Here is the most important riddle of all time for you to figure out.
Following the crusades the church spread knowledge of Greek and Roman classics throughout all the countries of Europe. Its intention was to secure its legitimacy, using the classics to prove it had truth. Its contender for power and control was the Holy Roman Empire, which did not have experience with Greek and Roman law and culture. As we should know this conflict for power leads to the Protestant Reformation, and years of war between Protestants and Catholics, and finally a return of democracy. The religious conflict still is not resolved, but we are distracted from it by a new contender for power and control, Islam. However, as Christians are divided, so are Muslims divided, and the divisions have the same Greek and Roman religious root.
To cut free from the Holy Roman Empire, the folks on the Roman side used rediscovered Roman Law to claim legitimate separation from the German controlled Holy Roman Empire. The city of Bologna was essential to this development, because thanks to Fredrick I it got a charter for the first university since the fall of Rome.
http://wiki.ask.com/List_of_oldest_universities_in_continuous_operation?qsrc=3044
"The knowledge of Roman Law had probably never been allowed to die out entirely, though it was long thought that the growth of this study dated from an alleged discovery of a copy of the Pandects of Justinian made in 1135 at the sack of Amalfi. However that may be, there grew up in several of these cities schools for the study of law. That at Bologna was made famous by the greatest of these early teachers,Irnerius (1067-1138), in the same manner that Abelard raised Paris to distinction, and large numbers of students collected here....
At Bologna the first charter was given by Emperor Frederick I, in 1158.... By the period of the classical Renaissance there existed some seventy-five or eighty of these institutions scattered over all the countries of Europe." |
The original focus of this university begins with the Pandects of Justinian and the study of law. To appreciate this, we must know when Rome fell, the remaining power was the church, and the power was no longer located in Rome, because the power had shifted to the Germans. This is not just a shift in power, but a radical change in consciousness! Imagine having no awareness of governing political bodies that make laws. There is only nature and it is violent and threatening, and then there is God and all that is good. Imagine not questioning that all authority rests in the church, because you know absolutely nothing about politics and people making laws, and the church also totally lacks consciousness of anything expect its own dogma. The church had rejected the Greek and Roman classics, as the work of pagans, and could not possibly rule as Greeks and Romans ruled. Seriously, study the bible and forget everything else you know of government. It is a book of kings and slaves. What kind of law does this book give us for government and today's understanding of reality and rule by law? Now reintroduce Roman law and Greek reasoning and logic without religion. What happens to the power of the Pope in Rome when he can prove Rome has a legitimate claim of separation from Germany? What happens to our understanding of truth and law when a mass of people become literate in Greek and Roman classics? Again, what happens to the power of the church? What happens to our consciousness? What happens to our understanding of law and social/political organization?