Medieval Myths- the Dark Ages

Tolkien R.R.J

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The Middle Ages- The Dark Ages?

Many vicious distortions and lies had entered the historical cannon with the seal of distinguished scholarly approval, so long as they reflect badly on the catholic church.”
-Rodney Stark Bearing False Witness Debunking Centuries of Anti-Catholic History Tempelton Press 2016


Labeling historical time periods can be useful... but sometimes they reveal more about those who created them than those who lived during them. Such is the case with the dark ages”
-Steve Weidenkompf The real Story of catholic History Catholic Answers Press 2017



The winner wrote the history and in an attempt to discredit former worldviews and civilizations that it overcame the modern secular and protestant “enlightenment” historians have portrayed the medieval catholic dominated Europe as backwards compared to the modern totalitarian centralized states of today and the centralized power of Rome before it. Besides, if we did not bash other cultures that differ from us who cant defend themselves it would deprive us moderns of the aristocratic pleasure of despising earlier medievalist. However this view has now started to give way and historians recognize the claim of the time period of the “Dark ages” is a myth.

Great historical myths die hard....writers continue to spread traditional myths....even though they are fully aware of the new findings. They do so because they are determined to show that religion, and especially Christianity, is a dreadful curse upon humanity.”
-Rodney Stark Bearing False Witness: Debunking Centuries of Anti-Catholic History


No period of history is more misunderstood, or underappreciated, than the middle ages”
-Anthony Esolen Professor of English Providence College How Dark Were the Dark Ages?



Invention


The middle-ages...witnessed the abolition of slavery, the liberation of women, checks and balances on absolutism, artistic achievements of medieval cathedrals, inversions of the book, the musical scale, and the mechanical clock.”
-Regine Pernoud Those Terrible Middle Ages Debunking the Myths Ignatius press San Francisco


revolutions in agriculture, weaponry and warfare, non human power, transportation, manufacturing and commerce....so to did remarkable moral progresses...enormous progress that took place in music, art, literature, education and science.”
-Rodney Stark Bearing False Witness Debunking Centuries of Anti-Catholic History Tempelton Press 2016


The medieval time period was one of great invention. The stirrup was invented, the heavy Calvary charge, iron horse shoe, innovations in forms of writings and styles of literature, the creation of the Gothic Cathedrals, the mechanical clock invented, plows, eye glasses, aquaculture, the three-year crop rotation system, chimneys, clocks, wheelbarrows, Musical notation, oil-based paints, sonnets, water and wind power, the blast furnace,
The compass, paper, printing, gunpowder, great castles, dams, Wind mills were even used to push the ocean back and reclaim land that know belongs to the Netherlands. Courts, lawyers, the creation of Carolingian minuscule.

One of the great innovative eras of mankind....on a sale no civilization had previously known”
-Historian Jean Gimpel


It was during this time period that Europe made great advancements and pushed itself ahead of the rest of the world technologically. Rodney Stark argues once the authority of Rome was removed, progressed in fact blossomed. Music and poetic activity was everywhere as did celebration with the holy land and Rome acting as the Disney of its day.

They were full of color, of celebrations involving everybody in town; they invented the carnival; they revived popular drama, which had lain dormant for a thousand years; whatever they did, whether it was sinning or fighting or repenting or falling in love, or travelingthousands of miles to Rome or to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher they did it with energy and gusto.
-Anthony Esolen Professor of English Providence College How Dark Were the Dark Ages?



there were theatrical productions everywhere very early in the middle ages”
-Regine Pernoud Those Terrible Middle Ages Debunking the Myths Ignatius press San Francisco




Preservation


Everything we know about the ancient world can survive without...without someone in the middle ages thinking it was worthwhile to copy it”
-Thomas Madden The Modern Scholar: The Medieval World, Part II: Society, Economy, and Culture



The Church and monks preserved the bible, the writings of the fathers, of the ancient and various pagan classics, devotionals, church council writings, writings of popes etc nothing of the ancient world would have been known if not for those dark age translators preserving the text.


