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Well, that's the thing. Yes, the central control collapsed (though I still wouldn't underestimate the influence of the Church, which effectively controlled king
by swombat 14y ago
Well, that's the thing. Yes, the central control collapsed (though I still wouldn't underestimate the influence of the Church, which effectively controlled kings' actions through the threat of excommunication). However, on a local basis, there was no such great disaster, just a long slow change.
And it was not really a dark age. As I said in my previous post, the dark age narrative is largely an invention of the 17th-18th century. What actually happened in that period was the development of a whole lot of great stuff like city states, art, commerce, banking, kingdoms, navigation tools (compass), military inventions (crossbows, guns), hourglasses, farming technology (ploughing), metallurgy, optics (eyeglasses!), mechanical clocks, textile technology (spinning wheel), the printing press, windmills, glassmaking...
For the people living in those times, it probably didn't feel anything like a "dark age". Just a fairly smooth progression upwards, with the usual ups and downs of wars, plagues and other disasters that are hardly confined to the middle ages.
I know the narrative of "here's the awesome roman empire, and now the church takes over and you have the dark ages, and now reason comes back in the form of the renaissance" is very compelling, particularly if you don't like the church very much, but it is just a narrative, and is not very well supported with facts.
- serans 14y agoI am no historian, but what I was taught in high school is that "dark ages" are called so because of the little knowledge we have about them compared to the comparatively well documented Roman Empire and Renaissance periods, not because they were themselves "dark" in any sense.
- lifeisstillgood 14y agoQuite a lot depends on when we say the dark ages began / ended. By say 1066 I would say Darkness was lifted, trading and Europe stabilised and by 1200 and Marco Polo Western Europe became fully involved / aware of with the rest of the Eurasia continent. Taking 1066 as a uk centric cutoff much of the above had either not been invented / rediscovered Kingdoms and city states - The Roman Duc and knightly organisation of armies appeared before 350, banking was I thought super charged by the crusades. Compasses - Marco Polo, the Mongols, guns - not till what 1300? I am aware there is always some in Europe knew but it did not benefit most. So it does depend in definitions (as always). If its the simplistic Romans/bad church/good renaissance then yes I agree with you, but if it is Good Romans/messed up Romans/dark ages/Europe starts to join the world/renaissance Then I am much happier to argue for a period of 400+ years where development in Europe was largely static and the agrarian based economies just slowly adjusted to lower levels of trade etc, and certainly 450-550 was just a morass of backwards sliding.
- lifeisstillgood 14y agoI am just re-reading this and something has struck me - my posts sent by iPhone are always less coherent and more difficult to read than those I type at a desk. It may be because I am more rushed on the phone, but I suspect it is a function of how I think - I seem to think by typing and my typing speed on Iphone is much slower than my brain can handle
- cema 14y agoYou think as you type? Try it the other way around.