The Death of Tolerance

He also didn't like Americans.

Here is my favorite anecdote (possibly apocryphal) about Gibbon:

"On one occasion during the American Revolutionary War he rejected an invitation to meet with Benjamin Franklin, replying with a card saying that though he respected the American envoy as a man and a philosopher, he could not reconcile it with his duty to his king to have any conversation was a “revolted” subject. Franklin replied that he had such high regard for the historian that if ever Gibbon should consider the decline and fall of the British Empire as a subject, Franklin would be happy to furnish him with some relevant materials! "

As I get older, I've come to respect that Benjamin Franklin more and more. (He's my favorite currency to have.)

guy

 

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I did not know that about the Americans. Fascinating
Wait a sec! You are on historum right?

 

One is not outdated just because one lived long ago. Some of us seem to be over the hill before we walk upright. There is still value in history written long before Gibbon and sources whose authors still live that are more interested in promoting their agenda than aligning it with truth. Gibbon was what we now call Politically Correct. When I was in college I was troubled by what seemed to be the impossibility of studying modern history uncolored by agendas. It took me longer to figure out that ancient history was not immune and neither was I.

I agree on both counts. I really like those half dollars!

 

Yep. I don't participate in the Ancients forum there, however. Most of my contributions have been on English (and later British) history 1688-1837.


guy

 

I knew you looked familiar!
Always a pleasure to meet a fellow historum user!

 

I watch everything Bettany Hughes & Mary Beard do. BBC always has historical stuff I tend to download & watch. Currently reading "SPQR" by Beard. Only on chapter 2 though.

 

For us non-numismatists (but lovers of that Las Vegas), this currency with Benjamin Franklin is also a favorite....while it lasts:

 

Shhh! We don't want those crazy modern collectors to post here!

 

Too late, here is my modern coin. I have had it for 50 years. Sigel Franklins are not dated but 1863 is a good guess.

 

Mary Beard is excellent because she questions what has always been taken for granted. I like that. Plus, she has a very engaging style.

SPQR is one of my top five books of 2015.

 

Mag Max... Wonderful posting. Further, excellent thread you created...everyone's contribution has been entertaining and informative. Furthers my feelings of correctly calling Western Europe's demise after the fall of Rome as the Dark Ages...destruction of knowledge, zeolot and fanatical religion, breakup into small greedy kingdoms, lifespans shortening...

 

@Alegandron And a lack of a strong Central government!
Before the History Channel started showing the crazy Aliens show, they made a good documentary about the dark ages.


I personally think that the Fall of Rome did not have to occur and could have been prevented. That is one reason why I like to focus on the 4th century.

 

I agree with you! Zeolous Christianity, paranoid of ancient knowledge, and non-christian (specific to the christian sect supported by the State), killed the empire and forced accumulated knowldge underground or destroyed it forever. Dark Ages...

 

That is a popular misconception which has its origin from around 1700s. Today the scholars on European Middle Ages would refute that description.

The European Middle Ages was not a backward period. It was actually a dynamic period where art, science, farming, architectures and philosophy were available and flourishing.

Ancient works such of Hesiod, Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Galen, Ptolemy, Cicero, Ovid, Seneca, Horacio etc. etc. were indeed preserved at monasteries, not destroyed. However some works of pagan philosophy was most likely destroyed or neglected because people saw no values in them, but others works such as Aristotle (plus the others) were indeed preserved as they saw value in them. In the Middle Ages and Renaissance the words from the bible was seeing as definitive. If the bible did not provide the answer then Pagan Aristotle’s word was definitive.

It was first from 1550-1700, when the scientific revolution found place in Europe, that the ideas of ancient Greeks were debunked when the Europeans realized that the ancient Greeks were wrong in their understanding of astronomy, medicine and physics.

But Europe anno 500-1500 was not a dark ages. - That would be rejected by modern scholars today.

 

Knowledge was siphoned into the monastaries and was not open to virtually any of the populace. Much of the knowledge was destroyed, too many NAMED works are lost. Not convinced of the "modern" argument.

 

The ancient works that the people saw value in was preserved by the monks in the monasteries throughout Middle Ages because clergymen were skilled writers, not because they wanted to siphoned it. More importantly they wrote them down onto parchment which was more durable than papyrus. When we have access to ancient works today it is simply caused because the people in Middle Ages were interested in some certain ancient authors, whose works were written/copying down to generation to generation. However some of the works, which people were not interesting in like for instance Pagan philosophy, vanished as people saw no reason to copying them down. – The notion that ancient works were destroyed systematically in Middle Ages is a myth and is rejected by the scholars on medieval history today.

