THE DARK AGES WERE NOT REAL - The Carolingian Renaissance
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- čas přidán 31. 03. 2024
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The Dark Ages are a silly myth that just won't seem to go away. Let's look at one such tale from the period, the rebith of Western European power as some evidence as to why the time period between the Fall of Western Rome and the Fall of Constantinople is truly a facsinating and not at all dark era of human history.
Primary
Bursell, Rupert. "The Coronation Oath." Ecclesiastical Law Journal 25, no. 2 (2023): 156-170.
Einhard, Vita Karoli Magni. The life of Charlemagne. Folio Society, 1970.
Fouracre, Paul, and Richard A. Gerberding. "Liber Historiae Francorum (The Book of the History of the Franks)." In Late Merovingian France, pp. 79-96. Manchester University Press, 2013.
Scholz, Bernhard Walter, and Barbara Rogers, eds. Carolingian Chronicles: Royal Frankish Annals and Nithard's Histories. Vol. 186. University of Michigan Press, 1970.
Warner, David A. "Ottonian Germany: The Chronicon of Thietmar of Merseburg." In Ottonian Germany. Manchester University Press, 2013.
Secondary
Aguilera-Barchet, Bruno, and Bruno Aguilera-Barchet. "Popes vs. Emperors: The Rise and Fall of Papal Power." A History of Western Public Law: Between Nation and State (2015): 121-152.
Barraclough, Geoffrey. The Crucible of Europe: The Ninth and Tenth Centuries in European History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976.
Benham, Jenny. "T reaty of V erdun (843)." The Encyclopedia of Diplomacy (2018): 1-5.
Crosby, Bruce H. "How the Franks Became Frankish: The Power of Law Codes and the Creation of a People." (2020).
Effros, Bonnie, and Isabel Moreira, eds. The Oxford Handbook of the Merovingian World. Oxford University Press, 2020.
Gillett, Andrew. "Rome, Ravenna and the last western emperors." Papers of the British School at Rome 69 (2001): 131-167.
Hallenbeck, Jan T. The Frankish monarchy and the papacy, 750-774: a study of the Frankish-papal alliance in the eighth century. New York University, 1966.
King, Paul David. Charlemagne: translated sources. PD King, 1987. 38-41
Mayr-Harting, Henry. "Charlemagne, the Saxons, and the Imperial Coronation of 800." The English Historical Review 111, no. 444 (1996): 1113-1133.
Nelson, Janet L. "The Annals of St-Bertin: Ninth-Century Histories, Volume I." In The Annals of St-Bertin. Manchester University Press, 2013.
Riché, Pierre. The Carolingians: A family who forged Europe. pp. 274-288 University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993.
Wallach, Luitpold. "The genuine and the forged oath of Pope Leo III." Traditio 11 (1955): 37-63.s
Whaley, Derek. "From a Salic law to the Salic law: The creation and re-creation of the royal succession system of France 1." In The Routledge History of Monarchy, pp. 443-464. Routledge, 2019.
Correction, I said Otto I was a Carolingian, he wasnt. I should have said "following in the footsteps of a Carolingian".
Literally unwatchable with all these inaccuracies.
Absolutely love what you're doing, thank you.
I did hear someone once try to excuse the name by saying it meant dark as in we have far less written down during this era compared to other times in Europe. So its dark in western sources and not due to some terrible society thing.
It was a weird thing for someone to say despite the fact that we have stuff like Beowulf.
Which is moronic considering the litany of primary sources available
If you don't already know it, I recommend Henri Pirenne's History of Europe until the 16th century (or similar title). It explains brilliantly how civilization survived the Roman fall. No doubt it's old fashioned now but it's a brillisnt example of how to compress a most complex period into a highly readable account.
@@HistoryofEverythingChannelSomething you forgot to mention is the Irish golden age and the expansion of the Gaels from Ireland to Scotland and the Isle of Man.
The Dark Ages is a myth created by Big Renaissance to sell you more paintings
Hey OSP Reference.
I was taught it was an invention of the Victorians or at least the The Enlightenment, who had a massive boner for Rome, holding it up as some Height of human civilization to be emulated. Basically "We're not Imperialist Expansionists, coming to conquer you and exploit your resources for gain, while we plow your native culture into the ground. We're CIVILIZING you for your own betterment"
Ran by a cabal of the so-called "enlightened."
Am down with that
I mean yes. That is true.
I thought it was called the dark age because record keeping wasn't great and we didn't know much about it, making it a "dark" section of history. Shows what I know.
It kind of started off that way but it became sort of a term for intellectual and technological regression because people form the modern period started to look at the period as a collapse. They assumed because the great works stopped being built and records were spotty that society must have collapsed into barbarism until the late medieval period or so.
Also because every (aspiring) empire that came after claimed to be the rightful heir of the Roman empire, and spreading propaganda about how stupid everyone was after the Romans broke up helps make you appear more legitimate. Yeah, fake news :).
That is what they taught at school but not how people used the term colloquially
I think it was more that they let things like aqueducts fall into disrepair and it was assumed that was because the unwashed barbarians that took over didn't understand how Roman things worked
I offenen use it for the period between the death of Justinian and the Carolingian renaissance. To indicate the lack of sources for that period. In discussions about that period archeological findings are often more important than written materials. Tough I would quite like a more neutral les judgemental therm for that period.
Plus Christianity arguably preserved the Western Roman Empire for another century before it would have otherwise collapsed.
Also helped to preserve Roman culture as the catholic church and thus the education system for much of the medieval and much of the modern periods were all heavily influenced by fanboys of Rome.
