A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance

Manchester begins by stating that, while some historians reject the term “Dark Ages”—used to delineate the six centuries between 400 and 1000 C.E.—he believes that it is appropriate. He describes the intellectually dead Europe of the period as “a mélange of incessant warfare, corruption, lawlessness, obsession with strange myths, and an almost impenetrable mindlessness” (3).

Europe was experiencing difficulties, which had begun with the fall of Rome, 100 years before its real death in the 5th century. Rome had expanded its empire until it had to protect a 10,000-mile border. Huns and various barbaric tribes of Visigoth warriors constantly attacked the border. Eventually Rome was sacked, and warlords ravaged the country. Europe regressed into what would be known as the Dark Ages, which would prove relentlessly bleak. Famines and plague, culminating in the Black Death and its recurring pandemics, repeatedly thinned the population. Rickets afflicted the survivors. Extraordinary climatic changes brought storms and floods, which turned into major disasters because the empire’s drainage system, like most of the imperial infrastructure, was no longer functioning.

Most of the people lived in small villages that they rarely left, creating small, insular societies with little knowledge of the dialects, cultures, or lives of people in nearby towns.