Re: Another thing they don't have: sense of humour

On Thu, 02 Feb 2006 17:05:34 +0100, Earl Evleth <evleth@xxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

That also sounds like the history of early Christianity, after it
took power. It went from a victim to an oppressor configuration.
Worse, it went though a book burning period around the 5th century
and plunged Europe in the "dark ages" that took it a thousand
years to get out of.

The 5th century in Europe had no more bookburning than was normal in
other adjacent centuries and other adjacent parts of the world. You
can hardly blame the "Dark Ages" (a really obsolete term) on
Christianity. You must still think that Gibbon was an historian.

The so-called "Dark Ages" were mostly caused by political unrest, war,
and epidemic diseases. Ireland, for instance, was Christian from the
late 5th or early 6th century but didn't suffer the war and disease
continental Europe did, and in Ireland scholarship was kept alive
throughout the early middle ages. Even in continental Europe, many
monasteries preserved works of antiquity that would have been lost if
it had depended on the secular world. And other parts of the Christian
world (Byzantium, for instance) maintained their civilizations.


--
Barbara Vaughan
My email address is my first initial followed by my surname at libero dot it
I answer travel questions only in the newsgroup
.

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