Question

Why did the Italian poet and humanist, Petrarch, writing in the fourteenth century, give the name “The Dark Ages” to the period immediately preceding his own, from the fall of the unified Roman empire (early 400s) until about 1300?

a. Due to climate change in Europe and the Mediterranean, this period was typically much cloudier and wetter than either Classical Antiquity or the Renaissance, and therefore it was literally darker.

b. Petrarch was an ill-informed and unlearned individual who had never visited any of the great churches of Italy and who thought that there was no art at all in the Middle Ages.

c. Petrarch was commenting on the fact that medieval architecture typically did not admit much light into the interior of buildings, and that monks lived in dark “cells” where they had to study by candlelight.

d. Petrarch believed that the Dark Ages was a period of intellectual darkness due to the loss of the classical learning, which he saw as light.

e. Petrarch knew that because of war and disruption, people in the preceding nine hundred years had never had the opportunity to learn to read or make refined works of art.

Answer 1

1.Option D)Petrarch believed that the Dark Ages was a period of intellectual darkness due to the loss of the classical learning, which he saw as light.

Petrarch referred to the period between 11th and 13th centuries, post Roman Literature as dark ages,due to lack of any intellectual literature.There is also a lack of historical records from this time.After the light of Roman empire extinguished and before it ignited with the Latin Renaissance,the middle period was seen as a dark time for literature and culture.