History for Atheists on the Non Sequitur Show 3 – The So-called “Dark Ages”
Yesterday Steve McRae and Kyle Curtis of the Non Sequitur Show were kind enough to have me back on, this time to discuss the myths around the medieval period as a “dark age” where Christianity suppressed Greco-Roman knowledge, crushed science, stifled technology, burned witches, banned baths and killed cats.
The No-So-Dark Ages – Part 1
The Not-So-Dark Ages – Part 2
50 thoughts on “History for Atheists on the Non Sequitur Show 3 – The So-called “Dark Ages””
Awesome discussion. You really need to do a full article on the progress of science and technology that was made during the Middle Ages, if not an entire series.
There will articles in my “Great Myths” series on medieval science and technology and probably on the myths of the Medieval Church as a “theocracy” and a couple of other points I covered more briefly on this show.
Great, because in your overall excellent article on the clowns Harris and Shapiro I think your claim on mediëval physics (for instance Buridan) was too grandiose. I let it go because it was irrelevant for your overall point. And I think I can show it by explaining some high school physics.
I don’t believe I made any particular claim about Buridan’s physics, so I don’t know what you’re objecting to here.
I didn’t catch a mention of Buridan, but Christopher Graney, author of the great book “Setting Aside All Authority: Giovanni Battista Riccioli and the Science against Copernicus in the Age of Galileo” (2016), also wrote a paper “Mass, Speed, Direction: John Buridan’s 14th century concept of momentum”, The Physics Teacher 51(7): 411–414, October 2013 | doi:10.1119/1.4820853.
What’s your opinion on this article so it deals with medieval technology https://bedejournal.blogspot.com/2011/02/richard-carrier-and-domesday-watermills.html?m=1
That’s James Hannam’s old blog. He’s the author of God’s Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science (2019) and a very sensible historian of science and technology.
Have you read the book The Genesis of science it’s really good
It’s the same book. That’s just the title given by its American publishers.
I was about to ask when your next appearance was gonna be. As predicted, Carrier’s uncultured followers asked where he was for “refutation” and labeled you the “atheist apologist for Christianity guy”
Unfortunately there is no cure for stupid.
Crusader Tim II: Legacy Of Rome
Yet another great appearance.
Hey, l heard you might be on Emperor Atheist’ channel soon? I know of others you might like to be a guest on:
Stefan Molyneux
Godless Cranium’s “Heathen Hour”
Shannon Q
Friended Forever
Atheist Edge
Aron Ra’s “Ra Men”
Seth Andrew’s “Thinking Atheist”
“Stefan Molyneux”?
You’ve got be joking me! Why would anyone not a crank want anything to do with that clown?
Let me guess, he said something you didn’t like?
Stefan Molyneux over the years has said MANY things that are flat-out false and ridiculous. Whether I liked it or not isn’t really the point.
Now I think about it more: Most of what he says is flat out false and ridiculous.
LOL at how you imagine that this guy who blogs here would have anything to do with hm…
In all fairness, you described Aron Ra when he talks about history and religion. However, l think Tim could use the recognition that Carrier unjustly gets — also seeing as the latter is getting more desperate and having people promote him as much as he can.
I doubt that Stefan Molyneux is any good platform for getting recognition. His audience are alt-right conspiracy cranks. It makes about as such sense as platforming yourself from that “Infowars with Alex Jones” nonsense.
Sorry for any derailing of the topic.
I think we can safely say that hooting winged monkeys will fly out of my arse before I go on Stefan Molyneux’s show.
The others might be good, no?
Now I really want to see you on Molyneux’ show. I love hooting monkeys, but flying ones? That really would be something.
As I wrote a few times on a Dutch blog on Antiquity (if you can read Dutch I can recommend it: google Mainzer Beobachter) I can think of only one neutral and useful definition of Dark Ages: an in-between period about which we don’t have written sources. Three typical examples are
1. Greece between Homerus and Thales, say from 800 until 550 BCE;
2. The Low Lands (what’s now Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg and some parts of Germany) from 350 until 500 CE;
3. Britain from 400 until 550 CE. There is the famous letter to Aetius of course, but it’s hardly informative.
On that Dutch blog several more examples were given which I alas have forgotten.
