Anti-Christian Mythology

Jim Pederson Dyed-in-the-Wool History January 20, 2025

The Mythology of the Dark Ages and the Renaissance

Western history, as it’s commonly and consistently presented, consists of Classical Antiquity, followed by the Church dominated Dark Ages, which gave way to the Renaissance or Enlightenment which then led to and enabled the development of modern western society. The phrase “Dark Ages” can most probably be traced to the Italian humanist Petrarch (1304-74) who characterized the period stretching from the fall of the Roman Empire to his own age as a time of “darkness”. (1 p. p.74) This was then repeated through the ages until it became a sort of collective false memory.

François-Marie Arouet, known by his nom de plume Voltaire (1694-1778): “ [during this era ] barbarism, superstition, [and] ignorance covered the face of the world” (1 p. 74)
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78): “Europe had relapsed into the barbarism of the earliest ages. The people of this part of the world … lived some centuries ago in a condition worse than ignorance.” (1 p. 74)
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970): “As the central authority of Rome decayed, the lands of the Western Empire began to sink into an era of barbarism during which Europe suffered a general cultural decline. The Dark Ages, as they are called … it is not inappropriate to call these centuries dark, especially if they are set against what came before and what came after.” (1 p. 74)
Daniel J. Boorstin (1914–2004), (onetime professor at the University of Chicago, librarian of Congress, and senior historian at the Smithsonian Institution): “Christianity conquered the Roman Empire and most of Europe. Then we observe a Europe-wide phenomenon of scholarly amnesia, which afflicted the continent from AD 300 to at least 1300..(this occurred because) the leaders of orthodox Christendom built a grand barrier against the progress of knowledge.” (From the Book The Discoverers in 1983) (1 p. 73)

Renowned historian Will Durant was somewhat more charitable referring to a decline in literary outputs during the 6th and 7th centuries saying “The basic cause of cultural retrogression was not Christianity but barbarism; not religion but war. The human inundations ruined or impoverished cities, monasteries, libraries, schools, and made impossible the life of the scholar or the scientist. Perhaps the destruction would have been worse had not the Church maintained some measure of order in a crumbling civilization” (2 pp. 9-10)

Now let’s take a look at what really happened starting with the Barbarian conquest of Rome. The term barbarian derived from the word “babbler” meaning that their language was not understandable which, of course, is a matter of perspective. The Goths, who conquered Rome, were not comparatively backwards or ignorant. Their military leader Alaric had been a commander in the Roman army and the majority of his troops were also Roman army veterans. The Barbarian North had long been “Romanized” with sophisticated manufacturing operations and trade routes. (1 pp. 75-77) Moving forward from that point, there was steady and significant economic and technological progress that improved people’s lives and broadly raised the quality and standard of living. Most of these advances were led by the church and the monastery system in particular.

