Text 25837, 97 rader
Skriven 2006-12-16 20:40:46 av Mimi Gallandt (1:123/789.0)
  Kommentar till text 25836 av John Hull (1:123/789.0)
Ärende: Muslems
===============
John Hull -> Mimi Gallandt wrote:
 JH> Mimi Gallandt -> John Hull wrote:
 MG>> John Hull -> VERN HUMPHREY wrote:
 JH>>> VERN HUMPHREY -> JOHN HULL wrote:

 MG>> (some snippage)

 JH>>>>> And, since books were so labor intensive, only the Church and
 MG>> royalty
 VH>>>> had
 JH>>>>> access to them.  That left the common folk uneducated and
 JH>>> illiterate for
 JH>>>>> hundreds of years until the first printing presses made
 MG>> replicating a
 VH>>>> book
 JH>>>>> cheap.  The Church kept them that way.  It was a far cry from the
 VH>>>> Roman empi
 JH>>>>> when most Romans were able to read, even many of the slaves.

 VH>>>> John, the common folk had ALWAYS been uneducated and illiterate.
 JH>>> Making
 VH>>>> a book was a whole year's work for a highly-trained man -- and poor
 VH>>>> people had NEVER been able to afford them.

 VH>>>> The vast majority of Roman Citizens under the Republica were not
 JH>>> classed
 VH>>>> ("Capitae censae") -- they couldn't afford to buy swords and
 JH> shields.
 VH>>>> And there were no public schools.

 VH>>>> After the "fall" of the Roman Empire, the Church christianized the
 VH>>>> barbarians, restrained their barbaric tendencies, and brought
 MG>> learning
 VH>>>> back to the world.

 JH>>> Sure thing, Vern.  I guess that's why the French king gave the pagan
 JH>>> Northmen land in Normandy (that's how they became 'Normans')
 MG>> because it
 JH>>> was easier to stop their pillaging of monasteries and seacoast
 MG>> towns by
 JH>>> giving them land than fighting them.  And I guess that's why
 MG>> William, no
 JH>>> friend of the church (to be sure, he allied himself for political
 JH>>> reasons, not religious ones), invaded England and did his best to
 JH> wipe
 JH>>> out Saxon nobility and centers of learning, all with the approval
 MG>> of the
 JH>>> Church.

 JH>>> As for bringing back learning, what a joke!  Only royalty and
 MG>> churchmen
 JH>>> got any formal education, peasants got spit.  Women at all levels
 JH> were
 JH>>> locked out of the system.  Early scientists were hounded, persecuted,
 JH>>> and even executed for heresy for trying to advance the knowledge
 JH> base,
 JH>>> all with the approval and participation of the church.

 JH>>> I won't even go into the Crusades.  You forget I have no axe to grind
 JH>>> here.  It took Europe nearly a thousand years to get back to the
 JH> level
 JH>>> of civilization, in general, that the Romans enjoyed, and most of
 JH> that
 JH>>> was because of intransigence of the clergy in Rome.

 MG>> IIRC someone told me that Muslims saved many texts, too and how much
 MG>> more learning would there have been earlier if the library at
 JH> Alexandria
 MG>> hadn't burned?


 JH> Correct, although the great library in Alexandria was gone before the
 JH> Papacy was established, so I wouldn't lay that on them.  But bits and
 JH> pieces of things were saved by monks and clerics and the nobility
 JH> despite efforts to destroy most of it that didn't line up with church
 JH> "doctrine" over the centuries.

 JH> The history of the papacy itself reads more like a political history
 JH> than a religious one.  Most of the Popes, until fairly modern times,
 JH> were religious in name only.  Murder, corruption, vice, invasions,
 JH> theft; you name the crime, and one or more of the Popes is guilty of it
 JH> at some point in that history.

The two Borgia popes come to mind  :)

-- 
L'Chaim

Mimi

In the beginning
the Word already was.

mimigalATcoxDOTnet

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