Dark Age

Dark Ages is a term of historical periodisation used to refer to a period of supposed cultural and economic deterioration, and scarcity of written record, usually being contrasted with the more recent times of the writer and with classical antiquity. Its original use referred to the Western European Middle Ages (roughly the 6th to 14th centuries), emphasising the perceived decline following the fall of the Roman Empire.

The term employs traditional light-versus-darkness imagery to contrast the 'darkness' of the period in question with earlier and later periods of 'light'. The concept of a 'Dark Age' originated from the Italian scholar Petrarch in the 1330s, and was originally intended as a sweeping criticism of Late Latin literature. Petrarch regarded the post-Roman centuries as 'dark' compared to the 'light' of classical antiquity. The actual term derives from the Latin saeculum obscurum, originally applied by Caesar Baronius in 1602 to a tumultuous period in the 10th and 11th centuries.

This original definition is still sometimes found in popular use, but increased recognition of accomplishments during the Middle Ages has since the 20th century led to the appellation usually being restricted to the Early Middle Ages (c. 5th–10th century). However, many modern scholars of the era tend to avoid the term for its negative connotations, finding it misleading and inaccurate. Popular culture has tended to use it more pejoratively to refer to a time of backwardness.

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. In the 19th century scholars began to recognise the accomplishments of the period, which challenged the image a time exclusively of darkness and decay. 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.

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