Dark Age Revisionism: has it gone too far?

[Red Sun]

[quote name='Matrim Fox Cauthon' post='1667761' date='Jan 30 2009, 05.15']Is it the historian's role to assign value to history?[/quote]

[quote name='EHK for a True GOP' post='1667797' date='Jan 30 2009, 06.04']Yes.[/quote]

While it is sure nice to assign value to history, in the end, it is not very usefull, because the perceptions of value often change within a couple of generation. Imo, the role of history is trying to find out why things happened the way they happened, what other ways of development might have been possible, how things changed and how they became the way they are now. I have no problem, saying that we live a better life today, and that at least, in some places of the earth, people have much more rights as they had in the past. However, as I said before, the world of today is formed by the people of the past.

The idea of human rights is born from the age of enlightment, the age of enlightment is the result of the confessional wars in Europe, the confessional wars in Europe are the result of the reformation, the reformation is a result of the discussions in the Church in the 15th century and other factors, the concils and the discussion in the Church are influenced by the universities and other forms of "community" that were created to protect the interests of a certain group, the ideas and creations of "community" are omnipresent in the Middle Ages and thie developpment started in the Dark Ages, be it guilds of travlleing merchants, or be it monasteries. That is only the large scale and it is pretty reduced, the technological developpment is just as important and much more subtle. However, what I liked to show was that, even though, there might always have been opportunities for other ways of developpment, the final outcome is what it is, and the task of the historians is to analyse the different steps.

[quote name='EHK for a True GOP' post='1667637' date='Jan 30 2009, 03.00']Who the hell knows. (I'm addressing the question as if it were 'What further progress could be derived from the continuation of a Rome that implemented all that shit you mentioned) What we do know is that great knowledge, infrastructure, and expertise was lost. It took centuries for it to be relearned and much longer to be surpassed in most areas. (both geographically and in breadth of subject matters) If Rome persisted or if there was a less devastating transition to something different, we may have developed a variation of our modern society centuries earlier.[/quote]

That is true in some ways, but on one side, Rome did survive in Constantinople for once, and the loss of knowledge can have different reasons. We will never know how many books burned in the Libary of Alexandria and how many books burned in others places. We also don't know how many of the things that were known in the Roman Empire were known to all people or only to a group of specialists.

But it certainly is true that some knowledge was lost, because we can see in Gregory of Tours historiographical works and his description of the times of Clovis, that ca. 100 years later, he didn't have the correct definitions of traditional Roman titles, like senator, anymore.

[EHK for Darwin]

[quote name='Matrim Fox Cauthon' post='1667866' date='Jan 30 2009, 00.16']One is the realm of objectivity while one is not.[/quote]

That doesn't make them mutually exclusive.

In either case, we're drifting from the point. The point is there's nothing wrong with the historian declaring better or worse, more or less primitive, more or less sophisticated, more or less civilized, more or less just, fair, free or humane. That these conclusions are gonna be inevitably colored by the author's own cultural lens does not mean it will be dominated by it. One can acknowledge their prejudices and explain why their judgment is fair and accurate in as objective terms as possible despite these prejudices. So long as there's a sound, rational basis supported by evidence for the conclusion, what's the problem?

[Matrim Fox Cauthon]

[quote name='EHK for a True GOP' post='1667888' date='Jan 30 2009, 01.45']That doesn't make them mutually exclusive.[/quote]It also doesn't make value assessments of history in anyway useful.

[White Walker Texas Ranger]

I'd suggest[i] A World Lit only By Fire[/i] by William Manchester. He's pretty critical of the Middle Ages.

