The "dark Ages"

[Hilde]

Ya'll know i love that latin mass with it's wonderful music and everything. And that Aquinas guy

So anyway from time to time, in different kinds of discussion the middle ages are brought up as an example of something not to strive for.

like:

-women were oppressed, were married away like objects and what about those chastity belts!

-they hated science because they were religious, and they tried to hinder gallilei in speaking the truth. Becue of this this time period was pretty standstill, because of you know, religion. And they killed the opposition/dissenters!

-Nobody understood anything during mass, and they couldn't even read the bible. Thank Jesus for Martin Luther who came and translated the bible!

etc

Since these things come up in different discussion I think it's important to have correct knowledge so that you can weed out some bad arguments and not be led astray. I've seen some chronological snobbery, and although i like like medical and technological advancements(whether that's all positive cane be discussed) it is a fallacy.

[Resurrexi]

The Dark Ages usually refers to the early Middle Ages (i.e. the first few centuries after the fall of the Western Roman Empire). My favorite period in history is the High Middle Ages, which would include the reigns of Pope Innocent III and St. Louis IX along with the lives of St. Thomas Aquinas and Godfrey of Bouillon (just to name a few of my favorite historical personages).

Edited July 2, 2010 by Resurrexi

[Winchester]

Read Regine Pernoud. The Protestant revolt was a step backward for women.

[Lil Red]

from what i understand, monks saved the written word during the "Dark Ages", by hand copying and saving books.

[Resurrexi]

I honestly think modern secular ethnics are pretty lame, and my views on morality are based solely on Catholic teaching and history, so I consider things like the crusades and inquisitions acceptable in principle, in contrast to a lot of people with ethical views based on modern secular values.

[Winchester]

I didn't learn poo about the Crusades in school. It was all apologies. That whole incursion into Europe by mahometans was kind of glossed over. I thought Seljuk Turks was a rock band. Yeah, thank God for the crusades.

[IgnatiusofLoyola]

[quote name='Hilde' date='02 July 2010 - 04:29 PM' timestamp='1278106197' post='2137073']
Ya'll know i love that latin mass with it's wonderful music and everything. And that Aquinas guy [img]http://www.phatmass.com/phorum/public/style_emoticons/default/love.gif[/img]

So anyway from time to time, in different kinds of discussion the middle ages are brought up as an example of something not to strive for.

like:

-women were oppressed, were married away like objects and what about those chastity belts!

-they hated science because they were religious, and they tried to hinder gallilei in speaking the truth. Becue of this this time period was pretty standstill, because of you know, religion. And they killed the opposition/dissenters!

-Nobody understood anything during mass, and they couldn't even read the bible. Thank Jesus for Martin Luther who came and translated the bible!

etc

Since these things come up in different discussion I think it's important to have correct knowledge so that you can weed out some bad arguments and not be led astray. I've seen some chronological snobbery, and although i like like medical and technological advancements(whether that's all positive cane be discussed) it is a fallacy.
[/quote]

The fact that it wasn't the custom for most people to bathe regularly, and raw sewage was dumped into the gutter, or the nearest stream that was also used for laundry and drinking water, are among the many things that make me glad I live now. (Along with indoor plumbling, dental anesthesia--heck, anesthesia, period--are among the things I'm grateful for.)

But, what you're describing as the "middle ages" covers a LONG period of time--hundreds of years. The things you described didn't all happen at the same time. Historians usually split that long period it into shorter time spans like the "Medieval or "Dark Ages," and later, the "Renaissance"--to name only a few of the terms used by historians.

I think every period of history has had good things and bad things. After majoring in history in college, I decided that the "good old days" that we sometimes yearn for, never existed. As civilization has moved on, we've lost some valuable things, but we've also gained some valuable things. Personally, I'm glad I didn't live in the time and place when people who refused to convert to Catholicism were thrown off towers.

