Antiquity to Renaissance: The Triad of Historical Periods
The conceptual framework that divides history into three parts—Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Modern Era—arose from Renaissance humanism. Renaissance scholars saw themselves as reviving the classical world’s art, literature, and philosophy after a long period of cultural decline.
- The classical period referred to the Greco-Roman civilization, which was idealized for its intellectual and artistic achievements.
- The period following the fall of the Roman Empire (traditionally dated to 476 AD) was seen as a “dark” or “middle” era lacking the sophistication of classical antiquity.
- The modern period began with the Renaissance, signaling a "rebirth" (rinascita in Italian) of classical knowledge.
This framework emerged gradually during the 14th and 15th centuries.
Early Uses of the Concept
The idea that there was an intervening period between classical antiquity and the modern age was not entirely new in the Renaissance but became more explicit during the Italian Renaissance.
- The Italian humanists such as Francesco Petrarch (1304–1374) are often credited with popularizing the notion of a “dark age” (saeculum obscurum) after the fall of Rome.
- Petrarch lamented the loss of classical culture and considered his own time a period of decline compared to the glory of antiquity.
He used the Latin term medium aevum to describe this middle period, which was seen as an age of cultural and intellectual darkness between two golden ages. shutdown123