CHAPTER III 



THE MEDIAEVAL MIND 



The Middle Ages The Patristic Age The Dark Ages The Reconstruc- 

 tion of Europe The Coming of the North Arabian Science The 

 Revival of Learning The Schoolmen Thomas Aquinas Dante 

 Roger Bacon The Decay of Scholasticism. 



UNTIL recent years, the term " Middle Ages " was 

 applied to the whole long interval of a thousand 

 The years between the fall of the ancient 

 Middle Ages, civilization and the rise of the Italian 

 Renaissance. But the revival of interest in the 

 history, art and religion of the thirteenth and 

 fourteenth centuries has led to a clear recognition 

 that by that time a new civilization had arisen, 

 and has produced a growing tendency to restrict 

 the name " Mediaeval " to the four hundred years 

 which preceded the Renaissance and followed what 

 soon came to be termed specifically the " Dark 

 Ages." 



But, to the historian of science, there are advantages 

 in the older classification. It is not till the period of 

 the Renaissance that modern science recovers the 

 knowledge of the ancients, learns to examine it 

 critically, and starts on a path of its own by the help 

 of the new experimental method. Hence the period 



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