Dark Ages Myths, help dispelling them?

[PraiseChrist]

Here’s an excerpt from this article:

“*t is easy to see how abuses crept in. Among the good works which might be encouraged by being made the condition of an indulgence, almsgiving would naturally hold a conspicuous place. . . . It is well to observe that in these purposes there is nothing essentially evil. To give money to God or to the poor is a praiseworthy act, and, when it is done from right motives, it will surely not go unrewarded.” *

But there are much worse things going on in the Church today than this abuse, like cafeteria catholicism.

 

[PraiseChrist]

You can use the Catholic Encyclopedia to help you with topics you are discussing in history, just be sure to cite it when necessary

All the best in your history class

 

[Monte_RCMS]

Peebo, you need to start another thread for that. The Spanish Inquisition happened in the “Early Modern” period, not in any kind of “Dark Ages.”

Every parish church had a priest’s missal and a ectionary book, with all the readings and prayers. Every priest read the prayers from the missal and the readings from the lectionary. Sometimes they weren’t terribly good at it, and there were a few scandalous cases where priests apparently just mumbled, but the fact they were a scandal tells you how few they were.

Bishops either trained and educated priest candidates at their own house (the beginning of seminaries) or at a cathedral school. Later on, priest candidates went to universities. All priests had to be personally ordained by some bishop, or by an abbot with the powers of a bishop. They didn’t just pick people out at random.

In a small village, the priest might be the only one who knew how to read and figure (ie, do math), so he was often called upon by the whole village and its lord, to write letters and do accounts. This was a pain in the butt, so priests had a lot of incentive to teach these basic skills to both adults and children.

In anything bigger than a village, the lord’s steward would know how to read and write. So would any merchants or prosperous farmers. So would lawyers and physicians. Often their wives and kids would also know how to read and write.

Nuns often knew how to read and write, because that was an important part of a convent education. They had to know Latin so as to sing the Hours and the Mass. Nuns also copied out and illuminated books, just as monks did. Recent research has revealed that they were doing a lot of the big Carolingian copying project, for example, but even in the Dark Ages, they show up as copyists and illuminators.

The Franks actually tended to educate normal laywomen living at home more highly than the men, because men were expendable but women tended to live. It was the job of women to run the household and cure the sick, and an educated woman brought a much higher brideprice to the clan. (And she’d be coming back to her birth family in the end, if she lived, so no investment in her education would be lost to her family by marriage, unless she died in childbirth or the like.)

Education was time-consuming and expensive, but it also tended to spread. There was less schooling in times of turmoil, and more in times of peace. Knowledge never died out entirely.

But yes, the average Dark Ages peasant probably knew more Bible stories and sayings and proverbs than the average American who claims to be Christian. They had retentive memories and not a lot of entertainment to distract them. So they actually paid attention in church.

Excellent essay.

Somewhere, there is a piece about how the ten oldest universities are Catholic.

Need to refind that.

 

[Mintaka]

Re: difficulty of getting a Bible –

Well, that varied.

First off, in early Christian times, it was a lot easier to get an entire Bible, or at least an entire New Testament and separate Old Testament. They had papyrus paper from Egypt, which was pretty cheap. Professional scribes were not cheap, which was why some monks started copying out books themselves for their monasteries.

After the Muslims invaded Egypt and cut the sea routes there, Europeans had to work out different ways to write. Birchbark and wax tablets were both only good for temporary notes. Rag paper had not yet been invented (in the West, that is - China was using it). They had to go with vellum and parchment, which meant you had to prepare and use up the hide of some perfectly good calf or sheep.

So for a long time, most people, even most parish churches, didn’t have a whole entire Bible. That was a lot of parchment, even if you wrote really small. (So instead they just had lectionaries, and it was just a one-year cycle of readings anyway.) But most monasteries worked diligently to copy whatever books were around, and then to pass out or trade or sell those copies. If a king or lord was willing to fund copies of a Bible, he would get one for himself.

The Irish monks and nuns were crazy to copy books, though, and they went all throughout Europe. They also convinced British monks and nuns to go big on book collection and copying. The Venerable Bede had multiple Bible copies from all kinds of sources, and he’s the one who did most of the work on figuring out the best edition of St. Jerome’s Vulgate. Spanish monks were also notorious for having a fair number of books, although they had a lot of Muslim invasion troubles.

It was in the late 700’s and early 800’s that Charlemagne started funding monks and nuns to copy books, in a big way. Most of the literature that survived ancient Rome survives in Carolingian-era copies.

