Dark Ages?

The Dark Ages means that there are no historical documents for a period so historians have little idea of what is happening. Europe slipped into such a period gradually beginning in the 4th century . It was at it's worst in the 5th and 6th century with the collapse of the western Roman Empire, but was not evenly distributed. Britain in the 5th and 6th century was the worst. Italy France and Spain less so. This web site discusses Britain but it will link you to other similar sites for the Dark Ages

http://www.vortigernstudies.org.uk/

Hey thanks!

The "Dark Ages" is something of a misnomer. The period that lasted from the 4th/5th to the 14th/15th centuries CE (about a thousand years), is better termed the European Medieval Period. Generally, the Medieval Period lasted from the end of the Roman Empire until the Renaissance. There is no common consensus as to exactly when the period began, or ended.

As the Western Roman Empire fell into chaos, Europe fragmented and record keeping became haphazard. As centralized administration was lost things like the road and monetary systems became localized. With the loss of Roman authority and law, European civilization became destabilized as local "nationalities" and chieftains struggled for power. Within a relatively short time, a few hundred years, a new European stability began to emerge, but remained somewhat fragmented.

The system that developed is called feudalism. A hierarchy of obligation from peasantry to kings dominated an everyday life that was largely agricultural, with periods of almost ritualistic warfare between neighboring fiefs. Kings and nobles held their places supported and blessed by the Church, which itself had become very structured. Literacy fell drastically. Literacy survived, along with many ancient records, in monasteries. The focus of learning was however, mostly on the religious doctrines of the Church. Monumental building continued and by the late Medieval Period Europe had constructed the Cathedrals that still inspire awe. This was a very stable system, and some exceptional religious thinking did occur. By the 13 century many scholars of the period argue that precursors of the Renaissance were evident.

What ended the thousand years of European stability? There is no single simple answer to that. At least partially, I believe, the appearance of the Bubonic Plague and the devastation it caused progressively throughout Europe was the straw that broke the camel's back. Decimation of the population completely destabilized the economic system, made physical labor more valuable, and freed up considerable wealth. The agrarian system was shaken as land ownership shifted, and the feudal system became strained. In many ways the Plague WAS the end of the world that existed with little change since the end of Pax Roma. Into that vacuum came new ideas about the world, and Man's place in it. Ancient learning reappeared from Muslim archives. New ideas, especially if they were labor saving and profitable, got a fair trial. Printer's ink and gunpowder may have eventually appeared even without the Plague, but whether they would have had the same impact on society is less clear.

Oh well ... hope that helps.

Under historians here in Europe, no-one calls the Middle Ages 'dark ages' but this term is only referred to the period Acquiunk refers to.

To call the medieval period 'dark ages' is more the kind, popular books and tabloids name it.

Besides that, I think, Asherman's response summs up the end of Middle Ages quite well.

I had always considered the "dark ages" to be roughly equivalent to the Gothic, which is to say, post-Roman, pre-HRE, period of western European history. But what do i know?

Yes, let us know what you know... :wink:

Fascinating!
The plague did come up in our conversation, but I knew that that happened in the later Middle Ages.

Sorry, I hadn't realized "dark ages" were synonymous with "middle ages"
I thought "dark ages" indicated a time between the fall of the roman empire and the middle ages.
Good learning experience.

So - let me get this straight (kind of)
As the Roman Empire became more and more unstable, the lands that had been within their domain, so to speak, were now left to their own devices, allowing them to form their own more localized systems.
The Catholic Church power grew during this time. Written information was preserved in monasteries and the like. However, new records were not written very much, so not as much is known about this exact time period.

Enter the Plague. THAT I've done some reading on.
Most of the population of Europe was killed by the bubonic plague, thereby "cleaning house". I don't know how else to say it.
Those that were left started delveloping new technology, and it was utilized more effectively as it was more necessary what with their being many less people.
If the plague had not occurred, perhaps these new methods would not have been developed, as there would have been no need.

Is that fairly accurate?

I understand that the plague effected some areas of Europe less than others - like Italy. I suppose that's why the Renaissance got a stronger hold there?

OK - here's another one - What were the major influences that caused the Roman Empire to become unstable?

