Great Britain -- Social conditions; Moral conditions; Social problems
that the very promising germs of later Greek science were allowed to
die, and nearly the whole of the surviving Greek literature was
unknown in Europe for many centuries. The trade in spurious relics,
the rapacity and unscrupulousness of the Papacy, the coarseness of the
nobles and people, and the general sexual licence of priests and monks
were almost incredible.
This dark age began to receive the first rays of new light in the
eleventh and twelfth centuries, and historians are agreed that the new
light came from the civilisation of the Spanish Moors. This it was
that, by introducing Greek literature and its Arab commentators, led
to the early revival of science. But the cult of the grossest relics
and superstitions continued, and the clergy repressed, or inspired
rulers to repress, all dissent with more ferocity than ever. During
the one general persecution of the early Christians by the Romans
about two thousand had suffered for the faith; and only a few hundreds
can be added from the earlier sporadic persecutions. But within fifty
years of the establishment of Christianity in the Empire, tens of
thousands of Donatists, Manichæans, Arians, Pagans, etc., were done
to death, and hundreds of thousands ruined or maltreated, by the
triumphant Christians. In later centuries it was the turn of
Monophysites, Monothelites, etc., and in the first quarter of the
thirteenth century alone more than a million heretics were done to
death in Languedoc. If the Jews and witches and others who suffered on
religious grounds be added, the "butcher's bill" of the new
religion passes ten millions; and beyond these are the countless
millions of those who suffered something less than death.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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