Historiansplaining: A historian tells you why everything you know is wrong

Middle Ages 9: Knowledge and Ignorance in the Middle Ages (and Today)

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Jun 1, 2017
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INSIGHT

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.
INSIGHT

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.
INSIGHT

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).
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