Quote Originally Posted by benzss View Post
They didn't have the same influence as Christianity, or they didn't have the same influence with regard to free thought as Christianity?
I should have prefaced that with "In the time of their blossomings during the Classical period." Maybe that would make it clearer? Well, Stoicism was very widely embraced by the Romans, but even still...

Of course it wouldn't have. It wouldn't have even been relevant had Christianity not been dominant.
So are you saying that Humanism is a recovery from Christianity of the liberally moral and humanist (in a modern sense of the word) Classical socities?

Christianity's uniting power was limited. England and France have been at war for years, and Charlemange's union of Gaul and Germania didn't last very long thanks to the Holy Roman Empire. The various Italian city-states were also Catholic. It's easy to overstate Christianity's unifying influence, but between the varying Christian states it did very little.
Oh no, of course you're correct. But let's use the city states of Greece as an example. There was little love between Athens and Sparta, who engaged in war with each other frequently enough. They identified even less with each other than did the entities that would later become the European nations during the Middle Ages. However, they still found enough in common with each other to be able to unite under the Hellenic League and repel the Persians.

Likewise, the warring states of Europe were able to unite under the banner of "(Western) Christendom" to be able to defend themselves against the Muslim invaders and to later engage in those unfortunate Crusades. Spain fell early to the Muslims only because it was outside of Charlemagne's empire, which he did defend succesfully and which was able to find some justification for its unity through Christianity.

In response to your EDIT, let me add that I'm not saying that Christianity was "better" or morally "more advanced" than Islam at the time. My point was merely that it lended some sense of unity to otherwise warring states that allowed them to repell a common invader.