What of St. Thomas Aquinas? Boethius? Ascham, mentioned below? Roger Bacon and his gunpowder? St. Teresa of Avila? Dante? Hildegarde von Bingen? The unknown author of Gawain, and The Pearl? Andrea Marini? For too long the Middle Ages have been viewed as ignorance mingled with fanaticism, filth, and malice. Any honest reader of the works from that vast period (and one so heterogenous! "Medieval" means nothing but the time between the fall of the Roman Empire and the Renaissance, a nearly useless division) will come to the conclusion that men of the time were as clear-minded as modern ones, and often more so.
Moreover, to identify Medieval Philosophy with Leftist leaning is absurd, as Natalie Solent mentioned some time ago. "Economic illiteracy", quotha!
As for absurd and obsessive dogmatism, St. Thomas was, in his mild, scholarly way, at war. He was warring against the encroachment of Islam, and the Islamic use of Aristotelian philosophy. He was, indeed, not reconciling Christianity to Aristotle, but bringing Aristotle, as far as was possible, into the Christian fold. He had to confront subtle and brilliant minds, and to do so needed subtlety, brilliance, and not a few pages.
Magical thinking? Maybe, but to the Medieval mind the world was full of marvels. I wonder if their overestimation of its wonderfulness is not less culpable than our current underestimation. And obscurantism is a product of mankind, no less than shit. It will be with us as long as we are men, and is not restricted to one period of history. We just have better-defined channels for it nowadays.
