There is a trend to try and deny the Dark Ages ever existed; even to portray them as really lovely, light and wonderful ages of goodness and achievement. I’m exaggerating. But only a little. I’ve debunked this a lot. I have a whole category assigned to the subject. And I wrote a whole chapter on it, with scholarship and evidence cited, in Christianity Is Not Great. My book The Scientist in the Early Roman Empire also has a pertinent section on the myth (Chapter 5.10). But here I’m going to take on a recent iteration of the idea.
The McDaniel Case
I wrote a while ago about Spencer Alexander McDaniel’s often good website yet flawed article on the historical evidence for Jesus. And I there mentioned that like everyone (including me) she doesn’t always get things right. She can be a mixed bag even in the same article.
I mentioned in particular McDaniel’s piece debunking the Dark Ages, which has a lot of good material rightly debunking a lot of misconceptions about the Dark Ages. For instance, that wasn’t the era of mass witch hunts (the Inquisition, for example, was actually a much later phenomenon of a far more prosperous time) or of the kind of “armored knights” people usually imagine, and so on. And pretty much all educated persons knew the earth was a sphere, even in the Middle Ages.
But what we mean by the Dark Ages, an era of Western civilization between the 5th and 10th centuries, was also an age of decline and stagnation that did set us back a thousand years. McDaniel gets wrong many facts about the history of technology and science that mislead her into concluding otherwise. In this case her mistakes are mostly of inference rather than fact; but there are enough factual mistakes to warrant some correction as well.
For example, McDaniel argues that publicly seen depictions of the universe as a sphere indicate popular knowledge the earth was a sphere, but that’s incorrect: those spheres illustrate the entire cosmos, not the earth. The belief that a flat earth inhabited a spherical universe remained widespread—among the illiterate, who indeed also still thought such things as that lunar eclipses were caused by witch magic and not orbital shadows (see my references in Not the Impossible Faith, pp. 170 and 213 n. 13). But this was as true at the height of the Roman Empire as in the Dark Ages.
McDaniel is otherwise right that even in the Dark Ages flat-earthers among the educated were rare weirdos just as today. Even if then far more influential weirdos—the infamous flat-earther Lactantius tutored Constantine’s children and may even have been responsible for Constantine’s selection of Christianity as an imperial state religion (inexorably changing the future of humanity). But his flat-earthism never caught on, even as his textbook on education advocating it remained revered among Christian educators throughout the Medieval West (see my discussion in The Scientist in the Early Roman Empire, pp. 495-96; in context: pp. 489-96).
More serious a flaw though is McDaniel’s non sequitur that correcting all those mistaken views of the Dark Ages allows us to reject the conclusion that “we would be millennia ahead of where we are now technologically” (more accurately it would be one millennium ahead, but I’ll excuse her hyperbole) and that those ages “have not held us back collectively as a species.” None of her subsequent argument actually supports that conclusion. Actual evidence very clearly supports the contrary.
It’s all the worse when McDaniel violates her own warning not to confuse “later eras” with the Dark Ages…and then claims a bunch of inventions for the Dark Ages that were actually centuries later—or had already been invented centuries before! Like “the printing press.” Sorry. That’s the Renaissance. Also, the Chinese invented it centuries before. Likewise, “paper money.” Nope. Not in Europe until the 17th century. Wayyyy after the Middle Ages. Unless she means the Chinese—who, yep, invented paper money a thousand years earlier. And “eyeglasses,” though at least uniquely European this time, were invented in the “High” Middle Ages or early Renaissance, not the Dark Ages. Meanwhile, the “lateen sail” and “heavy plow” and “water mill” and “glass mirrors” were all in wide use in ancient Rome long before the Dark Ages (see Scientist, pp. 191, 204, 219, 229; likewise “waterwheel,” in the Index of Inventions, p. 627, referencing several pages documenting extensive and diverse industrial uses and applications of wheel-drive water-power).
Meanwhile, inventions like “the horse collar” and “sternpost-mounted rudder” are not as significant as claimed (ancient side-rudders and harness systems were basically just as good: Scientist, pp. 203-04). But also, that rudder? Invented in China a thousand years earlier; diffused from there to Arab ship design; and thence to Europe—after the Dark Ages. That’s multiple factual fails right there. And the horse collar? Again, China. Centuries before. But it at least reached Europe by the end of the Dark Ages, so it’s not wildly off. Just not that big a deal. (And both were cultural diffusion, not invention.)
The magnetic compass was also invented in China a thousand years before; and the dry compass around the same time as in Europe: 12th century. After the Dark Ages. Likewise windmills: not in Europe until the High Middle Ages or early Renaissance; and already invented by the Arabs and Chinese centuries before—and technically already by the Romans, where working wind-powered water pumps were already in use, documented by Hero of Alexandria; and indeed the European mill design is essentially a rip from that inventor’s pages, combined with already-ancient Western watermill designs.
The notion even that “there were just about as many major technological advancements made in western Europe during the Middle Ages as there were in classical Greece and Rome” is so wildly false it’s jaw dropping to see anyone still repeating it. But alas so many do. Indeed that myth is still so commonly repeated now that I devoted fifty pages to refuting it in Scientist, listing literally hundreds of ancient inventions (the index of them alone spans three whole pages, and isn’t even complete: pp. 625-27), vastly outpacing the Middle Ages even as a whole, but absolutely dwarfing the Dark Ages in particular—in fact demonstrating how shockingly little was invented in the Dark Ages (Scientist, pp. 190-240). Thus demonstrating precisely the problem with that era.
It’s telling that McDaniel buries a candid admission in her article that it’s “generally agreed among historians…that only the Early Middle Ages in western Europe (c. 475 – c. 800 AD)…can really be called a ‘Dark Age’.” Rather, that is literally only what anyone informed calls the Dark Ages. That’s what we all mean by the Dark Ages. “The Dark Ages didn’t exist except when they did” is not a very catchy headline I guess. Nevertheless, McDaniel correctly dispels a lot of mistaken beliefs among the less educated public as to which icons of the Middle Ages actually did and didn’t belong to the period actually called the Dark Ages. And as such, her article is quite useful. But the rest must be taken with a corrective.
Getting It Right
I’ve written before on why the Dark Ages are in fact aptly so-called, despite all the additional myths still believed about them. Even the original coiners of the term did not mean by it “total darkness” or anything the like. They meant a substantial and catastrophic decline in civilization over a five hundred year period (from which we did not fully recover for yet another five hundred years), during which vast amounts of knowledge and information were lost, and had to be rediscovered or reinvented in the early Renaissance; allowing us to finally pick up where the West had left off in the 4th century, by the middle of the Renaissance in the 15th century. Which is approximately one thousand years after that decline began—which beginning was not in the Dark Ages, but Late Antiquity. As nearly all scientific and technological progress ceased after the 3rd century A.D. and everything spiraled out for a century or two more until it all fell apart. The resulting collapse of civilization in the West spanned centuries after that, and is what we call the Dark Ages.
That collapse was much slower in the East, owing to its absurd wealth; so the Dark Ages does not refer there, as McDaniel rightly points out. People often forget the Eastern Roman Empire hung on a bit longer and did a bit better. But it still stagnated and continually declined as a civilization. It made no significant advances in science or technology for a thousand years, and then was finally overrun and extinguished by Muslim nations, never to exist again—Muslims who had centuries before adopted the same abandonment of science that doomed Christian lands in both the East and the West for a thousand years. But unlike the West, the Islamic world experienced no Renaissance with which to rescue itself. It remained in stunted ignorance. And thereby surrendered all future world dominance to Western Imperialism.
My chapter on “The Dark Ages” in Christianity Is Not Great lays out the facts and scholarship demonstrating how catastrophic that period was for the West and why it took so long to recover from. And why, consequently, it held us back. We lacked the wealth even barely to survive much less continue the advances that ancient civilization had been steadily building on; we lost vast amounts of human and intellectual and technological resources (see below). And Christianity as an ideology was wholly ill-equipped to fix or prevent this, as it was hostile to the very values necessary to the task: curiosity, empiricism, and commitment to progress. Which is why civilization stalled even in the Eastern, Byzantine Empire.
