PETER Mullen’s eulogy on the Dark Ages (Echo, Sept 29) appears based on that period’s invention of various horse accessories such as stirrups and the realisation that the world was round – partly attributed by Mr Mullen to Thomas Aquinas, who lived mid-13th Century – at least 200 years after the Dark Ages finished.

Apart from this repeated mixing of the late Middle Ages with the generally accepted earlier Dark Age period, Mr Mullen is also deeply confused about the activities of the church in the broad medieval period. He reports Copernicus as having been taught the heliocentric theory by medieval theologian d’Oresme and thus overturning “the silly flat earth”

theories. In the first place, the heliocentric theory puts the sun at the centre of the solar system – the shape of the Earth is largely irrelevant.

Secondly, the Roman church does not come out of this story very well, since it banned the works of Copernicus and threatened Galileo with torture and death for repeating the notion that the Earth orbited the sun.

Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake in Rome in 1600 for teaching the same thing.

The great champion of truth – the Roman church – did not admit error in its treatment of Copernicus until 1992! Any connection between the church and education is purely coincidental.

Robert Meggs, Hartlepool