The Dark Ages Myth

Quid est Veritas? said:

We should actually be lauding the Catholic Church for saving classical learning from the cataclysm of the barbarian conquests of Rome.

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What did the barbarians actually do to the Catholic Church? Did they persecute Christianity like a number of the Caesar's prior to Constantine?

Norbert L said:

What did the barbarians actually do to the Catholic Church? Did they persecute Christianity like a number of the Caesar's prior to Constantine?

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Some did, in particular the Arian Visigoths, who later converted to Islam.

Others, like the Merovignians, worked to subvert the hierarchy and exploit the Church as a tool for political power, setting in motion the events which would lead to the Great Schism.

Root of Jesse said:

Why is it common knowledge that the Dark Ages was all that dark?

It has long been received wisdom that following the collapse of Rome, Europe slumbered through a millenium of ignorance that came to be known as the Dark Ages. Historian JB Bury noted that when Emperor Constantine adopted Christianity, this "inaugurated a millenium in which reason was enchained, thought was enslaved, and knowledge made no progress "
William Manchester described it as an "era of incessant warfare, corruption, lawlessness, obsession with strange myths, and almost impenetrable mindlessness...The Dark Ages were stark in every dimension."

We know these things to be so far from the truth as to be classified as myth. Is it just anti-Catholic rhetoric, or is something else behind it?

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Whenever people speak about the Dark Ages, I think we need to see it from a point greater than Europe. As said elsewhere,
there's an amazing resource showing the African and Asian cultures during the 'Dark' Ages and all of the ways that they were VERY advanced during the Middle Ages as seen here:

• Early Global Connections: East Africa between Asia, and Mediterranean Europe

For a brief description of this excellent resource:




The Empires in African history are truly amazing and to see them go against the grain in Medieval times is stunning...

And for one of the best places to go on the matter, one may wish to investigate the work of HomeTeam History since they do an amazing job discussing the accomplisments of Africans in a time that much of the world was still in the dark



More was shared on this issue elsewhere, if interested:

Quid est Veritas? said:

Exactly, Greek wasn't known. The very Lingua Franca of the ancient world. The original language in which most of our philosophy and science had been written.
This very fact should show you that an intellectual decline had set in after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, after which the European Intellegentsia had to make due with their few translations and later commentaries without the ability to read the original texts themselves.

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From a purely "barbarian" perspective, there was no Dark Age. They migrated towards Rome, were exposed to whatever Classical knowledge survived there, and gradually innovated & improved upon the same.

However, from a broader "Western" perspective, much of the Classical knowledge base disappeared as the Roman empire collapsed.

Adequate summary?

Root of Jesse said:

Why is it common knowledge that the Dark Ages was all that dark?

It has long been received wisdom that following the collapse of Rome, Europe slumbered through a millenium of ignorance that came to be known as the Dark Ages. Historian JB Bury noted that when Emperor Constantine adopted Christianity, this "inaugurated a millenium in which reason was enchained, thought was enslaved, and knowledge made no progress "
William Manchester described it as an "era of incessant warfare, corruption, lawlessness, obsession with strange myths, and almost impenetrable mindlessness...The Dark Ages were stark in every dimension."

We know these things to be so far from the truth as to be classified as myth. Is it just anti-Catholic rhetoric, or is something else behind it?

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I think its probably an exaggeration of the period between roughly 450 and 1,000 AD in Northern Europe, when things were quite bad. For example, Brittania was invaded by Angles, who were converted by St. Augustine of Canterbury (not to be confused with the more famous Patristic scholar St. Augustine of Hippo, who wrote The City of God, which provided great comfort as things got bad), sent by St. Gregory the Great, but this conquest resulted in the church in that province being out of contact with the rest of Christendom for over a hundred years.

Likewise there was technological decline, and the monasteries experienced a shortage of books, particularly Greek books, and of Greek-speaking people. And during that timeframe, the population of Rome collapsed, and the number of working aqueducts in Rome went from 9 to 1.

Conversely, thanks to monasteries, some civilizations reached new heights, for example, the Irish, and also it was during this timeframe that Venice was developed, to the point that by 1204 it was able to conquer Constantinople (something I rather wish it had not done, but the event demonstrates that things were not universally dark in Western Europe in that time). And the church continued to expand, converting more and more previously non-Christian ethnic groups.

Root of Jesse said:

Even in Europe, the Dark Ages weren't Dark at all.

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Indeed, although I would argue at times they were dark in some places.

A true Dark Age occurred when Tamerlane exterminated most of what is now the Assyrian Church of the East in the 12th century, and then the Silk Road and the Pax Mongolica ended due to the Bubonic Plague, which by the time it hit Europe, managed to wipe out a third of the population in many countries. Sweden and the rest of Scandinavia, parts of Russia and Ukraine, Poland, Germany, and Great Britain were especially hard hit. But these events occurred during a period when one could argue that in several places in Italy, the Renaissance was already in progress.