So ? S’not like he didn’t have other men.
And as **jinty **says, the proper response to assassination is probably not total obliteration of anyone who could possibly have had a hand in it. One could call that a teensy bit of an overreaction, even. We’re talking about a Pope here. Now maybe I didn’t read my Bible too closely but I think they’re not supposed to be Kayser Soze :).
They were heretics, though, so they were deliberately defying the authority of the Church. You can’t have that.
Oh for sure, for sure. You let people start thinking they get to have their own ideas on imaginary crap they might get the crazy notion they get to have their own ideas on crap that matters, too. Gotta nip that nonsense in the bud.
Upthread I suggested that the RCC wasn’t too keen on the development of the printing press, given all the implications. Was that the case, or is that yet another thing that they should be given credit for?
Well, to the Pope, the imaginary crap is the crap that matters. They tend to have different worldviews than you do.
Well, first of all, the printing press wasn’t in the middle ages, so it’s outside the scope, but the Catholic Church, and governments generally, were wary of the printing press, even though they saw its usefulness. The Catholic Church had special reasons to dislike it, because it broke the monastic near-monopoly on manuscript writing and bookmaking, but the general response of most European governments was to resort to censorship and legal restrictions on printing.
I don’t believe it’s a coincidence that the imaginary crap happened to be tied to a lot of crap that matters, as far as the Church was concerned - things like extorting donations from the nobles, tithes and chores from the peasants, lands and estates all over the place, an information and spying network spanning the whole subcontinent… and of course, the Church was more than happy to prop up the corrupt and unfair monarchy system (as long as the Church got a cut).
The Popes, peace be upon them, might have been in it to save my soul - but when came dinner time they didn’t feast on stale turnips and mouldy bread, like 80% of the population had to. Nor did they particularly like people who happened to think they should, if what happened to the Franciscan order is any indication.
Isn’t that even more damning, then? No one is suggesting that the RCC was more enlightened in the middle ages than they were later on. The later the date, the less of an excuse there is for a lack of enlightenment.
But I think this whole thread is a bit of a red herring. Technological advancement is a less-critical indicator of enlightenment than scientific advancement, which in turn is less critical than social/political advancement (i.e. democracy, gender equality, etc.).
I suppose it depends what you mean by “enlightenment”. I’d argue the RCC was more tolerant in the middle ages than it was in the Renaissance, when, due in large part to the Protestant Reformation, you saw greater centralization, more cracking down on dissent and an increased stress on conformity.
This is a point that seems pertinent to the OP. Towards the end of the Viking Era (say the end of the 10th Century), through the Late Medieval into the Modern, there were steady changes in ship construction, mast and rigging technologies that eventually allowed Europeans to send “explorers” down the coast of Africa, into the Indian Ocean and to the Americas.
In the 11th Century, for instance, rigs were developed that allowed ships to routinely pass through the Straits of Gibraltar making seaborne trade between Northern and Southern Europe easier and cheaper. Somewhere around the 12th Century stern rudders replaced steering oars on ships in both the Mediterranean and Northern Europe. By the 14th century further improvements in masts and rigging allowed ships to sail through the Oresund from the North Sea to the Baltic.
Europe was not unique in the size of its vessels or the sophistication of its seafaring technologies in the period between the 10th and 16th Centuries. The Chinese built enormous trading vessels; a stern rudder was developed in the Indian Ocean and in Chinese waters at about the same time as it was developed and spread throughout Europe; the phenomenal long-distance seafaring knowledge of Polynesians allowed them to settle the Pacific from New Zealand to Hawaii to Easter Island.
But the incremental developments in seafaring technologies of the middle ages coincided in Europe with developments in more sophisticated methods of trade. The medieval period sees the expansion of the use of currency, of credit, of trading cartels (like the Hanseatic League), of insurance, of forced slavery and of banking. Wealthy Europeans wanted luxury goods that could not be produced locally. And demand was not limited to the the nobility and to the clergy. Wars between the Italian city-states of the 14th Century and those between the Dutch States and the Hanseatic league in the 16th were largely fought over control of trade routes. In the latter case it was for control of the lucrative trade in stores for ship construction such as lumber, hemp, pitch and iron that were produced in huge quantities from the Baltic. Lots of wealth was amassed by families and individuals who were members of neither the first or second estate.
