recently, it seems like the 'monks' have passed down a lot, notably the recipes for things noticed when googling a Portuguese Pastel de (forgot) and German Lebkuchen cookies. is this just food related? why do monks control the narrative? do they really mean monks ie. religious scholars like we have today?
For a time, monasteries were one of the few centres of learning left in Western Europe. u/KiwiHellenist has written about this concerning ancient literature here and here, whilst u/sunagainstgold has focused on foreign-language literature in this answer. When it comes to food production, u/McCretin wrote a summary quite recently