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Ancient Public Library Discovered In Germany (theguardian.com)
Archaeologists have discovered the remains of the oldest public library in Cologne, Germany, "a building erected almost two millennia ago that may have housed up to 20,000 scrolls," reports The Guardian. From the report: The walls were first uncovered in 2017, during an excavation on the grounds of a Protestant church in the centre of the city. Archaeologists knew they were of Roman origins, with Cologne being one of Germany's oldest cities, founded by the Romans in 50 AD under the name Colonia. But the discovery of niches in the walls, measuring approximately 80cm by 50cm, was, initially, mystifying.
"It took us some time to match up the parallels -- we could see the niches were too small to bear statues inside. But what they are are kind of cupboards for the scrolls," said Dr Dirk Schmitz from the Roman-Germanic Museum of Cologne. "They are very particular to libraries -- you can see the same ones in the library at Ephesus." It is not clear how many scrolls the library would have held, but it would have been "quite huge -- maybe 20,000," said Schmitz.
"It took us some time to match up the parallels -- we could see the niches were too small to bear statues inside. But what they are are kind of cupboards for the scrolls," said Dr Dirk Schmitz from the Roman-Germanic Museum of Cologne. "They are very particular to libraries -- you can see the same ones in the library at Ephesus." It is not clear how many scrolls the library would have held, but it would have been "quite huge -- maybe 20,000," said Schmitz.
... probably had to be taken away due to copyright claims of some imperial Roman mega-corporations.
Ancient libraries were very often (nearly always?) private. They would either serve a particular institution, such as a government body, or some were only open to members who paid the high membership fees (compare a country club). For example, the vast majority of the holdings of Library of Congress aren't available of the public.
The article indicates they think it was a public library because it was located near the center of town, next.to a church, and there were public buildings nearby. Again, the Library of Congress is at the center of Washington, near public buildings, across the street from the capitol, the Supreme Court building, and a church. It's not a public library.
Unless the statues were really small too.
Pshaw! So -called "experts".
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Right, that's why monasteries were known to be places where monks working as scribes duplicated scrolls and books.
AC the world moved to the Codex. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Early Christians did intentionally destroy Pagan writings, including Greek and Roman science, and even went so far as to rape and murder the academic Hypatia for the sake of their internal gossip. They created only limited religious writing. All science from the Greeks and Romans was preserved exclusively by the Arab civilization. I say this as a Catholic, so don't imagine some offense. It is just that history and reality are different than you know.
Early Christians did intentionally destroy Pagan writings, including Greek and Roman science, and even went so far as to rape and murder the academic Hypatia for the sake of their internal gossip. They created only limited religious writing. All science from the Greeks and Romans was preserved exclusively by the Arab civilization. I say this as a Catholic, so don't imagine some offense. It is just that history and reality are different than you know.
Exclusively?? That is quite simply not true. While there have always been book burning morons among the Christians like in any other religion they never dominated for any length of time and were fiercely opposed by scholastically minded people within the church. Large numbers of manuscripts were copied and preserved in Christian monasteries by monks and nuns. In fact we owe a big debt to both Arab scholars and religious figures as well as their Christian counterparts for the preservation of much of the surviving ancient literature and scientific writings. In fact Arab books were translated into western languages during the middle ages, that includes the Quaran which was translated into Latin by monks as early as the 11th and 12th centuries and scientific works such as the famous medical encyclopaedias written by Ibn Sina (known as Avicenna to medieval Europeans) which became well known reference works in Europe of the Middle Ages. The worst we can accuse Christian monks, Arab religious figures and scholars of both cultures of is that they did not have the time or capacity to save everything. That being said we are still finding ancient works in monastic collections that were thought to have been lost.
Early Christians did intentionally destroy Pagan writings.
Correct, even into Victorian times, although Victorian times also saw efforts to revive knowledge of Pagan matters and customs, like Morris dancing.
As an example, "fairies", the ones in childrens books that look like pretty dolls, are actually a sugar-coated survivor from a large pantheon of pagan spirits and demons that pre-dated Christianity, from both Norse and Classical origins. Early Christian priests did everything in their power to eradicate this extensive folklore.
All science from the Greeks and Romans was preserved exclusively by the Arab civilization.
Such an overblown claim is so easy to unravel, because all it takes is one example. Aristotle was largely preserved by the Arabs, but Plato did not need to be re-introduced in the West, because earlier Christian theologians generally liked Plato a lot. Aristotle was never actually destroyed in the West, but he simply was not liked, so his manuscripts were not copied enough and eventually disappeared (papyrus and paper rot, you know). Both Plato and Aristotle were pagans (though not of the same sort as traditional Greek paganism), and neither had their texts burned for this.
In fact, Christians generally only intentionally destroyed heretical works. A pagan work cannot be heretical. A heretical work is by someone who claims to be Christian but teaches falsely. I'm sure some ancient Christians somewhere destroyed pagan works, but I cannot think of a single instance where the documentary evidence explicitly states that Christians are destroying pagan texts. You can find passages where they talk about the need to destroy heretical texts, and you can find plenty of passages where they proclaim their fondness for Greek and Roman writings, but I cannot recall any passages about destroying Greek and Roman writings for their paganism. Please, find me one.