That's arguable. Not only did the west Christianize much slower than the east, but it was the highly intolerant policies of early Christian emperors that helped contribute to the Battle of the Frigidus, which destroyed the western legions at a time they would almost certainly never recover.
And get this, one of the reasons the Christians wanted to hold onto Rome was because it was basically the least cruel and most civilized civilization Europe had ever seen. As horrifically brutal and awful as it was, it was nothing compared to what they had before. Like the fact the Romans were disgusted by the idea of human sacrifices was super progressive 😂. Even despite being genocided by Rome so many times, it was more Christian than the alternatives.
@@hedgeearthridge6807 "The fact the Romans were disgusted by human sacrifices was super progressive" No it wasn't? The Israelites, Greeks, Iranians and Akkadians were all saying the same thing back in the Bronze Age.
You also had the fact that the Roman triumph had prisoners be ritually slaughtered in front of the statue of the gods. By this point, even the Germanics largely disvowed it
arguably
yeah
I mean you could also argue that christianity and the rise of exclusive religions lead to the downfall of the roman empire
About time someone put Voltaire in his place.
2:00 - gratuitous Icelandic natural beauty warning.
We in the concrete world are not worthy of such delights.
This is very helpful.
In American school they were like, “here is Italy. They had a renaissance.
here is the Holy Roman Empire.
Martin Luther, and the Catholic Church existed during this time.
Ok that is everything, Next time period.”
My school drove me crazy. Our history was the same but they still made us study the revolutionary War and the Civil rights movement for around a month each year in history class and/or English class. Meanwhile medieval ans ancient history was like "first agriculture happened, then the great pyramid was built, then Ancient Greece was founded by Socrates and Homer, then Rome happened, and then history started in 1492
@@arthas640 well history class doesn't have much time and the civil rights movement is a bit more important to modern day US than the creation and implications of the Golden Bull on the Holy Roman Empire.
My school taught us about the english civil war & ivan the terrible so u stupid
My school had the english civil war & ivan the terrible
I think the best quote i've heard about the fall of Rome is that the question isn't why Rome fell, but why didn't Rome fall sooner. I don't remember where I heard it though.
By all accounts it should have fallen during the Crisis of the 3rd Century, when regions started breaking off and soldiers leading personal armies began declaring themselves 'Emperors' and 'reigning' for a month or two before getting stabbed in the back. By a combination of good leadership and luck were Aurelian and Diocletian able to stop the downward spiral, but one got assassinated by political hackery and the other just left before all the problems that had led to the crisis in the first place (i.e. no clear rules for succession, empire too large to administer, etc.) were properly addressed.
This is especially true of the east, the byzantines had ridiculous plot armor
That's the real reason why I'm thinking about Rome. The plot armor of that empire is immaculate.
And even then, Byzantium became Rome once the capital moved to Constantinople
osp said that
I was under the impression the original meaning of term ‘dark ages’ when it was first used by historians was to describe how the period lacked many surviving historical accounts or works of literature. The term itself was never meant to describe the period as an age of barbarism. It was just a way to describe how most of the European cultures from that time lacked the ability to create long lasting paper that wouldn’t decay over time. Allowing them to preserve their works literature into the future. Something which frustrated historians enough to deem the period the ‘dark ages’. Obvious, over time teachers and lazy historians took that frustrated definition and redefined the period as something it wasn’t.
yep.
Yes. The thing is, though, that in both senses of the term, it's basically an England-only thing that is erroneously then extended into the rest of the former Wearer Roman Empire.
Post-Roman Britain legitimately was an utter disaster zone. the collapse of Roman civilisation there actually does deserve the term 'collapse', as opposed to in mainland Europe where often the people who lived through it might well have missed what we consider the end of the WRE because not much really changed on the ground.
It's basically only in England that you get stuff like written records coming to a complete halt, but also things like the ability to produce pottery ceasing and the complete desertion of... pretty much every town and city. Post-Roman Britain almost completely de-urbanised, because the organisation and economy required to support even towns, just didn't exist. It's only relatively late into the Anglo-Saxon period where you start to see people living in settlements larger than villages again.
But none of that applied to mainland Europe. There's a reason that post-Roman and Anglo-Saxon Britain is basically an interesting footnote in European history between the fall of the WRE and the Norman Conquest; it was the one bit of the Empire that was legitimately completely broken by the fall of Rome.
@@mdt105 It does seem quite interesting though. It sounds like later into the Anglo-Saxon period they had formed a fairly well run state, not to mention obviously founding England and the beginnings of the English people/language.
I’ve read that even earlier on, the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms did have quite good relations with mainland Europe, and apparently Anglo-Saxon churchmen, including figures like Bede and his history, were quite influential in Europe, for example in founding churches across Germany(e.g. St.Boniface)and whatnot. And men like Alcuin, who was influential in Charles the Great’s court as well.
So they are really quite interesting and it’s not like they were cut off from the continent the whole time, basically some interesting and influential things did happen before the Norman Conquest.
For the first 200 years or so the term dark ages does seem to apply, but it’s actually a really interesting time period, with things like the Arthurian myths and the mysteries of the Sutton Hoo burial being from around this sort of 400-600ish time.
I do agree that dark ages is a very England centric term.
No
@@mdt105 This is complete nonsense.. bruh don't talk on shit you don't understand.
Two main reasons why it was called the Dark Ages. First, the lack of records. Record keeping falls off a cliff between the Western Empire and the Renaissance. Records are still kept and preserved, but it's in much, much smaller quantities, and most of it is written down in monasteries, places that aren't exactly known for spreading information freely.
