Dark Age Revisionism: has it gone too far?

[The Iceman of the North]

I find the term "Dark Age" quite natural covering the history up to about 800, whereupon the "Golden Age" started, lasting until around 1300.

[Datepalm]

Fascinating thread (Though I haven't a lot to add.)

I did watch BBC's "Barbarian" series a while back, which seemed to make a fairly good case for the Romans not being that cool at all. Though I did think they were grasping at straws a bit now and then, like assuming the entire roman empire was fundumentally againt scientific and technological progress more or less from one thingibob (Absurdly awesome as the antikytheria mechanism appears to be) found on a [i]greek [/i]rather than [i]roman [/i]ship.

[size=1](Not to mention not managing to go more than about ten minutes without sying something along the lines of "These were [i]our ancestors. [/i]The people whose descendants would become, well[i], you and I."[/i])[/size]

Basically, I guess i'm wondering how we're defining "Not dark aged" (or "working") society. Romans had big cities and good administration, but also widespread slavery and barabric (heh.) sports and so on. During the dark ages some important codes and principles came into being but general quality of life for most people seems to have declined faily drastically.

[tzanth]

[quote name='Shryke' post='1665171' date='Jan 28 2009, 01.18']So, again, as long as it lasts, it works? Even if it lasts several centuries before leading to the extinction of it's people?[/quote]

Systems don't arise randomly; they're the result of historical events and processes. Furthermore such events and processes are often the result of action taken by individuals. If a system arises in the first place its clearly working for some group of individuals under some set of variables. Similarly, if any system is able to last for several centuries clearly it "works" by some set of parameters. It may collapse or evolve at some point in the future - all systems do - but that doesn't mean it didn't work while it lasted.

[Daeric]

[quote]Stuff that is overrated:
Rome

Stuff that is underrated:
The Spanish Inquisition[/quote]

Stuff that is massively underrated and never suspected

Danish Inquistion ;)

[Guest Raidne]

Interesting topic, IMO. I agree with Galactus, et al. The Dark Ages refers to the period from about the 6th century, or a little later, to roughly the 10th century, depending on what area you're talking about. And I like that term for that period. IMO, it's "Dark" because the West had lost it's cultural heritage, and didn't get it back until scholars started reclaiming bits of Plato and what not from the Muslim and Byzantine scholars. First, in Muslim-occupied Spain and during the Crusades, and then later when people from the Byzantine empire started showing up in Italy in droves.

I think you have the dark period until the turn of the century, about, and then a transitory period where some things from the Western cultural heritage leaked through and inspired a few scholars, e.g. Abelard's Sic et Non, and some unrelated developments were made, e.g. cathedral building, leading to what is now termed the 12th century Renaissance. And the Universities start popping up around this time. Also, the economic situation changed - see Guy Bois' "The transformation of the year one thousand" for an excellent case study in economic history on that subject.

Then, you have the early Renaissance when the Byzantine scholars start showing up in Italy and Pico della Mirandola and Ficino get the humanist movement going and ultimately revive philosophical skepticism. Their influence can be traced all over the continent. There's a change in Latin here too - medieval Latin is actually really easy to translate, because it's largely wrong. About this time, everyone starts getting tutored by the Byzantines and it improves a lot and goes back to the classical style.

But, to answer to question, I have very little problem terming the early middle ages the "dark ages" for all the reasons EHK laid out in the original post. Apparently, many coins from the Merovingian period having writing on them that doesn't even mean anything, illiteracy was such a problem.

ETA: As is probably clear, my knowledge, to the extent I have any, centers around the history of ideas since that was my focus when I did my bachelor's in history, and I'm pretty lacking in the economic and political history areas, so that's my take from that perspective.

[EHK for Darwin]

[quote name='Bruce Galactus' post='1665102' date='Jan 28 2009, 01.53']But the point is that this change was what was required to create the modern world. The industrial revolutioon, and by extension our own world, is based on the developments of medieval patterns, not roman ones.[/quote]

How do we know that? How do we know that without the post-Roman societal collapse (still sticking to that moniker) that we wouldn't have developed our modern world centuries earlier? That we wouldn't have had our industrial revolution in the 15th century instead of the 18th? Simply saying that 'these things were required to create our modern world' strikes me as a bit lazy and deterministic. It tells us nothing. Its quite possible that over 1,000 years of continued development, Rome or some other similarly developed successor state may have reached the same milestones in better time.

