Publication details

Je (středověk) doba temna?

Title in English Is (the Middle Ages) a dark age
Authors

FOLETTI Ivan LEŠÁK Martin PICHANIČOVÁ Veronika ROSENBERGOVÁ Sabina

Year of publication 2021
Type Monograph
MU Faculty or unit

Faculty of Arts

Citation
Description The Middle Ages are now almost exclusively perceived as a period of darkness and similarly the art of this period is also presented as decadent. However, this perspective is primarily the result of centuries of accumulated ideas and prejudices that have attempted to simplistically describe an era that can by no means be described in just a few sentences. With our book, we would like to overcome this notion and offer a new perspective on art and the period often inaccurately referred to as the early Middle Ages. We attempt to answer several questions: did the fall of the Roman Empire and the migration of nomadic tribes cause the decline of artistic creation? What did the medieval landscape actually look like? Was it really riddled with dark, impenetrable and dangerous forests, as depicted in the legends of Robin Hood or the numerous works of the Romantics? Was the world of faith really impenetrably separated from earthly life? Did art serve only to glorify God? What about churches filled with gold and precious stones? Did the church only show its power and wealth in this way? We would like to present readers with an "early Middle Ages" much closer to what it may have actually looked like: a colorful mosaic, a time of lively and varied cultural exchanges, and in a sense the cradle of abstract and conceptual thought. To the question "Is the Middle Ages a dark age?" we would like to answer "No!"
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