
Middle Ages 9: Knowledge and Ignorance in the Middle Ages (and Today)
29 snips
Jun 1, 2017 AI Snips
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Why The Middle Ages Were Not Simply Ignorant
- The Middle Ages combined massive loss of texts with intense intellectual creativity rather than sheer ignorance.
- Monasteries labored to preserve classics but material limits like fragile papyrus and costly parchment (300 calves per Bible) meant inevitable losses.
Augustine Shaped Medieval Biblical Interpretation
- Early medieval intellectual life privileged Platonic and Augustinian approaches that treated scripture allegorically and valued a higher, spiritual reality.
- Augustine argued the Bible often demands nonliteral reading and insisted moral coherence (love) over crude literalism.
How Population Growth Created Medieval Universities
- After 1000 CE demographic and economic growth spurred new institutions of learning and the formation of universities across Europe.
- Universities taught a standard curriculum: trivium (logic, rhetoric, grammar) and quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music).
