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The Medieval Catholic Church was a "hot bed of intellectual discovery." Starting with the Reconquest of Spain and the Crusades, Europeans gained access to a wealth of Greek and Arabic texts that head been lost to the Latin speaking half of what was once the Roman Empire since the time of the Barbarian Invasions. Guys like Aquinas were fascinated by new knowledge and new ways of thinking and used these models to build brand new philosophies and structures of thought. This expansion continued pretty steadily with barely a dip for the Black Death. I can provide a list if you like.

Material/technological advancement starts appearing from the 900's as well. Things like crop rotation, the horse collar, a whole host of architectural/engineering stuff, etc..

Actually, the Catholics, both Roman and Celtic tried to preserve everything the could get their hands on after the Fall of the Empire. Lots of the texts that survived the initial series of invasions were destroyed by the Vikings, who did a pretty thorough job of nipping the intellectual flowering of the 7th and 8th centuries in the bud. I've seen the figures for monasteries/convents/joint foundations that they burned. More were destroyed than survived in England. All those books. There are plenty of surviving references to texts that were destroyed during Viking raids.

Much of the what the Medieval church gets blamed for actually happened during the Counter Reformation or later. In part you can blame Gibbon, who had a real ax to grind. The books that got burned in the Middle Ages (documented cases, as opposed to accusations made centuries later) were Christian "heretical" texts, rather than works by the "pagan fathers." They were much more likely to burn Mirror for a Simple Soul, because the woman who wrote it advocated abolishment of the clergy and perfection in life through Union with God, then they were to worry about something Plato had to say about Comedy.

One more point: The division between Medieval and Renaissance is entirely arbitrary and not particularly sensible. Middle Ages are aprox: 900-1500. Renaissance runs 1300-1600ish. Note the overlap. That's right, The Renaissance started smack dab in the Middle Ages, and is mostly simultaneous with things like the Black Death and the Hundred Years War.

Basically, Enlightenment scholars invented the term, "Renaissance", and labeled all the stuff they liked about the Middle Ages "Renaissance," so they could go on making fun of the ignorant barbarians living in the "Dark Ages."

The loss of individual portraiture in art actually occurred during the Roman Empire at the time when they were experimenting with four Emperors. This was a propaganda thing designed to show 1. The emperors were united and spoke with one voice. 2. The Emperor was an everyman. 3. The individual is less important than the State. Soon all government funded art adopted this style and the private sector followed suit, since it became the fashion. The Christians latched onto this style as well, since it was not only fashionable, but suited their ideology.