The idea of the “Dark Ages” was first memorably expressed by the Italian humanist scholar Francesco Petrarch in the mid 1300s. Petrarch grew up in exile, watching foreign armies invade Italy and threaten his hometown, Florence. Nearly all his friends were killed by the Black Death or by bandits on the roads. He felt “very weak and vulnerable,” says Palmer.

Petrarch sought solace by studying antiquity, especially ancient Rome, which he saw as a time of relative peace and stability—as well a pinnacle of intellectual and cultural achievement. “And so, he invents the '[Dark] Ages' when he says, ‘We are in an age of ash and shadow,’” says Palmer. He longed for a return to the “pure radiance of the past,” launching the golden age/dark age/new golden age rhetoric that would color historians’ view for centuries to come.

That view, of course, proved to be highly simplified—not least because labeling the period between the 5th and 14th centuries the “Dark Ages” discounts nearly a thousand years of advances and achievements. Like the 8th-century court of Charlemagne, which expanded trade, founded libraries and increased literacy. Or the soaring sophistication of French Gothic cathedrals such as Notre-Dame and Chartres. Or how, beyond Europe, the Islamic world leapt forward in science, medicine and math.

And even though the Renaissance brought increased wealth and cultural achievements, the so-called "Dark Ages" (also referred to the “Middle Ages” or “medieval era”) actually had a higher life expectancy for many groups, says Palmer—like men of fighting age and children between three and 12. That’s because greater wealth during the Renaissance resulted in more advanced weaponry, deadlier wars and more travel, which spread more diseases.

Governments also became less stable during the Renaissance as wealthy oligarchs began nurturing bigger ambitions, imagining themselves as potential new monarchs. Those individuals and families vying for power often did so ruthlessly—and violently. The result, says Palmer? “Murder, murder, murder, murder.”

The term “Dark Ages” also has historically referred to that period’s paucity of written sources. But modern technological breakthroughs now allow researchers to extract historical data from a wider variety of materials, analyzing everything from DNA to tooth enamel. So, the term “Dark Ages,” Palmer says, is “half an outdated dependence on text and it’s part Petrarch being mopey."

The Renaissance has become so identified with Italy that it’s sometimes referred to as “the Italian Renaissance.” But while the movement may have originated in cities like Florence, it also flourished in wealthy capitals around Europe.

Think literary giants like England’s William Shakespeare (1564-1616) and Spain’s Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616). Or Dutch masters such as Jan van Eyck (c. 1390-1441) and Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528). Inventor Johannes Gutenberg of Germany created the first movable-type printing press in the mid 1400s, while astronomer Nicolas Copernicus (1473-1543) of Poland pioneered the sun-centric view of the solar system.

The Renaissance also wasn’t limited to Europe—and in fact, Europeans understood their continent to be relatively impoverished compared to the East, Palmer says. While an impressive library at that time in Italy might boast 600 to 1,000 volumes, an Ottoman sultan might own 5,000-plus books—and consider it unremarkable. Europeans, says Palmer, were “very aware that the Ottomans have the best scientific equipment, the best navigation tools, the best boats and ships, the best mathematics.”

When exactly was the Renaissance? It depends who you ask.

A college English department, says Palmer, might point to Shakespeare (16th century) as the beginning, while the romance language department might cite Dante writing Divine Comedy two centuries earlier. Did the Renaissance start with Giotto’s fresco cycles (c. 1300), infused with unprecedented realism and emotion? The Florence cathedral (1420-1436), an architectural and engineering marvel with the world's largest-ever masonry dome? The first-known painting (mid-1470s) by the master Leonardo?

While most definitions land somewhere between the 1300s through the early 1600s, little consensus exists. The “Renaissance is whenever we began doing the thing that you think makes us not medieval,” Palmer says. “And different people have ideas of what that is—whether it’s investment banking or rejecting the authority of a church or drawing realistic human beings on a canvas or writing Shakespeare.”

“The end justifies the means.”

It’s an infamous phrase attributed to famed Florentine political philosopher and statesman Niccolò Machiavelli, implying a ruthless cynicism and immorality about what constitutes justifiable action by those in power. But in reality, that specific phrase appears nowhere in his political treatise, The Prince, published in 1513, five years after his death. Not only is it a misleading interpretation, but it misses the historical context, says Palmer: Machiavelli had lived through a civil war and dedicated himself to preventing another one.

“For Machiavelli, the end justified the means only because the end is the survival of your country and its people when they’re under existential threat of war and conflict,” she says, noting that Florence had just witnessed its closest neighbors fall to violent conquest.

In fact, many of Machiavelli’s positions resonate with modern values, she says, including the idea that statecraft should strive for stability and protection of the people, that history offers lessons for contemporary rulers—and even the separation of church and state.

Machiavelli was also the first to advocate for multiple political parties to coexist peacefully and take turns in power. This was especially radical in 16th-century Italy, when competing parties typically fought in the streets “until one side kills all the members of the other party, cuts their heads off and puts them on piles on the city walls, burns their houses down, and builds the new seat of government on top of it,” says Palmer. (In fact, Machiavelli’s office in Florence was built over the ashes of a defeated enemy’s burned-out fortress.)

“The idea of the sinister political schemer is a very, very fun character,” she says, “so the story of scheming Machiavelli gets told over and over again.” But, “I like to discuss him as Machiavelli the patriot.”