What is another name for the rebirth of knowledge after the dark ages?

Answer 1

The term you are after is, as others have stated, "Renaissance", a term that supporters of the 15th century flowering of literature and the fine arts applied to that era.

Unfortunately, the history is seriously flawed, and the terms "Dark Ages" (esp. if used to characterize the whole millennium from 476 to the 15th century) and "Renaissance" (if used exclusively of mainly for the ITALIAN Renaissance and its outflow) are serious misnomers. They were invented by people promoting their own culture and critical of --and (great irony here) IGNORANT of!-- the centuries before their own. It later became even more popular among those critical of the Church, the most powerful institution of this earlier period.

As a matter of fact, the term "Dark Ages" is largely REJECTED by modern historians, certainly by those whose area of expertise is the "Middle Ages" (a somewhat more neutral term). They are aware that there was, in fact, MUCH advancement of culture and technology in these centuries. It may be proper to speak of a BRIEF "Dark Age" immediately after the Roman Empire finally fell apart (at least in the West --the Eastern Empire ["Byzantium"]did not). But church leaders and teachers (such as the literate monks and priests) soon helped restore civilization and broke NEW ground.

In fact, historians of the Middle Ages now often use the term "Renaissance" to refer to flowerings of culture and learning long BEFORE 15th century Italy. Indeed, the "Carolingian Renaissance" and especially the "Twelfth-Century Renaissance" (a period know as the "High Middle Ages") brought MUCH more important advances. The latter was the time of the founding of the UNIVERSITY system, through which major advances were made in philosophy (so-called "scholasticism", which involved a great advance in careful reasoning) and the foundations of the whole "scientific method" -- elements critical to the emerging of the Modern world.

Alongside these intellectual advances there were during these centuries (esp. after AD 1000) critical advances in MANY areas that created the foundations for modern advances -- including advances in Parliamentary government, complex banking methods (which would FINANCE discovery and progress), trade, navigation (the ships and navigational tools that, together with new financial structures made the Age of Discovery possible). ALL of this starting well before the Italian Renaissance. (For that matter, it was the EARLIER flourishing of banking and commerce that produced the wealth the FINANCED the Italian patrons of the arts.) And the spread of learning and information with the invention of the printing press, came DURING the Renaissance but in a different region and as an outgrowth or earlier advances, NOT because of Italian artistic movements at that time.

In all this, I do not mean to say there were not some good and beautiful things contributed by the Italian Renaissance and its offspring in the North. In addition to the contributions of talented artists, the rediscovery of some fine literature and advances in textual criticism (the latter of which was helpful in a new era of careful studies of the original languages of other texts, such as the Bible, hence contributing to the Reformation as well as later Catholic scholarship). But they need to be put in perspective. Fifteenth century Italy did NOT bring the end to some mythical "Dark Ages", and on close inspection its contributions seem rather less significant than those of the other cultural advances of the preceding centuries.

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Further reflections and links, correcting the popular mythologies:


"The Renaissance Myth"
http://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/renaissance.html

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. See Middle Ages." ("Dark Ages")
http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/6/0,5716,29246+1,00.html).


"In fact, although scientists at times have been persecuted, the scholastic tradition and modern science were a direct result of the Roman Catholic Church. In the "dark" ages, the church (and especially its belief system about progress and learning the details of God's works) created the first Universities, the concept of academic freedom (even to the extent that scholars could travel through hostile lands safely) and science itself. This is well documented (it started around 1100 AD) but very few people know it - including academics.

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

why that would be the renaissance of course! the word literally means "rebirth"

Answer 3

It's called the Age of Aquarius.

Answer 4

the Renaissance

Answer 5

renaissance