Aristotle's Children: How Christians, Muslims, and Jews Rediscovered Ancient Wisdom and Illuminated the Middle Ages - Hardcover

Rubenstein, Richard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0151007209 ISBN 13: 9780151007202

Publisher: Harcourt Brace International, 2003

Synopsis

Europe was in the long slumber of the Dark Ages, the Roman Empire was in tatters, and the Greek language was all but forgotten, until a group of Arab, Jewish, and Christian scholars rediscovered and translated the works of Aristotle. His ideas spread across Europe like wildfire, offering the scientific point of view that the natural world, including the soul of man, was a proper subject of study. The Catholic Church convulsed, and riots took place at the universities of Paris and Oxford. Richard Rubenstein recounts with energy and vigor this magnificent story of the intellectual ferment that planted the seeds of the scientific age in Europe and reflects our own struggles with faith and reason.

About this title

Review:

PRAISE FOR WHEN JESUS BECAME GOD"A splendidly dramatic story . . . Rubenstein has turned one of the great fights of history into an engrossing story." - - Jack Miles, author of God: A Biography "A flesh-and-blood encounter of real people that reads like anadventure story."-The Christian Science Monitor

From the Back Cover:

"A superb storyteller who breathes new life into such fascinating figures as Peter Abelard, Albertus Magnus, St. Thomas Aquinas, Roger Bacon, William of Ockham and Aristotle himself." --Los Angeles Times
The intellectual explosion that transformed Europe in the Middle Ages and coursed through the Western world, triggered student riots and heresy trials, and set the stage for today's rift between reason and religion. The ideas came from Aristotle. His work, like the rest of Greek culture, had been lost in the centuries after the fall of Rome, when the Greek language was forgotten. But in the Muslim world, the wisdom of the Greeks was never lost and contributed to the flowering of Islamic culture.
When scholars in the twelfth century collaborated on translating the ancient classics, they resurrected ideas that turned Western thinking away from the supernatural world and toward the world of nature. With their optimistic view of human nature, these ideas sparked fierce controversies in the universities and caused major changes in the Catholic Church. Rubenstein shows how the Church adopted these new ideas and struggled to reconcile science and religion and how Western thinking was set on the path it has followed ever since.
This is a feast for readers who are fascinated by medieval history, and a treat for all who want to understand the ideas that are fundamental to modern thought.
Richard E. Rubenstein, a professor of conflict resolution and public affairs at George Mason University, is the author of When Jesus Became God, a Publishers Weekly Best Religion Book. A graduate of Harvard College, Oxford University (Rhodes Scholar), and Harvard Law School, he lives in Fairfax, Virginia.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harcourt Brace International
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0151007209
• ISBN 13: 9780151007202
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352