In fact, Latin and even Greek authors were already well known in the middle ages, we know now that the contribution of the ancient works, classical, or not, was as from being scorned or rejected at the time. Acquaintance with it was considered an essential element of knowledge.”
-Regine Pernoud Those Terrible Middle Ages Debunking the Myths Ignatius press San Francisco




Financial


Period of great growth and vibrancy in the middle ages. Not at all what you think of the dark ages, a misnomer. Dont say the dark ages to a medieval historian, it upsets them”
-Thomas Madden The Modern Scholar: The Medieval World, Part II: Society, Economy, and Culture


The middle ages saw the growth of market towns witch brought large economic growth as well. Coining increased based on market value needs. The “commercial revolution” of the 11th century brought early capitalism were peasants with large amounts of goods sought a market and trade created merchants who would buy in bulk and sell in distant lands. We see the beginning of the stock market based on long distance voyages. All this leads to peasants upward mobility to the “middle class”


Trade flourished once the empires cities which had been mostly centers of government with little commercial activity...devolved to local cheiftens. Trade in the roman empire had consisted mostly of plunder and booty from military exspediations and tribute from conquered regions. In the post imperial world, trade expanded throughout Europe to include iron tolls, weapons, pottery, glassware and woolens.”
-Steve Weidenkopf The Real Story of Catholic history 2017



we see the middle class born”
-Thomas Madden The Modern Scholar: The Medieval World, Part II: Society, Economy, and Culture



Universities and Science


it is the catholic church that invents the university”
-Thomas Madden The Modern Scholar: The Medieval World, Part II: Society, Economy, and Culture


How about the university? Medieval man invented it. For the first time in the history of the world, you could go to Paris or Bologna or Padua or Oxford or Prague or Cologne and study under masters of law, medicine, philosophy, and theology, and your degree -- designating you as a master or a doctor -- would hold good anywhere in Europe. It was an international community of scholars. A young Thomas Aquinas, born in southern Italy at the beginning of the 13th century, would travel to Cologne to study philosophy under the philosopher-biologist Albert the Great, then to Paris where he taught theology and philosophy, then to Rome, and back to France -- and this sort of thing was the rule among scholars, not the exception.
-Anthony Esolen Professor of English Providence College How Dark Were the Dark Ages?



Universities were invented and the medieval church supported scientist in large numbers without interference. Science based on observation was founded. Increase in literacy rates followed as medieval schools preserved and translated ancient text and books replaced schools. libraries had various classical works. The middle ages also saw the creation of the hymn and liturgical charts.

During the middle ages the catholic church actively supported a great deal of science”
-James Hannam phd history of science from Cambridge university


formal education does not exists outside the catholic church”
-Thomas Madden The Modern Scholar: The Medieval World, Part II: Society, Economy, and Culture



Abolition of Slavery- Farming and Population


One fundamental fact about all....antiquity before Christ, is the insignificance of the individual before the state”
-G K Chesterton The Everlasting man


slavery... it is curious, when one glanced through history textbooks, to note the discretion with which this is brought up,, weather it is a question of the disappearance of slavery at the very beginning of the high middle ages or its abrupt reappearance at the beginning of the 16th century.... school textbooks for high school classes. None of them points to the progressive disappearance of slavery from the fourth century on.”
-Regine Pernoud Those Terrible Middle Ages Debunking the Myths Ignatius press San Francisco



Medieval Europe was first in world to see slavery as inherently evil and abolish it. Slavery does not pick up again until the return of roman law and centralization during the renaissance.


Slavery, once ubiquitous in Roman and post Roman Afro-Eurasia, persisted in Arab world, but was gradually dying out in christian lands”
-Christopher Tyerman Gods war a new history of the Crusaamades Harvard U Press Cambridge Mass 2006



In the Roman time period farm work was viewed as fit for slaves and thus you needed a good supply of slaves to produce food. Since slavery was done away with during the “dark ages” it was now done by freemen. With the exodus of people moving from large cities to the country, more and more picked up farming and a massive increase in farmers and food production followed along with better farming techniques, led to a massive increase in population and increase life expectancy. A sigh of good standard of living. Population tripled from 1000-1300 in the west.


