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Nowadays the term Dark Ages is avoided by historians because it denotes prejudice. The terms Middle Ages or Medieval period are commonly used instead. This was a period which spanned from the 6th to the 15th century, from the fall of the western part of the Roman Empire to the Renaissance. Historians subdivide it into the Early Middle Ages (5th century-1000) High Middle ages |(1000-1300) and Late Middle Ages (1300-1500).

The term Dark Ages was coined in the 14th century by the Italian humanist Petrarch, who saw what we now call the Early and High Middle Ages as a period of cultural deterioration. This label used the imagery of light-versus- darkness imagery. Petrarch wanted to reverse the image of Classical Antiquity (the Greeks and Romans) of his days, which saw it as a dark period because it was not Christian. Petrarch instead said that Classical Antiquity was a period of light because of its great cultural achievements. By contrast, he portrayed the subsequent period as one of darkness because he thought that it lacked cultural achievement. Petrarch also saw this time as a "better age", an age of cultural revival though the rediscovery of the greatness, light and splendour of Classical antiquity. He advocated the study of Latin literature for the education of the elites and wanted to restore Latin to its original purity (as opposed to the way the use of Latin had developed up to his days). He also started a fashion of travelling around the monasteries of Europe to find the transcripts of Roman manuscripts which were copied by monks in the 9th century. This work had been commissioned by Charlemagne. Petrarch wrote: "But for you perhaps, if as I hope and wish you will live long after me, there will follow a better age. This sleep of forgetfulness [about Classical Antiquity] will not last forever. When the darkness [of this forgetfulness] has been dispersed, our descendants can come again in the former pure radiance [of Classical Antiquity]."

Modern historians have challenged this idea of the Middle Ages as a period of darkness and have pointed out that there were times of great cultural activity and have coined the terms Carolingian Renaissance (late 8th and early 9th centuries) Ottonian Renaissance (10th century) and Renaissance of the Twelfth Century. These terms were was first used by historians in the 19th century, by analogy with the Italian Renaissance to point out that these were periods of significant cultural renewal during the so called dark ages.

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