Second was the self-assumed superiority of Renaissance writers and thinkers sniffing their own farts. To them, they alone were the gatekeepers of the knowledge of antiquity, they heightened the achievements of antiquity above all else, and quickly began rubbishing anything that was ever done between the reign of the last Western emperor and their own uniquely ordained selves. It's because of them that Latin is no longer a living language: They killed it by "preserving" it in the pickle jar that is the Catholic Church as the ecclesiastical language. The "Vulgar" Latin that everyone else spoke morphed into the modern Romance languages.
Aka the Renaissance writers were a bunch of Romaboos who thought everything between the Fall of Western Rome and their reconnection with it was just a bunch of stupid peasants going around Europe smeared in cow dung, ignoring how Eastern Rome lasted well into the Middle Ages.
yeo.
The lack of records is a myth too. Writing, while mostly religious, continued on, including in Latin, throughout the dark ages. We actually have as much Latin writing from the dark ages than antiquity, simply because Roman writing was lost when decentralization made maintaining and recopying the pypyrus scrolls of old Rome hard, and what survived was what the medieval people copied and wrote onto parchment and books.
And yes, the church didn't keep those writings locked under a key, they did actually spread that knowledge. Yes, it wasn't available to everyone, but the reason why so many Roman and Greek classics survived is because they were copied a *lot* by the church for the purposes of teaching Latin. Rich people ordered books, noblemen ordered books, clergymen ordered books. Sure, the peasants were out of luck, but how much access the average roman citizen had to the writings of Cicero or Virgil?
@Israelyguy14 Quite a bit actually. Public libraries were a thing as were public discourses in philosophy.
The church deliberately kept the peasantry illiterate and ignorant in order to maintain their power.
The way I've always understood the term "dark ages" was just referencing something like when the Roman empire fell, the average person who where living within its borders, and citys. Who's families relied on the government for centuries are now faced with no institutions, laws or city service's because there's no one there to pay for those things while the government reorganizes.
Has more to do with not as many records being kept, or surging from that time.
@@baneofbanesA lot of records were destroyed too in the protestant reformation and various anti-catholic revolutions, leading to a lot of lost sources. England was particularly hard hit with the dissolution of the monasteries. Only 7% of texts from medieval monasteries survived that process, and it continued in the following decades. In 1551 King Edward VI passed an act insisting on the purging of “Superstitious Books.” for example. Iconoclasm in the protestant reformation also destroyed large amounts of cultural artifacts such as art in Northern Europe. So in many ways the reason we don't know much about the medieval period, especially in the English-speaking world is also the result of a "manufactured" dark age.
@@baneofbanes you know, that actually makes way more sense, like reading a history book and sing a whole section smeared over in ink
@@nonnayerbusiness7704 interestint
@@nonnayerbusiness7704The man just made a whole video proving that Christianity didn't destroy everything Pagan in sight and now you're telling me Christianity did it's level best to destroy everything they could get their grubby hands on?
The amount of knowledge destroyed for asinine reasons does hurt a lot :(
Truth be told, people who still call it the dark ages are really just saying "oh that's the boring parts". Where as I see it and I'm immediately strapping on proverbial scuba tanks.
Really? My teachers gave the impression "And now here's a period where everyone fought in wars that were much stupider than usual. And then came the period where everyone fought wars for stupid reasons, but now the gun was invented"
So this was the time when France was dominant power in Europe. Truly a dark age XD
Lmao 😂
I actually doubt a Muslim France was ever in the cards. What's often missed about Muslim Spain is the cumulative effect of both the Berber Revolt and the Abbasid Revolution. The Berbers were the main local manpower pool; without them, al-Andalus is reliant on importing junds from the motherland. After the Abbasids come to power, that's impossible, and al-Andalus ends up either a distant frontier province or a disconnected island of the Umayyads. Either way, it's in a precarious spot and badly needs time to consolidate itself internally and exercise control over the Berber tribes in the Maghreb.
As it was, the Muslims did still manage some conquests in France: They made it past the Pyrenees in the east and got ahold of Septimania for a few years (e.g. the Carcassonne-Narbonne area north of Catalonia). Even a more successful invasion of Gaul might secure lands up to the Garonne or thereabouts, but even then, it's not very defensible, and it's likely to be abandoned as fissures develop between the Berbers and the Umayyads, or as administrations change. As context, the Umayyads grabbed Septimania around 719, at which point Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz put the brakes on. Even then, he was considering pulling out of Iberia entirely (as well as Cilicia), considering the Caliphate over-extended and unsustainable on those fronts.
The other big thing that's going to stop them is the comparative power vacuum. Visigothic Spain was a mess of civil wars as the Gothic kings tries to grab power from the nobles and vice versa. Carolingian France had at least 20% more people in France alone, probably closer to double Iberia once you add their German lands, and it's logistically farther from whatever power bases an invading force out of Iberia could put together.
tl;dr Muslim Aquitaine might be possible but I think Muslim France is a harder sell.
Honestly, if we’re talking strictly European/Near Eastern History and excluding other regions, I prefer to categorize the timeline as such;
Ancient Antiquity: 3300-1200 BC (Basically analogous of the “Bronze Age”)
Archaic Period: 1200-500 BC
Classical Period: 500 BC-200 AD
Late Antiquity: 200-500 AD
Early Middle Ages: 500-1000 AD
High Middle Ages: 1000-1300 AD
Late Middle Ages: 1300-1500 AD
Early Modern Period: 1500-1900 AD
Modern Period: 1900 AD-present
Those are just rough divisions for the sake of simplicity, specific splits would be tied to certain events (Fall of Ravenna, Norman Conquest, etc.)
Maybe it's just me, but when I was a curious child reading about history, the "dark ages" usually spanned the period from the fall of the Western Roman Empire to the rise of Feudalism.
"Screw you Voltaire." I think I'm in love.
