Context

The medieval era from roughly 500 AD to 1550 AD, was a millennia of great change and progress.  The attacks on this epoch which in effect built the modern world, are provided by various groups opposed to the Catholic Church:  Protestants, ‘Humanists’ or Atheists, 17^th century self-promoters, Enlighteners, and 19^th century philosophers posing as scientists (Darwin, Marx etc). 

Medieval history is rarely taught, and even rarer is to find someone who understands how medieval philosophers and natural scientists built the foundations for mathematics, physics, astronomy, cosmology chemistry, engineering and even the comprehension of electricity.  As if the telescope just popped into existence by itself, or the university built itself, or the enormous complexity of Magellan’s circumnavigation, was without a long pedigree of innovations.

Constraints

The constraints against any civilisation developing at all were significant.  It is a miracle that Western Europe survived in any form.  It is incredible that any civilisation of any value was created in what had to be the most difficult if not impossible of circumstances.  Consider the following.

Rome:

1.  The end of the Roman military empire over a 200-year period, and its white-slavery premised economy, stopped the financing of public works across Europe and the mediterranean.  Without the military-economy and its wars, plunder and white slavery, the economic basis for much of this region was destroyed.  This economic fracture had to be replaced and improved.  This takes time. 

2.      90% of the population of Rome, or roughly 90 million out of 100 million people were poor, mostly peasantry, and largely illiterate.  This is hardly a promising starting point when the empire inevitably collapses. 

3.      Governance in Rome was controlled by the military and aristocratic elite.  When local government was replaced by Germanic leaders, there were few who could read, write, comprehend the laws, or attract public confidence.  In the main, it was the Church who provided the foundations for law-and-order post 500 A.D.  One of their great challenges was to improve the literacy of society and to instil peace and legal procedures over force and violence.  This transition period would necessarily take time – in fact generations.

In 500 A.D. the legacy of Rome was not what the books and movies describe.  It was an empire largely built on white slaving and war.  Literacy was low, the currency devalued, terms of trade short, the Roman numerals inured to advanced mathematics, Latin was fragmenting into vernaculars, no social or welfare system existed, there was no public education, and the economy ran on slavery which prevented innovation and technology being developed. 

Yet we are constantly told that somehow, such a civilisation, which exalted the barbarity of gladiatorial contests, slavery and violence, was the apogee of mankind’s civilisation, because the slaves and military could construct roads, some coliseums, or public baths.  What a bloody nonsense.  The point to be made is that by 500 A.D. Europe and the western Mediterranean were in a deep depression, bankrupted financially and morally, and even the rather limited public infrastructure was in the context of some 800 years of empire building, remarkable thin and scant.  The Romans created no innovations in art, literature or even basic social services. 

Byzantium:

Constantine quite rightly moved the focus and locus of the Roman empire, away from the corrupt barbarism of Rome to the East to Constantinople.  He established Christianity as the state religion in about 315 A.D.  The pagan barbarism of Rome with its culture of war and slaving was reduced.  Christianity flourished in the East and the Byzantine empire was one of history’s greatest and most splendid creations.  It is never taught because it was profoundly Christian and Greek.  It upsets the settled narrative that Christianity post Rome led to nothing but ‘darkness’. 

The Byzantines invented a wide variety of innovations in architecture, engineering, military technology, mathematics, astronomy and science, including the astrolabe, Greek fire, the translation of ancient Greek philosophers, and the creation of massive libraries and schools.  Algebra for example, is an Arab word for maths which already existed in the 2^nd century AD and can be found within Byzantine universities.  The use of Hindu numerals was known to the Byzantines before the Muslims conquered, slaughtered and enslaved some 50 million Hindus and Buddhists starting in the 9^th century.  The narrative can’t handle this, so any Christian-Byzantine flowering in any domain must be allotted to a non-Christian group.