I'm not picking on Catholics. Non-Catholics have contributed at least their share to the violence over the centuries. The practice of throwing people off towers was just the first example that came to my mind. But, another example, the mass slaughter of millions of Jews (and others) during WWII, was carried out by people who often claimed to be Protestant.

No time in history was all bad or all good, but from what I have learned, I'm not sorry that I'm living now, despite all the awful things in the world. Good thing, because it's not that I had any choice (that I know of) of what time period or place I was born into.

Edited July 2, 2010 by IgnatiusofLoyola

[Resurrexi]

The thing I like about the Middle Ages is the fact that society in general was religious, even if many people weren't particularly devout. I also love the art, architecture, music, literature, and philosophy that were produced during the High Middle Ages.

Edited July 2, 2010 by Resurrexi

[Winchester]

[quote name='Resurrexi' date='02 July 2010 - 06:11 PM' timestamp='1278108707' post='2137110']
The thing I like about the Middle Ages is the fact that society in general was religious, even if many people weren't particularly devout. I also love the art, architecture, music, literature, and philosophy that were produced during the High Middle Ages.
[/quote]
Respect your elders.

[Archaeology cat]

My medieval history prof would get very angry at anyone calling that period the "dark ages". It certainly wasn't all bad.

[Gregorius]

Man, every time I try to talk about something I get super-verbose. Sorry for the super-long post ahead of time. And further warning, I mean all charity towards all readers, and am not trying to be insulting!



If I am not mistaken, the term "Dark Ages" was coined by protestant propaganda to try to make the Church look bad, to spread the idea that the Church really was 'keeping people in the dark'.

What people don't realize is that the Church saved Europe, and led it to become what was up until recently. Even when Muslim culture was flourishing and rediscovering classical Greek thought, it was the works of people like St. Thomas Aquinas and company who re-introduced these ideas (and added the eyes of the Faith to them) to the general populace of Europe. The Church sponsored the arts and sciences which in part led to the downfall of Feudalism and thus herded in the Renaissance. Even the Galileo case is largely misunderstood. Galileo apparently did not strictly follow the Scientific Method, instead writing and working under the assumption that he was right. The Church already for the most part approved works of men like Nicolaus Copernicus and Tycho Brahae, telling them to hold off because the theory could not yet substantially be proven. Galileo, unlike Copernicus, did not hold off and basically insulted the Pope and the Church in his book [u]Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo[/u] largely the reason he appeared before the Inquisition. Heliocetrism at the time was considered contrary to Scripture based on current evidence of the time although Galileo supposedly subscribed to the Augustinian approach to Scripture, that is, not to take Scripture too literally, particularly when the text is a psalm, song or poem. Galileo is justified in this particular case only because he happened to be right. Now of Course Galilieo did more good things than bad, such as improve the teloscope, discover four of Jupiter's moons, discover sunspots and help disprove the theory that the celestial bodies were smooth and perfect and moved in a uniform circular pattern, mainly why Copernicus could not substantially prove Heliocentric Theory. Copernicus until the end of his life had friends in the heirarchy, including Pope Urban VIII. Galileo was never killed, nor sentenced to be so.

I kind of overexerted myself above, so I'll be short here and say, yes, despite certain behaviors by men towards their wives, the Catholic view of the woman is much more respectful than say the Puritan view on women, the Lutheran view on women (and all people for that matter) or even the Aristotlean view on women. Now if you look at it from a secular 21st century set of values, it may seem women are 'oppressed' but then secular culture often has a deformed misunderstanding of concepts like "freedom", "Liberty", and "Rights".

Now not to be rude or insulting, but just looking at the testimonials of the countless saints who lived during the Middle Ages, many of them women, and most of them having no formal education or even literacy, will shoot down the idea that "nobody understood what was going on during the Mass". Though Mass is certainly an encounter with the Mystery, and thus it cannot be completely known to anyone but God Himself, the ideas that went around about the Mass at that time were likely the same that float around today: many believed without question, others did not; some came to belief after study, others studied and came to disbelief (i.e. Martin Luther).

