<<From: Popeyesays, Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2003 04:22:28 I think the point being
raised is that to the largest extent Christian monasteries and libraries did
not preserve Greek and Roman philosophy in their collections. This is because
the ecclesiastical hermits considered such things trivial compared to treatises
on Christianity and the pre-Christian scholars were severely short-changed. It
was the libraries of the Islamic Empire that preserved most of the written
material we now refer to as Greek philosophy and literature. Therefore, we owe
the existence of these documents (in the most part) to the Islamic respect for
philosophy and history and THEIR efforts to preserve the material.>>
I'm not sure this is the point being raised in Baha'i texts, but I think
you're basically correct and the manuscript evidence partially supports such a
view. That is, there are many manuscripts, copies of Greek works in European
collections today in Arabic or with Arabic and Farsi marginal notes. However, in
the East Christian did preserve Greek learning. In fact, the main source of
Greek learning gathered by Muslims was of course Jews and Christians. Christians
were great preservers of Greek learning and they too spread this Greek
learning into Latin Europe as they fled from Muslims. The early Church fathers, the
great historian Eusebius and others, quoted the Greeks, admired them and
propagated the Greek dependency theme. That idea was probably one of the main
reasons why so much Greek leaning was preserved and transmitted through the ages.
And not just the great philosophers, but the poets and historians as well.
Some of the reasons for the popularity of certain works is in itself
interesting. Virgil was thought to have prophesied Christ (a puzzling reading of
Virgil's statements about Caesar Augustus) and so Dante made him his guide in
the Divine Comedy. If one reads Virgil (even available in audiocassette today,
if you like) one may wonder which influenced Christian beliefs on the after
life more, the NT or the Aenied.
Apart from Greek learning though, I don't think we can underestimate the
importance of commerce with prosperous Muslim societies. Muslim art too played
a major role in this commerce, not just Muslim sciences, as a conveyer of a
Muslim world view. Venetian art, for example, shows how closely the cultures
inter mixed and how much Europeans borrowed. So I think it is fair to say that
there are more than a few Muslim ideas and concepts too that impressed and help
revitalize European culture.
I've often wondered, for example, how much Muslim views about protecting
Christians and Jews (regardless of their own sectarian beliefs) played in the
European conception of nationalism. Or how much the European obsession with
cataloguing all the things on the planet and showing an ordered creation was
influenced by Islam and Islamic art.
But these matters aside, if one looks at European culture, with all its
art forms, from the Renaissance to the 19th century, the most visible and
pervasive influence is Classicism.
Warmest,
Michael
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