Perhaps the most significant impact on European society after the collapse of the empire was the eradication of slavery, a mainstay of the imperial way of life.”
-Steve Weidenkopf The Real Story of Catholic history 2017



Women


Truly philosophical minds find a new proof of the elevation to witch the christian middle ages was enabled to raise the position of women. Antiquity affords no parallel.”
-Leon Gautier Chivalry the Everyday Life of the medieval Knight Tumblar House 2015


women have “finally left the middle ages” in point in fact, women have much to trod to recover the peace that was theirs in the time of Queen Eleanor and Queen Blanche”
-Regine Pernoud Those Terrible Middle Ages Debunking the Myths Ignatius press San Francisco


The feudal husband....respected and honored his wife, his equal [christian not roman idea] whom he loved”
-Leon Gautier Chivalry the Everyday Life of the medieval Knight Tumblar House 2015



Far from being a time were women were burned at the stake for voicing their opinions, instead the middle ages were a drastic increase in the treatment of women over the previous pagan and Roman law understanding of the women as property. Chivalry was born in the middle ages with its high respect for the treatment of women and the responsibility on the man [unlike in Rome] to protect and care for the women financially and health wise. Further men were not to abandon the women are leave her without protection. Divorce witch breaks apart families and women today was near zero in the middle ages. Women were not simply objects to be used and discarded when a better opportunity arises for the man. Moral norms and respect for woman like Chasity, chivalry and marriage protected woman from men who would not support the woman and thus financial security and a father were intact before sex or marriage ensuring the family unit. The idea that marriage itself is consensual come only from Christianity not secular of Roman law. It was not until Christianity spread that women had a choice in marriage. Even today this is a minority view among the worldviews of the world. It was the Bible that taught women were created equal to men. Often it was the women seeking a certain noble man for marriage.


Women as a wife was fenced in with honor and respect....the wife gained an influence over her husband, witch the couples of ancient Greece and Rome never attained”
-Leon Gautier Chivalry the Everyday Life of the medieval Knight Tumblar House 2015



Men and woman as distinct and both benefiting from each other was the norm. Woman were held in high esteem as mothers who raised and taught their children and helped the self sufficient lifestyle. Motherhood was seen as noble and vital to society held in the highest regard and as the of the highest importance. That women take the last name of men did not start until the council of Trent in the 16th century during the renaissance. Land owning was tied to military service and they did not care to be politically correct but to protect the family, land and lives witch were dependent on that land. This is why men owned land more than women not because of discrimination. Women outside of royalty even could own land through inheritance [usually first born male] or marriage usually by gifts at weddings or if the husband died.


Hierarchy placed below man, the women in all other respects was his equal”
-Leon Gautier Chivalry the Everyday Life of the medieval Knight Tumblar House 2015



The Church held women in high esteem. Early church maryters were women such as Saint Angus and Saint Genevieve. There is no need to mention how important Mary is to the medieval world. In fact cults of Mary that elevated her to high a status were around in the middle ages. Women were well educated often through the church. Women held authority over men at various times one convent of men and women was run by a 20 year old women.

It was only at the end of the 16th century.... that women would be excluded from all state functions.”
-Regine Pernoud Those Terrible Middle Ages Debunking the Myths Ignatius press San Francisco


Women voting was often and widespread. Women were tradesmen, shop owners, teachers, doctors, binders, copyist, plasterers etc etc They could knight, knights. Tamar the Great, Queen Elanor of Aquitaine and Queen Blanche of Castile were among the most powerful figures in all of Europe in their day acting as King/Queen combined. Less powerful Queens were crowned with ceremony just like kings. They were as powerful as normal Lords and held important responsibilities.

They unquestionably excersized power when the King was absent, sick, or dead, they had their chancellery, their power, their field of personal activity, the women in classical times was relegated to the background. Found herself excluded from any political or administrative function. Considered.... as being incapable of ruling...excluded from any right over her personal property.”
-Regine Pernoud Those Terrible Middle Ages Debunking the Myths Ignatius press San Francisco


It was the reemergence of the Renaissance, roman law, and centralization that led to absolute monarchies, democracy and the lesser role of women. By 1600 their roles espically as queen had lost power due to increase wars from centralization in absolute monarchies due to the Kings increase military power.

her influence diminished in direct proportion to the rise of roman law and juridical studies, then in institutions, and finally in customs.”
-Regine Pernoud Those Terrible Middle Ages Debunking the Myths Ignatius press San Francisco



Modern women are in fact all but gone, feminism has done away with them. Women have been changed into industrialized men.