There's a couple of problems here. The first is to ask what one means by the Roman empire. That may seem disingenuous, but it's not. Constantine founded a second capital at Constantinople--formerly the Greek trading city of Byzantium, and now modern day Istanbul--and very wisely split the imperial administration into an eastern and a western duality. Each office and officer in the west was mirrored in the east. Additionally, the administrative center in the west was moved from Rome to Ravenna. Ravenna, on the Adriatic sea, therefore had direct communications with Constantinople, and with Illyria--one day to become Yugoslavia--which was the recruiting ground for the legions, with Gaul (France) declining as a result of too-heavy recruiting. Many people naïvely acribed the "fall of the Roman empire" to the sack of Rome by Alaric and his Goths in 410CE. But Rome had been sacked before (390BCE) without the failure of the Republic, and the Principiate Empire survived that event. Ravenna, which is surrounded by marshes on the landward side, was never seriously threatened. The Magister Militum, the supreme military officer in the west, was Stilicho, who was as German as Alaric, and he was wise enough to bide his time, and assure the protection of Ravenna, and Rome be damned.

The Roman Empire, therefore, did not seriously begin to decline until the arrival of the Seljuk Turks in the Middle East. In the 8th century, the Arabs who had roared out of the Arabian deserts behind the banner of Islam utterly failed to make an impression on the Roman Empire (now commonly known as the Byzantine Empire, after the Greek name of Constantinople, and distinguishing that empire from the previous empire which included the west). The Seljuks also failed to take the empire, although they badly hurt them militarily and took much of Anatolia (think modern Turkey). But it was a Turk clan in Anatolia, headed by Osman, who eventually united the Turks sufficiently to challenge the eastern "Rome." The Osmanli Turks are commonly referred to as the Ottoman Empire (the Arabic for Osman is Uttuman). The Empire began to seriously shrink under Osmanli assaults, and the Crusaders had already taken much of Anatolia from them, only to lose it to the Turks. The Osmanlis pushed into Europe, and at Adrianople (arguably the most fought-over city in history) contended again and again with the Romans and their Slavic allies, the Servs and Bulgars. That city changed hands seventeen times before the Turks finally secured it. This cut off Constantinople from its Slavic allies, and in any event, the Bulgars were pushed far to the east, and the Servs definitively defeated by the Turks in Kosovo in the late 14th century. The city of Constantinople fell to the Turks in May of 1453--more than a thousand years after Rome was sacked by Alaric. They called themselves the Roman Empire, and their neighbors called them the Roman Empire, and used various versions of the word Roman to describe its inhabitants. So in fact, the Renaissance was well under way before the Empire finally disappeared.

The second problem is to know what you mean by unstable. Were that a simple straight-forward question, my answer would be slavery. The higher ranking families of the order of Patres (meaning "Fathers," and alleging these families to be descended from the original founders of Rome in 754BCE) had traditionally appropriated public lands to their own use. The order of Plebs would have said misappropriated, and the history of Rome from the expulsion of the Tarquins to the civil wars of Marius and Sulla is largely taken up with the struggle between the orders for public land, taken by conquest. By and large, the Plebs lost. After Sulla, the issue became moot. Iulius Caesar was born at about the time of the Sullan civil war, and he, of course, founded the Principiate Empire (from Princeps, meaning first citizen, the title was actually first used by his successor, Octavian, known as Augustus, and was a pretty flimsy attempt to maintain the appearance of a republic--but the Republican Empire was long dead by then). By Roman policy any town or city which resisted to the point that assault was necessary was leveled, and the population sold into slavery. Each legion received a portion of those slaves, legionaries having the number and gender and rough age recorded on "the books," with the ability to draw that number of slaves when they retired (not many survived, but those who did could look forward to a very comfortable retirement). During the final war with Carthage, Corinth in Greece had sided with the Carthaginians, and it was taken and leveled--the building stones were used to construct docks on either side of that province, Isthmus (from whence the name of that geographical feature) and the roads joining them. Iulius Caesar "refounded" the city as a retirement community for his Gallic and civil war veterans, who arrived with their accumulated pay and slaves.

During the period of the Social Wars, a way had been found to co-opt the ambitious and capable members of the order of Plebs. This was the creation of the order of Equites, or knights. In time, and rather quickly, the Equites became agents and brokers for the Patres in the latifundia, which were huge slave-driven enterprises, originally farms to produce olives for oil and grapes for wine, and eventually expanding into grain and livestock production. Very quickly, the latifundia became manufacturing concerns as well, making pottery and textiles. The small holders and small craftsmen were soon driven out of business, and ended up crowding into an already bulging Rome for the free panem et cirque--bread and circuses. The mass-produced commodities of the Patricians and Equites were shipped all over the empire, to their great profit. The Patres lead ever more sybaritic lives, and were more and more removed from governance, a circumstance very charming to the Principiate administration.

