[americanophile]

This is a very Latin-centric article, hardly surprising, but full of glaring omissions. The case for the ‘Dark Ages’ being less than dark, and for Islam's true warlike nature, are particularly strong if one takes into account the great history of the Byzantines. I can't understand why or how this fantastic civilization - which also held the door shut against Islam for hundreds of years, goes without mention. Charles Martel is rightly famous, but if he was the hammer than many of the Byzantine emperors were the shield. Some of the achievements of the Byzantines were not surpassed until well into the Renaissance. Indeed, the flame of classical learning, culture, and many other elements of ancient progress were carried by Byzantine society until the fall of Constantinople (one of the greatest schismatic failings of the West of all time - there was no united Christendom). The fall of Constantinople is indeed the spark that touched off the Renaissance - much of that learning and culture fleeing the captive Christian east for western Europe. To place Islam in it's proper context, one must understand its 800 year+ assault on the Christian Byzantine Empire, and to understand the meteoric rise of western Christendom from the Renaissance on, one must understand the Dark Ages which requires a knowledge of the vastly underrated Byzantine Empire.Still, a very interesting discussion.

[americanophile]

A very interesting discussion.

[AnAmericanMother]

I think by its terms the discussion is limited to Europe proper. There was, technically speaking, no “Middle Ages” in Constantinople, since it did not undergo the same changes that the West experienced, and it fell in the middle of the 15th century.