Progress...

[Zenith]

Actually Christianity DID slow down progress in Europe. I find it funny that you post about the European feudalism, but fail to mention that the Arabs/muslims were just as feudal during that time...yet you claim they had a golden age.

Well, they did..and thats because the prevailing religious authorities found nothing wrong with scientific though in the Arab world. The Europeans Christian leaders, however, looked upon science as a threat of a return to the pagan ways of the old Roman empire, and therefore tried to ban it as much as possible.



do a bit more research the next time you post on the middle ages.

She's not the only one who's heard about an islamic Golden Age.
Read this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Age_of_Islam

As about Europe, they had military developments. And little things like windmill, wheelbarrow, etc. - which were most surely invented by peasants, not lords or 'scholars'.
Yeah, it seems that the banks have also invented in western europe in the middle-ages (And here's what I've found now).

The Church obviously didn't want the people to study the pagan philosophies, or anything of the greek pagans. Regarding the pagan philosophies and the pagan thought, the reason they were forbidden is quite clear: they would have harmed a lot the Church's authority and political interest (it would have been a source of heresy and even apostasy). In rest, I believe there was a quite total disinterest for science dwelling in Europe, rather than an oppression of it. The European lords seemed to have been interested more in taking others' lands and riches, rather than staying at peace and caring for the people and trying to develop the country. And the Catholic Church was more interested in taking people's money. Anyway, do you know a great interest for progress in India, from the Caspian sea eastwards, the region of Mongolia and other pagan countries in the middle ages? (except the Japanese and perhaps the Chinese, they might have had some developments, but I'm not very sure now).

As about the Christian Roman Empire (and the continuance in the Byzantine Empire) they did have interest in culture and art (and they also had the Justinian Code - a code of laws, for whom 3 older codes were used).
Also,

The outstanding figure in the cultural movement of the tenth century was
Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus, who did much for the intellectual progress
of Byzantium, not only by protecting education, but also by contributing many original
writings. Constantine left all government affairs to Romanus Lecapenus, and devoted
the greater part of his time to the field which interested him. He succeeded in
becoming the heart of an intense literary and scholarly movement to which he
contributed greatly by active participation. He wrote much, induced others to write,
and attempted to raise the education of his people to a higher level. His name is closely
connected with the erection of many magnificent buildings; he was passionately
interested in art and music, and spent large sums of money on the compilation of
anthologies from ancient writers.

And another thing I've just found:

The writings of Classical antiquity never ceased to be cultivated in Byzantium. Therefore, Byzantine science was in every period closely connected with ancient philosophy, and metaphysics.[123] Although at various times the Byzantines made magnificent achievements in the application of the sciences (notably in the construction of the Hagia Sophia), after the 6th century Byzantine scholars made few novel contributions to science in terms of developing new theories or extending the ideas of classical authors.[124] Scholarship particularly lagged during the dark years of plague and the Arab conquests, but then during the so-called Byzantine Renaissance at the end of the first millennium Byzantine scholars re-asserted themselves becoming experts in the scientific developments of the Arabs and Persians, particularly in astronomy and mathematics.[125]

In the final century of the Empire, Byzantine grammarians were those principally responsible for carrying, in person and in writing, ancient Greek grammatical and literary studies to early Renaissance Italy.[126] During this period, astronomy and other mathematical sciences were taught in Trebizond; medicine attracted the interest of almost all scholars.[127]

In the field of law, Justinian I's reforms had a clear effect on the evolution of jurisprudence, and Leo III's Ecloga influenced the formation of legal institutions in the Slavic world.

And other interesting things:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_science
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_literature

The Byzantine/Roman Empire had kept the values for culture of the old Roman Empire, but the western Europe had before centuries fallen to barbarians - whom did not not value culture and stuff. If the Roman Empire had never been devastated by barbarians (and later, by muslims) then perhaps all Europe would have progressed much faster.