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Thiudareiks Flavius · 06-25-2004, 11:18 PM

The discussion Robert and I are having in the "Inventions" thread has gone way past that topic, so I thought a new thread was in order. 
 
Robert wrote: 
 
Quote: 
 
Quote:<hr>Information and ideas, via books and institutions of learning, and their free exchange, were a key aspect of medieval culture. 
 
I don't have a clue what you are talking about.<hr> 
 
I'm talking about the fact that learning, particularly ancient learning, was revered in the Middle Ages. This is part of the reason why the clergy had such status. This is why books were often rubricated, illuminated, bound in gold and jewels and turned into treasures. This is why even the plainest books were precious items. This is why men travelled for months to far-off lands and laboured for years to translate hitherto lost works of ancient knowledge. This is why the study, copying and translation of books was considered amongst the holiest labours a monk could perform. This is why this period saw the origins of the university. This is why literacy levels rose steadily, literature increased in quantity, quality and variety and a mass market arose for books. This is why a medieval Catholic in a medieval Catholic country invented the printing press. 
 
Quote:<hr>This is not about calling the Medieval period a dark age or critisicing the Church.<hr> 
 
No, but most of the misconceptions about medieval learning in particular and the Middle Ages in general are the result of several recent centuries of precisely those prejudices. It's only in the last 150 years or so that we have come to understand the Middle Ages better. 
 
Quote:<hr>The medieval period stretches from about 500 to about 1500 (scholars like to disagree) ...<hr> 
 
Indeed, which is why those dates are as good as any and the ones I use. More hard and fast dates have been suggested - 476-1492 for example - but no-one woke up on Jan 1, 1500 (or 1492) and said to his wife "Wake up honey - it's the Renaissance!" Actual history is a continuum and periodisation is merely a convenient way of dealing with it. That said, the printing press still remains a medieval invention both according to the convenient conventional dates and according to the traditions of learning and book production in the Middle Ages. 
 
Quote:<hr>but for the first centuries, maybe even the first millenium, medieval culture was not quite about free exchange of ideas, books and learning.<hr> 
 
I said they were "a key aspect" not "the key aspect" of the period. But even in that early period knowledge, learning and ideas were revered, which is one of the reasons (literate) churchmen came to hold such high status in that time. Of course, people in that period had a lot of other things to worry about other than producing books or speculating about mathematics - such as social, political and economic fragmentation and the next wave of Avar or Viking attacks. Despite this, some still produced books and speculated about mathematics and were revered for doing so. 
 
Quote:<hr>Maybe the latter centuries of the Medieval period looked more like that ...<hr> 
 
No, they didn't "look" like that, they were like that; just as much as the earlier period. It's just that (i) more survives from the later Middle Ages and (ii) more was produced as a result of the foundations laid by earlier scholars and as a result of greater economic power and political stability. 
 
Quote:<hr> ... but most of the medieval period, regional strife, dynastic conflict, war and weapons were the key aspects of medieval culture.<hr> 
 
They were a key aspect of medieval culture, certainly. Ditto for late Roman culture. And "Renaissance" culture. And Early Modern Culture. Or just about any period of history you care to mention. 
 
Quote:<hr>I ask people to give me examples of technology that was "stifled" by the Church. 
 
Oh, that's easy - how about medicine? The Church outlawed the study of the human body, and the excellent levels of medic knowledge as we find it in Roman times is completely lost for centuries because of the Church.<hr> 
 
The Church simply continued the Roman legal prohibition against human dissection, which was in turn an expression of the Graeco-Roman taboos regarding the treatment of dead bodies. These taboos meant that human dissection was not practiced before the Third Century BC. It seems to have been the direct royal patronage of the Ptolemies in Alexandria which first allowed ancient physicians to put scientific inquiry over tradition and dissect human cadavers, resulting in the work of Herophilius of Chalcedon and Erasistratus of Ceos. 
 
This window closed fairly soon, and Roman law forbade human dissection. Galen, in the Third Century AD, defied this law, but most of his dissection was done on dogs and pigs, resulting in some profound misconceptions about human anatomy in his work which were passed on for centuries (including the medieval centuries, where his work was revered, not "lost"). 
 
But neither Roman law nor the medieval Church "outlawed the study of the human body", and medieval physicians, like Galen before them, dissected animals and made observations about human anatomy through their surgical work. Human dissection was revived in the Middle Ages, at the Italian universities and particularly at Bologna, in the Thirteenth Century, when post-mortem examinations of murder victims and executed criminals allowed medieval anatomists full access to this technique once more. The advances in human anatomical study we see in later centuries were built on these medieval foundations, which were in turn inspired by Galen. 
 
Quote:<hr>Tim, this is not about windmills or that sort of technology, but about the freedom to study and publish ideas freely. Please don't tell me you think that the medieval church did not stifle that. They did it until quite recently.<hr> 
 
I can't see why this has to be some kind of black and white, all-or-nothing dichotomy. I'm not saying the Medieval Church imposed no restrictions on any ideas that all - that would be absurd. Like powerful institutions before it and after it, the Church tried to control ideas that were contrary to its orthodoxy. But this does not mean that the cliches about the Church "stifling" all knowledge, new ideas, old ideas or innovations is correct either. 
 
Since knowledge of the material world was considered to have come from God, its study and examination was revered, not suppressed. And since the equally revered "ancient authorities" had made it their business to engage in this study, so their medieval admirers (mainly churchmen) sought out their works wherever they could find them and spread and added to their information. 
 
In fact, if anything "stifled" medieval knowledge, it was the high degree of reverence for these ancient works. If "the ancients" said the equatorial region was so hot as to be completely impassable, then there were medieval scholars who would argue this till they were blue in the face, despite other medieval scholars who argued that medieval explorers and missionaries had passed the equator and that "the ancients" were plain wrong. If Aristotle said geese were born from goose barnacles in the northern oceans, then this was taken as gospel (so to speak), though it was the medieval Emperor Frederick II who proved the philosopher wrong through his observations of both geese (he was a keen hawker and wrote a treatise on the subject) and goose barnacles. 
 
If there was an intellectual aspect to "the Renaissance" it lay not in any "revival of ancient learning" - that happened in the Twelfth Century as a result of medieval churchmens' efforts - but rather as a result of a slow, late medieval recovery from this intellectual inferiority complex. Anselm had said medieval scholars were to ancient scholars like dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants. Renaissance humanists, like their medieval forerunners, realised that they were every bit as capable as "the ancients" if not more so. 
 
So the fact that the Church sought to control some ideas which conflicted with its dogmas does not mean the old cliches about the Middle Ages as a period of intellectual stagnation are somehow valid. Intellectual inquiry continued and slowly quickened in pace in the Middle Ages, partly out of reverence for "the ancients" and partly - as Edward Grant summarises in his excellent [url=http://www.cambridge.org/aus/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521003377" target="top]God and Reason in the Middle Ages[/url] - due to an enshrinement of reason as the central principle in medieval intellectual life. 
 