I first demonstrated this point in my chapter “Christianity Was Not Responsible for Modern Science” in The Christian Delusion. It was only the recovery of pagan ways of thinking, and some of their lost works, that brought us back to a real recovery—as in, a restoration of Western civilization to where it had left off: a scientifically and technologically inquisitive and progressive society with a potent base of accumulated knowledge and capabilities to build on. Had the abandonment of all that in the 4th and 5th centuries not occurred—had Roman civilization been allowed to continue thriving on the same intellectual and material basis as it ended the 2nd century with—we would be 1000 years more advanced today. But Late Antiquity and the Dark Ages combined into a total stall-out, experiencing almost nothing but decline, no significant advance.
Which is not to say Christianity caused that stall-out. It didn’t. It just guaranteed by its take-over of the Western mind that nothing that needed doing to reverse that downfall would be done for at least a thousand years. As I demonstrate in The Scientist in the Early Roman Empire (e.g. pp. 471-542), and with respect to education, in Science Education in the Early Roman Empire (e.g. pp. 137-66), Christian values were the opposite of scientific values, and kept humanity from returning to the latter for far too long. As to the catastrophies of the third century that actually started this downfall, which were not caused by Christianity but rather contributed to Christianity’s rise to dominance, see my discussion in Not the Impossible Faith (pp. 435-40).
For my previous takes on all this, addressing the technological and the scientific topics, and the bogus claims of modern Christian scholars, see my past articles, Ancient Industrial Machinery and Modern Christian Mythology and The Mythical Stillbirth of Science in Ancient Greece. These are necessary to see how the likes of McDaniel aren’t doing their homework, and are falling victim to the ignorance of Medievalists, who didn’t think to check their claims with Classicists down the hall.
The Decline Was Horrific
There is a great roundup of examples of this new trend at the Slate Star Codex, written up by Scott Alexander. A typical example is warehoused at the website Is Christianity True, that commits all the same follies as McDaniel, and more (note Slate Star has an expired link; I’ve linked to the latest version). Alexander then follows that list of examples with an excellent debunking not just of the modern myth of “there being no Dark Ages,” but of the rhetorical tactics and tricks of argument used to push the myth. I highly recommend reading it (not least for its excellent dry humor). She lists data that supplements mine. I’ve been using similar evidence in talks for years now.
Here’s a quick summary. From an actual expert, in his own peer reviewed study of the period:
[T]he post-Roman centuries saw a dramatic decline in economic sophistication and prosperity, with an impact on the whole of society, from agricultural production to high culture, and from peasants to kings. It is very likely that the population fell dramatically, and certain that the widespread diffusion of well-made goods ceased. Sophisticated cultural tools, like the use of writing, disappeared altogether in some regions, and became very restricted in all others.
…
It is currently deeply unfashionable to state that anything like a ‘crisis’ or a ‘decline’ occurred at the end of the Roman empire, let alone that a ‘civilization’ collapsed and a ‘dark age’ ensued. The new orthodoxy is that the Roman world, in both East and West, was slowly, and essentially painlessly, ‘transformed’ into a medieval form. However, there is an insuperable problem with this new view: it does not fit the mass of archaeological evidence now available, which shows a startling decline in western standards of living during the fifth to seventh centuries…[which] was no mere transformation, [but] a decline on a scale that can reasonably be described as ‘the end of a civilization’.
…
[T]here is a real danger for the present day in a vision of the past that explicitly sets out to eliminate all crisis and all decline [like this]. The end of the Roman West witnessed horrors and dislocation of a kind I sincerely hope never to have to live through; and it destroyed a complex civilization, throwing the inhabitants of the West back to a standard of living typical of prehistoric times.
Bryan Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization (Oxford University Press 2005), pp. 87, 183
Even the so-called Carolingian Renaissance was a mere blip in this record, a brief, isolated, relatively unimpressive attempt at a recovery—that failed. Society wouldn’t really start pulling out of this hole until around 1000 A.D. The very pit of the decline was reached in the 7th century, but it took over two more centuries to get back to the rim of that hole, and over four more to get back to where Western civilization had once attained. And even that march up the wall of the pit was relatively inglorious. Compared to the High Roman Empire, the Carolingian era was barbaric, below even the level of societal wealth, sophistication and achievement of Classical Greece, which the Romans at their height had long since surpassed, and which no civilization on earth would obtain again until the Renaissance.
Instead:
Archaeologists see very substantial simplifications in post-Roman material culture in the fifth to seventh centuries…which in some cases…is drastic; only a handful of Roman provinces [i.e. the Eastern (Byzantine) Empire] did not experience it. … [Even] the resources for political players lessened considerably, and the structures in which they acted simplified, often radically.
Chris Wickham, The Inheritance of Rome: A History of Europe from 400 to 1000 (Viking 2009), p. 9
As I wrote in Christianity Is Not Great, there surveying the scholarship and evidence:
The declines in trade and population were enormous, many cities falling into ruin, countless roads and bridges and aqueducts vanished or abandoned, access to literacy and education (and peace and justice) plummeted, and even where available, the Bible more typically replaced secular learning in math, history, philosophy, literature, law and science as objects of study and tools for organizing society, resulting in many a backward walk in the areas of human rights, morals, security, and welfare.
And as Peter Sarris documents in Empires of Faith: The Fall of Rome to the Rise of Islam, 500-700 (Oxford University Press 2011; pp. 75-76), in many regions this decline was so severe as to mark “a period of stark and rapid economic decline” that was “unprecedented in human history,” witnessing “massive economic and cultural dislocation and, in terms of material culture and economic complexity, a return to prehistoric levels.”
Every archaeological indicator documents this (just for some examples see my article on technology). Population dropped by at least a third, urbanization by half, trade and industry by over an order of magnitude. Manuscript production plummeted; the practice of writing of new books almost disappeared. Over 99% of all ancient books and discoveries were lost. Standards of inquiry and reportage fell to the level of quaint embarrassment. Even the East saw substantial losses and declines in all these same markers, if not to the same scale suffered in the West.
The Dark Ages sucked. Severely. And denying that is scandalous.
Conclusion
Yes, the Dark Ages happened. They occupied the period from the 5th to the 10th century. And they took five hundred more years to fully recover from, bringing Western civilization back by the 15th century to all the peak markers of accomplishment that it had achieved by the 2nd century. That’s a thousand years we were set back.
And yes, those ages were sufficiently dark in every measure to warrant the appellation. They dropped the Western world (and even, if less catastrophically, the Near Eastern world) to its lowest levels of decline by every measure not seen since before the rise of the Ancient Greeks who built up Western civilization on a foundation of democracy, technology, and science. The Dark Ages were an era we as human beings should look upon in shame, disappointment, and concern never to repeat what caused them or sustained them. They deserve the name. And only someone who would deny that can have any reason to avoid it.
Enter Rodney Stark, a typical example. He’s a Christian sociologist who often says completely false things about the history of science and Christianity’s relationship to it (he is one of the targets I debunk in my chapter on this in The Christian Delusion). He has this to say in his hopelessly unreliable book The Victory of Reason, subtitled “How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success” (pro tip: it didn’t):
For the past two or three centuries, every educated person has known that from the fall of Rome until about the fifteenth century Europe was submerged in the “Dark Ages”—centuries of ignorance, superstition, and misery—from which it was suddenly, almost miraculously rescued, first by the Renaissance and then by the Enlightenment. But it didn’t happen that way. Instead, during the so-called Dark Ages, European technology and science overtook and surpassed the rest of the world!
Literally every sentence of that paragraph is false. Except for “it didn’t happen that way,” but that accidentally obtains truth only by everything Stark saying around it being false!
- No relevantly educated person for the last three hundred years has regarded the Dark Ages as extending “to about the fifteenth century.” Indeed, the Renaissance began in Italy in the 1200s and spread to the rest of Europe by the 1400s, the fifteenth century. Which follows on the High (or Late) Middle Ages. The Dark Ages only mark the first half of the Middle Ages, the Low (or Early) Middle Ages. So right out of the gate, Stark is fabricating a straw man, and on that basis declaring the Dark Ages don’t exist, merely because some (?) less informed people confuse which period they denote.
- The Dark Ages were “centuries of ignorance, superstition, and misery.” As I just showed you their misery is extensively documented in the archaeological and historical record. As is their ignorance and superstition. Even scholars of the period, far scarcer than in former times, were significantly backward in their comprehension and access to knowledge compared to their peers at the height of the Roman Empire.
- The Renaissance took centuries to develop once society began its climb out of the Dark Ages around 1000 A.D. And it took centuries more for the Renaissance to evolve into The Enlightenment, which began in the 17th century. Altogether, from the end of the Dark Ages to the dawn of the Enlightenment, we find over 600 years. That is not “suddenly, almost miraculously.” It’s painfully, sloggishly, maddeningly slowly.
