So what caused a thousand years of European Dark Ages anyway? American Christians, do you care to guess?

Answer 1

The 'Dark Ages' is a refrenced coined after that period of time (about 480AD to 1000AD) because of hardly any literature and art other than religious artifacts. Education was not a main focus at that time. This was a 900 year period falling the fall of the Roman Empire, which was then believed to end the advancements that this Empire had made. Turning beliefs into either heaven or hell-often referred to a dark mood.

Answer 2

The label "Dark ages" is the product of anti-Catholic propaganda of later times. The so called "Middle ages" were as creative, vibrant and sparkling as any other age of human life.

There are loads of fabricated myths trying to show how "dark", "repressive" and superstitious" these times were. Just to give a few examples:

1. People didn't think the Earth was flat, neither did the Church. It was common knowledge since old Greek times that the Earth is round. For people who sail on the the oceans, this is just plainly obvious.

2. Witch-trials didn't happen in the Middle ages, they happened in the "modern", "enlightened" times after the Reformation (mainly the 17th century), equally in Catholic and Protestant countries.

3. Also the Inquisition was way more active after the Reformation than before.

4. Medieval learning was not more close-minded than 16th and 17th century learning. In fact, the opposite is more true. The Church (both Catholic and Protestant) became more and more close-minded and sceptical to other ideas, because of the conflicts of the reformation itself. What happened was, the Church closed its openness to science but at the same time lost a lot of its influence over science and universities (and society).

5 In short, the roots of modern fundamentalism, literalism and anti-science lies mainly in the reformation and its aftermath on both sides, but some traces are found already in the end of the Middle ages (mainly the 15th century, which incidentally is when the first traces of the [pre-]reformation also shows).

6. Science in the high Middle ages (12th -14th centuries) saw the development of logic, reason, experiment and exchange of ideas even with non-Christian cultures of learning. The backlash actually came with the renaissance and the reformation (15th - 17th century), which saw logic and reason as old-fashioned and sophistic. The balance was restored around the times of the enlightenment (18th century).

Answer 3

I'd be interested to see a source on some of these comments. From the books I've read on this topic, it seems the dark ages were more about disease (plagues), the economic and population impact of the Crusades, the stagnation of social systems like serfdom, the overhang of the Roman Empire, and so on. The resolution of the high Middle Ages into the Renaissance likewise was primarily economic, having to do with the merchant system and the formation of urban centers and city states.

Answer 4

The public idea of the Middle Ages as a supposed "Dark Age" is also reflected in misconceptions regarding the study of nature during this period. The contemporary historians of science David C. Lindberg and Ronald Numbers discuss the widespread popular belief that the Middle Ages was a "time of ignorance and superstition", the blame of which is to be laid on the Christian Church for allegedly "placing the word of religious authorities over personal experience and rational activity", and emphasize that this view is essentially a caricature.[4] For instance, a claim that was first propagated in the 19th century[5] and is still very common in popular culture is the supposition that the people from the Middle Ages believed that the Earth was flat. According to Lindberg and Ronald L. Numbers, this claim was mistaken, as "there was scarcely a Christian scholar of the Middle Ages who did not acknowledge [Earth's] sphericity and even know its approximate circumference."[6][5] Ronald Numbers states that misconceptions such as: "the Church prohibited autopsies and dissections during the Middle Ages", "the rise of Christianity killed off ancient science", and "the medieval Christian church suppressed the growth of natural philosophy", are examples of widely popular myths that still pass as historical truth, even though he says that they are not supported by current historical research.[7]

Answer 5

No one definitive event marks the end of antiquity and the beginning of the Middle Ages. Neither the sack of Rome by the Goths under Alaric I in 410 nor the deposition in 476 of Romulus Augustulus, the last Roman emperor in the West, impressed their contemporaries as epoch-making catastrophes. Rather, by the end of the 5th century the culmination of several long-term trends—most notably a severe economic dislocation and the invasions and settlement of the various Germanic tribes within the borders of the Western Empire—had changed the face of Rome. For the next 300 years western Europe remained essentially a primitive culture, albeit one uniquely superimposed on the complex, elaborate culture of the Roman Empire, which was never entirely lost or forgotten.

Answer 6

As an American Christian, I think the oppressive forms of government that existed at the time had something to do with it. Whenever you have a lot of people ruled over by a bunch of power hungry inbred elitists who try to keep people in check by supressing free thought, you're bound to have problems. The whole idea of America is to prevent such a situation by having a government ruled by the people. I totally agree with the guy above me who said that religious scholars were critical in preserving the knowledge of antiquity.

Answer 7

Um....not that it sounds like you really care, but it was the collapse of order as Rome fell under the weight of its own corruption....

Sorry, but religious scholars, both Christian and Muslim, were critical in preserving the literary, academic, and yes even SCIENTIFIC, heritage that allowed for the Renaissance to occur.

Answer 8

Rumor has it that the collapse of the Roman Empire and its administrative machinery had a great deal to do with it.

Answer 9

Catholicism.

Catholics are not saved and are not Christians. Catholics believe a false gospel of works that leads to eternal hell (Galatians 1).

Bible teachers that said the Vatican and the catholic cult are an antichrist: John Bunyan, John Huss, John Wycliffe, John Calvin, William Tyndale, John Knox, Thomas Bacon, John Wesley, Charles Spurgeon, Samuel Cooper, John Cotton, and Jonathan Edwards

Answer 10

The suppression of free thought and the prevention of the pursuit of knowledge (science).