Why were the Middle Ages so...bad?

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FuzzyBunny116

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If the Church was so powerful during those days, and the lay so (theoretically) so devout [and perhaps I just answered my own question] why are they so backwards? Why were times so bad, with so many (I assume) in prayer? Probably a higher percent than are now!
 
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1ke:
What makes you think they were bad?
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The corruption within the Church, the general poverty of the residence and lack of power, and it seems with the advent of the Renaissance, things started getting better as religious fervor seemed to die down.
 
We think it’s bad because we never lived in them–we try to view that time and compare it to our time now. But reading up on it, I realized it wasn’t really “bad”.
 
Other than the Bubonic plague and the pneumonic plague it was not so bad. But then again… they didn’t have baseball. So it could have been bad. 😃
 
The Middle Ages are thought by us to be hopelessly backwards because it’s been pounded into our conscience by school, the media, and centuries of anti-Catholic propaganda. Also it’s extremely easy (and pompous) to pass judgement on those who lived in a different time and place by criteria they couldn’t possibly know.

The cure is to educate yourself in this area. Start with these articles and go from there:

Those Terrible Middle Ages! Debunking the Myths - a book review
catholiceducation.org/articles/history/world/wh0041.html

How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization
catholiceducation.org/articles/history/world/wh0101.html
 
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FuzzyBunny116:
The corruption within the Church, the general poverty of the residence and lack of power, and it seems with the advent of the Renaissance, things started getting better as religious fervor seemed to die down.
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There was plenty of poverty during and after the Renaissance, and plenty of corruption, and plenty of religious fervor. The Middle Ages are condemned by Protestants as a way to attack Catholicism, and by the secular world as a way to attack Christianity. If things were so awful during the Middle Ages, how and why did they build so very many of the most beautiful churches the world has ever seen?

There’s a rather well-known book called “The Thirteenth, Greatest of Centuries” which, as you might guess, presents a different picture of the Middle Ages.
 
There’s a rather well-known book called “The Thirteenth, Greatest of Centuries” which, as you might guess, presents a different picture of the Middle Ages.

Would you know the author or publisher of that book. I would like to read more about the middle ages. Thank you to each of you who posted info.
 
Nana Rose:
There’s a rather well-known book called “The Thirteenth, Greatest of Centuries” which, as you might guess, presents a different picture of the Middle Ages.
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Would you know the author or publisher of that book. I would like to read more about the middle ages. Thank you to each of you who posted info.
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The author is James Walsh, but the book is not new or even recent. It was written about a hundred years ago, give or take. I found a 1950s copy fairly cheap on the internet. You could try amazon.com or bookfinder.com
 
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FuzzyBunny116:
The corruption within the Church, the general poverty of the residence and lack of power, and it seems with the advent of the Renaissance, things started getting better as religious fervor seemed to die down.
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As opposed to now?

Seriously, I think you have a view of history that lacks Catholicity. I suggest reading authors Warren Carroll, Hillaire Belloc, and Regine Pernoud.
 
I would invite you to read a book entitled The Twelfth Century Rennaissance by Geoffrey Barraclough. And I don’t even think the Dark Ages were so bad - take a look at the Book of Kells and the Lindisfarne Gospels or the Armagh chalice or Tara Brooch. Look at the Bayeux Tapestry and listen to the music of the first troubadors. Whether you want to believe it or not, it was Holy Mother Church which kept western civilization going. Let me give you one concrete example. The protestants always talk about how the Church kept the Bible chained and would not let the people read it during the Middle Ages.

First, the clergy and small parts of the nobility were the only ones who could read. Most of the knights (chivalry) could not read much less the serfs. Second, I am a calligrapher. Most of you have no idea how long it would take to write one page of the Bible by hand much less the entire Bible. Third, I would ask you to look at the love and craftsmanship that the scribes and illuminators put into their Bibles. Between the time and the art, Bibles were actual real treasures. Many of their covers were encased in gold and gems…of course they were chained to the ambo! And on top of this you had Viking raiders, the threat of Islam, and the Mongols.

And yet, western civilization thrived…in science, in art, in architecture, in music and we, we my brothers and sisters are the beneficiaries. We have a profound debt to our ancestors in the middle ages. Let’s not let revisionist politcally correct history distort the reality.
 
Regine Pernoud has a recent book called Those Terrible Middle Ages. I haven’t read it but would like to. The title is ironic–she’s pointing out that the Middle Ages were not a horrible period at all.

Yes, there was plenty of suffering. But times remained hard for most people long after the Middle Ages. The 12th century actually marked a far bigger “renaissance” (in terms of rebirth of culture, better standards of living, etc.) than the later movement usually called the “Renaissance.” The later “Renaissance” (14-15th centuries) was a “rebirth” primarily in Italy, which had missed out to a large extent on the earlier one.

In many respects the Renaissance was a more brutal and violent period than the Middle Ages. Punishments were generally harsher, war was more openly justified on the basis of “reasons of state,” governments ruled with less consent by the governed (the great city-state republics of Italy came to be ruled by dictators in the 15-16th centuries, and by the 16th century their German counterparts were in decline by comparison with the rising power of the “princes”).

And let’s not even start talking about the horrors of the 17th century.

The earlier Middle Ages were indeed a time of “backwardness” in the sense that there was less education and urban living–and even a marked decline in population–compared to the era of the Roman Empire. The takeover of Western Europe by Germanic tribes left the Church as the only bearer of classical culture and education. It was centuries before the population rebounded (climate change had something to do with this) and urban civilization became important once again.