So long as the Empire continued to expand, there were new markets for the Patres and Equites to exploit. The raw material of the legions could be found in the new federated "barbarian" tribes--first the Gauls, then the Germans. A foederatus was an area in which a tribe or clan was given one third of public land in return for providing auxilliaries for the legions, or a set number of legionary recruits. In this manner, the Romans co-opted the threat of barbarian invasion, and "barbarians" were often military neutralized by other "barbarians." The Goths had crossed the Baltic to the valley of the Elbe, but population pressure had forced them east, and they settled in the region north of the Black and Caspian Seas. There, they learned equitation from their Turk and Tatar neighbors, and became accomplished horsemen, although they never adopted the bow, but simply took their spears and evolved them into lances. The Goths were driven west by the pressure from the growing tribes of central Asia--Turks, Tatars, Mongols and many others--and finally sought refuge in the Roman Empire. Therefore, Alaric was actually a Roman officer demanding a better settlement for his tribe, and claiming the Romans had reneged on the federation agreement in Greece.

The Goths not only did not hurt the Empire, they actually strengthened it for centuries by the addition of heavy cavalry which was to replace the heavy French infantry as the backbone of Roman armies. But the Empire did not expand indefinitely, and in the Antonine period, it began to shrink. Although imperceptibly at first, the process accelerated, and the slave-driven enterprises of the Patres and Equites began to collapse. The west declined economically, while the east grew more vigorous, developing new economic and administrative methods from the largely Greek population of their cities. As new tribes broke through the weakening defenses in the west, the federation system broke down. Professor Barry claims that the Lombard settlement was the last nail in the coffin. They were awarded two thirds of public lands, which were now extensive. The latifundia system had destroyed small holding, and farms had run to ruin and the wilderness had taken over again. The system had destroyed any hope for a consumer economy in the west, which no one at the time understood. The Lombards also exacted the recognition of their "Kings," which was an innovation for the Germans, who had not previously had permanent Kings, but only elected Kings in time of tribal emergency. These Kings eventually assumed the dignity of Emperor, and began to make war on the eastern portion of the Empire. The Emperor Julian, known as the Apostate and given a very bad press by the Christian historians, was leading an army west when he died, ostensibly of illness (he might also have been poisoned by Christian officers who resented his unwillingness to recognize Christianity as the state religion).

So in fact, the western portion of the Empire disintegrated from economic and social causes, while the east grew ever more vigorous. That's the short answer, i left out a lot of detail.

Thank you, Setanta.

Wow
Thanks for making so many connections, that really helps.
I'll share this w/ my bud, Gabe.

The Dark Ages was the term that used to be applied to the period between the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the rise of feudalism and the Middle Ages. They were called "dark" because historians didn't know much about them, but assumed that they were pretty awful.

For what it's worth, archaeologists gave up using the term "Dark Ages" altogether several decades ago, on realising that they simply weren't dark any more - we know a great deal about them and they simply weren't that bad. In fact, for the peasantry they may well have been better than the Middle Ages.

I don't know if historians still use the term at all.

I personally do not like labeling Medieval Europe as "dark" as it reduces history to a prejudice of the present. It was not "dark" at all actually. When people describe the past or certain events and eras in history as being one thing or another, they tend to make history static. That is ahistorical as it reduces history to a mere point in time, which it is not. Therefore, to look at Medieval Europe as "dark" ignores all the other richness of that society. If we believe it was "dark" then we should ignore all the advances it made in architecture, agriculture, and philosophy such as the revival and adaptation of Roman law and classical texts by the Scholastics by people like St. Thomas Aquinas who combined Aristotelian reason with Christianity. The entire concept of the university as we know it today, is entirely a Medieval invention.

1. Watch the Star Trek Episode "Bread and Circuses".
2. The Dark Ages, as a physical history as opposed to social history event, would've happened anyway (Krakatoa explosion, no Sun for two years, everyone going all crazy, crops died, 1st occurance of Bubonic Plague, DARK AGES WERE LITERALLY DARK)

Dark Ages just refers to the period of little or no recorded history. Well ends with Charlemagne and Charles Martel, who stopped islams march into France..