Why can historians call the dark ages the dark ages?
The concept of a Dark Age was introduced by http://wiki.answers.com/wiki/Petrarch in the 1330s. Writing of those who had come before him, he said, "Amidst the errors there shone forth men of genius, no less keen were their eyes, although they were surrounded by darkness and dense gloom." Christian writers had traditional metaphors of "http://wiki.answers.com/wiki/Light_versus_darkness" to describe "good versus evil." Petrarch was the first to co-opt the metaphor and give it secular meaning by reversing its application. Classical Antiquity, so long considered the "dark" age for its lack of Christianity, was now seen by Petrarch as the age of "light" because of its cultural achievements, while Petrarch's time, lacking such cultural achievements, was seen as the age of darkness. As an Italian, Petrarch saw the http://wiki.answers.com/wiki/Roman_Empire and the classical period as expressions of Italian greatness. He spent much of his time traveling through Europe rediscovering and republishing classic http://wiki.answers.com/wiki/Latin and http://wiki.answers.com/wiki/Greek_language texts. He wanted to restore the classical Latin language to its former purity. http://wiki.answers.com/wiki/Renaissance_humanism saw the preceding 900-year period as a time of stagnation. They saw history unfolding, not along the religious outline of http://wiki.answers.com/wiki/Augustine_of_Hippo's http://wiki.answers.com/wiki/Six_Ages_of_the_World, but in cultural (or secular) terms through the progressive developments of classical ideals, literature, and art. Petrarch wrote that history had had two periods: the http://wiki.answers.com/wiki/Classical_antiquity period of the Greeks and Romans, followed by a time of darkness, in which he saw himself as still living. Humanists believed one day the Roman Empire would rise again and restore classic cultural purity, and so by the late 14th and early 15th century, humanists such as http://wiki.answers.com/wiki/Leonardo_Bruni believed they had attained this new age, and that a third, http://wiki.answers.com/wiki/Modern_Age had begun. The age before their own, which Petrarch had labeled dark, thus became a "middle" age between the classic and the modern. The first use of the term "Middle Age" appeared with http://wiki.answers.com/wiki/Flavio_Biondo around 1439. In other words, it was a dark period in human history.
