Getty medievalist Larisa Grollemond illuminates the Middle Ages
The Annunciation to the Shepherds (detail), about 1480–1485, Jean Bourdichon. Tempera colors, gold, and ink, 6 7/16 × 4 9/16 in. Getty Museum, Ms. 6 (84.ML.746), fol. 55
As a medievalist, I’m asked all the time, “Why was it called the ‘Dark Ages?’”
This phrase comes up a few times in history, and it means something different every time.
“Dark Ages” usually refers to the 900 years of European history between the 5th and 14th centuries. Have you heard that this was a period of stalled advancements in science or culture?
That’s just a myth!
Francesco Petrarca aka Petrarch, 1800s, Engraved by R.Hart from a print by R.Morghen after a picture by Jofanelliand published in London by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street & Pall Mall East. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license (CC BY-SA 3.0). Source: Wikimedia Commons
The 14th-century Italian poet Petrarch is the best-known medieval source for the idea that the period in Europe from around 500–1500 was “dark.”
But that phrase was a specific gripe. Petrarch was complaining about the general quality of literature in his own specific time and place: Italy in the 1300s (which makes him sound like a snob).
A 1602 text by Caesar Baronius used saeculum obscurum (the dark age/century) to refer to the 10th and 11th centuries as lacking in surviving historical sources. But dark really just meant that he didn’t know a lot about the time.
Unfortunately, the term persisted and historians started using “dark” as a pejorative term to mean a period of superstition and stagnation in art, literature, and science.
Copy of a painting of a dejected looking young girl reading a book at a table, 1865–1870, Albumen silver print. 84.XD.1157.1450 Getty Museum
“Dark Ages” stuck, and so did the misconception that this was a period full of unenlightened people wandering around the dark.
The Creation of the Sun, Moon, and Stars, 1250–1260, English. Pen-and-ink drawings tinted with body color and translucent washes, 8 1/4 × 6 3/16 in. Getty Museum, Ms. 100, fol. 2v, 2007.16.2v
Today, we’ve recognized the many advances of this period—including universities, mechanical clocks, and the printing press—and that there many other ways to name and think about this “middle age” that aren’t nearly as Eurocentric or as ideologically-loaded.
After all, the Middle Ages were always the illuminated ages.
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