[quote]You really cannot overestimate the importance of this separation. The church creates the antecendant of International Law, it manages (quite successfully) to define marriage as a matter of consent and not something you can be forced into. The church (in both the West and the East) kept the ancient classics alive, the church laid the foundation of the university, the church created an international organization that connected all of western europe: A network that could function even in times of war.[/quote]

Yeah the church kept some of the classics alives, but they didn't do much with them. In fact the large majority of ancient manuscripts of the Greek and Roman era classics were translated and transferred by Byzantine Greeks fleeing the decline of the empire, through contact with Arab Muslims and Moors in Spain. The Monasteries kept a flicker of learning alive, but it was really spread to the masses by the lands (and travelers to the lands) that had never lost this knowledge. The monks didn't bring these 'seeds of the Renaissance' to the people (at least not most of it), the Byzantine Greeks and Muslims did.

[quote]EDIT: It remains really amusing of course to see how differently "Dark Ages" are defined. You'd be hard pressed to find someone in Scandinavia calling the 700-1000 period a "Dark Age" for instance[/quote]

No, they just helped perpetuate the continuation of a dark age in other areas by raiding the shit out of them. The Vikings were nice enough to gut alot of the progress Charlemagne and the Franks may have made.

[quote]Yeah, golden age is used very rarely and usually very specifically "The Golden Age of the Dutch Republic." I've never seen it used as a generalized term like people sometimes use "The Dark Ages".[/quote]

Don't we have the Golden Age of Islam? I know I've heard the Golden Age of Greece. (back when they had all the great philosophers and the Spartans and Athenians still kicked ass) I also get a Golden age whenever I merge a great artist and great priest together, so there! :) (also works when I build the Taj Mahal)

[Hereward]

[quote name='Red Sun' post='1665128' date='Jan 28 2009, 08.39']Haha. I also think that English history counts the Dark Ages up to the Normannish invasion, even though, Britain did have some cultural highlights even long before 1066. But that's before the Vikings.[/quote]

The Dark Ages are often claimed to have ended in England with the beginning of the process of unification, i.e. Alfred the Great. Certainly, leaving Viking incursions apart, the pre-Norman late Anglo-Saxon civilisation was quite sophisticated, almost certainly moreso than the Norman one that replaced it, except in terms of the military and architecture.

[Red Sun]

[quote name='EHK for a True GOP' post='1665303' date='Jan 28 2009, 14.23']Yeah the church kept some of the classics alives, but they didn't do much with them. In fact the large majority of ancient manuscripts of the Greek and Roman era classics were translated and transferred by Byzantine Greeks fleeing the decline of the empire, through contact with Arab Muslims and Moors in Spain. The Monasteries kept a flicker of learning alive, but it was really spread to the masses by the lands (and travelers to the lands) that had never lost this knowledge. The monks didn't bring these 'seeds of the Renaissance' to the people (at least not most of it), the Byzantine Greeks and Muslims did.[/quote]

It depends, a couple of classic authors and their works were always present in Western Europe (for ex. some speeches of Cicero, some Sueton, some Livius), but since the knowledge of greek declined, they have indeed lost a great part of the cultural heritage.

[quote name='Hereward' post='1665320' date='Jan 28 2009, 14.55']The Dark Ages are often claimed to have ended in England with the beginning of the process of unification, i.e. Alfred the Great. Certainly, leaving Viking incursions apart, the pre-Norman late Anglo-Saxon civilisation was quite sophisticated, almost certainly moreso than the Norman one that replaced it, except in terms of the military and architecture.[/quote]

Thank you for the information. That makes much more sense, imo, because aside from exchanging the elites, the Normans kept many elements of Anglo-Saxon administration. That's the interesting aspect about the Normans, they always used existing structures and adapted them a little bit.