Romans generally didn’t make use of water or wind for power and relied on human labor; generally performed by slaves (this may in part have been to avoid unemployment). By the ninth century one third of the estates along the Seine River around Paris had water mills and the majority were on church owned properties. Moving forward several centuries there was one mil every 70 feet along the same river. (1 p. p. 77)
In modern England, the Domesday Book (forerunner to modern census) reported 5,624 water-powered mills or one for every 50 families and this was known to be an undercount. (3 pp. 12-22) (1 pp. 77-78)
Many dams were constructed during the “dark ages” and some like the one at Toulouse built in 1120 were large scale engineering accomplishments, this one spanning 1300 feet. (3 pp. 12-22) (1 pp. 77-78)
Agriculture also made great strides with the adoption of a three field crop rotation system, with one third of the land left unplanted but cultivated and fertilized, and invention of the heavy plow. The horse collar was also more than doubled the speed of cultivation. (1 p. 80)
Selective plant breeding was introduced resulting in more productive crops feeding larger populations and this innovation was a product of the monasteries. Henry Goodell, President of what was then the Massachusetts Agricultural College, wrote, “The work of these grand old monks during a period of fifteen hundred years. They saved agriculture when nobody else could save it. They practiced it under a new life and new conditions when no one else dared undertake it.” Another commentator noted, “Wherever they came they converted the wilderness into a cultivated country; they pursued the breeding of cattle and agriculture, labored with their own hands, drained morasses, and cleared away forests.” (2 pp. 28-29)
Agriculturally productive lands also expanded dramatically again thanks to the monks. 19th Century historian of monastic life Montalembert further observed, “It is impossible to forget the use they made of so many vast districts (holding as they did one-fifth of all the land in England), uncultivated and uninhabited, covered with forests or surrounded by marshes.” The land they converted was some of the most difficult. (2 p. 30)
Another very significant but seemingly simple invention of the “dark ages” was the chimney that allowed for buildings and homes to be heated while being protected from the elements. This had a dramatic effect on the quality of life and general health. (1 p. 80)
Eyeglasses were developed in 1280 and went rapidly into mass production again making a dramatic improvement in quality of life that extended not just to the very wealthy but broadly throughout society. (1 p. 80)
There were also great advancements in military technology which enabled Christendom to survive. Heavy cavalry didn’t exist because the lack of stirrups and a good saddle meant that a rider with a lance would be thrown off his horse when he attempted to strike an advisory. The development of a saddle with stirrups made heavy cavalry possible and a high pommel and cantle that curved to partially enclose the rider’s hips also enhanced the rider’s ability to withstand sudden shocks. Using these high backed Norman saddles on very large horses with long lances, in 732, the Franks overwhelmed the Muslim forces at the battle of Tours. Four centuries later during the Crusades, nothing had changed. (4 pp. 80-81)
Within a decade of gunpowder arriving from China, church bell manufactures were producing mortars and cannons. (1 p. 81)
Metallurgy also advanced and again this was through the monasteries and specifically through the Cistercian monasteries. Each monastery would have a factory on the grounds. Sometime the iron ore was donated and sometimes it was purchased by the monks. This system spread industrial know-how throughout Europe. (2 pp. 34-35)
Medieval musicians invented polyphony, which is the simultaneous sounding of two or more lines creating harmony. (1 p. 83)
The first two universities appeared in Paris and Bologna in the 12th century. Oxford and Cambridge came along around 1200 and many more throughout the 13th century. (1 p. 85)

Through most of these accomplishments the monks played a leading role both as developers and disseminators of new processes and technology to people who would have otherwise remained ignorant. Their industries included raising and breeding cattle and horses, various types of farming including vineyards, brewing of beer and manufacture of wine, beekeeping, raising of fruit, cheese making, routing, storing, and management of water and irrigation, mining, and even managing fisheries in some areas. (2 pp. 29-33) The monastery system also created a management structure and specialization similar to a modern mid-sized to larger manufacturing business except with more diversification and horizontal integration.

So how did the originators of the “Dark Ages” narrative get it so wrong and why do we keep perpetuating it today? The creators of the renaissance myth were focused principally on literature and far removed from practical reality, forming their positions based on the familiarity academics had of classical Greek and Roman literature and philosophy. Even at that, the translation of these works from Greek to Latin had long since been accomplished. The Italian Renaissance in particular wasn’t a rebirth of classical learning but an emulation of classical styles in art and literature by the aristocrats of what is now Northern Italy which recast their own regional history (1 pp. 86-87). The intellectuals of this age didn’t notice or value anything that affected ordinary life outside of their own academic peer group. It seemed clear to them that the small communities that made up medieval Europe couldn’t sustain a high culture. Paris and London at this time only had populations of 20,000 and 30,000 respectively. (1 pp. 76-77)

The history of technology has generally been of little interest to academics in the humanity disciplines in part due to an aversion to and lack of experience with manual labor. John Gimpel, in The Medieval Machine, who specialized in the study of technology during this period and is a primary source for many of the references, said this:

“.. Plato, in the Gorgias, gives evidence of the contempt in which engineers were held by philosophers in his time: “You despise him and his, and sneeringly call him an engine-maker, and you will not allow your daughter to marry his son or marry your son to his daughter”

“The scorn of men of letters for engineers throughout history has kept them, all too often, oblivious to the technology created by those engineers who were of lower social status and worked to earn their living. They had no idea that in the other world there was an uninterrupted tradition of technological writing. Leonardo da Vince is a case in point. As an engineer he was despised by the literati of his time, and they, like the majority of western intellectuals today, were ignorant of the fact that Leonardo had borrowed a great many of his inventions from technological treatises by engineers of previous generations.” (3 p. i)

Some things certainly haven’t changed much. Commentators on politics and culture will cite expert opinion when it is useful which can frequently mean that the source is no longer living to address the use of his works. Alternatively they will hide behind “experts” who are patrons of those advancing the same political agendas they are advocating and scorn those who are not.