As far as I know, only the English lexicon uses the term “dark age” while the rest of Europe refers it just as the “middle ages”
If this is an April Fool's day joke then it is too late and the joke is on you History of Everything
It isn't 🤣
April 2nd
@@HistoryofEverythingChannelInternational Date Line strikes again.
Yeah for us here in Europe but if the video is going up in North America it will be April 1st
@@Knight6831we know how to convert to UTC time thank you very much
@@Knight6831I’m in North America and CZcams shows the release date as April 1st. Time zones are a strange concept.
I always understood the "Dark" in dark age, not to mean "evil" or "fucked" like Dark Knight or "Dark Days are Upon us", but more like the dark in Dark Matter, as in: unknown.
That is most surviving information we have on the ~400-1200 CE period is secondhand, from historians in the middle ages and renaissance, as opposed to first hand like in earlier and later periods.
This dearth of first-hand accounts [for whatever reason, probably burned during conquest and border skirmishes, plus the general lower literacy rates] has spawned its own Woo-Pothesis: Phantom Time. This Woo exaggerates the sparsity of primary sources to say it was all fabricated [Plato-style] by Papal Historiographers to make the HRE founding Date to be 1000 AD [when Otto was crowned the first official HOLY Roman Emperor, and not Emperor of the Romans, Emperor of the Franks, Emperor IN Rome or other similar titles held by his predecessors].
These nutters say it is actially ~1500 Ce now and everything from ~400-900 was a fabrication, and the Roman Empire never fell, [only Rome itself, maybe] and rule went directly from Julius Nepos to Otto, with the whole Merovingian/Carolingian era being fiction.
And to be fair to Voltaire, by the time he made his roast on the HRE, it was in decline and little more than a confederation of often warring German states, having lost territory to the Danes, Swedes, Russians, Ottomans, and French, while also usually being ruled by a junior member of a Spanish dynasty. [similar to how until the Wars of the Roses and finally the Georgian era, England, while a budding Empire in its own right, had a King who was technically vassal to the King of the French.
If you count Charlemagne as a HOLY Roman Emperor [as opposed to Emperor in Rome or of the West, or other versions] then the HRE was approaching 1000 years old at the time of Voltaire and like the rest of Europe, was so far changed from its founding as to be the HRE of the Carolingians in name only. Like calling its spiritual successor, the EU, an empire
Well obviously once you look outside of Europe it isn't the Dark Ages anymore.
I mean that's like saying Alexander the Great lived during the Warring States period.
Every term for an age is in the end a very localized phenomena.
But yeah in the end the "Dark Ages" is a very broad term for an extremely long time. But in the end we always have to generalize when we want to categorize, otherwise we end up in analysis paralysis.
0:18 I've been there, it's a gorgeous ruin in Tipperary and there's a really good lunch place just a quick walk from it. I can't remember the exact name of it though sadly. I think it was a cathedral/abbey in the past though.
0:47 The best is that it was the very same Christianity that ended the dark ages, yet they seem to conveniently forget that.
Finally!! A video acknowledging that "muh heckin wholesome dark agerino!!" is a farce
This was a great video; far too many people hear the term "Dark Ages" and think some sort of caricature of peasant life, a la Monty Python. The rise of what would become France is just a small facet of the larger European cultural progression towards the statehood of all the countries (almost literally) that we know of today.
Thank you, kind sir, this was most enjoyable.
You can’t both say it wasn’t a dark age and then also claim that the foundations for the French state happened during it.
Yeeeaaahhhhh calling it "Dark Ages" is a pretty mish mish, but in my opinion it's irresponsible to gloss over the 3rd-5th CE collapse of basically everything we'd call "civilization": mass literacy, standardized global trade, urbanization, commoditized fabrication at scale . . the list is fairly long. Christianity, of course, doesn't make anything collapse or particularly grow, but is an emergent quality of its circumstances. In a plague-filled period (Antonine, Justinian) where the rule of law[1] is disintegrating, an egalitarian creed that puts a premium on medical attention is going to do very well for itself.
As climate in Western Europe began to stabilize in the 8th C - and then begin warming *subtantially* into the early centuries of the second millenium CE - the civilization of the Middle Ages stepped up in earnest, equalling and then in some areas surpassing population and urbanization levels of the Roman period. The powerful machinery of the late Hellenic world was rediscovered, and huge new structures erected with completely novel aesthetics. But those are not what people call "Dark Ages - 1190 is a very, *very* long way from 690.
[1] and, more importantly, the means by which slavery is enforced . . Western historians have never quite grokked exactly how huge slavery was in Roman civilization
When I first learned about the "Dark Ages" in school it appeared to make sense, mainly because the only thing talked about was feudalism and The Black Death. It's when you dig below the surface you see it wasn't dark, more just dimmer compared to the age of Rome before and the Renaissance after it.
A company with deep pockets needs to hire this dude to make documentaries. Damn good show.
You have no idea how good it feels to see this particular meme taken down a peg. Love your work.
The breath and with of what you cover is crazy love your work
Good luck and Godspeed
Thank you so much
Fun fact: our modern shape of the Latin alphabet (most commonly used fonts, at least) can be traced to the Carolingian minuscule, which some Renaissance scholars mistakenly took for the original Roman writing style and marveled at its elegance. Not realizing that the ancient texts they were looking at were meticulously copied by monks.
I only ever heard the term "dark ages" used for the period from the fall of the roman empire till the coronation of Charleslemanges.
Here in austria it is sometimes used as standin for the migration period that roughly covers the same period of time.
And the 'dark' does not refer to being especially uncivilized or savage but rather a relative lack of writen primary sorces in lage parts of europe....
In so far i never realy had any trouble with the term....
Hey 50K! Congrats!