"Feminism... is in no way pro-female or pro feminine....have sought to achieve their equality is by defeminizing woman, by diminishing the natural procreative abilities that make them woman, and in the end make them more like men....its destroying the concept of woman altogether."
-Eric Robert Morse the Economic Theory of sex Industrialism, Feminism, and the Disintegration of the Family New Classic Books 2016


Woman, overcome with satisfied at the idea of having penetrated the masculine world, have remained incapable of the additional immigration required to bring to this world her own mark, which is preciseness what is lacking in our society. It is enough for her to imitate men, to be judged capable of practicing the same trades....without asking herself if she might not be motivated by an unconscious, perhaps excessive, admiration of a masculine world.... even at the loss of her own identity”
-Regine Pernoud Those Terrible Middle Ages Debunking the Myths Ignatius press San Francisco

also see


I Wish I Was In The land Of Cotton- Southern Agrarian vs Northern Industrialization
 

Tolkien R.R.J

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Flat Earth?

Galileo did not discover that the earth was round, this had been known for more than four centuries.”
-Regine Pernoud Those Terrible Middle Ages Debunking the Myths Ignatius press San Francisco


The people of the Middle Ages did not believe the earth was flat. They knew it was round. The ancients said it was round, the Fathers of the Church said it was round; they saw its shadow during an eclipse of the moon, and the shadow was round; they saw masts of ships sinking below the horizon – round!”
-Anthony Esolen Professor of English Providence College How Dark Were the Dark Ages?


The earth was known to have been round long before the Renaissance and Galileo [1633]. There was no flat earth society like the modern evolutionist flat earth society. It was common knowledge and The Bible teaches as such [Job 26.7, 10 Isiah 40.22]. According to Rodney Stark in his book Bearing False Witness: Debunking Centuries of Anti-Catholic History. All theologians and scholars agreed the earth was round at the time. The myth was invented by a fictional writer Washington Irving and taken as truth by anti catholic historians.

The opposition Columbus encountered was not about the shape of the earth, but about the fact that he was wildly wrong about the circumference of the globe...the story [Columbus flat earth] was unknown until more than three hundred years later when it appeared in 1828...the story was eagerly embraced by historians who were so certain of the wickedness and stupidity of the roman catholic church.”
-Rodney Stark Bearing False Witness Debunking Centuries of Anti-Catholic History Tempelton Press 2016



You will read in some book that men of the middle ages thought the earth flat and the stars near, but that is a lie.”
-C.S Lewis Problem of pain



The famous evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) said

There never was a period of ‘flat earth darkness’ among scholars (regardless of how the public at large may have conceptualized our planet both then and now). Greek knowledge of sphericity never faded, and all major medieval scholars accepted the earth’s roundness as an established fact of cosmology.
-Gould, S.J., The Late Birth of a Flat Earth, in: Dinosaur in a Haystack: Reflections in Natural History, 1st paperback ed., pp. 38–50, New York: Three Rivers Press, NY,1997

and


Russell documents accounts supporting earth’s sphericity from numerous medieval church scholars such as friar Roger Bacon (1220–1292), inventor of spectacles; leading medieval scientists such as John Buridan (1301–1358) and Nicholas Oresme (1320–1382); the monk John of Sacrobosco (c. 1195–c. 1256) who wrote Treatise on the Sphere, and many more. One of the best-known proponents of a globe-shaped earth was the early English monk, theologian and historian, the Venerable Bede (673–735), who popularized the common BC/ AD dating system. Less well known was that he was also a leading astronomer of his day Henderson, T., World-famous astronomers celebrate the Venerable Bede”
-The Journal, journallive.co.uk, 13 February 2009




And the leading church theologian of the middle ages, Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), wrote in his greatest work Summa Theologica/Theologia

The physicist proves the earth to be round by one means, the astronomer by another: for the latter proves this by means of mathematics, e.g. by the shapes of eclipses, or something of the sort; while the former proves it by means of physics, e.g. by the movement of heavy bodies towards the centre, and so forth.”


We call the earth a globe, not as if the shape of a sphere were expressed in the diversity of plains and mountains, but because, if all things are included in the outline, the earth’s circumference will represent the figure of a perfect globe. … For truly it is an orb placed in the centre of the universe; in its width it is like a circle, and not circular like a shield but rather like a ball, and it extends from its centre with perfect roundness on all sides.”


