In this era monks devised the first complex mechanical clocks, displaying fractional changes in the length of the day that most clocks even today don’t show. It’s true that medieval people had a huge respect for ancient authority-but that didn’t stop them innovating. It could tell the time, could help you find the height of a building or the way home, could track the motions of the stars. Portable, multifunctional and elegant, it was both cutting-edge and a status symbol. The medieval equivalent of a smartphone was the astrolabe.
#Medieval period years manuals
Those manuals were often advanced guides to gadgets-for medieval people loved technology just as we do today. It even became fashionable to include Arabic buzzwords or phrases when they were writing scientific manuals in Latin or English.
In many cases, Muslim and Jewish scholars were building on the work of earlier thinkers from Greece or India, and Christians in England or France were well aware of that too. Christian translators flocked to places where the two faiths mingled, like Spain and Sicily, to get their hands on the best theories and texts. The most advanced scientific knowledge for most of the European Middle Ages came from the Islamic world. But scholars didn’t care where they got their knowledge from. Yes, there were terrible examples of racial and religious persecution in the Middle Ages (just as in more recent history). These Christians enthusiastically embraced discoveries by people of other faiths. Here’s Why It’s So Important to Get Medieval History Right Read more: The Middle Ages Have Been Misused by the Far Right. Many of the biggest names in medieval science were monks and friars, and some-such as Robert Grosseteste and Thomas Bradwardine-became bishops and even archbishops. And where experience contradicted scripture, Christian scholars saw no need to take biblical descriptions literally. In other words, to understand the mind of God they should study His Creation just as much as the Bible. It’s not hard to see why: the goal of devout Christians was to get closer to God and the key to the divine plan, said theologians, was written in two books: the book of Scripture and the book of Nature. Contrary to popular myth, the Church was a great supporter of science. Many universities were founded directly by the Catholic Church. Students and lecturers traveled and communicated across borders in the first truly international language of learning: Latin. Sacrobosco’s Sphere, and many other works of science, were enthusiastically studied in the new universities that sprung up across Europe from the 12th century onwards. Scholars did mostly think the Sun and other planets went around the Earth, but even that was argued about in the Middle Ages, and it didn’t stop them doing some very clever and precise astronomy. The answer he gave was remarkably accurate. Sacrobosco went on to explain how you could calculate the size of the earth, simply by measuring the height of the sun above the horizon in two different cities.
A beautiful diagram in many manuscripts illustrates how this shows that the seas must be round. As a ship sails away from harbor, noted Sacrobosco, a lookout at the top of the mast will still be able to see land long after the sailors on deck have lost sight of it. It was written in about 1230 by Johannes de Sacrobosco-John of Hollywood. They recorded the proofs in textbooks, handwritten on smooth animal-skin parchment.
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