Excellent presentation, highly thought-provoking
i remember reading somewhere that the dark ages is really just meant to represent the period of time between rome and the anglo saxons in Britain since not much is known about that time period. like the most we know about that time is literally to do with king Arthur and how maybe he might of been a roman general who stayed in Britain in charge of a city state in wales, aside from that not much else is known until the anglo saxons arrive and created enough stability for monks to begin writing stuff down.
nice work!
Congrats on 50k!
just a sidenote (partly copied from Wikipedia) to make something aware: (...) Since Karl der Grosse (Charles the Great), the realm was merely referred to as the 'Roman Empire'. The term sacrum ("holy", in the sense of "consecrated") in connection with the medieval Roman Empire was used beginning in 1157 under Friedrich/Frederick I Barbarossa ("Holy Empire"): the term was added to reflect Friedrich's/Frederick's ambition to dominate Italy and the Papacy. The form "Holy Roman Empire" is attested from 1254 onward. The exact term "Holy Roman Empire" was not used until the 13th century, before which the empire was referred to variously as universum regnum ("the whole kingdom", as opposed to the regional kingdoms), imperium christianum ("Christian empire"), or Romanum imperium ("Roman empire"),[32] but the Emperor's legitimacy always rested on the concept of translatio imperii,[g] that he held supreme power inherited from the ancient emperors of Rome.(...)
I see the term dark ages to mean almost no one writes or reads latin anymore
Thanks, good videos
completely unrelated, but the roller coaster of geography around the Netherlands is quite wild, even Flevoland makes an appearance sometimes
Thank you for this.
I think only people with a very basic knowledge of history refer to the whole Medieval period in Europe as "The Dark Ages". Even Wikipedia describes "The Dark Ages" as an early Medieval period only.
As a devout RMS Olympic fan, thank you for doing my girl justice.
Take care good sir!
2:40 Thank you.
Very small point, but the territory of today's Czech Republic was originally Christianized by the byzantines. See Cyril and Metodus in 863. There were some frankish monks in later years, yes.
The term dark ages isnt "problematic" because it ignores the Islamic golden age. In this context it specifically refers to Europe so the term makes no comment on the middle east or far east
I always held that the Holy Roman Empire did start out as a Holy Roman Empire, but by the time of Voltaire had degenerated into what was basically a Schismatic German Confederation.
The eastern expansion of the Carolingian empire ends roughly at the border of the Roman Empire. That border is still seen today, as a sudden spike in Heavy Metal music fans.
As someone who isnt really knowledgeable in history before say the 19th century, I always thought of the darkages to be arround the 13th century or so, and not that early
This is my first video from this channel and I'm so happy to be wrong, bc I clicked on the video expecting it to be about how that time peroid didn't exist.
Have you listened to the History of Byzantium? Picks up where Mike Duncan's History of Rome podcast left off, and is really detailed on what happened to East Rome during the "dark ages" really interesting stuff.
Where I think the term "Dark Ages" can meaningfully be applied is the areas of the Western Roman Empire during the first 300 years after the fall of the empire, so for me the Dark Ages end already with Charlemagne. Compared to the former heights of the Roman Empire, the scale of things, the centralization, the extent of institutions etc. and pretty much everything was clearly diminished for a long time, which is why I think the term does have some truth to it. Though Dark Ages might still make it seem too much like every day was chaos and nothing good ever happened.
Trying to apply the concept to the whole medieval period, however, and especially outside Europe, is complete nonsense.
Best April fools video yet!
Teaching western civ at community College here in US the term is now Late Antiquity rather than dark age. More than anything dark refers more to the collapse of centralized rule and general stability. In western Europe both fell apart, but the people didn't just disappear.
I thought this was an episode on the theory that the dark ages never happened.
I forgot that was a thing
@@HistoryofEverythingChannel which is why people though this mighe be an april fools joke.
As I started to learn more about the Middle Ages I always questioned why was it called the Dark Ages especially in regards to Western Europe when it was the period were Cathedrals were made, rise of inventions that led to better agriculture than even the Romans would wish they have, better arms and armour especially in the late middle ages and in regards to education the standard was that one must know how to read and write in Latin to be considered literate so its safe(?) to assume a lot of people still know how to read and write their local language.
Also ah Gavelkind the bane of every Crusader Kings player... but IRL it could be a blessing of sort since it allowed regions/states to form their unique culture and identity further.
For me the decline of reading, written and consequently written records is significant enough to warrant the description.
I always thought that the term dark age was just a different name for the middle age I never looked into it because I'm more interested in the weapons armor and how they where made and used though the fact that where I live most people use dark age and middle age is used interchangeable around my town probably helped in that
If i'm not mistaken it was the poet Francesco Petrarca who coined the term. He was comparing the art of classical antiquity to that of the period after it.
With the exception of a few years around 536AD, I'll bet the sun rose every day.
So when is the Q&A stream?
"Dark ages" was coined by Petrarch in the 14th century. His characterization might be worth its own video. Not that it comes up much in everyday conversation, but I use the term "early middle ages".
2:45 To be fair to Voltaire, wasn't he talking about the Holy Roman Empire as it was in the late 1700s, not in 800? 🙂
I always thought that the term was used exclusively as a lack of Latin correspondences between the Roman empire and the frontier states and the cessation of the spread of Roman technologies from the Roman empire.
For the love of Chuck “The Hammer,” Pepin the height challenged, and Big Carl, the “g” in Merovingian and Carolingian is the one in the French word “Allemagne” not the American “thingie.”
Sorry for picking nits, this one was a fingernail to chalkboard interruption in the flow of awesome.