Note however that there is a deeper problem to your claim. You identify Christianity with the West. If Western European Christianity lost Greek texts, then you conclude that Christians destroyed them. But Christianity also existed in the East, even within Arab lands, and those Christians did not necessarily lose Aristotle. After all, the fall of Constantinople to the Turks did not occur until 1453!
Incipiamus, fratres, servire Domino Deo, quia hucusque vix vel parum in nullo profecimus.
If you honestly think that most knowledge was preserved by monks in the middle ages, particularly in latin manuscripts, then you are really, *really*, *REALLY* uneducated on this topic. My college studies included far more medieval and ancient history than is common for students (I attended multiple universities and took every history course for medieval and older that I could).
Certainly *some* knowledge was preserved by monks. Even useful things from time to time.
But there was not "complete destruction of civil institutions" as you say. Much used to be made of the "fall of Rome" but that overplaying went out of style decades ago. One observation I recall was that the "dark ages" were only "dark" because of a paucity of written records -- but that there were actually plenty of records and as research continued what was "dark" continually shrank.
Around five to ten years ago I did an extensive survey of 500 AD to 1000 AD in Europe (that quickly focused on the latter part of the period) that found some interesting things, like Charlemagne's public school (not just for the aristocracy, but noble children rubbing shoulders with commoners). Or that the lot of the serfs was made worse by the eradication of the iron plow share in favor of roman-style agriculture. We know lots of things about the time period, largely because there was *not* complete destruction of civil institutions.
But throughout that time period the vast majority of regional knowledge preservation, much less adding to the store, was the result of muslims. I realize that doesn't make for good material in christian-centric teaching, but it doesn't change reality.
In that line, there was a public school "history" text that went after muslims for legally limiting the number of wives to four and completely glossed over Charlemagne's wives and concubines (just counting wives he had more than four) -- all within a span of two pages.
None of this makes christians bad and muslims good, but people who are intent on either the former or the latter misrepresent and omit significant facts.
Top 1% of what part of the world? There were certainly parts of the Roman empire where the literacy rate was far higher. The Jewish population, for example, was quite literate. Also, it wasn't until much later (than this public library) that the Church controlled anything, much less access to its scriptures. If access to books was controlled earlier, it's only because books were very valuable; sort of like controlling access to the diamond rings under glass in your local jewellery store.
As for excommunication being a death sentence, I am not sure where you got that idea. Most people who were excommunicated went on to live long lives; the army of the Fourth Crusade was excommunicated by the Pope, and while I'm sure many of them died out there, it was not because they were excommunicated. I've NEVER heard that the Church gave permission to execute those who were excommunicated.
In sum, if you are correct that "Only an under educated person today would not be aware of how society worked 1.800-1.900 years ago", then I'm afraid you've placed yourself among the under-educated.
Are you sure that's not just because the English is old (Early Modern, roughly same period as Shakespeare)? I've read both the KJV and other translations all the way through, and while there are certainly places where the KJV is not only older English, but also just strange, as well as places where the translation is not so good (mostly Old Testament, maybe especially Psalms), it's not all that bad if you can deal with the thee's and thou's.
But throughout that time period the vast majority of regional knowledge preservation, much less adding to the store, was the result of muslims. I realize that doesn't make for good material in christian-centric teaching, but it doesn't change reality.
Muslims (or better, Christians and some Hebrews employed by Muslims) began to translate Greek books into Arabic in the 8th-9th century, after the conquest of the Near East in the 7th century. The Roman Empire became a Christian Empire during the 4th century. Who do you think preserved those texts in the meantime (just 4 or 5 centuries, you know)? As a comparison Arabic texts were mainly translated into Latin in the 12th century, 3 or 4 century after they were translated from Greek.
You claim to have studied the 500-1000 AD period and Charlemagne and his public schools: then you should know the paucity of Greek scholars in Western Europe, which had hindered the diffusion of Greek texts for centuries. One of the best Greek translator at the court of the Frankish Kingdom was an Irish monk, Eriugena and that because Ireland was almost spare by the Barbarian Invasions and the chaos they sparked.
All science from the Greeks and Romans was preserved exclusively by the Arab civilization.
First, the knowledge of the ancient Greeks and Romans wasn't really science. Science didn't really start to evolve until the 16th or 17th century.
Second, after the fall of the Western Roman empire, the Eastern Roman empire (often known as Byzantium or the Byzantine Empire) would continue for almost 1000 years longer (the capital city of Constantinople would fall to the Ottoman Turks in 1435).
Huge amounts of earlier knowledge were preserved in Byzantium during this long period. As things started to fall apart (due in part due to Arab pressure), people from this civilization fled back to the West seeking safer lives. Many scholars consider this a primary driving force to the Italian Renaissance.
What you are referring to as the Arab civilizations (a bit of a loose term, depending upon how you define 'Arab') certainly made some unique contributions, and they helped to preserve some knowledge that might otherwise have been lost, but they did not have the sole or exclusive role in preserving ancient knowledge. A case could even be made that the Arab / Ottoman / etc pressure on Byzantium had a net negative effect in the overall preservation of ancient knowledge.
The Arabs were not alone in creating pressure on Byzantine civilization: the first time the city of Constantinople was sacked it would be by Christian crusaders (in 1204).