General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: This message was self-deleted by its author [View all]RainDog
(28,784 posts)not Catholicism.
in fact, Christianity helped to perpetuate the "dark ages" because of its insistence on dogma and its involvement and investment in the political and financial structure of the middle ages. The Church was one of the biggest "slave holders" i.e. serfs, in western Europe.
yes, a few scribes did translate texts, but the texts themselves were only saved because they weren't destroyed by Christian zealots over hundreds and hundreds of years.
Most of the texts came to the west via Spanish Muslim Europe. Black and brown skinned people taught the west how to overcome its religious ignorance.
The migration of knowledge was across the Middle East, through Africa, to Spain, then Italy... and eventually to the rest of Europe.
Translators of ancient texts were most often Islamic or Jewish translators who were brought to Spain to work for Islamic leaders.
Islamic scholars and traders taught westerners how to make paper (learned from the Chinese via trade), how to do mathematics (first invented by Africans), how to practice hygiene, supplied them with medical knowledge and showed Christians an example of religious tolerance unknown in western Europe for centuries.
A 1221 decree from Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II declared all official documents written on paper were invalid because he thought it reflected Islamic culture - iow, the church leaders worked to suppress the spread of knowledge for centuries.
Islamic scholars questioned the Greek understanding of cosmology because keeping track of time was so important for their religion. Astronomy is indebted to Islamic scholars - whose work was translated and used by, for instance, Copernicus. Islamic scholars questioned Ptolemy's view of the earth as the center of the universe based upon their mathematical calculations.
With the invention of the printing press, combined with the distribution of knowledge that had been kept and expanded by Islamic civilization, the west was saved from itself.
The church, for the most part, didn't work to uncover lost texts - ones that may have had only one copy preserved - so they weren't exactly devoted to translating or replicating those, tho, yes, the church did have the only copy of some texts that were kept hidden from western scholarship for centuries.
The people who brought these texts to the western world, more than anyone else, were booksellers and printers who wanted to earn a living and promote a new technology. Some of these texts were not allowed in western universities - but because they were "forbidden," they were even more interesting... same as it ever was.
even after the invention of the printing press, Christians insisted on burning texts created by Islamic scholars in Spain as Christians retook that area.