Do the Middle Ages deserve their poor reputation?

Humes fork · 24th May 2012, 11:35 AM

A relatively freethinking and tolerant antiquity was replaced by a harsh and intolerant medieval Christianity. My impression is that many atheists and skeptics have this view of history. It is also the view of history shared by broad swaths of mainstream society.

However, to my knowledge most modern historians don't share this view. Do you agree with them?

My impression is that the Roman era, contrary to this image, did not exactly result in advances in scientific knowledge, and that the Romans were a less curious people than the Greeks. But I also think that the Middle Ages had fewer interesting thinkers than antiquity. Still, Thomas Aquinas was important in that he contributed to the intellectualization of religion. He tried to provide proofs for God's existence, and though they were poor, the thinking it represented was a step forward. And of course we have Roger Bacon. But between 300-1000 CE there seems to have been little intellectual thought.

Life as a peasant was probably slightly better in the Middle Ages, as improvements in agricultural technology was made.

The tolerance of antiquity should not be exaggerated. Impiety was punishable by death in ancient Greece. Anaxagoras, Socrates and Aristotle are all examples of philosophers who were persecuted for impiety toward the gods. I'm really not sure being an atheist in ancient Greece was much better than during the Middle Ages.

MG1962 · 24th May 2012, 11:52 AM

Well first up the reason for the name dark ages has nothing to do with Christianity, also the graph badly under estimates the progress made with science and technology through the era.

Aepervius · 24th May 2012, 12:00 PM

It truly depends on what type of "science" (or the historical version from it) you are speaking of it. Some part of science were actually greatly advanced during that time by various part of the world, heck even christianity. On the other hand some part were advancing more outside christiniaty due to some local taboo. Overall I think the reputation is wrongly earned , there *were* advancement and not fall back overall, and the step "down" as you see in the picture a misconception which date back from the renaissance/enlightement age. Example "some middle age people belieived the earth is flat" is actually a misconception from recent time (renaissance/enlightment).

tomwaits · 24th May 2012, 12:27 PM

The Byzantines did pretty well, at least until 1453.

rjh01 · 24th May 2012, 06:16 PM

Where did the figures for the vertical axis come from? The reasons for the dark ages are many. So the graph is far too simplistic to be taken seriously.

MG1962 · 24th May 2012, 06:18 PM

Originally Posted by rjh01

Where did the figures for the vertical axis come from? The reasons for the dark ages are many. So the graph is far too simplistic to be taken seriously.

Some one who claimed to be an atheist but was too caught up in hate of Christianity to be much of anything

jasonpatterson · 24th May 2012, 07:44 PM

Originally Posted by rjh01

Where did the figures for the vertical axis come from? The reasons for the dark ages are many. So the graph is far too simplistic to be taken seriously.

(Shhh, it's a joke, don't tell anybody.)

gumboot · 24th May 2012, 08:10 PM

The person that drew this graph seems to think the "dark ages" and the "middle ages" are the same thing.

WildCat · 24th May 2012, 08:26 PM

Originally Posted by MG1962

Well first up the reason for the name dark ages has nothing to do with Christianity, also the graph badly under estimates the progress made with science and technology through the era.

Yeah, it's hard to maintain a society when waves of disease keeps killing off half the population. And wasn't it the church that preserved the ancient knowledge?

Puppycow · 24th May 2012, 08:45 PM

Well, first of all, the "graph" is obviously horse manure.

That aside, I'm hard-pressed to think of any major scientific advances in the early middle ages. The late middle ages leading into the Renaissance had some important ones though. Here's what wiki says about Science in the Middle Ages.

Quote:

Science in the Middle Ages comprised the study of nature, including practical disciplines, the mathematics and natural philosophy in medieval Europe. Following the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the decline in knowledge of Greek, Christian Western Europe was cut off from an important source of ancient learning. Although a range of Christian clerics and scholars from Isidore and Bede to Buridan and Oresme maintained the spirit of rational inquiry, Western Europe would see during the Early Middle Ages a period of intellectual stagnation. During the High Middle Ages, however, the West had begun to reorganize itself and was on its way to taking again the lead in scientific discovery (see Scientific Revolution).