[Galactus]

[quote name='EHK for a True GOP' post='1667872' date='Jan 30 2009, 07.21']No it wasn't. China always had some cities near the top, but for two distinct periods Constantinople than Cordoba were the largest cities in the world.
[url="http://geography.about.com/library/weekly/aa011201a.htm"]http://geography.about.com/library/weekly/aa011201a.htm[/url]
[url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities_throughout_history"]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_large...oughout_history[/url]

(although to be fair, alot of that stuff is educated guesswork when you've got cities that are fairly close)[/quote]

And Baghdad actually was larger than both Constantinopole and Cordoba at one point. (Probably the first city to breach the One Million barrier)

[Galactus]

If we are to share suggested readings, I suggest the Teaching Company's lecture series: They have one about the Early Middle Ages one about the high Middle Ages, one about Byzantium, one about the Fall of Rome... Yeah, you get the point.

[quote name='Raidne' post='1667629' date='Jan 30 2009, 02.54']I, actually, find this stuff to be [i]a lot[/i] more interesting than whatever the nobility was up to.



And I have to agree with that too. Great point. Slavery is as old as society, but making it race-based, as a natural condition of a certain race? Oh, that's a modern invention. We don't always move in a straight line forward, but I do have to say that it seems like the general trend reaches toward progress.

Zabzy, I more than any other book would recommend Richard Popkin's The History of Skepticism. It's not medieval - it starts with Erasmus, but it deals with how the earliest ideas of the modern age, starting with the early Renaissance, came about. All the properly medieval books I have are pret-ty dry, except that Radding book I mentioned upthread. Popkin is just fascinating stuff though, and the extent to which I've ripped him off will be pretty evident, too.

And again, I have to plug Montaigne's Essais. The guy wrote in the late 16th century, but he's like someone you wish was your best friend. He transitions seamlessly from philosophy to making jokes about his lamentably small penis. Great reading.

You know - one more thought? I was all thinking, so, gee, why [i]didn't[/i] the west get more information out of Byzantium earlier? And then I remembered, right we did have contact in organizing the crusades, but then the Catholics sacked the city. That explains that. I had forgotten all about all that. Crazy bastards.[/quote]

It's actually a bit more complicated than that, basically, while the Byzantines DID have all those old texts, they mainly didn't care for them much, with the Crusades the Byzantines became "hellenized" in a way (they had to define themselves as "Us", the Greeks/hellenes vs "them" the barbarians/latins) which means they started pulling out all those old tomes of Plato and such from the libraries and studying them. The Byzantines had to "rediscover" (it's the wrong word, but can't find any better) their greek heritage before they could transmit it to the West.
[quote]idn't we already cover this? Knowledge, trade, writing, education, bureaucracy, institutions, agriculture, engineering, building, etc. Of course it was a slow, gradual decline, it didn't suddenly pop into being the moment the last emperor was deposed. But these things were far more prevelant under Rome than after Rome.[/quote]

But these things had already started to decline before the Fall of the Western Empire (and declined, to a somewhat lesser degree, in the East as well)


[quote]This is only a problem because you decided it must be one. Really alot your post seems concerned with what to do with the gray area rather than any actual objection to the existence of a dark age. As you well note, it was a decline rather than an abrupt fall. Like much of history we can't definitively point to a time when things coalesced from civilization to barbarism. But we did have civilization than some time afterwards we had a period of primitive barbarism.[/quote]

Barbarism in some areas, innovation and new ideas in others.

[Galactus]

[quote name='Raidne' post='1666946' date='Jan 29 2009, 18.05']Agreed, see my commentary on philosophy and architecture as it relates to the 12th century Renaissance upthread. However, even in that example it's really about the common theme of seeking specialization and the advent of the widely known master-craftsman or builder, and not really about the specific details of advancing to this style of buttress over another which is too specific to really be part of the history of ideas as it is commonly understood.

I think we all agree that the Scandinavian history during this period must be looked at somewhat separately, as you seem to agree with in your next post. I think the argument that this term the "Dark Ages" has to be limited to the areas that are now, for the most part, France, Germany and Italy. Maybe Britain as well - that's far out of my realm of knowledge and I'm sure they picked up quite a bit from the Scandinavians.

