“I do not intend to make you believe that in the Middle Ages everything was known or that there were only advances; It is true that there were also superstitions and ridiculous beliefs, but today these things still exist: there are people who currently believe that the world is flat and not a sphere, or that vaccines do not work. The philosophy of the English historian Seb Falk is pure common sense. Your work Light in the Middle Ages. The History of Medieval Science (Ático de los Libros, 2024), a suggestive fictional essay, comes to combat the cliché (more and more worn out and less and less heavy) of a dark Middle Ages that never existed. And this lie contradicts not only the material heritage – Romanesque churches or Gothic cathedrals – but also the wealth of scientific advances that have served as the basis for later and current knowledge, which Falk shows (yes) with the passion of a professor and a popularizer, his two professional facets.
Immersed in the task of collecting the scientific “enlightenment” of the boring Middle Ages that we have been sold, the Cambridge University professor put his hands on his head. How was it possible that a “fashionable” period, popularized by fictions like the lord of the rings either Game of Thrones (or even the video game Assassin’s Creed) and whose new books and novels continue to be published – was not associated with the great scientific advances that he had been able to discover throughout his doctoral thesis. “I decided to write a book, not only to tell facts and destroy myths, but also to excite the public and lead them to search for themselves,” he admits. This is one of the reasons why he is entrusted with an astrolabe, the smartphone of the Middle Ages—in the presentation of his study in Spain, after receiving praise from the British press and readers.
Since undertaking to delve into and chronicle scientific achievements over a millennium was no easy task, Falk chose to entrust the responsibility to a 14th-century monk named John Westwick, whose life adventures bring the reader closer to the story, with details about the Alphonsian tables, the liberal arts, or the introduction of Arabic numerals. If the reader did not know who the author of The light of the Middle Ages, I would surely bet on a Spanish writer. In the pages of the book there are references to Alfonso What was the Spanish weight in medieval science? “The Iberian Peninsula played an important role as a place of cultural mixing, of exchange of ideas between Christians and Muslims,” explains the professor.
The appearance of a “wise” king
While the identity of European countries in the face of emerging migratory movements is being questioned, Seb Falk rightly attributes to these frictions, to this contact, the origin of many medieval advances. “There were borders in Italy and the Holy Land, but Spain was the most important place for the exchange of instruments, tables, observations and translations,” explains Falk. A millennium ago, says the English popularizer, Spain “acquired a lot of strength as a place where one could find books of very advanced knowledge.” In this context, the author affirms, “it was very easy for Alfonso Falk to place among the great advances of the time the development of the so-called Alphonsian tables, the first catalog drawn up in Christian Europe with very precise observations and data that, later, allowed scientists such as Copernicus, Galileo or Kepler to develop their theories.
Of course, all these advances had to walk throughout history with a stone in their shoe. The surely malicious cliché of the “Dark Ages”. But what could be done to make their progress shine, if not to question and blur what had been achieved so far? And this is how this belief germinated in the Renaissance, when people turned to the knowledge of classical civilizations – Greece and Rome – with the lucidity of thinkers like Cicero, questioning what was in the middle, in the middle: the Middle Ages. Here, Falk points out, religion also entered the scene. To discredit this supposed Dark Age, Protestants criticized without measure one of the institutions responsible for it, the Church, for its superstitions and lies.
Now the question is simple: do advances like the astrolabe that Seb Falk carries in his hands fit into this falsely dirty and dark Middle Ages? “I compare it to the smartphone current because it allowed us to acquire a series of knowledge such as knowing the time, orienting ourselves towards the north or the south, identifying a star, knowing the length of the day or when the sun was going to set, or even the height of a building,” says the author. That is to say practically everything that one of our smartphones does (use GPS, check the weather forecast, download information, etc.), except call. Which, incidentally, is almost the least thing that we do with a smartphone. “It is true that there were already instruments that performed these functions separately, but none could do them all together in a single portable object, which could be taken on a trip and which, in addition, was a symbol of the person’s status,” says the writer. Perhaps this can now be achieved by buying the most expensive iPhone (or maybe not even that).
Liberal Arts and Arabic Numerals
In The light of the Middle Ages, The author also discusses the creation of the first universities or the consolidation and development of the seven liberal arts, established in Roman times. This is how letters (grammar, logic and rhetoric) and numbers (arithmetic, astronomy, geometry and music) were distinguished, a structure that was the basis of the transfer of knowledge throughout the Middle Ages, before the emergence of new forms of knowledge to conceive of learning. and modify this pattern.
Precisely in the field of numbers, there has been a change that has allowed a decisive advance. “I have been able to see that my readers are surprised by what I say about Roman numerals, that they are not as bad as they seemed and that they allow operations such as multiplication to be carried out easily”, reveals Falk, who recognizes, however, that Arabic numerals “are more flexible, they work better”. Despite this, the Romans have survived (they have done so until today, although they are used in very specific fields) for centuries, since only certain specialized disciplines, such as astronomy, required complex operations. “Today we continue to use three different systems, if we add the writing of numbers with letters to the Romans and the Arabs, and this is something that surprises the reader when he thinks about it”, adds the professor.
Like all eras, there was a (major) event that buried the Middle Ages. What did the discovery of the New World mean for science? “When Europeans traveled to America, they discovered a new continent, new animals, new plants… This led them to reflect and doubt the authority of the ancient sages,” explains Seb Falk. Although this fact was not the only one that shook the foundations of knowledge. Another of the most significant was, according to the British professor, the emergence of printing (Gutenberg, 15th century) which favored the production and circulation of books and, consequently, the comparison of knowledge and the analysis of contradictions between them. “Traveling, as it appears in the introduction to Francis Bacon’s most important book, meant increasing knowledge; it was something new compared to the Middle Ages, where, even if people traveled, ideas were debated and discussed in a more internal way,” adds Falk.
Will Falk and other authors definitively put an end to the false thesis of medieval darkness? “We must understand that the reality of the Middle Ages is not a reality of pure darkness, nor of pure achievements, it is a complicated era,” the author acknowledges. “But I believe that contemporary authors must share the effort to make society understand that every era is complex, has its advances and its problems; In this way, we will lead people, for example, to look at medieval buildings in a different way and to ask themselves the reason for their elements,” he adds. And he leaves a sentence for reflection: “Our medicine is much better than that practiced in the Middle Ages, but it still has its problems and we must continue working to advance.”