This does not mean that reason was entirely unfettered in this as in any other period (remember what happened to Socrates), but it does mean that the old black-and-white cliches about the "stifling" of intellectual inquiry by the Church gets it badly wrong. I recommend Grant's book highly: it goes a long way towards making all this very clear. 
 
Quote:<hr>No, I'm not blackening the Church and churchmen, they did great things, but I think your concept of the Medieval period is somewhat based on unfounded ideas.<hr> 
 
They are very well founded, but not as well known as the old cliches. Comprehensive study of the Middle Ages was neglected until relatively recently, and it takes a while for its findings to filter into popular consciousness. Particularly since the prejudices on which the cliches were founded survive to this day. 
 
A couple of years ago an atheist writer who had produced a long e-book "proving" that medieval people believed the earth was flat came to a medieval history discussion group I contribute to asking us to critique his work. He was motivated by what he saw as "Christian revisionism" on the subject and wanted to prove medieval ignorance and Church "stifling" of ideas once and for all. The problem was that he had little understanding of the material he was using and his thesis was based on false information and chronic misinterpretations of the evidence. 
 
We discussed this with him at length for several weeks, and I think the fact that most of us were atheists ourselves (myself included) helped him to give us a fair hearing. In the end - in one of the few confirmed sightings of intellectual honesty on the internet - he agreed that he had got the whole thing backwards and rewrote the whole work to make it clear that medieval people were quite aware that the world was round and that his original version had been based on ignorance and prejudice. 
 
What was interesting was the reaction of other, anti-Church, atheists to his revision - they berated him for caving into "Church apologists" - despite the fact that most of us were atheists too and that they could not refute a word he (or we) had written. There's a lesson in there somewhere about rigid orthodoxy in the face of the evidence ... 
 
Quote:<hr>Why did we only get access to Greek and Roman ideas and inventions through the Muslim world, who did keep and use this knowledge whereas it was gone, yes stifled! in the west?<hr> 
 
No, not "stifled" - lost. There's a big difference. In a period of mass communication, general literacy and mass production of books, it's hard for us to imagine how so much of the knowledge of the ancient world could simply be lost in the chaos of the Late Empire and its collapse. But in a world where literacy was more rare (and declining), where books were fragile, precious and scarse due to being hand-produced artefacts and where educational institutions were less robust and widespread, this could (and did) happen very easily. 
 
And how did those books (I'm not sure which "inventions" you are referring to) reappear in the West? It was by the prodigious efforts of medieval churchmen who, through their culture's reverence for learning in general and ancient learning in particular, journeyed for months to Sicily and Spain to find copies, worked for years to learn Arabic and Hebrew to translate them and then brought them back to Europe to be copied, read, discussed (in the new universities) and expanded on. All of this was done with the active encouragement and support of the Church, by churchmen. "Stifled"? 
 
Quote:<hr>Of course Johannes Gutenberg (we like to think that Lourens Jansz. Koster was the first in 1446, Jan Brito van Doornik shortly after him, and only in 1450 Gutenberg surpassed them) was a Catholic, how else would this have been possible? 
But think about this - Gutenberg's Bible was in Latin. Why? Because the Church officially did not allow mass translations for laymen to use.<hr> 
 
Another erroneous cliche I'm afraid. Vernacular translations were not just allowed, they were encouraged - particularly in the periods where a territory was being converted. Gothic, Old Slavonic, Old English, Provencal and many other languages were used to make these translations, along with extracts from Biblical books (since a copy of the whole thing was expensive) and gospel harmonies in the vernacular were widespread. 
 
Quote:<hr>In the 1380s, John Wycliffe produced dozens of English language manuscript copies of the scriptures. They were translated out of the Latin Vulgate, which was the only source text available to Wycliffe. The Pope was so infuriated by his teachings and his translation of the Bible into English, that 44 years after Wycliffe had died, he ordered the bones to be dug-up, crushed, and scattered in the river!<hr> 
 
The problem with Wycliffe's translation was not that it was a vernacular translation of the Bible - they had existed throughout the medieval period - but (i) it was a very poor translation and (ii) Wycliffe's followers added a preface which the Church considered heretical. The same Council of Oxford that condemned this translation on these grounds specifically upheld the idea that vernacular translations were a useful and acceptable tool. 
 
So, it was Wycliffe and the Lollards' ideas that were the problem, as you say yourself, not the idea of translating the Bible into the vernacular - that was commonplace. The only reason most medieval Bibles were in Latin is that this was the universal language of scholars and therefore the one language they had in common. In situations where this was not the case, the Church used vernacular translations. 
 
Quote:<hr>One of WycliffeÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢s followers, John Hus, actively promoted WycliffeÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢s ideas: that people should be permitted to read the Bible in their own language, and they should oppose the tyranny of the Roman church that threatened anyone possessing a non-Latin Bible with execution. Hus was burned at the stake in 1415, with WycliffeÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢s manuscript Bibles used as kindling for the fire.<hr> 
 
It's funny that the Council of Oxford upheld the use of vernacular Bibles just seven years earlier then. And that they are common throughout the medieval period. Could it be that it was not the possession of "non-Latin Bibles" that was the issue, but the possession of vernacular Bibles produced by sects that the Church considered heretical, like the Hussites? 
 
Quote:<hr>In 1525 and 1526, William Tyndale completed an English translation of the 1519 and 1522 editions of the Erasmus Greek New Testament. It is thought that some 6000 copies were made of Tyndale's Bible but were destroyed because of official opposition to it. .... The church declared it contained thousands of errors as they torched hundreds of New Testaments confiscated by the clergy, while in fact, they burned them because they could find no errors at all.<hr> 
 
Really? One highly qualified scholar made a detailed critique of it and found plenty. Sir Thomas More, the renowed Humanist and linguist, declared that searching for errors in Tyndale's Bible was like searching for water in the sea. Protestant scholars also found both Wycliffe and Tyndale's Bible wanting in scholarship, which is why both were rejected by the Church of England and the King James Bible was commissioned instead. 
 
The idea that the medieval Church condemned vernacular Bibles per se is another hoary old myth - one fuelled by Protestant prejudice and misinformation. 
 
Quote:<hr>The printing press was indeed invented when it was because of a demand of printed texts.<hr> 
 
Indeed. A medieval demand which was a reflection of a medieval reverence for knowledge and a driving need for quicker ways to produce more books, coupled with a medieval tendancy towards the mechanisation of all kinds of things - time-keeping, milling, fulling, forging, hammering, pumping and making books. 
 
