Thomas_More
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On the Enlightenment, Wez, I don’t see it as an awakening from medieval attitudes but from early modern attitudes, namely the religious fanaticism and oppression of the 16th and 17th centuries.
Too many people lump these dark times (witch-hunts, religious wars) with the long-gone Middle Ages, which the early modern period had destroyed the best of and made worse the worst of.The Enlightenment was important for breaking the power of the Counter-Reformation Church and producing so many materialist thinkers. These thinkers may have been bourgeois or aristocratic, but so what? Only a fool would claim that their class position invalidates materialist logic.
Why would I reject the Stone Age etc? I am only rejecting the disproven view that the Middle Ages were a period of ignorance and stagnation between the so-called golden age of ancient Rome and the 15th century Renaissance.
Did you know that the Renaissance reversed the progress of women, and that witch-hunting was a Renaissance invention? Racism too.
Did you know that Rome was never sacked by the Goths, and that it was the Vandals who abolished the bloody Roman “Games”?
Yes, in many ways I consider modern capitalism a far worse dark age than many aspects of the Middle Ages.
I think you will like THE TRAGEDY OF LIBERATION by Dikotter. There is a photo of Chinese youths made to carry an ocean of portraits of Stalin.
Wikipedia:
The Harvard professor Charles Homer Haskins was the first historian to write extensively about a renaissance that ushered in the High Middle Ages starting about 1070. In 1927, he wrote that:
[The 12th century in Europe] was in many respects an age of fresh and vigorous life. The epoch of the Crusades, of the rise of towns, and of the earliest bureaucratic states of the West, it saw the culmination of Romanesque art and the beginnings of Gothic; the emergence of the vernacular literatures; the revival of the Latin classics and of Latin poetry and Roman law; the recovery of Greek science, with its Arabic additions, and of much of Greek philosophy; and the origin of the first European universities. The 12th century left its signature on higher education, on the scholastic philosophy, on European systems of law, on architecture and sculpture, on the liturgical drama, on Latin and vernacular poetry…[7]
THE DARK AGES, AN AGE OF LIGHT.
Amazon:
The Dark Ages have been misunderstood. History has identified the period following the fall of the Roman Empire with a descent into barbarism a terrible time when civilisation stopped. Waldemar Januszczak disagrees. In this landmark 4-part series Waldemar argues that the Dark Ages were a time of great artistic achievement, with new ideas and religions provoking new artistic adventures. He embarks on a fascinating trip across Europe, Africa and Asia, visits the world s most famous collections and discovers hidden artistic gems, all to prove that the Dark Ages were actually an Age of Light’. In the first episode the viewer will discover how Christianity emerged into the Roman Empire as an artistic force in the third and fourth centuries. Waldemar explores how Christian artists drew on images of ancient gods for inspiration, and developed new forms of architecture to contain their art. The second episode is dedicated to the Barbarians . Focusing on the Huns, Vandals and Goths, Waldemar follows each tribe’s journey across Europe, and discovers the incredible art they produced along the way. Along with Christianity the Dark Ages saw the emergence of another vital religion: Islam. This is the focus of Episode Three. Waldemar examines the early artistic explorations of the first Muslims, the development of the mosque, and their scientific achievements. In the final episode Waldemar looks towards the North of Europe. The Carolingians saw themselves as successors to Rome, reflected in their art. Elsewhere, the Vikings were constructing long ships with intricate decoration, and marking their territory with powerful rune stones.
MEDIEVAL LIVES by Terry Jones.
Google Books:
Terry Jones, actor, director, author and Python, approaches this most misrepresented and misunderstood’ period in history through its principal characters. Accompanying a TV series, the book addresses and redresses many of the stereotypical images we have of the Middle Ages. Each chapter deals with a major character’, opening with the medieval peasant, discussing his life and work, his status, village life in general, his relationship with the Church and the Peasants’ Revolt. After famine and Black Death, Jones turns his attention to secular and royal minstrels and entertainers, as well as medieval romance and epic tales. From here to the outlaws, gangs and legendary figures of the period, to the monk, the development of monasteries and religious orders, the crusades and Church power. The rest of the books is filled with tales of philosophers, alchemists, magicians, fraudsters, innovators and doctors, chivalric knights, damsels and, ultimately, the king himself. Written in an accessible and colloquial style, this is a great read for anyone wanting to get a glimpse of real Medieval Lives .
BARBARIANS by Terry Jones.
Google Books:
A completely fresh approach to Roman history, this book not only offer readers the chance to see the Romans from a non-Roman perspective, it also reveals that most of those written off by the Romans as uncivilized, savage, and barbaric were in fact organized, motivated, and intelligent groups of people with no intentions of overthrowing Rome and plundering its Empire. This fascinating study does away with the propaganda and opens our eyes to who really established the civilized world. Delving deep into history, Terry Jones and Alan Ereira uncover the impressive cultural and technological achievements of the Celts, Goths, Persians, and Vandals. In this new paperback edition, Terry and Alan travel through 700 years of history on three continents, bringing wit, irreverence, passion, and the very latest scholarship to transform our view of the legacy of the Roman Empire and the creation of the modern world.
The first recorded, unambiguous European references to a spherical Earth are found in the work of ancient Greek philosophers, such as Plato and Aristotle. By the time the Roman writer Pliny the Elder was writing the first part of his Natural History around AD 77, the fact that the Earth is a sphere was treated as common knowledge: ‘We all agree on the earth’s shape. For surely we always speak of the round ball of the Earth’ (Pliny, Natural History, II.64).
https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2018/05/the-earth-is-in-fact-round.html
The idea that the Earth is flat was a Victorian fad. People have known the Earth is a globe since ancient Greek times.
Have to contradict you. No one in the Middle or so-called “Dark” ages believed the Earth was flat. They weren’t stupid.
Please don’t delete this, Alan. I’m just answering Movimiento.
https://images.app.goo.gl/od5ZPEkYRHJ3APSL6
Conspiracy Club.
The city of Changchun in Manchuria, full of civilians was ordered by Lin Piao to be made a city of death through starvation. 160,000 perished, after having been compelled to resort to cannibalism.
“Communism”?
“Party of the working class”?Mao’s massive book burnings, hundreds of thousands of titles in the 1950s, dwarf the Nazi book burnings.
