Avoid the Myth of the Dark Ages
- Thread starter Finn
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I consider the Romans jerks, so I personally don't view their collapse (Imperial-wise, since the Church still remained) as Dark. But if you want to have the Renaissance people not throw the Middle Ages under the bus (the name "Middle Ages" itself being a swipe at the time between them and Rome, since it was like these were just transitional times with no merit), you have to have the Renaissance not think that the Greeks and Romans were the be all, end all of advancement and civilization, and be accepting of the fact that the Middle Ages were a time of advances, and those advances led into the Renaissance itself.
One possibility (and a favorite on this board, for sure) is the survival of everyone's favorite Roman successor state-with no fall of Byzantium, you have a steady continuation from antiquity to the modern period, and a ready resource of greco-roman goodness for when the Westerners decide its fashionable again.
Alternatively, have more preservation of classical records during the "middle ages" and have them more widespread, so there's not as much need for a renaissance in the first place.
So what point of departure could change that attitude?
I suppose if paper-making reaches the west earlier, recorded history wouldn't depend so much on the price of papyrus, or [gah! expensive!] parchment, or on re-use of older sheets due to shortages.
I suppose if Italy wasn't devastated by the sixth-century wars, it might have been more prosperous, and more independent, in the following centuries. But all bets are off on this sort of thing. And it's possible that the conflicts between the Emperor, the Pope, and the Italian city-states made the idea into useful propaganda...
I suppose if paper-making reaches the west earlier, recorded history wouldn't depend so much on the price of papyrus, or [gah! expensive!] parchment, or on re-use of older sheets due to shortages.
I suppose if Italy wasn't devastated by the sixth-century wars, it might have been more prosperous, and more independent, in the following centuries. But all bets are off on this sort of thing. And it's possible that the conflicts between the Emperor, the Pope, and the Italian city-states made the idea into useful propaganda...
Byzantium? BYZANTIUM? They certainly made later late antiquity and the early middle ages a good deal darker than the periods might have been.
Lower the importance of Roman law in western Europe.
Its adoption from medieval italy (because it was FAR more favorable to patrician (alliance between high nobility and bourgeois than customs) and its praize by courts's jurists made the medieval customs look silly and primitive. Avoid a litteral adoption of this laws, and you could make a mix between customs and roman legislation (with southerns law and customs being very close to roman law sometimes)
Not Italian Renaissance
It must begins anywhere but there. Spain or France are the most plausible, but not an Italy that litteraly fantasmed roman civilisation.
No Protestant propaganda as we know.
Protestantism played a great role in the "dark legend" of Middle Ages, an age where supersition and papism ruled an enslaved Europe to Satan, before the Protestants came.
Bonus points (or i'm just thinking about it) : No HRE, No Crusades after the III (or at least no as it occured OTL, critically the following the venitians, angevines or anything else interests), No HCW, No Great Schism or West/East Schism would be appreciable too.
Its adoption from medieval italy (because it was FAR more favorable to patrician (alliance between high nobility and bourgeois than customs) and its praize by courts's jurists made the medieval customs look silly and primitive. Avoid a litteral adoption of this laws, and you could make a mix between customs and roman legislation (with southerns law and customs being very close to roman law sometimes)
Not Italian Renaissance
It must begins anywhere but there. Spain or France are the most plausible, but not an Italy that litteraly fantasmed roman civilisation.
No Protestant propaganda as we know.
Protestantism played a great role in the "dark legend" of Middle Ages, an age where supersition and papism ruled an enslaved Europe to Satan, before the Protestants came.
Bonus points (or i'm just thinking about it) : No HRE, No Crusades after the III (or at least no as it occured OTL, critically the following the venitians, angevines or anything else interests), No HCW, No Great Schism or West/East Schism would be appreciable too.
There is a problematic conception with the idea that humans became stupider and more ignorant in Europe after the fall of Rome, and it only returned to previously lost intelligence with the Renaissance. And that the Romans were perfect and everyone else was a group of barbarians digging in the mud and living just a step above cave men. That's the Middle Ages in the conception of it as a middle age; a dip where people tried to climb out of a hole and get back to being in the Roman days. In truth, the Barbarians whom the Medieval kingdoms evolved from were reasonably advanced (and many on Rome's level; it may even be most) and Europe kept developing throughout the Middle Ages, and developed into the Renaissance rather than someone snapping their fingers and all of a sudden them leaping out of mud huts. The Middle Ages were, to the people who lived in them, the most Modern Ages. And they were doing things that hadn't been done before.
Investigate Terry Jones' stuff on the Middle Ages. He's my guru.
Well it wasn't a wasteland region inhbaited only by savages (not as nowadays) but between 650's and the Viking raid, it seems to have been quite stagnant? But if you've informations about this period, please give me as i would really like to have been wrong on this one.Dark Age Ireland, not that dark
Quoted for truth. But Georges Duby is the only Emperor-God of Middle Ages!
Oh, and please avoid Regine Pernoud that was competent, but made any defense of Middle-Ages more or less "Roman Ages and Renaissance are the true Dark Ages" stuff. Aslo raged against Occitan, but it don't take it personal.
Revolutionary Todyo
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All I have is that I've always been taught that compared to Roman Britain Ireland was advanced, Irish scholars having something of a reputation for being rather clever, "If a man speaks Greek he must be Irish" and all that. Also the idea that Irish monks were well traveled reaching as far as Ukraine.