- In absolutely no sense whatever did European technology and science overtake and surpass the rest of the world “during the so-called Dark Ages.” Or even in the High Middle Ages. It only did so during the Renaissance and Enlightenment. Which we could have obtained one thousand years earlier, if the Dark Ages had not happened—if Christianity had brought a scientific spirit to Western civilization during an age of crisis instead of abandoning it. Which resulted in the Dark Ages causing a massive centuries-long decline in “European technology and science,” that we then had to take centuries yet more to crawl back out of—not a surpassing of prior glory; but a loss of nearly all of it.
It’s time to reject this new attempt to rewrite and whitewash history. Stand up to it. Not with false ideas about the Dark Ages, however, but correct ones. McDaniel’s article is worthwhile for learning what myths in the other direction to avoid. But her enthusiasm takes her too far. This present article, and the articles and resources it links to, aim to fill that gap. Between the two, you can crusade for what really happened in the Dark Ages.
Pun intended.
Is there a problem with when the Dark Ages occurred in The McDaniel Case, paragraph 3, line 1 vs. The McDaniel Case, last paragraph, lines 1-3 vs. Conclusion, paragraph 1, line 1?
I can’t figure out what you are referring to. Can you be more specific what you are asking?
“[W]e mean by the Dark Ages, an era of Western civilization between the 5th and 10th centuries” (The McDaniel Case, paragraph 3, line 1), “…the Dark Ages are in fact aptly so-called…They meant a substantial and catastrophic decline in civilization over a five hundred year period” (Getting It Right, paragraph 1, lines 1-3), and “…the Dark Ages happened. They occupied the period from the 5th to the 10th century” (Conclusion, paragraph 1, line 1) appear to assert something at variance with “It’s telling that McDaniel buries a candid admission in his article that it’s “generally agreed among historians…that only the Early Middle Ages in western Europe (c. 475 – c. 800 AD)…can really be called a ‘Dark Age’.” Rather, that is literally only what anyone informed calls the Dark Ages. That’s what we all mean by the Dark Ages.” (The McDaniel Case, last paragraph, lines 1-3). The first three citations seem to define ‘Dark Ages’ differently from the last citation. I know nothing about the Dark Ages, except what you tell me, but what exactly are you telling me: did the Dark Ages last c. 500 years or c. 325 years? I’m just trying to understand the term ‘Dark Ages.’
Different scholars peg them to different date ranges, and those who stop at 800 think the Carolingian Renaissance ended them. It didn’t. The actual archaeological markers show we didn’t get back to pre-400s levels until about 1000 A.D. Which is why I discuss the archaeology as the defining evidence. But at least those who ignore that admit the Dark Ages existed. So I’ll just roll my eyes at their dating it too narrowly. No need to argue the point of exactly when they ended unless there is some reason to.
any book recommendations as t whot caused the industrial revolution when it did – as opposed to in roman or egyptian times (how did they cut rock so laserly? Is this ‘lost knowledge’ theses?).
To my knowledge no one has covered that who actually studied the ancient evidence. I survey possible theories with respect to steam power in The Scientist in the Early Roman Empire, pp. 232-34. Technically the Romans did undergo an industrial revolution (they ushered in the world’s first age of automation under water power), it just wasn’t of the kind we mean (fossil fuels allowed a massive increase in EROI, “energy return on investment,” so we really mean that by “Industrial Revolution”). So the question is really about steam power.
Leading books on the subject (which don’t really examine the ancient evidence so are of limited value in their differential conjectures) include Stearns and Hobsbawm. But neither give any evidence for their own conjectures’ causal efficacy (they just throw a bunch of conjectured explanations at it and assume they must work) and both admit its a debated and unresolved question; so you might not find them useful.
Probably most useful for you is Allen, who comes closest to what I think is correct (but gets caught in overdeterminism: imagining too many things as causal, when really it was just one thing: steam power, that then activated all the others). But he also doesn’t develop his argument with comparing the ancient regime informedly.
Meanwhile, there is no “laser” precision in any neolithic cultures. That’s a myth based on a lack of knowledge of what known neolithic technologies can do. They just devoted a shit ton of labor to pound or grind to the clearances they wanted, using obvious techniques like shelf grinding (grinding two stones side by side with the same instrument and motion, which makes them of exactly the same dimension). Which were not at laser-levels of precision, but metal-edge levels of precision.
“Aliens did it” is a step up from “God did it”, “Super Civilisations did it” is a step up from “Aliens did it”. The crank lessens but it is still crank. I point people to Baalbek and its associated quarry. You can hardly propose super-tech in Roman Syria. How the Romans lifted and moved seven hundred ton blocks might be unknown but move and lift them they did. We have the evidence.
Since Roman civilisation wasn’t 99% otherwise a super-civilisation using super-tech, it is orders more probable the tech used was not outside the possible for the period but possibly different to what is presently known.
For example, archaeologists recovered a chariot from a first century Brigantian site in Yorkshire; it’s supension proved to be implemented in an upside down fashion to how it was expected to be implimented. A previously unknown technology; but not an impossible technology for the time-frame.
u furget the astronaut relief/heiroglif and the cellfone.
And, ‘v cors, the Baghdad Battery.
That’s all bogus. Except the battery, which is conjectural, and not Western, so not relevant.
“But Late Antiquity and the Dark Ages combined into a total stall-out, experiencing almost nothing but decline, no significant advance.
Which is not to say Christianity caused that stall-out. It didn’t.”
Is that true? Christianity didn’t bring down the Roman empire all by itself, but it did contribute or at least play a role in the decline of the empire and, by extension, the coming of the Dark Ages. From A.H.M. Jones (1964):
Christianity not only weakened the empire economically, but by depriving it of its most virtuous citizens, it weakened the empire politically.
From A.H.M Jones again:
Other historians, notably the Italian Arnaldo Momigliano, say that the Christian church weakened the empire by depriving it of its most talented men, not only its most virtuous.
A.H.M. Jones disagrees with Gibbon that Christianity led to the downfall of the Roman empire; rather, his view is more sophisticated. Christianity was one of a number of internal weaknesses, that economically, administratively and politically weakened the empire. Jones says that “the internal weaknesses which it [the Western Roman Empire] developed undoubtedly contributed to its final collapse in the fifth century.” Although Christianity contributed to the decline of Rome, Jones says that the main cause was barbarian invasion.
We need to stop exonerating the Christian church of the downfall of the Rome empire and the coming of the Dark Ages. It contributed to the “stall-out” as you call it, but maybe not as much as other factors.
That’s what I mean by “It just guaranteed by its take-over of the Western mind that nothing that needed doing to reverse that downfall would be done for at least a thousand years.” The collapse began in the third century (see the reference I gave), owing to factors Christianity had nothing to do with. Rather, Christianity lacked the values or tools to stop or reverse the decline that resulted, directing resources and attention to other things instead.
Note, however, you should be very skeptical of the claims you quote. I don’t think the data actually supports them; and they aren’t that significant even if correct: e.g. legends of thousands going hermit is not evidence of actual thousands doing so; and even were it true, the empire had a population near 100 million; the disposition of a few thousand can have no noticeable effect on the economy.
Likewise the negative claims, e.g. the idea that there weren’t massive pagan temple holdings outside Egypt is plainly false. Epidaurus alone refutes the claim; and it was one of countless like it; even Acts makes much of the power and wealth of the Artemis cult in Ephesus and that wasn’t even the only one in that city, and every major city had its array of well-staffed temples and grounds. We have plenty of literary attestations of the extent of the pagan pilgrimage industry all across the empire. And so on.
The only demonstrable truth I am sure of in these claims you quote is the redirection of talented minds, and state and public resources and attention, from science and technology pursuits, to theology and religious administration, and things of that nature. That’s true. And is a material reflection of the change in values that Christianity brought to the West, which doomed it to never recover—until those pagan values were rediscovered and re-diffused into Western culture generally, particularly at the level of the empowered class.
So you agree that Christianity contributed to the decline of the Roman empire and the coming of the Dark Ages by stealing Rome’s most talented men? That was what Italian scholar Arnaldo Momigliano maintained. Yes, the main reasons for the collapse may have occurred earlier, but Christianity contributed by making a bad situation worse. I’ll give the quote in full, since I didn’t bother the last time:
“The fact that the aristocracy played a role of increasing importance in the affairs of the Church is only one aspect of what is perhaps the central feature of the fourth century: the emergence of the Church as an organization competing with the State itself and becoming attractive to educated and influential persons.
