Christianity In The Middle Ages

Imagine a farmhand going to sleep around 500 A.D. and waking up in 1450 A.D. while having the world seem no more advanced than it was when he went to sleep. The Middle Ages were a time of nearly no scientific discovery due to the strong grip of the Catholic Church throughout the period. The ideals of humanism and the spirit for scientific discovery were beginning to rise during the Medieval Era. It was the humanist world view, with its spirit of inquiry, in addition to the diminishing grip of the church beliefs, that led to the scientific revolution; setting the stage for the large amounts of scientific observation and discovery for centuries to come.
The Medieval Era was characterized by the inclusion of church in the state. Though religion
and government were officially separate, they were cohorts of each other, one influencing the other. This was very evident in the lack of scientific discovery and reasoning throughout the Middle Ages. The so called science of the era was derived from the teachings of The Bible rather than based on scientific evidence or reason. Hence leaving a void in society for nearly 1000 years, and was once again filled with the Renaissance in the 15th century and the Scientific Revolution that began in the 16th century.
Humanists would study previous knowledge that did not come from religion and church in order to gain their basis of understanding, while using rational thought to validate previous claims and formulate new ones. For instance, “[Scientific] revolution was accomplished through utilization of the medieval roots of science, which were in turn derived from the scientific discoveries of the ancient Romans and Greeks” (Kreis, Medieval Synthesis and the Secularization of Human Knowledge). The foundation of human's understanding of the world used the progressive knowledge of the ancient civilizations as a foundation, rather than the previous religiously engineered discoveries of a church-run society. To combat the influence of the church on discovery, Francis Bacon believed that any theory that was once proven, must be proven again to insure validity (Varvis 68). Anything that was once theorized during the Medieval Era had to be reproved, without the bias of the church as an influence. Humanists believed that all problems, in the case scientific questions, should be solved based on rational thought rather than ancient preconceptions or church-touted facts.
Humanist values turned scientists toward a body of knowledge centered around humans and the natural world, rather than abstract theories.
For example, Leonardo da Vinci was one of the first intellectuals to truly depict a human with anatomic accuracy and to use the human form as art, in his work: The Vitruvian Man (Dartmouth College, Leonardo). While da Vinci may have not been a direct part of the Scientific Revolution, he still embodied the ideals of humanism, while making many scientific discoveries that wouldn't have occurred previously. He was considered a true Renaissance man; he broke away from trying to explain the supernatural world humans believed in, but rather tried to explain the human itself and the nature around it. Furthermore, scientists, theologians, and philosophers all began to focus on nature with the advent of the Scientific Revolution, with many historians believing that this focus on nature had a direct correlation to the decline of the Christian church and its beliefs (Kreis, The Scientific Revolution). Scientists began to transition to logical explanations of world, while defenestrating the theological reasoning of nature. Case in point, twelve members of The Invisible College worked together to create the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, in 1660, whose purpose was to compile all natural information possible and communicate it to the public (Kreis, Medieval Synthesis and the Secularization of Human Knowledge). This event exemplifies two main characteristics of humanism, namely the secularization of science and the emphasis of individual discovery, together with collaboration to complete a
problem.
Along with the rise of Humanism, the Scientific Revolution also flourished due to the humanist values of questioning and the importance of humans. Scientists during the Scientific Revolution replaced the medieval world view in favor of a logical, natural explanation of the world. They instead tried to use the scientific means to validate the claims of medieval thinkers and begin to construct a new era based on the discoveries of science, not religion.