/lit/ - Literature

>>18078579
It didn't and historians generally credit monasteries for the preservation of classical knowledge.

>>18078606

>>18078606
>destroy temples and monuments
>burn books
>prohibit transfer of knowledge and culture
How did christianity preserve classical knowledge if they destroyed more than they preserved? It's like the pyromaniac firefighter.

THIS IS A QUESTION FOR «REDDIT», YOUR HOME.

>>18078606
The monastic scribe is the result of the Gaulish nobility buying out the church so as to retain their position of privilege and intellectual leisure (they liked reading the classics). It had nothing to do with Christianity, because the Church wasn't doing this stuff before them. Had Europe not become Christian, they'd have just done the same thing anyways. We know, because they were doing this in the BC period.

All Christianity did was marry the traditional scribal guild to an arbitrary system of asceticism, the latter of which in most cases wasn't all that ascetic. It wasn't until the 1100s that the Pope managed to get monks to stop owning slaves, for example.

>>18078606
They seemed to have had no problem preserving classical knowledge before Christianity and the monasteries though.

>>18078648
The only reason any books from then exist is since the Goths refused to attack Churches.

>>18078742
Literally no reason to assume this.

>>18078763
No-one is assuming anything. It's a historical fact.

>>18078648
They actually did, the library of Alexandria was a huge mess and many of the books were damaged

>>18078780
Christian propaganda.

>>18078579
>>>/r/eddit

>>18078613
> the dark ages of scientific repression
Oh, let me bust out the world's smallest violin and shed a tear for all those amazing Roman scientists the church repressed. Like, for example...

(uh, let me get back to you on that one.)

>>18078579
>First dark age
How could you forget the bronze age people you stifling jew

>>18078780
>this one thing happened
You people are not mentally stable. Sorry but if 99% of latin literature and 90% of ancient literature was lost then muh monastic preservers were not doing a good job.

There is two options. Either they were actively trying to destroy non-Christian literature and they did a really good job at it, or they were trying to preserve non-Christian literature and they did what can only be described as the worst job imaginable.

But yes, you are correct, libraries burned even before Christianity.

>>18078631
> a plebbitor expounds on his vision of the history of Christian monasticism
Topical video clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DueSvcjn810

>>18078613
>scientific repression
Didn’t the scientific method start in Christian Europe?

>>18078579
Handing control of communications and commerce to the bad guys against Europe's best interest, thus silencing truth and harvesting it brutally as exploit

>>18078579
Are you impying niggers are bad?

>>18078579
Wow, this board went to shit pretty hard.

>>18078816
It's not my view, I got it from reading Roman Aristocrats in Barbarian Gaul. So, really, it's just Ralph Mathisen repeating a simple factual observation held by Classicists for the past few centuries.

But then, the last book you read was one assigned to you in high school, so the fact that you don't have a clue what you're talking about is to be expected.

when nancy pelosi thanked george floyd for sacrificing himself to bring social justice to america yesterday it made me realize jesus is like the ancient version of george floyd, and christianity the ancient version of blm

>Peter Thonemann, a professor of ancient history at the University of Oxford, argues that Nixey's work is problematic, and that "the argument depends on quite a bit of nifty footwork", because Nixey makes a large number of broad generalizations based on limited evidence. He also states that the deliberate destruction of ancient temples by Christians "seems to have been exceptionally rare in real life" and that the Christian book-burning was always directed towards heretical or "magical" writing, and not towards classical literature.[5]

>Professor Tim Whitmarsh of Cambridge University described it as "a finely crafted, invigorating polemic against the resilient popular myth that presents the Christianisation of Rome as the triumph of a kinder, gentler politics. On those terms, it succeeds brilliantly". He also cautions that the work risks being one-sided. He said it represented a reversion to Edward Gibbon's view of the Christians as instigators of the fall of Rome. "In seeking to expose the error and corruption of the early Christian world, Nixey comes close to veiling the pre-Christian Romans’ own barbarous qualities," he said.[2]

>Johannes (Hans) van Oort, a Dutch Professor of Patristics and Gnostic Studies at Radboud University, states that Nixey "is replaying her hand with her fierce tone and gross exaggeration" and that her book "lacks any historical structure". Van Oort also writes that Nixey doesn't understand some historical contexts and that she "makes some serious historical slips".[6]

>Levi Roach, a medievalist of University of Exeter, states that Nixey's book "does not seek to present a balanced picture" and that it is "a book of generalisations". He also states, "Nixey ends up endorsing the long-debunked view of the Middle Ages as a period of blind faith and intellectual stagnation".[7]

>Richard Tada, PhD in ancient Greek and Byzantine history from the University of Washington, states that Nixey ventured "into areas where she is clearly out of her depth" and as result her book is "a shoddy work that fails to make the grade even as a polemic", and that one of Nixey's attempts to blame Christians for the supposedly destruction of classical world is "simply dishonest", where she misrepresents both primary and secondary sources.[8]

>Averil Cameron, professor emerita of Late Antique and Byzantine History at the University of Oxford, points out that Nixey is promoting some outdated teachings and finds Nixey's book without nuance and counter-arguments, and states that Nixey's readers would never know that there are academic works that contradict her narrative if they only get their information from her.[9] On Twitter Cameron called Nixey's book "a travesty".[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Darkening_Age

>>18078797
((sea peoples))) caused that too.

