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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 2306653" data-attributes="member: 4937">Kinda like when people think of the '60's, they are usually thinking of the early '70's? Yeah, I agree.  In fact, I had a good chuckle a few nights ago when PBS was advertising a show about Martin Luther, and they had this line that was something to the effect of, "At the height of the Dark Ages, one man dared take on the Catholic Church..."Height of the Dark Ages???  Martin Luther took his hammer to the door of the Wittenburg in 1517, which is well into what is regarded as the 'The Reinnaisance'.   Furthermore, it's generally felt by most modern historians that the Reinnaisance was itself hardly the technological and scientific revolution that the writers of the Reinnansance cast it as, but rather an evolutionairy step beyond the great technological and cultural advances of the High Middle Ages which had been but temporarily abated by the plague years.   And in any event, the term Dark Ages refers to the period of European history in which no virtually new manuscripts were produced (and survived at least) in Western Europe, hense that this period is literally 'dark' to history because we cannot clearly see into it.  By 1517, Europe was in no sense dark to history, with not only new manuscripts being produced by the hundreds, but books were being printed by the hundreds and had been for decades.   The actual Dark Ages refers to the period beginning in about 500 AD and extending to no later than about 1400 AD, though refering to the whole of the Middle Ages as 'Dark' (as Petrarch did) is no longer considered completely proper by modern historians.   In any event, the height of the Dark Ages is surely some time between 500 AD and 900 AD when virtually nothing was being written in Europe.</blockquote>

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