Tricks the Dead Have Played Upon the Living

Rodney Stark has written extensively on the myth of a Dark Ages in Europe. Whilst his explosion of the myth should be of interest to all historians of the West, it is of particular interest to Christians because of the widespread hypothesis that the Dark Ages existed due to the influence of Christianity in Europe, which ignorance and superstition throughout the Continent. The sub-thesis is that since Christianity is a religion of superstition and ignorance were it to become culturally dominant again, a new Dark Ages would descend upon the land.

This hypothesis and its sub-theses were advanced successfully by the philosophes of the Enlightenment. Voltaire, of course, had observed that "history is a trick the living play upon the dead"; he was in no doubt that "meaningful" history existed only as a useful tool to illustrate selectively his preferred narrative of the times. In his day, the preferred narrative was to assert that human reason was sovereign over superstition, and that the Christian religion was primarily a superstition that held the unenlightened in thrall. Thus, Enlightenment propagandists glorified the ages of Greece and Rome and denigrated the age of Christian ascendency in the West.

Voltaire (1694-1778) claimed that after Rome fell, "barbarism, superstition, [and] ignorance covered the face of the world." According to Rousseau (1712-1778), "Europe had relapsed into the barbarism of the earliest ages. The people in this part of the world . . . lived some centuries ago in a condition worse than ignorance." Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) also pronounced this era as the "triumph of barbarism and religion".

For three centuries this has been the received wisdom of the matter in the West. Most twentieth century historians simply accepted this narrative, or "trick played upon the dead" as true. Like the narrative of evolutionism, one had to espouse it in order to be respected in the academy. Here, for example, is Daniel J. Boorstin, Librarian of Congress, writing in 1983, claiming that the Dark Ages began before the fall of Rome--sometime around the emergence of the Christian gospel. As it grew and expanded, so did a pervasive ignorance.

"Christianity conquered the Roman Empire and most of Europe. Then we observe a Europe-wide phenomenon of scholarly amnesia, which afflicted the continent from A.D. 300 to at least 1300." This occurred because "the leaders of orthodox Christendom built a grand barrier against the progress of knowledge." And in the words of the distinguished historian William Manchester (1922-2004), this was an era "of incessant warfare, corruption, lawlessness, obsession with strange myths, and an almost impenetrable mindlessness . . . . The Dark Ages were stark in every dimension." Ibid, p.66

Now the myth of the Dark Ages has been exploded in the mind of the academy--at least for the present.