(March 20, 2025) Most of today's classical texts came into Europe from the crusades (1095 and 1291 CE), the Reconquista of Spain (1200's), and the looting and rule of Constantinople by the 4th crusade (1204-1261).  The university system expanded to take advantage of this Pagan knowledge which was still respected in Europe.

The first university in Europe was the University of Bologna. Teaching began around 1088, with the university becoming organized as guilds of students (universitas scholarium) by the late 1100's. It is the first degree-awarding institution of higher learning and the first university to graduate a woman (who later taught there) in 1239. It became known for its law degree. The main compilation of Roman law (called the "Digest") had been rediscovered in Italy in 1070 and teaching that was main the motivation for the university's founding. The Digest had been ordered by emperor Justinian I in 530–533 CE and is divided into 50 books. 

The 2nd university was the University of Paris emerging around 1150 as a corporation associated with the cathedral school of Paris. It was officially chartered in 1200 by King Philip II and recognized in 1215 by Pope Innocent III. It's diploma subjects were: Arts, Medicine, Law, and Theology. The "Arts" covered the subjects of rhetoric, grammar, logic, astronomy, arithmetic, geometry, and music, all inspired by the surviving classics.

References

List of medieval universities on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_medieval_universities

(March 20, 2025) The support of literate monks and nuns to aid with law and commerce was the chief motivation for Pagan chiefs to switch their lands to Christianity.

European chiefdoms and their more organized feudal form depended upon personal relationships to work. Yet any strong centralized government centered around a king required a literate staff to function. This staff kept track of money, laws,  contracts, and foreign relations. Until the high middle ages such literacy was provided to European kings by the Christian church who in return suppressed various Christian heresies.

Only after the rise of universities with their secular Roman law degree and related Pagan knowledge did Kings get the idea to employ their graduates independently of the church to support government operations. Thus began the conflicts between church and state which allowed enough freedom for the Protestant reformation to succeed instead of being suppressed as just another heresy.

(March 20, 2025) The Renaissance was time when new trade wealth supported classical themed art inspired by increasing knowledge of the classics. It was the visible culmination of 200 years of slow cultural change. The Renaissance (and early science) ceased in Catholic lands starting in 1545 with their increasing religious intolerance brought on by the Counter-Reformation. Secular art and science then moved north into Protestant lands.

(July 6, 2022) Repeated exposure to new facts is what breaks old paradigms. This process was accelerated by the invention of the printing press combined with low cost paper.

Paper making as the random combination of plant fibers into a sheet began in China around 105 CE. The first historical report of this appears in the official history of the Han dynasty written sometime in the 400s CE. It says this:

Europe did not develop a surplus of old clothes until after 1250 with the adoption of the spinning wheel and horizontal loom. This was also the time when paper started to be produced in Spain and Italy after getting the idea via the Arabs (Hunter 1949). As a comparison, 140 calves had to be killed to provide enough velum for one small Bible which was a great expense.

Sometime during the 1440's Johannes Gutenberg (1400-1468) invented the movable-type printing press. Gutenberg was born in Mainz Germany and had attended the University of Mainz for at least a few years so he would have observed the high demand for various written items. Mainz was also at the center of wine making country so he would have also been familiar with the presses which pressed grapes to extract the juice. In his early 30's he traveled down the Rhine river to the prosperous trading city of Strasbourg to find the funding to produce his printing press. During the 1430s he got this funding from some Strasbourg merchants. He did his work in secret hiring a carpenter and goldsmith as needed to help produce the printing machine parts. It would have taken him about a year just to make all the needed letter punches by himself. The ink he probably used was soot mixed into the sun thickened, cold pressed, linseed oil which was also used in paints. His first prints were common high volume items for the church like prayer books and indulgence certificates. This new ability to mass print indulgences was one factor which led to the Reformation. When Guttenberg felt he was ready he went upscale and printed his famous Latin Bibles starting in late 1454. These used both red and black ink and many pages were hand decorated. The paper was some of the finest paper of the age having no imperfections. These were displayed at the Frankfort trade fair in late 1454 to much acclaim.

References

(July 6, 2022) The medieval authoritarian paradigm really started to change when the Protestants claimed the Bible and not church doctrine was authoritative and it could not have happened without its amplification by printing press also giving voice to class and nationalist frustrations. The Protestants also claimed that human reason could extract Biblical knowledge.  (See the movie Luthor for an emotionally compelling introduction to this time period)

The Reformation was accidentally started by Martin Luthor who only intended to debate the selling of indulgences for the purposes of absolving sin but ended up challenging Papal authority because the Pope had commanded that selling and because the press actively spread his opposition (nothing like controversy to sell papers and books)

In 1515 Pope Leo X put forth a new and more extreme indulgence selling scheme to raise money for the construction of  St. Peters Basilica in Rome. These  indulgences had greater benefits than ever before applying to almost any sin, including adultery and theft. All other indulgence preaching was prohibited for the eight years this program was active. Special indulgence preachers were even sent out and given strict instructions on how to be most effective.

