always thought of the Middle ages as this dark, ignorant time when almost nobody could read, travel or access real knowledge. But reading Dante Inferno honestly changed that perspective for me. Dante’s references blew my mind. He constantly mentions Greek philosophers, Christian theology and folklores. Dante’s sense of geography is wild. He casually references places across Europe, North Africa, even parts of Asia, reading Inferno made me realize how wrong it is to picture medieval Europe as a place of total ignorance. These people weren’t living in a vacuum they were actively engaging with ancient philosophy, Christian ideas and folklores. 1300s might not have had the internet but they had a thriving network of ideas.
I’m not even sure when Gutenberg came along with the printing press but Inferno definitely proves that long before that people were reading, studying and passing ideas around, maybe it’s an outlier but reading this makes me think the Dark ages weren’t dark at all
edited , Okay, I looked at Wikipedia and the Gutenberg printing press came around 1450 long after Dante’s Inferno. So how could he have accessed so much knowledge? It really boggles my mind!
by Delicious_Maize9656
17 Comments
*Dante* was literate.
Peasant Donte was illiterate.
There were a lot more Dontes that Dantes out there.
The difference is *mass* literacy, not literacy of the elite.
>Dante’s father was Alighiero di Bellincione, a businessman and moneylender, and Dante’s mother was Bella, probably a member of the Abati family, a noble Florentine family.
(Wikipedia)
He was lucky enough to have both a merchant for a father and possibly someone of nobility for a mother. “When he was 12, however, he was promised in marriage to Gemma di Manetto Donati, daughter of Manetto Donati, member of the powerful Donati family” (also wikipedia). Not much is known about his education, but as a family that was at least upper middle class, he was likely tutored privately, or a Florentine church or monastery.
He could have been a poor laborer, with similar thought-dreams, but illiterate and working too hard and for too much of his life to devote to anything more than survival. Like the majority of people in those days.
By the late 1300s Europe was already in the renaissance period, the dark ages are the end of the Roman Empire, so like 500-1000 CE.
I’m not a historian so someone correct me if I’m wrong but I thought we called them the dark ages because the church suppressed free thinkers? The dark age period coincides with the Roman Empire becoming the Holy Roman Empire and the pope becoming the ruler. It was less about people rejecting new ideas and more about the church limiting dissent.
The “dark ages” is usually more referring to about 500-1000 ad.
less than 0.01% of people read it at the time
well dante wrote the divine comedy. so that was one early hint that he was smart
The 200 iq, 4-D thinking, poet with the beatific vision was certainly an outlier
And even so, Alighieri’s work were considered lowbrow literature back in the day by scholars because it was extremely popular with the working class. Most middle class people knew verses by heart and sang them at work and while having fun at the tavern. Also, because it mentioned many rich florentines in hell by name, their powerful families were PISSED.
While the “dark ages” myth has been busted, it really pertained to Western Europe anyway and is mostly a contrast with the renaissance where the combination of the fall of constantinople (mass migration of greco-roman scholars) and the printing press (mass publication) rapidly spread knowledge through Western Europe.
The Italian peninsula of the 1300s had a large merchant class and city states were accumulating a lot of power and wealth. There was not mass literacy like today but neither was it a case of no literacy.
They had a thriving network of ideas, but only for less than 0.1% of the population
>always thought of the Middle ages as this dark, ignorant time when almost nobody could read, travel or access real knowledge.
well, Dante is not just your average Joe.
in the past people were not stupid. but i think it would be incorrect to assume that a goat farmer would be well versed in geography or finer disagreements in philosophy or religion. definitely would not be literate nor would they have access to ‘reading materials’.
“I’ve taken a single data point and extrapolated to a trend within a population!”
This is such a weird take.
Firstly, the Dark Ages is a pretty outdated conception, even if we considered the 14th century a part of them (which I wouldn’t)
Secondly, “long before that people were reading, studying and passing ideas around”…? What people are you talking about? There were certainly plenty of poor serfs that were illiterate, meanwhile the aristocracy and church had the wealth and privilege to study and disseminate ideas.
“The Dark Ages” are 90% fake. It’s true knowledge of Greek, the commerce of the Silk Road, and relative open trade across the Mediterranean faded after the rise of Islam cut Europe off from Asia and destroyed much of the Byzantine/Eastern Roman Empire; but the ideal that medieval Europeans were backwards, stupid, or uniquely illiterate (beyond most of all humans in any society being illiterate until recently anyways) is just total nonsense. Anyone who is aware of Dante, or of philosophers like St. Thomas Aquinas and Bl. Duns Scotus knows this.
A lot of the idea of “The Dark Ages” is basically a combination of either Protestant propaganda (look at those stupid Papists before Luther came along!) or Enlightenment propaganda (look at those stupid Christians before Humanism came along!). Very little of it is true.
Everybody thinks they’d be the noble scholar-knight on the side of justice and chivalry.
As someone studying the Middle Ages, I sometimes forget people still believe this when there is so much work that has been done for the last sixty years to break this idea. 1300’s is pretty late in the Middle Ages, you can find remarkable things all throughout the “period”. The humanists made a lot of mistakes wanting to “reconnect” with Antiquity, thankfully it is more recognized in historical researchs now