Middle Ages, Enlightnement, dungeons and darkness

We associate to the Middle Ages images of dungeons, tortures, darkness. But this is an error of perspective. Our idea of Middle Ages arose in the Age of Enlightenment, but the Illuminists confused Middle Ages and  “Ancien Règime”, i.e. the 16^th century of Absolute Monarchies. Absolute Monarchies were actually an age of prevarication and darkness It is not casual that the main Italian illuminist, Alessandro Manzoni, set his main novel in the XVI century, and paints this century as an era of harassment, oprevarication and opportunism. An even more effective representation of  the century is the “Devils of Lodoun” of Aldous Huxley, which describes weel the regime of delation and terror of the kingdom of Louis XIV. Dungeons, which we associate so strongly to Middle Ages, are a characteristic of the absolute monarchies, they were rare in the Middle Ages. As a matter of fact, in the Middle Ages, life was poor but free and human since, after the collapse of the Roman Empire, there was not state. The horror show begun in 1492, when Isabela founded the Spanish Monarchy, followed shortly after by Elizabeth the First and only much later by Louis XIV. 

Brave New World

Nel romanzo Brave New World (il Mondo Nuovo) Aldous Huxley descrive un mondo in cui sono stati cancellati tutti i libri e le persone fin da appena nate vengono sottoposte a un continuo lavaggio del cervello. Huxley aveva in mente il consumismo, ma qualcosa del genere è stato realizzato dalla Chiesa a partire dall Controriforma, quando, spaventata dalla scissione protestante, ha messo all'indice praticamente tutti i libri, la bibbia stessa era praticamente vietata (non ci sono state traduzion in italiano fino al XIX secolo e la lettura autonoma era vista come quasi eretica) e ha iniziato un'opera capillare di lavaggio delle coscienze che in Italia probabilmente dà ancora i suoi frutti.