“What were the middle ages?
The most important question, of course, is “What were the middle ages? What was the character of them?” In textbooks, maybe a hundred years ago, they were often referred to as the “Dark Ages” and that was a wonderful way of being able to say nothing important happens and we can skip it. And there’s a, particularly, a Protestant tendency to do that. Okay, Augustine died, when exactly did Luther come along? Let's go from one good guide to another and let's ignore the fact that there are only about eleven hundred years between them and surely nothing much could have happened in those eleven hundred years. Let's get to the Reformation. Well, they weren’t a Dark Age. They were, in fact, an age of a great deal of cultural and intellectual and ecclesiastical accomplishment that is very important and we need to take a serious look at. Dark Ages (ca. 1200–800 BC): Mass Migrations and Development of Homeric Epics. The Dark Ages were a time of great migrations and devel