The Irish monks hid away the heretical works of the Greek and Roman philosophers, until Europe was ready for the Renaissance.
I wonder if interested people should pull together to save some of this possibly endangered data. Remember when the Harper government started purging all of Canada’s climate data? Maybe a massively parallel effort is needed to save important Federal data over the next four years - and who knows, maybe longer.
I thought we stole 'em from the Arabs during the Crusades.
That too, I think, maybe, but somebody had to hang onto them from 1200-1500. But IANAH.
It’s both, as far as I remember. Irish monks did save some works, but I’d guess that there was a great deal more to be had in places like Baghdad, Jerusalem, Cairo, and in the Caliphates in Iberia.
The slackers didn’t save Mufonious Rufus or the other Stoics beyond a little here and there. I do not forgive or forget!!!
Any idea if that was intentional or just lack of sources to save?
No idea but I always assumed it was just randomness and lost texts.
Hm. I’ll have to ask my friends who study ancient/medieval history what they know about it. It’s an interesting question, how we got the ancient texts that we do have, in the first place.
Well, those that the Church father’s liked or supported (because they weren’t perceived as being in conflict with Christianity) got preserved. So, some classical philosophy was fine but not Sappho’s poems.
Sure, but it wasn’t just the church preserving. And, in the case of the Irish monks, they often preserved what they thought was worth preserving outside of the church itself. And of course, there were other sources around the Mediterranean that saved works, too. At least some percentage of classical writings came from some of the places I mentioned above.
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