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02-22-2018, 11:12 AM
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Was the Dark Age Dark?
In this fully justified panning of a new book on what Gibbon called "the rise of barbarism and religion," our Mike Juster raises serious (for me at least) questions about Western Literature between Ausonius (4th cent. AD) and Dante: https://www.claremont.org/crb/basicp...fMjZSY.twitter
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Aaron Poochigian
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02-22-2018, 01:24 PM
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Good for Mike Juster. But why anybody thought we needed a book like Nixey's when we have the books of Peter Brown on late antiquity, I cannot fathom.
(And for a really fascinating opposing case--what was actually wrong with classical mores, and the reason the earliest Christians didn't care for them--see Sarah Ruden's Paul Among the People.)
Shouldn't a basic course in medieval Latin be enough to convince one that there's plenty of quality between Ausonius and Dante?
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02-22-2018, 01:45 PM
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Maryann, don’t hate me, but I am one of those who have held a prejudice against Medieval Lit. “Beowulf,” of course, is huge for me but that’s really about it. My preference for Classical Latin and my boredom with most Christian poetry have prevented me from “getting into” much Medieval Lit. Still, I’m getting better. Mike’s efforts are slowly converting me. I want to see the light.
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Aaron Poochigian
Last edited by Aaron Poochigian; 02-22-2018 at 01:51 PM.
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02-22-2018, 03:59 PM
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In the Anglo-Saxon and English-language tradition up to about Chaucer, there's quite a bit worth reading beyond Beowulf: one could do worse than start with Sweet's Anglo-Saxon reader, then read Gawain (there's an Everyman edition with Pearl, Cleanness and Patience as well), Piers Plowman, John Gower, and maybe Gavin Douglas's Virgil. And then Chaucer is Chaucer.
That's leaving out French, Occitan, Spanish, Catalan, Italian, German, and Old Norse, and the Celtic languages, and medieval Latin. In Western Europe.
This semester I'm teaching Marie de France, she is quite entertaining. :-)
Cheers,
John
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02-22-2018, 04:32 PM
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I know, I know--it's a prejudice I have. I'll have to keep finding "exceptions" until the prejudice goes away.
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Aaron Poochigian
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02-22-2018, 05:11 PM
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I’m not familiar with Nixey’s book The Darkening Age, and A. M. Juster’s assessment of its faults in both content and writing may be justified. Whatever the demerits of the book, I do find in Juster’s review a soft-pedaling of the immense destruction and eradication of Greco/Roman culture that was intentionally caused by early Christianity. If Nixey’s book is, as Juster asserts, a fusion of “venomous anti-Cathlolicism” and “today’s more extreme identity politics,” Juster’s review itself smacks of typical Christian apologetics.
One doesn’t need to idealize or romanticize the ancient classical world or ignore the many atrocities and devastations brought about by those cultures in order to recognize the catastrophic harm caused by Christianity. Juster’s critique takes Nixey to task for shoddy historical research, poor-quality writing, and a sophomoric, biased viewpoint; however, while doing so he likewise underplays or glosses over the intentional and systematic obliteration of “the glory that was Greece, /And the grandeur that was Rome” by early Christianity. The Christians did in fact perpetrate a cultural crime of monstrous proportions.
I’ll end this post with a passage from Carl Sagan’s book COSMOS:
“The last scientist who worked in the Library [of Alexandria] was a mathematician, astronomer, physicist, and the head of the Neoplatonic school of philosophy … Her name was Hypatia. She was born in Alexandria in 370. … The growing Christian Church was consolidating its power and attempting to eradicate pagan influence and culture. … In the year 415, on her way to work, she was set upon by a fanatical mob of Cyril’s [Archbishop of Alexandria] parishioners. They dragged her from her chariot, tore off her clothes, and, armed with abalone shells, flayed her flesh from her bones. Her remains were burned, her works obliterated, her name forgotten. Cyril was made a saint.”
Richard
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02-22-2018, 06:43 PM
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Carl Sagan may have drawn that arresting passage from Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy, which tells pretty much the same story. I've read Gibbon, some years ago, but don't recall it there in quite so graphic a fashion.
Cheers,
John
Last edited by John Isbell; 02-22-2018 at 06:45 PM.
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02-22-2018, 07:14 PM
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Maryann, thanks for the reading tip. I will check out Paul Among The People. I couldn't read the review. Perhaps he is making accurate points but the review is so culture warrior-like I don't trust it. It seems he has a pretty flimsy book in his maw. My problem is I think the response would be the same to a much better book.
Richard, I have the letter Hypatia wrote before her execution. It is a powerful reminder.
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02-22-2018, 07:33 PM
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Mike, many thanks for this! Arthur has spent his life as a teacher fighting the "Dark Ages" view of the early medieval period (and the "Swerve" view of the Renaissance which holds that it produced secularism and therefore Truth). I am so delighted to hear your voice on our side.
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02-22-2018, 10:33 PM
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Juster’s review says as much about his personal beliefs and ideology as it does about the book in question. The book may be bad, but the review is shallow and painfully exculpatory.
Consider this sentence from the essay: “Any thinking person who has tried to appreciate classical art feels grief about the masterpieces we have lost.” Immediately following this flicker of sorrow, Juster goes on to mention how the Romans also looted and destroyed artifacts from conquered nations. Well, that certainly lets the Christians off the hook. It’s an eye for an eye ethos applied to cultural destruction.
Near the end of his essay, Juster addresses this point again when he writes: “In recent decades people have pulled down statues of Lenin, Saddam Hussein, and generals of the Confederacy. Any fair-minded review of the historical record makes it impossible to label early Christians as uniquely destructive of art.” That statement strikes me as a lame analogy and feeble excuse. Comparing a destroyed statue of Lenin or Saddam Hussein to lost masterpieces by Phidias or Polyclitus or Praxiteles or Lysippus is risible.
The Romans did loot Greece of thousands of bronze and marble statues, but not to melt them down or smash them to pieces. Rather, they carted them back to Rome because they valued their beauty and artistry. They wanted the originals to keep and to imitate. Most of the work of those ancient Greek masters has been lost, except for some statues that survive in Roman copies.
Furthermore, the Christian annihilation of the pagan visual arts was extended to anything considered heathen and unchristian. We are lucky to have inherited even a minimal amount of Greco-Roman science, philosophy, literature, and temple architecture. We know that 123 plays by Sophocles used to be housed in the Library at Alexandria. Only seven of them have survived. And this ratio of loss is typical for all areas of ancient Greco-Roman culture. While many circumstances contributed to the demolition of classical antiquity, early Christianity certainly did its best, often aggressively and viciously, to eradicate anything and everything deemed unworthy to inhabit the nascent Kingdom of Christ.
Mr. Juster’s scathing review of Nixey’s The Darkening Age has actually prodded me to consider buying the book.
Richard
Last edited by Richard Meyer; 02-23-2018 at 08:13 AM.
Reason: fix typo
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