Posted on 08/09/2006 5:44:39 AM PDT by Marius3188
You keep asserting this, but it isn't true. There are contemporary accounts. They just don't support what you want. For example, the De Excidio Britanniae had plenty to say about the ravening hordes of Saxon invaders causing destruction and famine. It was written (another example of those darn illiterates still stubbornly producing writing) in the 6th c., contemporaneously with the historical Battle of Badon Hill of Arthurian legend.
Yet, despite his obvious relish at describing the horrors of the Saxon invasion, Gildas makes no reference to a climatological catastrophe.
Later, Medieval cities were frequently sited in the same areas as earlier Gaulish and Roman cities and towns.
Yeah. Because they never stopped being occupied. Rome dwindled in size because it dwindled in importance following the Eastern Roman Empire and Byzantium, but it was never abandoned, even after being sacked. Paris, OTOH, grew. So did Aachen and Cologne.
No, this indicates it was fashionable to compare one's self with the Roman Empire's golden age, and the art of the last few centuries wasn't fashionable. France had another period of that fashion under Napoleon. Which is "better":
The Ardagh Chalice, circa 9th c.
Cellini's salt cellar
They are not, BTW, legends ~ just that you don't know what the Breton word for Arthur is, nor it's historical use ~ try Boadicea, which is both the name of a British revolutionary in Roman times, and a sentence. "Bo" means the same as "Mc", or Abu in Semetic languages ~ that is, paterfamilias. "a" or "ad" is "Arthur" or "military leader". "dic" (with a hard c) is a fairly universal term meaning "king", "lord", "ruler", etc, but here it's feminine in form suggesting we are talking about a great queen.
So, there's your "Arthur". How it got preserved down to the 6th century (538/540) is a real good question.
BTW, both of the aforementioned documents were mostly written BEFORE 540, and that Excidio contains few real dates!
The Carib were cannibals if I recall correctly.
True. That's not the point. The point is that there was not a dark age of ignorance between 500 and 1000 AD. They had a distinct art, literature, architecture, social structure, law system, etc., that was their own development beyond the inheritance from Rome. However, a tradition arose of casting their culture as a regression from Rome. Central power and organization regressed, but the culture continued to develop.
The Renaissance didn't spring forth, Athena like, full grown. It was the continuation of a constant cultural path.
As to the technical skill of the two artists, the intricacy of the chalice completely blows the salt cellar away. The pics shown don't begin to show the surface engravings. The execution is a toss-up, IMO; both are master class of their particular schools. The design, well, that's a matter of taste, representative figurines vs. geometric patterning. Cellini's claim was based on appealing to the tastes of the day. Mythical allusions and Roman style figurines were fashionable, geometric patterning was not. Either artist could have made a hell of a Faberge Egg.
Love your screen name! Too bad you couldn't use arrows.
Now you are really stretching.
De Excidio Britanniae and The Confessio of Saint Patrick are the ONLY two contemporary sources concerning the 5th/6th century ~ outside of the Arthurian materials in the Welsh Annals.
Only two sources of what? Arthur or the general history? Because there are many documents from the 6th c., so where are the contemporary accounts of your mega-disaster? (I think we can safely dismiss 5th c. sources of what happened in 540 AD, don't you?)
I mentioned De Excidio Britanniae, because it was likely written in the 540s, and so exactly when you claim the event occurred. If that isn't exact enough for you, how about Historia Francorum, by Gregory of Tours, written c. 591 AD? Surely such a disaster happening only 50 years before would be mentioned in a definitive History of the Franks.
Many of these works were not lost, per se. They had just fallen out of favor or were rejected as Pagan.
Someone was pointing out on one of these history threads the other day (or maybe it was on one of those "Muslims saved Western Culture" threads) that the "preserved" Muslim version of Aristotle, which had been re-re-re translated, when "discovered" by Western scholars, was quickly supplanted by a superior version in the original Greek that had been around all along. It was just that the scholars of the day mostly no longer read Ancient Greek, until their interests were piqued.
I do agree that the reintroduction of these classics spurred new avenues of thought. They are one of the reasons for the rise in popularity of looking to Antiquity. It's like, "Dad's furniture is crap, but Grampa's furniture is valuable antiques." Both the Middle Ages and the Renaissance rejected what had come just before them, but accepted the next previous as an ideal.
Now, why is that? Why are they only two? For one thing, they escaped getting burned during the dire conditions at the middle of the 6th century.
Now, why did the Angles and Saxons arrive? Why did they want to leave a vast continental area devoid of enemies just to go to Britain to fight with the technologically superior Britons? Well, it was real bad back home. In fact, the islands the Angels (Frisians) lived on were unlivable and the rest of Germany where the Saxons lived was getting very nasty ~ crop failures were common.
Still, you will note that BOTH documents were written by guys on islands which were not affected as much by the change in climate that was driving people out of the Continent.
Yes, islands ~ Britain is an Island. Scota is an island (and would one day in the future be called Ireland).
As you recall, I noted that folks on peripheral island areas did much better than people on the continents.
A similar phenomenon happened on the East Coast of Eur-Asia. Koreans departed from the Korean peninsula circa 560 and arrived in Japan where they took over and founded the present dynasty. These people were escaping bad weather, a devastated economy, and going to a place where food was still growing.
So, come up with all those other books published in Germany in the 500s ~
You can branch out into the other Gaelic languages from that point. It's all quite interesting.
Important dates: 1085 Islamic Toledo falls to northern Christians. By 1130 translations of books from the Toledo library filter throughought Europe. By the 1300s the Renaissance is underway.
That's a mere 200 years to take one of the most primitive, decrepit, broken-down, impoverished societies on Earth and begin to turn it toward the stars.
Toledo's great library was one of the most comprehensive repositories of ancient books ever created. Upon conquering Toledo the Christians and Moslems agreed that the library must be preserved, and it was done.
You've posited a theory, full of assumptions and question marks. It is not up to me to search out data for you. Every time I have pointed out evidence that contradicts your pronouncements on this thread, you have chosen to ignore it and shift your argument.
The facts are these: There were lots of things written on the continent during the 500s. No one, to my knowledge, speaks of the event you posit occurred in the 540's. I could posit that space aliens came down and flew the pyramids over Constantanople, and you could not prove it didn't happen. You can only show evidence to prove a positive.
So show your positive proof of a massive European depopulation due to a fimbulwinter.
Do you know what ONLY LARGE BRIDGE means?
For one thing, no one around to use a bridge, or to build it. Secondly, they used wood so we can date these things with considerable precision through the science of dendrochronology.
http://www.morien-institute.org/darkages.html is a very colorful Welsh oriented site.
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