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To: ahadams2; Fractal Trader; Zero Sum; anselmcantuar; Agrarian; coffeecup; Paridel; keilimon; ...
Traditional Anglican ping, continued in memory of its founder Arlin Adams.

FReepmail sionnsar if you want on or off this moderately high-volume ping list (typically 3-9 pings/day).
This list is pinged by sionnsar, Huber and newheart.

Resource for Traditional Anglicans: http://trad-anglican.faithweb.com

Humor: The Anglican Blue (by Huber)

Speak the truth in love. Eph 4:15

2 posted on 10/11/2005 6:00:02 PM PDT by sionnsar (†trad-anglican.faithweb.com† || (To Libs:) You are failing to celebrate MY diversity! || Iran Azadi)
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To: sionnsar
There was no time or place in history when Christianity and Christian values more influenced society than the European Middle Ages. There was a lot wrong with them, but in one area at least they can serve as an example to the world.

The agriculture, technology and industry of the Middle Ages was sustainable. They had the three-field system and the principle of crop rotation - later of planting complementary crops together. There are farms in Europe that have been in continuous use for 1500 years, without any depletion or degradation. That puts those guys ahead of most other cultures, from Babylonia to Yucatan.

The technology was based entirely on sustainable sources of energy, from the water mill to the windmill, which ran everything from the miller's grindstone to the blackmith's forge. Even their wood-burning was accompanied by systematic afforestation to replace the trees, most famously of course in England's "New Forest".

The lead in much of this endeavor, moreover, was taken by the great monastic orders, whose estates were largely self sufficient, and which fostered controlled innovation. Fish farming, still a new idea in the US last century, was introduced by the monasteries. As was smoking to preserve meats, salt curing, and the main advances in natural medicine.

On the larger scale, the pattern of settlement, as population increased, was basd on self-sufficient and sustainable communities - farming villages, market towns, cities as cultural centres not termite hives. And post roads with stables, inns, and rest houses, built on an elaborate scale in both France and the Holy Empire.

Say what you will against the Christian High Middle Ages, but their stewardship of the Earth and its creatures was exemplary. As any visitor to Europe can still see today. Deo gratias.

3 posted on 10/11/2005 9:05:17 PM PDT by John Locke
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