In the article The Dark Age Myth: An Atheist Reviews “God’s Philosophers”, Tim O’Neill presents a rough outline of popular misconceptions of Christian Europe, in contrast to what is believed about the periods that preceded and succeeded it.

Remember, the following is what people wrongly believe, not how things actually were.

“The myth goes that the Greeks and Romans were wise and rational types who loved science and were on the brink of doing all kinds of marvelous things (inventing full-scale steam engines is one example that is usually, rather fancifully, invoked) until Christianity came along. Christianity then banned all learning and rational thought and ushered in the Dark Ages. Then an iron-fisted theocracy, backed by a Gestapo-style Inquisition, prevented any science or questioning inquiry from happening until Leonardo da Vinci invented intelligence and the wondrous Renaissance saved us all from Medieval darkness.”

As my scientific worldview was largely shaped by popularizers such as Carl Sagan and Richard Dawkins, who share the exact same bias as that described above, it’s what I bought into as well for more than a decade.

It took years for me to get weaned off this myth, even after being exposed to alternative points of view. I didn’t want to believe it was true, and resisted letting go of the myth at every step.

Reading the book reviewed in the link above is a good start for anyone else who wants a fresh look at the topic.

As to the idea that Europe was a theocracy, it is widely misguided. The Pope certainly did not rule with an iron fist, as he was a spiritual leader first and foremost. And there was always a precarious power balance between the Papacy and the various political leaders of the time. In 1527 Rome was even sacked by Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, and the Pope barely survived.

I also recommend the following YouTube videos:

David Bentley Hart — Myths about Christian History

BBC Timewatch — The Myth of the Spanish Inquisition — a BBC documentary which debunks popular misconceptions about the Inquisition. One thing that stuck with me is how the image of the Inquisition we have today is largely a relic of the conflict between Protestantism and Catholicism. Protestants, who had weaponized the printing press more effectively, successfully spread slanderous mischaracterizations of the established Church in order to gain an upper hand over it.

Franciscan University Presents: Myths About the Crusades — a conversation about the context in which the Crusades were fought, and their actual meaning in the history of Europe and Christendom. Rather than being mindless imperialistic wars, they are actually something we owe a lot to.

“The Crusades, History, and Europe”

The article “Recovering a More Complex Story of the Christian West”, which reviews Nick Spencer’s “The Evolution of the West”, best describes my current position:

Why Christianity’s role in shaping the West should be in need of vindication is itself an interesting tale. In secularist circles, from the eighteenth-century Roman historian Edward Gibbon to the most recent popularizers of the “New Atheism,” it has long been axiomatic that everything praiseworthy in western societies was achieved by overcoming and displacing the legacy of Christianity. Equality, freedom, democracy, the rule of law, human rights, modern science and its fruits — all of these are viewed as luminous achievements brought about by an escape from the stultifying, superstitious shadows of the Christian religion. This view does not withstand serious historical scrutiny. Indeed, after reading this book, there are two things one can no longer credit. The first, which Spencer explicitly debunks, is that modernity’s highest achievements owe nothing to Christianity and everything to secularism. The second, the untenability of which he pauses repeatedly to underscore, is that everything that is good about modernity is due to Christianity in some unambiguous or univocal way. The matter is more complicated than that. One might add a third myth that Spencer nowhere mentions, let alone debunks, but one that is worth mentioning because it travels well in some quarters: that the modern is the secular, the secular is the anti-Christian, and . . . we’re doomed, unless we somehow tear up the roots of the modern altogether. That myth, too, does not survive this book.

I prefer the synthesis view, that celebrates all aspects of our civilization’s heritage: Greco-Roman, Judeo-Christian, and modern. Douglas Murray, Roger Scruton, and Nassim Taleb have all made statements supporting this compatibility.

You can’t have a coherent social body if some members consider themselves a hostile “other”, part of a distinct tribe who’s on the verge of an imminent takeover— and this is how many militant atheists and secularists who reject our Christian heritage view themselves.

We don’t all have to agree, but we all have to feel like we’re playing on the same team, on the grand scale.