The main point here is that there was an early split between the ‘West’ and Latin, and the ‘East’ and Greek.  This is rarely remarked upon.  The ancient sources including early Bibles, were found in Greek.  The language gap precluded an easy translation into Latin.  This issue was compounded by the internal challenges faced by the ‘Western Roman empire’ after 500 AD.  Much in the way of science and learning did not make its way into the West because of the language barrier.  This was remediated in part, when Byzantine Christians fled the Muslim Jihad in the mid-15^th century and brought back copies of Greek manuscripts and books.  This helped stimulate the so-called Renaissance or rebirth, which was just an extension of what already existed – medieval civilisation, premised on Byzantium’s 1000 year history of learning. 

Invasions:

The Muslim invasions destroyed Christianity.  Staring in 632 AD the eastern, southern and Spanish western mediterranean basin, was conquered by the moon cult of Mecca and Christianity was pulled asunder.  Trade routes, cultural exchanges, travel and information sharing in the once Christian empire was destroyed.  Spain was largely conquered, except for Don Pelayo and the Asturias, by 720 A.D.  France was invaded by huge Muslim armies (40 to 80.000 men) now called ‘raids’ by revisionist Christophobic historians and almost succumbed to the Muslim Jihad. 

War is bad for just about everything.  The Muslim desecration and destruction of Christianity was evidenced everywhere from the killing of its men and the rapes of its women, to the plunder and effacing of its cities, towns, libraries, aqueducts, irrigation systems, schools and ecclesiastical buildings which provided welfare and social support.  Building ‘civilisation’ when it is being destroyed is rather difficult.

As written above, by 500 A.D. the Western rump of the Roman empire was in dire straits to begin with.  The Musulman incursions against an unprepared population further retarded civilisation’s development.  There is no factual basis to any of the claims for Muslim ‘civilisation’.  The Muslim empires invented nothing of note.  Any so called discoveries already existed, or in the case of their meagre philosophical and astronomical outputs, were rendered by non-Muslims with Muslimified names. 

Having said that, based on Musulman sources, Visigothic Spain and indeed North Africa amazed the Muslims with its wealth, sophistication, glittering cities, libraries, learning and welfare.  From the low point of 500 A.D. the Romano-Christian culture of Spain and North Africa had gone to great lengths to repair and expand civilisation. 

This was eradicated by Muslims who took over these rich areas, which were later declared by Christophobic ‘intellectuals’ to have been built by Moslems.  Absurd to say the least.  In fact North Africa, once the granary of the Roman empire became a desert.  Its irrigation systems annihilated by Muslims, the world’s biggest library in Alexandria set to fire by the Muslims.  Wheeled carts once plentiful on the roads of North Africa largely disappeared for 300 years replaced by donkeys. 

The Muslim irruption was just one.  Huns or Avars had been plundering central and Western Europe  since the 5^th century (Attila the Hun for example).  Magyars (Huns) fell upon Europe in waves starting in the 9^th century.  The Saxons, pagans before their forcible conversion by Charlemagne in the 9^th century, emanated from Germany and plundered areas of Francia, Frisia and England.  The Anglo-Saxon-Jute takeover of England was followed by the Viking plundering of the island, France, Ireland and other North Sea targets starting in the late 8^th century and lasting until the reign of Canute in the early 11^th century.  We have here endless war  stretching from the Musulman invasion of 710 AD (Spain) to William the Conqueror (1066).  Almost every region in Western Europe was enveloped in war and subject to the dislocations caused by war, invasion, disease and social unrest.

Summary

A normal person, with a normal intellect, understands that ‘science’ or ‘mathematics’ in such a context would not be a priority.  Creating a telescope (optics begin in the 12^th century), is not really a priority when your land is ravaged, and your family threatened with death.  It is only after the defeat of the Muslims in Spain, which becomes evident in 1200 AD, the end of the Viking invasions (roughly 1000 AD), and the defeat of the Magyars in central Europe (early 11^th century); that Western Europe even has a chance at rebuilding the civilisation that was in repair and proceeding to greatly surpass that of Rome, in 700 A.D.  

One of the greatest miracles in history is simply this:  How did the Romano-German-Christian civilisations of Western Europe survive from 500 to 1000 AD?  If there i