Not to mention those masterpieces of Gothic architecture, bestriding the landscape of the Middle ages like armies armed with a thousand spears, the Cathedrals.
The climate collapse from 1350 until the 1600's, not to mention the Black Death - now there was something like a dark age, a double whammy that few civilisations could have survived. Civilisation did seem to go a little dim right about then. But no civilisation until the Renaissance? Hardly.
Suspect buwaya has a strong point that Europe did pick up pace before the Renaissance, but that the fall of the Western Roman Empire did lead to an initial collapse--or almost collapse--in European society that took centuries to rebuild.