Who brought Europe out of the dark ages?

by [deleted]

[deleted]

zumbiz

This is a somewhat weird question.

First of all one could ask if there ever was a Dark Age. Sure, there was some decline in certain institutions but there was also a lot of continuity. The disintegration of the western part of the Roman empire is not as catastophic as often percieved. The works of James Bryce (on the holy roman empire) and Will Durrant (the history of the western civilization) both illuminate this quite well bit there is a lot more scholarship on this.

Secondly, there is no one person responsible for bringing Europe out of the Dark Age of you would postulate that there was one such Age. Petrarch, a 14th Century Catholic scribe is usually considered as the father of the renaisance as he in many ways popularaised (in a very narrow sense) the surge in reverence for the classical roman culture. Claiming that he for this reason brought Europe out of the Dark Age is giving him to much credit. The renaisance was rather a structural phenomenon which to us is most visible through certain persons (such as the artist Raphael, the polymath Leonardo da Vinci, the political thoeritician Machiavelli, the critical scholar Lorenzo Valla). As a phenomenon it deserves a more detailed description than I am prepared to give here.

Tl dr: It is not really appropriate to speak of a Dark Age. Even if you do so you cant name a single person who ended it. If you really have to, I would recommend Petrarch.