Eric Christiansen in this review essay in
The New York Review of Books begins by noting,
"Prejudice against the medieval runs deep."
The very word is
"applied to all severe punishment, out-of-date technology (this 'medieval' typewriter), and all illiberal attitudes. ... The stand-bys of eighteenth-century derision have stood the test of time."
This was and is
"Unfair because it has been found again and again that our skills, laws, liberties, nations, and languages are the result of hard work in the millennium reputed dark..."
And which
"left castles, cathedrals, Italian and Flemish and Byzantine art, printing, plainsong, and parliaments, not to mention universities."
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