When were the European Dark Ages?

Question

And what was the cause? I've read it was the Little Ice Age that began around 1250, and I've read it was the withdrawal of the Roman Empire around 900. Can someone please point me in the right direction?

Answer 1

The terms "Dark Ages", "Renaissance" and "Enlightenment" are later inventions by those highly critical of the past and must all be taken with a very large grain of salt. The term "Dark Ages" especially is a great misnomer and based, ironically, on much ignorance and stereotyping.

IF you wish to use the term at all, it should ONLY be applied to the century to two centuries at most after the fall of the Roman Empire --traditionally AD 476-- when much was in transition. (And it all has NOTHING to do with the "Little Ice Age".)

"The phrase the Dark Ages (or Dark Age) is most commonly known in relation to the European Early Middle Ages (from about A.D. 476 to about 1000).

I am quoting a number of brief explanations of how the expression "Dark Ages" term is mistaken and misleading and something few if any scholars of the period use anymore.
Follow the links to see a fuller explanation of how the "Dark Ages" were NOT so dark.

"Most modern historians dismiss the notion that the era was a "Dark Age" by pointing out that this idea was based on ignorance of the period combined with popular stereotypes: many previous authors would simply assume that the era was a dismal time of violence and stagnation and use this assumption to prove itself."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Ages

Paul H. Freedman
Director of the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities,
"Medievalists have been at (largely unsuccessful) pains to convince their students that the "Dark Ages" is a misnomer, that the centuries between 500 and 1500 saw not only the birth of Europe but the beginnings of parliamentary democracy, romantic affection, universities, and even the discovery of the individual as a complex, internally contradictory agent in uneasy relation to society. "
http://www.vanderbilt.edu/rpw_center/chart.htm

"Dark Ages. the early medieval period of western European history. Specifically, the term refers to the time (476-800) when there was no Roman (or Holy Roman) emperor in the West; or, more generally, to the period between about 500 and 1000, which was marked by frequent warfare and a virtual disappearance of urban life. It is now rarely used by historians because of the value judgment it implies. Though sometimes taken to derive its meaning from the fact that little was then known about the period, the term's more usual and pejorative sense is of a period of intellectual darkness and barbarity."
http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/6/0,5716,29246+1,00.html).

"The period following the collapse of the Roman Empire is generally referred to as the 'Dark Ages.' This term comes from the belief that the light of learning brought to the people of the provinces of the Empire flickered and died as Rome withdrew. It was believed that the peoples who had been brought into the Empire degraded to what they had been before their Roman education. The end of this period is different for various areas of Europe. It can also be argued that any particular area may have re-lit its lamp of learning at many different times. The reason for this argument comes from a relatively recent belief - Lack of Evidence does not mean Evidence of Lack. "
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~lawlessl/DarkAges.html

"It is popular history that science was either Greek in origin, or from the Enlightenment (or perhaps from the Arabs). That, however, ignores the facts, just as "the dark ages" is a misnomer. The rise of science (not just observations) in Europe but nowhere else is not an accident - the causative factors were the Catholic belief system, the church's ability to set up institutions, and the monastic system which gave many scholars the time and place to do their work, not to mention providing other folks to write and duplicate work before the age of the printing press." -John Moore
http://gmroper.mu.nu/archives/169558.php

Answer 2

Okay, but you are all wrong. It had very little to do with the withdrawal of the Romans from Britain and Europe.

Why do we call it the Dark Ages?
The simple reason, for it would go on for months to tell the full story, but in a nutshell, it was like this.

There were many people writing of events, such as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, Bede, etc. There was much written knowledge to be had. Then the Vikings started their thirst for plunder, and then eventually, land. The Vikings raided all the churches and monasteries they could find. They took, as booty, all the gold, silver and books that they could find; they pretty much stripped half of Western Europe!

The gold went back to their own Scandinavian countries, and the books were sold off to the highest bidder. Many of the books were decorated in gold leaf and lapis-lazuli, a highly prized crushed blue gemstone, many times more valuable than gold.

When all the books and other writing were thus no longer available, and the Vikings had stripped everything worth having; the histories that were left were pretty much mouth to mouth. This is why we call it the Dark Ages, because little of what was written no longer survives, so we have not much to go no when researching the ages from around c793 which was the first recorded raid of the Abbey at Lindisfarne to circa 850 AD. I hope that goes someway to enlighten you about the reasons behind the Dark Ages.

Answer 3

The dark ages were caused by the collapse of The WESTERN Roman Empire. When it collapsed, the strong central government went with it. As a result, there was a lot of fighting between local tribes and powers for domination, infrastructure was not kept up and overall quality of life declined.

The Little Ice Age was actually a reason that we came out of the dark ages. It caused widespread reduction in population as well as mass migration. Once the workforce was reduced by plague and famine, the lower classes were able to demand more rights and compensation. This led to the beginings of unions, recreational time and the pursuit of science, art and philosophy.

Answer 4

My understanding was that several reasons were behind the fall of the Roman Empire, the Barbarians (Goths) being just one of them. Emperor Constantine legalized Christianity he SAID b/c of a sign he saw (but it also happened to help him out for the common people to worship a mono deity). After him, there was a brief time the next emperor tried to return to the pagan roots but he died young and whoever took over after that, resorted back to Xianity. Sometime around then the empire started falling and I think the DA would have occurred anyway. It's just that the church combined with the politicians and turned into a very corrupt, bloodthirsty enigma. After the Crusades, there were the witch hunts, the Black Plague, the Inquisition, and the mini-ice age. Some of those things occurred b/c the church wouldn't let anyonee learn REAL science b/c it went against their dogma. I've heard that the Dark Ages referred to different things. My 'favorite' is the time between when the Roman Empire fell and when the church took over.

Answer 5

The "Dark Age" refers to the middle ages in Europe, somewhere around 460 until 1000 or so. It was the period of transition from the Classical Roman until the High Middle Age, when the Reniassance began. It had nothing to do with climatic changes, but with the lack of cultural expansion. The lack of Latin literature, contemporary written history, general demographic decline , limited building activity and material cultural achievements in general.
Here are 3 good info site to get you started.

Answer 6

It started in the 400s when the Roman Empire collapsed, and then eventually got worse....and then got better around the 1400s as the Renaissance started to come around.

Answer 7

It was the time between the fall of the ROman Empire and the Renaissance in western Europe.