Only a minority could afford themselves of studying stadium generale in Middle Ages. In ancient times also only a minority could afford themselves gathering learning as the majority as ordinary peasants did not have time/resources of reading Homer’s odyssey and Iliad or Socrates’ dialogues. So your assumption that the ancient Romans/Greeks had access to unlimited learning while in the Middle Ages it was siphoned, is just not correct.

Scientific Revolution, that found place in Europe in 1540-1690, was successful because it managed to debunk flawed ancient learning that by the way was prevailing, not destroyed, in Middle Ages. Like for instance the great Italian of Galileo discovered that Aristotle’s physics was wrong due to an experiment in the Pisa Tower, he also constructed a scopes and proved Copernicus was right while the ancient Greek’s assumption of a geocentric world(Ptolemy) was flawed. Later when Tycho Brahe made observation at his observatory while his helper Kepler made notations, the British genius of Isaac Newton combined Galileo’s new physics with Kepler’s numbers and he published “Principia” which was outstanding and revolutionary and as well in contradiction to the ancient Greeks.

Lavoisier also did experiment in chemistry that proved the wrongdoing of ancient learning that rejected atom-theory and relied on 4-element-theory where they believed they could transform an atom into another atom.

In term of medicine the ancient Greeks, like for instance according to Galen, the human body contained four humors: blood, black bile, yellow bile and phlegm. Illness was believed because of imbalance of the four humors. One of his method which involved of letting the blood leak out in order to balance the four elements, did not help at all and was dangerous to the patients. - The Swiss Physician Paracelsus and Flamish Andrea Vasaluis , due to some experimental method, pioneered that the illness was caused of chemical rather than of humoral imbalances.

The ancient Greeks/Romans saw human dissection as unmoral thus they have to dissect peg as example in order to understand human body, that practices was so in Middle Ages and Renaissance as well. Like for instance when the pope discovered some drawings of dissected woman’s womb, with a baby within, Leonardo Da Vinci was expelled. Ancient Greeks made a large contribution into the mathematics, like Euclid’s geometry and Pythagoraian theorem. However they also rejected the concept of “zero” due to some stupid philosophical arguments like “nothing” cannot be a thing. Because of that, mathematic was halted as it was difficult to calculate mathematic with the roman digits that did not have comma and irrational numbers. – In NO way surprising that the Muslims were kings of mathematics and medicine in the Middle Ages: they used zero into their number, and they dissected human corpses.

Accordingly the ancient learning was not systematical destroyed in Middle Ages. It was rather preserved. Anyway that “much of the knowledge” was not “knowledge” at all, but flawed assumptions in which Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Lavoisier, Paracelsus and Vasaluis in various ways in the era of Scientific Revolution proved was wrong because of genuine scientific approach to their works where they relied on experiment method and reasoning rather than just philosophy as ancient Greeks did.

 

I've started to read the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (all the volumes) to try to understand better the decline and all the issues going on during this time period of collapse. Unfortunately it is a rather long read...probably much longer than necessary, so I shall be reading for the next 4 months probably.

 

Odd that there is still discussion on this topic.
All I will say is that the persecutions of Paganism and other religious minorities was a very bad thing for the Empire in more than one way, and especially at this time when the Empire needed civil unity and peace.
When Theodosius I and Gratian basically said that "The topic of the nature of Christ and other Christian doctrines are now locked down from further discussion", it was akin to slamming a door on an entire way of thinking in the Greco-Roman world.
The Edict of 381 can be seen as a precursor to the dark and closed minded thinking of the Middle ages.

 

Due to the Edict, THINK of how many Christians that were NOT of the Nicean Sect that were persecuted and/or killed off.

I personally feel that justifying the Dark Ages of Western Europe were as good or better than what the Ancients created in Rome, Greece, etc. is akin to putting lipstick on a pig. I am just not convinced. I do agree the Byzantines and the emerging Muslim World continued advancement of Mankind during this period. Western Europe regressed. I would rather had lived in Rome during the Republic or the Empire than to have lived in the vacuum of the Viking or Saxon World after the Fall of Rome.

 

An intriguing and interesting topic.

Any culture or society that restricts knowledge and information will inevitably result in ignorance and intolerance, whether instituted by Church or State. The 'Dark Ages' were a step backward until those 'enlightened' individuals challenged all precepts, secular and non-secular.

Personally, I feel that much of the period of the 'Dark ages' were not quite so dark as we were all taught in our school days, but it took the 'Enlightenment' to truly once again reach and arguably exceed the knowledge of the Classical age.

Just my opinion......