No period of history is more misunderstood
or underappreciated than The Middle Ages, the ten centuries from the fall of the Roman
Empire in the 5th century to the start of the Renaissance in the 15th. This is especially true between the year 1000,
when global warming brought grapes to England and grain to the coasts of Greenland, doubling
the population and reviving town life all across the Europe, and 1348, after the warming
had ended and the Black Death arrived from the east. Let's take a closer look at these years. We'll
make a good start by dispelling some nonsense. 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! More nonsense: the Middle Ages were cheerless.
Quite the reverse! 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 traveling thousands of miles to Rome or to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher they did
it with energy and gusto. What do we owe to the Middle Ages? 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. How about modern science? Thomas's teacher
Albert was a biologist. Why should that surprise us? Medieval man believed that God made the
world as an ordered whole. They learned it both from Scripture and from pagan thinkers such as Aristotle. Science did not burst on the scene with Galileo. Copernicus died in
the sixteenth century, but he was a priest-astronomer at a Polish university founded in the Middle
Ages. He wasn't even the first man to suggest that the earth orbited the sun. Others had
ventured the suggestion. Most prominent was the late medieval Nicholas of Cusa -- a philosopher and a cardinal in the Church. How about architecture? If the Middle Ages
were dark and ignorant, how come ordinary people -- masons, carpenters, painters, sculptors,
glazers -- erected the most beautiful and majestic buildings to grace the earth, the
Gothic cathedrals? Without power tools, with pulleys and winches and scaffolding and their
bare hands, they built up lacework in stone and glass, flooding vast interior spaces with
color and light; we have nothing to match their complexity and beauty. And art? Studying the ancients, Medieval man
produced whole genres of art that the world had never seen. There had never been anything like Dante's Divine Comedy or Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, or the Arthurian legends of Chretien
de Troyes; or the paintings of Giotto, or the astonishingly beautiful and precise work
of the illuminators of manuscripts. What else do we owe to them? Western music
-- they invented our musical notation, and western harmony; not to mention the humble
carols we enjoy at Christmastime. A tradition of local self-government -- witness the chartered towns all over Europe. Free associations of men united for the common good: friars, guildsmen,
members of lay orders devoted to good works; people who established schools, orphanages,
and hospitals. Far from the Dark Ages, which it is popularly
called, The Middle Ages might better be described as the Brilliant Ages, a startling epoch of progress from science to art, from philosophy to medicine. Indeed, in one crucial way, we are less civilized
than those who enhanced human existence over a thousand years ago: we dismiss the achievements
of our ancestors, and fall short of them; they honored their ancestors, and surpassed
them. I'm Anthony Esolen of Providence College for
Prager University.
Quite a good, short video. Indeed the "Dark Ages" are a misnomer. There was a masive cultural and societal collapse because of the Black Plague, but before that things were going well.
The Dark Ages term has fallen out of usage in modern academia. From my understanding, when it is used nowadays, it typically refers to the earlier portion of the medieval period or between ~500 CE and ~1000 CE. The period they talk about isn’t really centered on that era. Directly following the Fall of Rome, Europe had a rough time of it as expected. Infrastructure and seats of power and civility were broken down. The power vacuum resulted in conflict and instability. Powers eventually consolidated, but, in my opinion, I think “Dark Age” is appropriate for the half century directly following the collapse. In the video though, they’re talking primarily until up to the 16th century, which is a different situation entirely. It was, of course, an innovative age. I don’t think the term “Dark Age” comes to a person’s mind when discussing the Renaissance. I also think the video was a bit too Eurocentric. Universities did grow in Europe, but influence from the Eastern and Islamic powers of the time were vastly important. Trade and naval superiority were becoming ever more important, and the world was more interconnected. It’s hard to talk about education especially, without lending some credit to the Islamic Golden age.
I’d advice against using PragurU as a source for information. They are essentially a propaganda organization who put out factually false and even hypocritical videos
They’ve had Will Happer on to discuss climate change even though he’s had his credentials stripped away from him
PragerU = Downvote.
What's next? The daily stormer?