The idea of the Middle Ages as a Dark Age is popular today. But it all began somewhere, with a 14th century Italian poet named Petrarch.
The concept of the Dark Ages is not some postmodern thing or even a 19th century Romantic notion. It is, in fact, contemporary to the period it describes. Strangely enough, it was a term created in the 14th century, by one of the Middle Ages' most brilliant writers-the poet Petrarch (1304-1374). Petrarch is best remembered for his passionate sonnets dedicated to a woman named Laura who may or may not have really existed, did not requite his love and died during the Black Death in 1348. But he is also the writer who crystallized the growing dissatisfaction with the denigration of ancient knowledge during the 14th century.
One could ascribe Petrarch's term to bitterness following the onset of the Black Death, except that he coined the term the "Dark Ages" in the 1330s, over ten years before the Black Death arrived in Europe. Petrarch appears to have used the term to describe the 5th to 14th centuries in protest at the relentless denigration of ancient pagan religion by Christian writers during this period. Some pagan works certainly survived, but they tended to be converted to Christian use. Especially important writers like Plato were rehabilitated and purged of their pagan roots by writers like St Augustine in the 5th century.
But starting in the 12th century, Western Christian writers like Abelard (one of the subjects of this week's blog) began to look more closely at the ancient writers, translating Greek writers into Latin or even vernacular. Because so much of these writings survived in Italy (being the former center of the Roman Empire), this new movement began to change the old way of looking at the universe, increasing in importance the study of human beings as human beings, rather than fallible creatures desperately (and often vainly) seeking salvation with the only being worth studying: God.
Like many of the Italian "humanists" of his day, Petrarch rediscovered and fell in love with the old classical works, including the writings of Aristotle. Aristotle was a big sensation in the 14th century. Petrarch felt that the ancient period of the pagan Romans and Greeks had been one of light and learning and that the entire Christian period (including in his lifetime) was dark and ignorant by comparison. This inverted the traditional Christian view of the classical period as a dark age of pagan ignorance followed by Christian enlightenment.
A century later, some humanists went further, believing that they had finally left the Dark Ages behind. In 1439, Flavio Biondo renamed Petrarch's "Dark Age" a "Middle Age".
And thus, the "Middle Ages" were born.
