Review: Reclaiming The “Dark Ages”: How The Gospel Light Shone From 500 To 1500 By Iain Wright and Yannick Imbert

by on March 26, 2026 | Comment

On-ramps are really important for merging safely and easily into fast-moving traffic. Where I live near Detroit, the merging lanes at the end of on-ramps are shockingly short, often leaving a sense of dangerous urgency to find a place to fit comfortably as lots of things are coming at you quickly. The purpose of entry ramps is to give you opportunity to adjust and to get up to speed without being overwhelmed.

Familiarity is part of the on-ramp for studying church history. Most readers of this space are probably comfortable hearing and reading about new details concerning John Calvin, Martin Luther, and other major (and even some minor) figures of the Reformation. The reason is because you have probably already heard some things about these people and about the Reformation itself. You have a level of familiarity with the ideas of the Reformation period and its figures that you have conceptual storage buckets to hold new and deeper details when more information comes at you. You are already up to speed, or close to it, and are therefore able to absorb more traffic more easily.

Most of us are less familiar with the medieval period. It can often feel like a period of history that has no on-ramp, expecting you to take a stark left turn from a full stop to get right into seventy-mile-an-hour traffic. We have far fewer conceptual storage buckets to help us make sense of new information that comes to us about the Middle Ages. Given that most of the literature on the medieval period is more academic in nature, I have struggled with how to help people get acquainted with these thousand years of church history.

Iain Wright and Yannick Imbert have produced just the sort of volume that will help Reformation Protestants come to better grips with the medieval period. This book is a collection of ten biographical sketches concerning figures from (roughly) every century of the Middle Ages, ranging from AD 500–1500. Each exploration of a particular figure provides helpful insight on major cultural developments through these centuries, which enables us to see the backdrop for a lot of medieval issues. Alongside these historical insights, Wright and Imbert also highlight a specific theological or ecclesiastical contribution that each person made.

This book’s goal is to show that the moniker “dark ages” is unfit for describing the medieval era. The authors contend that the gospel was always present and that faithful people still served the Lord between the time of Augustine and the Reformation. Certainly, Wright and Imbert note many ways in which Reformed Christians will have even serious disagreements with some of the figures whom they examine. Still, they make the clear case that we also have many things to appreciate about these medieval examples—how they served Christ and worked to help his people.

In other words, the mounted case here is that we should quit thinking that the medieval period was as dark as has been suggested. A fascinating vignette is how the label “dark ages” originated with notable historian Edward Gibbon, who used it in lamenting the fall of the Roman Empire. He thought the Middle Ages were dark because Christendom became the dominant system of government. The merits of Christendom, as it existed in the medieval period, are matters for further discussion. Nevertheless, we should not think that the medieval period was dark simply because Christianity had a prevailing presence across Western society.

In the goal of showing that the church had gospel light, which was a positive thing throughout the Middle Ages, this book is a resounding success. Sometimes the organization of material ends up rehearsing points, especially about context, more than once within a given chapter. This understandably can happen in a multiauthor work. Sometimes the authors might feel too defensive about saying positive things about the medievals, but that stance, too, is understandable given the kneejerk reaction among many Protestants to the medieval era. I do wish that they had given us footnotes or endnotes to their citations from primary sources because there is great stuff that would be worth pursuing further if we could find it. The overall result of this book is a resounding success.

I lead a class about medieval theology for Westminster Theological Seminary Online, and one of the challenges, at least at the beginning, is overcoming students’ skepticism that the medieval period has anything evangelical (in the proper sense) to study that can help us. I have struggled to address that concern without getting bogged down in details to show Reformed Christians why this period of history deserves more appreciation. I will be recommending to my class that they read at least one chapter of this book per week. Seminary needs interstate-speed traffic with more academic literature. Still, students can be aided by an on-ramp so they know how to deal with that traffic. I think this book will help on that front.

Familiarity is one of those orientating features that helps us make sense of big blocks of material. The church’s middle thousand years is undoubtedly a big block of material. This little book is a great way to dip into most centuries of the medieval period without diving headfirst into the ocean. It will show you that Christ was at work through his people and that his gospel was still present during this period.

©Harrison Perkins. All Rights Reserved.

Iain Wright and Yannick Imbert, Reclaiming The “Dark Ages”: How the Gospel Light Shone from 500 to 1500 (Christian Focus, 2024).

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