WHO, AFTER ALL, INVENTED THE MIDDLE AGES?


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Abstract

It is well known that we owe the three-part periodization of world (and first of all, European) history – Antiquity, Middle Ages, and New Time – to humanists, but we cannot establish exactly when and who invented it and who first used the term Middle Age (medium tempus). Obviously, this is due to the conventionality of periodization in general, and the absence in the Renaissance of the need for scientific rigor with respect to historical periodization, the three-part scheme arose spontaneously in the whole and was refined gradually. One of the moments in its development stems from the rule of cultural continuity and the Renaissance literary echoing of eras. The article shows that the image of the «Dark Ages» present in Francesco Petrarch, the founder of humanism, goes back to Antiquity and to the favorite author of the Italian poet, Marcus Tullius Cicero. The idea of the cultural and historical coloring of epochs and the attitude of the people living to it is played on the same material in the famous poem of F.I. Tyutchev «Cicero» («Blessed is he who has visited this world…»).

About the authors

M. A Youssim

Institute of World History, Russian Academy of Sciences

Email: youssimm@mail.ru
Moscow, Russian Federation

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