The State, though trying to regiment everything, was not able to prevent or suppress the competition of the Church. A man could in fact escape from the authority of the State if he embraced the Church. If he liked power he would soon discover that there was more power to be found in the Church than in the State.
The Church attracted the most creative minds – St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, Hilarius of Poitiers, St. Augustine in the West; Athanasius, John Chrysostom, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Basil of Caesarea in the East: almost all born rulers, rulers of a type which, with exception of the scholarly emperor Julian, it was hard to find on the imperial throne.
[…]
Gibbon was simplifying a very complicated issue when he insinuated that Christianity was responsible for the fall of the empire, but he perceived that the church attracted many men who in the past would have become excellent generals, governors of provinces, advisers to the emperors.
[…]
People escaped from the state into the Church and weakened that state by giving their best to the Church. This is a situation which in its turn requires analysis and explanation. But its primary importance cannot be overlooked. The best men were working for the Church, not for the state.”
Momigliano’s second argument is that the Church weakened the empire economically. This is not the same as Jones’s argument about “idle mouths,” which you said was at odds with the historical evidence. Here’s the quote:
“Moreover, the Church made ordinary people proud, not of their old political institutions, but of their new churches, monasteries, ecclesiastical charities. Money which would have gone to the building of a theatre or of an aqueduct now went to the building of churches and monasteries. The social equilibrium changed – to the advantage of the spiritual and physical conditions of monks and priests, but to the disadvantage of the ancient institutions of the empire.
[…]
Yet the conclusion remains that while the political organization of the empire became increasingly rigid, unimaginative, and unsuccessful, the Church was mobile and resilient and provided space for those whom the State was unable to absorb. The bishops were the centres of large voluntary organizations. They founded and controlled charitable institutions. They defended their flocks against the state officials. When the military situation of the empire grew worse, they often organized armed resistance against the barbarians. It seems to me impossible to deny that the prosperity of the Church was both a consequence and a cause of the decline of the state.”
So is it possible to maintain that the Church contributed to Roman decline by draining the empire’s wealth (transfer of money from pagans to Christians)?
Correct.
(With respect to the brain drain argument. The wealth drain argument is less persuasive because pagans also retreated to mysticism and anti-empiricism; but their numbers shrank so precipitously among the elite due to direct and indirect oppression, we never got a chance to see whether they’d have recovered their scientific values given the resources.)
What do you make of the argument that Christian celibacy played a role in causing the Dark Ages? The church not only stole the empire’s best and brightest, but encouraged (and later forced) its best and brightest to lead celibate lives. The argument was first made by Sir Francis Galton in “Hereditary Genius.” I quote:
Does any of this sound plausible?
No.
First, history shows that geniuses don’t simply descend from prior geniuses. In fact, regression to the mean is the norm, not the other way around: most major thinkers came from lesser lights, not greater; that’s why there are no dynasties of great scientists or philosophers or intellectuals of any kind. Economists point out this is why nations that explode with progressive genius are always the nations which expand access to education and opportunity to all classes and communities; you get more geniuses from the general population than you will ever get from geniuses themselves.
Second, there is no evidence any such effect on birth rate existed in the Middle Ages. In fact, the evidence is to the contrary. Monasteries were filled with excess sons; the exact opposite of “having less sons.” Monasteries were really just a way to get rid of excess children. Celibacy might have been valorized; but it was almost never actually practiced. The Middle Ages kept hitting its Malthusian limits; it shrank only from mass devastation and starvation, and once recovery began, populations steadily grew, not shrank.
Even among the intellectual elite, priests could marry and even did so prodigiously. Priestly celibacy evolved only toward the end of the Dark Ages and was only significantly enforced after the Dark Ages. Which is significant because most intellectuals weren’t monks (e.g. John Philopon, Isidore of Seville, Paulinus of Aquileia, etc.). And most monks didn’t remain celibate (only those who remained several years took oaths of lifetime dedication).
But above all, as clearinghouses for excess sons and daughters, nunneries and monasteries even celibate could have been huge powerhouses for intellectual and scientific advance, if the personnel harnessed there were simply directed to those ends instead of hymns and scripture and theology and other useless pursuits (or, as was more common, non-intellectual pursuits: they were actually primarily used as labor houses, not academies). So it was the cultural direction of the time, not a change in biological reproduction, that sustained the Dark Ages.
Hello! It’s me, Spencer again. I just discovered this article and I wanted to point out that the vast majority of the factual “errors” you point to in my article are actually not errors on my part at all but rather the result of you misreading or misinterpreting what I actually wrote.
Most notably, that section in my article on medieval inventions that you criticize was talking about the entire Middle Ages—not just the period that has traditionally been referred to as the “Dark Ages.” I was making a point about the Middle Ages as a whole, not about the Early Middle Ages in particular.
I agree with you that there weren’t many inventions made in western Europe during the Early Middle Ages, but that wasn’t what I was even trying to argue. The section on medieval inventions was titled “A not-so-backwards Middle Ages,” not “A not-so-backwards Early Middle Ages.” Furthermore, the sentence listing the inventions began “It was during the Middle Ages…” not “It was during the Early Middle Ages…” If I had been talking about the Early Middle Ages, I would have clearly said so. Please read more carefully next time.
In fact, that section on medieval inventions was primarily focusing on inventions from the High and Late Middle Ages. I was trying to dispel the popular notion that there were no major inventions during the Middle Ages as a whole. It seems that you somehow managed to misunderstand what I was fundamentally trying to argue in that section. Thus, there was no error made with regard to any of the inventions from the High and Late Middle Ages that you criticize me for listing.
Please also note that, in my article, I specifically defined the Late Middle Ages as the period lasting from c. 1250 to c. 1450 CE. The movable type printing press was indeed first invented in China in around 1040 CE, but it was most likely invented independently by Gutenberg in around 1439, which means, under my periodization, the movable type printing press was first invented in Europe in the Late Middle Ages. Thus, I was not wrong to categorize it as a “medieval invention.” Once again, please try to read more carefully.
If you think my definition of the Late Middle Ages too generous, just look at the Wikipedia article on the subject (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Late_Middle_Ages&oldid=931206074), which takes an even broader definition of the Late Middle Ages, defining it as the period “lasting from 1250 to 1500 AD.”
With regard to the invention of paper money, it seems we have taken different definitions of what exactly counts as “paper money.” In the twelfth century, the Knights Templar had a system where pilgrims could deposit their money in one Templar preceptory and receive a document recording how much they had deposited that they could exchange for funds of an equal value at another Templar preceptory.
Later, in Italy during the fourteenth century, there was a complex system of nota di banco or “bank notes” that functioned in a similar manner. In other words, I wasn’t wrong here; I probably just should have taken more time to explain exactly what I meant.
Most of my article was devoted to debunking misconceptions about the Middle Ages in general, since most people wrongly believe that the term “Dark Ages” refers to the entire Middle Ages. It was only at the end of my article (in the section “A not-so-dark ‘Dark Ages'”) that I finally turned to specifically address the Early Middle Ages.
Again, to be clear, I never tried to argue that the Early Middle Ages weren’t a period of decline; my point with regard to the Early Middle Ages was only that they weren’t a period of total darkness and oblivion.
I don’t think anyone reading your article will notice that bait and switch. Your article is arguing there was no Dark Ages because [x]. If [x] is not in the Dark Ages, there is no reason for you to mention [x]. Thus either you are a terrible writer and thinker and don’t know how to coherently formulate an argument and thus included data completely irrelevant to your article’s thesis thus misleading people into thinking it was data supporting your thesis, or you actually did mean [x] to be part of your article’s argument and are now lying to save face.
Either way, the criticism stands as valid, and all you are now doing is admitting I’m right that [x] in no way advances your article’s thesis that there were no Dark Ages or that they weren’t technologically and scientifically and socially backward. If you agree with that, then agree with that. Don’t try to weasel out by claiming half your article isn’t about your article’s own stated thesis.
That’s the early Renaissance. Using such a broad definition of “Middle Ages” as to include even the early Renaissance is another bait and switch that falls to exactly the same point I just made above.
You are digging your hole deeper by now extending the definition of “money” so broadly as to include any and all letters of credit. But now, that gets the invention well before the Middle Ages and prior even to Christianity [example example example]. Catch-22. Either way your claim is disproved.
