Editing Dark Ages (historiography) (section)

===Baronius===
In response to the [[Protestantism|Protestants]], [[Catholicity|Catholic]]s developed a counter-image to depict the [[High Middle Ages]] in particular as a period of social and religious harmony and not 'dark' at all.<ref>[[Philip Daileader|Daileader, Philip]] (2001). ''The High Middle Ages''. The Teaching Company. {{ISBN|1-56585-827-1}}. "Catholics living during the Protestant Reformation were not going to take this assault lying down. They, too, turned to the study of the Middle Ages, going back to prove that, far from being a period of religious corruption, the Middle Ages were superior to the era of the Protestant Reformation, because the Middle Ages were free of the religious schisms and religious wars that were plaguing the 16th and 17th centuries."</ref> The most important Catholic reply to the ''[[Magdeburg Centuries]]'' was the ''[[Annales Ecclesiastici]]'' by Cardinal [[Caesar Baronius]]. Baronius was a trained historian who produced a work that the ''[[Encyclopædia Britannica]]'' in 1911 described as "far surpassing anything before"<ref>{{cite EB1911 |wstitle=History |volume=13} |page=530 |first=James Thomson |last=Shotwell}}</ref> and that [[John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton|Acton]] regarded as "the greatest history of the Church ever written".<ref>[[John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton|Lord Acton]] (1906). ''[[s:Lectures on Modern History|Lectures on Modern History]]'', p. 121.</ref> The ''Annales'' covered the first twelve centuries of Christianity to 1198 and was published in twelve volumes between 1588 and 1607. It was in Volume X that Baronius coined the term "dark age" for the period between the end of the [[Carolingian Empire]] in 888<ref>Baronius's actual starting-point for the "dark age" was 900 (''annus Redemptoris nongentesimus''), but that was an arbitrary rounding off that was due mainly to his strictly [[annalists|annalistic]] approach. Later historians,m such as Marco Porri in his Catholic ''History of the Church'' [http://contemplativinelmondo.splinder.com (''Storia della Chiesa'')] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110716120451/http://contemplativinelmondo.splinder.com/ |date=2011-07-16 }} and the Lutheran ''Christian Cyclopedia'' [http://www.lcms.org/ca/www/cyclopedia/02/display.asp?t1=s&word=SAECULUMOBSCURUM ("Saeculum Obscurum")] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091019080028/http://www.lcms.org/ca/www/cyclopedia/02/display.asp?t1=s&word=SAECULUMOBSCURUM |date=2009-10-19 }}, have tended to amend it to the more historically significant date of 888 and often rounded it down further to 880. The first weeks of 888 witnessed both the final break-up of the Carolingian Empire and the death of its deposed ruler [[Charles the Fat]]. Unlike the end of the Carolingian Empire, however, the end of the [[Carolingian Renaissance]] cannot be precisely dated, and it was the latter development that was responsible for the "lack of writers" that Baronius, as a historian, found so irksome.</ref> and the first stirrings of [[Gregorian Reform]] under [[Pope Clement II]] in 1046:

{| class="wikitable" style="float:right; margin:0 0 1em 1em; clear:right;"
|+ Volumes of ''Patrologia Latina'' per century<ref>[[Philip Schaff|Schaff, Philip]] (1882). ''History of the Christian Church, Vol. IV: Mediaeval Christianity, A.D. 570–1073'', Ch. XIII, §138. [http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/hcc4.i.xiii.v.html "Prevailing Ignorance in the Western Church"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110809144844/http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/hcc4.i.xiii.v.html |date=2011-08-09 }}</ref>
! Century !! Volumes !!{{No.}} of
volumes
|- style="text-align:right"
| 7th || 80–88 || 8
|- style="text-align:right"
| 8th || 89–96 || 7
|- style="text-align:right"
| 9th || 97–130 || 33
|- style="text-align:right"
| 10th || 131–138 || 7
|- style="text-align:right"
| 11th || 139–151 || 12
|- style="text-align:right"
| 12th || 152–191 || 39
|- style="text-align:right"
| 13th || 192–217 || 25
|}