Quote:<hr>But to the Church, and many worldly leaders as well, this was quite unwanted. Rebel ideas were spread as well throught he printing press - a bit like modern email and the internet bring 'unwanted' ideas to the people of oppressed countires.<hr> 
 
This has nothing to do with the supposed medieval "stifling" of ideas, reason, information or innovation per se. 
 
Quote:<hr>So please don't sell me that 'progressive medieval Church' stuff, for it is not correct.<hr> 
 
So far I've countered every single instance you've put up with evidence and contrary information. I am not arguing for a "progressive medieval Church", but your "stifling medieval Church" is no more real. The truth lies somewhere in the Middle, but well away from the old cliches about medieval stagnation and repression. 
 
Quote:<hr>Universities were no lighting source of free learning either, because, like all the rest of society, the of course fell under the sway of King and Church.<hr> 
 
Few things could be further from the truth. Things changed later, but if there was a medieval institution which was fiercely - even ferociously - independent and resistant to external intervention it was the medieval university. They fought pitched battles in the streets of Oxford and Paris to uphold that independence, held several kings to ransom by threatening to leave their kingdom and were granted charters which enshrined their immunity from outside interference in law by both kings and popes, however reluctantly. 
 
Quote:<hr>So printing presses are a "Renaissance" artefact because it represents a "Renaissance" idea (dissemination of information) which is not a "Medieval" idea? 
 
Nope, but this is not what I was talking about at all. No, Tim, I was talking about the accepted fact that periods are fluid, and that according to the agreed limits, such periods start earlier in one area, and later in others. No mystery there.<hr> 
 
Quite a mystery I'd say. As I said above, periodisation is an artificial construct that we impose on the continuum of history for reasons of convenience. Neat, round numbers like "500-1500" may be arbitary, but they avoid subjective line calls like "well, the printing press is a 'Renaissance-like' idea, so when it appears we can say 'the Renaissance' had begun in that area, but not others". As I've said, the impetus which drove the inventors of the printing press was a combination of the medieval reverence for learning, rising literacy levels in the later Middle Ages, market forces and a medieval tradition of mechanising processes. To categorise it 'a Renaisance idea and therefore Renaissance' is not just arbitary, but borders on completely circular logic. 
 
Quote:<hr>Fyi, the Renaissance is a period which is defined by development in the arts, not scholarship, book producing or such. It was about new thought amongst painters, sculptors and musicians, and it started in Italy. If you don't believe me, I suggest you look it up in an encyclopedia.<hr> 
 
No need - I couldn't agree with you more. When I refer to the Renaissance, I'm referring not to a period (I prefer "Early Modern Period""), but to a movement in late medieval and Early Modern art and architecture. It was a result of that Humanist recovery from the medieval over-reverence of "the ancients" and a recognition that these artists were every bit as accomplished as their ancient forebears. 
 
But, if "the Renaissance" isn't defined by "book producing and such", doesn't this undermine your whole position? 
 
This is the second time I've had this discussion this week. I think it's time I got around to starting on a website project about reason, invention and ideas in the Middle Ages, since there seems to be a need to get this information out there in a more readily accessible medium. 
Cheers, Tim O'Neill / Thiudareiks Flavius 
 
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Help create the film of Publius Quinctilius Varus' lost legions. 
 
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Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus · 06-28-2004, 06:39 PM

A question I have always been wanting to ask. I know about the 3 previous time classification Ancient, Middle Ages, Modern. When you talk about mideval ages is an era inside the middle ages or another way to call the Middle Ages. THERE IS NO VICTORY WITHOUT DEFEAT, AND THERE IS NO DEFEAT WITHOUT VICTORY

Thiudareiks Flavius · 06-29-2004, 01:35 AM

GPM asked: 
 
Quote:<hr>When you talk about mideval ages is an era inside the middle ages or another way to call the Middle Ages.<hr> 
 
They are two terms for the same period and they mean exactly the same thing. "Medieval" is from the Latin 'medium aevum' which means 'Middle Ages' (ie between the Ancient and Modern worlds). 'Middle Ages' is simply a translation of the same word. 
 
As for when the term refers to, that varies, but 500-1500 AD are widely accepted as the demarcation dates. 
Cheers, Tim O'Neill / Thiudareiks Flavius 
 
Visit 'Clades Variana' - Home of the Varus Film Project 
 
Help create the film of Publius Quinctilius Varus' lost legions. 
 
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Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus · 06-29-2004, 03:08 AM

THANKS THATS WHAT I ALWAYS THOUGHT AND JUST WASN'T SURE.

**Robert Vermaat** · 06-29-2004, 10:04 AM

Tim, 
 
Mh. Your repose certainly has some good points, but with some I canÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢t agree. 
 
One of my problems with your point of view is that you see the whole of the Middle Ages from one point of view only. When you say that learning and discoveries were important IÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢m sure thatÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢s true, but you know as well as I do that for a long time, so-called ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã‹Å“paganÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢ classical writers were not revered but ignored. If all classical learning had been so revered, many many more classical authors would not have been ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã‹Å“lostÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢ (as you like to call it). You may defend the church concerning their ban on dissection as a continuation of Roman practise, but they banned it nonetheless. Even in 1300, during your period where all learning was supposedly so revered with the churchmen at the front of searching more knowledge, Pope Boniface VIII issued a bull (De Sepulturis, 1300, forbidding all dissection (including on animals), with the added bonus of excommunication for those engaging in it. So much for gaining knowledge! Like I said, stifled. 
 
Your description of the rise of learning rings more true of the last 500 years than of the Middle Ages than of the first 500. You have a big problem with people called the Middle Ages an age of backwardism, and of course that view is wrong. But in trying to sing the praises of the Middle Ages, you ignore that the start of this period was not quite so uplifting, and to me you ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã‹Å“stealÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢ some of the new ideas of the following period to embellish ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã‹Å“yourÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢ Middle Ages. But thatÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢s my view. 
 
Also, you place the men of the catholic church on a very high footing. Too high IÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢d say, for the reason why all these ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã‹Å“knowledge-gatherersÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢ of yours were catholic is not so much due to the high standing of knowledge in the catholic church, but more to the hold the church had on society. Where you say ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã‹Å“of course they were catholicÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢, I say that too: ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã‹Å“of course they were catholicÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢, for a non-catholic would not have been allowed to get away with it. You are in agreement, as your treatment of Wycliffe proves ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å“ apparently you say their ideas were the main obstacle to the church. However, this had not only to do with their ideas, but about making the whole Bible accessible to common folk ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å“ it was normal to read from the Latin Bible in churches, which was of course not understandable to the believers. 
 
