DARK AGES

In the first instance, references to the ‘Dark Ages’ have focused habitually on western Europe and ignored the vibrant intellectual traditions that emerged in Byzantium and further east. In the early Middle Ages, between approximately 500 and 1100 CE, Islamic and Jewish scholars played a critical role in the translation and transmission of ancient texts and in the refinement of Graeco-Roman theories and practices of medicine. This process was not only important for the immediate continuation of Hippocratic and Galenic formulations of humoralism but also for the longer evolution of Chinese, Indian and Western medicine through the migration of people and the transmission of ideas across geographical and ideological borders. In the past, historians have also concentrated too much on the scholastic medicine that was fostered, and some would argue languished, in European monasteries and libraries. Preoccupations with learned medicine have diverted historical attention away from the variety of secular and religious healers and carers to whom the sick and suffering turned in times of distress. In doing so, historians have failed to acknowledge the manner in which, across the Middle Ages, faith and medicine did not necessarily compete but combined to generate new charitable and state institutions for the sick, poor and disabled.