<P> The term employs traditional light - versus - darkness imagery to contrast the era 's `` darkness '' ( lack of records ) with earlier and later periods of `` light '' ( abundance of records ) . The concept of a `` Dark Age '' originated in the 1330s with the Italian scholar Petrarch , who regarded the post-Roman centuries as `` dark '' compared to the light of classical antiquity . The phrase `` Dark Age '' itself derives from the Latin saeculum obscurum , originally applied by Caesar Baronius in 1602 to a tumultuous period in the 10th and 11th centuries . The concept thus came to characterize the entire Middle Ages as a time of intellectual darkness between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance ; this became especially popular during the 18th - century Age of Enlightenment . </P>
<P> The term employs traditional light - versus - darkness imagery to contrast the era 's `` darkness '' ( lack of records ) with earlier and later periods of `` light '' ( abundance of records ) . The concept of a `` Dark Age '' originated in the 1330s with the Italian scholar Petrarch , who regarded the post-Roman centuries as `` dark '' compared to the light of classical antiquity . The phrase `` Dark Age '' itself derives from the Latin saeculum obscurum , originally applied by Caesar Baronius in 1602 to a tumultuous period in the 10th and 11th centuries . The concept thus came to characterize the entire Middle Ages as a time of intellectual darkness between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance ; this became especially popular during the 18th - century Age of Enlightenment . </P>
when was the term dark ages first used
when was the term dark ages first used
1602
1602