The Irony Channel

Published March 12th, 2007

You know, when “History” is in the name of a channel, you’d expect them to get the history right above all else. Sadly, that isn’t what happened. Me being the medieval history dork that I am, I was pretty excited to see their Dark Ages special. I had high hopes - I hoped they’d work on debunking the myth that the Dark Ages were, well, Dark. That Western Europe was a miserable backwater. That life was nasty, brutish and short.  But they got it all wrong. I mean, profoundly wrong. I’m only a dork with a bachelors and I caught a half dozen major errors. History Channel, I am very, very disappointed in you.

I will first admit to missing about the first 20 minutes of the special. So lord knows what they got wrong in there. But let’s start at the beginning - even calling it “The Dark Ages” - good lord. No respectable historian has referred to the early middle ages as the Dark Ages in 70 years. Why? Because they weren’t all that dark. Sure, they were different than during the Roman Empire’s reign, but they weren’t a time when cavemen wandered around or something. There were significant technological, social, military and commercial innovations during the early middle ages. To call them the Dark Ages is not only a misnomer, it is now laughable in academic circles.

I came into the story just in time for Justinian’s reign in the Eastern Roman Empire. The show portrayed him as a pretty selfish, oppressive ruler that mistreated his subjects out of lust for power and greed. It also portrayed Eastern Europe as the shining light of civilization in the Dark Ages. Not exactly a great example of an enlightened ruler. Justinian wanted to restore the Roman Empire to much the power it had many years before, when the Mediterranean was a “Roman Lake” - and he planned to do it through conquest. He indeed was very dishonest about paying his soldiers and basically stole to finance his military campaigns. But he wasn’t as concerned about the Empire as the true Roman rulers. He never attempted to build the infrastructure and roads back up in the conquered lands. He simply conquered them to take more money. Areas he had no interest in (such as the Balkans), he just let the barbarians invade with no opposition. He wasn’t about restoring the empire to previous glory, he just wanted wealth and power. The only roads he kept up were the ones heading into Persia.

The show credits Justinian for rebuilding the Hagia Sophia with great opulence. True. Though, it wasn’t done out of piety, as the show implied. Nor did the show really mention that he was rebuilding it - they really seemed to want to portray the Hagia Sophia as the crown jewel of Justinian’s rule.

And now we get to the first Really Big Error in my book. For those of you who know me, you know I’m all about plagues and how they affect society. Well, Justinian’s campaigns were halted by - Justinian’s Plague. The same disease that Caused the Black Death almost a century later hit Europe hard during Justinian’s time too. Even Justinian himself was afflicted. The show says that 100 million died from the plague. Well, that’s simply untrue. The population of Europe was not high enough to have a death count that high. The true death toll was probably half to a (more likely) quarter of that. It was still very deadly, having a 40-60% mortality rate if afflicted, but 100 million is absurd. The Black Death probably killed that many, and Europe at that time was at a near population high. This is when I started to wonder who the hell fact-checked this. How could the college professors who helped narrate get these things so wrong? I don’t know. But the errors continued.

On to Charles Martel and his grandson Charlemagne. These gentlemen ushered in the Carolingian era of Western Europe, Charles Magnus himself presiding over the Carolingian Renaissance. While setting up this era, the show portrays France in the 5th and 6th Centuries as being a horrible, empty backwater. They made it sound as if each township was so isolated no one knew what was going on in the world and all they did was farm farm farm, huddle together in winter and hope no one died. THIS IS RIDICULOUS. France at this time, the Merovingian period, had a fairly sophisticated trade network! Marseilles in the south was a gateway point for goods from the Eastern Roman Empire to enter into Western Europe. French rivers were basically toll roads for travelling merchants. A sophisticated silver economy developed since most of the gold of Europe was in Constantinople or the Vatican. In the north of France, Denmark and in England cities grew not around fortresses, but around marketplaces. These “emporia” were key to the economy of western europe. Because of this trade network, we can find Byzantine Artifacts in Scandanavia and Ireland, and nordic artifacts in Turkey from this time.  And the peasants were no slouches either. They didn’t spend their lives toiling inefficiently and stupidly. During this time the farming innovation of the heavy plow came into use, allowing for fields to be planted in tougher soil than previously possible. More soil, more food, less horror.

Art and architecture did not disappear during the early middle ages. During the Merovingian period there was quite a bit of interesting pieces and buildings made. Much of it was unfortunately lost, but what remains shows the transition from Roman influence to more Celtic, more “Western European” styles.

There is one historian in this special with a serious Charlemagne fascination. He nearly deifies the man, proclaiming that all you’ve heard of him is true and more. The Charlemagne of this special was a man who united Western Europe out of love of knowledge and learning. He reinstituted schools and education, worked on the infrastructure and was proclaimed Holy Roman Emperor by the grateful Pope, who was so pleased with the King and his Christian Kingdom.

Give me a break. Charlemagne was a great ruler, but he was a powerhungry expansionist. He conquered lands at the point of a sword. And he initiated the Carolingian renaissance not because he was so pious and so loving of Europe, but because that is what Roman Emperors did, and by God that’s what he’d do. Why was he crowned emperor? Well, Pope Leo III was very grateful to Charlemagne, but not beacause he restored an empire under Christian rule. See, Leo had been run out of Rome under accusations of adultery and perjury. A gang attacked him, attempted to gouge out his eyes and tear out his tongue. Leo was interrogated and exiled to a monastary - but he escaped and sought Charlemagne’s protection. Charles Magnus gave it, Leo swore innocence and his assailants were exiled under edict of the Emperor. Good deal.

Dare I continue? I dare. The show claims that during the Carolingian renaissance, Europe’s population rebounded because of climate change. A professor (of what, I have no idea) says very clearly that the Medieval Warm Period (which allowed greater range and longer growing seasons) followed the Little Ice Age. The truth is precisely the opposite. The Little Ice Age followed the Medieval Warm period. Why is this significant to the show?

The show says that the Viking Invasions put a stop to the growing light in Europe, plunging the continent back into darkness. Of course, the Viking Age started at about exactly the time of the Medieval Warm Period, so either Europe was fluorishing or it was being plundered - the show is a little confused on this point. Additionally, they misconstrue why the Vikings stopped raiding. There were two major reasons. One, Europeans weren’t stupid and started clustering towns around fortresses. Vikings were not prepared to lay seige to castles. But the second reason is that while the Vikings fluorished during the Warm Period (as did much of Europe), they were most affected by the Little Ice Age! Many of the expansion settlements of the Vikings were in the far north, areas that became far less habitable as the climate cooled. It is the Little Ice Age that stopped the Vikings from permanently settling North America - they were almost there. They had raided into Newfoundland from permanent settlements in Greenland! Greenland today has very few habitable areas. But during the warm period, Viking settlements had little trouble sustaining life. When the cold temperatures came, the Greenland settlements were no longer habitable, and the European foothold in the New World was lost for another 400 years.

Oh, and Vikings did not wear big horned helmets. That’s an affectation of Victorian Opera. Any gaudy horned helmets the Vikings had were ceremonial. Their functional helmets were much more, well, functional. How can the History Channel perpetuate even that, the simplest to debunk, of stereotypes!?

Is that all? No, there’s more. More things that I missed, more things that I’m less familiar with, more things that they just got wrong. But I can’t go on. I’m too disappointed, and really, who is still reading this?

Hopefully the Irony Channel.

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