Is it true that Europeans had no knowledge of Greece and Rome

until the Muslims translated the Greek and Roman works to them?

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_of_the_Greek_Classics
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

(citation needed)

The clergy had access but weren't allowed to draw any conclusions from it that deviated from the church's dogma.

no its an ubermeme, european scholastic monks were of the platonic tradition while islam ulama adopted the aristotlean approach. Aquinas is the one who popularized aristotle back to the west, although older church figures like pope sylvester II who traveled to al andalus to study and collect translated scrolls and many others.

It was a question.

>
>
>

They knew about them but they didn't have greek writings. Dante references Homer and some characters in Greek myths but he hadn't read the Iliad

Certain figures like Caesar, Alexander, Hector, etc, were known in the middle ages through legend even if they couldn't understand the Greek texts. At the same time many philosophical works, especially Aristotle, were in fact recovered in the west from Arabic translations in around the 12th century.

I think Dante was after they were translated.

They did. I feel like most of this is historical revisionism trying to downplay western advances and support Islam. The church eve adopted some dumb Greek ideas like Aristotle's model of the universe.

aren't the byzantines considered european?

Would be a bit strange if all those rulers who claimed to be the legitimate roman emperor didnt even know anything about ancient Rome

Most significant contact with Greek culture was during the Council of Ferrara, when over 700 byzantines attended to th council with the aim to mend the Great Schism and create an alliance against the Ottomans

didn't alot of Irish Monks preserve ancient works?

Obviously the people calling themselves Holy Roman Emperors, practicing Roman Catholicism and writing in Latin knew about Rome and to a certain extent Greece. However, it wasn't until the 12th century translations of Greek works from Arabic in places like Spain and Sicily that Greek philosophy was really revived in Europe. Of course this also introduced Muslim philosophy and science and some other stuff like Hindu-Arabic numerals.

I'm an Irisfag, that's basically a meme made up by one guy to sell books. It's basically our version of WEWUZing. There were a significant amount of Irish scholars active in early medieval Europe, first with the Hiberno-Scottish Mission of the 7th century and then in the Carolingian Renaissance, and some of these were classically educated, but they didn't save civilization or revive classical scholarship or whatever people claim. The more important revival of classical learning in the 12th century had no real Irish influence as far as I know.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_of_the_Greek_Classics

Aristotle you dingus , later on muslims philosophers rejected the greek philosophers.

>Syriac translations played a major role for the later reception into Arabic. These translators from Syriac were mostly Nestorian and Jacobite Christians,

Muslims btfo

>Looking up to something that's not Jewish
Not so fast goy!

How?

Who cares I rather worship a brown warlord over a kike on a stick.

Homer was translated into Latin by Leontius Pilatus in the mid-14th century, after Dante had died.

Muslims always brag about how they saved the Greek works

>muslims invade the eastern roman empire and destroy their knowledge

N-no guys, we totally saved the classical works after prying them from the still warm hands of the Byzantines!

They had some (but too little) until Byzzies were forced to turn to the west - first trying to get help against the muslims, but mostly when said muslims forced them to leg it to Europe with all they could pack up.

In any case remember that there were no printing press, everything had to be manuscripted, and religious texts usually had a better priority than mathematics treatises.

Don't talk about Alexandria, infidel.

Are there any historical books on this?

>what was the Byzantine/Eastern Roman Empire

But they did. What difference does it make of they hired Christians who could speak the languages they were translating?

Muslim writers argued that the Byzantines hadn't made use of Greek learning because of their Christianity.

they did, give them credit when its due

...

They traded for them from the Byzantines. The rest, the majority, they got from Aramaic translations and not the Byzantine Greeks themselves.

Nice article. This basically answers OP's question.

Some important Greek works (e.g. some of Apollonius's books) have been preserved only in Arabic, and their later Latin translations, no doubt but the idea that they "saved" the Greek corpus or something is of course wrong.

And the Arabs stripped Byzantium of some of its richest provinces and made it more insuler in the process in the first place, while barely paying any attention to non technical/mathematical texsts (those came via other means). So, good on them for recognizing quality like most major human civilizations but I'm still a bit iffy on this whole "preservation" narrative. I guess they could have destroyed everything instead so yay.

That's a pretty hard claim considering every Germanic cunt and his mum was out to be "hurr Romun Empror."

Nobody says that they singlehandedly 'saved' Greek literature. It's the fact that they transmitted that literature to the West that's important. There's a big difference between saving and transmitting something.

That is how fucking stupid your question was, it needs a citation.

>Roman Catholics had no knowledge of the empire that founded their church.
Seems far fetched.

The funny thing about Merchant memes is that the more of them I see, the more I like the Merchant. He always seems so jolly.

>It's the fact that they transmitted that literature to the West that's important.
They didn't even do that. They destroyed the Roman Empire.

I can say stupid stuff too.

