Re: 2012 Elections Part I: All Politics is Yokel
Medieval society changed significantly in the 15th/16th century from a scientific standpoint. Prior to that, nobody really thought too much about politics, medicine, astronomy, theater, history, etc. It was forbidden, not even considered or at least not a priority. But changes were highly correlated with the discovery of all the Greek work that was rediscovered via the Moors. Suddenly every single scientific and artistic discipline touched on by the Greeks was all the rage. Was it a total coincidence? I happen to think not.
Look, this is not a knock on you, because what you wrote is chapter and verse of "history" as taught in high school and intro college survey classes, but this is nonsense.
Every statement in your paragraph is drawn from the simplistic and self-congratulatory narrative constructed after the fact by anti-Catholic historians looking to stick one in the Pope's eye. Politics, medicine, astronomy, theater, history, and every other form of intellectual life was alive and well in the west from the 11th century onwards, and reached fantastic heights both in public and private life centuries before the so-called "Renaissance." In certain ways the Renaissance was actually a big step if not backwards then at least sideways, because for decades there was a slavish repetition of the (usually fragmentary, badly translated, and misunderstood) words of the Ancients that was every bit as stifling as Scriptural Adherence (which itself was far less oppressive than Victoriana depicts). The "science vs faith" dichotomy is the anachronistic imposition of a VERY modern outlook backwards against a period which knew no such distinction, and every significant scientific and cultural figure up until about 1750 would have considered it an absurdity. It's cartoon history -- it isn't real.
I'd say my religious faith is about a 1 on a 10-point scale, but bad history is still bad history. Like I said, nothing against you -- most curricula are incredibly lacking on this topic. But having read about ten thousand pages on Medieval history I can assure you there is nothing of truth either explicitly or by implication in what you've written -- you are perpetuating a mythology that all scholars have rejected for a hundred years.
If you want to read a fantastic overview of this, I recommend "Inventing the Middle Ages" by Norman Cantor. It's really a work of historiography, but it will give you a lot of information on the historians who have been working since the late 19th century to discover what was really going on in Medieval thought. It actually got me so interested that I went and read those ten thousand pages.