That is nowhere stated in your article. Your thesis is, to the contrary:
Nothing here about the counter thesis being “total darkness and oblivion”; which would be a straw man anyway, as no one who says any of the things your thesis statement declares false, says the Dark Ages were “a period of total darkness and oblivion.”
Trying to weasel out of what you actually said by now pretending you were only combating a thesis no one advances (and that you didn’t identify in your article, and is not the counter-thesis you did identify in your article), simply drops you into another error: that of arguing against a straw man. None of your evidence subsequently presented however is against that straw man, but the actual thesis you actually claimed to be debunking, which is the thesis just quoted above and called by you “bupkus.”
This is looking very dishonest to me. And I recommend you rethink how you are trying to defend yourself here. It will only serve to further discredit you.
Meanwhile, my article already notes your article also correctly debunks myths about the Dark Ages. So don’t try to pretend I didn’t already note what you got right, as an excuse to claim you didn’t get wrong exactly what I said you did.
I have three comments.
First of all, in my original article, I very clearly stated near the beginning of the section “The not-so-dark ‘Dark Ages'”:
This was the main point I was trying to make with regard to the Early Middle Ages. It is an expansion on the statement I made in the first paragraph of my article that “they [i.e. the Early Middle Ages] were not as ‘dark’ as most people think.” By “most people” here, I mean non-scholars.
Second of all, my article was never supposed to be a response to any kind of serious scholarly argument; the article was, from the very beginning, supposed to be a debunking of silly beliefs that non-scholars have about the Middle Ages.
This should have been fairly obvious by the fact that I was debunking things like the idea that educated people in the Middle Ages thought the Earth was flat and the idea that people in the Middle Ages never bathed. Obviously, no serious scholar would advance these ideas that I was arguing against, but I was arguing against them because there are many non-scholars who still believe such things.
Third of all, there is actually a lot of material in my article that isn’t directly related to my introduction. For instance, I never mentioned anything in my introduction about the popular belief that educated people in the Middle Ages thought the world was flat or the popular belief that people in the Middle Ages never bathed, both of which I end up debunking later in the article. Perhaps my introduction could use some revision.
Does this mean that I am “a terrible writer and thinker” and that I “don’t know how to coherently formulate an argument”? Maybe. “Terrible” is a subjective assessment, so I’ll let you be the judge of how “terrible” my writing is. Bear in mind that I am currently only a sophomore in college. In the meantime, I will note that you are the one who apparently decided my article was worth writing a lengthy response to.
In any case, thank you for your honest input. I don’t plan on replying here further.
You aren’t responding now to anything I actually argue in my article.
This seems to be a pattern with you.
How many historians agree that the dark ages were really a thing? Can you please give me some 21st century books by historians who agree on this?
I cite some in this very article. And they even comment on the field being behind the ball on this and admit its apologetical. Basically, they are saying the same thing I am.
You’ve presented very good evidence. But my predicament is that the kind of people that defend the dark ages keep resorting to an argument from authority saying things such as “historians have abandoned the term ‘dark ages'”
So I was hoping to get a consensus or a list about what 21st century historians think about this
looking on it there does seem to be an unusual number of historians defending this which baffles me.
looking on their track record they also seem to be constantly making the argument that historians have abandoned the term over and over again, some say it was abandoned in the 19th century, some in 1950s, in 1980 Carl Sagan was criticized by people saying the term was abandoned in 1960, nowadays we get the argument it was abandoned in the 1970s.
They seem to really insist that this is common knowledge among historians and that this is a recent thing as if there’s been some kind of a huge discovery on this and I was hoping you could please elaborate on this.
Also do you think the book “darkening age” is accurate regarding the dark ages?
Arguments from authority are fallacies. If they can’t explain the evidence or arguments that their “authorities” cite for that position, then you get to ignore them. They are not conveying any useful knowledge to you, and do not know what they are talking about either.
If they can explain the arguments and evidence for that position, then you’ll know when and whether they are full of baloney or not, and whether their “authorities” are really just apologists, engaging in the same biased misrepresentations that the scholars I cite call out, or are making valid points.
So, ultimately, anyone who pulls that argument on you has to make a choice: will they choose only to believe authorities that don’t tell them the truth (authorities who are playing semantic games or ignoring or misrepresenting evidence); or authorities that do (and thus who do not play semantic games and who endeavor to give a correct and accurate view of the evidence, e.g., will they listen to the authorities I cite, who call out the others, or not?).
You, of course, can make your own choice in that matter.
Otherwise, on the general question of “arguments from consensus” as a fallacy or not, and thus when you can dismiss them (and when you can’t) see: On Evaluating Arguments from Consensus.
-:-
Regarding The Darkening Age, I cannot comment as I have not read it. I have read critical reviews of it though, and I was not impressed by the reviewers arguments, which could count as an own-goal endorsement—given that, if they had any good arguments to make against the book (any actual flaws in it), surely they’d have presented them instead. But who knows. Maybe they are just terrible critics.
If you come across a good critical review of that book (one that gives specific and clear examples of “what’s wrong with it”), link me to it and I’ll see if I can vet it. But so, far, I haven’t found any that hold up.
Hey man, why in reddit, bad history group, claim the dark ages didn’t really exist.
Reddit is a garbage pit of ragelords and asshats with hardly any relevant knowledge or competence worth heeding.
Please choose a more reliable source to get your information from.
https://www.catholicfidelity.com/apologetics-topics/inquisition/the-holy-inquisition-myth-or-reality-by-dr-marian-horvat-ph-d/
The official ecclesiastical procedure against heretics indeed had its excesses, but events from hundreds of years ago should not be judged by today’s standards. To understand this, let’s look at the formation of the Inquisition. The heretics of old (Cathars, Waldensians, Bogomils, Hussites) were far from being pious religious dreamers. They burned down churches, cities, killed people, and lived or propagated abnormal civil and sexual lives. The state had to act against these actions. When the state began using the accusation of heresy for political purges, the Church intervened and did not allow the state to arbitrarily decide who was a heretic and who was not. Thus, the Inquisition saved many people’s lives, but history books do not write a word about this.
The perception of the Inquisition’s scale and methods is also unfair. Many have been led to believe that the Inquisition massively and easily burned people at the stake, while subjecting them to terrible torture. It is true that torture was used in certain cases, but this was due to the spirit of the times, and the Church practiced mercy here too: The inquisitorial court used one kind of torture, while the secular courts’ torture instruments were only limited by imagination. It’s not without reason that many caught criminals invented a religious element in court (“the voices said”; “God messaged”) so that their cases would be transferred from the secular to the inquisitorial court, where they could hope for a milder punishment. Thus, the majority of inquisitorial trials were ordinary criminal proceedings, and not “dramatic collisions of conscience and power.” Death sentences were only issued in severe and common-law cases. The number of these was not more than two or three individuals per year. The severity of punishments is also relative. Indeed, the punishments were harsh. But the medieval person could endure them. In less softened peoples today, the justice system still uses more cutting methods.
True religious judgments were rare, and only very significant or particularly violent heretics were executed (e.g., Jan Hus). However, two factors come into play here. In the Middle Ages, God was considered the King of kings. Anyone who offended the king was sentenced to death for treason. Teaching heretical errors about God or falsifying His word was thought in the past to offend the King of kings, thus heretics were also sentenced to death. But remember, in the Middle Ages, Christianity was the state ideology, the main force of social cohesion. Attacks against it violated societal interests. Open critics of the state ideology were always punished. It’s no different today: And it’s not necessary to think only of the mass executions of the French Revolution, the Nazi concentration camps, or the communist gulags. Just observe the activities of national security agencies. In many Western countries, if someone is a mover of a movement considered “heresy” by the official medium, then the state power monitors and possibly shuts it down. Not without reason. Modern freedom of speech is not as straightforward as many believe. In many European countries, openly or even covertly offending certain nationalities or deviations is punished with imprisonment. The essence doesn’t differ much from the persecution of heretics, and the methods are not far from those of the Inquisition.
Spain is an exception. Not only because the Inquisition operated most harshly there, but because there, the Inquisition was primarily in the hands of the state, not the church. This led to many abuses and mercies, but fundamentally, there was a reason for it. Spain was full of seemingly converted Moors who pretended to be Christians but were actually spying and trying to bring Europe under the crescent. These people were indeed sought out by all means. However, it’s evident that the Inquisition also served a counter-intelligence function here. Its name reflected this: Sanctum Officium Inquisitionis, the Holy Office of Investigation.