The falsehoods were then enthusiastically advanced because they fit an irreligious and anti-Catholic religious and political agenda. Protestants embraced these teachings because they discredited Catholicism but, in the long run, the enemy of your enemy is frequently not your friend. The renowned anti-Christian enlightenment philosophers such as Voltaire, Diderot, Hume, and Gibbon that engrained the idea of a dark ages and renaissance into the western consciousness based their narrative of the victory of science over religion but none were in any way scientists or engineers and made no contribution to the accomplishments they touted. Moreover, the accomplishments of this era were made by men who were in most cases deeply religious. (1 p. 87) Thomas Payne is another example of this with “Age of Reason” in 1794 which, while claiming reason and intellectual superiority, was a non-scientific attack on all religions as “fabulous inventions”. (4 p. 91)

The final question regarding the not-so-dark dark ages is how did European civilization so far exceed other societies outside of Christendom? This comes down to belief in reason as a means to discover the divine. Augustine held that reason was indispensable to faith: “Heaven forbid that God should hate in us that by which he made us superior to the animals! Heaven forbid that we should believe in such a way as not to accept or seek reasons, since we could not even believe if we did not possess rational souls.” He went on to explain how faith and reason go hand in hand with reason being first dependent on faith: “faith must precede reason and purify the heart and make it fit to receive and endure the great light of reason.” (1 p. 89)

This created a belief in progress which, in turn made progress inevitable. The progress that was apparent in Western Civilization was not in spite of Christianity, as the enlightenment myth would have you believe, but was rather, because of it. By contrast, other civilizations and cultures lacked this perspective and didn’t advance.

The Rise of Modern Science

The idea of a scientific renaissance involves some specific misconceptions that need to be addressed starting with the idea of a flat earth. For many centuries prior to Columbus, all educated Europeans, including Roman Catholic prelates, knew the world was round. When the church initially opposed Columbus’ voyage, it had nothing to do with the shape of the earth but the circumference. Columbus had estimated that the distance from the canary Island to Japan was only 2,800 miles which was wildly wrong. The real distance was app. 14,000 miles which his clerical opponents correctly calculated and opposed his voyage because they anticipated that the expedition would run out of food and drinking water and die at sea. If not for the western hemisphere that is exactly what would have happened. The tale about flat earth was penned by writer Washington Irving (Legend of Sleepy Hollow) over 300 years later and was adapted from the real story from Columbus’ son’s book History of the Admiral, but the rationale was changed to portray the Catholic Church as fearing that he would fall off the edge of the earth. Irving presented this as fact and it was picked up as fact by protestant and atheistic academics and writers and the account has lived on since frequently making it into text books.(1 p. 2)

The belief that there was a sudden scientific revolution goes against the very nature of science and engineering. In 1676, Isaac Newton described his role in the development of science by saying, “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” He wasn’t simply being humble, he was right. The scientific achievements of his era were the culmination of centuries of steady and sustained discoveries(4 p. 89). The story of Nicolas Copernicus and the heliocentric universe, which is the key piece of evidence in establishing and perpetuating the belief that Christianity is the mortal enemy of science, is really a case study in gradualism. The scientific discoveries that led to the heliocentric universe were made over several hundred years and involved numerous notable figures like Roger Bacon and William of Ockham leading to the work of Copernicus who mathematically defined a theory where the planets circled the sun. Unfortunately the calculations were neither more accurate nor easier than those of the Ptolemaic system because Copernicus didn’t realize the orbits were elliptical. To correct the discrepancies, he came up with unobservable, theoretical loops. The idea that the earth orbited the sun as opposed to the other way around wasn’t unique to Copernicus but the fact that he defined it mathematically was, yet he got everything else wrong(4 pp. 89-100).

