The irony is it is called the dark ages because it was a period of widespread ignorance and knowledge/technical development was styrmied by religion largely. It is not a title awarded to the period compassionately.
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Exactly!
Curious as to where youâre getting the claim of organised religion stymying technological advancement in the early medieval. Historically, the Christianity/Islam/etc were broadly responsible for both advancements in understanding and the preservation of knowledge that would otherwise have been lost.
Itâs more than fair to argue that the âDark Agesâ was a period of technological regression, but Iâd say that can largely be attributed to the fall of the Roman Empire and the mass migrations/warfare of the time.
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Another point of the Dark Ages being âDarkâ is compared to alot of other historical eras, there is a lack of information from it.
In the period the Church was responsible for most technological and knowledge based advancement, largely because most education and learning was tied up with the church, so it follows that any advancements were attributed to them.
This does not change that whilst being in that position, the church suppressed a lot of potential advancement by keeping the monopoly on knowledge and keeping development of knowledge typically within the remits of what was accepted as Orthodox thinking. There are outliers of course, but when you look at the behaviour of the church in the period thereafter (especially when you look at how freethinking and tolerant of alternative theologies the Church became in the 17th century onwards) you canât deny that despite being the sole propogators of knowledge during the dark ages, the Church was also responsible for stunting it. The two are not mutually exclusive.
The Renaissance (a period of an explosion of thinking) was largely the beginning of a response to orthodox Church thinking, if the Church wasnât previously behaving as a block in the way of knowledge development, then it doesnât make much sense that thinking traditions that developed against it would see such rapid progression in relation to scientific knowledge comparatively.
Itâs worth remembering that it was 17th and 18th century protestants who coined the period âdarkâ because of how they viewed the churches behaviour at the time compared to their own.
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I guess you need to define what period youâre referring to as the Dark Ages. In a modern context itâs largely used in reference to the early medieval, whereas Protestant writers seemed to be using it as a broad description for the medieval period as a whole.
If you want to talk about the entirety of the medieval period, especially when weâre moving toward the Renaissance and subsequently the Enlightenment, yeah my disagreement isnât nearly as strong.
But for the early medieval, there were far more important circumstances at play â including the loss of the Greek scientific/technological theory, because even the later Romans werenât able to effectively translate a lot of it anymore.
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I 100% agree, a few weeks ago I stood up to Homophobic comments made, only to be slandered OOCly by it. Telling me to chill and calm and that âItâs just a joke.â.
Homophobia isnât a joke, itâs real and it effects many, many LGBT+ people. It doesnât matter if its a âfunnyâ meme. Or in RP. Queer people shouldnât have to deal with hate. I myself being gay find it degrading when when people say theyâre not homophobic and then go on to do said homophobic things and use the internet to hide behind what they did.
For those who need to see, Blizzard have made NPCs in Shadowlands to represent the LGBT+. These are lore characters!: https://www.wowhead.com/news=316533/the-story-of-the-first-night-warrior-night-fae-campaign-preview-spoilers?fbclid=IwAR3wIb3X6b_vwlo6d7M7rvF7G2o-DASy6SsQtDMEAq_AuKwXLqbZ-5byDew
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Yeah Iâm talking pre renaissance. Youâre right itâs a big foggy period and one rule does not fit all indeed so apologies if it looked like Iâm generalising.
For reference I do not disagree that the fall of the RE was significant, it absolutely was, I just think the role the church played re: knowledge is also a significant part of it too.
Iâm not massively clued up on general history Iâll admit, but I have background in religious history so my perspective is largely looking at how the church reflected on its own behaviour thereafter and the language they used for the time.
Islam is an interesting one because Iâd argue that their outlook in more conventional scientific knowledge in the same period was much more open minded than Xtianity especially in the early period when you look at the work of people like Averroes and Avicenna and their work on optics and scepticism for example.
I now have a massive urge to dig out all my uni papers and readings. Feels like a lifetime ago now.
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Yeah, same haha. Iâm thinking back to my first year, where I had a module (and an exam) on the topic of the Early Medieval. Thatâs 5+ years ago now, so my memory isnât 100%.
I was going to mention the golden age of Islam under the Abbasid Caliphate, yeah. Itâs important to remember that the notion of scientific regression during the early/high medieval is very Eurocentric, because the Islamic world was moving forward in leaps and bounds at the time (which took its time to filter across to Europe).
From my pov, the Church appears to become more responsible as times goes on, which I suppose you could try to correlate with the increase of systemic corruption. Iâm not fully certain.
The only really famous examples of the Churchâs opposition to progressive thinking, to my immediate knowledge, come later during the Renaissance and onwards, as scientific and philosophical thinking started to contradict their own religious teachings. Iâm sure they were doing it before, but thatâs when it really went into overdrive.