>>18078579
>>18078613
>As the accomplishments of the era came to be better understood in the 19th and 20th centuries, scholars began restricting the "Dark Ages" appellation to the Early Middle Ages (c. 5th–10th century),[3][7][8] and now scholars also reject its usage in this period.[9] The majority of modern scholars avoid the term altogether owing to its negative connotations, finding it misleading and inaccurate.[10][11][12] Petrarch's pejorative meaning remains in use,[1][2][13] typically in popular culture which often mischaracterises the Middle Ages as a time of violence and backwardness.[14][15]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Ages_(historiography)

>The conflict thesis is a historiographical approach in the history of science that originated in the 19th century which maintains that there is an intrinsic intellectual conflict between religion and science and that it inevitably leads to hostility.[1] Most examples and interpretations of events in support of the thesis have been drawn from Western history. Historians of science have long ago rejected the thesis[2][3][4][5] and have instead widely accepted a complexity thesis.[6] Nonetheless, the thesis "remains strong elsewhere, not least in the popular mind."[6]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_thesis

>>18078579
read name of the rose and a canticle for leibowitz
the beginning of the dark age was the enlightenment and the renaissance

>>18078625
>destroy temples and monuments
Temples were abandoned by pagans themselves, some were preserved by christians and converted only after governmental decree allowing thus. Occasional active destructions were caused by conflict between pagans and christians, from both parties.

>burn books
Cite a single book burnt. Many were simply lost JUST LIKE many christian books.

>prohibit transfer of knowledge and culture
Absolutely retarded. Only Augustine already shows how slanderous this false accusation is. Most Church Fathers reiterate how some pagan doctrines are in coformity with Christian doctrine and how they are useful for intellectual life because they are simply from the Logos, are simple facts of knowledge.

>>18078579
>>18078613
>>18078648
>The book Established beliefs of Epicurus was burned in a Paphlagonian marketplace by order of the charlatan Alexander of Abonoteichus, supposed prophet of Glycon, the son of Asclepius ca 160[22]

>The Diocletianic Persecution started on March 31, 302, with the Roman Emperor Diocletian, in a rescript from Alexandria, ordering that the leading Manichaeans be burnt alive along with their scriptures.[23][24] On the following year, on February 23, 303, Diocletian ordered that the newly built Christian church at Nicomedia be razed, its scriptures burned, and its treasures seized.[25]

>Suetonius tells us that, at the death of Marcus Lepidus (about 13 BC), Augustus assumed the office of Chief Priest, and burned over two thousand copies of Greek and Latin prophetic verse then current.

>In 25 AD Senator Aulus Cremutius Cordus was forced to commit suicide and his History was burned by the aediles, under the order of the senate.

>In 186 BC, in an effort to suppress the Bacchanalia practices that had been led in part by Minius Cerrinius, a Consul of Rome claimed that the fathers and grandfathers of the Romans had suppressed foreign rites and ceremonies, "seeking out and burning all books of pretended prophecies"[11]

>According to Diogenes Laërtius, the agnostic position taken by Protagoras aroused anger, causing the Athenians to expel him from their city, where the authorities ordered all copies of the book to be collected and burned in the marketplace. The same story is also mentioned by Cicero.[2]

>Aristoxenus in his Historical Notes affirms that "Plato wished to burn all the writings of Democritus that he could collect".[4] In his own lifetime, Plato was not in a position to destroy all copies of his rival's writings, but Plato's purpose was largely achieved through the choices made by scribes in later Classical times.

>>18078579
i also saw that one youtube video

>>18078800
>Sorry but if 99% of latin literature and 90% of ancient literature was lost then muh monastic preservers were not doing a good job.
There were literature already lost or deliberately destroyed before Christianity's establishment, and even after the rise of Christianity we lost also christian writings.

>>18078579
>HAHA, I POSTED IT AGAIN

>>18078800
>then muh monastic preservers were not doing a good job
velum and traditional parchment do not preserve well, you try better

>>18080357
You didn't repeat a fact, you made a guess about the causal relation between Christianity and the behavior of the monastic scribes. "It had nothing to do with Christianity'' is what you said, your reasoning for this being that Christians didn't always behave this way, and non-Christians sometimes did behave that way, which is not a very convincing argument.

>first ever dark age

Read a book sometime.