The popular picture of the Dark Ages is wrong. People knew the earth wasnt flat; they werent terrified that the world would end at the end of the millennium. And the medieval Catholic Church, widely considered a source of intolerance and inquisitorial fervor, was not anti-science during the Dark Ages in fact, the pope in the year 1000 was the leading mathematician and astronomer of his day. Called The Scientist Pope, Gerbert of Aurillac rose from peasant beginnings and ascended to the pinnacle of the Christian world to become Pope Sylvester II. In The Abacus and the Cross, acclaimed science writer Nancy Marie Brown nimbly crosses disciplines to follow Gerbert through scientific exploration and political scheming, showing how science was central to the lives of monks, kings, and even popes a thousand years ago.
