After the fall of Rome, the empire disintegrated into many small kingdoms. Italy would remain broken up in this way for the next 1,000 years—although it was briefly part of Charlemagne's Holy Roman Empire. The next nine centuries were characterized by an economic and cultural deterioration, or falling apart. This period used to be called the “Dark Ages,” a term invented in the Renaissance to describe the time between the glory of Rome and the glory of the Renaissance (476 to the early 1400s CE). This time period as a whole is now referred to as the Middle Ages, and the period after the fall of Rome is called the Early Middle Ages.
Click each image below to see examples of the decay people experienced in Europe after the fall of Western Rome.
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Question
Why did historians once call the period after the fall of the Western Roman Empire the Dark Ages?