I see a lot of geographic determinism in the expansion of Europeans into the Americas and elsewhere. Europeans were introduced to goods they couldn’t produce locally and because Europe is an uncommon landmass being a peninsula of peninsulas and islands, the people were used to sailing to get the things they wanted. Moreover, they were willing to fight at sea to protect goods they had obtained by fair means or foul. And as competition between merchants and states developed during the middle ages, traders recognized that cutting out as many middlemen as possible was good for business. Additionally, as wages grew after the Black Death, some small amount of luxury goods previously unavailable to lower orders of society became attainable.
Europeans may not have developed many of the technologies that became very useful, but they were good at combining them and improving them. It was Europeans, after all, who seem to have first solved the riddle of placing guns on ships as platforms for force projection. Of course, there was competition in the Mediterranean with the Ottomans, but when the Portuguese began making their first incursions into the Indian Ocean, it was Genoese shipbuilders and Hungarian gunsmiths (I believe that is correct) who were sent by the Ottomans to supervise the construction of the fleet to combat European interference.
It is too easy to try to examine societies using a Civilization game methodology by counting the number of technologies a society has, whether it be 3-field agriculture, the stirrup, or gunpowder and when those technologies were adopted. More interesting to me are the social, environmental, geographical, intellectual and technological conditions that allow a society to develop or manipulate technology. Understanding developments in organizational and financial technology and in the study of social mobility are are tougher, and to me more interesting. Sure, I think religion plays a role, but I need a lot more convincing before I believe that that role is central.
Imam Hamid al-Ghazali’s writings in the 12th century that convinced portions of the Islamic world that Mathematics etc… were works of the devil sure did help Catholic Europe.
The Islamic world were far ahead of us and the increased trade by ship had more to do with them inventing of celestial navigation IMHO.
Even up to the discovery of the Americas the Europeans were using square sails, you can get around that way but it makes it really hard to cross Oceans without the ability to reckon your latitude.
Rat,
I spent about a half hour responding. Then it got lost in preview post. So I’m going to be quick.
I don’t know who he is. How?
Celestial navigation was understood before Mohammed was born. The Prophet navigated the desert, not the sea.
Latitude? Really?
Columbus sailed to the Canaries using fore-and-aft sails. There he switched to square sails. Naus and caravels from Iberia, at that time, were built to use both lateen and square sails.
I appreciate your ideas. I have read through them, Rat, but I think you’re wrong about these specifics.
So because you aren’t an expert on 12th century Islamic Imams he didn’t exist?
It is one thing to have a knowledge of celestial navigation, there is another issue making it practical. When your religion puts importance to knowing the direction towards mecca you get more people working on that problem even if you ignore that they controlled a lot of the Mediterranean at the time. But you are correct, I should have said they improved celestial navigation.
It doesn’t matter how many tiny lateen sailed caravels you have if you need to sail with a carrak (the Santa María) to carry your goods, your limit is the square sails and their ability to point. The mizzen being lateen on a carrak would not have allowed it to point much as the other yard arms were rigged square. Having been the unfortunate owner of a yawl I would argue the mizzen is only useful to correct weather/lee helm.
No, Rat Avatar, I apologize. I think in my hurry to complete my post combined with frustration with having lost what I had previously wrote, I may have come off dismissive. That is not what I intended. I wanted to say that I did not know who Imam Hamid al-Ghazali was (I am not an expert). But I did not know how his writings “convinced portions of the Islamic world that Mathematics etc… were works of the devil sure did help Catholic Europe.”
In fact, I wanted you to elaborate on this because I didn’t quite understand.
You’re right. A great point, and I do recognize the role of Muslims and Islamic science in improving celestial navigation. Muslims’ need to face Mecca is something I’ve always known, but your post is the first it had occurred to me that that mandate would obligate an understanding of the stars. It’s a revelation and has gotten me thinking. Thank you.
I am not a sailor. I am a student of historical ship building. My understanding of historical ship handling, masting and rigging is based on traditional academic study, therefore it is anecdotal and not practical. There, my friend, you have a leg up on me.
My argument – just to reiterate – is during the Medieval period, there was a tremendous aggregation of technologies in Europe. Because of the particular geographic nature of Europe and seafaring tradition, Europeans combined technologies to develop the most sophisticated machines of the day, namely ships. European ships were bigger and better than ships built anywhere else in the world at the time. I need to stress that until just over a hundred years ago, seafaring vessels were the most sophisticated expressions of a society’s technological knowledge.
