The Dark Ages label hides institutional continuity

A fourteenth-century lighthouse prompts a challenge to dismissive accounts of medieval achievement. One proposed explanation for the Dark Ages label is the later admiration of Greek and Roman models. Renaissance changes in warfare and the organization of states encouraged a search for useful precedents in Roman doctrine and training. Elevating Rome in this way also encouraged accounts that treated the intervening centuries as a disastrous interruption. That interpretation leaves too little room for the complexity of medieval government and institutions.