Middle Ages Presuppositions

Within popular discourse, the historical period of the Middle Ages is synonymous with the term “Dark Ages”: how did this particular equation come about? The immediate connotations of the Dark Ages are clearly negative: they suggest oppression, ignorance and a period of motionless in human development. The reason behind this description of the Middle Ages is arguably the result of a contrast to the subsequent periods of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment: the Renaissance itself signals a “new birth”, whereas the Enlightenment clearly evokes images of a new insight and vision wielded by humanity. Accordingly, the negative values ascribed to the Middle Ages are the result of this historical period’s difference to the Renaissance. Such an account, namely, judges the Middle Ages from an entirely different world-view.

To the extent that one takes the values of Renaissance and Enlightenment as positive developments in human history, the Middle Ages will be viewed as “dark.” From another perspective, in order to dismiss the negative image of the Middle Ages, one has to deconstruct the wholly positive image of the Enlightenment, thereby questioning the presuppositions behind these descriptions. According to the Encylopedia Britannica, the post-Medieval world can be considered to have “invented the Middle Ages in order to distinguish themselves from it.” (2014) The description of the Middle Ages as Dark Ages can therefore be understood according to the shift of values that occurred from the Middle Ages to the post-Medieval world.

What values and world-views characterized the Middle Ages, such that they came to be rejected and termed “dark” by the world of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment? As Julius Evola (2010) writes, “with the en...

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...reflected in the great Christian works of art of the time period. At the same time, the Medieval world did also show an interest in the pre-Christian tradition, to the extent that they made extensive translations of previous pagan works that then helped shape the more scientific world-view of the Renaissance and Enlightenment. The decision to describe the Medieval as dark is thus the result of a different historical period applying its own internal values to the Medieval period: to the extent that the post-Medieval intelligentsia rejected the religious world-view as superstition and bondage, they advanced an account of the Medieval as dark. From another perspective, however, if one values spirituality above all else, the irony is that the post-Medieval world, with its emphasis on science and the human being at the expense of the spiritual, is the true “dark age.”