Fun Fact, in German you normaly don´t say "dark ages" oder "dunkele Zeiten" We would say "mittelalter" or "middle ages" in english? And we distinguished between early midddle ages, high middle ages und late middle ages and then to the renaissance.
Quite ironic to basically call the Eastern Romans stupid for having civil wars, when Charlemagne's empire fractured within two generations of his death while Eastern Rome lasted for another 700 years.
Charlemagne's empire split according to law and custom.
The byzantine empire was in constant civil war against laws.
One is a bad system functioning well, the other is a mediocre system functioning poorly.
"sorry northern Ireland"
That was weird.
I can't see how we could say the HRE was "roman" seeing as it was:
1- Founded by a Germanic king
2- Centered around what constitutes modern day Germany and eastern France
3- Did not have direct authority over Rome
I get the "Holy" on account of Catholicism being where it drew a lot of its claim to legitimacy, and the Empire part as it involved the subjugating of peoples under a central authority though.
Founded by the pope of Rome who crowned a Roman catholic according to the religion of the late Roman empire as the emperor of the Romans
Also the Eastern Roman Empire probably didn't get the memo that the ages it existed was supposed to be dark.
Somebody left candle on smh
Would love a look at Ireland during the period.
Thank you so much! I live in The Netherlands, pretty much on the Limes and close to Noviomagus - Roman history is not that interesting to me, it was an invading empire that did their thing for a while and then sort of left. Much more interested in the pre Roman and the post Roman times - this video gives an amazing overview of the latter.
A video on pre Roman history would also be greatly appreciated, allthough I know it's hard because the invading Romans are often the only written source available.
So true bestie
Omg bestie
I think there could still be some value in the use of the term “Dark Ages”, but only within an appropriate context. I would narrow the scope of the Dark Ages from only the fall of western Rome to the start of the Carolingian Empire, and it would only apply to western Europe. The term would apply because this period sees a relative lack of firsthand documentation of events compared to prior and future periods.
I have heard an admittedly very racist use of the term Dark Ages to refer to this period in world history because, while we see Europe struggling in the immediate aftermath of the fall of Rome, we see the rise of the Islamic Caliphate and several African civilizations, so the use of “dark” would refer to the skin color of these societies’ populations.
As far as I know the scientific meaning of the term "dark ages" is morally neutral: It just means that there are relatively few historic documents from that period, so modern historians are "in the dark" about it...
I think some historians over hype Tours. It was basically an all cavalry raiding force from the Islamic caliphate in Iberia.
The Muslims would have returned to Iberia afterwards anyway. There undoubtedly would have been Muslim presence along the southern part of France and I think mostly along the Mediterranean coast. Given events that happened within the caliphate itself I do not think it would have gone further into France.
Bret Deveraux did a *great* series on covering all the ways why the Dark Ages is a stupid term, main being that for the average citizen there was no difference in quality of life from before Rome fell to after. The Process was so gradual that honestly it's hard to even tell when do the Dark Ages *begin*.
Secondly, as he shows, there was a shift in quality of life over time due to the lack of a singular organized authority, but in many other ways there is also continuity - writing continues, and actually grows during the period, unlike what so many say. Roman culture evolves as the Civic and Religious elite of the Gaelo-Romans merges with the Frankish nobility, with the structures, customs and norms of these new societies being an extension of the Roman culture that their forefathers had.
Ultimately it's a problem of Historical Traditions and Narratives, and not actual history. Because what people imagine is a rapid transition from "200 CE Rome with Marble and Legionnaires everywhere and orators walking the marbled streets arguing about Cato and Ceaser" to "everyone lives in ruins and straw huts and flog themselves and fling shit out of window".
Sorry, but I don't think you're conveying the point of the series effectively (assuming you mean "Collections: Rome: Decline and Fall?", as I can't think of another he's done covering this issue). Deveraux argues that, while the old 'Death of a Civilisation' concept isn't right, and various facets of the 'Dark Ages' were already present in the late Empire, the breakdown of Roman Rule in the West did significantly decrease quality of life for the average citizen.
To quote the introduction to part 3 of the series:
"This week then, we’re going to turn to ‘things’ - economics and demographics (which is also going to include a brief discussion of popular literacy). In my own view, this is the decisive part of the ‘fall of Rome’ question, because these are the areas in which we can get a sense of what the experience of the collapse of Roman authority was like for the vast majority of people in the Roman world who do not write to us, who were not rich or powerful and who are thus very difficult to see historically. After all, even if the collapse of Roman political authority was a neutral or even potentially beneficial experience for the elite stratum at the top of society - and it is not clear that it was, mind you; those elites themselves that write to us certainly did not think so - if it was catastrophically bad for the non-elite population, their experience utterly swamps the elite experience by sheer dint of numbers.
And as those of you who have noticed the trend in how this series is organized may have already guessed, it was catastrophically bad. Buckle up folks, it is all downhill from here."
I still kind of think of about 500-800 AD as the dark ages, i'm willing to be dissuaded of this though.
It is interesting watching this on April Fool's Day
Still not sold on this monotheism being a good idea, but you make good arguments.
Very well, from now on it shall be known as the Smelly Medieval Peasant ages.
... _would_ we say that the church recorded what we know about Norse Paganism? Because my understanding is that it was definitely a Snorri Sturluson solo EP, for political reasons SPEAKING OF, I think the Church's dalliance with earthly politics in addition to their habit of purging the heretic and the unbeliever, is why scholars of the time and the well-read don't particularly care for the Church of this era and, well, other eras?
This is one of my favorite conspiracy theories! Right up there with "lizzid people", Birds are not real and flat earth. As a collector of such wild notions, I get a special snicker out of this one. Thank you!
I cant tell if this is an aprill fools video or not
Its April 2nd here
The Enlightment was the true Dark Age.
