And More Modern Myths: The Dark Ages

Rodney Stark on science and religion:

...Recent historical research has debunked the idea of a "Dark Ages" after the "fall" of Rome. In fact, this was an era of profound and rapid technological progress, by the end of which Europe had surpassed the rest of the world. Moreover, the so-called "Scientific Revolution" of the sixteenth century was a result of developments begun by religious scholars starting in the eleventh century. In my own academic research I have asked why these religious scholastics were interested in science at all. Why did science develop in Europe at this time? Why did it not develop anywhere else? I find answers to those questions in unique features of Christian theology...

And a Protestant gentleman pointing out that the whole "Dark Ages" thing doesn't just hit at Catholicism:

The whole idea of “the dark ages” was invented by critics of Christianity. The first people to label a dozen centuries as “dark” thought that there had been brightness and knowledge in the Graeco-Roman world with its supposedly sunny paganism, and there was brightness and knowledge again in the Renaissance or the Englightenment with their recovery of the classics and their historical-critical investigations, but that in between there was a period of darkness. Notice what’s in that dark period: Christianity. Evangelicals should be very cautious about marking those dozen centuries on our timeline as “dark.” We might be trying to point out that there were some corruptions of faith and practice between the earliest church and the great Reformation, which is true. But if we paint with a broad brush, we end up painting the same “dark ages” picture as the faith’s most radical critics. Dismissing the middle ages has proven to be a good first step to dismissing Christianity...

Once the myth has been dispelled, and the terra incognita on our mental maps has been opened up for exploration (HERE THERE BE DRAGONS), we can even admit that there actually was such a thing as a dark age in the medieval period. It lasted about 150 years, from just after the death of Boethius (who was going to translate Plato and Aristotle into Latin for the barbarian kings who had taken over Rome) to the rise of Charlemagne and the massive educational renewal of the Carolingian reforms. There were some other dips and dark spots throughout the middle centuries, but they were all compensated for by renewals and revivals like the rise of the medieval universities, the Cluniac reforms, intellectual trade with the Muslim world, and other events we’re not supposed to know about. We are supposed to be obedient moderns and believe that a thin trickle of faithfulness and thought has run through the vast desert of ignorance and corruption. But that is the opposite of the truth. In fact, the dark ages were very short, and the great tradition of Christianity is very big.

Begone, myth of the dark ages! Bring me the Summa Theologia, let’s teach our children some Latin and Greek. Protestants should refuse to be driven out onto a narrow strip of land when the whole tradition is rightly ours...

Naturally, he and I have some serious disagreements on some points (the tradition is rightly yours? This would be the tradition where Thomas is a Dominican priest, Charlemagne a Catholic king, the universities protected by the popes and bishops...? Aren't you guys supposed to despise tradition?) but that aside, he makes valuable points.