A note about Bible translations, IÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢m afraid you are a bit too optimistic about which translations existed and were allowed. The first translation (into Latin) was commissioned to Jerome (4th c.) and his Vulgate version became the official version for a 1000 years. Of course there were Bible translations into English and other languages, but these were a) never a complete translation (only parts) and b) they never were officially sanctioned. It was not common to translate the Bible into vernacular. If the Council of Oxford upheld the translation of Bibles into vernacular, why did not one Bible in vernacular exist? I think you mistake their ruling, which i think was about translating parts of the Bible into vernacular, not the complete text. 
Translations into languages such as into Gothic I donÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢t count ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å“ these date from before there was a catholic church with anything like a power to sanction such translations. 
 
You seek to discount the Wycliffe Bible translation as banned because of errors, which I think is unfair. Of course there were errors, but some of the critics you quote lived much later. And I think it logical for Sir Thomas Moore to find fault with Wycliffe's bible, he was not exactly a critic of the catholic church, was he? At the time, there was nothing to compare it to. Not a fair comparison. It is clear the translations of Wycliffe and Tyndale offended the church because the broke the monopoly. 
 
On periods, I donÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢t see your objections. Who is talking about 500-1500 as a strict rule? Certainly not me. Of course periods are artificial, is that not obvious? But they are just a scientific method, not a goal. Frankly I can understand why you get so worked up about it ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å“ itÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢s a common way of defining periods, just donÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢t blame the wrong use of periods in schoolbooks and popular thought on the scientific method. 
Who said the Renaissance started when the printing press appeared? It did not. No, I donÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢t classify the press as Renaissance, and therefore the start of the period. That would indeed be silly. Like the rest of periodisations, some say this and this say that. The Renaissance starts when in an area the ideas are spreading which are generally considered to be typical for that period. You could of course debate if thatÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢s right. For me, I find the use of the printing press more fitting in a period where the free distribution of ideas is allowed. But I can see why you think the invention of the printing press would belong more to the medieval period. 
 
Start a website about the Medieval period? Please do! But can I ask you to get all the details? 
 
Valete, 
Valerius/Robert Edited by: <A HREF=http://p200.ezboard.com/bromanarmytalk.showUserPublicProfile?gid=vortigernstudies>Vortigern Studies</A> at: 7/1/04 6:06 am

06-30-2004, 05:31 AM

An absolutely fascinating and informative opening post, Tim. Plus some equally interesting comments by Vortigern. 
 
I've only had a chance to browse swiftly through the thread, but I hope to study it in more depth later. So much for me to learn!

Crispvs · 07-01-2004, 03:45 AM

Small point Robert. 
Thomas More lived in the first half of the 16th century not the first half of the 19th century and as chief minister to Henry VIII he would certainly have been in a position to know about Tyndale's translation. 
 
Crispvs

**Robert Vermaat** · 07-01-2004, 04:01 AM

Oops, goofed up there..

Thiudareiks Flavius · 07-01-2004, 12:10 PM

Robert wrote: 
 
Quote:<hr>Your repose certainly has some good points, but with some I canÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢t agree. 
 
One of my problems with your point of view is that you see the whole of the Middle Ages from one point of view only.<hr> 
 
I do? I've studied this period in great detail for the last 25 years and in that time I am almost constantly reminding people that it encompasses 1000 years and many things which are true of the earliest medieval period are not true of the later end. On the other hand, I also constantly remind people that the differences between the medieval world and the periods that precede it and follow it should not be emphasised to the exclusion of the continuities. A truer perspective lies between these two extremes. 
 
I have already acknowledged, as I always have and will always continue to do, that the early medieval period did see a breakdown in many late Roman institutions, with a corresponding loss of a great many things which had gone before. 
 
There is no denying this. But to point to certain aspects of the earlier medieval period and holding them as evidence of the deficiency of the period overall makes no more sense than pointing to aspects of the later period and pretending them to be indicative of the whole. You seem to think I am doing the latter, BTW, and I think you are misunderstanding much of what I am saying as a result. 
 
Quote:<hr>When you say that learning and discoveries were important IÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢m sure thatÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢s true, but you know as well as I do that for a long time, so-called ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã‹Å“paganÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢ classical writers were not revered but ignored.<hr> 
 
I "know" this? Sorry, but I donÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢t. There was a debate in the early, pre-medieval Church regarding the value of "pagan" knowledge, with some early Patristic writers rejecting all such Classical learning, while others argued for its preservation. The argument was won, as far as the Western intellectual tradition was concerned anyway, around the beginning of the medieval period - through the persuasive and often repeated argument of Augustine. He compared the learning of the Classical world to the "treasures of the Egyptians" - the gold carried off from Egypt by the Israelites. Just as that gold's pagan origins made it no less precious or beautiful, so the pre-Redemption origins of Classical art and wisdom made it no less worthy or wise. 
 
It was Augustine's position on this matter that was upheld in the West: 
 
Such studies are the way to the highest things, the way of reason which chooses for itself ordered steps lest it fall from the height. The steps are the various liberal arts. 
(De Ordine, I, 8, 24.) 
 
The liberal arts he refers to were the ancient disciplinarum libri novem laid out by Varro in the First Century BC - the liberal arts that were the form the basis of the curriculum espoused by Cassiodorus and Boethius and thus formed the basis of all medieval study and, eventually, the basis of the medieval university. 
 
Please excuse the lengthy explanation that follows, but it wasnÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢t simply the physical loss of books which lead to the loss of knowledge in the early period; it was also the circumstances by which ecclesiastical institutions came to fill the void left behind. In the period that episcopal structures and monasticism were developing in the West, the traditions and institutions of Roman intellectual life were in decline, but were still more or less intact. Late Roman bishopsÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢ households were not meant to be centres of secular learning, though since bishops were often well-educated aristocrats and their household clergy often had a secular as well as religious education, they often maintained non-religious intellectual traditions as well as those more pertinent to the office of a bishop. Likewise, late Roman monastic communities in the Benedictine tradition had no requirement to preserve and study secular or pagan works, but many monks chose to anyway. 
 
With the slow collapse of the Western Empire, many of the elements which sustained secular knowledge declined, decayed and eventually (in most places) collapsed almost completely. With this came the collapse of administrative traditions, a decline in literacy amongst the laity, a loss or scattering of many works of secular literature and an almost total loss of certain skills (eg fluency in Greek) which supported links to the pastÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢s intellectual heritage. The one area in which literacy, the institutions and traditions which supported it and the artifacts that sustained it survived in any robust way was the Church. The Church, therefore, slowly came to fill the void that other, older and largely secular institutions and traditions had once held ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å“ administration, education, historical record and analysis, mathematics, science etc. 
 