What? Someone swapped out the titanic? Why would anyone do that?
My history teacher literally said that during the dark ages everything was worse than the Roman Empire it:e and everyone was dumber than
n o
@@HistoryofEverythingChannel I know what he said was wrong, I was just stating his stupid quote
morovgian dinasty? isnt it mero-vingian? (without the dash) 4:30
As far as where I stand dark ages refers to times which have either very little original or archeological sources available or just very research done.
Popular and pseudo science as well as culture has both interpreted the dark part as being grim, uneducated and overall terrible as well as equaling the term with the middle ages which is both factually wrong.
I would go so far and state that various forms of research is actually steadily improving our understanding of that and other dark ages and maybe the term is too tainted or misunderstood to be still used anyway.
Given the recent buzz about the royal family in England It kinda feels like we have not yet quite overcome the post roman feudal order totally.
Also just thinking about it I wonder how historians in 1000 years will see the year 2024, are we end stage Renaissance or late industrialization - it kinda feels like we´re moving a bit away from the pre-post WW2 history and even very dramatic changes like the fall of the eastern block, 9/11 and such start to feel like minor footnotes of history already. Heck even the corona pandemic feels like ancient history already.
Now that I think about it, it definitely sounds like an idea made up during the enlightenment, ESPECIALLY by the French when they were on their anti-religion trip. "Seven day weeks? Days named after ancient gods? Years based on the birth of Christ? Can't have any of that! History? Nothing that happened in the past thousand years matters, only now matters because it involves us and our religion-free cleverness!" And then the German philosophers did what they did best: write gigantic boring papers to say "yeah I pretty much agree, we're really clever" 😂
Voltaire and the HRE. How Roman was the HRE?
there was no 'Charlemagne'. His name was 'Karl /Carl' (and this more correkt Name is also the base for the Carolingians or the latinized Karolus/Carolus - and almost all languages refer to a Karl. Only France (England copied this nonsense) changed that name as regional mutation over time which doesnt change the fact that it makes absolutely no sense to use for any reason (especially not historical incorrect) the name 'Charlemagne'. It is JUST WRONG! No one with that name existed. And we do NOT talk about a simple convention between totally different language families like for instance in the case of 'Tutankhamun'. We talk about an existing and used original name (from Karl Lagerfeld, Karl Marx, Carl G.Jung, Carl Gustav - King of Sweden etc.) and a historic WRONG (also on Karl/Carl based - but much later just regional mutated) 'Charles' which exists parallel but wasnt the true name (or if you want its less close). Most historians (because not accurate enough) still make the mistake to mix permanently the names wrong depending on their irrelevant habits instead of just using the CORRECT KNOWN NAMES. And only if one understands that you get an idea to think about why his brother is named KARLOMAN = Karlman! People who uses (not just in this case, there was also no Louis, its 'Ludwig' or at least something along this line Ludwig = Clovis/Cholodwig) wrong names MISS A LOT OF HISTORY! This mixing of usually WRONG french names leads permanently to a weired mix of Germanic/Latin and WEIRD later regional-localized bullshit name (historically spoken)). We talk here about almost in all cases Germanic tribe or tribe union leaders who also teached the children in Germanic ways (Karl did that as well) plus a 'modified' VulgarLatin version (not classic Roman), and kept in most cases others out from the inner circle/dynasties. The core region of the Franks (which are as confederation the result of older tribes from mostly Germany) was 'Austrasia' which is basically Western Germany, Netherlands and Belgium with Aachen/Germany as center - where also the Carolingian Renaissances took place and Karl der Grosse/Charles the Great was/is buried plus many other stuff which still exist there. And those regions became also later part of the Holy Roman Empire with Germany as base - but not under 'Holy Roman Empire' (that name came later) but under 'Roman Empire (the continuation!) and/or 'the Christian Empire'. And btw. - almost all Renaissances, the Northern as well as the one in 'Italy/Rome' were in reality in the direct or indirect realm of the (Holy) Roman Empire - just like most industry (till today), most cities/castles, most people (yes, there is a reason why the BLUE BANANA is the most populated region in Europe, most innovations and so on - keep in mind that you had also one one side then the Hanseatic League (Northern Maritime Subempire) of autonomous cities (within the 'HRE') and the also autonomous cities in Northern Italy with maritime trade Empires (like Venice) which were connected by land and water (especially the Rhein/Rhine river) which not just traded goods of all kind but also information. This trade and information highway backbone within the (Holy) Roman Empire is one major reason for the progress of Europe (and why here most relevant stuff happened. And this is also true today: as said, most populated and industrialized region in Europe - and from knights armor/weapons to cars and stuff today, this continued). It should btw. also not be surprising - due to the geographical interface situation in Europe - that most cultures originated in those regions (Proto-Germanic in Northern Germany, Proto-Celtic in Southern Germany/Austria (Hallstatt), Proto-Italic nearby in Hungary (before they went over to 'italy) and Proto-Slavic in Poland and the region around). The other European meta culture branch was in Anatolia (Proto-Greeks, Proto-Etruscian etc). And Germany is also today right in the center the transit country Nr. 1 (in and through Germany). You also have most roads/tracks/trains (and internet) here which is also the reason why the Deutsche Bahn and some neighbors (like Netherlands, Belgium - the old Austrasia hotspot!) have similar problems with the pressure of the exploding traffic since the globalized 21. century - its not just old structurs which became old/and incompatible systems - but also more fluctuation and traffic in the main hotspot of Europe. Btw... another population measure is the 'great Northern plane' - the flat land between Netherlands/Northern- and Middle-Germany over Poland etc.till Russia (also if one measures this population one gets the most populated region for a reason). Back to the Germanic Frankish Empire something 'funny/interesting'. This Frankish core region 'Austrasia' with Germany/Netherlands/Belgium is also the biggest hotspot for Tornados in Europe ....
