The Birmingham age-herald., 1914-07-26
LETTERS TO EDITOR
More About Middle Ages

To the Editor of The Age-Herald
 An old opponent of mine, with whom some moons ago I crossed swords filings down another gage. I bow and take 1t up. I made, in recent letter to The Age Herald, the assertion that the middle ages were not dark, but were ages of light and learning, and that in this modern his- torical research would bear me out. Mir H. School bluntly says "nego," so the burden of proof rests with me- Before, however, directly quoting from my au- thorities I am sure MT. School will cour- teously grant me permission to make a few general remarks anent these dark ages
 l read a few days ago that the dark ness of certain mediaeval centuries is all in the mind of the persons applying the term. that as few echoes come down from the distant past, some therefore conclude that there was little going on' that the entire population was Sunk in ignor- ance' not to mention superstition and
 'barbarism''
 De Maistre once said: History is a
 conspiracy against truth,' and this notion really receives some illustration in the at-
 titude toward the middles ages. As Sir
 Francis Palgrave, in the preface to his
 History of Normandy and England
 says, "A dead set has been made against the n.icdle ages as periods immersed in darkness, ignorance and barbarity But
 most Of all have these censures been
 directed against medaeval Christianity. WlciCfore this prejudice, this distorted viewpoint that can see so little good in that historic period?
 Fleury indicates that this conspiracy began with the humanists of the Renais- sance period. Their movement was a re- action against the old learning: to com mend the new tone they wished to i'm part to civilization, it was necessary to deprecate the old. The reformation
 readily adopted the same unfavorable view, and the sceptical writers of the eighteenth century had a natural an | tipathy to the ages dominated, as the me- dieval centuries were by Christianity 1 The more researchful historian of the nineteenth century has been disturbing | this censorious judgment by manifestine l a disposition to go over the grounds i again in a more scientific spirit
 | That the masses of the people from the ninth to the thirteenth century could
 neither read nor write pay be readily granted We find in legal instruments
 of that time. And the aforesaid lord | hath declared that he does not know how | to sign his name, owing to the fact o1 l his being a nobleman." And a knight
 being asked to read the Scriptures, re- l torted q am not a clerk. l have g
 family to support
 1 But after all, is illiteracy ignorance and would inability to read mean mucf | in the tenth century as in the twentieths, | Let the world of today lose "the art l preservative of the arts"-prnting; let the
 newspaper vanish from the land, and the 1 cheap school book be thing of the past l throw us back to the condition of manu. | script books, multiplied slowly and pain | fully. and instead of i've million Hitter 1 atcs, as we have today in this land oi
 light and progress. we might have 20,O00,. | 900 or 30,000,0O0.
 1 Another considerations: To be unable tt 1 read nowadays means backwardness neg 1 lect of opportunity, stupidity; but quite | the contrary in the age before the inven- 1 tion of printing. Illiteracy then was ex cusable, was in a certain sense fashion 1 able, the naturally intelligent, who in oul l day are common schooled,' were in tha age illiterate. But what must not b, l forgotten, though it is forgotten, is tha 1 in instituting comparisons between thi. age and the middle ages. the circum l stances of civilization were altogethe different We today are "the heirs of al
 the ages and the long result of time" l Not so our ancestors in the ages we ar, l considering. For over three centurie (to A. D. 75o) civilized Europe was tn, field of successive waves of barbarian
 conquest. Franks, Goths. visigoths. Os trogoths, Vandals. Alans. Huns and Lom bards followed each other with destructiv'