But the aftermath of these collapses and this slow transition did not always leave this sole, substantial, surviving intellectual heir equipped to fulfill this role in the same way these earlier institutions had ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å“ at least, not at first anyway. The loss of books, to begin with, was hard to overcome in a period where there had never been terribly many copies of a single work in the first place. Monasteries and other Church institutions did have secular books ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å“ some more than others ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å“ but their collections, and the traditions which sustained them, were largely focused on religious matters, for obvious reasons. Add to this the disruptions, economic decline, population downturns and disruptions to travel and trade which marked the Fifth to Seventh Centuries, and it becomes equally hard for those who sought to sustain or revive knowledge to do so, regardless of whether it was secular or religious. 
 
It also took some time for scholars in this earlier period to even realize what was happening. We have scholars lamenting the decline of learning and ancient knowledge in their own areas and their own generation, but there is no indication that this was recognized as a widespread issue or an ongoing problem. It took centuries before this became clear, and by then the problem was worse still. As late as the end of the Eleventh Century, Gerard or Cremona simply thought that if he went to Paris he would find the copy of PtolemyÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢s Almagest that he was seeking. It was only when he found no copy there, or anywhere else in the West, that he traveled to Toledo and began his work of translation of Arabic and Hebrew versions of this and other ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã‹Å“lostÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢ works. 
 
Sorry to be long-winded about this, but people often ask me how so many works could simply have been ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã‹Å“lostÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢ and why it was secular works that often suffered this fate (it wasnÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢t actually ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å“ many religious works were lost through similar processes). Their assumption is that there must have been some Church antipathy to these works and find what I am saying about medieval reverence for ancient works hard to reconcile with this decline in learning and books. If we look at the process by which ancient institutions of learning and government declined and collapsed, how the Church slowly came to fill some of these voids (often in new ways) and why many books and much knowledge could be lost in the process, the two ideas are easier to reconcile without having to invoke any (mythical and unsubstantiated) deliberate Church ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã‹Å“stiflingÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢ of ancient learning. 
 
Quote:<hr>If all classical learning had been so revered, many many more classical authors would not have been ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã‹Å“lostÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢ (as you like to call it).<hr> 
 
See above. In Cassiodorus' time, for example, most of them were not yet lost. He, and other churchmen of the earliest years of the medieval period were still part of the unbroken traditions of Classical learning, because the institutions that maintained those traditions were still, though declining, intact. In the century that followed his death, however, Italy was wracked with wars and invasions, as were Gaul, Spain, Britain and rest of the West. These traditions broke down, communication became more precarious, travel more dangerous and the ongoing economic and population decline in the West accelerated. 
 
This was what fragmented the already weakened traditions of Classical learning, not this mythical antipathy of the wicked Church to ancient learning. But in the period that followed the worst upheavals of the late Roman and early medieval periods, the fragments and pockets of this learning that survived were eagerly seized upon and shared and what had survived was preserved. Keep in mind that most of our earliest manuscripts of these Classical works are medieval manuscripts - most of them early medieval manuscripts - produced by churchmen. 
 
One such pocket of survival was Ireland, where some of this ancient learning was preserved while it was destroyed by the upheavals in the rest of Europe. Scholarship in Greek had already been declining in the late Roman world and all but vanished in the West in the collapse of the Empire, but it was preserved in Ireland. There is one Seventh Century account of a group of Irish monks who traveled to Jerusalem, stopping in Egypt to examine the pyramids (and measure them). This account refers, almost in passing, to no less than 30 Classical authors whose works had been preserved in Ireland, but were lost or obscure in the rest of Europe. 
 
This is why Charlemagne recruited Irish monks and their English pupils (like Alcuin) as part of his orchestrated campaign to try to reverse the loss of knowledge which scholars (all churchmen) of his time lamented. His campaign, like those of Alfred and the Ottonians, was motivated partly by the fact that he needed administrators and that the Frankish Church itself was in bad shape educationally. But it was also inspired by a recognition that ancient knowledge was being lost and needed to be preserved, recovered and sustained. The same impulses towards reversing this loss of knowledge drove those who later traveled to Spain to bring back knowledge which survived in Arabic and Hebrew there. 
 
So there was no Church-driven early medieval antipathy to ancient learning - but there was a Church-driven effort, over several centuries, to recover what had been lost in the chaos of the late Roman and early medieval upheavals. 
 
Quote:<hr>You may defend the church concerning their ban on dissection as a continuation of Roman practise, but they banned it nonetheless. Even in 1300, during your period where all learning was supposedly so revered with the churchmen at the front of searching more knowledge, Pope Boniface VIII issued a bull (De Sepulturis, 1300, forbidding all dissection (including on animals), with the added bonus of excommunication for those engaging in it. So much for gaining knowledge! Like I said, stifled.<hr> 
 
This is a bit like the "medieval people believed the earth was flat myth" - regularly repeated but actually wrong. Pick up just about any general history of anatomy and you'll find this myth repeated as though it's a fact. What those who repeat it clearly haven't done is actually read Boniface's Papal Bull. 
 
Does it forbid human dissection? No. 
Does it forbid animal dissection? No. 
Does it even discuss dissection at all? No. 
 
Like all titles of Papal Bulls, "De Sepulturis" are the opening words of the bull's title, which reads in full: 'Persons cutting up the bodies of the dead, barbarously cooking them in order that the bones, being separated from the flesh, may be carried for burial into their own countries are by the very fact excommunicated.' 
 
It has absolutely nothing to do with dissection - it refers to the practice from the Crusades where nobles who had died overseas often had the flesh boiled from their bones to be carried home for burial there. It was this practice that Boniface was condemning, arguing that so long as their bodies were buried in consecrated ground overseas, this was a suitable resting place for any Christian. 
 
Just because something is repeated, doesn't make it true. I've found from long experience that it's best to check these often repeated assertions, particularly when they come from (a) people who have no specialist knowledge of the medieval period or (b) people with ideological axes to grind. 
 
Any medieval legal prohibition of dissection came via the Roman legal tradition and the ancient taboos about the treatment of corpses. Prior to Boniface's (completely irrelevant) bull, full medical dissections had already been revived as a tool for study and teaching in Bologna. Sixteen years after it Mondino dei Luzzi wrote his manual on human dissection, Anatomica, which was to be the standard text on the subject for the next two hundred years. All of this happened as a result of inquiry by churchmen and without interference by, or with the full encouragement of, the medieval Church. 
 
So, "stifled"? Sorry, no. 
 
Quote:<hr>Your description of the rise of learning rings more true of the last 500 years than of the Middle Ages than of the first 500.<hr> 
 
No, it doesnÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢t. It simply accelerated in the later period and we also have more surviving evidence from the Late Middle Ages. 
 
Quote:<hr>You have a big problem with people called the Middle Ages an age of backwardism, and of course that view is wrong. But in trying to sing the praises of the Middle Ages, you ignore that the start of this period was not quite so uplifting,<hr> 
 
See above for why. This fact is not support of the myth of the Church ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã‹Å“stiflingÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢ knowledge, in either the early medieval period or the late. 
 