But I also think scientific method, such as it is, is the most important thing that happened in the history of ideas in the last 2000 years, and while it may have been possible without Plato, it wasn't possible without some discovery of philosophical skepticism.[/quote]

I'm going to argue that the scientific method actually had more to do with the rise of... THE BOURGESIE! *drumroll* It, as a method/ideology fit the schemes of the merchant-class. The philosophical rationalization was more an ex-post facto thing to describe what people were already doing all over Europe: Experimenting.

[quote name='Pax Thien Jolie-Pitt' post='1667225' date='Jan 29 2009, 21.55']True, but when the Pope became involved, that faction become Church doctrine and that lead to repression or even massacre.[/quote]

Except when it didn't, and they elected an anti-pope (or just ignored what the current one said, he was in Rome, what was he going to do, come all the way to Northern Germany and make them?)

[EHK for Darwin]

[quote name='Bruce Galactus' post='1667930' date='Jan 30 2009, 01.17']And Baghdad actually was larger than both Constantinopole and Cordoba at one point. (Probably the first city to breach the One Million barrier)[/quote]

Yep, its in there and credited as the first 1 million. (although some generous estimates of Rome I've read elsewhere suggest it hit that mark some point around the height of the empire, but the links I had didn't seem to think so)

[quote]But these things had already started to decline before the Fall of the Western Empire (and declined, to a somewhat lesser degree, in the East as well)[/quote]

Yes, but I don't really see what that changes about the existence (or non-existence) of a dark age.

[quote]Barbarism in some areas, innovation and new ideas in others.[/quote]

Innovation and new ideas didn't pop up for some centuries anywhere in the Christian west.
Wiki's handy little list of technology from the Middle ages lets us know that almost all of those innovations came after the 10th century.
[url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_technology"]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_technology[/url]
And most of the ones that were from the 'Dark period' were typically not widespread until much later. There was a significant stretch of a dead period everywhere but the east and Muslim areas.

[Galactus]

You know, I'm not a byzantine fanatic or anything, but was there actually much of a technological development in the byzantine world? I know the arabs discovered and spread a bunch of agricultural crops and stuff as well as things like the Astrolabe and such, but what did the Byzantine's actually invent? Presumably they kept improving architectural stuff, and there was stuff like the cyrillic alphabet and certain techniques for creating artwork, but I can't think of any really significant invention done by the Byzantines.

[Red Sun]

[quote name='Bruce Galactus' post='1667982' date='Jan 30 2009, 09.29']You know, I'm not a byzantine fanatic or anything, but was there actually much of a technological development in the byzantine world? I know the arabs discovered and spread a bunch of agricultural crops and stuff as well as things like the Astrolabe and such, but what did the Byzantine's actually invent? Presumably they kept improving architectural stuff, and there was stuff like the cyrillic alphabet and certain techniques for creating artwork, but I can't think of any really significant invention done by the Byzantines.[/quote]

They had probably some mechanisms, based on pneumatic or water power. Luidbrand of Cremona describes them in his rapport (9th century). Mechanisms of this kind were used or re-invented in other parts of Europa, not much before the 13th century. (We know from William of Rrubruck that a French artisan created an artifical silver tree that worked with pneumatic energy for Mangu Chan, and we know about one example of such a tree that belonged to Heinrich dem Erlauchten, Markgraf of Meißen.)

I think the real inventions of the byzantine empire concern the administration, especially the creation of the Thema structure, that allowed a better defense of the empire.

[EHK for Darwin]

[quote name='Bruce Galactus' post='1667982' date='Jan 30 2009, 02.29']You know, I'm not a byzantine fanatic or anything, but was there actually much of a technological development in the byzantine world? I know the arabs discovered and spread a bunch of agricultural crops and stuff as well as things like the Astrolabe and such, but what did the Byzantine's actually invent? Presumably they kept improving architectural stuff, and there was stuff like the cyrillic alphabet and certain techniques for creating artwork, but I can't think of any really significant invention done by the Byzantines.[/quote]

They're often viewed as a carrier of knowledge rather than an improver, but their main individual achievements are primarily deemed to be in mathematics, medicine, law and some architecture.

