If by 'unified' you mean 'oppressed everything else', then yes. This is reason to invade countries nowadays, though, ironically.
No, I don't mean oppressed everything else. There was NO long standing central power, like England or the United States today. The political power was in the hands of
feudal lords. Christianity gave people a common cause, and the pope filled the power vaccum, since something had to.
Hence: They're keeping the masses dumbed down. Dumb people, who have no other explanations for things, have to follow Christian belief because due to the indoctrination, they don't know any better.
No, they aren't. The feudal lords, who actually couldn't read or write themselves, were afraid of knowledge, so they didn't want their subjects to learn it themselves. And besides that, the people just
didn't want to learn. Finally, when the Renaissance, or the revival of Roman/Greek ideals, came about, people decided "hey! learnings cool! let's go learn how to make awesome art!"
And only taught church-approved, biased material.
Prove it. The Holy Roman Empire, though lead by a Christian king, was actually VERY close to what the old Roman empire did. It was almost an "early Renaissance." Too bad it didn't last very long due to viking invaders, or the Renaissance could have happened during this time versus the 16th century.
Go back to history class. The Roman Empire embraced every sort of religion, it was in fact part of ones personality and treated as untouchable.
No, YOU go back to history class. Through the Roman Empire *tolerated* other religions, that doesn't mean it *embraced* them. And do you know WHY the eastern roman empire survived longer than the western one? Among other reasons, one was that the eastern roman empire had Christianity as its official language once Constantine proclaimed it so. It then served as a unifying factor as the central government of the eastern roman empire began to fade. (Oh, and the western roman empire had long since faded).
Biased teachings aren't meant for learning, they're meant for conversion.
It seems you're very biased yourself. The Islamic world was actually very secular, and actually
encouraged scientific learning. Some contributions include...
-Preserving Greek philosopher's manuscripts
-The astrolabe
-An early scientific method
-Advances in farming techniques
-The concept of "0". (They adopted 1-9 from the India, but then created the concept of "nothing," creating the
Arabic numeral system we use today)
And of course, many more.
They could've just sent a trade caravan.
No, one trade caravan wouldn't have done enough. Multitudes, maybe. But like I said, the crusades are really a black mark on Christianity's past. But it still yielded positive results.
Not particularly. If schools would've been teaching non-biased information, the entire world as we have it now would've been different. For better or worse, I cannot say, because it never happened. But saying it's the 'only thing' is a very, very far stretch.
Too bad all these people in the middle ages that wanted to make unbiased schools couldn't. Oh wait. They could. It's just that there wasn't anybody that WANTED to. So the church did. The church created the schools because nobody else did. They filled the power vacuum. Some schools, even if biased as you say > no schools.
It isn't false, it's misinterpreted. There's a huge difference between having schools and teaching people. The Dark Ages were about indoctrination, not free will and advancement. We live with this legacy today, still.
So my history teacher taught it wrong? Okay then. Whatever you say /sarcasm. Anyway, here's what the AP World History textbook says as a summary:
Western Europe in the Middle Ages had a love-hate relationship with the world around it. Early on, Europe seemed threatened by Vikings, Asian nomads, and Islam. At the same time, Europeans actively copied many features from Islam and traded with Asians. Through selective acceptance of benefits from the world around them, this civilization developed a global awareness.
source:
http://wps.ablongman.com/long_stearns_wcap_4/18/4648/1189934.cw/index.html (
http://wps.ablongman.com/long_stearns_wcap_4/18/4648/1189934.cw/index.html)
Doesn't seem very indoctrinated. In fact, the Middle Ages were characterized by
decentralization.