Quote:<hr> ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã‚Â¦ and to me you ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã‹Å“stealÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢ some of the new ideas of the following period to embellish ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã‹Å“yourÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢ Middle Ages. But thatÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢s my view.<hr> 
 
I stick to the period 500-1500 as convenient start and end points. But I also look at continuity, since history is not so neat. To return to the printing press: the idea that it is an outgrowth of medieval impulses is quite clear. Not only do we have this ongoing and accelerating tendency towards finding, preserving and sustaining knowledge, and a parallel rise in literacy with its market forces driving a growing book trade, but we also have repeated medieval attempts to mass-produce books and/or find cheaper ways to produce them. 
 
The ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã‹Å“peciaÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢ system was one way. Another was earlier medieval experiments with mass production which led to block printing whole pages. Which, in turn, rapidly led to the innovation of moveable type. To wrench the latter out of this medieval context and declare it a ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã…â€œRenaissanceÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã‚Â

**Robert Vermaat** · 07-01-2004, 10:29 PM

Tim, 
 
That you know far more than me about this period, is clear. 
That I did not prepare well enough before writing my answer, is clear as well (the Thomas Moore goofup was really bad). 
That you nevertheless won't convince me, call me headstrong, seems clear to me as well. You have good points, I repeat that, and I stand corrected on several points. 
However, lots of your arguments are either circular (that of catholocism and the invention of the printing press is a good one), or don't answer my answers. I won't therefore discuss these further. 
This is not because of the lack of detail in your posts, but I keep thinking you force me into a camp which says the Medieval period was a period of ignorance (which I don't think it was) or which says the catholic church was bad (which I don't think either). But you keep answering me as if I had said so. I will keep it at that. 
 
Nevertheless, I'm not convinced by your repeated argument that the catholic church was a champion of new discoveries and the spread of learning. maybe it was not as I thought (I grant you that much), but not as good as you say either. 
take, for instance, that papal bull we talked about, De Sepulturis. But of course it referredto to the practise of transporting dead Crusaders back in that fashion, and of course it did not mention dissection. But is that all? The Crusades had ended, so there would not have been many corpses being boiled and sent home, would there? Or was this bull meant to discorage physicians such as those from Salerno's medical school, or William of Saliceto, who published a record of his dissections in 1275? 
 
Was the catholic church not against surgery (and dissection as a means of training), because it opposed any form of shedding blood, not only in war but also by doctors? Had the Council of Le Mans in 1248 (and other afterwards) not forbidden surgery to monks? 
 
Or, can you tell me why Boniface's bull was interpreted at the time as if it had indeed forbidden all dissection? Was it not used it in persecution of those who did dissect bodies for medical studies? 
 
I'm not interested in a good/bad discussion, and the above point is merely meant to show that there is discussion possible. 
 
One more point. When discussing the 'Bible' in regard to translations I did never deny there was a translation into Gothic (where did you get that from?), only that it was sponsored by the church in the same way as Wycliffe's translation was disapproved. You simply can't compare the instistition of the church in both occasions, as you seem to do.! Methodius' 9th c. translation into Old Slavonic of the was indeed a translation of most of the Bible books. But how many of these 'complete' translations of Bible books had there been before Wycliffe? (By 'nothing to compare to' I meant similar translations, and of course not original texts!) 
 
This is one of my points of criticism, the ease with which you compare the incomparable. The medieval period, the church sponsoring accumulation and spread of all knowledge, etc. Most of my arguments in the above discussion were against these assumptions, not against the level of learning or the church as such. 
 
Valete, 
Valerius/Robert

Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus · 07-02-2004, 02:03 PM

Allow someone who has not studyed this period anywhere nearly as in depth as you two put in a question. This has to deal with the earlier middle ages. Something I have always been interested in is the great schism and its effect on europe. Did the great schism isolate byzantine empire from the rest of europe, and who was the head of the orthodox church in this era. With the split did that help the Ottoman empire in their conquering of the byzantine empire, or was it more a matter of military organization, which I beleive is why the europeans always had a hard time in the field against the arab armies. Thats it for now. THERE ARE NO STUPID PEOPLE, ONLY PEOPLE STUPID ENOUGH TO NOT KNOW WHEN THEY'VE MADE A MISTAKE

Thiudareiks Flavius · 07-03-2004, 02:56 AM

Robert wrote: 
 
Quote:<hr>That you know far more than me about this period, is clear.<hr> 
 
Well, it is the period in which I specialise and have post-graduate academic training. That's why I'm more of a spectator than a contributor at RAT most of the time - in Roman history I am very much an amateur. 
 
Quote:<hr>That I did not prepare well enough before writing my answer, is clear as well (the Thomas Moore goofup was really bad).<hr> 
 
An understandable mistake when you're researching on the run. We all do that. 
 
Quote:<hr>That you nevertheless won't convince me, call me headstrong, seems clear to me as well.<hr> 
 
I'm a little surprised to hear you state that I won't convince you. Even when I am very sure of my position, I do try to be open to the possibility that my perception is, if not wrong, then not entirely right. Nothing I am saying here would be remotely remarkable to any of my fellow medievalists - this is all essentially undergraduate, commonplace stuff. But I appreciate that it's counter to the popular perception of the Middle Ages and so may be news to those, with respect, without a really detailed knowledge of the period. 
 
Quote:<hr>You have good points, I repeat that, and I stand corrected on several points. 
However, lots of your arguments are either circular (that of catholocism and the invention of the printing press is a good one), or don't answer my answers. I won't therefore discuss these further.<hr> 
 
I'm not sure what you mean by "catholicism and the invention of the printing press" and I've tried to answer every point you've made, point by point and in some detail. If I've missed something, please let me know. 
 
Quote:<hr>This is not because of the lack of detail in your posts, but I keep thinking you force me into a camp which says the Medieval period was a period of ignorance (which I don't think it was) or which says the catholic church was bad (which I don't think either). But you keep answering me as if I had said so. I will keep it at that.<hr> 
 
I certainly don't feel you believe either of these things and it's not my intention to force you into any position at all. The reason my replies may come across that way is that, while that is not your position per se, your perception of the Middle Ages seems to be informed by a (rather outdated) popular perception of the period which was shaped by precisely these prejudices. 
 
Quote:<hr>Nevertheless, I'm not convinced by your repeated argument that the catholic church was a champion of new discoveries and the spread of learning. maybe it was not as I thought (I grant you that much), but not as good as you say either.<hr> 
 
Since I am working to counter some (erroneous) perceptions of the period, it may seem that I am going too far the other way or that I am presenting the Middle Ages and the medieval Church in some kind of glowing light. But I know the period well enough to be fully aware that the Church was not (by modern standards) a wonderful libertarian and pluralist institution. Where theological speculation, philosophy and, occasionally, science conflicted with its dogma, it was definitely not happy to accomodate alternative ideas. At times, it was "not happy" to the point of killing people. There's no denying this, and I have no wish to. 
 
