[cyberax]

I find that these reductive stereotypes are... actually true.

Not all the Middle Ages were really Dark, but some of them were.

> It assumes people in very different places for 1,000+ years did the same thing and had the same views

But that was true, wasn't it? The Dark Ages started when Christianity spread through most of Europe. And really completely ended only when the Reformation fractured it.

And sure, the Reformation was made possible by internal forces within the religious institutions, slowly building ideological foundation for it.

[stryan]

>> It assumes people in very different places for 1,000+ years did the same thing and had the same views

> But that was true, wasn't it? The Dark Ages started when Christianity spread through most of Europe. And really completely ended only when the Reformation fractured it.

1. Political, economic, cultural, and even religious systems would vary drastically by place and time in Europe. The lifestyle and thoughts of an English peasent in 600CE would be drastically different from the lifestyle of a Spanish or Frankish one, and would differ even more so between 600CE and 900CE.

2. The "Dark Ages" traditionally started when Rome fell in 476CE, long before Christianity had spread outside of traditional Roman lands.

3. The Reformation didn't start until the 16th century, long after the Dark Ages are considered to have ended. Generously you could say it started with the Hussites in the 1400s but that's still skipping over the Renaissance entirely which is the absolute latest end for the Dark Ages since the whole point of it as a historical context is "rediscovering" the Classical works.

[cyberax]

> 1. Political, economic, cultural, and even religious systems would vary drastically by place and time in Europe.

This is a non-answer. Yes, political systems were different. The ARE still different.

But during the Dark Ages, there were NO places in Europe where science or scholarship really flourished.

> 2. The "Dark Ages" traditionally started when Rome fell in 476CE, long before Christianity had spread outside of traditional Roman lands.

It should have started around the time of the move of the Roman capital to Constantinople. By the time of the fall of Rome, the Darkening had been in full swing.

If you want a precise date, I propose the date of murder of Hypatia in 415 AD.

[wqaatwt]

It was probably the 540s and the subsequent century or so.

> there were NO places in Europe where science or scholarship really flourished.

If you define ~800 AD as the end of the dark ages then yes. By Charlemagne’s time that had already changes.

It wasn’t exactly flourishing in Gaul, and Germany during the Roman times either. Those regions had arguably surpassed their Roman peak by the end of the dark ages.

And of course science and scholarship were preserved in Constantinople during the entire period (of course they had some very dark moments too)

[zozbot234]

> But during the Dark Ages, there were NO places in Europe where science or scholarship really flourished.

Ireland is often cited as one such place, thanks to early Christian monasteries. The Carolingian Renaissance was significant in Central Europe, and there were important cultural developments in Slavic lands, though perhaps not involving 'science' as such.

[stryan]

> But during the Dark Ages, there were NO places in Europe where science or scholarship really flourished.

That seems different from what you originally argued but either way, that's also not really accurate. I'm going to assume you're referring to "Western Europe" here since you're clearly aware of Eastern Roman/Byzantine empire still existing, but that still leaves Al-Andalus, the Carolingian Renaissance, agricultural advancements like the three-field system, wheelbarrows, multiple types of milling technology, and during the latter end you start getting advanced compasses, bells, mechnical watches, and other metallurgy.

Where all of these done in one or two specific places? No, continuing to ignore Byzantium here, but there was a still a variety of advancements happening all the time without which the Renaissance couldn't have happened.

> It should have started around the time of the move of the Roman capital to Constantinople. By the time of the fall of Rome, the Darkening had been in full swing.

I mean, you can think that but that's not how or what the term "The Dark Ages" usually refers to. It sounds like you have your own constructed time period in mind and I'm not interested in discussing something I'm not aware of.

> If you want a precise date, I propose the date of murder of Hypatia in 415 AD.

A very pointed date to choose.

[garciansmith]

> But that was true, wasn't it? The Dark Ages started when Christianity spread through most of Europe.

No, it is not. As Stryan noted in another response to your comment, the idea that medieval Europe was somehow one uniform culture is incorrect.

I would also add that the term "Dark Ages" is used in different ways by different people. People who don't know much about the Middle Ages often use that term to describe the whole of the Middle Ages, from roughly the fifth century to the end of the fifteenth (and Christianity had already spread around the Roman Empire by the fifth). Others just the early Medieval period (about 500 to 1000). Some limit the term to periods where we just don't have many sources, or it is perceived that we don't (e.g., I've heard it applied to Visigothic Spain).

Fourteenth-century Humanists (who lived at a time often considered to be part of those so called "Dark Ages"!) first used the term to contrast what they thought were the centuries between their lives and the classical period. They even went so far as to emulate the handwriting of the classical texts they favored, thinking they should because that's how the Romans wrote. They didn't realize they were copying eighth- and ninth-century Carolingian hands instead, texts copied by monks and clerics and court scribes because they valued them. (Lower case letters in modern languages that use the Latin characters, like English, are still based on Carolingian minuscule.)

[cyberax]

I'm pretty sure most people call them "Dark Ages" because during this time the speed of social and scientific development almost entirely stopped.

And mind you, I'm not saying that it stopped _completely_, but it slowed down to a crawl.

[garciansmith]

I would agree that many people view the Middle Ages as a static time, though a point I was trying to make was that the "Dark Ages" can mean different things depending on the person and context.

But more importantly it wasn't static (or "almost entirely stopped")! It's an erroneous conception that, as I said, started with people who lived in the Middle Ages. People in the Renaissance and Early Modern Period would often repeat this, so now many people do too. That doesn't make it correct.

[wqaatwt]

> social and scientific development almost entirely stopped

Well it did in fact sped to an almost unparalleled pace after 1000 AD or so. How much progress do you think there was before the dark ages? The Roman Empire was rather stagnant (especially technologically and there were significant advances in agriculture, metallurgy and industry in the dark ages even before even before 1000 AD

[wqaatwt]

> The Dark Ages started when Christianity spread through most of Europe.

1000-1400s AD was a period of extremely rapid (by historical standards) economic, societal and technological progress. Just compare with the highly stagnant (in relative terms) Roman Empire between 0 AD and 400 AD. It was the opposite of the dark ages…

500-800s AD were not great, but plague, climate change and extreme political instability likely had a bigger impact on that than Christianity…