[Guest Raidne]

[quote name='EHK for a True GOP' post='1665303' date='Jan 28 2009, 08.23']Yeah the church kept some of the classics alives, but they didn't do much with them. In fact the large majority of ancient manuscripts of the Greek and Roman era classics were translated and transferred by Byzantine Greeks fleeing the decline of the empire, through contact with Arab Muslims and Moors in Spain. The Monasteries kept a flicker of learning alive, but it was really spread to the masses by the lands (and travelers to the lands) that had never lost this knowledge. The monks didn't bring these 'seeds of the Renaissance' to the people (at least not most of it), the Byzantine Greeks and Muslims did.[/quote]

I agree with this, and would further add that, IMO, universities developed independently of the church, were, by necessity, sanctioned by them, and that the church did much more to retard the progress of universities than it did to develop them. The University of Paris, for instance, came about through the support of Phillip Augustus, not the church. He eventually turns over control to the church (following a tavern brawl and riot), probably just to avoid having to deal with the administration of the unruly students and the bad press. The church stays out of their affairs for the most part, but when they do get involved, it's hardly in the interest of promoting scholarship, but instead to reign the university in by limiting the number faculty, posthumously excommunicate some maester or another whose teachings they disagree with, or make all kinds of little piddly demands, like the following from the papal bull [i]ex litteris vestre[/i] issued between 1208-09:

[quote]From letters written to us by your humbleness we learned that some recently appointed doctors of liberal arts have deviated from the ways of their predecessors in three main points: the wearing of anti-regulation dress; the failure to observe the accustomed order in lectures and disputations, and the neglect of the pious custom of attending the funerals of deceased masters. We also learned that you were desirous to restore these decent customs and with that intention you elected unanimously eight jurors from your ranks to turn the aforementioned regulations into written statutes...[/quote]

These same three concerns are addressed again in 1215. Really important stuff there being directed by the church.

And let's not forget censorship - from the statutes of 1215 drafted by the pope's representative Robert of Courson:

[quote]They shall not lecture on the books of Aristotle on metaphysics and natural philosophy or on summaries of them or concerning the doctrine of master David of Dinant or the heretic Amaury or Mauritius of Spain.[/quote]

[EHK for Darwin]

[quote]Depends what you mean by technological advances. Many things that were known by the romans but never really used large-scale (like wind and water mills) became widespread in this period. There were multiple improvements in agricultural techniques and technologies (three-field system, horse collar, you know the drill)[/quote]

Just doing some googling, but the horse collar was a Chinese innovation that eventually filtered into Europe around the 10th century. And the Romans actually developed the three-field crop rotation system, which was rediscovered by Europeans several centuries after the fall. I guess you can say (as you and others did) that the Romans didn't know these things and/or didn't make adequate usage of them, and they did contribute to the agricultural revolution of the 12th century or so, but they weren't really European innovations.

[quote]That is inarguably true. But then, is cities really a valid way to judge a society where the majority of the population (which was the case even in roman days) is rural?[/quote]

I think it is to some extent. Cities were and almost always have been the centers of commerce, culture, engineering, art, education and learning, architecture, government, religion, bureaucracy, and administration. They generally are the heart of any given civilization. Where the great works are done and the great people migrate to. Just as a matter of sheer numbers, you're gonna have a better chance of great intellects mingling to produce great innovations than you are with thousands of tiny, barely connected villages with no urban centers. I do think a lack of urban-ness very well can (and often does) denote a significant degree of backwardness.

[quote]traditional legal systems were actually far more complex than is often imagined, and we got the first real attempts at international law in the church's Canon Law.[/quote]

I did a course on it and we read many translated examples of Justinians Code versus the laws that became the standard in the post-Roman West. It was for the most part tribal and backwards in just about every sense. Monty Python's parody was close to being nothing of the sort. I was seriously waiting for a passage asking if the accused party weighed the same as a duck. There may have been complexity, but certainly not rational or well reasoned complexity. There was a canon law section in the course, but we sadly never got to it. Maybe I'll dig out the book. (That thing was a BEAST)

[quote]This is the main point where discussion is incontrovertible: The question is how significant that really was for the people who actually lived there.[/quote]

Is that really the right question though? People who know nothing, miss nothing. Modern history has been more concerned than in past eras for the lot of the common people under particular regimes, but the bigger questions still remain the same; What did they leave behind? And the answer for the period from the fall til at least the Carolingian Renaissance is 'not much'. Populations declined 20% during that period. Trade fell to the lowest level since the Bronze age. Building, writing? Very little. Systematic agriculture disappeared for a period as well. As did any form of large scale manufacture.

It seems I have to grant that Europeans pulled out of this dark age much sooner than I'd previously concluded, the developments of the mid-Medieval period certainly marked significant progress. But the first few centuries immediately after the fall (or however long it took Roman institutions, trade, bureaucracy, literacy and agriculture to disappear in various areas) til probably the rise of Charlemagne were as dark as dark ages get.

