Nowadays the term is not used by scholars to refer to the entire medieval period when used, it is generally restricted to the Early Middle Ages. In the 19th century scholars began to recognize the accomplishments of the period, which challenged the image a time exclusively of darkness and decay. The term was originally intended to denote the entire period between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance, similarly to ' Middle Ages' and implying an intermediate period between Classical Antiquity and the Modern era. įurther information: Late Antiquity, Decline of the Roman Empire, Migration period and Early Middle Ages The original definition remains in popular use, and popular culture often employs it as a vehicle to depict the Middle Ages as a time of backwardness, extending its pejorative use and expanding its scope. Many modern scholars avoid the term altogether due to its negative connotations, finding it misleading and inaccurate. Īs the accomplishments of the era came to be better understood in the 19th and 20th centuries, scholars began restricting the "Dark Ages" appellation to the Early Middle Ages (c. The concept thus came to characterize the entire Middle Ages as a time of intellectual darkness between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance this became especially popular during the 18th-century Age of Enlightenment. The phrase "Dark Age" itself derives from the Latin saeculum obscurum, originally applied by Caesar Baronius in 1602 to a tumultuous period in the 10th and 11th centuries. The concept of a "Dark Age" originated in the 1330s with the Italian scholar Petrarch, who regarded the post-Roman centuries as "dark" compared to the light of classical antiquity.
The term employs traditional light-versus-darkness imagery to contrast the era's "darkness" with earlier and later periods of "light". It emphasizes the demographic, cultural and economic deterioration that supposedly occurred in Western Europe following the decline of the Roman Empire, and the relative scarcity of written records from the period. The " Dark Ages" is a historical periodization traditionally referring to the Middle Ages.
From Cycle of Famous Men and Women, Andrea di Bartolo di Bargilla, c. Petrarch, who conceived the idea of a European "Dark Age".