The main advances I associate with the Romans is their roads and their aqueducts.

Korren · 24th May 2012, 10:28 PM

Originally Posted by Puppycow

, Western Europe would see during the Early Middle Ages a period of intellectual stagnation.

Western Europe, with the exception of (parts of) Italy and Greece was hardly an intellectual hot house before the fall of the Roman empire either.

RobDegraves · 24th May 2012, 10:28 PM

Well... this topic seems to have been created just for me, considering that my MA is in history... specializing in the middle ages.

It's a very complex subject, to compare the Roman Empire to the so called "Dark Ages" in Western Europe. It varies by country... for example someone already mentioned Byzantium. However, there are a few things I might point out generally, and I can get more specific if people want.

To begin with, agriculture was definitely better during the Roman age, than it was right after Roman civilization withdrew in the West. During the Empire, aqueducts, organized labor and standard practices, even a degree of mechanization were all used to produce far better results than what you would find in Europe around the year 600 or so. Almost all kinds of knowledge were affected by Rome's withdrawal, mostly negatively. Though the Church kept a lot of knowledge alive, they had ceased to try and innovate or research much at all. There was a pervasive impression that Man had regressed and had lost the capacity for new learning. How much Christianity is to blame for the lack of, or safeguarding of, knowledge and learning makes for a long conversation.

The early middle ages, in general, were periods of endemic warfare, little to no trade or commerce, famine and disease. Plagues, endless killing and misery made it look like the world was ending, further fueling religious fervor. Hell seemed a lot closer and a lot more real.

However, that does not mean that the early middle ages were a waste or a downgrade, despite what it seemed like at the time. To begin with, the Roman empire had a number of issues that almost insured it's eventual transformation or fall. No one had seen such an empire and no one could really understand how to fix the problems. Slavery took away jobs, an empire built on conquest had problems affording peace, endemic factional infighting, religious issues, etc. The middle ages were in some ways a way to restart and try a new kind of civilization. There were some significant problems, and sometimes I am surprised we even made it out of the dark ages. I often say it's a good idea to spare a thought for the people who sacrificed so much to lift us out of there.

MG1962 · 24th May 2012, 10:51 PM

Rob I was watching a doco today about Robin Hood - starring of all people Russel Crowe - yeah I didn't expect much accuracy, but in passing they mentioned that for a few hundred years before the Crusades the climate had been ferocious on farming and food production had been dropping because of the lack of getting anything to grow.

Is this something you are familiar with?

HansMustermann · 25th May 2012, 04:09 AM

Originally Posted by Humes fork

http://thewordofme.files.wordpress.c...dark-ages1.jpg

A relatively freethinking and tolerant antiquity was replaced by a harsh and intolerant medieval Christianity. My impression is that many atheists and skeptics have this view of history. It is also the view of history shared by broad swaths of mainstream society.

However, to my knowledge most modern historians don't share this view. Do you agree with them?

We've had this talk and that graph before. I can't be bothered to write all that all over again, but basically I would say that Christianity can't really be blamed for all the crap-storm that had been happening. Mind you, it wasn't a force for progress, either, but you can't really blame everything on it either. The whole societal collapse is what caused it all to stagnate and even, yes, go backwards.

Europe was basically living a Fallout scenario. Society had collapsed, Justinian's plague, likely the first Black Death outbreak in Europe, had decimated the population, trade collapsed, order collapsed, and so on. The groups of survivors trying to build a living out of rocks scavenged from old Roman ruins had other concerns than preserving the old knowledge.

Originally Posted by Humes fork

My impression is that the Roman era, contrary to this image, did not exactly result in advances in scientific knowledge, and that the Romans were a less curious people than the Greeks.

