/lit/ - Literature

>>8988774
Dante does not depict them as honorary christians. The only one who gets Greek/Roman who gets close to that is Cato (as a sort of guardian manager of early purgatory) and that is thanks to his depiction in Lucan and, to a lesser degree, Seneca

You'll start a big pissing contest if you use the term Dark Ages now. The Greek side survived in the Byzantine empire since Greek effectively died in the west between ~500 and ~1400 (with a handful of exceptions, mostly in places like Sicily that maintained contact with the east/had a tradition of a Greek populace to begin with). They had a different relationship with classical literature and philosophy than developed in the west - largely since their language was still greek, even if in another form, whereas Latin ceased being the spoken language in the west probably around 900 and was effectively an academic/religious one soon afterwards.

And to the main point, yes and no. It is clear that certain things survived or, more accurately, thrived thanks to their supposed connection with Christianity. Most famously, Virgil's 4th eclogue prophecy of a golden child was often taken as a reference to christianity, leaving him a prophet and his work a justifiable study for religiously minded. But generally there is little of what antiquity itself recognized as the most important philosophical works that are lost to us.

That said, the actual question is largely irrelevant since the most important philosophy (Plato and much of Aristotle) disappeared in the west with the disappearance of Greek (they were never or only partially translated into Latin) and only re-emerged in the 12th century following increased contact with the Muslim world who'd translated and preserved them and then even moreso in the following centuries, culminating in the mass emigration of Byzantine scholars when their empire fell to the muslims. What was left in the west was largely roman stoicism and some later neoplatonism, both of which loan themselves well enough to christian interpretation that they didn't have to worry.

I'm simplifying and I know it in case anyone wants to call me out but there are space issues and I'm lazy.

Sort of, but a lot of things can be interpreted to point to God. A relatively small number of classic works actually informed Christian and Islamic philosophy for example. I think they had like none of Plato for long stretches, maybe the Theaetetus, Plotinus fragments/epigones, often pseudonymous or mistakenly accredited to Aristotle, parts of Aristotle but not all. All usually glossed in Latin/Arabic by Porphyry/Boethius types rather than possessed in full and original.

The choices about what to "save" seem pretty haphazard. Why not save more of Plato, if you're going to save weird chunks of Plotinus? Why not more of Aristotle, if he's the be-all end-all of philosophy?

The monks saved a lot of stuff because in the the Early Middle Ages they were dominant in the clergy, I think, but from the High Middle Ages on the clergy becomes more episcopal? (I think?) Richer, less tethered to the church proper, less creatures of the church, more of a general intellectual and scholastic culture coming from the upper classes. I think that's when a lot of texts start to be rescued, and Petrarch isn't long after, combing through old libraries to find Cicero and Tacitus manuscripts and shit.

By then, their appropriating pagan Antiquity doesn't seem like it was that big of a deal, especially with the Crusades and the inheritance of al-Andalus and stuff. Whereas in the earlier periods, I just don't think the technology or "print" culture was sophisticated enough to sustain huge text circulations, to do things like Petrarch did where you go and "rescue" old texts. From what I know, they commented on a relatively small and canonical corpus of received works. Whoever "found" Tacitus was probably like "oh" and put it back on the shelf, as opposed to saying "this doesn't service God!"

You might look into the Carolingian Renaissance, but it was more about this textual tradition being stagnant and barely-there, like I said, because Europe was just so slow-moving and the entire literate class was in the monastic clergy, servicing the still-barbarian kingdoms, at that point. There was concern that "Latin," really the very oral and not very literatee Italic languages, developing out of late Vulgar Latin which didn't resemble Classical for centuries anyway, was becoming decrepit, fear that the clergy was no longer able to read even the Vulgate. The Carolingian Renaissance rehabilitated some Classical stuff, which was considered dangerous but useful for keeping people's Latin up to snuff. In that way, it kind of ossified Latin and set in stone that the post-Latinate vernaculars (French, Spanish, Italian) were NOT "Latin."

>>8988830
>>8988850
You guys have proved really informative. Thank you.