Only thing you can call really a dark age would be the bronze age collapse where the entire civilizations around Mesopotamia collapsed and there was no written records from the period https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uM6JSS3l-IQ
“If you don’t build an aqueduct for a few hundred years people forget how to build aqueducts”
It’s worth noting that this never actually happened, at least on a general European level. While the history of aqueduct construction in medieval Europe is hard to track, and certain regions large and small might not have retained the local expertise needed to build and maintain them, they continued to be used, built, and repaired throughout early medieval Italy and Byzantine Rome at the very least, and the technology, if it had ever contracted in use, had again spread throughout the continent by the 13th century.
There hasn’t yet been much scholarly work on the subject, but the evidence supporting such a narrative includes:
– Constantine V’s monumental renovation of Valens’ aqueduct in the mid 8th century, which had been cut by the Avars a century earlier (smaller scale repairs would also be undertaken by Basil II, Romanos III, and Manuel I)
– the aqueduct of Salerno, in southern Italy, built in the 9th century
– the aqueduct of the Ivorn monastery, mount Athos, built in the 10th
– the existence of an entire medieval Roman bureau dedicated to aqueduct construction and maintenance headed by a “Logothete of the Waters”, mentioned in Attaleiates’ 11th century History
– the appearance of an aqueduct in the Eadwine Psalter, illuminated in England circa 1200~
– the 13th century aqueduct of Sulmona, southern Italy, and
– the 14th century aqueduct of Segorbe, Catalonia, among many others
Thanks for the detailed examples. Perhaps that wasn’t the best example to choose off the cuff, since I was aware that many aqueducts continued to be maintained and was even dimly aware, now you mention it, that some new ones were built in the early Middle Ages. I think the example of the use of maritime concrete or the building of major domes (in the west, obviously) were better examples to use for what I was saying.
True, although I think the dome of the Palatine Chapel in Aachen could *perhaps* fit the definition of a “major dome”, even if not anywhere near the level of the Pantheon, Rotunda of Galerius, or Hagia Sophia.
Yes, I was thinking of Aachen when I mentioned “major domes”. I don’t think it really counts.
That’s fair – the lack of anything larger means we can’t really say with certainty that the Carolingians could have constructed a dome on a legitimately monumental scale by classical standards, at least without importing Roman engineers (as the Venetians did a couple centuries later), though to be fair to the medievals such domes as mentioned above were truly exceptional even in antiquity.
And by the time things recovered in western Europe they were more into spires anyway.
The Non Sequitur Show guys were promoting Mythcon during the intro (might as well endorse a flat-earther convention). I’m surprised you didn’t say anything
One of the things I like about those guys is that talk to a wide range of people and keep lines of communication open rather than rejecting anyone who doesn’t toe some rigid party line. So they keep having me back on despite the fact a (small) minority of their listeners hate me. And they talk to Carrier and the Mythcon people despite the fact they don’t find Mythicism convincing. Besides, it’s their show and I was a guest, so I’m not going to tell them what they should and shouldn’t promote – that would be a bit obnoxious.
‘banned baths’ – funny lol.
There are two issues here. First, was there a Dark Ages, or is the whole idea a historical myth? The brief answer, yes, there were Dark Ages. The revisionist thesis there wasn’t is largely the product as near as I can tell of libertarians, anarchists, lovers of medieval Christianity, etc. pursuing an agenda.
The other issue is whether Christianity caused the Dark Ages, as opposed to being the social product of social decay and collapse. The thing is, I’m not altogether sure who maintains this. Christian scribes disdained ancient learning. This is a fact. If you are trying to argue otherwise, you’re wrong.
I made it perfectly clear that there was a period we could call a “dark age”. But that it was caused by the collapse of the Western Roman economy and politcal structure and it did not last for “one thousand years”. Europe had recovered economically by the eleventh century and went through a boom time in the centuries that followed, with attendant advances in technology and learning.
See above. The Church was at its weakest and least influential in the actual “dark age” of the Early Medieval Period. And it was at its strongest and most influential at the end of the Medieval Period when we see the great advances in the economy, trade, technology, science and learning. So clearly it was not the problem. Did you actually bother to watch the video you’re commenting on? I make all this pretty clear.
It’s not “fact”, it’s garbage. They regarded it as “the Gold of the Egyptians” and taught it was given to them by God and so should be preserved and used. And if you can read any “ancient learning” at all you have a long succession of Christian scribes to thank for the privilage. We have nothing more than a few fragments apart from what was preserved by Christian scholars precisely because they did NOT “disdain ancient learning”. You are dead wrong. You’ve come to the wrong place to parrot that nonsense pal.
