Reply #44: We've established that you make careless statements, indifferent to the actual history

[struggle4progress]

The medieval Christian world was not indifferent to new and useful ideas

... Biscop brought relics, paintings, and books back to his monasteries. He created a large library at Jarrow which made it one of the cultural centers of Northumbria. Bede had access to important ancient works ... The skill Bede displayed as a chronologist and his scrupulous attention to sources in this work are the basis for the innovations of the Ecclesiastical History. The History provides one of the few sources of information on early English history. It also established the use of the modern system of chronology, the annus domini. Prior to the Ecclesiastical History, there were several different systems of calculating dates, such as the four year Olympiad, the fifteen year Indiction, and the annus mundi, which all related to the Paschal cycle of 532 years. The correct reckoning of time was important for the Church, not only for determining when to recite the Divine Office each day, but for calculating the proper observance of the major festivals. The liturgical year centered around Easter, which was a "movable" festival. Unlike the Nativity, which was tied to the winter solstice, Easter had originated out of the Passover and was calculated according to the lunar year. The Julian calendar was based on the solar year; hence, the celebration of Easter fell on different days from year to year. Difficulties in calculating the correct dates for Easter had created conflicts between the Celtic and Roman churches in England. Bede was a strong advocate of Roman orthodoxy, and paid particular attention to this problem in his History. These difficulties with uniform calculations of time prompted Bede to use the annus domini as a method for relating simultaneous event, and events which occurred in different parts of the world. This was a monumental task, since "he had to take account in his various chronological calculations of several different eras of the world with different starting points, of Imperial regnal years from both the eastern and the western empire, of consular years, of Indictions which might begin variously on 1 September, 25 September, or 25 January ... and also of the regnal years of half a dozen Anglo-Saxon kings reigning contemporaneously but succeeding to their several kingdoms at different dates in a year which had no uniform beginning even within England itself." By recalculating all these various time tables and placing events within a single framework, Bede established modern chronology ... http://www.faculty.de.gcsu.edu/~dvess/ids/medieval/bede1.htm

... In the year 725 Bede (Latin name Beda Venerabilis) published a new extension of Dionysius’ Easter table to a great Easter cycle, which is periodic in its entirety and in which consequently not only the sequence of (Julian calendar) dates of Alexandrian paschal full moon but also the sequence of (Julian calendar) dates of Alexandrian Easter Sunday is periodic. Bede’s Easter cycle contains lunar cycles (of 19 years) as well as solar cycles (of 28 years), and therefore it has a period of 532 years ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beda_Venerabilis%27_Easter_cycle

... Soap came into widespread use in Europe during the ninth century. Techniques for producing it improved during the next two centuries, but the product remained soft, more like today's liquid soaps. By the 12th century hard soap came into use ... http://scholar.chem.nyu.edu/tekpages/soap.html

... The other kind of windmill is the vertical or post mill ... Here the sails are vertical, revolving around a horizontal axle. The other end of this axle is attached to a wooden gear which in turn is attached to gear on a separate vertical axle to which the millstone is attached. The gear ratio is set to provide a reasonable grinding speed in a typical wind .... the first surviving mention of one comes from Yorkshire in England in 1185 ... http://scholar.chem.nyu.edu/tekpages/windmills.html

... Magnetized needles used as direction pointers are attested to in the 8th century AD in China, and between 850 and 1050 they seem to have become common as navigational devices on ships ... Knowledge of the compass as a directional device came to Western Europe probably sometime in the 12th century ... The assumed path is by the overland Silk Road and not by sea on the "standard" trading route from China to India to Arab and Egyptian ports. This assumption is made because the Arabs seem to have learned of the compass from the Europeans. The first mention of the directional compass .. occurs in Alexander Neckam's De naturis rerum, probably written in Paris in 1190 ... http://scholar.chem.nyu.edu/tekpages/compass.html