| Abstract: | The idea of ‘the middle ages’ developed only gradually, out of the attack on the Augustinian view of history, which had dominated thought for nearly a thousand years. Petrarch and the Italian humanists began this attack, claiming a new, third age had begun with the recent revival of culture and the arts. The religious upheavals of the sixteenth century helped produce the idea of a ‘middle age’ in religion too. The terms used for this period varied, until medium aevum and its equivalents became accepted, in the late seventeenth century. The idea of ‘the middle ages’ reached its fullest expression in the eighteenth century, with Voltaire, and eventually became part of the institutions of academic history. Traditional usage should not continue to be accepted. If historians see no general pattern in history, they must abondon terms like ‘medieval’, which presuppose such a pattern. A new theory of history may emerge in the future, and will no longer describe ‘the middle ages’ by a name which implies a barbaric interlude. This will enable ‘medievalists’ to produce a truer picture of their period. |
