When did they start calling middle ages the middle ages?

Question:I am doing a project on Middle ages. I need a period or a date of when we started to call the specific period the middle ages

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: I am doing a project on Middle ages. I need a period or a date of when we started to call the specific period the middle ages

actually, the people of the middle ages thought that they were living in the end times, that humanity had passed its prime with the fall of the Roman Empire, and that it was only a matter of time before Jesus Christ would return to judge his subjects.

The first people to make the distinction were Renaissance scholars who had a renewed interest in ancient Rome. The Renaissance was an important step forward for the arts, sciences, and histories, and it was partly caused by interest in all things Roman.

Now don't get me wrong, your average peasant wouldn't have drawn much distinction between the middle ages or the "golden age", life would have continued on pretty much undisturbed. A peasant living in 1500 CE would have had a life not at all dissimilar from a peasant in 1500 BCE. It was only with the industrial revolution that peasants began seeing change within their own lifetimes. Heck, the middle ages are highlighted for its peace, for being a sleepy era, while the Renaissance would be catagorized by frequent, brutal, massive wars. that would continue more or less until the end of World War II.

This is why older terms like Renaissance and Dark ages are being phased out in favor of terms like Migration era or Early Modern Era.

The concept of dark ages, medieval ages, and the Renaissance started with the Renaissance scholars who sought to distance themselves from the theology-centric thinking of previous scholars and to associate themselves with the humanistic works of Ancient Rome. They called the period after the fall of the empire the dark ages because there was little official documentation for them to work from. But modern Archeology has revealed much that was not available to the Renaissance scholars, which is why we consider Dark Ages an outdated term.

This basically was the way it was until the Romantic period in the 19th century sought to glamorize closeness to nature, and therefor worked to paint the middle ages in a different light. We reach our modern understanding through archeology, which is why we divide history into antiquity, the migration era, the middle ages, the early modern era, and the modern era.

There really is no specific date on that...
Its a politically correct term for the time period. There was a reason it was called the Dark Ages, but people want to forget about that.
I would say that they have been calling it that for less than 50 years.

The Middle Age is commonly referred to the period of time after the fall of Rome, the 5th century, to around the 16th century.

As far as I know the term is a fairly modern one. I doubt people went around in this time period and referred to it as the middle ages.

Flavio Biondo the Renaissance Historian in 1442.