The Dark Ages

[Gaius]

Thanks also, Michael Allen, and looking forward to your work.

Very significant that information like this, associated with the CI message, is coming out.

[brucebohn]

Very interesting Michael.. Thank you....

[EzraLB]

Now that I think about it, I do have one interesting book on the "Dark Ages," titled "Daily Life In Medieval Times" by Frances & Joseph Gies. Like Bill stated, you have to take any of these books with a grain of salt, and this one is no exception, especially when it comes to depicting the role of Jews in society.

This book has the typical apologetics when when it comes to the Jews, who always "suffer" at the hands of the "ignorant" and "superstitious" Christians. That said, the book does point out some interesting items:

That even in the mid-13th Century, the Pope was already defending the Jews in collecting debts from the nobility.

That the nobility would expel the Jews from the territory over a financial dispute for the sake of exacting a fee from them to allow them back in. I'm sure this may have happened in some cases, but I'm also sure that there were other, legitimate, reasons for doing so.

That the nobility would heavily tax a Jew who wished to convert to Christianity--because the noble saw the conversion as a significant loss of income.

That Jews were held in high regard as physicians merely because of their esoteric knowledge of Arabic and their ability to use astrology and numerology to treat sick patients.

That Jews were regularly charged with ritual murder, and the authors claim that this was merely a way of the nobility to exact more money in fines from the Jews.

Still, in terms of depicting everyday life for Christians at the time, this book has a lot of beautiful colored illustrations and details about how they lived....

[Staropramen]

Wesley Swift on the "Dark Ages";

Have you believed the Dark Ages fable? In actuality, this was the age of Light, of Flourishing Adamic governments throughout the world. The word world means literally "Age of man--or Age of Adam.” In fact, Ireland was an important center of Light, and higher learning. It was during this time that St. Patrick expelled the "Snakes" from Ireland. This event has been retained in our music, just as the chronicles of the Celts and Saxons were kept in poetic form to prevent distortion. So you see, my God's enemies fear the truth from the old books.

http://swift.christogenea.org/content/erm-old-records