[AndyP]

[quote name='Raidne' post='1665345' date='Jan 28 2009, 09.22']These same three concerns are addressed again in 1215. Really important stuff there being directed by the church.[/quote]

No more or less inane than most administrative instructions issued by large organizations today and throughout history. On the issue of censorship, do you really think there would have been less had administration of the university remained in the hands of the state. Exactly how far would that lecture on the legitimacy on Monarchal rule would have gotten?

[EHK for Darwin]

[quote name='AndyP' post='1665376' date='Jan 28 2009, 08.46']No more or less inane than most administrative instructions issued by large organizations today and throughout history. On the issue of censorship, do you really think there would have been less had administration of the university remained in the hands of the state. Exactly how far would that lecture on the legitimacy on Monarchal rule would have gotten?[/quote]

Fair enough point there, but monarchical rule is a simple enough concept with limited and usually obvious boundaries. There's much less one needs to steer clear of compared to centuries of superstitious church doctrine that insists on infiltrating countless areas of study that would be better left to science or philosophy. Discovering the world doesn't quite operate the way the Bible suggests does not threaten the monarch.

[IheartTesla]

It must have truly been the dark ages if people werent using the numerical system. I presume all the more educated folk such as monks/priests probably did math in roman numerals. Ugh!

[Galactus]

[quote]Just doing some googling, but the horse collar was a Chinese innovation that eventually filtered into Europe around the 10th century. And the Romans actually developed the three-field crop rotation system, which was rediscovered by Europeans several centuries after the fall. I guess you can say (as you and others did) that the Romans didn't know these things and/or didn't make adequate usage of them, and they did contribute to the agricultural revolution of the 12th century or so, but they weren't really European innovations.[/quote]

Arguably not, but then, neither were most inventions in the roman age. (most of which seems to have been adaptations of stuff developed in the middle-east)

But it is an interesting point, when is something "invented"? When you have the first principle, or when people start to use it? The romans had tons of discoveries that didn't have any noticeable impact on their way of doing things until after the fall of the Empire in the west.

[quote]I think it is to some extent. Cities were and almost always have been the centers of commerce, culture, engineering, art, education and learning, architecture, government, religion, bureaucracy, and administration. They generally are the heart of any given civilization. Where the great works are done and the great people migrate to. Just as a matter of sheer numbers, you're gonna have a better chance of great intellects mingling to produce great innovations than you are with thousands of tiny, barely connected villages with no urban centers. I do think a lack of urban-ness very well can (and often does) denote a significant degree of backwardness.[/quote]

But all these cities depend upon a countryside for their very survival: It is changes back here that really impact city life and organization.

[quote]Is that really the right question though? People who know nothing, miss nothing. Modern history has been more concerned than in past eras for the lot of the common people under particular regimes, but the bigger questions still remain the same; What did they leave behind? And the answer for the period from the fall til at least the Carolingian Renaissance is 'not much'. Populations declined 20% during that period. Trade fell to the lowest level since the Bronze age. Building, writing? Very little. Systematic agriculture disappeared for a period as well. As did any form of large scale manufacture.

It seems I have to grant that Europeans pulled out of this dark age much sooner than I'd previously concluded, the developments of the mid-Medieval period certainly marked significant progress. But the first few centuries immediately after the fall (or however long it took Roman institutions, trade, bureaucracy, literacy and agriculture to disappear in various areas) til probably the rise of Charlemagne were as dark as dark ages get.[/quote]

But the point is they *didn't* "pull out", they went into a different direction, what rose out of the early middle-ages was not the classical world born anew but the High Middle ages. Which had an entirely different dynamic, better in some ways perhaps, worse in some ways certainly, but incontrovertibly not the same.

It's not a matter of unilinear development here, with the roman age being "higher" and the dark ages "more primitive" (except perhaps, when dealing with particular and very specific stuff like say, architecture)

And as mentioned, the period is even shorter than that, for while the decline started in the 300's it also didn't really get going until pretty late: A hundred years or so after the fall of the Empire things were pretty much the same as they had been in the late empire. There was no imediate shift between "Hey, we're awesome romans" and "Hey, we're primitive germanics." It was a slow process of transformation.