They created what may have been the first approximations of a modern hospital (though more lean to the Muslims getting there first), staffed with the most educated and skilled doctors of the day (some of them even women), and dotted even the provincial areas of the empire. They were known for their highly detailed and accurate medical textbooks, The Medical Compendium in Seven Books in particular was considered one of the fullest repositories of western knowledge of medicine (with many improvements by the author himself as well) and in standard use in both the Byzantine and Arabic world for centuries afterwards. This was one field where they expanded upon previous greco-Roman knowledge and they were influential on even the Arab-Muslim world in this area, but its pretty clear (I think) from existing knowledge that Islam produced far more innovations in this area.

Their universities were for some time centers of scientific and mathematical learning, responsible for transfering many of the greco-roman texts to the Arabs. But overtime Arab scientific and mathematical achievements eclipsed their own and the influence switched from the Arab world to the Greek.

They of course built the Hagia Sophia, one of the greatest architectural achievements of any era and arguably the single most impressive building ever built. (I'm a fan) It required many complex measurements (the primary professions of the 'architects' were mathematician and physicist) and implemented a few new architectural innovations to get the massive Dome set.

And perhaps their greatest achievement insofar as it influenced the modern world was Justinian's Code, which became the base foundation for most civil code traditions throughout the world. In both law and other fields, the Byzantines didn't just accumulate prior knowledge. They organized, condensed it, weeded out redundancies, inconsistencies, and undesirables, clarified, modified, stored and spread it. Creating the Code itself was a massive task, involved pouring over thousands of books of Roman law and organizing them into 50 volumes. One of the most impressive academic undertakings of the ancient or medieval world.

But when it comes down to it, the Code aside, it appears that they didn't develop that much on their own. They never lost the past knowledge and had in depth philosophical discussions of Greek and Roman authors, but had few seminal works of their own. They collected a great wealth of medical knowledge, but most of the innovations in the field came from the Muslims. Had some of the foremost universities heavily dedicated to mathematics and science, but again the real progress in those fields came from the Arabs.

I think its possible that lack of study and interest may have left us without a full understanding of their contributions. After all, despite being the lone superpower of Christendom for half a millennium and a major player in near east and European history for a thousand years, they almost never appear in textbooks. They're not the focus of hardly any history channel specials. Not as many English language books written about them. Being the greatest, largest, and wealthiest city in the world didn't lead to widespread romanticism of Constantinople in the modern western world. Its quite possible that there are contributions waiting to be found, that were perhaps misattributed, whose real source is simply waiting to be translated. Always possible.

In either case, the mere matter of their existence for a thousand years even without being the primary preservers of ancient knowledge played a pivotal role in the development of Europe, mainly the fact that Europe was able to develop at all. Fact is dark age Europe would've been a pushover for the Muslim armies if they wished to bother with it and without the Byzantines standing guard at the eastern gates, its quite possible they may have seen the prospect as too easy and tempting. The Byzantine empire made the survival of Christendom possible. Of course if I want to be consistent with my previous statements, I should suggest that Dark Age Europe would have been better off conquered, since the Arab-muslims were more developed and sophisticated in nearly every respect. But than I wouldn't be able to drink alcohol. Which is more than enough reason on its own to shout 'GO BYZANTINES!'

