbreak of the plague).