The Renaissance

The revival of Roman law brought about legal standardization in the interest of centralized nation states...put an end to the legal rights enjoyed by medieval serfs and feudal Lords. The result was the reintroduction of slavery, the subjugation of women, the exploitation of the worker, and the rise of the absolutist state”
-Cornelius Micheal Backley S.J.U of San Francisco Forward to Those Terrible Middle Ages”


In fact, the 17th century- the age of reason- the number of witchcraft trials swelled to insane proportions.”
-Regine Pernoud Those Terrible Middle Ages Debunking the Myths Ignatius press San Francisco


With the enlightenment and Renaissance we saw a return to Roman centralized law and society built upon the state. With it returned massive warfare, slavery, the decline of women in society, the exploliation of the work force, industrialization and the decline of agrarian life. The decay of society and family and standard morality, the rise of democracy and totalitarian states, the loss of liberty and private property, the loss of the individual and his earnings, and the deprivation of basic human rights on the grandest scale. And the seeds of colonialism and imperialism.

Tribunals were marked by a particular harshness due to the Renaissance of Roman law... Fredrick 2nd....for the first time stipulated specifically the pain of fire against hardened heretics, Thus the inquisition at its most odius, was the fruit of.... the forerunner of the “enlightenment monarch” who was, moreover, himself a skeptic and soon excommunicated.”
-Thomas Madden The Modern Scholar: Heaven or Heresy: A History of the Inquisition



saw it [Roman law] as an instrument of centralization and authority. It showed a large part the effects of its imperialist and, let us say the word, colonial origins.”
-Regine Pernoud Those Terrible Middle Ages Debunking the Myths Ignatius press San Francisco



The inquisition itself is a product of Roman law. And that means a legal code that had nothing at all to do with Christianity. That developed over many centuries before Christ was even born”
-Thomas Madden The Modern Scholar: Heaven or Heresy: A History of the Inquisition



Who Spreads the Myth?

The period of time when Europe was “Christianized” was renamed the dark ages. Enlightenment scholars began a campaign to associate the church with superstition and ignorance, including the outright lie the church in the middle ages taught a flat earth. Jeffery Burton Russel sets the record straight in his book inventing the flat earth myth...it is sad the conquerors write the history books. Over the next century secularist ideas replaced the christian worldview in Europe that continues to this day.”
-Micheal J ord and John K Reed How Noahs flood Shaped our earth


There were no dark ages...in part the notion that Europe fell into the “dark ages” was a hoax perpetrated by very antireligous intellectuals such as Voltaire and Gibbon, who were determined to claim that theirs was an era of “enlightenment.””
-Rodney Stark Bearing False Witness: Debunking Centuries of Anti-Catholic History


[The dark ages] “Mostly fictitious, invented by modern thinkers eager to discredit medieval faith and thought.”
-C.S Lewis


What the proponents of the enlightenment actually initiated was the tradition of angry secular attacks on religion.”
-Rodney Stark Bearing False Witness: Debunking Centuries of Anti-Catholic History
 
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The Middle Ages- The Dark Ages?

Many vicious distortions and lies had entered the historical cannon with the seal of distinguished scholarly approval, so long as they reflect badly on the catholic church.”
-Rodney Stark Bearing False Witness Debunking Centuries of Anti-Catholic History Tempelton Press 2016


Labeling historical time periods can be useful... but sometimes they reveal more about those who created them than those who lived during them. Such is the case with the dark ages”
-Steve Weidenkompf The real Story of catholic History Catholic Answers Press 2017



The winner wrote the history and in an attempt to discredit former worldviews and civilizations that it overcame the modern secular and protestant “enlightenment” historians have portrayed the medieval catholic dominated Europe as backwards compared to the modern totalitarian centralized states of today and the centralized power of Rome before it. Besides, if we did not bash other cultures that differ from us who cant defend themselves it would deprive us moderns of the aristocratic pleasure of despising earlier medievalist. However this view has now started to give way and historians recognize the claim of the time period of the “Dark ages” is a myth.

Great historical myths die hard....writers continue to spread traditional myths....even though they are fully aware of the new findings. They do so because they are determined to show that religion, and especially Christianity, is a dreadful curse upon humanity.”
-Rodney Stark Bearing False Witness: Debunking Centuries of Anti-Catholic History


No period of history is more misunderstood, or underappreciated, than the middle ages”
-Anthony Esolen Professor of English Providence College How Dark Were the Dark Ages?