[Guest Raidne]

[quote name='EHK for a True GOP' post='1667872' date='Jan 30 2009, 01.21']No it wasn't. China always had some cities near the top, but for two distinct periods Constantinople than Cordoba were the largest cities in the world.
[url="http://geography.about.com/library/weekly/aa011201a.htm"]http://geography.about.com/library/weekly/aa011201a.htm[/url]
[url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities_throughout_history"]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_large...oughout_history[/url]

(although to be fair, alot of that stuff is educated guesswork when you've got cities that are fairly close)[/quote]

Shouldn't Tenochtitlan also be included? The highest estimates have it's population at 1 million in the 16th century, and it wasn't founded until the 14th century, so I'm not sure what the population was during the relevant period, but certainly it should be on any list for the late middle ages.

[quote name='Bruce Galactus' post='1667945' date='Jan 30 2009, 02.30']It's actually a bit more complicated than that, basically, while the Byzantines DID have all those old texts, they mainly didn't care for them much, with the Crusades the Byzantines became "hellenized" in a way (they had to define themselves as "Us", the Greeks/hellenes vs "them" the barbarians/latins) which means they started pulling out all those old tomes of Plato and such from the libraries and studying them. The Byzantines had to "rediscover" (it's the wrong word, but can't find any better) their greek heritage before they could transmit it to the West.[/quote]

BG, looking into it, I see that there was an increase in Aristotelian scholarship during the 13th and 14th centuries, but it doesn't seem that the Byzantines didn't care for their Greek texts until then, by any means. A major transcription of Plato was done sometime during the 9th and 10th centuries (apparently part of it still exists - you can see it at Oxford).

In fact, I've never heard anyone make that argument before. Is it common? Can you tell me what specifically leads you to believe that it's true?

I think the [url="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/byzantine-philosophy/"]entry[/url] from, again, the Stanford Encyclopedia of philosophy is a really good detailed overview, for an internet source, anyway.

Some interesting stuff there comparing scholarship in the east to the Universities of the West too, arguing that it might have been key that the West had universities more independent from the Church than the East.

[BranTheBuilder]

[quote]Furthermore, during the Dark Ages when the Germanic barbarians moved into old Roman lands, there was a reason why they allied with the Church: it was the Church that provided one of the last preserving linkages of the prior Roman Imperial society once the civil authorities of the territories collapsed.[/quote]

to return to this post - the last time I did any reading about the migration period/early saxon era they didn't adopt the "local" christian faith when arriving in Britain... the Anglian and Saxon conversion happened quite awhile later after many missionaries had been sent from neighbouring christian territories.
At the same time they seem to have had little interest in reusing Roman structures (a good example would be Roman London - the saxon settlement was "just down the road from it" and built in their native style.)

for essential reading - try a good translation of the AngloSaxon Chronicles - they give awonderful insight into the mindset of that era as well as some interesting accounts of well known events.

As for the "common people" discussion - that one really is personal preference, i can sympathise with both sides of the argument.
on one hand the great events and the "great people" who were directly involved in them are fascinating and truly important - such events and people have had massive influence over the ages (for example i'd look at the House of Godwin and their influence over the future of england).
on the other hand - learning how people like us (assuming that noone here rules a country, is a Bishop or conducts international trade/piracy ona regular basis) is a wonderful experience. Little things such as what they ate, how they made their clothes, the levels of personal hygene, the evolution of fashion etc are truly exciting to many (myself included). The major bonus of learning/looking into/recreating these things is that when talking to laypeople (MoP's as most re-enactment/LH groups refer to them) it is very easy to get the crowd involoved in the history - getting a couple of kids to turn a quern stone to mill flour gives them a much greater insight into the life/food of the times than any dry "dates and names" description of battles.
seeing how cloth is dyed, woven and worn again brings simple things such as clothing into perspective for the crowd - in the end they take away more from the experience than if we do a step by step history lesson animated by "great people" on a battlefield (don't get me wrong there - displays of combat are great for crowds too, 10 year old kids love them... and we can educate at the same time...)

so in conclusion after that ramble I would argue that both areas have their place and are fascinating when presented in conjunction with each other by people who are enthusiastic about them... like so many things who you talk to and how they talk about it really affect your enjoyment of a subject.