About a century later Johannes Kepler replaced the circular orbits with ellipses and the math now worked precisely without any forced adjustments. Still there was no explanation as to why the planets remained in their orbits. Isaac Newton added that piece some time later. Galileo’s role in the story is relatively minor and somewhat complicated, centering on a somewhat satirical paper titled Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, which had three speakers arguing the relative merits of the heliocentric and Ptolemaic views in the context of tidal phenomena. Two of the speakers were philosophers and the third was a layman named “Simplico” who represents the traditional view. In the context of history, the Galileo incident occurred shortly after the reformation and during the Catholic Counter Reformation where the Catholic Church sought to protect itself against Protestant criticism that they were moving away from biblical orthodoxy especially with regard to their sponsorship of science. To avoid controversy, the Pope, who knew and liked Galileo, asked him to simply acknowledge his conclusions as a theory which would have seemed easy enough especially considering that Galileo had a history of being somewhat loose with the truth claiming credit for the work of others(1 pp. 155-66). What he did was to include the disclaimer but out of the mouth of Simplicio. The Pope felt betrayed and Galileo didn’t really seem to understand why. The Pope sheltered Galileo from any serious punishment winding up in house arrest but it did trigger a tightening of academic freedom. Galileo’s theories on the tidal movement turned out to be entirely wrong. (2 pp. 70-71)

Science developed in Europe gradually but fairly consistently and it did so because Medieval Europeans saw it to be desirable and achievable based on their belief in and concept of God, not in spite of it. Contrasting this to Islam, there is no belief in a self sustaining creation but it is assumed that Allah regularly intrudes in the natural world and changes things as he sees fit and, as a result of this, most Muslim scholars have held that efforts to establish natural laws are blasphemous. Christian theology gave rise to science just as non Judeo-Christian religions stifled it everywhere else. Christian Europe believed that the natural world was the creation of God and was orderly and rational. Religions outside of the Judeo-Christian tradition generally did not believe in a creation or beginning at all and saw the universe as being stable and eternal with no beginning or purpose. Of note here is that atheistic belief systems, claiming to be built on science, held this same position until Hubble, Einstein, and others in the early 20th century established that the universe was expanding and had a point of beginning. This was so philosophically unacceptable at the time that Einstein developed the “cosmological constant” to explain it away based on the peer pressure he knew he would encounter.(5)

The actual beliefs of notable scientists of the period are telling with regard to the role of the enlightenment and the reformation on the development of science. Rodney Stark in Myths of the Reformation conducted a study of the 52 most prominent scientists of that time period. They were fairly evenly split between Protestant and Catholic and only one was a skeptic or atheist. Several were actually clergy. Then as now, radical secularists claim the intellectual high ground by claiming to be supported by a scientific consensus while nothing of the sort is even remotely true. Stark summed this up as follows: (1 pp. 165-66)

“Just as a group of eighteenth century philosophers invented the notion of the Dark Ages to discredit Christianity, they labeled their own era the Enlightenment on the grounds that religious darkness had finally been dispelled by secular humanism. As Bertrand Russell (1872 – 1970) explained, the “Enlightenment was essentially a revaluation of independent intellectual activity, aimed quite literally at spreading light where hitherto darkness had prevailed.” Thus did Voltaire, Rousseau, Locke, Hume, and others wrap themselves in the achievement of the “Scientific Revolution” as they celebrated the victory of secularism, eventuating in the Marquis Laplace’s claim that God was now an unnecessary hypothesis. Of course, not one of these “enlightened” figures had played any part in the scientific enterprise. What about those who had? Were they a bunch of skeptics too? Hardly.”(1 pp. 165-66)

