THE MIDDLE AGES WERE NOT AS 'DARK' AS OFTEN SUGGESTED

Johannes Fried, The Middle Ages, translated from the German by Peter Lewis (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Belknap/Harvard U. Press, 2015) ("The division of human capacities into the Liberal arts and Mechanical Arts has its origins in the educational doctrines of the ancient Greeks and Romans. The term 'Liberal Arts' denoted those disciplines that could be mastered without manual labor, and which one could pursue without having to make a living from them. In Antiquity, then, this conception was premised on the figure of the free, wealthy aristocrat, whose livelihood was maintained by an army of people more of less dependent upon him. But this social stratum no longer existed; his place was now primarily taken by monks and scribes, and very occasionally lay people. Every activity that require manual work, by contrast, was designated as 'mechanical,' including for example surgery and medicine, hunting skills, maritime navigation and any form of commercial enterprise." Id. at 53-54.).