The Actual Medieval Age

An armored knight, astride a lumbering steed, and toiling serfs tied to the lands of their lord, while cloistered monks and nuns remain lost in prayer. Amidst this scene, we can't forget the iconic backdrop: high-walled castles, towering Gothic churches, and an abundance of farms. These elements are what we commonly associate with the medieval age. But what precisely was the medieval age? The answer to this question is as much about early Renaissance woke culture as it is about historical periodization.

Today, on "Medieval Madness," the go-to channel for all things intriguing, bizarre, and captivating about the medieval age, we embark on a journey back in time to decipher the definitions and truly understand what the medieval age represents.

Defining the medieval age and pinpointing its timeline is not as straightforward as one might assume. This is partly because the concept of the medieval age, as we understand it, didn't fully crystallize until after the period itself had concluded. This might sound peculiar, and it is. The medieval age is an example of what historians refer to as an anachronism—an idea or term applied to a period of history retroactively.

Anachronisms are not unfamiliar to us. Think of historically iconic films, like Mel Gibson in "Braveheart" (1995), portraying the 13th-century Scottish warrior William Wallace donning a tartan kilt. However, these kilts didn't exist until the 16th century. Another anachronism is found in the movie "Gladiator," where Russell Crowe's character fights alongside a German shepherd on a battlefield set in 180 A.D., even though German shepherds as a breed weren't established until the late 1800s.

The medieval age, however, differs in that it is an idea, not an object or an artifact, being used to anachronistically mold our view of the past. In this case, it was Renaissance scholars who crafted this anachronism, rather than Hollywood producers.

The concept of the Middle Ages, also known as the Dark Ages, was created and popularized by Petrarch, an Italian Renaissance scholar and poet, in the 14th century. Petrarch wandered through European towns and cities, gathering and translating whatever Latin texts he could find. His work opened up the knowledge of Greek and Roman authors to his contemporaries. He was deeply impressed with what he discovered and began contrasting his own era as one of great ignorance, comparing it to an era that preceded it—the age of the Greeks and Romans, which he perceived as logical, civilized, and enlightened.

Petrarch essentially embodied the notion of the "born in the wrong generation" mentality. However, he wasn't alone. Across Italy, scholars from various fields began translating and reading the classics, pondering why they were seemingly more intellectually advanced than their predecessors. They branded their own period, which spanned around 900 years from the fall of the Western Roman Empire to various endpoints like the conquest of Constantinople (1453), Christopher Columbus's voyage (1492), or the start of the Protestant Reformation (1517), as the "Dark Age." This label distinguished them as logical, intelligent, and progressive compared to their predecessors, whom they saw as stuck in a dogmatic, backward, and dark age.

The practice of labeling their era as the "modern age" allowed these Renaissance scholars to virtue signal, highlighting their superiority over the so-called Dark Ages. These scholars, who identified themselves as Renaissance men, considered themselves enlightened, unlike the ignorant souls of the medieval period, who were still deeply immersed in dogma. Petrarch's bold claim in his work "Africa" from 1343, prophesying a better age to follow, set the tone. The label of the medieval age persisted and became an integral part of the "Three-Age Theory" of history, encompassing the classical age, the medieval age, and the modern age.

Intriguingly, if one were to travel back in time during the medieval age and ask a local person in any Christian or Islamic European region which age they were living in, they would not respond with "the medieval age." In fact, the concept of a "medieval age" was not in use at that time. Peasants, when questioned about their era, would typically offer specific dates or seasons rather than an overarching label. Even educated individuals of that era wouldn't identify with living in the "medieval age." If they did comprehend the question, they might respond with a biblical reference, tied to the six ages of the world. The medieval age, as we understand it today, was not a term used by people of that time to define their period.

The anachronistic nature of the medieval age becomes apparent when we consider the East Roman Empire (Byzantine Empire), which persisted for a long time after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. In the Eastern Roman Empire, the flame of ancient learning was not extinguished. Islamic scholars translated numerous works into Syriac and Arabic, and their society never experienced the same kind of knowledge decay that Petrarch observed. Thus, the concept of the medieval age, as defined by Renaissance scholars, doesn't align neatly with the historical realities of the Islamic world.

Moreover, when it comes to other significant civilizations across the world, such as those in Asia, Africa, or the Americas, it becomes challenging to categorize their periods into the same framework. The label "medieval