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If you are going to discuss history topics, please know what you are talking about! (I might have just insulted someone with an answer to a comment they made, but I tried to be honest without being too rude.) Someone listed the Dark Ages as their least favorite time in history, and given what they said, I think it is based more on a dislike of the Church than any real feel for the era.
The so-called Dark Ages have usually (popularly) been synonymous with the Middle Ages (Medieval period). The comment included a note about there being hardly any art or architecture and also referred to it as being boring where nothing much happened because 'the Church was in charge and they basically didn't allow much of anything to happen'. I don't think the person in question studied the same history I did...or they've taken in way too much of the popular "Hollywood" version of history without getting the real McCoy.
My reply to her comment: "I actually enjoy that era - the founding of the university system (including the Universities of Bologna, Oxford, & Cambridge), the people (Charlemagne, Hildegard von Bingen, Fibonacci, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Marco Polo, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Catherine of Siena), artists, musicians, and writers (Giotto, Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Duccio, Dante, Guido d' Arezzo, Boethius), types of art (Carolingian, Romanesque, Gothic), and events (the signing of the Magna Carta, the building of Notre Dame and La Sainte-Chapelle) - it's really amazing how much went on that gets overlooked."
The Middle Ages actually started the boiling pot that would one day overflow and flower into the Renaissance around 1420. One of the best descriptions I've heard for how the Renaissance saw mankind came from Sister Wendy Beckett - "we can think of the Renaissance as seeing humanity as godlike. No! They saw humanity as dignified, as able to stand up and take responsibility...They stand on the earth and they cast their own shadows. That's what the Renaissance was about - humanity as upright, suffering, but responsible." Without the Middle Ages, it is highly probable we would not have had the Renaissance and all that came after...in art or science or literature - or pretty much anything else.
The so-called Dark Ages have usually (popularly) been synonymous with the Middle Ages (Medieval period). The comment included a note about there being hardly any art or architecture and also referred to it as being boring where nothing much happened because 'the Church was in charge and they basically didn't allow much of anything to happen'. I don't think the person in question studied the same history I did...or they've taken in way too much of the popular "Hollywood" version of history without getting the real McCoy.
My reply to her comment: "I actually enjoy that era - the founding of the university system (including the Universities of Bologna, Oxford, & Cambridge), the people (Charlemagne, Hildegard von Bingen, Fibonacci, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Marco Polo, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Catherine of Siena), artists, musicians, and writers (Giotto, Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Duccio, Dante, Guido d' Arezzo, Boethius), types of art (Carolingian, Romanesque, Gothic), and events (the signing of the Magna Carta, the building of Notre Dame and La Sainte-Chapelle) - it's really amazing how much went on that gets overlooked."
The Middle Ages actually started the boiling pot that would one day overflow and flower into the Renaissance around 1420. One of the best descriptions I've heard for how the Renaissance saw mankind came from Sister Wendy Beckett - "we can think of the Renaissance as seeing humanity as godlike. No! They saw humanity as dignified, as able to stand up and take responsibility...They stand on the earth and they cast their own shadows. That's what the Renaissance was about - humanity as upright, suffering, but responsible." Without the Middle Ages, it is highly probable we would not have had the Renaissance and all that came after...in art or science or literature - or pretty much anything else.
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