If you want to attack the Church’s role, it would be best done by reversing the cause-effect relationship. In other words, instead of arguing that the Church caused “backwardness” or secularization caused progress, you could argue that Christianity became dominant in the Empire precisely because society had become in many ways less rational and sophisticated by the 3rd-4th centuries; and that Christianity declined in the modern era (to some extent in the Renaissance, but quite a limited extent) because there was greater material prosperity and sophistication.

But you would still have to deal with the close link between Christianity and both medieval and Renaissance culture–the role of the Church in the rise of the university system, the cathedrals, etc. Richard Dawkins’s remark that the great artists treated religious subjects because that’s where the money is won’t cut it–it’s superficial and reductionist. There was something in Christianity that inspired Gothic architecture. To me that’s a good reason to believe in Christianity right there (not a sufficient reason, I hasten to add–but it has due weight along with many others).

Edwin
 
I want to clarify something. Is it true that the Church taught that bathing was bad during the Middle Ages?
 
I would like to address this from the other vantage point.
There is still a poverty problem in the world. In Africa, China, Russia and even in the U.S. were we are way more advanced than they were back even 70 years ago (when some people were still useing horse and carage). So the Poverty problem hasn’t gone away nor did it start with the Catholic Church of the Middle Ages. The Romans and the Barbarians the sucseeded them had a sizable impoversed population. Poverty is something that has been a carrydown through the centuries.

I have finished reading How the Catholic Church Built Weastern Civilization and I found it very illuminating to a subject I have not much knowladge of. The “Dark Ages” wern’t all that dark. With great Mathameticans and Ecomist, and Scientits as well as lawyers (the goodness of which can be debated at a later thread). The Dark ages wern’t as dark as one might presuppose.
 
With glee, I share with you an excerpt from Orthodoxy, by Gilbert Keith Chesterton.

I take in order the next instance offered: the idea that Christianity
belongs to the Dark Ages. Here I did not satisfy myself with reading
modern generalisations; I read a little history. And in history
I found that Christianity, so far from belonging to the Dark Ages,
was the one path across the Dark Ages that was not dark.
It was a shining bridge connecting two shining civilizations.
If any one says that the faith arose in ignorance and savagery
the answer is simple: it didn’t. It arose in the Mediterranean
civilization in the full summer of the Roman Empire. The world was
swarming with sceptics, and pantheism was as plain as the sun,
when Constantine nailed the cross to the mast. It is perfectly true
that afterwards the ship sank; but it is far more extraordinary
that the ship came up again: repainted and glittering, with the cross
still at the top. This is the amazing thing the religion did:
it turned a sunken ship into a submarine. The ark lived
under the load of waters; after being buried under the debris of
dynasties and clans, we arose and remembered Rome. If our faith
had been a mere fad of the fading empire, fad would have followed fad
in the twilight, and if the civilization ever re-emerged (and many such
have never re-emerged) it would have been under some new barbaric flag.
But the Christian Church was the last life of the old society and was also
the first life of the new. She took the people who were forgetting
how to make an arch and she taught them to invent the Gothic arch.
In a word, the most absurd thing that could be said of the Church
is the thing we have all heard said of it. How can we say that
the Church wishes to bring us back into the Dark Ages?
The Church was the only thing that ever brought us out of them.

Chapter IX, Authority and the Adventurer
 
Many folks like the society of the Middle Ages because of the idea of a society based on birth and bloodlines. The idea that the great great grandson of a warrior chief who seized some territory is of “better birth” than the great great grandson of a tenant farmer remains attractive. Monopoly of money and property based on family membership must be great if you are in the right family. Guess it’s easier to pick the right parents than actually have to compete against the “lesser” folks in the market place. Ideas of noble blood die hard. Here in the US, we have no royalty. My white trash and Irish ancestors moved here to get away from the political monopoly of the royal families. I’m glad they did.

The Middle Ages are dead. Royalty is dying. Good.
 
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kryogenix:
I want to clarify something. Is it true that the Church taught that bathing was bad during the Middle Ages?
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That was only the French Catholics. 😉
 
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NPS:
That was only the French Catholics. 😉
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:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

Thanks though, folks. I’m asking for “How the Catholic Church Built Western Civlization,” and I might do the same for “Those Terrible Middle Ages!” Only problem is, I imagine folks won’t believe me in the Church’s positive impact on the world:o .
 
FuzzyBunny116 said:
:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

Thanks though, folks. I’m asking for “How the Catholic Church Built Western Civlization,” and I might do the same for “Those Terrible Middle Ages!” Only problem is, I imagine folks won’t believe me in the Church’s positive impact on the world:o .
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“You can lead a horse to water…”

All you can do is give them the information. Provide or point them to these articles I provided and, if possible, the entire books. If someone is determined to wallow in their own ignorance, however, there’s not a whole lot you can do. :cool:
 
Fidelis said:
“You can lead a horse to water…”

All you can do is give them the information. Provide or point them to these articles I provided and, if possible, the entire books. If someone is determined to wallow in their own ignorance, however, there’s not a whole lot you can do. :cool:
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So true. I’ve decided that I have to face facts. You can read all you want, learn all you want and then tell people the truth all you want.You can make your case as cogently and nicely as possible. You can point out facts. You can link good articles.
…and 99% of anti-Catholics will not budge one single inch. Or if they do budge, they conveniently forget that budging sooner rather than later.
My theory, though, is that some of the people reading a thread but not participating will be moved to look deeper. (At least that’s what I tell myself to keep my spirits up. 😉 )
 
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