The "Dark Ages" weren't dark

Informative video. Here is another similar take on it as well:

Modern schoolbooks generally portray the Middle Ages as a time of poverty, backwardness, and economic slavery, from which the people were freed only by the Industrial Revolution; but reliable early historians painted a quite different picture. Thorold Rogers, a nineteenth century Oxford historian, wrote that in the Middle Ages, a labourer could provide all the necessities for his family for a year by working 14 weeks. Fourteen weeks is only a quarter of a year! The rest of the time, some men worked for themselves; some studied; some fished. Some helped to build the cathedrals that appeared all over Germany, France and England during the period, massive works of art that were built mainly with volunteer labor. Some used their leisure to visit these shrines. One hundred thousand pilgrims had the wealth and leisure to visit Canterbury and other shrines yearly. William Cobbett, author of the definitive History of the Reformation, wrote that Winchester Cathedral was made when there were no poor rates; when every labouring man in England was clothed in good woollen cloth; and when all had plenty of meat and bread . . . . Money was available for inventions and art, supporting the Michelangelos, Rembrandts, Shakespeares, and Newtons of the period.

The Renaissance is usually thought of as the flowering of the age; but the university system, representative government in a Parliament, the English common law system, and the foundations of a great literary and spiritual movement were all in place by the thirteenth century, and education was advanced and widespread. As one scholar of the era observes:

We are very prone to consider that it is only in our time that anything like popular education has come into existence. As a matter of fact, however, the education afforded to the people in the little towns of the Middle Ages, represents an ideal of educational uplift for the masses such as has never been even distantly approached in succeeding centuries. The Thirteenth Century developed the greatest set of technical schools that the world has ever known. . . . These medieval towns, . . . during the course of the building of their cathedrals, of their public buildings and various magnificent edifices of royalty and for the nobility, succeeded in accomplishing such artistic results that the world has ever since held them in admiration.

The common people had leisure, education, art, and economic security. According to The Catholic Encyclopedia:

Economic historians like Rogers and Gibbins declare that during the best period of the Middle Ages say, from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century, inclusive there was no such grinding and hopeless poverty, no such chronic semi-starvation in any class, as exists to-day among large classes in the great cities . . . . In the Middle Ages there was no class resembling our proletariat, which has no security, no definite place, no certain claim upon any organization or institution in the socio-economic organism.

Richard Hoskins attributes this long period of prosperity to the absence of usurious lending practices. Rather than having to borrow the moneylenders gold, the people relied largely on interest-free tallies. Unlike gold, wooden tallies could not become scarce; and unlike paper money, they could not be counterfeited or multiplied by sleight of hand. They were simply a unit of measure, a tally of goods and services exchanged. The tally system avoided both the depressions resulting from a scarcity of gold and the inflations resulting from printing paper money out of all proportion to the goods and services available for sale. Since the tallies came into existence along with goods and services, supply and demand increased together, and prices remained stable. The tally system provided an organic form of money that expanded naturally as trade expanded and contracted naturally as taxes were paid. Bankers did not have to meet behind closed doors to set interest rates and manipulate markets to keep the money supply in balance. It balanced the way a checkbook balances, as a matter of simple math. The system of government-issued tallies kept the British economy stable and thriving until the mid-seventeenth century, when Oliver Cromwell needed money to fund a revolt against the Tudor monarchy . . . .
Click to expand...

http://www.webofdebt.com/excerpts/chapter-5.php
 
pcosmar said:
Fall of Rome???
on what planet?

Guy was full of $hit from the start. couldn't listen further.

The roman empire remained.. remnants of it still do.

Renaissance?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_the_Dragon
Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigismund,_Holy_Roman_Emperor

Sounds like a bunch of revisionist history.
Click to expand...

The Holy Roman Empire was founded by Charlemagne, it was not a direct remnant of the western Roman empire, the Byzantine Empire was a direct descendant of the eastern Roman Empire but it eventually fell to a combination of muslims and western invaders.

Most people consider the Roman empire to have fallen by the beginning of the "Dark Ages" so he referenced that as the starting point, it really doesn't have much to do with what he has to say about the conditions of the period.
 
Dark ages ? What , the 13th century ? Had to be dark , those brilliant europeans did not really get the skies lit up well with burning witches until the 1500's or so .
 
Last edited:
oyarde said:
Dark ages ? What , the 13th century ? Had to be dark those brilliant europeans did not really get the skies lit up well with burning witches until the 1500's or so .
Click to expand...

You are right, but the Injuns had been burning people at the stake all along.
 
Swordsmyth said:
Most people consider the Roman empire to have fallen by the beginning of the "Dark Ages" so he referenced that as the starting point, it really doesn't have much to do with what he has to say about the conditions of the period.
Click to expand...

At what time exactly the roman empire split and crumbled is irrelevant to the fact that it still remains,, at least in partial form.

Dark ages were pretty damn bloody. and the Renaissance was romanticized.

It has to be pretty ugly for the peak of civilization to be Vlad the Impailer.

Vlad-the-Impaler-e1475950979390-1024x629.png
 
pcosmar said:
At what time exactly the roman empire split and crumbled is irrelevant to the fact that it still remains,, at least in partial form.

Dark ages were pretty damn bloody. and the Renaissance was romanticized.

It has to be pretty ugly for the peak of civilization to be Vlad the Impailer.

Vlad-the-Impaler-e1475950979390-1024x629.png
Click to expand...

Let's put it this way, the "Dark Ages" were not a "dip" in the progress of civilization, they were no darker than the age that preceded them and progress was made during them.
 
Swordsmyth said:
Let's put it this way, the "Dark Ages" were not a "dip" in the progress of civilization, they were no darker than the age that preceded them and progress was made during them.
Click to expand...

Ok,, But I consider the Industrial Revolution to be the beginning of the Dark Age.
 
Early Middle Ages were a dark age. The term doesn't necessarily describe something bad, just the fact that we don't have much primary resources from that time period as we do other ages, hence why we're "in the dark" about them. It's true it wasn't a real dark age, the kind that you found after the Minoan crash in the Bronze Age where the entire historical record virtually goes blank on us. But it was dark enough to warrant the title honestly. No reason to be uber-autistic about it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HH8Ln4j3X0Q
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Occam's Banana
"Dark money" group secretly funding high-profile Democrat "influencers"?
Replies
12
Views
72
TheTexan
TheTexan
2
Been A long time need assistance with Bitcoin
Replies
2
Views
655
24marinematt
2
PAF
The Dark MAGA Gov-Corp Technate
Replies
5
Views
126
TheTexan
TheTexan
PAF
Trump Shouldn’t Push India to the Dark Side
Replies
5
Views
100
Brian4Liberty
Brian4Liberty
PAF
Canada, 51st State?
Replies
6
Views
67
vita3
V
Back
Top