MEDIEVAL CASTLES
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loginThe Middle Ages are no longer considered the “Dark Ages” (as Petrarchtermed them), sandwiched between the two enlightened periods of clas-sical antiquity and the Renaissance. Often defined as a historical periodlasting, roughly, from 500 to 1500 c.e., the Middle Ages span an enor-mous amount of time (if we consider the way other time periods havebeen constructed by historians) as well as an astonishing range of coun-tries and regions very different from one another. That is, we call the“Middle” Ages the period beginning with the fall of the Roman Empireas a result of raids by northern European tribes of “barbarians” in the lateantiquity of the fifth and sixth centuries and continuing until the adventof the so-called Italian and English renaissances, or rebirths of classicallearning, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. How this age could betermed either “Middle” or “Dark” is a mystery to those who study it. Cer-tainly it is no longer understood as embracing merely the classical in-heritance in the west or excluding eastern Europe, the Middle East, Asia,or even, as I would argue, North and Central America.
