Editing Middle Ages (section)

== Modern perceptions ==
{{See also|Dark Ages (historiography)|Medieval studies|Middle Ages in popular culture}}

[[File:Gossuin de Metz - L'image du monde - BNF Fr. 574 fo42.jpg|thumb|upright=0.8|Medieval illustration of the [[spherical Earth]] in a 14th-century copy of ''[[Gautier de Metz|L'Image du monde]]'']]

The medieval period is frequently caricatured as a "time of ignorance and superstition" that placed "the word of religious authorities over personal experience and rational activity."<ref>Lindberg "Medieval Church Encounters" ''When Science & Christianity Meet'' p. 8</ref> This is a legacy from both the [[Renaissance]] and [[Age of Enlightenment|Enlightenment]] when scholars favourably contrasted their intellectual cultures with those of the medieval period. Renaissance scholars saw the Middle Ages as a period of decline from the high culture and civilisation of the Classical world. Enlightenment scholars saw reason as superior to faith and thus viewed the Middle Ages as a time of ignorance and superstition.<ref name=Davies291>Davies ''Europe'' pp. 291–293</ref>

Others argue that reason was held in high regard during the Middle Ages. Science historian [[Edward Grant]] writes, "If revolutionary rational thoughts were expressed [in the 18th century]<!--original quotation says: "expressed in the Age of Reason"-->, they were only made possible because of the long medieval tradition that established the use of reason as one of the most important of human activities".<ref name=Grant9>Grant ''God and Reason'' p. 9</ref> Also, contrary to common belief, [[David C. Lindberg|David Lindberg]] writes, "the late medieval scholar rarely experienced the coercive power of the Church and would have regarded himself as free (particularly in the natural sciences) to follow reason and observation wherever they led".<ref name=QPeters>Quoted in Peters "Science and Religion" ''Encyclopedia of Religion'' p. 8182</ref>

The caricature of the period is also reflected in some more specific notions. One misconception, first propagated in the 19th century<ref name=flat>Russell ''Inventing the Flat Earth'' pp. 49–58</ref> and still very common, is that all people in the Middle Ages believed that the [[Myth of the flat Earth|Earth was flat]].<ref name=flat /> This is untrue, as lecturers in medieval universities commonly argued that evidence showed the Earth was a sphere.<ref>Grant ''Planets, Stars, & Orbs'' pp. 626–630</ref> Lindberg and [[Ronald Numbers]], another scholar of the period, state that there "was scarcely a Christian scholar of the Middle Ages who did not acknowledge [Earth's] sphericity and even know its approximate circumference".<ref>Lindberg and Numbers "Beyond War and Peace" ''Church History'' p. 342</ref> Other misconceptions such as "the Church prohibited autopsies and dissections during the Middle Ages", "the rise of Christianity killed off ancient science", or "the medieval Christian Church suppressed the growth of natural philosophy", are all cited by Numbers as examples of widely popular myths that still pass as historical truth, although they are not supported by historical research.<ref name=Numberslect>Numbers "[https://web.archive.org/web/20171011022345/https://www.faraday.st-edmunds.cam.ac.uk/CIS/Numbers/Numbers_Lecture.pdf Myths and Truths in Science and Religion: A historical perspective]" ''Lecture archive'' Archived 11 October 2017</ref>