So, the Inquisition had many dark sides, but these were not the consequences of the institution itself, but of human fallibility. It stands that the sanctity of the Church is not diminished if some of its members commit sins, because such scandals are unavoidable. If the inquisitors operated conscientiously, they cannot be faulted, for with their rigor, they protected the common people from common-law, religious criminals. There were saints among them.
Many believe that “the Catholic Church burned at the stake those of different faiths.”
First of all, it was not simply “people of different faiths” who were burned, but rather the incorrigible rebels and deliberate religious subversives. Second, and most importantly, it was not the Church that burned them. The Church itself never burned anyone, either at the stake or otherwise. Death by burning is a terrible remnant of pagan Germanic law, which unfortunately, was adopted and maintained by virtually every state in the Middle Ages; and importantly, it was a state punishment, not an ecclesiastical one. Just because the state was so intertwined with the Church at the time and considered religious crimes as also state crimes: qualified as subversion and rebellion, hence sometimes the state power itself pursued the perpetrators of religious crimes with its often brutal means, including torture and burning at the stake. In determining the religious crime, ecclesiastical factors were of course consulted, and thus mixed courts were established, such as the Inquisition. The ecclesiastical factors unfortunately erred in often being too readily defenders of state excesses and not sufficiently opposing the cruel and often unjust methods of torture and punishment. In most cases, however, they did take action and it was the Church itself that repeatedly and vehemently spoke out against these barbaric customs.
In distributing death by burning, everyone was equally guilty at the time: individuals, society, the people, cities, and states, not least the heresies themselves, which also extensively used torture and other forms of torment against Catholics.
Many also believe that “the Inquisition led hundreds of thousands to a horrendous death.”
The “hundreds and hundreds of thousands” is a mild exaggeration invented by the Spanish apostate Llorente and circulated by numerous fanatical anti-Catholic novelists. According to serious calculations, the number of victims of the Inquisition over 700 years falls well short of even the number of martyrs and those tortured during the English persecution of Catholics. Why do those who so readily mention the Inquisition remain silent about the much bloodier persecutions of Catholics in non-Catholic areas?
Moreover, the Inquisition itself was only partly an ecclesiastical institution, as we have already explained. It should also be added that the best-performing Spanish Inquisition was a state institution, established to monitor and neutralize the traitorous dealings of Arabs who remained in Spain after the long Moorish occupation and had ostensibly converted to Christianity, as well as the Jews who secretly allied with them. To this end, the judges of the Spanish Inquisition always first sought to determine whether the suspected Arabs and Jews could legitimately claim their baptismal certificates, that is, whether they were indeed living a Christian life or merely using baptism as a cover. This led to a unique mixing of religious and civil elements in the Spanish Inquisition. The Church cannot be held so responsible for the Spanish Inquisition to the extent that, on the contrary, it was the Roman Curia that protested against the actions of the Spanish Inquisition in many cases, seeing them as an unwarranted interference by the Spanish crown in ecclesiastical legal matters.
But what does the world know about this! The “Spanish Inquisition” is a hobbyhorse on which the enemies of the Church have happily ridden for a hundred years. Experts can refute the horror stories circulating about it a hundred times, but for some people, what matters is not whether something is true, but whether it can be used as a trump card against the Catholic Church.
In 1590, Antonio Pérez, the private secretary of Philip II, fled to France and then to Germany due to murder and treason charges. While there, he wrote a detailed report for the Protestants about Spain’s deeds. But in revenge, he added two or more zeros to every number, thus inflating the number of victims to several million over a hundred years. The countries of William of Orange and Elizabeth I enthusiastically spread these writings that discredited the Spanish, which became known as La Leyenda Negra – The Black Legend. This, in turn, spread in the public consciousness through Anglo-Saxon historiography and has become indelibly embedded. Since then, no one has ever done so much harm to their own country.
There were two types of Inquisition; the ecclesiastical and the Spanish Inquisition, which were fundamentally different from each other.
A. The ecclesiastical Inquisition (investigatory or examining committee, court) was the Church’s institution against heretics to oversee the purity and unity of Christian doctrine, to unveil the schemes of those who would disrupt religious unity and church discipline, and to protect the misled from being led astray. This institution was founded based on a decree issued in 1184 by Pope Lucius in agreement with Frederick Barbarossa against the Albigensians; its main operational areas were southern France and northern Italy; its goal was to root out remnants of heresies dangerous to both the Church and the state (Waldensians, Cathars, Albigensians), to win them over, or to neutralize the stubborn ones.
Later, the ecclesiastical Inquisition targeted any heresy; it naturally did not apply to Jews unless it concerned baptized Jews who relapsed, as such individuals were treated as heretical Judaizers, just as apostate Christians who converted to Judaism.
These ecclesiastical inquisitional institutions were under the direct jurisdiction of bishops, thus they were episcopal investigatory seats, with a codified procedure. Pope Innocent IV in 1248 entrusted the Dominican Order with the ecclesiastical inquisitional authority over heresies. Just as the episcopal, so too the Dominican Inquisition spread across European states: beyond Spain, Portugal, and Italy, it reached France, Germany, Hungary, Poland, and later England, wherever there was a desire to defend against dangerous heretics. However, European rulers later began using the Inquisition not to preserve the unity of faith but rather to secure their own power.
In dealing with ordinary heretics (Gottschalk, Abelard, Gilbert, Berengar, etc.), the ecclesiastical Inquisition’s proceedings were mild; it aimed to neutralize them to the faithful through excommunication, at most imprisonment. However, if their teaching and attacks also aimed at subverting the ecclesiastical and social order, and if they did not cease their heresy but stubbornly clung to it, being found guilty not just against the faith but also against state laws, they were handed over to the secular authority, which typically punished such individuals with death by fire (burning at the stake) and confiscated their property. The Church itself never used physical punishments, especially not the death penalty. In interrogations, although the popes prohibited it, torture was sometimes used, following the disapproved practice and procedural model of that era’s secular courts, but much less frequently and much more mildly than those courts, always considering the individual’s constitution and the nature of the offense.
For what our more refined understanding and more humane sentiments may disapprove of in the Inquisition’s proceedings, it is not the Church but the era that should be held responsible. Moreover, we must not forget that preserving the unity of faith and the Christian social order against disruptive elements, dangerous fanatics, and deliberate wrongdoers demanded stern and effective measures in those harsh times; the heresies that called the (ecclesiastical) Inquisition into existence threatened the very foundations of family, state, marriage, private property, and society itself, and if they had prevailed, culture would have been destroyed, and humanity would have regressed into barbarism after 600 years of the Church’s sacrificial labor.
The institution of the ecclesiastical Inquisition was reorganized by Pope Paul III in 1542, and Pope Sixtus V abolished it in 1587, replacing it with the Congregatio Romanae et universalis Inquisitionis Sancti Officii (Holy Office), a church committee attentive to the purity of faith, composed of cardinals and distinguished theologians, alongside several ecclesiastical and secular legal scholars.
B. The Spanish Inquisition was established by the Spanish state power under Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella towards the end of the 15th century (1480), primarily operating in Spain. Its goal was to preserve Spanish national and religious unity by subduing elements dangerous to the state, namely the uncontrollable Marranos (secret Jews) and later the Moriscos (secret Muslims), who mocked Christianity.
It is a great misconception or a result of malicious intent to claim that the primary purpose of the Spanish Inquisition was the confiscation of Jewish property, which was then shared between the crown and the Church. Its primary and foremost goal was the protection of Christianity and the Spanish nationality against the engulfing Maranos, or the secret Judaism hiding under a Christian guise.
The Spanish Inquisition, although retaining the external forms of the ecclesiastical Inquisition, was not a Church but a secular, state, political institution. Its inquisitors, whether clerical or lay, were appointed by the king, who also dismissed them from their positions, provided their remuneration, and issued instructions; they exercised their power — even if they were priests — not as the Church, but as the state, the king’s officials, and executed judgments in his name.
However, this institution, originally established for racial protection purposes, increasingly became a precursor to royal absolutism against the nobility and clergy.
In his historical work, the Jewish author Heinrich Grätz, discussing the Spanish Inquisition from his own Jewish bias, calls Isabella “bigoted” and zealously claims that she and Ferdinand, by establishing the Inquisition, paved the way for Spain’s impoverishment and decline. (Geschichte der Juden, V. Bd. Leipzig, 1864. pp. 300—363.) However, he is mistaken, as Spain’s subsequent decline was caused by other factors.