I think to a certain extent you can balance it with the importance of monasticism and the amount of knowledge that was retained because of the various orders and monasteries.
Alternatively, you can probably also criticise them for withholding that knowledge â although whether they could effectively share with populations not exactly known for their literacy Iâm not sure.
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Yeah I pretty much agree on all lines there. Especially the Eurocentric vision of progress. We owe a lot of readings of the archetypal Greek philosophers (Plato, Aristotle) to the translation of their works by Islamic thinkers before they were then subsumed into further European culture.
You see the same with further east. For example a lot of the ideas of David Hume re: perception and thought (Iâd argue the majority of his actual philosophy of mind) which were hailed as polemic within Europe were ideas that had been floating in a very similar form within the philosophical canon of Buddhism since the Abiddharma of the Tripitaka which reached the widely referenced Pali version as early as 29 BCE. Hume essentially just used words like âImpressionsâ instead of Skandha but overall what he was touting in that area wasnât a ânew ideaâ outside of Europe, itâd be doing the rounds for over a thousand years before he was even born.
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I love ye for bringing them up. Muscovy is love.
This kind of thing does not belong in WoW. Itâs not acceptable and using âItâs only ICâ is not an excuse. Itâs against ToS, end of.
Blizzard are usually on point with reports of this nature and usually act swiftly if you provide timestamps in a report.
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Just a reminder to those using the âmedievalâ argument that the main reason for homophobia in Western Europe during that era was due to the unfortunate spread of a certain religion which had been translated in such a way that such things were seen as evil.
The real medieval era also had the ability to read or be educated as a very rare thing (also Human nobility would be more likely to speak Thalassan than Common), any form of âmagicâ would result in harsh punishment (all magic was seen as evil because Christianity) and letâs not get started on their views on Women and those who didnât share a religion with them (the Scarlets are closer to Medieval Christianity than other Humans).
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Which is why I find it kinda funny when people use that argument as well.
âWell if youâre gonna say that being gay is evil because âthatâs how it wasâ then I guess you also hate all forms of magic, women, other religions and cultures, any and all forms of education, basic hygiene, practically any form of medical aid that actually worksâŚâ
Seems like an oddly specific thing to pluck from that time period to then try and apply in a setting thatâs nothing like said time period, while also ignoring everything else from the medieval era. 
The whole witch burning thing wasnât done by the Catholic church. The Inquisition was about purging heresy out of Christianity, and witchcraft was not part of the Catholic canon â magic does not exist. You had a much higher survival rate in ecclesiastical courts than in civil courts, because the person who accused you of being a witch to the church is the one who got punished by virtue of the fact that theyâre the ones claiming magic exists which goes against Christian teachings and that is heresy.
All the witch burning was done by mobs, mostly as an excuse to claim the holdings of a rival. Most witches who were burned were rich landowners and religion was a convenient back drop to rile the masses to lynch them out of fear rather than something ordered by the church.
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This came as a pretty funny fact to me upon first finding out.
Also heard an alleged tale about a village who were convinced a woman was a witch, so they brought her to the priest, who berated the mob.
To prove to them that she wasnât a witch, he locked the door to the church and beat the woman with a stick; claiming that if she were a witch, sheâd evaporate into smoke and escape through the keyhole.
A vile thing, but I could see something like that play as a Monty Python sketch.
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One of the last people to die in the Salem witch trials was a dude called Giles Corey. They needed a guilty plea out of him, but he refused to comply so they started to torture him by crushing. Every time they asked him to plead, he just kept asking them to put on more weight out of defiance.
Took him three days to die, and in the end his illegal execution (no plea) brought the support of the witch trials in Salem among the local population to a grinding halt and he was posthumously absolved. The charges against him were initially levied as an excuse to commandeer his wealth and he remained defiant until the end to protect his estate and familyâs future (they hanged his wife illegally too, unfortunately).
Edit: to make this relevant to WoW, the witch trials in Drustvar seem to follow this same mold. Rich people â mostly women, given theyâre the ones who became bonafide witches later â were lynched by mobs without any actual authority like in the case of Lucille Waycrest. She was the daughter of the regional ruler of Drustvar and they still went after her based on made up charges. It wasnât really done out of religious concerns, albeit NPCs in Drustvar exclaiming in the Lightâs name when the witches attack.
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I miss the time we put Warcraft into this game instead of Lovecraft.
Youâre right, my bad on the âpunishmentâ thing. I got it mixed up and witchcraft was criminalized in the early modern period. It was definitely more of a Protestant thing than a Catholic one.
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Police drag me out of the courtroom while Iâm shrieking about how you shouldnât refer to any period of European history as the âDark Agesâ because itâs a historical misnomer that overlooks the very real achievements of the early Middle Ag-
(The door slams shut as Iâm hurled back into the street)
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