On October 31, 1517 after nailing the debate theses written in Latin to the church door as was university tradition, Luther sent a letter with these debate points to the Archbishop of Mainz, Albert of Brandenburg, under whose authority the indulgences were being sold.  The theses were printed and distributed to interested parties. Yet these were commercial printers and no copyright laws existed so they made extras either because they were hoping to sell them or someone paid for them.

 These theses appeared in a four-page pamphlet in Basel and as placards in Leipzig and Nuremburg.. In all, several hundred copies of Luthor's theses were printed in Latin throughout Germany in 1517. Kaspar Nutzel in Nuremberg translated them into German later that year, and copies of this translation were sent to several interested parties across Germany but it was not necessarily printed.  (references at  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninety-five_Theses)

Archbishop Albert, on the advice of his advisors at the University of Mainz, decided Luther should be prohibited from preaching against indulgences in accordance with the instructions in the Papal bull sent out by Pope Leo. Albert passed on this request to the authorities in Rome who agreed that Luthor was a threat because he was challenging Papal authority. In February 1518, Pope Leo asked the head of the Luther's religious order, the Augustinian Hermits, to convince him to stop spreading his ideas about indulgences. Just in case Sylvester Mazzolinin was appointed to write an opinion which would and could be used in a trial against him. He wrote "A Dialogue against Martin Luther's Presumptuous Theses concerning the Power of the Pope," which focused on Luther's questioning of the pope's authority rather than his complaints about indulgence preaching.  This Papal opposition is what really gained Luthor a following.

Luthor refused to back down and the result was the establishment of anti-Papal Protestantism throughout northern Europe. Yet Protestantism became as dogmatic and intolerant as Catholics. This was for two reasons:

The first reason is that the Bible is often contradictory with the result that Protestants could never come to a common conclusion on the truth it was supposed to contain. This is why so many Protestant denominations exist today.  Each ended up picking out certain lines in the Bible to believe while  ignoring others.

The second reason is that society was not ready for diversity. Every secular ruler believed that social stability could only be achieved if everyone had the same ideology. This was further supported by both Protestant and Catholic officials who believed errors in belief risked the death of a person's soul. So they were quick to cut out heretics from society like a surgeon cuts out a cancer in order to save others. 

References

Luthor by Eikon Film and NFP Teleart (2003) Movie directed by Eric Till and stars Joseph Fiennes in the title role. (Highly recommended, Rarely does a movie both capture the feelings of the time and be historically accurate.) Online at: https://www.amazon.com/Luther-Joseph-Fiennes/dp/B001EMYRHU

(March 27, 2025) After the Reformation, the development of science (and resulting industrial advanced) moved to northern Europe. Significantly, these were also the most recent Pagan lands. The Catholic church imposed thought control at the Council of Trent which was a series of meetings held between 1545 and 1563 in Trent, northern Italy. It ruled in 1546:

The council of Trent in 1546 ruled that

• ” . . . no one, relying on his own skill, shall, – in matters of faith, and of morals pertaining to the edification of Christian doctrine, – wresting the sacred Scripture to his own senses, presume to interpret the said sacred Scripture contrary to that sense which holy mother Church, – whose it is to judge of the true sense and interpretation of the holy Scriptures, – hath held and doth hold,” (Trent, Session 4, “Decree Concerning the Edition, and the Use, of the Sacred Books”)

The scripture in this case was the Latin Vulgate and not any earlier Greek version. So while salvation could be gained by faith as the Protestants claimed, it could also be gained by merit via good works and participating in various Catholic sacraments and sacrament equivalences (including indulgences).

So the Reformation caused the Catholic church to compromise by admitting an authoritative source of knowledge (the Bible) existed external to itself yet it retained its control over thinking by claiming that only it could accurately discern its the Bible's secrets.

(March 27, 2025) The Reformation only challenged the Catholic Church's thought control, it did not challenge using the Bible as the main source for community knowledge. Seeing nature as such a community knowledge source only came about during the Enlightenment.