Yes and no. Or rather, no and yes. There were plenty of Romans interested in the science, but yes, on the whole their culture was more valuing administration and rhetoric and military skill for a proper Roman. BUT the Romans were also pragmatic enough to realize that someone has to do it. The whole expansion of Rome was built on being very fast to reverse engineer anything that worked, and make even better versions of it. And they most certainly had nothing against letting the Greeks keep doing it. Most Roman-age libraries had probably more manuscripts in Greek than Latin, and whole fields like medicine were dominated by the Greeks.

So, yes, the Romans were somewhat less inclined to make advances in medicine or astronomy than the Greeks, but they still had their own guys. And it's somewhat irrelevant, since they let the Greeks keep at it full speed, anyway.

Originally Posted by Humes fork

The tolerance of antiquity should not be exaggerated. Impiety was punishable by death in ancient Greece. Anaxagoras, Socrates and Aristotle are all examples of philosophers who were persecuted for impiety toward the gods. I'm really not sure being an atheist in ancient Greece was much better than during the Middle Ages.

Sort of. The only thing punishable in Rome was denying the gods of the state. And you actually had to go around denying other people's gods. Belief wasn't really necessary even to be a high priest, as long as you did the rituals right.

It's not great by modern standards, but it sure beats the Christian version of setting each other on fire for not believing the right flavour of Christianity, or for saying the wrong version of the Lord's Prayer. So the Christian middle ages were still a huge step back.

As for the Greeks... well, it's not that simple. Impiety was more like a charge tacked on top of it, than the main thing. Their trials were more like a sophistry contest than a modern trial, so anything you could add to make the guy look bad, was fair game. It's a more general failure of their legal system, than really enforcing religion.

And really, what you see there is more like just that Socrates had made himself hated by a lot of people.

tomwaits · 25th May 2012, 05:27 AM

Originally Posted by RobDegraves

Though the Church kept a lot of knowledge alive, they had ceased to try and innovate or research much at all. There was a pervasive impression that Man had regressed and had lost the capacity for new learning. How much Christianity is to blame for the lack of, or safeguarding of, knowledge and learning makes for a long conversation.

One of my favorite books is The Name of the Rose. Although it's fiction, I think it does a great job of showing how the Western Church preserved ancient knowledge, but treated it with such reverence (and sometimes fear) that they felt compelled to safeguard it from the masses. This led to stagnation of learning; innovation was frowned upon. How could anyone possibly improve on Aristotle (called just "The Philosopher") anyway? Meanwhile the Byzantines and Arabs were doing just that.

RobDegraves · 25th May 2012, 07:52 AM

Quote:

Rob I was watching a doco today about Robin Hood - starring of all people Russel Crowe - yeah I didn't expect much accuracy, but in passing they mentioned that for a few hundred years before the Crusades the climate had been ferocious on farming and food production had been dropping because of the lack of getting anything to grow.

@MG1962...

It really depends on where you are but overall it was not so. It also depends on what Crusade he meant. The period around the first crusade (1100 AD) had what is called the medieval "warm" period, where the weather in general was much warmer. The Robin Hood movies are typically set around the period of the 3rd Crusade, with Richard the Lion Heart, even though Robin Hood stories can be found as far back as the 9th century. From the first Crusade to the 3rd, England's population had gone from about 1 million to 4 or 5 million.

MG1962 · 25th May 2012, 07:59 AM

Originally Posted by RobDegraves

@MG1962...

It really depends on where you are but overall it was not so. It also depends on what Crusade he meant. The period around the first crusade (1100 AD) had what is called the medieval "warm" period, where the weather in general was much warmer. The Robin Hood movies are typically set around the period of the 3rd Crusade, with Richard the Lion Heart, even though Robin Hood stories can be found as far back as the 9th century. From the first Crusade to the 3rd, England's population had gone from about 1 million to 4 or 5 million.

