First I didn’t say what you’re inferring (I really wish people would stop putting words in my mouth around here). However, if you want to talk about the dark ages … the churches role is a mixed bag. Sure they kept up monasteries; however, they also enforced a very dark theocratic Europe. It wasn’t until rediscovery of early Roman writings (such as the writings of Cicero), which kicked off the renaissance — that Europe finally began to free itself from the grip of the church and once again immerse herself itself in humanism.
I also posted this to enlighten people to the fact that the middle ages (500-1500) was not a period of darkness (there was much learning and culture involved in this period):
The Middle Ages lasted for a thousand years and were filled with bloodshed, slavery, superstition, and ignorance!"
Anyone who has attended a history class, conversed with an “enlightened” secularist, or debated an anti-Catholic is familiar with this sort of remark. The Middle Ages, that period from roughly 500 to 1500, sometimes called the “Dark Ages,” is, in the minds of most people, characterized by dim thinking and dull living—not to mention disease and hypocrisy.
Not so, insists the famed French historian and archivist Régine Pernoud (1909–1999). Pernoud wrote numerous books about the Middle Ages, most notably Joan of Arc: By Herself and Witnesses. In Those Terrible Middle Ages! Debunking the Myths, the author has an axe to grind and isn’t afraid to let the sparks fly when it comes to expressing her frustration with the lack of accurate teaching about the Middle Ages. “The Middle Ages is privileged material,” she writes. “One can say what one wants about it with the quasi-certitude of never being contradicted.”
Originally published in 1977 for a French audience, this book is both a helpful introduction to the real Middle Ages and a pithy commentary on the importance of a sound education in history, something many Americans have never been exposed to.
Pernoud notes Chesterton’s statement “that a man is truly a man only when he has looked at the world while standing on his head with his feet in the air,” an observation that captures Pernoud’s ability to right the record by turning stereotypes and fallacies upside down. Her concern is that what passes for an education in history within public schools is often little more than a string of stereotypes held together by the glue of gullibility.
“The Middle Ages still signifies a period of ignorance, mindlessness, or generalized underdevelopment,” she writes, “even if this was the only period of underdevelopment during which cathedrals were built!” Pernoud laments that the strides made in scholarship in this area have yet to reach the general public, a situation that hasn’t changed much since the 1970s, at least on this side of the Atlantic.
The heart of Pernoud’s argument is that the revival of Roman law and the infatuation with Greek and Roman culture that occurred in much of western Europe during the sixteenth century eclipsed all that existed between the “two periods of light, antiquity and the Renaissance.” The intermediate period—the “middle” age—came to be viewed as “crude” and “obscure,” failing to measure up to the eternal standards of ancient Greece and Rome.
In the realm of art the result was “an anathema on the Middle Ages. All that was not in conformity with Greek or Latin modeling was mercilessly rejected” and even purposefully targeted for destruction. But the great cathedrals were all built during the Middle Ages. The literary forms of the epic and the novel were products of the same era, as well as the bound book (codex), which replaced the use of scrolls.
The Middle Ages produced scholars of incredible learning—Isidore of Seville (unofficial patron saint of the Internet, since the structure of his extensive dictionary, Etymologies, was similar to what is now called a database), Bede the Venerable, Gregory of Tours, and Hildegarde of Bingen. The latter is not, as Pernoud demonstrates, an exception: Many women religious were outstanding scholars and theologians. Another, Petronilla of Chemillé, was an abbess who presided over convents of both women and men—at the ripe age of 22.
Far from being a time when women were “oppressed,” the Middle Ages witnessed a flowering of the feminine element in the Church, society, and home. It was in the seventeenth century that women began to lose privileges and authority, essentially reverting to the status of property under the revived Roman law. Similarly, slavery, which had died out during the Middle Ages, emerged again with the “colonial expansion that characterized the classical period.” As Pernoud takes pains to show, the feudal system was a far cry from slavery—despite modern misconceptions––and was a way of life built upon honor, specific rights, and a deep commitment to the agrarian life.
Pernoud also addresses the two issues most commonly mentioned in ordinary conversation about the Middle Ages: the Crusades and the Inquisition. But the former she touches on too briefly, and she provides only a general overview of the historical context of the latter. One wishes she had spent more time on both subjects, especially since they are so misunderstood and are such significant parts of the erroneous perspective many people have about the Middle Ages.
catholic.com/thisrock/2000/0009revw.asp