A well stated overview of the Enlightenment published in 1966:

• "To call the Enlightenment Pagan is to conjure up the most delightfully irresponsible sexual license: a lazy sun-drenched summer afternoon, fauns and nymphs cavorting to sensual music and lascivious paintings, preferably by Boucher. There is some reality to this fantasy: the philosophes argued for a positive appreciation of sensuality and despised asceticism.... In speaking of the Enlightenment as pagan therefore, I am referring not to sensuality but to the affinity of the enlightenment to classical thought. Words other than pagan - Augustan, Classical, Humanist - have all served as epithets to capture this affinity ...." (Peter Gay 1966)

The first battle between nature and the Bible would be over the question of whether the earth moved. The Christians viewed the earth as immovable because the Bible said so: 

• (Psalm 104:5, NIV) He (God) set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved.

Also 1 Chronicles 16:30, Psalm 93:1, Psalm 96:10.

Yet developing observations and theories about nature indicated that the earth moved.

References

(March 27, 2025) Any claim that the earth moved was viewed as Pythagorean and heretical. Christians got most of their information about the Pythagoreans from Aristotle. He wrote:

• It remains to speak of the earth, of its position, of the question whether it is at rest or in motion, and of its shape. As to its position there is some difference of opinion. Most people-all, in fact, who regard the whole heaven as finite-say it lies at the center. But the Italian philosophers known as Pythagoreans take the contrary view. At the center, they say, is fire, and the earth is one of the stars (heavenly bodies), creating night and day by its circular motion about the center. They further construct another earth in opposition to ours to which they give the name counter-earth. (1)

"Star" is the Greek word ἀστήρ ("aster" as in astronomy) which means any heavenly body. 

"Fire is the Greek word φωτιά ("fotia" as in photograph) which has been traditionally translated as either fire or light.

The most complete statement about the Pythagorean conception of the universe is found in a surviving summation of old Greek texts done by Joannes Stobaeus around 400 CE. It says:

• Philolaus (first Pythagorean author) says that there is a fire (emanating glow) in the middle (of the world) at the center; he calls it: Hestia (Greek equivelent of Selu/Selene),  the All, the Guard-post of Zeus, the Mother of the gods, the Altar, the Link, and the Measure of Nature. Besides, he locates a second fire, quite at the top surrounding the world. The center, he says, is by its nature the first, around it, the ten different bodies carry out their choral dance. These are: the heavens, the planets, lower is the sun, and below that the moon, lower the earth, and beneath this, the counter-earth, then beneath these bodies is Hestia, in the center, where it maintains order. The highest part of the covering, in which he asserts that the elements exist in a perfectly pure condition, is called Olympus; the space beneath the revolution-circle of Olympus, and where in order are disposed the five planets, the sun, and the moon, forms the cosmos; finally, beneath the latter is the sublunar region which surround the earth where are the generative things susceptible to change. (1)

References

(1) Aristotle (350 BCE) On the Heavens, Book 2, Part 13. Online at https://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/heavens.2.ii.html

(2) Original in Stobaeus, Eclogarum Physicarum, translated by August Meinekie (ed) Ioannis Stobaei Eclogarum Physicarum et Ethicarum, vol. 1 (1860). I found it in: Phythagoras or Christ by Alberto A. Martinez (2022) Saltshadow Castle, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

(March 25, 2025)  The Pythagoreans were devoted to the celestial light fate powers of  Selu/Selene because they did not think the emotion class of motion powers were pure enough (Selene means "powers of Selu" in Akkadian). This is a consequence of their contact with Zoroastrian Dualism. Her male complement was the dark, new moon and eye pupil god Su who represented the emotion sources magic including that aimed at affecting fate  (astrology magic).

Greek ἑστία (Estia, Hestia) is the Akkadian phrase ES.T meaning "Spiritual-fluids of astrology magic." Spiritual fluids were emanations such as the light and heat from hot coals and the sun. Emanations are not the same as the "expulsions" which are the actual flames of a fire.

Selu/Selene was called "Vesta" in Latin. Vesta is the Akkadian phrase US.T meaning "Binders of Astrology-magic." This word has the essentially the same meaning as Estia/Hestia. She was the goddess of fate for family and society and was guardian of the family hearth which protected the family. This hearth fire was not the element of fire/flame. In Rome, her main priestesses were the state sponsored Vestal Virgins. Being virgins they had nothing to do with fertility and life powers. 

(July 7, 2022, updated March 26, 2025) Perhaps everyone has heard of the time-space continuum from Einstein's Relativity Theory. This is the foundation of both the universe and mathematics because it has the property that some smaller interval always exists. If a system needs it then it can pop into existence. The classic example of a continuum is the mathematical curve defined by 1/x shown to the left. Because the curve is symmetric around the point (1,1) as many points can exist between 0 and 1 as between 1 and infinity.

