Questions about Dark Ages (historiography)

Short answers, pulled from the story.

Who coined the term Dark Ages and when did he use it?

Cardinal Caesar Baronius applied the phrase saeculum obscurum in 1602 to describe a tumultuous period. He later used the specific term dark age for the period ending with the collapse of the Carolingian Empire in 888.

What year did Petrarch establish his view that classical antiquity was light and his own era was darkness?

Petrarch established this new way to view time during the 1330s while writing about centuries of history. By around 1343 he concluded his epic poem Africa with a prediction that a better age would follow his death.

When was the History of Decline and Fall of Roman Empire published by Edward Gibbon?

Edward Gibbon expressed contempt for the rubbish of Dark Ages in his History of Decline and Fall of Roman Empire published 1788. This work contributed to the popularity of the concept during the eighteenth-century Age of Enlightenment.

Why did Cardinal Caesar Baronius call the period between 880 and 888 the dark age?

Baronius termed the age dark primarily because of paucity of written records regarding the early part of the Middle Ages. A comparison of Migne's Patrologia Latina shows a sharp drop from thirty-four volumes in ninth century to just eight in tenth century.

Which historians wrote about the Dark Ages in the nineteenth century before modern scholars questioned the term?

Jacob Burckhardt delineated contrast between medieval dark ages and more enlightened Renaissance in Civilization of Renaissance in Italy published 1860. Henry Thomas Buckle wrote during these rightly called Dark Ages clergy were supreme in History of Civilization in England appearing 1857.

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