After that, book production kept going everywhere. As the cities grew and as universities showed up, laypeople got into the business. In Paris, Salerno, and other university towns, there were scribal book factories attached to bookstores. (And often, the scribes were women of the family.) You could pick out a book that had already been copied out for you, or you could order one to your specifications of binding and illustration. To speed things up, individual illuminations were changed to woodcut printed illustrations which the illustrator colored in.

When knowledge of the making of rag paper (literally made from old clothes and rags - a process the Muslims learned from the Chinese) came over to Europe from Spain and from the Crusaders in the Middle East, the price of books dropped so low that even poor students could afford copies. Vellum and parchment were still used for expensive books, but otherwise it was rag paper all the way.

After that, printing was mostly a matter of changing scribe factory bookstores into printshop bookstores. (You could still order the kind of binding and color of illustrations you wanted.) These kinds of early printed books are called “incunabula”, because it was the “cradle” of printing. And everybody knows that Bibles and books of the Bible were the earliest printed books, because the demand was always so high.

So yeah, the Dark Ages were mostly “not enough sheep, not enough copyists, too many people dying of various stuff to be worrying about books.” As soon as people had the time, money, sheep, and people, they started copying books again. (And writing their own.)

 

[jcrichton]

Excellent essay.

Somewhere, there is a piece about how the ten oldest universities are Catholic.

Need to refind that.

Hi, Monte!
Here’s a little take on the origin of the university:

European higher education took place for hundreds of years in Christian cathedral schools or monastic schools (scholae monasticae), in which monks and nuns taught classes; evidence of these immediate forerunners of the later university at many places dates back to the 6th century.[11] The earliest universities were developed under the aegis of the Latin Church by papal bull as studia generalia and perhaps from cathedral schools. It is possible, however, that the development of cathedral schools into universities was quite rare, with the University of Paris being an exception.[12] Later they were also founded by Kings (University of Naples Federico II, Charles University in Prague, Jagiellonian University in Kraków) or municipal administrations (University of Cologne, University of Erfurt). In the early medieval period, most new universities were founded from pre-existing schools, usually when these schools were deemed to have become primarily sites of higher education. Many historians state that universities and cathedral schools were a continuation of the interest in learning promoted by monasteries.[13]

The first universities in Europe with a form of corporate/guild structure were the University of Bologna (1088), the University of Paris (c.1150, later associated with the Sorbonne), and the University of Oxford (1167).

The University of Bologna began as a law school teaching the ius gentium or Roman law of peoples which was in demand across Europe for those defending the right of incipient nations against empire and church. Bologna’s special claim to Alma Mater Studiorum[clarification needed] is based on its autonomy, its awarding of degrees, and other structural arrangements, making it the oldest continuously operating institution[8] independent of kings, emperors or any kind of direct religious authority.[14][15] (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University)

Maran atha!

Angel

 

[buffalo]

**Bearing False Witness: Debunking Centuries of Anti-Catholic History amazon.com/Bearing-False-Witness-Debunking-Anti-Catholic/dp/1599474999
**

 

[Darryl_B]

Thanks to the wonderful World History curriculum at my district, we are told that, “Nobody, not even some priests, could read the Bible, so the people didn’t know what God said.” I can see part of this, but there is more to the story, right?

The next idea is from the 95 Theses, largely laughable but for this quote(paraphrase): “Rather than be merciful to the neighbor, the Church instead wants their money.”

Next, related to the first, is the vaguely implied idea that the Dark Ages kept the faithful in the dark, and that they just did whatever the Catholic clergy told them to. Polyphony and Gregorian Chant, and all of the rituals of the Church were ways to keep them in the dark from the Christian past.

I know this is silly, but I’d appreciate some help. Also, my history teacher is super nice. Just saying that.

The Dark Ages only exists juxtaposed to the age of Enlightenment. It was the self-branded age of Enlightenment that took it upon itself not only to describe itself in that terminology “Lightened”, but also comparatively to create in their own minds the opposite Age of “Dark”. The age of Enlightenment was primarily developed by Theists. People who believed God set things in motion and then departed it leaving it to its own devices.

History is wrong. There was no age of Enlightenment, and there was certainly no Dark ages.

 

[Markie_Boy]

There are some good audio’s to listen to here on CA, under the “For Catholics” and “For Other Christians” tabs on the home page that deal with these things.

The Church did some not-so good things in the Dark Ages, and to deny it is to not stay in truth. Was a lot of what’s said over exaggerated or skewed - possibly.

We are to stand in truth as best we can - it strengthens out testimony.

Again - I’d recommend the audio here.