I’ve heard people float the idea that medieval Europe wasn’t as terrible as its made out to be, at least in comparison to what most of the world was like, and that the idea of a terrible Dark Age was promoted by Renaissance writers and thinkers looking to exalt their own time.
I’m not a historian though, and while the history of Europe that I’ve studied paints a pretty bleak picture of medieval Europe, I’m not sure how much of that is based on a proper historical interpretation. The history that I’ve been taught has been wrong before, so I’d like to get a few second opinions
I’d like to get a few second opinions
Heh, all you have to do is whisper "Petrarch was right" in a Medievalist's ear to get them going. This happens to have cropped up beforehand and is a very common pop-culture notion, which like many pop-culture notions, is partly true in such a way that it's almost completely untrue.
I refer you to this compilation on the wonders of the Medieval Period, collected for Christmas; I've just added on some medical stuff there. Don't forget to check the other posts in the thread, as they quite cogently point out that most pop-cultural comparisons of the Roman era versus the Medieval era go with holding up the elites of the former against the poorest of the latter - I trust the problems there become obvious.
Besides, any era in which there were not only multiple aqueducts across multiple places built of their own knowledge, but also pie fraud, cannot be said to be 'dark'.