{{blockquote|"The new age (''saeculum'') that was beginning, for its harshness and barrenness of good could well be called iron, for its baseness and abounding evil leaden, and moreover for its lack of writers (''inopia scriptorum'') dark (''obscurum'')".<ref>[[Caesar Baronius|Baronius, Caesar]] (1602). ''[[Annales Ecclesiastici]]'', Vol. X. Roma, p. 647. "...nouum inchoatur saeculum, quod sui asperitate ac boni sterilitate ferreum, malique exundantis deformitate plumbeum, atque inopia scriptorum appellari consueuit obscurum."</ref>}}

Significantly, Baronius termed the age 'dark' because of the paucity of written records. The "lack of writers" he referred to may be illustrated by comparing the number of volumes in [[Jacques Paul Migne|Migne]]'s ''[[Patrologia Latina]]'' containing the work of Latin writers from the 10th century (the heart of the age he called 'dark') with the number containing the work of writers from the preceding and succeeding centuries. A minority of these writers were historians.

[[File:European Output of Manuscripts 500–1500.png|thumb|upright=1.2|Medieval production of manuscripts.<ref>Buringh, Eltjo; van Zanden, Jan Luiten: "Charting the "Rise of the West": Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, A Long-Term Perspective from the Sixth through Eighteenth Centuries", ''The Journal of Economic History'', Vol. 69, No. 2 (2009), pp.&nbsp;409–445 (416, table 1)</ref> The beginning of the Middle Ages was also a period of low activity in copying. This graph does not include the [[Byzantine Empire]].]]

There is a sharp drop from 34 volumes in the 9th century to just 8 in the 10th. The 11th century, with 13, evidences a certain recovery, and the 12th century, with 40, surpasses the 9th, something that the 13th, with just 26, fails to do. There was indeed a 'dark age', in Baronius's sense of a "lack of writers", between the [[Carolingian Renaissance]] in the 9th century and the beginnings, sometime in the 11th, of what has been called the [[Renaissance of the 12th century]]. Furthermore, there was an earlier period of "lack of writers" during the 7th and 8th centuries. Therefore, in Western Europe, two 'dark ages' can be identified, separated by the brilliant but brief Carolingian Renaissance.

Baronius' 'dark age' seems to have struck historians, for it was in the 17th century that the term started to spread to various European languages, with his original Latin term ''{{lang|la|saeculum obscurum}}'' being reserved for the period to which he had applied it. Some, following Baronius, used 'dark age' neutrally to refer to a dearth of written records, but others used it pejoratively and lapsed into that lack of objectivity that has discredited the term for many modern historians.

The first British historian to use the term was most likely [[Gilbert Burnet]], in the form 'darker ages' which appears several times in his work during the later 17th century. The earliest reference seems to be in the "Epistle Dedicatory" to Volume I of ''The History of the Reformation of the Church of England'' of 1679, where he writes: "The design of the reformation was to restore Christianity to what it was at first, and to purge it of those corruptions, with which it was overrun in the later and darker ages."<ref>[[Gilbert Burnet|Burnet, Gilbert]] (1679). ''The History of the Reformation of the Church of England'', Vol. I. Oxford, 1929, p. ii.</ref> He uses it again in the 1682 Volume II, where he dismisses the story of "St George's fighting with the dragon" as "a legend formed in the darker ages to support the humour of chivalry".<ref>[[Gilbert Burnet|Burnet, Gilbert]] (1682). ''The History of the Reformation of the Church of England'', Vol. II. Oxford, 1829, p. 423. Burnet also uses the term in 1682 in ''The Abridgement of the History of the Reformation of the Church of England'' (2nd Edition, London, 1683, p. 52) and in 1687 in ''Travels through France, Italy, Germany and Switzerland'' (London, 1750, p. 257). The ''[[Oxford English Dictionary]]'' erroneously cites the last of these as the earliest recorded use of the term in English.</ref> Burnet was a bishop chronicling how England became Protestant, and his use of the term is invariably pejorative.