The Inquisition, Witch Hunts, and other Offenses

The Spanish Inquisition is something that has such an impactful and universal meaning it has become a figure of speech yet it too is greatly exaggerated. In 1567 Reginaldus Montanus wrote, in Latin, A Discovery and Plain Declaration of Sundry Subtill Practices of the Holy Inquisition of Spain. His account, “emphasized the deviousness and trickery of the interrogation techniques, the variety of horrors in its torture chambers, and the appalling behavior of its familiars, prison keepers, and torturers,” and follows the innocent victim through the process ending with him being burned at the stake. Montanus was the pen name of a renegade Spanish monk who became Lutheran and fled to the Netherlands where he wrote his book. His work found a ready audience who wanted to believe it and to further believe that is was representative so it became the standard account and the exaggerations just grew from there with subsequent claims about the number of deaths being as high as 300,000.(1 pp. 117-18) These sorts of accounts not only survived in popular culture but were preserved and passed on in mainstream academic material. Historian Will Durant (1885–1981) wrote in texts that were used as educational sources for several generations, “we must rank the Inquisition … as among the darkest blots on the record of mankind, revealing a ferocity unknown in any beast.”(1 pp. 117-18)

Once again, reality is far different from accepted perceptions. The first 50 years of the Spanish Inquisition are poorly documented but there is academic consensus that this was the worst period and as many as 1500 people may have been executed. During the recorded period, there were 44,674 cases and 826 executions. Averaging the entire period from 1480 to 1700, there were only about 10 deaths per year at the hands of the Inquisition courts. By way of comparison, in England from 1530 to 1630 the English averaged 750 executions per year(1 pp. 121-22).Torture was practiced across Europe at the time but the Spanish Inquisition courts limited it so there could be no danger to life or limb and not last more than 15 minutes. Still records indicate this was rarely used because it was thought to be ineffective.(1 p. 122)(6 pp. 240-50)

The Spanish Inquisition was established to deal with converses, or Jews and Muslims who converted to Catholicism to avoid being deported or expelled after the resonquesta of Spain. While estimates are that around half of these converts were sincere, the Inquisition had a twofold purpose(6 pp. 36-38). One being to identify fake converts and the other, to protect those who where sincere from periodic outbreaks of mob violence. There was also a small Lutheran group mainly involving priests and monks. The Spanish Catholic state did not have a concept of freedom of religion as the church provided the framework of their society but neither did the protestant states that arose from the reformation.

Which hunts were also going on across Europe and even in the American colonies extending into the 1700’s, well after the reformation. Notable enlightenment figures had no problem with this. Thomas Hobbes in his classic work, Leviathan (1651) wrote, “as for witches…. They are justly punished”. Another prominent enlightenment figure Jean Bodin (1530 – 1596) was a judge at several witch trials and advocated burning them as slowly as possible(1 p. 123). Witchcraft could refer to anything from performing religious rights or functions of the clergy without being sanctioned by the church to the occult. Those committing minor offenses, sometimes out of ignorance, generally repented and few were excused. (1 pp. 240-60)

The estimates of the victims of the witch hunts, like the inquisition, have been wildly exaggerated. Some writers and commentators have placed the toll as high as nine million and portrayed it in a modern social justice context emphasizing female victims. The most accepted figure of the real death tool between 1450 and 1700 was around 60,000 which is a tragic number but over that length of time and broad area, nothing approaching genocide. As for the role of the Spanish Inquisition in the Witch hunts, historian William Monter attempted to do a statistical study of this and concluded that from 1540 to 1640 when the witch hunts were at their peak, the Inquisition of Argon executed only 12 people for this offense.(1 p. 124)

Bibliography

1. Stark, Rodney. Bearing False Witness Debunking Centuries of Anti-Catholic History. West Conshohocken, Pennsylvania : Templeton Press, 2016.

2. Woods, Thomas E. Jr. How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization. New York, New York : Regnery History, 2005.

3. Gimpel, Jean. The Medieval Machine The Industrial Machine in the Middle Ages. Middlesex, England : Penguin Books, 1976.

4. Stark, Rodney. Reformation Myths Five centuries of Misconceptions and Some Misfortunes. London, England : Society for Promoting christian Knowledge, 2017.

5. Schroedar, Gerald L. The Science of God. New York, New York : The Free Press, 2009.

6. Kames, Henry. The Spanish Inquisition A historical Revision. New Haen Conn : Yale University Press, 2014.

7. Kempis, Thomas A. the Imitation of Christ. London England : Walrus Books, 1400.