[Galactus]

[quote]Shouldn't Tenochtitlan also be included? The highest estimates have it's population at 1 million in the 16th century, and it wasn't founded until the 14th century, so I'm not sure what the population was during the relevant period, but certainly it should be on any list for the late middle ages.[/quote]

Mind, estimates vary a lot but most of them I've seen puts Tenochtitlan behind Paris and Constantinopole (and I think Cairo as well, not certain) It was a large-but-not-unprecedented city by european standards. Mind, it gets a bit tricky as Tenochtitlan was starting to merge with neihgbouring cities when the spanish arrived.

[Galactus]

[quote]BG, looking into it, I see that there was an increase in Aristotelian scholarship during the 13th and 14th centuries, but it doesn't seem that the Byzantines didn't care for their Greek texts until then, by any means. A major transcription of Plato was done sometime during the 9th and 10th centuries (apparently part of it still exists - you can see it at Oxford).[/quote]

"Didn't care" was obviously hyperbole, but it wasn't the major thrust of byzantine intellectual achievements (which was more directed at their christian side)

[quote]In fact, I've never heard anyone make that argument before. Is it common? Can you tell me what specifically leads you to believe that it's true?[/quote]

I've seen it all over the place, it seems to be common enough to actually pop up in textbooks (and not just a single textbook but all of those I have mentions it)

When I was studying a few years back it seems to be consensus that the byzantines renewed their interest in the greek classics as a way to define themselves against the latins.

[quote]Some interesting stuff there comparing scholarship in the east to the Universities of the West too, arguing that it might have been key that the West had universities more independent from the Church than the East.[/quote]

Mmm, not quite like that. The byzantines actually had a greater separation between clerical and secular learning than in the West, with palace schools and such educating the imperial elite and monasteries education the clergy. (to that we should add that, while far from harmonious, the church and state in the east were much less at odds with each other than in the west, hence never spawning the kind of "safe" zones that tended to sprout up in the West in the cracks between church and state authority)

[Guest Raidne]

[quote name='Bruce Galactus' post='1668216' date='Jan 30 2009, 10.19']I've seen it all over the place, it seems to be common enough to actually pop up in textbooks (and not just a single textbook but all of those I have mentions it)

When I was studying a few years back it seems to be consensus that the byzantines renewed their interest in the greek classics as a way to define themselves against the latins.[/quote]

It is odd then that the Stanford Encyclopedia entry lists so many Greek works that were a standard part of the curriculum from the 8th century onwards.

Are you sure you're not just referring to the large increase in new publications and commentaries on the classic Greek texts around that time?

ETA: That especially makes sense to me, as most of those commentaries were on Aristotle, and so would be a way to contrast themselves against the western commentaries on Aristotle.

To put a point on it, what I mean is that I think your contention that the Greeks had to rediscover their classics is not accurate.

[Matrim Fox Cauthon]

[quote name='BranTheBuilder' post='1668111' date='Jan 30 2009, 08.17']to return to this post - the last time I did any reading about the migration period/early saxon era they didn't adopt the "local" christian faith when arriving in Britain... the Anglian and Saxon conversion happened quite awhile later after many missionaries had been sent from neighbouring christian territories.[/quote]This was primarily in response to the Franks.

[quote]for essential reading - try a good translation of the AngloSaxon Chronicles - they give awonderful insight into the mindset of that era as well as some interesting accounts of well known events.[/quote]I have a copy, as well as Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English peoples.

