Quote:
Originally posted by ApostleKnight@Oct 25 2005, 12:49 AM
John William Draper, M.D., LL.D., is the author. Not at all flattering to Roman Catholics in particular and Christians in general, this book documents how, to paraphrase it crudely, the Roman Catholic church was responsible for the Dark Ages...
I'd recommend this book highly, very interesting historical and religious information that's worth knowing I think, regardless of the author's undisguised contempt for religion (and after reading his book, you'll understand why he, as a professor at New York University in the 1800's, despised the knowledge and wisdom lost during the Dark Ages presumable because of religion, a.k.a. the Roman Catholic Church mainly).*
You can get an e-text version of it (and many, many other classics) here:
[snapback]79222[/snapback]
|
I'm not sure I would be interested - not because it's anti-Christian/religion, but because it's wrong. The middle or 'dark' ages happened because Rome fell and literacy was lost. There are two causes to the fall of Rome - 1. The invasion of the barbarian hordes, sweeping across the frozen Rhine in 406... and within 70 years (give or take a decade) the empire would be only a memory; and 2. The internal causes left the empire unable or unwilling to defend itself against the Huns, the Goths, Avers and the like.
Some may blame the Christian Church for promoting virtues like patience and pusillanimity and devoting resources to charity and devotion instead of to a vigilant military but then one could just as easily blame vice-encumbered paganism. As the great Edward Gibbon put it is his masterful The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776) "The decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness."
In fact, it was the Catholic Church, via the Irish monasteries, that preserved and re-introduced classical learning; without whom the 'dark' ages would have been truly dark. That's not to say that the Catholic Church does not have giga-tons to atone for but causing the the middles ages is too big of a stretch.
I just don't have much time to devote to miseducation but even outdated stuff may have some good material so thanks for the link.