People generally forget or don't know that the Early Renaissance was part of the late Middle Ages, and that the High and Late Middle Ages produced the artistic and literary genius of Dante, Chaucer, Giotto, Cimabue, Petrarch, etc
Did the Dark Age really exist!?
- Thread starter BattleofHodow
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People generally forget or don't know that the Early Renaissance was part of the late Middle Ages, and that the High and Late Middle Ages produced the artistic and literary genius of Dante, Chaucer, Giotto, Cimabue, Petrarch, etc
Well all good points but we cannot deny that the Renaissance is what started the rapid advance of education, learning, culture, engineering, agriculture, architecture, art, mathematics and science. All within 220 years. We have the tablets and satellites now.
I think the Renaissance was mostly a cultural and artistic phenomena. It was the point in time that humanism began to take hold culturally, artistically, and intellectually.
But the real advances in science and technology had to wait for the 17th and 18th centuries aka the scientific revolution, and the Enlightenment.
BattleofHodow
New member
True, don't forget Jean Buridan, and Roger Bacon.
Industrial mills started in the Middle Ages of Europe.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watermill
Survey of industrial mills
In a 2005 survey the scholar Adam Lucas identified the following first appearances of various industrial mill types in Western Europe. Noticeable is the preeminent role of France in the introduction of new innovative uses of waterpower. However, he has drawn attention to the dearth of studies of the subject in several other countries.
First Appearance of Various Industrial Mills in Medieval Europe, AD 770-1443 [39]
Type of mill Date Country
Malt mill 770 France
Fulling mill 1080 France
Tanning mill c. 1134 France
Forge mill ca. 1200 England, France
Tool-sharpening mill 1203 France
Hemp mill 1209 France
Bellows 1269, 1283 Slovakia, France
Paper mill[40] 1282 Spain
Sawmill c. 1300 France
Ore-crushing mill 1317 Germany
Blast furnace 1384 France
Cutting and slitting mill 1443 France
BattleofHodow
New member
Well all good points but we cannot deny that the Renaissance is what started the rapid advance of education, learning, culture, engineering, agriculture, architecture, art, mathematics and science. All within 220 years. We have the tablets and satellites now.
Renaissance starter in Catholic Italy.
AProudLefty
Black Kitty Ain't Happy
To their objections. The progresses will not be impeded in any way. You can kill people, but you cannot kill ideas and progresses.
BattleofHodow
New member
The earliest regions to gain the Renaissance were also the first to become Catholic.
The last to be Catholic were along the Baltic & Norse regions also barely had a Renaissance compared to earlier Catholic reception regions like Italy, Germany, Poland, Austria & France etc.
BattleofHodow
New member
An awful lot of science came from Catholic clergy
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Catholic_clergy_scientists
AProudLefty
Black Kitty Ain't Happy
I am aware of the intelligent priests who wanted to educate people. They are pretty common but it has to be done in secret.
AProudLefty
Black Kitty Ain't Happy
Yes I am aware of that. Plenty of priests wanted to educate and had original thoughts and ideas.
BattleofHodow
New member
The Vikings & Varigians of Scandinavia were typically Norse Pagans who tried & may have well have nearly destroyed Catholic civilization of the era.
Renaissance started in the late 14th and 15th century long before Protestantism even existed. Catholicism was the only game in town in western Europe during the Renaissance.
The Protestant reformation did not get into fill swing until the middle of 16th century decades after the heyday of the High Renaissance.
BattleofHodow
New member
Right, well that wasn't the point I was driving at.
Italy was Catholic about 1,000 years before the Norse & Balts.
My point was that the last countries to become Catholic also didn't have as much as a Renassaince.
Contrary to anti Catholic rhetoric, Pagans were even more backwards & primitive.
I have plenty of posts pointing out that whatever faults Christianity had, it was the monks and the church institutions that kept literacy alive during the collapse of civilization after the fall of the western Roman Empire, it was Christian philosophers who resurrected Greek logic and inquiry, and the Church was the primary patron of higher education and natural philosophy, aka science.
Naturally, one can research Wikipedia till the cows come home to make a list of all the terrible things done by the Church.
But it is an integral part of western history that the Church was the only viable institution in western Europe to keep literacy and Greek thought alive when the western Roman empire collapsed and the Gothic invasions ravaged Europe
I took an online course about the Middle Ages from Professor Philip Daileader, a scholar who specializes in medieval history.
It really gave me an appreciation that the Middle Ages were not the caricature of a culturally and intellectually barren wasteland of human history we boomers learned in high school.
Undoubtedly, living through the Gothic invasions and enduring the feudal system was a bleak existence for most people.
But to this day, modern western civilization still owes a debt to the technological, intellectual, literary, agricultural, architectural, artistic, and engineering advances made in the Middle Ages.
ps, I would say you are correct that for several hundred years after the collapse of the western Roman Empire during the Early Middle Ages, we have such scant written documentation, that it seems there was a widespread loss of literacy and economic activity until at least the emergence of the Carolingian empire in the 9th century.
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