Invention


The middle-ages...witnessed the abolition of slavery, the liberation of women, checks and balances on absolutism, artistic achievements of medieval cathedrals, inversions of the book, the musical scale, and the mechanical clock.”
-Regine Pernoud Those Terrible Middle Ages Debunking the Myths Ignatius press San Francisco


revolutions in agriculture, weaponry and warfare, non human power, transportation, manufacturing and commerce....so to did remarkable moral progresses...enormous progress that took place in music, art, literature, education and science.”
-Rodney Stark Bearing False Witness Debunking Centuries of Anti-Catholic History Tempelton Press 2016


The medieval time period was one of great invention. The stirrup was invented, the heavy Calvary charge, iron horse shoe, innovations in forms of writings and styles of literature, the creation of the Gothic Cathedrals, the mechanical clock invented, plows, eye glasses, aquaculture, the three-year crop rotation system, chimneys, clocks, wheelbarrows, Musical notation, oil-based paints, sonnets, water and wind power, the blast furnace,
The compass, paper, printing, gunpowder, great castles, dams, Wind mills were even used to push the ocean back and reclaim land that know belongs to the Netherlands. Courts, lawyers, the creation of Carolingian minuscule.

One of the great innovative eras of mankind....on a sale no civilization had previously known”
-Historian Jean Gimpel


It was during this time period that Europe made great advancements and pushed itself ahead of the rest of the world technologically. Rodney Stark argues once the authority of Rome was removed, progressed in fact blossomed. Music and poetic activity was everywhere as did celebration with the holy land and Rome acting as the Disney of its day.

They were full of color, of celebrations involving everybody in town; they invented the carnival; they revived popular drama, which had lain dormant for a thousand years; whatever they did, whether it was sinning or fighting or repenting or falling in love, or travelingthousands of miles to Rome or to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher they did it with energy and gusto.
-Anthony Esolen Professor of English Providence College How Dark Were the Dark Ages?



there were theatrical productions everywhere very early in the middle ages”
-Regine Pernoud Those Terrible Middle Ages Debunking the Myths Ignatius press San Francisco




Preservation


Everything we know about the ancient world can survive without...without someone in the middle ages thinking it was worthwhile to copy it”
-Thomas Madden The Modern Scholar: The Medieval World, Part II: Society, Economy, and Culture



The Church and monks preserved the bible, the writings of the fathers, of the ancient and various pagan classics, devotionals, church council writings, writings of popes etc nothing of the ancient world would have been known if not for those dark age translators preserving the text.


In fact, Latin and even Greek authors were already well known in the middle ages, we know now that the contribution of the ancient works, classical, or not, was as from being scorned or rejected at the time. Acquaintance with it was considered an essential element of knowledge.”
-Regine Pernoud Those Terrible Middle Ages Debunking the Myths Ignatius press San Francisco




Financial


Period of great growth and vibrancy in the middle ages. Not at all what you think of the dark ages, a misnomer. Dont say the dark ages to a medieval historian, it upsets them”
-Thomas Madden The Modern Scholar: The Medieval World, Part II: Society, Economy, and Culture


The middle ages saw the growth of market towns witch brought large economic growth as well. Coining increased based on market value needs. The “commercial revolution” of the 11th century brought early capitalism were peasants with large amounts of goods sought a market and trade created merchants who would buy in bulk and sell in distant lands. We see the beginning of the stock market based on long distance voyages. All this leads to peasants upward mobility to the “middle class”


Trade flourished once the empires cities which had been mostly centers of government with little commercial activity...devolved to local cheiftens. Trade in the roman empire had consisted mostly of plunder and booty from military exspediations and tribute from conquered regions. In the post imperial world, trade expanded throughout Europe to include iron tolls, weapons, pottery, glassware and woolens.”
-Steve Weidenkopf The Real Story of Catholic history 2017



we see the middle class born”
-Thomas Madden The Modern Scholar: The Medieval World, Part II: Society, Economy, and Culture



Universities and Science


it is the catholic church that invents the university”
-Thomas Madden The Modern Scholar: The Medieval World, Part II: Society, Economy, and Culture


How about the university? Medieval man invented it. For the first time in the history of the world, you could go to Paris or Bologna or Padua or Oxford or Prague or Cologne and study under masters of law, medicine, philosophy, and theology, and your degree -- designating you as a master or a doctor -- would hold good anywhere in Europe. It was an international community of scholars. A young Thomas Aquinas, born in southern Italy at the beginning of the 13th century, would travel to Cologne to study philosophy under the philosopher-biologist Albert the Great, then to Paris where he taught theology and philosophy, then to Rome, and back to France -- and this sort of thing was the rule among scholars, not the exception.
-Anthony Esolen Professor of English Providence College How Dark Were the Dark Ages?



