The Dark Age

Abstract

No contemporary Byzantine historian recorded the empire’s seventh-century crisis. The reason was not simply that Byzantine readers were few, because Byzantines wrote a number of sermons, saints’ lives, and theological works during this time.¹ The reason was not even that a history of these years would have been unpleasant to read, because the empire’s surviving so many calamities was actually a remarkable achievement. Unresolved crises, however, have always caused problems for contemporary historians. As long as the Byzantines were unsure whether their empire would prosper or founder, they were unable to decide whether to celebrate its merits or to decry the sins for which God had punished it. As long as they harbored similar doubts about their current emperor’s ultimate success, they were unsure whether to praise or condemn him. If they wrote about the contemporary Church without knowing which of two rival doctrines would prevail, they feared that they might be unintentionally endorsing a heresy or denouncing saints. Most actual or potential historians therefore preferred to postpone writing about a war until it was over, about an emperor until he died, or about a disputed doctrine until an ecumenical council had taken a clear position on it.