Thanks for that - so rather than recovering it was a case the climate just got a little better for a period. And from what I have read in other sources as well as your comments earlier, in Western Europe at least, society was so busy just surviving there was little energy for anything else

HansMustermann · 25th May 2012, 08:33 AM

I think it depends on which period. People tend to lump everything between the fall of Rome to Columbus or so under "Middle Ages". (And then there are the gamers, a fair number of whom seem to think that everything between 3000 BCE to 1800 CE is middle ages

)

Society was generally busy surviving, but that varies to some extents based on exactly which period. The early middle ages were a lot more survival oriented. Civilization had just about collapsed in the west, and really everyone had FAR bigger concerns than ancient knowledge. By the high middle ages, though, things get more organized and viable, and by the end of the high middle ages, even the Church is getting a lot more smart cookies.

That incidentally also goes for the idea of the church as a guardian of ancient knowledge.

For most of the early middle ages, really, the church was just as anti-science as the early church. They're not actually trying to preserve any ancient knowledge, and in many cases they're actively trying to destroy it. They erased ancient manuscripts wholesale, and "redeemed" the parchment by writing a bible on it.

The only things they actually tried to preserve were a few documents which supported their theology. E.g., some do copy Josephus, just because it has the idiotic Testimonium Flavianum forgery. But otherwise they destroy works of astronomy, philosophy, etc, wholesale to mint more bibles.

(Incidentally NOW we can reconstruct the old text, so essentially they did preserve it that way. But for what they knew at the time, and what they were trying to do, they were actually trying to destroy all that knowledge wholesale and "redeem" the paper by writing something holy on it.)

Even the stuff they tried to preserve because they had immediate application, e.g., tables for computing torsion catapults, nobody even tried to understand the formulas, so as the errors accumulate in the transcriptions, eventually they get hideously wrong and become worthless. So Europe completely forgets how to make a torsion catapult, even while transcribing the tables for them, and eventually just gets the newfangled trebuchets from the Byzantines. (Way late in the high middle ages.)

The fascination with the old Greek and Roman science starts VERY late, in fact around the time of Petrarca. Then people suddenly get a fascination with everything pre-Christian, and a disdain for everything that was between the fall of Rome and them.

Incidentally, at that point, the old Greek and Roman manuscripts they do end up copying, a lot of them actually come from the Muslims. Because the ones that the dumbasses in the West had once had, they had largely destroyed.

In fact, arguably, a lot of what did kick that newfangled fascination with the old works of ancient Greeks and Romans, was the influx of such manuscripts that had been kept and copied by the Muslims. I.e., the crusades may well be what helped kick it into gear.

And arguably the church still wasn't the primary force in restarting that ancient science. It just wasn't in a position to stop it. All the Vatican could do in the face of this newfound love of ancient books, and of learning that ancient stuff, was to negotiate stuff that the Universities were still not allowed to teach. E.g., you can teach Aristotle, but you can't teach his ideas about multiple worlds.

And finally, if we're talking about Umberto Eco's "The Name Of The Rose", the action there is set in 1327. That's the beginning of the Late Middle Ages. By then, yes, the copying of old scientific and philosophy manuscripts was in full swing, and the church had more monks copying books than the rest of the western world combined. Though, yes, they still were weary of people also getting to the forbidden ideas in those.

Which is basically why one shouldn't think it was all a uniform Middle Ages period. One can't read a novel about the 1300's, and assume it was the same half a century earlier in the 800's.

TubbaBlubba · 25th May 2012, 09:03 AM

It always bothered me how scholastics were removed from HS philosophy courses in recent years. A lot of work in logic etc was done in that period.

JoeBentley · 25th May 2012, 09:19 AM

An interesting point was made in a documentary I watched about the Middle Ages a while back.

The thing about the Middle Ages was that the ruins of an earlier advanced civilization where still there. You could be a poor substance farmer eking out an existence in a mud and thatch hut literally in the shadow of the Roman Colosseum or the Parthenon or an Aqueduct. Even for a poor, illiterate, uneducated person with no concept of history in the academic sense couldn't avoid the fact that people had ounce existed that lived better.

Whether or not they deserve their reputation as "The Dark Ages" is certainly a matter for debate, but I think it is unarguable that they did represent a unique place in history.

tomwaits · 25th May 2012, 09:23 AM

Honestly this whole thread just makes me want to read Foundation again!

Belz... · 25th May 2012, 09:38 AM