Knowledge, an essay - continued

[fpb]

First, it is immensely vaster

Comments

[fpb]

Government and geography - that is, politics - have been subjects of philosophical reflection and treatment at a very high level of intellectual skill and acumen since the days of Plato if not earlier. They cannot be treated as a banausic concern. Architecture, in the Middle Ages, began and culminated in the building of churches, that is, it was a sacred discipline with highly formal, elaborate and profound concerns. And languages came to Western culture with an already elaborate and advanced doctrine of their own: both Icelandic and Irish produced, in the early days of Christianity and written culture, very impressive grammars, easily comparable to those that already existed and were known in Greek and Latin. Yet they never were translated or studied until the eighteenth century and the rise of comparative linguistics. The Middle Ages positively refused to take notice of some of the most amazing achievements of its own period in its image of knowledge: if music because music reproduces the order of the spheres and the singing of Angels, why not architecture for the same reason? If Latin grammar, why not Icelandic or Irish? Why, for that matter, not Hebrew? Jewish communities lived among the Christians for all this time, not only knowing their ancient language but actually using it as a literary vehicle to produce new written work; the Bible was sacred; the Old Testament was widely known and loved; and yet no Christian until the 1400s ever bothered to learn any Hebraic. As for politics, do you have the least idea how much political writing was produced during this period? The educated classes of all the middle ages, not only monks but merchants and lords, were constantly arguing about legal, political, geographical, commercial issues - everything that makes politics - and yet none of this made its way into the schoolrooms.

[elegant_bonfire]

not only monks but merchants and lords, were constantly arguing about legal, political, geographical, commercial issues - everything that makes politics It seems 'all politics are local' has been around for a long time.

[fpb]

Well, they also discussed it at the highest levels. Dante wrote a famous treatise "about the Monarchy", and he was hardly the only one. The theory and practice of politics at all levels was a universal mediaeval concern.