The notion that “Europe” had recovered economically by the eleventh century uses a rather bizarre standard which ignores gross population, agricultural production, urbanization. By many indices Europe did not reach Roman imperial levels of civilization till centuries after the Middle Ages.
The role of churchmen in royal courts was enormous in the early Middle Ages. I have no idea how you manage to think Leo negotiating with Attila was some sort of fluke that disappeared with the shreds of the Roman Empire. And I’m not quite sure whether your judgment on power is sound. If Innocent III couldn’t direct the Fourth Crusade away from Constantinople, was even he quite so powerful as you suggest. Worse, any surreptitious borrowing of Renaissance achievements to the medieval church can’t be the product of church power, given the Avignon captivity or the conciliar movement.
Now I not only do not know the historians who have been blaming the Dark Ages on Christianity, now I do not know which historians have been saying the Dark Ages lasted a thousand years. I think Mark Twain was apt to dismiss the Middle Ages.
When there are so many copies of Plato’s Timaeus against one copy of Lucretius; when the dialogues of Aristotle disappeared; when most biographies of Alexander himself were of less interest than the Alexander Romance; when even plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides are missing; when Tacitus is incomplete…Your only defense is to implicitly require that “disdain” means complete and adamant refusal to copy any, any non-Christian authors at all. That’s garbage.
I didn’t say that they had reached Roman levels on all measures. My point was that the period of population decline, minimal long distance trade and economic contraction had begun to reverse. And on some measures they reached and then exceeded Roman levels in the later medieval centuries that followed. The point is that the “1000 year dark age” so beloved by New Atheist ranters has not been accepted by actual historians for over a century.
Of course it was. My point is that they were always entangled in and usually subordinate to a secular power structure and were not the “theocracy” of New Atheist fantasy. As I explained, most of the medieval period was a long struggle by the Church to try to free itself from secular domination.
Thanks for proving my point. He was one of the most powerful medieval pontiffs and yet he clearly was no all-powerful theocrat.
What? “Borrowing of Renaissance achievements to the medieval church”? What the hell are you talking about?
Again – that’s exactly my point. HISTORIANS haven’t. Yet New Atheist polemicists and other popular commentators do.
There was not just “one [medieval] copy of Lucretius”. You just don’t know what you’re talking about.
The works of Aristotle didn’t all “disappear”. In the west the ones that had been translated into Latin were preserved and revered and as soon as they got the opportunity they sought out and translated the rest. And in the East Christians kept right on studying and copying them, which is how the Muslims got them and passed them to the West. Again, you seem to have no clue about what happened. And the lost early dialogues of Aristotle were on politics. Why would the Church somehow have a problem with political treatises yet preserve his works of metaphysics that, in places, directly contradicted Christian doctrine? You’re really clutching at straws.
See above about what was available in LATIN. The decline in Greek literacy in the West pre-dated Christianity and had nothing to do with it.
Yet the plays of Terence and Plautus were popular. Gosh – it’s almost as though one lot was in LATIN and the other in GREEK? Could there be a pattern here … ?
The Tacitus you can read thanks to … those wicked monks. And plenty of Christian works are also “incomplete” or even lost. Could it be that manuscript transmission of anything is a tenuous business? You need to think.
Chuckle. After your cluster of confused gibberish above, I don’t think anyone here is going to trust your knowledge or judgement on anything much. For people who held these works in such “disdain” they sure spent a lot of time copying, studying and preserving them. Go educate yourself better.
LOL everyone should listen to Steven T Johnson, he knows everything. What could experts know over him….
He’s come to the wrong place to play patronizing dickhead
As long as you don’t make clear what you mean with “Dark Ages” your questions are meaningless. The only sensible answer then is that it may tell us more about your prejudices than about the time period we’re talking about. Your second question suggests that that might be the case, because it implies that you mean more with Dark Ages than just a time period.
The only sensible definition of Dark Ages I know of is an interim period about which no written sources are available. The typical example is Britain from 400 CE until 550 CE. Given that many christians before and after this time interval it would be utterly stupid to say that christianity caused them. The same for the Dark Ages in Greece between Homeros and Thales of Milete.
“Christian scribes disdained ancient learning.”
Many did. Many did not. Who else copied the manuscript for all those centuries if not christian scribes?