[Elrostar]

[quote name='EHK for a True GOP' post='1668030' date='Jan 30 2009, 05.34']They're often viewed as a carrier of knowledge rather than an improver, but their main individual achievements are primarily deemed to be in mathematics, medicine, law and some architecture.[/quote]

This question of what the Romans (or Byzantines as we call them now) were doing is what I was sort of asking in my earlier post. (I've unfortunately been too busy with work to properly participate in this thread as much as I'd like)

When we talk about 'the dark ages' we're really talking about western Europe, and really only France, Italy, and Germany (and parts of Britain). As mentioned before, the Moorish influence in Spain meant that places like Andalucia were having a cultural blossoming and can certainly not be said to be suffering. And Scandinavia, much of Britain, much of north-eastern Europe, those areas were all populated by peoples who were most eminently not Romans. Their development continued much in the way it had for the previous thousand years or so, with their tribal societies and whatnot.

But the Romans? Well the people who called themselves Romans were living in Constantinople, right? They certainly thought of themselves as the Roman Empire. And the East had always been the richer, more cultural part of the Empire. Gaul was always a cultural backwater, and Germania was the end of the world (not to even talk about Britannia). Granted, it was a shift that Rome ceased to be a center of things. But the fact that the chief weight of culture and civilization lay in the eastern portion of the Mediterranean was scarcely new.

So what were those Romans doing? Well, Justinian certainly got up to a lot. Defining the legal system in a way that would become the basis of most societies today was a pretty major step. But I'm not sure about the technological inventions. I think they were heavily into theology, though. But I feel that the very fact that we focus so much on 'the dark ages' and so little on the 'Byzantine Empire', and the fact that we don't really consider it the 'Roman Empire' is pretty telling. I mean, just because something isn't in Rome doesn't mean we don't call it Roman. Just look at 'The Holy Roman Empire'.
I guess they're just stuck with their name. Kind of like we're stuck with the name 'Dark ages'?

[EHK for Darwin]

[quote name='Elrostar' post='1668916' date='Jan 30 2009, 20.38']So what were those Romans doing?[/quote]

[url="http://www.anders.com/lectures/lars_brownworth/12_byzantine_rulers/"]http://www.anders.com/lectures/lars_brownw...zantine_rulers/[/url]
Greatest.Podcast.Ever.

[Cimon]

[quote name='Elrostar' post='1668916' date='Jan 30 2009, 21.38']So what were those Romans doing? Well, Justinian certainly got up to a lot. Defining the legal system in a way that would become the basis of most societies today was a pretty major step. But I'm not sure about the technological inventions. I think they were heavily into theology, though. But I feel that the very fact that we focus so much on 'the dark ages' and so little on the 'Byzantine Empire', and the fact that we don't really consider it the 'Roman Empire' is pretty telling. I mean, just because something isn't in Rome doesn't mean we don't call it Roman. Just look at 'The Holy Roman Empire'.
I guess they're just stuck with their name. Kind of like we're stuck with the name 'Dark ages'?[/quote]

I'm kind of confused, are you making the assertion that referring to them as the Byzantines is relegating them to a sub-Roman status in history? I apologize if that's not what you were trying to say, but it seems to me that it makes perfect sense to think of them as distinctly different from Romans. I mean, not only was the culture/architecture etc. quite different from the western Romans, but seeing as how the western empire collapsed, and with it any idea of a Rome-centric empire, why would we refer to them as Roman? They thrived on their own merit and not from their status as an entity of the Roman Empire.

And it also seems that a more accurate description of the Dark Ages is not the [i]collapse[/i] of sophisticated civilizations (or what have you), but the absence of them. It's not so much that the areas you mentioned (Germania, Brittania) experienced a cultural collapse, but that there was no Rome to hold the title of a sophisticated and complex society. The majority of wester Europe simply became a backwater for the most part. I understand that there were exceptions, such as the Carolingian Renaissance as well as Ottoman or Middle Eastern dominated territores, but as a descriptor I don't think the term Dark Ages is inaccurate or useless.

On a slightly different note, I recently took a Renaissance Europe course, and my professor noted that many so called "Renaissance historians" don't even agree with the term Renaissance. If the dispute over Dark Ages can cause this much debate I wonder what everyone thinks about any possibly dispute over the term Renaissance.