Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Week 9 Blog: Where are the Dark Ages
I have always thought of medieval Europe as what was referred to as the dark ages. The first part of this weeks reading really changed my mind about this. To think that these people actually underwent an intellectual Renaissance was a bit of a paradigm shift for me. I was taken back that this relatively new religion (Christianity) was already undergoing such refining acts. The people took the "rules" for ritcheous living and realized that nobody was going to go to heaven--so they changed the rules. Thinking about how the justice system was based on theological views makes sense to me, but I can also see why the people thought that this was a bad thing--it was too tough. I was also surprised to see such an interest in academics. These motivations for learning were not things that I thought the people of this time period had. Maybe I am wrong in thinking that this was the Dark Ages at all. Can anyone speculate for me?
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I think what many people seem to forget is a minor renissance of sorts started with Charlemagne and continued in courts with the increase of christianity. I think why we have come to think of this as the dark ages is because not much survived and many of the trades were lost when the plague came through Europe. We read that many towns lost so many poeple that full crafts and trades were wiped out thus creating the more noted need for traveling tradesman. I think it is also important to remember that Isaac Newtons discoveres also were a result of the Plague later on. He fled to the country to avoid the illness and in turn developed many of the basics of modern science. I think that the "Renissance" we all know would have come much earlier had the Plague not struck Europe in with such force.
Well, Kurtis, I do speak to some of this in my essay on the "Dark Ages", in the class readings. But I'll summarize quickly here.
The term is pretty much out of favor among historians, period.
It gets used anyway. In a narrow sense, it usually is applied to the early Middle Ages, roughly 500 to 1000 or so. In a broader sense, it's used as a synonym for the Middle Ages generally. That broader sense never was right, not even among those who held there was such a thing as a dark age.
I was also interested to learn the level of sophistication during the the Middle Ages. The most interesting thing I learned was that of Isaac Newton and his discoveries as a direct result of the plague. It seemed that since the plague hit hardest in the cities where the poor were, and the rich were able to escape to the country, the rich survived in greater numbers. I do agree with the previous post that the "Renissance" would have occurred earlier if not for the plague.
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