The role of patronizing dickhead belongs to the host. The massive loss of ancient literature in Greek was due to the disinterest of Christians in the east. (This may have been overlooked on prejudices against eastern orthodoxy as not really “Christian.”) It is deceptive to switch to only Latin. It is doubly deceptive to forget how much of the Latin literature from the ancients was via Arabic. It is triply deceptive to pretend that losses of Christian literature was due solely to the vicissitudes of copying instead of censorship.
Ironically, there is actually a possibly valid defense of the monk scribes against disdaining the non-Christian literature, which is simply: The Dark Ages were a time of depopulation and economic impoverishment and while monks may indeed have wished to copy other kinds of literature, it wasn’t possible to do all they wished. Of course this isn’t available to someone who disdains the idea of Dark Ages.
This man feels free to spew garbage in defense of a historical Jesus the preacher and prophet. The sad fact we can’t know what the supposed preaching and prophecy was means this guy is still repeating Sunday School Jesus, just one from a so-called liberal church that is embarrassed to openly tout the supernatural. His preacher and prophet is fictional. Somewhere along the line, somebody made up his fictional Jesus. Why not early, when it was easier to get away with?
Insofar as he has any claim to sanity it’s the determination the only possible meaning to Brother of the Lord is a literal fraternal relationship. Real world experience with religious titles shows these are very political, and not necessarily literal. The insistence this isn’t possible displays a lack of historical judgment.
Even more suggestive of outright deficiency is the failure to note that James as hereditary leader of the early church flatly contradicts every notion of historical Jesus the website wants to defend.
Oh dear …
Yet a few lines later this guy “informs” us that the Latin West got their recovered Greek learning via the Arabs. But where does he think the Arabs got it? (Hint – it was from people in the east who were neither Muslims nor “disinterested”)
*polite cough* See above. While the scholars of the Latin West not only eagerly embraced the lost learning they found in Arab translation (odd, given that they were meant to hate and despise this stuff), but they also quickly worked out that getting it directly from their Byzantine Christian cousins meant the could translate directly from the Greek (odd, given that these eastern cousins are meant to have censored and destroyed it all). This guy really doesn’t have a clue.
I love the way he seems to think that by simply making these bold assertions he’s somehow making an argument. Again, as my analysis of Photios’ Bibliotheca shows, Christian texts were just as likely not to survive as pagan ones. And for people who were supposedly “censoring” this stuff, these people sure did spend a hell of a lot of time travelling vast distances to seek it out, learning difficult languages to translate it and then spending many hours painstakingly translating and copying it. Gosh, it’s almost as though they were trying to preserve it, not destroy it …
Luckily for me I fully acknowledge the collapse of learning and the chaos that followed the fall of the Western Empire and note how this accelerated the already steady decline of learning in the west. That is what caused the loss of these works, not “censorship”. And that is why, once this chaos receded and things stabilised, these CHristian scholars went far and wide in search of the works that had been lost. None of which fits with this weird “censorship” idea.
For “spew garbage” read “present mainstream non-Christian consensus scholarship”.
If this guy went to a Sunday School that said Jesus was a non-divine, Jewish apocalyptic preacher who presented an image of imminent cosmic cataclysm and was wrong, then this must have been a very strange Sunday School.
If this guy was going to be hanging around here I could ask him to explain the elusive logic behind this odd claim. But then we did have this:
So now I’m insane, according to Mr. Ranter. Okay pal – you’re blocked. Goodbye.
Very interesting.
I guess even the very early medieval period is more complex than simply “dark and chaotic”.
AFAIK, while places like the former province of Britannia and (large parts of) the Galliae did indeed experience a period of chaos, other places, like the Italian and the Iberian Peninsulas didn’t really in the same way.
What Odoacer did in 476 was more of a coup d’etat than some dramatic invasion. Large parts of the Roman state apparatus remained intact.
Furthermore both he and his Ostrogothic successor, Theodoric, had great respect for Roman civilization. Theodoric repaired many aqueducts and other buildings and built some new ones. If anything the dark ages in Italy probably first began after Justinian decided to restore the old united Roman Empire and started a war with the Ostrogothic Kingdom, in which it seems both sides pillaged a lot and used scorched earth tactics (and generally behaved rather cruelly). And even then I don’t know how “dark and chaotic” it really was.
