I know that the term 'Dark Ages' is thrown around a lot without that context that, in the period of time after the fall of the Roman Empire, Europeans, North Africans, and Middle Easterners all developed and continued to progress, culturally, socially, and technology.
What my question is asking, though, is this: did medieval Europeans know that they had lost access to the more advanced technologies and political organization of the Roman Empire and its immediate successors? Or were they, for one reason or another, kept in the dark? It seems like it would be so strange and existentially frustrating to know that there was a civilization not-too-long-ago that was more advanced than your own, but their advances still be, for whatever reason, just out of reach.
Please feel free to correct me on any misconceptions!
Essentially, yes, although the 'advanced technologies' isn't really true, and many Early Medieval people would have considered themselves far better off than they would have been under the Romans.
Romanitas was an very important socio-political element in much of Early Medieval Europe. It's a kind of collective Roman nostalgia-cum-imitation that in a way is similar to the widespread cultural Americanisation which happened across much of the world in the 1950s and 1960s. Essentially, rulers sought legitimacy and symbolic power in appealing to the structures, organisations and aesthetics of the Roman Empire, even if they had no political wish to actually be a part of it. A key part of this was often conversion to Christianity, which presented a tangible link to Rome, and was usually accompanied by the adoption of a Latinate literate bureaucracy, legal system and things like histories, chronicles and hagiographies, all of which grew a sense of legitimacy and prestige for a ruling dynasty. Romanitas could manifest in many ways; while Roman villa complexes were often abandoned or repurposed across Early Medieval England, the English were keen and capable builders of stone churches, in the Roman style, for example. To celebrate his alliance with Ceolwulf II of Mercia, Alfred of Wessex issued a special run of pennies from the London mint featuring a pictoral design that was a direct imitation of a Roman solidus design known as the "two Emperors" which had been a common find in England at the time. This is a particularly explicit piece of symbolic Romanitas; not only is Alfred celebrating Ceolwulf as his equal, but he's also associating both of them with the power and prestige of Roman emperors.
A commonly-cited piece of Romanitas is the poem known as The Ruin, found in the 10th Century Exeter Book but possibly written as early as the 8th Century. Typically thought to be about the Roman site of Aqua Sulis in modern Bath, the poem is a paean to the faded glory of the Roman ruins as the poet imagines the life that the ruins once has (although the poet imagines the typically Germanic revelry of warriors in an ale-hall rather than the more sedate communal bathing of the Romans). At the beginning of the poem, the poet says:
Wrætlic is þes wealstan, wyrde gebræcon;
burgstede burston, brosnað enta geweorc.
For some reason, pop-history often assumes that medieval writers were incapable of using allegory or symbolism and that everything they wrote was intended to be read entirely at face value, and that when the poet calls the titular ruin "the work of giants" they can only have been being literal, despite the incredibly well-studied fondness of the Early English to use great symbolism and complex imagery in their poetry and riddles. To paraphrase Cohen (1993) in Old English Literature and the Work of Giants, the Enta in Germanic mythology are master builders who can out-build even the gods; and they build in stone so that their creations live on after they die. However, while mighty and permanent, their buildings sit often as empty tombs to giants long-dead and lack the vitality - albeit temporary - of the more fleeting wooden constructions of men. In equating the builders of The Ruin (at a site which would have been well known as Roman) with enta, therefore, the poet is praising their magnificent building skills and the longevity of their legacy, while simultaneously noting that their time has passed and their glory now long-faded.
For many people, however, the passing of the Empire was actually beneficial. Archaeological work summarised very nicely in Oosthuizen's The Emergence of the English (2020) shows that as Roman urban centres declined in the 5th Century, the agricultural landscape across lowland Britain was reformed, transitioning away from the jntensive arable farming centred around villa estates to include a much wider use of pastorial farming, especially on more marginal lands. As a result, the diets of much of the population included much more meat and dairy than had previously been the case, which in turn seems to have led to people living healthier and longer lives.
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u/BRIStoneman did a fantastic job outlining some of the aspects of Romanitas in Europe here. I'd like to add something here that might shed some more light on the matter.
The Roman Empire's fall was not a cataclysmic event, like the burial of a bustling city in volcanic ash or one terrible war that left everything in shambles. It was a long process, a slow fraying of a structure that had seemed too big to fail but somehow did. There were many factors - constant wars and rebellions over a vast territory, over several centuries, the Empire grew unsustainable in an administrative sense, which also meant that the upkeep of garrisons, roads, trade, and coordination with local government bodies became impossible. The Empire tried to downgrade, for example by leaving Britain when the province couldn't be sustained anymore.
A major shift that was the Migration Period and the constancy of war and raids over 200 years drained the resources of the imperfect administration and stifled regrowth of urban centres. But while the various peoples launching war campaigns on the Empire had a different lifestyle and were on a different technological level, they were clever and ambitious - they often converted to Christianity (many coming in contact or choosing Arianism) of their own volition and tried to take over power in the Empire they invaded by instating puppet emperors. They wanted to be the Empire they on one hand admired for its achievements, and on the other destroyed.
And these peoples did not just collect their loot and go away - they transformed. The impact they made came from their nomadic mobility, but many eventually settled where they could build their own kingdoms. But they still looked up to the old vision of the Golden Age of the Roman Empire, which could, by the 5th-6th century, already became a legend as many urban centres decayed. But Latin remained the universal language of culture, diplomacy, and administration. Old Roman traditions and philosophies were venerated, though many texts were lost in the wars. New rulers made themselves into the image of the Roman Emperors, supporting arts and literary progress despite it not being the norm among their people.
Edit: Mobile woes. Will update with some more info.