"A friend is someone who will help you move. A real friend is someone who will help you move a body." - Unknown

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"Historians no longer think of early medieval Europe outside of Spain as the time and place of the Dark Ages but rather as the seedtime of European greatness. Where historians once saw a sharp break between Rome and its Germanic conquerors, they now find continuities in the "Romano-German" kingdoms; where once they perceived poverty and misery, they now see prosperous trading networks and free farm laborers; where once they saw cultural decline, they now find creativity - in Celtic manuscripts, for example, or the poetry of Beowulf, or the monasticism of the Benedictines. In short, many scholars no longer ask whether the Dark Ages could have been avoided because they don't believe they should have been avoided."