The Byzantines are responsible for the development of the field of Classics. Hands down, they are the main reason why Western Europe was able to garner so much information, especially after the collapse of the Byzantine state in 1204 and 1453

The Muslims did play a role however, largely through their commentaries on Aristotelian and other philosophical works. Averroes dialogues on Aristotle inspire Aquinas' great Summa Theologica.

Pretty hard not to know they existed when their fucking ruins were all over the place and being torn down to construct churches m8.

The only thing lost were specific writings. Poems, histories, codexs, etc. It's not too dissimilar to how we view other ancient cultures. We know they existed, we have evidence of them, we just lack documentation they may have left behind.

They knew they existed but they lacked specific understanding of them. For example, in depictions of Christ on the cross you'll see romans dressed like contemporary knights and the city has a distinct medieval design.

You have french illustrations of Brutus killing Caesar in 11th century France

>torn down to build churches
>not building churches onto them
Citation needed

>Sulpicius Severus, in his Vita of Martin of Tours, wrote, "wherever he destroyed heathen temples, there he used immediately to build either churches or monasteries"
>Sulpicius Severus. Vita, ch xiii

>Sometime toward the end of the fifth century, an abandoned "mithraeum" near present-day Motaro, was rebuilt as a church.
>Kulikowski, Michael. "Late Roman Spain and Its Cities", Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010

These are a couple I could find. But you are right in that there was also a great effort to build on top of ruins or to convert former places of worship and oppulence into churches. There wasn't only destruction and reconstruction.

That was artistic license you idiot. People drew biblical figures in ways that would have meaning. Not autistic and meaningless historical accuracy.

>Europeans
>had no knowledge of Greece and Rome
Jesus fucking Christ, no. You idiot.

also
>Islamic
>Golden
>Age

17th century works depicted contemporary monarchs in the style of Greek and Roman heroes. It's artistic license, you fucking moron.

It's literally the fucking opposite. Euros had arabic translations of greek works for centuries but they were so badly made people think the ancient were worthless. It took the byzantines escaping to Italy bringing koine texts for the recovery of greek literature and philosophy to happen.

Well this is a bit biased

I always wondered what the average villager or townsperson knew of history. Surely they must have had some vague notion of what Rome really was.

An educated clergyman and some nobles would have known more than the average peasant, for sure.

That his family always worked this soil and the lord always owned that soil

>le byzantine escapees meme

top kek. this whole argument is retarded, for if byzantines were so great, why didn't they use their own knowledge to have their own renaissance and defeat the turks?

Are you just pretending to be retarded, or do I need to answer?

Renaissance just means rebirth
It was rethinking how to do everything
Why paint like that when we could do it like that
Also wealth allowed this art and culture to flourish

Dude, the average villager was considered knowledgeable if he could name the last 3 kings who ruled over the land or the capital of the kingdom.
It's not an exaggeration either. Maybe you're imagining they were like modern Western hillbillies or even African villagers but not at all.

Because the infernal Asiatic hoards of Arabs and Turks overwhelmed them?

you mean crusaders right, you uneducated plebeian?

I understand the riches of the Orient can be quite tempting but to call them "infernal" is a bit much.

>crusaders
No. Only one crusade (the 5th) which was karmic justice and due debt. They only put a nail in a coffin which was created by the Asiatic invaders.

Plenty of Greek mathematical texts entered Western Europe via Spain in Arabic translation at first and they made use of them, alongside the original Arabic contributions though. But you're right that they considered the translation often pretty bad and preferred the original Greek texts when they could get their hands on it.

You mean the fourth and "karmic justice and due debt" aren't arguments about history.

>Arabic translations were done by Christians, Muslims btfo XD

>Arabic translations were shit, Muslims btfo XD

Hmmm

It's almost like consensus isn't the same and you can't straw man your opponent into a conceptual box. Interesting. Either Christian Arabs preserved the text and they were good or Arabs preserved poor copies of text and European Christians from the ERE brought them to Italy after t*rk scum conquered the empire. No matter which is true Muslim shitskins lose out.

No, both of those are retarded. Christians were employed by Muslims to translate the texts, Muslims copied, disseminated and commentated on them, and then Catholics translated these from Arabic into Latin in Spain and Sicily from the 12th century on, thus setting the foundation for the flourishing of learning in High Medieval Europe. The claim that medieval Europeans thought Greek literature, including many of the most important texts of the time, was shit because of bad translation is about as retarded as attributing all preservation of classical works in the Islamic work to Christians.

The Roman Empire destroyed itself.

Top tier bullshit. Maybe it could be true if medieval Monks didn't study the classics and the fucking 1000 year Byzantine Empire didn't exist.

they did...then suddenly, Vikings.

Didn't medieval Europe have essentially a tl;dr version of Roman history? I know that most of Livy stopped being copied and Tacitus' works were almost lost.