Apsu

Thank you for pointing that out. The argument seems revolutionary to me, at least as far as the entire scientific public education of the youth of America is concerned, so I personally would like to see it either shot down completely or looked at on a larger scale.

If so, I'm still having difficulty understanding why. After reading James's introduction and first chapter, the only explanations I'm seeing are based on the personal issues with writers from the 16th century to the 19th.

Here we have the issue explained as resulting from humanists not liking Latin. The cudgel being taken up without reasons being given.

Here we have the issue being the struggle between catholics and protestants. Makes sense to me, although in modern times protestants are butting heads with science as much as catholics -- if not more so.

Here we have Voltaire not liking the RCC and the idea of absolute authority, so he produced propaganda to instill doubt in its followers.



No reason here given.

Here we have the reason being ignorance, which I guess brings us to James's idea of our modern scietific world view, that the scholars no longer know the truth of how much the RCC brought science to us through the will of God?


So all in all, this has been a conspiracy on a very large scale encompassing centuries of scientific thought and writers. Throughout history, the RCC has been the champion of reason and scientific development. I wonder how the inquisition fits into all of this -- it obviously did not exist through the entire medieval period, but while it did -- how exactly was it championing reason and scientific development?

This, taken from Wikipedia (despite its terrible grammar) says that the RCC inquisition lasted from 12th-19th centuries:

That is from the later medieval period through the renaissance. Galileo was put on trial by the inquisition right? I guess I'm just finding it difficult to believe that this is a grand conspiracy. I'm not in argument against the scientific advances throughout the middle ages, but after reading through your work, I'm not understanding how that development was in any way better because of the RCC or why a conspiracy would be necessary at all particularly in light of the inquisition. Maybe the point will be better brought to light when I'm able to read the rest of the book

Antipope Innocent II

It was more than just personal issues. It was a combination of factors beginning with the new self-confidence of the Humanism of the Renaissance, which sought to contrast itself with what had preceeded them and so denigrated the previous systems of thought and, for example, gave Medieval architecture labels like "Gothic" (ie "barbaric"). Then came the Reformation, whereby Protestantism's propaganda duel with Catholicism had both saying nasty (and often absurdly wrong) things about each other. The Protestants were happy to associate anything Medieval with the worst excesses (both real and imagined) of Catholicism. Then there was the Englightenment, with guys like Voltaire and Gibbon gleefully beating Christianity with any stick that came to hand. Finally there was another round of anti-clericalism in the Nineteenth Century, sharpened by various sectarian hatreds.

Put all that together and you have plenty of overlapping reasons for various people to say and believe all kinds of total crap about the Middle Ages. And given that scholarly Medieval studies really only got off the ground in the Twentieth Century, there was barely anyone capable of correcting the distortions until quite recently. So we've had 500 years for the myths about the Medieval Period to become entrenched and less than 100 for the real story to filter down to the average Joe.

This was covered in some detail in the recent "Medieval Flat Earth" thread. In brief, the Inquistion was set up to investigate allegations of heresy, not to investigate scientists. On the whole, medieval "natural philosophers" (ie what we call scientists) were simply using reason to examine the physical world which, as a manifestation of the mind of a rational God, could be apprehended rationally. Doing so rarely strayed into anything which could be considered heretical and so "natural philosophy" was simply not on the Inquisition/s' radar.

Galileo was a special case. He was very much the wrong guy (a rather undiplomatic one) making a case that was still not fully backed up by science at the wrong time (the hottest point in the Counter Reformation). And he was rude to the Pope. He was really asking for trouble.

I've been having his conversation with people about science in the Middle Ages on and off for 20 years now. Whenever they insist that the Medieval Church persecuted scientists I ask them to give me an example of this. They usually bring up Galileo and Bruno (neither of those examples are Medieval) and then come up with nothing at all. That silence speaks volumes.

Roger Pearse

Before then also, unless we were to exclude the period prior to 1450 from the renaissance. Our libraries are heavy with humanist copies of manuscripts.

May I ask on what this is based? It sounds like a strange idea to me, but of course the restriction to technical works might alter the picture.

A set of lists of all the works to which you refer and the date at which they start to circulate in the west would be a good start in establishing your thesis.

I believe so.

Well, if we define the existence of a single copy of a book forgotten in a tower somewhere as "known" then no extant text is ever unknown. This seems a bit of a useless way to use words.

True.

My outlook is not specially of technical works but of ancient literary texts in general. I quoted the example of these two major historical texts to indicate that texts which we take for granted were in fact unknown in the period. But if we can establish the thesis that for *technical* works the flow is really much earlier, that would be most interesting.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Antipope Innocent II

I had a half-memory that Charles Homer Haskins actually did give a breakdown of what got translated when, but it seems I've remembered wrongly. But on the constrasts between the Twelfth Century Renaissance and the later Fifteenth to Sixteenth Century revival he has this to say:

"[W]hereas the Renaissance of the fifteenth century was concerned primarily with literature, that of the twelfth century was concerned even more with philosophy and science."
(Haskins, The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century (or via: amazon.co.uk), p. 278)

A.C. Crombie gives a table of scientific authors and works translated into Latin between 500 and 1300. It runs over 10 pages ( pp. 37-47) and, taken with the fact that Haskins only devotes one chapter of his book to literature rather than science and philosophy, that would appear to bear out Haskins' assertion.

