term “middle ages” is revelatory of the bias of modern historiography. It views real history, significant history, as ancient Greco-Roman humanism, followed by the “darkness” of a Christian era, and then finally reborn with the Renaissance. The “middle ages” were thus a kind of historical recess, lapse, or blank spot. The “dark ages” were not dark but alive with new impetus and a new inventiveness.13 The “middle ages” cannot be read in terms of the post-Trentine church nor in terms of the centrality