Universities were invented and the medieval church supported scientist in large numbers without interference. Science based on observation was founded. Increase in literacy rates followed as medieval schools preserved and translated ancient text and books replaced schools. libraries had various classical works. The middle ages also saw the creation of the hymn and liturgical charts.

During the middle ages the catholic church actively supported a great deal of science”
-James Hannam phd history of science from Cambridge university


formal education does not exists outside the catholic church”
-Thomas Madden The Modern Scholar: The Medieval World, Part II: Society, Economy, and Culture



Abolition of Slavery- Farming and Population


One fundamental fact about all....antiquity before Christ, is the insignificance of the individual before the state”
-G K Chesterton The Everlasting man


slavery... it is curious, when one glanced through history textbooks, to note the discretion with which this is brought up,, weather it is a question of the disappearance of slavery at the very beginning of the high middle ages or its abrupt reappearance at the beginning of the 16th century.... school textbooks for high school classes. None of them points to the progressive disappearance of slavery from the fourth century on.”
-Regine Pernoud Those Terrible Middle Ages Debunking the Myths Ignatius press San Francisco



Medieval Europe was first in world to see slavery as inherently evil and abolish it. Slavery does not pick up again until the return of roman law and centralization during the renaissance.


Slavery, once ubiquitous in Roman and post Roman Afro-Eurasia, persisted in Arab world, but was gradually dying out in christian lands”
-Christopher Tyerman Gods war a new history of the Crusaamades Harvard U Press Cambridge Mass 2006



In the Roman time period farm work was viewed as fit for slaves and thus you needed a good supply of slaves to produce food. Since slavery was done away with during the “dark ages” it was now done by freemen. With the exodus of people moving from large cities to the country, more and more picked up farming and a massive increase in farmers and food production followed along with better farming techniques, led to a massive increase in population and increase life expectancy. A sigh of good standard of living. Population tripled from 1000-1300 in the west.


Perhaps the most significant impact on European society after the collapse of the empire was the eradication of slavery, a mainstay of the imperial way of life.”
-Steve Weidenkopf The Real Story of Catholic history 2017



Women


Truly philosophical minds find a new proof of the elevation to witch the christian middle ages was enabled to raise the position of women. Antiquity affords no parallel.”
-Leon Gautier Chivalry the Everyday Life of the medieval Knight Tumblar House 2015


women have “finally left the middle ages” in point in fact, women have much to trod to recover the peace that was theirs in the time of Queen Eleanor and Queen Blanche”
-Regine Pernoud Those Terrible Middle Ages Debunking the Myths Ignatius press San Francisco


The feudal husband....respected and honored his wife, his equal [christian not roman idea] whom he loved”
-Leon Gautier Chivalry the Everyday Life of the medieval Knight Tumblar House 2015



Far from being a time were women were burned at the stake for voicing their opinions, instead the middle ages were a drastic increase in the treatment of women over the previous pagan and Roman law understanding of the women as property. Chivalry was born in the middle ages with its high respect for the treatment of women and the responsibility on the man [unlike in Rome] to protect and care for the women financially and health wise. Further men were not to abandon the women are leave her without protection. Divorce witch breaks apart families and women today was near zero in the middle ages. Women were not simply objects to be used and discarded when a better opportunity arises for the man. Moral norms and respect for woman like Chasity, chivalry and marriage protected woman from men who would not support the woman and thus financial security and a father were intact before sex or marriage ensuring the family unit. The idea that marriage itself is consensual come only from Christianity not secular of Roman law. It was not until Christianity spread that women had a choice in marriage. Even today this is a minority view among the worldviews of the world. It was the Bible that taught women were created equal to men. Often it was the women seeking a certain noble man for marriage.


