Why were they cslled "The Dark Ages" ?
In 1611 printed material was common and inexpensive, because printed material was inexpensive literacy was high, and because printed material was inexpensive more literate people knew English than knew Latin.
In 1400 manuscripts were scarce and expensive, because manuscripts were scarce and expensive literacy was low, and because manuscripts were scarce and the vast bulk of manuscripts were transcriptions of Latin originals if you were literate in 1400 it meant that you read Latin.
By 1648 Europe was divided into ethnic states that had their own separate languages as instruments of nationalism. In 1400 Europe was a patchwork of multiethnic kingdoms and princedoms and republics that used Latin as the common language of communication among the educated.
Between 1450 and 1550 you had the rise of nationalism, the wide availability of paper (as opposed to expensive animal skins) and the invention of printing - developments that completely altered European notions of education, literacy, language and politics.
oh, my gosh.
You wrote:
“If you knew it ... that was what all the fuss was about prior to KJV.”
1) If I understand you - and that takes effort because you’re apparently collapsing two very different things into one - as recently as 1970 anyone who could read any important modern language (with the help of a hand missal) could easily attend and understand the Latin Mass just about anywhere you found Catholics anywhere in the world. If you did not have a hand missal, you could still understand most of the Latin Mass simply by past experience.
2) The KJV has nothing to do with the Latin Mass nor supposedly making things formerly in Latin more understandable to people who didn’t know Latin. Several English language Bibles were available - including the Catholic Douay Rheims - BEFORE THE KJV EVER CAME INTO EXISTENCE in 1611.
Then you posted: “Why were they cslled “The Dark Ages” ?”
They weren’t. People today refer to times before their own as the Dark Ages. No one living in those supposed Dark Ages really referred to them as Dark Ages, however. The Dark Ages are largely a myth. Ignorant people - usually products of government schools - often claim the Dark Ages were the whole Middle Ages. That is the result of ignorance and bigottry. Scholars are increasingly uneasy about using loaded terms like “Dark Ages” for there is less and less evidence or reason to use such a term. Oddly enough, and of course ignorant people would never know this, during the “Dark Ages” (which no scholar today dates longer than from about 600 to 1000 give or take) there were vernacular translations of scriptures in Anglo-Saxon England. Most likely more of them would have been produced and circulated since Anglo-Saxon England had a particularly strong vernacular culture, but that was radically changed by the events of 1066. Gee, you probably understand all of that, right?
The Carolingian Renaissance, the Scholastic revolution, the Italian Renaissance and the Sicilian School didn't fit into their liberal agenda - so they were ignored.