Why do the medieval times seem like a black hole?

484 Views | 6 Replies | Last: 3 days ago by ramblin_ag02
Martin Q. Blank
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No, not the restaurant.

Discussion is primarily focused on the church fathers and the reformation. Very little in between. I've read Thomas Aquinas's Summa, but that's pretty much it from that era.
Zobel
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AG
One, there was less writing going on in general in the west.

And two, there was a period of pretty broad consensus in Europe, religiously. A lot of our texts are polemics, writing against this error or that. Most of the ways you can be wrong headed about Christianity were hammered out over the first ten centuries. There was less and less to correct without referring back to what had already been laid out. Since Europe was relatively united theologically, there was less "excitement" and less notable writing.

These are just my guesses.
PabloSerna
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AG
What about Peter Lombard's "Sentences" (c.1158)?

“Falsehood flies and the truth comes limping after it” -Jonathan Swift, 1710
PabloSerna
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AG
I would add that only the Bishops were preaching and may have had that level of understanding theologically. I say maybe, because there was not some university to attain anything like a Sacred Theological Doctorate.

Aquinas and the Summa Contra Gentiles were a reaction to Islam and infusion of the rediscovery of Greek philosophy. It has been said that Aquinas "baptized" Aristotle.
“Falsehood flies and the truth comes limping after it” -Jonathan Swift, 1710
Martin Q. Blank
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PabloSerna said:

What about Peter Lombard's "Sentences" (c.1158)?
Never heard of it. Have you read it?
Rocag
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AG
Zobel said:

One, there was less writing going on in general in the west.

And two, there was a period of pretty broad consensus in Europe, religiously. A lot of our texts are polemics, writing against this error or that. Most of the ways you can be wrong headed about Christianity were hammered out over the first ten centuries. There was less and less to correct without referring back to what had already been laid out. Since Europe was relatively united theologically, there was less "excitement" and less notable writing.

These are just my guesses.
The Gutenberg Bible was printed in the 1450's, so yeah there's just going to be a lot fewer books in general available prior to that general time period. This topic seems like it might also touch on the question of whether, and to what extent, the Dark Ages actually existed.
ramblin_ag02
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AG
There's plenty going on during the middle ages in theology. You've got Anselm, Albert, Aquinas and Dunns Scotus as the big luminaries, and there are a lot of "smaller" but still important names. I think there are a few reasons people shy away from this period in regards to popular interest and scholarship. First, there wasn't some big schism or some big controversy that spilled over into the legal, military, and economic lives of people like the Reformation/Counter Reformation. Second, it wasn't foundational like the Bible or other very early Christian writings. Finally, the middle age theologists were intentionally hard to understand. They used a very unique jargon and wrote their treatises in complicated logical formats. The entire point of this was to keep the arguments between on the most education people and weed out the laymen. So no surprise that laymen then or now have trouble getting into their writings
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