As for the translation of the Bible, certain things must be understood here. The Catholic Church teaches that the Divine Revelation of the Faith rests on two "pillars": Scripture; i.e. the Bible, and sacred Tradition, manifested from the time of the Apostles to the present. Both necessarily relate to one another, and both are necessary. Scripture is a product of the Church's Tradition, and in fact for the first few hundred years of the Church there was no written Bible. The Traditions of the Church are all backed up by Scripture, so you may know that these are legit, and not something the Pope or whoever made up one day. As the Bible comes from the Church, it is the job of the Church to interpret it, and the Church is the only one who can give a definitive "correct interpretation". So, rather than re-invent the wheel and read through the whole of Scripture and compare each and every doctrine, most people simply trusted the Judgement of the Church, who taught the people both Scripture and its meaning. The only people who really needed to [u]read[/u] Scripture were those who were to proclaim it and teach it to the people: Clerics- Bishops, priests, seminarians (the bulk of all University students at the time). The language of the Liturgy, of course, is Latin, so they really didn't need a written translation into the vernacular.

Then comes along Martin Luther. He [u]erroneously[/u] proclaims that Scripture alone (sola scriptura, if you will) contains all of Revalation, and that the Church is absolutely unecessary to interpret it, that the reader is the interpreter of Scripture (based of course, off of the assumption that Scripture speaks for itself; we of the modern age know quite the contrary). Following that the reader is the interpreter, it becomes necessary that the faithful understand it; proclaiming it in Latin and then paraphrasing it in vernacular won't cut it. It then becomes necessary that a vernacular translation is needed. Keep in mind as of this point most people are still illiterate. We all know that translations between languages often don't match exactly. That plus the fact that the source used for the translation is itself a translation full of ancient colloquialisms and the like.

Scriptural translations themselves aren't the problem: mistranslations of Scripture are. Luther's translation does not reflect Scripture as it actually is: it is a reflection of Luther's thought. Luther went so far as to presume to have the power to remove certain books from the Bible that didn't reflect his teachings. He despised letters like James and Jude (James especially, as it countered his idea that faith alone, or sola fide, saves a person).

A short while later, the block-letter printing press in invented in England, allowing books to be in greater supply. Of course, the most popular book is the Bible. At this point England has already gone through the Reformation and is now largely Protestant. In an effort to Re-Evangelize England, The Douay-Rheims Bible, the first English translation of the bible, is completed in two-volume form by 1610. Still, most of English media is in the hands of protestants, and protestant ideas are put into motion. In an effort to standardize the Bible for all the English Church, King James authorises a translation that to the present bears his name that is to be used in Anglican liturgy, all other translations non-withstanding. The King James Bible reflects Protestant thought and for the large part includes the incomplete Luther Canon.

Since then, other translations have come out reflecting the minds of each writing team and publishing body. The logical conclusion of having the reader being the interpreter is that the reader believes anything he/she wants to.

[frassati]

[quote name='Hilde' date='02 July 2010 - 05:29 PM' timestamp='1278106197' post='2137073']

-they hated science because they were religious, and they tried to hinder gallilei in speaking the truth. Becue of this this time period was pretty standstill, because of you know, religion. And they killed the opposition/dissenters!


Not exactly true... the "Dark Ages" is giant time span, and it actually laid the foundation for the emergence of modern science. In particular, Franciscans had a big hand in this. Thomism is considered a "dead end" for modern, secularist science, but tracing the historic debates and interchanges between Franciscans and Dominicans in this period can show how the door was opened for the scientific secularism we have now. William of Ockham, for example, was a Franciscan Friar of the period who arguably had good intentions, but in calling for the absolute separation of theology and science is credited by many as providing for the prebirth of modern science and the scientific method... I'm not making any claims for legitimacy or praising the emergence of the modern ideal, just saying that you can't say that the Medieval Church repressed science - for better or worse, they helped to develop it!