| You are quite wrong. The bulk of Greek learning was preserved by the Byzantine Christians. From them, the Arabs, Persians, and Jews of the Middle East, North Africa, and the Iberian peninsula got hold of manuscripts, and did, indeed, comment on various authors, as well as making contributions in mathematics and natural history. It is true that some of this learning was translated into Latin, and supplemented the texts that had been preserved by the monasteries, but it was not all Muslim, nor even Jewish (Maimondides being a prominent Aristotelian), but also some came directly from the Byzantines. Anyway, those earlier manuscripts stimulated the High Middle Ages, revolving around the growth of scholasticism, especially the work of Thomas Aquinas. That helped to lay a foundation for the Renaissance, but it was really the fall of Constantinople to the Turks, and the influx of Byzantine Greek scholars into the Italian Peninsula, which kicked off the Renaissance......... |