My problem, however, is with the popular perception that these dogmatic parameters extended to the point where all speculation, including most scientific and technological innovation, were (to use your word) 'stifled' by the Church. This is most definitely not the case at all. On the whole, the sciences did not intersect with or impact on medieval theology much at all and so were no threat to the Church. This changed later, in the period of Copernicus and Galileo, and the Church of that period, the Counter-Reformation, was actually much more defensive and intolerant than its medieval equivalent anyway. But the sciences rarely strayed into the Church's domain in the medieval period. 
 
This is partly, contrary to the popular perception once again, because medieval science and philosophy was so firmly based on the traditions of the Classical world, which were held in such high regard by the Church that they had long since been accomodated by Christian theology. 
 
As for technology, it had no theological implications what so ever. It was Church institutions which often adopted technological innovations first, since labour saving devices were useful to them - less time spent in the fields, meant more time for monks to pray, study and write for example. It was also churchmen that had both the time and the inclination to tinker with things like how to make a mechanical clock or setting lenses in a frame to help someone with failing sight see better. Most other medieval people had 'better' things to be doing - like digging dirt or hitting people. 
 
Quote:<hr>take, for instance, that papal bull we talked about, De Sepulturis. But of course it referred to to the practise of transporting dead Crusaders back in that fashion, and of course it did not mention dissection. But is that all?<hr> 
 
Umm, yes - it is. The medieval taboos regarding cutting up dead bodies were partially based on theology. As odd as it seems to us, the doctrine of the resurrection of the body made it, along with cremation, a definite no no in most circumstances (bodies were cremated in times of plague, but only when the chore of burying them became too onerous because of the numbers involved). It was also based on a long-standing, pre-Christian abhorrence of "mutilation", which was about as dishonorable as you could get in either the ancient or medieval world. 
 
Quote:<hr>The Crusades had ended, so there would not have been many corpses being boiled and sent home, would there?<hr> 
 
The idea that "the Crusades had ended" certainly would have been strange news to anyone in Boniface's time. The large-scale expeditions to the Holy Land had certainly ended, though no-one in the early Fourteenth Century knew that. But crusading activity, great and small, continued throughout the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, with expeditions to the Levant, Egypt, Turkey, North Africa and the Mediterranean and ongoing activity in Spain and the Baltic. So yes, there were still plenty of Christian warriors dying in far off lands and being brought home for burial. This was what Boniface was addressing. 
 
Quote:<hr>Or was this bull meant to discorage physicians such as those from Salerno's medical school, or William of Saliceto, who published a record of his dissections in 1275?<hr> 
 
Boniface's papacy came at what was effectively one of the high tide points of papal authority and theological power. If he wanted to "discourage" dissection then he would have been perfectly capable of issuing a bull that actually addressed that issue directly and do so in no uncertain terms. Why would he go about "discouraging" this practice by issuing a bull that (i) didn't even mention dissection and (ii) directly and specifically addressed another practice altogether? 
 
Besides, as I've already mentioned, dissection was a regular part of the curriculum at Bologna before Boniface's bull, and Bologna was a university with close ties to the Church in Italy and with the Papacy in particular. Not long after Boniface's bull Guy de Chauliac made attendance at dissections obligatory for all students of medicine at the medical school of Montpellier, and this was while the papacy was resident in Avignon, just down the road. 
 
This myth that De Sepulturis constituted a ban on dissection is repeated in many books on the history of medicine and other popular works on science. But it can be traced to one book in particular - one that is hardly a reliable source of information on the period. A.D. White's A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, published in 1896 was a highly popular history of science in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries and was one of the few works which constituted a general survey of the history of science at that time. It is also a highly tendentious anti-religious screed with an ideological agenda and it's riddled with errors, misinterpretations and distortions. 
 
Despite this, White's work found its way into many other popular books and its mistakes linger to this day. These days it's worth reading largely for amusement value, particularly since the study of the history of science in general and (more recently) medieval science in particular has progressed greatly since 1896. 
 
Quote:<hr>Was the catholic church not against surgery (and dissection as a means of training), because it opposed any form of shedding blood, not only in war but also by doctors? Had the Council of Le Mans in 1248 (and other afterwards) not forbidden surgery to monks?<hr> 
 
No, the Catholic Church was not against surgery or (in specific circumstances) dissection. Keep in mind that this was a period where the vast majority of university undergraduates, including medical students, were in holy orders. Yes, the Council of Le Mans, along with one earlier and several later councils, forbade monks to practice surgery, but this was an injunction specifically aimed at monks - one particular type of cleric amongst many others. Councils regularly forebade monks to do all kinds of things, because monks were supposed to live separate from "the world" in monasteries. They were not supposed to leave them and they were definitely not supposed to practice a trade, which is what surgery still was in the Thirteenth Century. 
 
Medieval monks had what was, for the Church, a disturbing tendency towards trying to stretch or break the rules regarding staying in their monasteries, praying, fasting and writing - which was what they were supposed to do. Understandably, many monks found this pretty dull and tried to find all kinds of reasons to get out and do other things. So rulings ordering monks to behave themselves as monks should (ie stay in their monasteries, pray, fast and write) were pretty regular. 
 
The reason wayward monks ended up practicing surgery is that monasteries often contained hospitals, supposedly for the care of fellow monks but often for the care of the local community. This meant some monks had good medical training and so there was a definite temptation for monks with surgical skills to practice their craft outside the walls. This was bad enough, since monks weren't supposed to practice any craft in "the world" at all, but it was even worse when they ended up practicing their craft on women - which was definitely something a monk was not meant to be doing. 
 
The myth that this ban on monks practicing surgery constituted a Church ban on surgery in general is another one that can be traced back to my friend A.D. White. Either White was under the impression that "monks" means medieval clerics in general (it doesn't) or White didn't really care what this ban meant, he just wanted another excuse to kick Christianity in the butt (more likely). Monks were also regularly banned from doing all kinds of other things - hunting for example - but this doesn't mean the medieval Church disapproved of hunting. 
 
Quote:<hr>Or, can you tell me why Boniface's bull was interpreted at the time as if it had indeed forbidden all dissection? Was it not used it in persecution of those who did dissect bodies for medical studies?<hr> 
 
No, it wasn't. Once again, A.D. White is the culprit here. He stated that this was the case and his story has been repeated uncritically by non-specialists (or fellow anti-religious bigots) ever since. It's nonsense. As I've already shown, dissections were practiced both before and after Boniface's bull, in universities and medical schools which were either under Papal charter or in close contact with the Church hierarchy and by doctors who were, themselves, churchmen. Dissections had to be done as an adjunct to a post-mortem examination or on the body of an executed criminal, but there was no ban on dissections and definitely no ban on surgery. The popes had their own personal surgeons by the way. 
 
