How Islam Destroyed the Literary Inheritance of the Classical World

[Goswinus]

Contrary to general belief and what they teach on universities, Islam was not the custodian of Classic Literature. In fact, Classical Civilization and its literary heritage in Europe was destroyed through an economic blockade by the Arabs, whilst in the Middle East it was obliterated with surgical precision.

http://europenews.dk/en/node/31643

[Goswinus]

One of the problems of selective reading is that things are read and interpreted while there is no basis for those conclusions.

It starts with this:

Since at least the time of the Renaissance scholars have wondered at the disappearance of Classical civilization — the advanced, urban and literate culture which began in Greece during the fifth century BC and was subsequently spread by the Romans throughout Western and Northern Europe. The traditional explanation for its disappearance is well-known and hardly needs repeating: Basically, after the Barbarian Invasions (of Goths, Huns, Vandals, etc) in the fifth century, the peoples of Western Europe reverted to living in thatched, wattle-and-daub huts. Cities were destroyed and abandoned, the art of writing virtually lost, and the mass of the population kept in a state of ignorance by an obscurantist and fanatical Church, which effectively completed the destructive work of the Barbarians.

But this traditional view gets however corrected a few paragraphs below:

For the "Barbarians” had nothing whatsoever to do with the disappearance of Classical Civilization: The great cities of the Empire, both in the West and the East, continued to flourish during the fifth and sixth centuries. The "Barbarian” kings, we now know, actually fostered Classical learning, and wasted no time in becoming completely Romanized themselves. They minted gold coins stamped with the image of the Emperor in Constantinople, and regarded themselves as functionaries of the Empire. The cities built by the Caesars continued to flourish, and there was even a great deal of new building and expansion. By the beginning of the sixth century Classical civilization had spread into the formerly barbarian regions of Ireland, Scotland, and eastern Germany; and the works of Homer and Virgil were now discussed in the rocky crags of Ireland’s Atlantic coast and the remote isles of the Hebrides. And intellectual life flourished among the cities and towns of Europe: authors such as Boethius and Cassiodorus were thoroughly steeped in the learning of Greece and made important contributions of their own. The former is regarded as one of the greatest minds of antiquity, a man whose all-encompassing genius sought to reconcile the thinking of Plato and Aristotle.

There was, therefore, no "dark age” in the fifth or sixth centuries.

[Osweo]

There was, therefore, no "dark age” in the fifth or sixth centuries.

Actually, in the western part of the Empire at least, there's as much a void from the time of the Antonine Emperors onward as there is after the official 'fall of Rome'. The late Empire was a pretty stagnant sort of place, or at least that's the impression I get. We speak of 'Classical Roman Literature', but the overwhelming majority of it is from the few decades around the time of Augustus. When the rigid old creaking edifice was finally toppled, it seems almost as if the Muses breathed a sigh of relief...

[San Galgano]

There is a tendence to highlight only the augustean period of Rome in many Books indeed.
A little less in the classic schools in Italy where latin poets are studied from the first to the last one.


Unfortunately after Virgile we have had the trend to underestimate other classical writers, a bit as it happened in Greece with Socrates.

Anyway it is true that when germanic tribes came in Italy after the fall of the roman empire, after a brief period of distrusts against the "romans", they made everything to create a well advanced society, but unfortunately devasting wars with Byzantines(let's not forget that plague killed something like 3 million people in Italy in that time and many others all over Europe) plus a more and deep dogmatic cristhianized era contributed to make the pitch really unplayable differently from roman times.