Undeniably, Ferdinand, with the Spanish Inquisition, not only created national and religious unity but, as the Inquisition later primarily aimed to prevent the infiltration of Protestantism starting with Martin Luther (1483—1546), saved Spain from the schism that, at the beginning of the modern era, brought bloody civil wars to other European countries.
The Spanish Inquisition worked with extremely harsh means (prolonged investigative imprisonment, torture, life imprisonment, death by burning).
The Spanish Inquisition cannot and should not be attributed to the Church, as the popes protested against this state institution, often raising their voices against its excessive harshness and, especially initially, severe abuses.
The Spanish Inquisition was abolished only in 1820, after about two and a half centuries of operation. It was briefly revived later but was permanently abolished by the council of state in 1834. In Portugal, the Inquisition was dissolved in 1821.
When attacking the Inquisition, it is usually the Spanish Inquisition that is meant, as the anti-Inquisition accusations typically refer specifically to it. However, even with the Spanish Inquisition, the following should not be overlooked:
a) Primarily, that the main goal of the Spanish Inquisition was originally to investigate the dealings of Marranos and Moriscos (apparently converted Moors) who were conspiring against Christian Spain and plotting multiple uprisings. This was not directly a religious matter but one of state security. In the centuries-long defensive struggle that Spanish Christianity waged against its sworn enemies, the Moors and Jews, the Inquisition was the last weapon of the Christian national kingdom against the overconfident (secret) Jewry aiming to subject all of Spain under Jewish rule, and the Moors (Moriscos) counting on the support of their African co-religionists and the Turks to re-establish the old Moorish rule. The Spaniards, who had suffered under Moorish rule for nearly 800 years, dreaded its return and the subsequent subjugation of Spain.
b) The jurisprudence of the 15th century was merciless, even cruel, worldwide; however, despite its strictness, the prosecutorial process of the Spanish Inquisition was much more humane and milder than that of all other secular, state courts of the era. The Inquisition exercised much greater caution in the use of torture compared to the courts of other countries. Only with special permission from the chief inquisitor and always in the presence of a supervising physician could physical punishment be applied; over time, the original severity lessened; from 1500 onwards, the repeated use of torture was strictly forbidden. The reason the Middle Ages used torture (torture for confession) is that the medieval justice system believed that the queen of evidence (regina probationum) was not the testimony of witnesses but the confession. — Death by fire (burning at the stake) was not a punishment exclusive to heretics, but in the 15th and 16th centuries, it was a special punitive tool for those who offended the divine Majesty.
The prisons of the Inquisition were also different from the prisons of that era; they were well-arched, bright, and dry rooms where the prisoner was not shackled and could move around. The provision of food was much better than in other prisons. Special care was given to the sick prisoners. The Inquisition’s representatives occasionally inquired whether the supervisors and guards were treating the prisoners well.
The auto-da-fé was not the burning of the condemned, as sensationalist historians and novelists narrate. The Spanish word fé (faith) should not be confused with the French feu (fire). The auto-da-fé, in Latin: actus fidei (= act of faith, deed of faith) was a religious act, either the release of the innocent or the reconciliation of the repentant sinner with the Church, symbolized by holding a burning candle in hand as a sign of their revived faith, making a confession of faith (actus fidei) and renouncing heretical doctrines, accompanied by an exhortatory sermon.
The immuratio (from the Latin murus = wall) was not “being walled alive” as some novelists who do not understand medieval Latin think, but imprisonment; placing the individual in solitary confinement (“between four walls”).
The sanbenito or sacbenito (from Latin: saccus benedictus; Spanish: sacco bendito = blessed sack) was neither a “straitjacket” nor a “mocking cloak,” but a type of robe made of coarse, yellowish-brown linen, consecrated by the Church for penance. Many medieval rulers also donned such garments towards the end of their lives in preparation for death. Those absolved by the Inquisition were required to wear this for a certain period. The garments of the obstinate heretics handed over to the secular authority for execution typically had flames and images of the devil painted on them.
c) The victims of the Inquisition were not all punished for their faith or lack thereof (heresy); under Torquemada’s inquisitorship, the Spanish Inquisition dealt not only with religious offenses but also a whole range of other moral crimes and civil, political felonies: blasphemy, polygamy (imported from the Moors), fornication, sodomy, church pillaging, espionage, treason, rebellion, murder, smuggling, usury, witchcraft, and the “witch trials.”
d) Like all human institutions, the Spanish Inquisition also had its abuses. It is undeniable that the Spanish Inquisition often treated the accused with excessive harshness; it is also undeniable that the number of its victims was not insignificant. (According to Gams, III, 2. p. 74, the number of those executed for heresy was about 4000.) However, it is also undeniable that biased and deliberately falsifying historiography, mainly by anti-church historians who wish to hold the Church responsible for the errors of the Spanish Inquisition, unscrupulously embellish its cruelties and unjustly exaggerate the number of its victims, especially based on the biased work “Histoire critique de l’inquisition d’Espagne” (Paris, 1817—1818) by Juan Antonio Llorente (1756—1823), a Spanish apostate canon and free-thinking writer who was forced to flee to France due to treason but was later also expelled from there. Llorente, the “homo mendax,” had his exaggerations and distortions recently refuted by the Protestant Schäfer (“Beiträge zur Geschichte des spanischen Protestantismus und der Inquisition des 16. Jahrhunderts, 1902. 3 volumes). Nonetheless, due to the biased falsifications of anti-church historians, the horror stories told about the Spanish Inquisition are ineradicable from pulp fiction novels.
e) The inquisitors, accused of religious intolerance, were no more tolerant towards Catholics than the so-called reformers of the 16th and 17th centuries, nor did they respect “freedom of conscience” any more. In fact, they practiced the Protestant principle of “cuius regio, eius religio” (the religion of the ruler is the religion of the state) — which gained ground through its enforcement — with even less tolerance and more cruelty towards Catholics than the Inquisition. (Zwingli, Calvin, Henry VIII, Edward VI, Elizabeth, etc.)
f) Even if we were to believe all the exaggerations that anti-church writers like to tell, it is certain that during the entire duration of the Inquisition’s operation, not as many people fell victim as in just one of those countries where Protestantism was introduced by force of arms, such as England, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Ireland, etc., where thousands of Catholics loyal to their faith and the Pope were murdered. What is the Spanish Inquisition compared to the martyrs of Protestant intolerance!?… Compared to the horrors of the Protestant investigative courts and blood courts, the Spanish Inquisition was — an innocent matter… And yet, although these facts are well known and not even denied by objective Protestant historians, — they are usually silenced, and the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition are shamelessly blamed on the Catholic Church (!).
g) The enemies of the Church, in order to create sentiment against the Church, either out of ignorance or malice, attribute the severity of the Spanish Inquisition to the Church, whereas it was precisely the Popes (Sixtus IV, Leo X, Gregory XIII, Paul III) who repeatedly protested against the Spanish Inquisition as applied by the Spanish kings, and even wanted to abolish or at least reform the entire institution. They repeatedly excommunicated abusive inquisitors, constantly admonished the judges to moderation, but their decrees were embezzled or their proclamations were prevented by the kings.
h) The Church has never converted, nor does it convert by force, because its principal stance is that no one should be compelled to embrace the Catholic faith against their will. (“Ad amplexandam fidem catholicam nemo invitus cogatur”. CIC. can. 1351.), and that the purity of faith should be preserved solely by spiritual means. (Forced conversions have never redounded to the glory of the Church, neither under the rule of the Visigoths nor in later times with forced baptisms.) Therefore, the Church has always disapproved of religious coercion originating from the state, as practiced by the Inquisition, whose legitimacy it can never recognize. This is why, no matter how useful the Inquisition was to Spain, the Popes always disapproved and condemned its acts of violence and every single act of cruelty.
What is the relevance of this word-wall?
Can you connect it to any point in my article?
The thesis also appears to be false. What the Church “claims” is not what it “does.” What it did is create a millennium-long atmosphere of terror for anyone who would contemplate rejecting it for another sect, religion, or none. That is coercion. No matter what it “says” its values are or what it is doing.
No one should gullibly fall for the church’s own propaganda.
What atrocities caused the population to shrink by at least a third? There must have been something major! Which Roman emperors were the most responsible for this?
I think you may have missed the point. These declines were not atrocities. They were catastrophes.
The population literally starved to death.