With no hard minimum length, lengths can only be defined in a relative fashion by ratios from geometry or from wave functions (musical harmonics, quantum mechanics). That is, by comparison of a reference length to another. The reference length can be called 1. All other numbers can then be defined by a ratio making process. Mathematics can thus be used to approximately describe the workings of continuums.

Historically, this insight was first made by the Pythagoreans. The first Pythagorean who wrote anything down was the Greek Philolaus who began his book (only now exists in small fragments) with a bold statement about this insight:

• Nature (physis) in the world-order (cosmos) was fitted together out of things which are unlimited and out of things which are limiting, both the world-order as a whole and everything in it. (1) 

Here the continuum is called an "unlimited" and the "limiting" processes were the ratios defined from geometry and musical harmonics.

In regards to the Pythagorean theorem assigned to them, they may or may not have invented it but its use of geometric ratios would naturally have associated it with the Pythagoreans.

References

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Philolaus (Sept 2003, revised September 2024). Online at: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/philolaus/

(July 6, 2022) Two discoveries started the expansion of physical nature into heavens which ultimately ended up challenging the authority of the Bible and infallibility of the Catholic church. The most understandable set of discoveries was presented in Galileo's 1610 book where he described what he saw with his telescope. He found that, Jupiter had moons, Venus had phases, and the moon had earthlike geography. This book was entitled the "Sidereus Nuncius"  or "Starry Messenger."  

Galileo Galilee (1564 - 1642) was a professor of Mathematics at the University of Padua in the Republic of Venice where he specialized in instrument making. This included an irrigation device and an advanced drawing compass/slide-rule.

The importance of his father, Vincenzio, on Galileo's  anti-authoritarian views should not be over looked. Vincenzio was a musician and mathematician and part of the group which invented the opera as a musical revival of Greek tragedy. He invented a more refined musical scale for the lute based on the actual harmonies of sound instead of the traditional mathematical Pythagorean ratios. He wrote a book describing and defending this new approach called Dialog of Ancient and Modern Music.  In it he states:

In 1608 or early 1609 Galileo heard about the invention of the telescope in Flanders which had came about because eye glasses had been invented making lenses more common. Because he was an instrument maker and designer he was one of the few who could build it sight unseen and keep on improving its magnification and clarity. His first telescope used standard eye glass lenses but Galileo soon went beyond that with lenses of greater power and clarity.

His first telescope demonstration was in the summer of 1609 for the Venetian military market which gained him a life time appointment as a professor and raised his salary to 1000 florins a year. In the fall he turned an even better telescope towards the heavens and found it was not divinely perfect and ethereal as assumed. He published a book describing these astronomical discoveries in Venice on March 12, 1610. The book caused a sensation. Kepler was delighted because it confirmed his contention that physics extended to the heavens.  After this Galileo's native university of Padua also offered him a professorship with terms better than those from Venice so Galileo moved back home. 

For Galileo the simplest explanation of his new findings was that the earth had to move around the sun. Yet, as he would be told, this directly contradicted Psalm 104 verse 5: 

Galileo's answer to this is found in a 1613 letter to a friend who was reporting this growing opposition:

He went on to say that many statements about nature were put into the Bible in order to keep it simple for the masses because the main purpose of the Bible was teaching salvation.  

Overt public attacks on Galileo began on December 21, 1614 with a sermon by a Dominican priest in Florence named Tommaso Caccini who was actually one of the first to decern the coming cultural war over knowledge authority. He stated that all of Galileo's followers and indeed, all mathematicians in general were "practitioners of diabolical arts and ... the enemies of true religion."

The problem for Galileo is that the only hard proof that the sun was at the center of the solar system was in Kepler's data and mathematics which few people could understand. So most people saw this sun centered idea as unproven.

After the Catholic inquisition in 1615 condemned heliocentrism Galileo went silent about that subject but continued on as normal until a friend of his became pope. Then in 1632 he published his sun centric astronomical views in a book entitled Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. He framed it as a debate and not as his own views so he managed to get it approved by the church. But what he did not know was that his anti-sun centered proponent named Simplico just happened to hold the same views as Pope Urban VIII who was insulted and wanted revenge. He at age 68 and ill was tried by the Inquisition, found guilty of heresy, and forced to recant. He spent the rest of his life under house arrest.

Yet some naively hoped that a more proper reasoning methodology would somehow reconcile nature with the Bible and/or Catholic theology. Protestant Francis Bacon (1561–1626) and Catholic Descartes (1596-1650) are the more famous of these proponents. 