The Iberian Peninsula, while probably going through a chaotic time in the 5th century, pretty soon got a stable rule in the form of the Visigothic Kingdom. Generally it seems the Germanic peoples far from being some barbaric haters of civilization actually were fascinated by the Roman Empire and wanted to emulate it.
Isidore of Sevilla, who created an encyclopedia over classical knowledge (Etymologiae) lived in the Visigothic Kingdom.
The agricultural developments you mentioned were probably a result of another important change that came with the start of the medieval period; the transition from slave system to feudal system. With “feudal system” I here don’t mean the relations between kings and local rulers, but the relations between peasants and various feudal lords.
Generally slave societies suffer from slow technological developments, because 1 the slave owners are often like “meh, I have a lot of slaves, I don’t need new technologies” (like you mentioned) and 2 the slaves don’t care about raising the productivity since it (probably) won’t change anything for them.
The Roman slave system furthermore ruined a lot of free peasants.
Already under the Roman Empire many realized this problem, and introduced the colonus system, in which both landless (and other poor) peasants and slaves could get a piece of land they could use, and in return pay a rent to the large landowner. Through time it spread more and more, and the difference between slave and “free” colonus disappeared, with them becoming bound to the land (basically enserfment).
The invasions together with rebellions like the Bagaudae (chronic Fourth Servile War?) completely destroyed the old Roman slave system. I guess the Germanic system with the free communal peasants further strengthened the peasantry, even when they were (re)enserfed. AFAIK the medieval serfs were basically guaranteed their piece of land.
Serfs, having their own piece of land, are more interested in breeding better cereals and animals, and inventing better and new technologies and methods.
Again the big problem is defining “Dark”. Period of chaos, you say? Then the First Century BCE was the Darkest one in the history of Rome, with the Republic collapsing and all kinds of parties involved in civil wars that lasted for decennia. The entire history of Greek Antiquity was Dark, because all those city states fought endless wars with continuously shifting loyalties. The Third Century of the Roman Empire will also be pretty high on the list.
Chaos is only a part of it, though that usually leads to the other things (cultural, scientific, and economic stagnation or even collapse).
Wrt. Ancient Greece, well not all city states were full of philosophers, playwriters, mathematicians, etc. A large part of the science, philosophy and culture of Ancient Greece was made in Athens after the Persian Wars and before its fall in the Peloponnesian War.
In that era Athens did indeed experience a time of peace. Sure they sent troops to fight, but not so many that it strained the finances or depleted the manpower. The Plague of Athens and the Peloponnesian War of course had a negative influence on the development, but it seems even then the Golden Age of Athens continued. Another factor was the fact that Athens exploited the other city states in the Delian League which financed that Golden Age.
While there indeed were a lot of large civil wars in the 1. century BCE Roman Republic, it doesn’t seem it led to a complete disruption of the cultural, philosophical-scientific and economic life of the country.
Also it seems between 71 BCE and 49 BCE there was generally peace and again from 30 BCE (although there were local revolts here and there).
I guess the Crisis of the Third Century could be seen as a dark age.
You still haven’t made clear what exactly you mean with “dark”. If chaos is only part of it you need to tell what’s more to it. Without doing so the risk of ad hoc arguments becomes higher the more examples you discuss.
For instance I guess that Europe from 1912 till 1948 also went through a dark age. Chaos, economic crises, political crises, wars, destruction, you name it – it’s all there. Or large chunks of Europe from 1618 till 1648. Or The Dutch Republic in 1672 and 1673. Or Europe from 1348 till 1400 or later. Etc. etc. Just a few guesses. I don’t see why these would be worse than yours.
I started dipping my toe into the origins of Christianity and its early history two months ago. As far as I can tell, you and Bart Ehrman are consistently giving reliable historical accounts.
Thanks for saving me time re Richard Carrier. You have convincingly shown the guy is a crank.
Tim,
I’ve read a large part of your website, and I want to thank you.
I studied had medieval studies as my focus as a humanities undergrad at Providence College, where I studied with actual Dominicans; and even with all that reading I’ve done, you’ve taught me quite a few things here that I didn’t know. You are the first contemporary evangelical atheist I’ve read that’s at all interesting, from whom I’ve learned anything substantial. Your dispassion and intelligence are impressive, and all too rare.
So thanks. This site is terrific.
I just watched both the videos here, and they’re very good. I noticed a few errors though, that I thought you might want to correct in future material..
