Quote:
Originally Posted by Penguin
They might have done a good job in preserving ancient knowledge, but they did a terrible job in spreading the knowledge outside their own club.
Knowledge that is conserved but not shared is stale, dead knowledge.
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In fairness, western Europe was rife with local warlords, almost universally illiterate and not at all concerned with artistic and philisophical matters. Charlemagne was regarded as one of the greatest leaders in medieval Europe in large part due to the fact that he could actually read. Such knowledge would have been wasted on them. That information waited for Europe to stabilize and mature, although by that point the Church itself had become a major player in political affairs and such knowledge was then deemed outside the sphere of acceptable church life. Those that protected this knowlede from outsiders then sought to protect themselves from the knowledge itself.