Women as a wife was fenced in with honor and respect....the wife gained an influence over her husband, witch the couples of ancient Greece and Rome never attained”
-Leon Gautier Chivalry the Everyday Life of the medieval Knight Tumblar House 2015



Men and woman as distinct and both benefiting from each other was the norm. Woman were held in high esteem as mothers who raised and taught their children and helped the self sufficient lifestyle. Motherhood was seen as noble and vital to society held in the highest regard and as the of the highest importance. That women take the last name of men did not start until the council of Trent in the 16th century during the renaissance. Land owning was tied to military service and they did not care to be politically correct but to protect the family, land and lives witch were dependent on that land. This is why men owned land more than women not because of discrimination. Women outside of royalty even could own land through inheritance [usually first born male] or marriage usually by gifts at weddings or if the husband died.


Hierarchy placed below man, the women in all other respects was his equal”
-Leon Gautier Chivalry the Everyday Life of the medieval Knight Tumblar House 2015



The Church held women in high esteem. Early church maryters were women such as Saint Angus and Saint Genevieve. There is no need to mention how important Mary is to the medieval world. In fact cults of Mary that elevated her to high a status were around in the middle ages. Women were well educated often through the church. Women held authority over men at various times one convent of men and women was run by a 20 year old women.

It was only at the end of the 16th century.... that women would be excluded from all state functions.”
-Regine Pernoud Those Terrible Middle Ages Debunking the Myths Ignatius press San Francisco


Women voting was often and widespread. Women were tradesmen, shop owners, teachers, doctors, binders, copyist, plasterers etc etc They could knight, knights. Tamar the Great, Queen Elanor of Aquitaine and Queen Blanche of Castile were among the most powerful figures in all of Europe in their day acting as King/Queen combined. Less powerful Queens were crowned with ceremony just like kings. They were as powerful as normal Lords and held important responsibilities.

They unquestionably excersized power when the King was absent, sick, or dead, they had their chancellery, their power, their field of personal activity, the women in classical times was relegated to the background. Found herself excluded from any political or administrative function. Considered.... as being incapable of ruling...excluded from any right over her personal property.”
-Regine Pernoud Those Terrible Middle Ages Debunking the Myths Ignatius press San Francisco


It was the reemergence of the Renaissance, roman law, and centralization that led to absolute monarchies, democracy and the lesser role of women. By 1600 their roles espically as queen had lost power due to increase wars from centralization in absolute monarchies due to the Kings increase military power.

her influence diminished in direct proportion to the rise of roman law and juridical studies, then in institutions, and finally in customs.”
-Regine Pernoud Those Terrible Middle Ages Debunking the Myths Ignatius press San Francisco



Modern women are in fact all but gone, feminism has done away with them. Women have been changed into industrialized men.

"Feminism... is in no way pro-female or pro feminine....have sought to achieve their equality is by defeminizing woman, by diminishing the natural procreative abilities that make them woman, and in the end make them more like men....its destroying the concept of woman altogether."
-Eric Robert Morse the Economic Theory of sex Industrialism, Feminism, and the Disintegration of the Family New Classic Books 2016


Woman, overcome with satisfied at the idea of having penetrated the masculine world, have remained incapable of the additional immigration required to bring to this world her own mark, which is preciseness what is lacking in our society. It is enough for her to imitate men, to be judged capable of practicing the same trades....without asking herself if she might not be motivated by an unconscious, perhaps excessive, admiration of a masculine world.... even at the loss of her own identity”
-Regine Pernoud Those Terrible Middle Ages Debunking the Myths Ignatius press San Francisco

also see


I Wish I Was In The land Of Cotton- Southern Agrarian vs Northern Industrialization
Flat earth is bunk but the Middle Ages and antiquity weren’t as bad as today. Today we have mass apostasy, people calling themselves Christians who are happy with their lives of sin, mass destruction of the human soul, etc.
 
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chevyontheriver

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Flat earth is bunk but the Middle Ages and antiquity weren’t as bad as today. Today we have mass apostasy, people calling themselves Christians who are happy with their lives of sin, mass destruction of the human soul, etc.
And we have more 'flat earthers' now than ever. The medievals knew the shape of the earth.
 
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Tolkien R.R.J

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And we have more 'flat earthers' now than ever. The medievals knew the shape of the earth.

not only that, they believe in evolution and global warming, very non PC.
 
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