In the first part:
1.) Gibbon asserted that Christianity undermined the empire. He is the source of that idea. I know you know this, I just thought it odd you didn’t mention him, and comment on his histiography, he is one of the great inspirations of the “Black Legend” after all, who for all his strengths is still one of sources of a lot of this bad atheist history.
2.) I know as an aetheist theology probably doesn’t interest you that much. But Arianism isn’t a abstruse “technical dispute about the nature of the Trinity,” it is an essential the denial of the Trinity in that Arius taught that Christ was not God, but rather the first creature and neither coeternal nor consubstantial “of the same substance” or “one in being with” the Father. It is a denial of Christ’s divinty. It is the complete negation of orthodox Nicean Christianity. Not a minor point at all.
3.) It was the 4th not the 3rd Lateran Council that was held in 1215. And more importantly, you’re wrong about the command to go to mass yearly.
That council didn’t say that Christians had to go mass once a year, it said that they had *to recieve the Eucharist once a year.* That’s not at all the same thing. Everyone was expected to go to mass every Sunday without exception. But in many places people rarely recieved at mass because the Eucharistic piety was so high that they rarely considered themselves to properly disposed. So the Council commanded yearly confession and reception of the Eucharist as a precept, not to get them to come to Church, but to encourage them to recieve communion after their yearly confession to ensure they were in good conscience.
On the history of Eucharistic piety:
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06278a.htm
See a summary of the council’s canons here:
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06278a.htm
cf. Canon 21, “Omnis utriusque sexus” The summary here doesn’t mention the Eucharist, because it is understood that confession and recieving the eucharist are linked. You have to be properly confessed to recieve, in other words.
On the second part, there is nothing I found incorrect here, except that when you said that the Galileo affair was a suppresion of science, I was a bit suprised.
I’d reframe the entire affair as an academic conflict that had nothing really to do with religion, a part from the “quibble” that the academics persecuting happened to mostly be clerics who used the power of the Roman inquisition against him. That’s a significant quibble, one that seperates it from most other academic squabbles, but it isn’t the defining element of the story.
You’ve already noted on the site here somewhere else that the debate over Copernicus had little to do with scripture, but was really over the challenge to Ptolemaic and Aristotlean cosmology. Galileo was tried because he attacked the recieved Greek cosmology and physics, and did it in a way that antagonized powerful people, including the pope.
There are a few other things on the site that I noticed where I think you distort or misunderstand things, particularly where you treat scripture. I understand the relationship between the Hebrew and Greek bibles differently than you do, for example. But I’ll spare you a discourse on that.
I need to go back and re-read a few things here, and mine your bibliographies for further reading.
Thanks again for this great work. I really appreciate it.
Cheers,
Charles Curtis
Hello Charles,
I’m glad you’ve found my blog useful. Though I am not an “evangelical atheist”. I actually keep my atheism to myself most of the time and so am not evangelical about it at all. I don’t care if people believe in God or gods, so long as they aren’t being arseholes about it.
” But Arianism isn’t a abstruse “technical dispute about the nature of the Trinity,” it is an essential the denial of the Trinity”
I understand that, but to we unbelievers that is based on some theological hair-splitting and is, indeed, a “technical dispute about the nature of the Trinity”. Arians believed in A Trinity and also believed Jesus was divine. They just didn’t conceive of either of those things the way you do. Obviously you see the difference as vast. To us, however, it is not.
Yes, that was a slip of the tongue.
I understand that. The point remains that if they were mandating that for just once a year then clearly attendance at Mass was not as imagined by pious conceptions of the Middle Ages as some kind of “age of faith”. We can’t know how regularly people attended Mass without taking the Eucharist or what proportion of people did so, but I think we can agree that regular attendance was not the norm for most people.
I’m very much aware of what the Galileo affair was and wasn’t and the multiple mainly non-religious factors that triggered it. But regardless of its causes, the fact is that the Inquisition made a ruling that placed restrictions on a scientific idea for (partially) theological reasons. The key to understanding this is to grasp why it did so and what that tells us (and doesn’t tell us) about the relationship between religion and science in this period. But that they made a ruling that restricted science is simply a fact.
To read a book on medieval technology is this a good book The CLOCK and the CAMSHAFT by JOHN W. FARRELL
To read a book is this a good book The CLOCK and the CAMSHAFT by JOHN W. FARRELL