<P> In response to the Protestants , Catholics developed a counter-image to depict the High Middle Ages in particular as a period of social and religious harmony , and not ' dark ' at all . The most important Catholic reply to the Magdeburg Centuries was the Annales Ecclesiastici by Cardinal Caesar Baronius . Baronius was a trained historian who produced a work that the Encyclopædia Britannica in 1911 described as `` far surpassing anything before '' and that Acton regarded as `` the greatest history of the Church ever written '' . The Annales covered the first twelve centuries of Christianity to 1198 , and was published in twelve volumes between 1588 and 1607 . It was in Volume X that Baronius coined the term `` dark age '' for the period between the end of the Carolingian Empire in 888 and the first stirrings of Gregorian Reform under Pope Clement II in 1046 : </P>
when did the dark ages start and finish
between the end of the Carolingian Empire in 888 and the first stirrings of Gregorian Reform under Pope Clement II in 1046