But I don't know of a similar list for the Renaissance of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries to compare this to. Haskins is not a scholar who makes statements like the one quoted above lightly, however.

James Hannam

Apsu,

Thanks for reading the chapter. My summary is necessarily brief because I am writing a history of medieval science, not a history of attitudes towards medeival science. I don't agree there was a conspiracy of any sort, simply a convergence agendas that kept the story going. For a society to be radically misinformed is hardly rare and medieval science almost a trivial example compared to say, the nurture fallacy or opposition to free trade.

If you would like to follow up the disparagement of the Middle Ages, the last chapter of Edward Grant's God and Nature is a useful primer. JB Russell's Inventing the Flat Earth provides a case study, although a rather under-researched one. He doesn't seem aware that the flat earth myth goes back at least as far as the sixteenth century - Francis Bacon believed it, for instance.

Best wishes

James

Ray Moscow

This is a vast subject, but I'll make a comment based on a talk I had with a medieval history enthusiast and author yesterday and my skimming of his book.

Medicine made considerable strides forward during the classical period but took a huge step back (in the West) during the "Dark Ages". Eventually it climbed up a bit towards classical levels due to some hard-working and curious monks (some of whom translated Arabic works such as Ibn Sina's), but then the church forbade any ordained people from working on it in the 12 century, with a final clampdown in about 1300.

That's why barbers took up the trade -- learned people (meaning certain clergy) were not allowed.

Luckily, the other powerful class (the landed gentry and royalty) at least kept the barber-surgeon arts going, largely because they needed them to patch up their soldiers (and often themselves) during conflicts. And eventually this tradition began to develop into something better.

So, medicine-wise, the Dark Ages were pretty damn dark, and largely thanks to the church.

Ray

Lucretius

O/T to an extent
Just a comment about Leonardo's mirror writing I note that someone has claimed that he suffered from dyslexia as a reason for this.
I myself used to use mirror writing automatically when I first learned to write the reason for this is NOT that I am genius in Leonardo's class but simply that I am naturally left handed and by some means the words I saw on the blackboard when I copied them down were transposed to this mirror writing.
So there is probably no "code writing" or anything of that sort involved just a peculiarlity of the brains of (some) left handed people,Leonardo included as he was left handed .

I have mentioned this to other people I have come across who are left handed and it seems to be fairly common amongst us.
Incidentally since I broke all the fingers of my left hand shortly afterwards in an accident I had to re-learn how to write right handedly for which of course I blame my terrible hand writing

James Hannam

Hi Ray,

I fear your source is badly mis-informed. What is his name and what has he published?

Classical medicine is actually totally useless because it is based on a completely false theory. The only good thing about it was that prior to Galen, medics actually did relatively little. The herbal of Dioscorides was translated into Latin and folk medicine/magic was no more or less effective than the best the Greeks could offer.

Yes, the church forbade clerics from practicing as doctors. This was because medicine was a lucrative profession and the church wanted clerics to do their jobs instead of moonlighting. There is no evidence that this caused a shortage of doctors. Secular doctors did not want the competition anyway. The church also allowed human dissection for almost the first time in history from the 13th century, which the Romans and Arabs had strictly forbidden. In no sense did the church hold back medicine in the middle ages.

Barbers never became doctors. Doctors were extremely learned and went through a university course for up to seven years. The big medieval medical schools in Padua and Bologna attracted students from all over Europe. Paris also became quite well regarded but Montpellier was the main French school. Surgery, however, was considered a craft not a profession and this is what barbers got involved in. However, university courses for surgeons also existed and the top surgeons could become very rich.

I hope this helps clear up some of your confusion.

Best wishes

James

PS: I'm left handed and never wrote in reverse.

Read the first chapter of God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science FREE

Ray Moscow

Unfortunately I'm not very well read on the subject and can only look up tertiary sorts of sources on it.

I don't agree that classical medicine was "completely useless", despite its flawed theoretical base. Nor would I agree that the church "in no sense held back medicine", since they did then and often still do.

The author's name is Rory McCreadie. He has given talks at the Royal College of Surgeons in London, so I suppose he has had to substantiate his ideas to those who know something about the subject: http://www.rcseng.ac.uk/museums/learning.html

His book is entitled something like "The Barber Surgeon's Mate".

How well his ideas hold up with other (or more academic) historians, I have no idea.

Ray

James Hannam

Do you have any evidence for these assertions? Have you come across Bad Medicine: Doctors doing Harm since Hippocrates (or via: amazon.co.uk) by David Wooton? And, how is the church holding back medicine now? I suppose you mean the objections to stem cells being farmed from human foetuses, which appear to be completely unnecessary anyway.

He sounds like a lot of fun with his leech demonstrations! However, he appears more knowledgeable on the 16/17th century than the Middle Ages. I'd suggest reading a specialist rather than relying on third hand sources.

Best wishes

James