Quote:<hr>I'm not interested in a good/bad discussion, and the above point is merely meant to show that there is discussion possible.<hr> 
 
It certainly is, but what I am trying to show is that much of what is "known" about this period is actually erroneous. Discussion on these matters needs to be informed by fact, and much of what is "known" and accepted about the medieval period is informed by prejudice, propaganda and outdated misinformation. 
 
Quote:<hr>One more point. When discussing the 'Bible' in regard to translations I did never deny there was a translation into Gothic (where did you get that from?),<hr> 
 
Umm, I have have no idea. That's because I'm unsure what you are referring to here. I was under no illusion that you weren't aware of Wulfilas' translation, it just seemed to me that you thought it was some kind of exception. It wasn't. 
 
Quote:<hr>only that it was sponsored by the church in the same way as Wycliffe's translation was disapproved. You simply can't compare the instistition of the church in both occasions, as you seem to do.!<hr> 
 
"The Church" in the Fourth Century was nothing like the Church in the Fourteenth. This is hardly surprising since 1000 years had passed and I imagine "the Church" of 3004 AD will be very different to the one today as well. The point is that when vernacular translation had a utility - as it did in "Gothia" in the Fourth Century, Frankia in the Seventh Century or Slavonia in the Ninth Century - it happened and no-one batted an eyelid. 
 
Quote:<hr>Methodius' 9th c. translation into Old Slavonic of the was indeed a translation of most of the Bible books. But how many of these 'complete' translations of Bible books had there been before Wycliffe? (By 'nothing to compare to' I meant similar translations, and of course not original texts!)<hr> 
 
Perhaps I didn't make my point about the nature of the Bible as a series of books rather than a single book in this period clearly. Prior to the widespread use of paper rather than parchment or vellum and the invention of printing, single volume Bibles were huge, cumbersome and vastly expensive. "The Bible" was a collection of books, some of which were widely used, others of which were not. "The Bible" was generally copied and utilised in separate volumes for reasons of utility and economics - with most smaller institutions and few individuals owning a "full edition" until quite late in the period, when book costs began to come down (a tendancy vastly accelerated by the invention of printing). 
 
Most Biblical books were translated in the vernacular at various times in the medieval period, but some - the gospels, the Pentateuch, Wisdom and the Psalms - were translated more regularly. The primary purpose of these translations - like the missionary translations before them - was utility. They were an adjunct to the doctines and traditions of the Church. 
 
Wycliffe's purpose was quite different and driven by a different agenda. As a proto-Protestant "Lollard", he rejected the Catholic of idea of scripture informed by "tradition" - he saw scripture as the sole source of religious truth. His translation was not meant as an adjunct to doctrine and tradition; it was the sole source of faith. This is what motivated him and this is why he produced his translation. And this is why, apart from the various earlier missionary full translations, his translation was of the whole 
work rather than its more utilitarian parts. 
 
Quote:<hr>This is one of my points of criticism, the ease with which you compare the incomparable. The medieval period, the church sponsoring accumulation and spread of all knowledge, etc.<hr> 
 
I'm not sure what you mean here. What is "incomparable"? 
 
Quote:<hr>Most of my arguments in the above discussion were against these assumptions, not against the level of learning or the church as such.<hr> 
 
Understood, but I repeat that most of your arguments are motivated by an understanding of the period which is informed by a non-specialist conception that was shaped by prejudice, ignorance and misinterpretation. No-one who has a detailed understanding of the period would find anything I am saying even vaguely remarkable. Many would actually find it rather conservative. I realise that it is at variance with the common perception of the medieval period, but the common perception of many things is, as you know, often completely wrong. 
Cheers, Tim O'Neill / Thiudareiks Flavius 
 
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Crispvs · 07-04-2004, 03:57 AM

Tim, 
 
Although I studied mediaeval history at university, Roman history was really my specialisation (before it became equipment) and so I stand ready to be shot down here. 
 
"Medieval monks had what was, for the Church, a disturbing tendency towards trying to stretch or break the rules regarding staying in their monasteries, praying, fasting and writing - which was what they were supposed to do. Understandably, many monks found this pretty dull and tried to find all kinds of reasons to get out and do other things. So rulings ordering monks to behave themselves as monks should (ie stay in their monasteries, pray, fast and write) were pretty regular." 
 
How much evidence is there for this? I know that Chaucer's monk bears little resemblance to what is prescribed in the rule of St Benedict, but how much was he a reality and how much was he a product of a pubic conception which did not fully realise the change forced on many monastries by the lack of lay brothers following the Black Death and the Hundred Years War? When my cousin was writing his thesis he looked at numerous manuscripts in a search for glosses which would have proved the existence of an attitude amongst monks which would fit in with Chaucer's portrayal. He did not find any such glosses. His piece: 'Rotteness and Revulsion' in 'Monks of England: Benedictines in England from Augustine to the Present Day' (Daniel Rees - editor), published 1997, ISBN: 0281050740, is worth a read. 
 
Crispvs Edited by: <A HREF=http://p200.ezboard.com/bromanarmytalk.showUserPublicProfile?gid=crispvs>Crispvs</A> at: 7/4/04 6:15 am

Thiudareiks Flavius · 07-04-2004, 08:46 AM

Crispvs wrote: 
 
Quote:<hr>How much evidence is there for this? I know that Chaucer's monk bears little resemblance to what is prescribed in the rule of St Benedict, but how much was he a reality and how much was he a product of a pubic conception which did not fully realise the change forced on many monastries by the lack of lay brothers following the Black Death and the Hundred Years War?<hr> 
 
Possibly a bit of both. The real-life figure that many Chaucer scholars think the character of the Monk was based on was the amusingly-named William de Clowne, Abbot of Leicester (1345-137, who was a famous hunting enthusiast. 
 
Quote:<hr>When my cousin was writing his thesis he looked at numerous manuscripts in a search for glosses which would have proved the existence of an attitude amongst monks which would fit in with Chaucer's portrayal. He did not find any such glosses.<hr> 
 
Well, I'm not sure what your cousin was looking for specifically, but Chaucer's satire is paralleled by condemnations of worldly monks by his friend John Gower (Vox Clamantis, 3: 1490-1512; Mirour de de l'Omme, 20,245-56). Wyclif made similar condemnations in his sermons, as did the 1387 report on conditions at Selbourne Abbey by Bishop Wykeham. Muriel Bowden's Commentary on the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales and Jill Mann's Chaucer and Medieval Estates Satire lists various other parallels. 
Cheers, 
Tim O'Neill / Thiudareiks Flavius 
 
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