But to me, the Dark Ages is big generic blob from about 600-1000AD so yeah there probably was stagnation, there's only so much you can do on a tiny island that lacks resources and a direct link to the continent.
Surely, it's not a judgment on irish civilisation. But i have the idea that the too many ties between Cloistred Clergy and Irish noblity (at the point to have monks fighting each other because there monasteries were linked to batteling families) played a role in it at the end, when the reltive authority of the bishops in western Europe and the mix between latin and celtic cloistred clergy allowed the monasteries to play a good economic role during the Carolingian times.
Interesting to see that celtic rites, as confession to the ear and peregrination lasted until todays.
For the latin and greek grammarians, i was most used to hear or read that about Anglo-Saxons scholars (at the point they played a great role in the cultural carolingian renaissance), so it would be the case of Irish scholars as well?
For Ukraine i didn't know about it, but...i think that the worst is it could be totally plausible.
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Basically, Justianian's ambition led to decades of war in Italy, and probably aggravated the war in Spain. Although it might not have devastated Africa as much as Italy and Spain.
While there was certainly a collapse of trade with the east(In 600 the graves of the Merovingian kings are decorated with Byzantine jewelry; this disappears later) and a general stagnation after Clovis in the Merovingian empire one can't really call it a generic blob. If you must, separate it into two with the reign of Charlemagne in the middle. Truly he breathed life back into western Europe and reopened much of the trade. After him, we can perhaps mark it into an era of terror, anarchy, and constant raiding, with the Saracens, Magyars, and Vikings attacking the cities of western Europe. Still, monasteries held great knowledge within their confines and the brilliance of Byzantium and Muslim Spain(both in the second period) heavily influenced Europe.
On the topic of Ireland, I had always felt that it's 'golden age of Monasticism' had begun to decline soon after the bid to convert the Ango-saxons to Irish Catholicism had failed, but perhaps I am wrong.
Not really. Besides the 'devastation of Italy' Byzantium had a significant cultural influence on Europe, probably for the better. And Byzantine scholars fleeing the Capture of Constantinople to Italy helped jump-start the Renaissance.
Revolutionary Todyo
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I meant Dark Ages Ireland, where the only interesting things to happen IMO were the rise of the monastries, the Viking raids and Brian Boru.
But I'm mostly ignorant on this era anyway.
Mainly because Merovingian kings used local production. I don't think that the development of proper work in Gaul, avoiding to have byzantine decorations, could be defined as "collapse".
Furthermore, the disapperence of oriental (mostly byzantine) goods was more localized in the 700's and was not even complete (Charlemagne had a royal byzantine tapestry)
General stagnation? Are you sure? Admitted the agricultural production stagned because of colder temperatures (since the 300's, really perceptibles during the 400-600), but the (re?)-appearance of a gift-based microeconomy used others flux than trade without representing a lesser alternative.
In fact romans roads have probably been abandoned for trade because of new techniques of transports as the trade still existing, but in slower flux, used more capacitying of carring.
Regarding Charlemagne, he persued only his fathers and great's father policy of general raid, in order to perfuse the gift economy.
Since Charles Martel to the death of Charlemagne, we can count : 4/5 raids against Aquitains, 4 against Lombards, 2/3 against Frisians (sort of Venetians of North Sea at this era), 3 raids in Spain (including raiding allies), 3 campaigns in Saxony, plunder of byzantine possessions, raid against the Avar Ring.
Where the big difference with the post-carolingian raids regarding the constance and the violence?
For the trade and agricultural revolution, it began really only after the death of Charlemagne, as the nobles had to find other way to have luxury goods than just raiding neighbors : by using another fiscality than the outbassed roman one, by making their domains productive and by enforcing trading in order to get "exotic" goods.
If these times weren't ones of economic change and growth, i doubt that Vikings and Maygars would have raided that much.
For cities stuff, no. Vikings attacked countryside first, not far well defended cities. They did so when armies retranched itself behind the walls, ready to attack them soon they began to plunder.
For Sarassines, it was "only" a slavery piracy, very limited regarding targets and inflicted damages.
Monasteries held critically their power and influence from the markets and peasant fleeing feudal violence that ioncreased the productivity of domain. Little chance to them to became centers of knowledge if they didn't managed to keep themselves relativly independents from neighbors.
May i ask why are you quoting Byzantium and Al-Andalus that are maybe the less influences in the IX? Even in Catalonia, at the very own contact of Spain, technological and cultural changes would have to wait the XI to really occurs.
FOr Byzantium, the fact that clerks keep greek texts and commentaries are not meaning that thek kept contact with Constantinople. At the contrary, we began to see wrong ideas about orthodoxy church, about ERE at this date, when Clergy and Papacy were definitly seeing their hope in the Franks.
They didn't even managed to convert them, mainly because of ties between monasticism and nobility in Ireland, and in Britons regions.
italy managed to be ravaged by war (20 years), paludism, loss of ressources because of Constantinople's needs (war, prestige).
The country lost a good part of its population, both urban (the real decline of Rome dates from the Gothic Wars) and rural (the production never was so low). When you see how easily the Lombards get a kingdom, and how it was made without great resistence...
Only some figures that given some flavour to the XV second half Renaissance. This feeling was greatly exageratted and the interest towards byzantine humanists in Italy was present much earlier.
Besides all the process of the Renaissance was already on the rails.