[quote]I agree with this, and would further add that, IMO, universities developed independently of the church, were, by necessity, sanctioned by them, and that the church did much more to retard the progress of universities than it did to develop them. The University of Paris, for instance, came about through the support of Phillip Augustus, not the church. He eventually turns over control to the church (following a tavern brawl and riot), probably just to avoid having to deal with the administration of the unruly students and the bad press. The church stays out of their affairs for the most part, but when they do get involved, it's hardly in the interest of promoting scholarship, but instead to reign the university in by limiting the number faculty, posthumously excommunicate some maester or another whose teachings they disagree with, or make all kinds of little piddly demands, like the following from the papal bull ex litteris vestre issued between 1208-09:[/quote]

Heh, I'm not claiming the church was doing all these things out of the goodness of their hearts, but where history is concerned, consequences matter more than intentions.

And incidentally, one of the side effects of the church meddling was the fact that unversities operated under canon law rather than secular law, which was quite big a bonus.

[quote]How do we know that? How do we know that without the post-Roman societal collapse (still sticking to that moniker) that we wouldn't have developed our modern world centuries earlier? That we wouldn't have had our industrial revolution in the 15th century instead of the 18th? Simply saying that 'these things were required to create our modern world' strikes me as a bit lazy and deterministic. It tells us nothing. Its quite possible that over 1,000 years of continued development, Rome or some other similarly developed successor state may have reached the same milestones in better time.[/quote]

Quite possible, but it would not be *our* world. A world developed from the later, totalitarian roman empire of Diocletian would be very different from the world that developed historically.

[quote]Yeah the church kept some of the classics alives, but they didn't do much with them. In fact the large majority of ancient manuscripts of the Greek and Roman era classics were translated and transferred by Byzantine Greeks fleeing the decline of the empire, through contact with Arab Muslims and Moors in Spain. The Monasteries kept a flicker of learning alive, but it was really spread to the masses by the lands (and travelers to the lands) that had never lost this knowledge. The monks didn't bring these 'seeds of the Renaissance' to the people (at least not most of it), the Byzantine Greeks and Muslims did.[/quote]

The classics, quite frankly, are overrated :P what spurred literacy was the commercial revolution: The fact that merchants needed to read to take part in the long-range international trade that started happening (and incidentally relatively early on was reaching far beyond what the romans ever did) These mainly happened to be taught by ex-church members (which the church didn't like, but that didn't stop people from running off with their literacy and teaching people to read)

[quote]No, they just helped perpetuate the continuation of a dark age in other areas by raiding the shit out of them. The Vikings were nice enough to gut alot of the progress Charlemagne and the Franks may have made.[/quote]

Yes... And then again no. Vikings opened up a WHOLE BUNCH of trade routes (routes that would later be taken over by german and dutch merchants) they connectected Scandinavia, Britain, Germany and France with Russia the Byzantine Empire, and also linked up with the fledgeling italian merchants.

The romans had extensive trade networks as well, but they were far less extensive than what was happening in the middle-ages (and these networks would in turn expand across the great oceans in the 1400's and 1500's)

Incidentally, this is another place where europeans advanced beyond the romans: Shipbuilding. Europeans pretty quickly were building much cheaper and more seaworthy ships. And shipbuilding is arguably far more important a tech than architecture.

[Guest Raidne]

[quote name='AndyP' post='1665376' date='Jan 28 2009, 09.46']No more or less inane than most administrative instructions issued by large organizations today and throughout history. On the issue of censorship, do you really think there would have been less had administration of the university remained in the hands of the state. Exactly how far would that lecture on the legitimacy on Monarchal rule would have gotten?[/quote]

This matters a lot less than you think. Political science, for instance, was not one of the areas of study at the university during this period, whereas natural philosophy would have been, had it not been largely prohibited by the church.

This maps the development of scientific vs. political progress too, as philosophical skepticism, which gave rise to empiricism was present in a major way as early as the 15th century, whereas non-monarchical systems of government don't come on the scene as a subject of academic discourse until much later.

And yeah, Andy it [i]is[/i] really more inane considering that's pretty much all the church was doing. That stuff on dress is in a papal bull and reappears in the official governing statutes, for Christ's sake.

[AndyP]

[quote name='EHK for a True GOP' post='1665399' date='Jan 28 2009, 11.08']Fair enough point there, but monarchical rule is a simple enough concept with limited and usually obvious boundaries. There's much less one needs to steer clear of compared to centuries of superstitious church doctrine that insists on infiltrating countless areas of study that would be better left to science or philosophy. Discovering the world doesn't quite operate the way the Bible suggests does not threaten the monarch.[/quote]
Anything that threatens the established social order, would be seen as a threat to the monarch. The Church being a large part to the social order would have been protected. Also literal interpretation of the Bible was a product of the Reformation which is at the start of the modern era.

