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"The Dark Ages" is a term used to describe the early Middle Ages, beginning after the fall of the western Roman Empire (so that would mean the Dark Ages began in 476 CE!.!.!.or AD if you prefer)!. The period ended in the beginning of the 14th century, at the start of the Renaissance!. The term "Dark Age" was invented by Petrarch (which is what I think SinisterMatt really meant when he referred to Plutarch!.!.!.who lived waaayyy earlier, in Greece), a 14th century Italian poet, to describe the "intellectually void" period before the artistic and literary developments of the Renaissance!. But in real life, the Dark Ages weren't so "dark" after all!.!.!.it was actually a period of huge social, political, and religious development!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

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For starters, it wasn't really Dark!. That was a misnomer given to the age by people in the Renaissance who thought that their time was way better than the times of yore!. The Middle Ages (or medieval period) were times of great learning and advancement!. Politically, most of the states that are found in Europe today didn't exist, with most political power being wielded by local lords in a complex hierarchical system known as the feudal system!.

Most scholars agree that the Middle Ages began with the fall of the Roman Empire in around A!.D!. 420!. However, when it ended is subject to debate!. Some place the end of the medieval period at the time of Plutarch, around 1380 or so!. Others place it later, at the conclusion of the Hundred Years War!.

Cheers!

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The Dark Ages, otherwise known as the Early Middle Ages, was a period in European history from the collapse of Roman political control in the West—traditionally set in the 5th century—to about the late 11th century!. It should be emphasized, however, that the fixing of dates for the beginning and end of the Dark Ages is arbitrary; at neither time was there any sharp break in the cultural development of the continent!. The term Middle Ages seems to have been first used by Flavio Biondo of Forlí (1388-1463), a historian and apostolic secretary in Rome, in his Historiarum ab Inclinatione Romanorum Imperii Decades (Decades of History from the Deterioration of the Roman Empire), which was first published in 1483, although written some 30 years earlier!. The term implied a suspension of time and, especially, a suspension of progress—a period of cultural stagnation!. Modern scholarship generally divides the whole period of the Middle Ages into three stages and is much more concerned with diversity within the subdivisions of the Early, High and Late Middle Ages that lasted until around c!. 1500!.



EARLY MIDDLE AGES
No one definitive event marks the end of antiquity and the beginning of the Middle Ages!. Neither the sack of Rome by the Goths under Alaric I in 410 nor the deposition in 476 of Romulus Augustulus, the last Roman emperor in the West, impressed their contemporaries as epoch-making catastrophes!. Rather, by the end of the 5th century the culmination of several long-term trends—most notably a severe economic dislocation and the invasions and settlement of the various Germanic tribes within the borders of the Western Empire—had changed the face of Rome!. For the next 300 years western Europe remained essentially a primitive culture, albeit one uniquely superimposed on the complex, elaborate culture of the Roman Empire, which was never entirely lost or forgotten!.



FRAGMENTATION OF AUTHORITY
Although during this period the loose confederation of tribes began to coalesce into kingdoms, virtually no machinery of government existed, and political and economic development was local in nature!. Regular commerce had ceased almost entirely, although—as modern scholars maintain—the money economy never entirely vanished!. In the culmination of a process that had already begun in the Roman Empire, the peasantry became bound to the land and dependent on landlords for protection and the rudimentary administration of justice!. Among the warrior aristocracy the most important social bonds were ties of kinship, but feudal connections were also emerging, which may have been rooted in the old Roman patron-client relationship or in the Germanic comitatus, the group of fighting companions!. All such connections impeded any tendency toward political consolidation!.



THE CHURCH
A Priest during the Dark Ages!.
The only universal European institution was the church, and even there a fragmentation of authority was the rule; all power within the church hierarchy was in the hands of local bishops!. The bishop of Rome, the pope, had a certain fatherly preeminence based on his holding of the so-called chair of St!. Peter, to whom it was supposed Christ had granted governing power, but neither the elaborate machinery of ecclesiastical government nor the idea of a monarchical church headed by the pope was to be developed for another 500 years!. The church saw itself as the spiritual community of Christian believers, in exile from God's kingdom, waiting in a hostile world for the day of deliverance!. The most important exiles were found outside the hierarchy of church government, in the monasteries that dotted Europe!.

Opposed to the forces of fragmentation and local development were the tendencies within the church toward standardizing the rite, the calendar, and the monastic rule!. Besides such administrative measures, the cultural memory of Rome persisted!. By the 9th century, with the rise to power of the Carolingians, the beginnings of a new European unity based on the Roman legacy may be found, for Charlemagne's political power depended on educational reforms that used materials, methods, and aims from the Roman past!.



CULTURE AND LEARNING
Cultural activity during the early Middle Ages consisted primarily in appropriating and systematizing the knowledge of the past!. The works of classical authors were copied and annotated!. Encyclopedic works, such as Isidore of Seville's Etymologies (623), which attempted to present the collected knowledge of humankind, were compiled!. At the center of any learned activity stood the Bible; indeed, all secular learning was regarded as mere preparation for understanding the holy text!.

The early Middle Ages drew to a close in the 10th century with new migrations and invasions—the coming of the Vikings from the north and the Magyars from the Asian steppes—and the weakening of all forces of European unity and expansion!. The resulting violence and dislocation caused lands to be withdrawn fWww@QuestionHome@Com

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