At the time the Catholic Church was the only Christian Church... and considering everything was a manuscript, we’re hundreds of years before the printing press after all... it shouldn’t be a surprise that research and literature was protected in order to be preserved.
Imagine... if you’re only copy of the bible was one you personally had to hand copy. How would you treat such a document?
You are forgetting Byzantium and the great church of the east. Their culture and religion civilized and Christianized much of Eastern Europe.