This first phase of the Enlightenment culminated in the 1687 publication of Isaac Newton's theory of calculus and motion entitled, the Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy) and John Locke's theory of acquiring nature knowledge entitled Essay Concerning Human Understanding. 

Newton's book showed that earthly physics really did extend all the way through the heavens. Additionally, the heavens operated without continual divine intervention just like a clock. His three laws of motion are:

1. An object at rest remains at rest, and an object in motion remains in motion at constant speed and in a straight line unless acted on by an unbalanced force.
2. The acceleration of an object depends on the mass of the object and the amount of force applied.
3. Whenever one object exerts a force on another object, the second object exerts an equal and opposite on the first.

Newtons inspiration by the nature based Pagan past is revealed in his introduction:

Reference

Newton, Isaac as translated by Andrew Motte (1846) Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. Online at: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Mathematical_Principles_of_Natural_Philosophy_(1846)

Sobel, Dana (2000) Galileo's Daughter, Penguin Books, New York

(July 6, 2022) Christian Europe was dualist. Truth was either true or false, people were either saved or unsaved.  The physical world was either evil and corruptible while the divine was good and  perfect. This dualism originated with the Zoroastrian religion of the Persian Achaemenid Empire (550-330 BCE) which made its way into Judaism during the Babylonian exile and then into Christianity. The ancient past was not dualist.

John Locke was the first person to attack dualism although he was not aware he was doing that. He was simply trying to understand the how humans could come to know things. The result was the first description of what moderns would call "Decision Theory." He took the new ideas of mathematical probability developed within the context gambling and commercial insurance and applied them to knowledge. Christiaan Huygens published his book on the subject in 1657 entitled On reasoning in games of chance.

For Locke, all knowledge was uncertain. Only if the its probability was high enough could it be considered true. Certainty increases with:

1. The conformity of anything with our own knowledge, observation, and experience.
2. The testimony of others, vouching their observation and experience. In the testimony of others is to be considered : 1. The number. 2. The integrity. 3. The skill of the witnesses. 4. The design of the author, where it is a testimony out of a book cited. 5. The consistency of the parts, and circumstances of the relation. 6. Contrary testimonies. (book IV, Chapter XV: Of Probability)

This weighing of evidence takes time therefore:

But in a contradictory nod the Biblical authority to prevent his book from being suppresses (a fear expressed in the books introduction) he says this:

Locke suddenly assumes the human receiver of knowledge is perfect, a perfection not seen anywhere else in his book.

The net result of his book was the falsification of the idea that knowledge was binary being either true or false. Knowledge could be gathered from nature over time with ever increasing certainty. It did not have to be suddenly revealed. He was certainly proved correct as evidenced by the existence of modern technology.

References

Locke, John (1689) Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Online at: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/An_Essay_Concerning_Human_Understanding

Locke, John (1690) Essay Concerning Human Understanding (a second edition original) Online at: https://www.google.com/books/edition/An_Essay_Concerning_Human_Understanding/hGeKsjjtu6EC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Essay+Concerning+Human+Understanding&printsec=frontcover

(July 6, 2022) The first phase of the Enlightenment challenged human created religious laws and institutions hiding behind a claimed divine sanction. The next phase will challenge was the divine right of kings to rule.

The Dawn of Freedom began in Britain in 1688  because that was the year of the "Glorious Revolution" in which constitutional limits were placed on monarchical power and religious toleration was made state policy. This phase had its roots in the philosophy of government from the classical era. This is why all the original government buildings in the United States look classical. 

The idea of liberty based upon natural rights only emerged during the Enlightenment. Freedom never emerged in nations having authorities not based upon nature.  

In this phase, the Enlightenment thinkers tried to separate the role of the state from the role of religion. Europe had seen too many religious wars and wars against heretics in its history. They concluded that the state would be responsible for material things while religion would be responsible for emotional/spiritual things. This first stated by John Locke  (1632-1704) who was also important in closing out the previous phase of Enlightenment. He wrote the following between 1689 and 1693:

Thomas Jefferson in the U.S Declaration of Independence shortened and generalized Locke's phase to "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."

The concept of happiness as used by Jefferson thus includes the right to health and the right to acquire and hold possessions. During the civil war Abraham Lincoln and the nation elevated in blood the Declaration of Independence above that of the constitution to justify the elimination of the property right of slavery. The Declaration as a statement of purpose trumped any legal document meant to implement that purpose. Freedom is Pagan.

References

Gay, Peter (1966)  The Enlightenment - The Rise of Modern Paganism 

Kramic, Isaac [editor] (1995)  The Portable Enlightenment Reader.  Penguin books