So Sad

I've been involved in another forum in a discussion about the early medieval period. I reacted, perhaps too strongly, to characterizations of the period as "having no keen interest in classical antiquity" and "the Merovigian kingdom in particular was a dark age for learning" and to citations of books such as Charles Freeman "Closing of the Western Mind" which accuses Constantine and the church of giving up "reason" that was resuscitated until Aquinas, devoting a whole 4 pages to 6 centuries of thinkers. I had thought that after Peter Brown and the reassessment of Late Antiquity of the last 35 years or so, that we'd gotten past this, but apparently not when well educated, intelligent people can speak of the "dearth of science" in the period seriously or that there was no philosophy etc.

We Early Medievalists have a long way to go.