Because the collapse of civilization vastly decreased the ability to produce and transport the food required to feed them. Likewise an enormous decline in water supplies. Cities could only remain populated with vast quantities of imported water (hence the Roman aqueduct system). Once that collapsed, the populations had to either die of thirst or flee to the country in search of water and food. And this led to violence as people fought to the death over scarce resources. A third of them simply didn’t survive all this.
Who were the people most responsible for this collapse? Constantine? Attila the Hun? Justinian?
Like most of history, it is often driven by broad social forces rather than the decisions of single individuals. One can blame the Christian mindset, for example, which by spreading and infecting the population led to all of the power-elite making bad choices collectively that tanked Western civilization.
But one can also blame the prior regime for failing to develop a stable constitutional government (since the collapse began in the 3rd century; Christianization was a an effect of that). No single person is responsible for that failure.
The power-elite collectively are, and over many generations even (e.g. we can see the trends growing in the second century, e.g. increasing policy decisions across the Empire leading to increasing income disparity and a continued failure to legislate any stable process for a peaceful succession of power).
One can point to parts of the story in the hands of many people. Marcus Aurelius’s failure to continue the election of emperors and instead reinstate familial inheritance of the imperium, leading to catastrophic leadership ending in cascading civil wars, exhausting the treasury and crushing public trust in the state currency. Diocletian’s turn to fascist reforms a century later to staunch the resulting economic collapse. Constantine’s enslavement of serfs (rather than turning the other way, toward a dynamic economy of free labor). Theodosius’s decision to legislate the brutal suppression of religious freedom almost a century after that. And from all of these things, the overall abandonment of scientific and industrial research and development. And so on.
Justinian isn’t in this picture, because he wasn’t in the West. His effort to retake Western provinces was too short lived to make any difference, particularly as their reconstruction was underfunded (most of his gains were symbolical, just lines on a map, rather than any actual recovery for the collapsing Western civilization).
The Byzantine empire did not experience a Dark Ages. It just slowly declined over a thousand years until it collapsed entirely in the 15th century, replaced by the Muslim Caliphates, who by then had taken to the same disastrous decision-making as the Christians (suppressing basic liberties, abandoning scientific and industrial innovation, supporting increased income disparity and the looting of public wealth for pointless luxuries and over-funded militaries, and so on).
Who popularized this “Christian mindset”? Theodosius?
Could the Roman empire have gotten rid of serfdom without hurting its economy? didn’t the Greeks try that and fail?
Wasn’t Justinian the one that plunged Europe into the dark ages by banning greek schools of thought in 529? If not then around when did the mass starvation start?
Who lead to the disastrous decision making in the caliphates? al ghazali?
I don’t even understand your questions.
There was no single individual who did anything. History is rarely moved by individuals. It is moved by a large number of agents acting in concert due to large social forces.
For example, on how the Christian mindset became “popularized,” that is a centuries-long process involving thousands of agents. Social forces contributing to it are complex and stem mainly from the collapse of traditional institutions in the 3rd century.
For an account of how this worked see my last chapter in Not the Impossible Faith, which discusses also the role of standard evangelization metrics: e.g. the same thing that popularized Mormonism popularized Christianity: salesmanship effecting compound interest toward market penetration, effected by thousands of agents over hundreds of years; the third century merely created conditions that made the product more attractive to buyers, resulting in it being “bought out” by the government, with the advent of Constantine, and then consolidated by his many successors. The only thing Theodosius did was the final step of enforcing it by law (compelling the populace to buy the product or be killed or exiled); but by then it had already saturated the free market and had its complete effect on the social system’s decline.
The Dark Ages are a collapse of institutions resulting in mass starvation and the decay of cities, economies, and knowledge (as money stopped rolling in to keep maintaining books and libraries and schools, for example, such that almost all were lost over ensuing centuries). They were not caused by closing already decimated fringe schools that had already been declining into virtual irrelevance for two hundred years by then. Moreover, those schools were in the Greek East. The Dark Ages are a phenomenon that affected the Latin West.
As to the history of Islam, that is its own complex phenomenon, and you’ll have to read entire modern histories to grasp it.
The tl;dr is that Islamic conquerors were ill-equipped to build any effective empire (because they didn’t come from one, and lacked the requisite training and experience, which had already vanished by their time and thus wasn’t even accessible), and while they were starting to catch up intellectually (during the Islamic renaissance of the 9th to 11th century), all those gains were lost by the Islamofascist purges of the 12th century (due to no individual; but a rising popularity of fundamentalist Imams who reached enough critical mass to steer the entire social system—and no one individual was responsible for their rise or their subsequent effects, but, again, broad social forces involving thousands of agents). That condemned almost all free intellectualism as heretical, shutting down all intellectual and thus economic progress by the end of the 12th century (with maybe a few holdouts in Persia, but nothing significant west of that). In result they ceased all pursuit of science and substantive philosophy (i.e. anything apart from naive theology) until the Age of Modern Empires reintroduced them.
Al-Ghazali was just one author in all this. He did not “cause” any of it, but was a symptom of an entire shift in popular thinking, and thus a representative of a broad social movement involving thousands of agents.
Does this mean the eastern Roman empire completely avoided the dark ages?
Some people try to argue that the expansion of Islam exacerbated the dark ages by closing trade routes or sth, how plausible is this claim?
I haven’t evaluated the claim of “closing trade routes,” though at a glance that sounds implausible to me.
The Byzantine Empire (the “eastern” Roman Empire) maintained sufficient wealth to avoid the catastrophic collapse of the West. It declined more slowly. Islamic expansionism had something to do with that, but as much to blame is the Christian mindset that dominated it, which still ended all substantial scientific and technological progress even in the east, and continued making bad economic and political decisions: I find the Wikipedia summary to be a decent starting point, along with a decent summary of the economics at The Collector.
What do you think about the argument that the 20th century was no better than the Dark Ages because Western Civilization carried on World Wars (with their trench warfare, strategic bombing, submarine warfare, poison gas, and propaganda), colonial imperialism (with its slave-like exploitation of labor, disparities between rich and poor, and cultural destruction), and totalitarian communism (with its collectivization, gulags, and secret police), and thus has no real right to criticize the Dark Ages as “barbaric.”
I’m not sure who makes that argument or if that is the argument they actually attempted, but there are a number of hopeless confusions here.
First, Better Angels and Moral Arc already ran the numbers and found that you are describing availability bias: conflating large events with productive events; in fact, more people were killed in previous centuries, per capita, while the era of mechanized world wars actually reduced the death rate (e.g. WW2 produced the UN and thus now nearly a hundred years of relative global peace despite a massive increase in global population; and produced less deaths than most large war eras by moving faster to its conclusion). Likewise all other moral metrics (crime, slavery, gender inequity, income inequity, access to human rights and medical and educational systems, etc.).
Second, “the Dark Ages” are called that (and criticized as “barbaric”) not for its death rate (though that was enormous: the population loss caused by civilization collapse was catastrophic and has never been equalled since) but for the massive loss of knowledge and massive decline in civilization (collapsing economies, particularly trade, industry, and agriculture, as well as science and technology), leaving centuries of relative ignorance and low sophistication of civilization. The term was coined to contrast it with the Renaissance, called a “Rebirth” specifically because of a recovery (hence “rebirth”) of all the things lost: knowledge, economies, scale of industry and agriculture, scale of popularion, and sophistication of the engines of civilization, like education and government, and science and technology.
The argument is repeated word by word here along with all sorts of other questionable claims like the church not being really to blame or the middle ages having technological innovations:
https://www.brianpavlac.org/witchhunts/werrors.html#cruelty
What did the UN actually do that made the world successfully avoid ww3 and ww4?
So, if it’s word-for-word, then yes, that’s bogus, and has the refutation I summarized.
I’ve elsewhere also debunked the myth that the middle ages (not the same thing as the dark ages: conflating them is also a fallacy I have called out many times) invented everything (or even a significant amount of anything).
So, you are, alas, reading rank apologetics and not any honest, logical, or accurate assessment of world history.
As for your question:
The UN has prevented any other global war since. That was, in fact, the purpose of it: to establish international diplomatic relations and processes to quell the causes noted in hindsight of previous world wars. The UN also created the international framework based on human rights being more important than selfish national desires for territory or wealth, and thus a goal and controlling limit to put on any negotiating table. That didn’t exist before WW2. And it has changed the entire way global aggression is framed and discussed and policed.
How come the un succeeded to stop ww3 whereas the league of nations failed to stop WW2?
The UN was specifically designed to fix all the problems that caused WW2—including the dinked design of the LoN, which failures were specifically addressed by dissolving it in favor of the UN.