To get back to your point, your suggestion that Columbus’s caravels had to ship with a carrack is pertinent, but I think you forget your history. Santa Maria ran aground and was left behind (along with about half of the expedition’s members who were never seen again, but that’s immaterial when talking about technology). Later, Nina and Pinta were separated and both made it back to Spain independently.
Caravels, were small, handy, flexible ships (distinct from boats), that were capable of crossing oceans. And the masters’ of those two ships, Christopher Columbus and Martin Pinzon, had an understanding of winds. Knowledge allowed both to get back from a place they’d never been before. This may not have been a technology, but it was a part of the great aggregation of knowledge that occurred in Europe in the Middle Ages.
So, here’s my point: two managed to sail across the ocean sea without a support ship on the first ever “official” crossing of the Atlantic, alone. I argue that it was Europeans’ ship technology and understanding of wind patterns – the natural world – that allowed them to expand out of Europe and place their stamp on the world.
Rat Avatar, again, I apologize if you misunderstood my previous post. If you can fish your yawl up the rivers to the replica of Santa Maria, I’ll pick you up and take you to my (favorite) bar and run you a tab.
-C
I have long thought that the single most significant reason for the eventual domination of Europe was not directly technological, but as an accident of history: uniquely, out of all the major centres of Eurasian civilization (the Rus, the ME, India, China), Europe was (mostly) spared the invasions and importations of the horse nomads, the Turks, Mamluks, Manchus and Mongols, that has such a stultifyingly conservative impact on the progress of civilization wherever they invaded or established themselves as a ruling class.
It is this, far more than religion or technology, which explains the major difference.
I can not find any of my books that don’t say that Columbus ran the Nina and Pinta as “Caravela Redonda” or with square sails.
One of the nice things about the Atlantic is that you can run quick runs with just square sails.
Caravels were good ships for their time but they were tiny, displacing well less then half what the early carraks displaced. Not much of an issue if you know where you are going and don’t intend to bring a lot of cargo (e.g. his follow up trips).
I do not think Europe was inferior, and it’s eventual rise did depend on the luck of geography etc…
I do not subscribe to the outmoded idea of the “Dark Ages” but the 500 years or so after the Romans left were obviously going to be hard. The urban economies were pretty dependant on the trade that was driven by Rome.
Also devastation is that IIRC Greek was the language of science in the Roman empire and as the church centred on Latin the access to the great books of the past diminished.
Anyway, all of those challenges had been dealt with 500 years before 1492 and I don’t think you will find any credible historian who would push the concept of the late middle ages being the dark and bleak world that is presented by pop culture.
As for the boat, I grew less stupid over the years and sold it, it is much cheaper to sail on other peoples boats 
Best Wishes.
I’m firmly in the camp of those who think we had two middle ages: the relatively stagnant one until about 1000AD and the one after that. In fact, we have two periods in European history: one before economy, academic research and engineering were related and one after that. The change occurs in the middle of medieval times and at the same time a continuous period of economic growth is started.
But I also think there is some geographic bias: when we talk about antiquity, we talk about Mediterranean dominated state structure. When the empire was split to two, the half with Syria and Egypt was able to have a military budget the size of the entire budget of the western part with predictable consequences. We Europeans tend to think the Roman empire as a European empire, but it was Mediterranean and seeing it as predominantly European history distorts everything.
When we talk about the rise of the medieval Europe, the centres include Flanders, northern France, England and Germany. It is a geograohically different Europe, partly over-lapping. This Europe came to existance because of the agricultural discoveries and its population distribution - a new balance much more to the north - reflects the new dense soils brought to cultivation. So substantial parts of the “renaissance” Europe had either no Roman “golden age” or one limited to life inside military camps only. This makes the whole idea of middle ages even weirder. I don’t think it is a useful concept.
Missed this until today.
I’m unconvinced the OP wasn’t arguing for moral superiority, at least.
I’m also dubious of your claim that low-velocity soft lead bullets are in some way humane. Aren’t they notorious for shattering bones in ways no one knew how to repair? We aren’t talking about high-velocity sniper rounds “instantly” killing someone with “static shock,” after all. And sepsis is sepsis, whether a sword or ball carried the contamination into your body.
Came here to say something similar to this. Carrier also address this - on Luke’s podcast and on the podcast on this link.