I feel I need to moderate some of the things mentioned in the video.
Firstly I think you have the wrong idea of what is meant when people call them the "dark ages". You seem to have this notion that people think of it as this boring era in which nothing happened and while that might be a lay opinion of the time span, that is not and was not the reason why it was called the dark ages. They were and to a more limited extent still are called the dark ages because of how the time frame in the region compared with the Roman Empire before its fall in the west.
In many regards things took a dramatic down turn, with major cities in the region rapidly depopulating, trade flows falling off a cliff, Roman infrastructure falling first into disrepair and then into ruin to say nothing of the wars that would disturb these previously far more stable and peaceful formerly Roman provinces. For the first few centuries after the fall of the western empire, I feel there is little room to doubt that things were noticeably worse for people in the region than they were in the Roman era and that is what people mean when they say the age was "Dark". It very much was a regression for much of western Europe that it wouldn't recover from for some time.
That said, that doesn't mean that there isn't anything to push back on for this time period. It was not, for instance, a dark age for large parts of the rest of the world and indeed it was a high point for some. Calling the times a dark age is definitely a misnomer for contexts outside of western Europe in that regard and is the result of a sort of blinkered western perspective on history.
The dark ages were also, it must be said, probably not as bad as has been popularly portrayed. While they were a regression, they were probably not anywhere near as apocalyptic as past historiography on the period liked to paint it. It also nowhere near as long as you mentioned in the video. Europe started to recover from the fall of the Western Empire long before the renaissance with the 10th and 11th centuries perhaps being the point where the region started to approach and in some areas surpass the Roman period in terms of population, organization and technical know how.
Oh and on a final unrelated note, the HRE was definitely neither Holy, Roman nor an empire, and I don't say that as someone who particularly dislikes the HRE as an institution. There are many ways in which the HRE was a fascinating institution that in a number of ways did work far better than has been portrayed in the historiography, but that doesn't change the fact that it wasn't holy, in the sense that it was very much a temporal institution, not a religious one, it wasn't Roman as most of the territory of the HRE hadn't even been within the bounds of the Roman empire and bears little cultural, political or social resemblance to the Roman empire, and it wasn't an empire in the strictest sense in the same way that it would be weird to refer to the EU as an empire.
As somebody who went to school during the early 2000s. The genuine teaching was that the dark ages were a thing with nothing happened and religion bad.
@@HistoryofEverythingChannelAs someone who went to school in the mid 2000s and 2010s I echo this sentiment. I can remember in my “world history class” in my first year of High school, we spent a day on the subject and got that same takeaways.
I was also in school in the early 2000s and what I recall being taught back then was that the Dark ages were literally dark in the sense of "It was hell on earth, barbarians everywhere". There was a sense of "Nothing happened back then" but more in the vein of "It was all downhill after the Romans so it was kinda cringe".
"the church wrote it down" well that's not true as most of the texts that survive werent written by monks from churches.
1:15 that’s a myth just because they won 1 Battle does not mean that all of England was under their control The English still had a king and men ready to fight
they didn’t take control of all of England until the 1070s and it’s a great insult to all the men who died for England after that battle
The middle ages are fine as a name.
Middle Francia, I guess, is the predecessor to the BeNeLux and Switzerland as well...
More so italy. The Northern part of the realm didn't last long at all to have as much of an effect
@@HistoryofEverythingChannel Undeniably. But I see the border outlines for the Netherlands and Switzerland in those of Mid-Francia
@@HistoryofEverythingChannelYou also forgot to cover the 7th to 9th century AD Gaelic golden age
You also forgot to cover the 7th to 9th century AD Gaelic golden age
it's the Dark Ages from the point of view of economics, sociology, and political history. The power and wealth of states and the populace disappearance created significant turmoil for European society at the time. Even if states like the Carolingians were created, they saw rapid fracturing due to the rise in feudal lords. It was a dark period in human history, and the religious and cultural divides created in that time is what creates many modern conflicts.
I would say it is less a cause of modern conflicts than the colonialism and huge expansion of slavery that occurred after the Middle Ages. It is also hard to argue that the middle ages had more turmoil than the centuries that gave us the Protestant Reformation, the 30 Years War, the Seven Years War, the Napoleonic wars, and the World Wars.
You are correct however, that a lot of the trade links and security provided by the Roman Empire was lost.
also reasonable.
None of the conflicts of the "dark ages" hold a candle to the conquest of the Mongolian empire or the absolutely devastating 30 years war
Every history professor I had during my degree freely admitted the concept of the Dark Ages is long debunked. I can't think of any modern historians who argue for it.
It persists, though, because it has a polemical value for some people. The old Stargate SG-1 TV show perfectly encapsulated it when it had characters say that the Dark Ages were a period of 500 years where because of the Church science and technology were heresy and witchcraft so all human progress stopped.
That's total nonsense, but there are people who want to believe it, it's a fable that satisfies their anti-Christian prejudices. Anyone educated about the era post-Rome pre-Renaissance knows it's not even vaguely true, science, medicine, technology, agriculture, architecture, art all advanced in the 1000 years between those two points. For every Roman technology like Roman cement that was lost countless others were improved and discovered.
Hence we only see the idea of the Dark Ages spread by non subject matter experts who have an axe to grind.
@@EasternstarADF 1. did technological progress slow down, yes.
2. were a bunch of records lost, yes.
3. Did societal complexity decrease, yes.
4. was there regional collapse, yes.
All of these satisify the dark age theory.