The Middle Ages in a Backlight: Re-examining a Humanist Myth

Abstract

The article examines the complex humanist construction of the Middle Ages as a medium tempus, a concept that is far from being stable and cannot simply be reduced to the traditional idea of a dark age. Beginning with Petrarch, humanist thinkers developed a view of the Middle Ages as a living force: a past from which they sought to distance themselves and, at the very same time, an existential condition that continued to shape their present.

By considering humanist historiographical theory as well as practice, the article aims at reconstructing a conception of the Middle Ages that proved methodologically productive for humanist scholars. Precisely because it was both difficult to interpret and yet deeply connected to the present, the medieval past became a methodological training ground. It encouraged humanists to approach history by “reading between the lines”, investigating the past through the small and often overlooked traces that have shaped—and continue to shape—the present.