[Galactus]

[quote name='EHK for a True GOP' post='1665399' date='Jan 28 2009, 16.08']Fair enough point there, but monarchical rule is a simple enough concept with limited and usually obvious boundaries. There's much less one needs to steer clear of compared to centuries of superstitious church doctrine that insists on infiltrating countless areas of study that would be better left to science or philosophy. Discovering the world doesn't quite operate the way the Bible suggests does not threaten the monarch.[/quote]

But you don't get it. The interaction between church law, monarchical law and various kinds of traditional (IE: Noble families) power groups is precisely what creates modern politics.

Time and time again we have the Church (this happens in the islamic world too, at certain times) saying "No, you can't do that." The church is by and large the steward of human rights in this period. The most famous being probably, that the entire idea that you can't be married to someone against your will is something the Church forced (largely successfully) on the nobility.

What is important is not really if the church was full of good people or not, or even if it was using it's power wisely, but that it *existed* as an alternate centre of power that sometimes worked in concert with and sometimes opposed the various other power centres, and again, most importantly, was *international*. The roman world had no equivalent to the medieval church. And those that came in the post-reformation era were still building on the legacy of the medieval church by and large.

[Guest Raidne]

[quote name='Bruce Galactus' post='1665415' date='Jan 28 2009, 10.21']Heh, I'm not claiming the church was doing all these things out of the goodness of their hearts, but where history is concerned, consequences matter more than intentions.

And incidentally, one of the side effects of the church meddling was the fact that unversities operated under canon law rather than secular law, which was quite big a bonus.[/quote]

Well no. They were doing it specifically in order to censor what was being taught. The consequence was that scholarship went much slower than it should have.

Please explain how operating under canon law was a bonus for the universities.

[quote]The classics, quite frankly, are overrated :P what spurred literacy was the commercial revolution: The fact that merchants needed to read to take part in the long-range international trade that started happening (and incidentally relatively early on was reaching far beyond what the romans ever did) These mainly happened to be taught by ex-church members (which the church didn't like, but that didn't stop people from running off with their literacy and teaching people to read)[/quote]

Maybe so, or maybe it was the Reformation which required literacy so that every person was capable of reading the Bible. That's the answer I've more commonly seen. And it was a renewed study of the classics that led to the spike in academic scholarship that led to the information explosion of the 16th century. Publishing didn't get going again because of merchants.

Basically, we're really talking about two different things. There's literacy in your native language, and there's literacy in Latin and even Greek. The latter came about from exposure to the classics, which couldn't be read until literacy in Greek and Latin was renewed. That's the sort of literacy which led to academic and scientific progress. Unless you're saying merchants were communicating to each other in classical Latin?

[Galactus]

[quote name='Raidne' post='1665417' date='Jan 28 2009, 16.23']This matters a lot less than you think. Political science, for instance, was not one of the areas of study at the university during this period, whereas natural philosophy would have been, had it not been largely prohibited by the church.

This maps the development of scientific vs. political progress too, as philosophical skepticism, which gave rise to empiricism was present in a major way as early as the 15th century, whereas non-monarchical systems of government don't come on the scene as a subject of academic discourse until much later.

And yeah, Andy it [i]is[/i] really more inane considering that's pretty much all the church was doing. That stuff on dress is in a papal bull and reappears in the official governing statutes, for Christ's sake.[/quote]

Actually universities were discussing and investigating democracy as early as the 13th century. They just mainly dismissed it as unworkable in larger states. (with a few exceptions)

And of course, non-monarchical forms of government existed even earlier. (eg. the italian republics)

And political science was discussed, although mainly as a component of law, not as an independent area of study.

[Galactus]

[quote name='Raidne' post='1665428' date='Jan 28 2009, 16.29']Well no. They were doing it specifically in order to censor what was being taught. The consequence was that scholarship went much slower than it should have.

Please explain how operating under canon law was a bonus for the universities.[/quote]

Quite frankly, they could not easily be bullied by local nobles or kings. (they still could be, but it was much harder) and church authorities wer elargely divided enough (eg. between universities, local bishops, the Pope...) that they could be either sidetracked or neutralized.

What you must remember is that canonical law, for all it's problems, was much more firmly legalistic than secular law: You could literally tie your enemies up for year sin processing and in the meanwhile get your ideas spread.