6 myths about the Middle Ages that everyone believes - Stephanie Honchell Smith

1,506,800 views ・ 2023-03-07

TED-Ed


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Medieval Europe.
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Where unbathed, sword-wielding knights ate rotten meat,
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thought the Earth was flat, defended chastity-belt wearing maidens,
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and tortured their foes with grisly gadgets.
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Except... this is more fiction than fact.
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So, where do all the myths about the Middle Ages come from?
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And what were they actually like?
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The “Middle Ages” refers to a 1,000-year timespan,
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stretching from the fall of Rome in the 5th century
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to the Italian renaissance in the 15th.
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Though it’s been applied to other parts of the world,
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the term traditionally refers specifically to Europe.
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One misconception is that medieval people were all ignorant and uneducated.
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For example, a 19th century biography of Christopher Columbus
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incorrectly purported that medieval Europeans thought the Earth was flat.
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Sure, many medieval scholars describe the Earth as the center of the universe—
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but there wasn't much debate as to its shape.
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A popular 13th century text was literally called “On the Sphere of the World.”
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And literacy rates gradually increased during the Middle Ages
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alongside the establishment of monasteries, convents and universities.
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Ancient knowledge was also not “lost”;
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Greek and Roman texts continued to be studied.
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The idea that medieval people ate rotten meat and used spices to cover the taste
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was popularized in the 1930s by a British book.
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It misinterpreted one medieval recipe
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and used the existence of laws barring the sale of putrid meat
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as evidence it was regularly consumed.
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In fact, medieval Europeans avoided rancid foods
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and had methods for safely preserving meats,
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like curing them with salt.
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Spices were popular.
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But they were oftentimes pricier than meat itself.
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So if someone could afford them, they could also buy unspoiled food.
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Meanwhile, the 19th century French historian Jules Michelet
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referred to the Middle Ages as “a thousand years without a bath.”
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But even small towns boasted well-used public bathhouses.
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People lathered up with soaps made of things
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like animal fat, ash, and scented herbs.
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And they used mouthwash, teeth-scrubbing cloths with pastes and powders,
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and spices and herbs for fresh-smelling breath.
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So, how about medieval torture devices?
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In the 1890s, a collection of allegedly “terrible relics of a semi-barbarous age”
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went on tour.
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Among them: the Iron Maiden, which fascinated viewers with its spiked doors—
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but it was fabricated, possibly just decades before.
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And there’s no indication Iron Maidens actually existed in the Middle Ages.
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The “Pear of Anguish,” meanwhile, did exist—
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but probably later on and it couldn’t have been used for torture.
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It may have just been a shoe-stretcher.
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Indeed, many ostensibly medieval torture devices are far more recent inventions.
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Medieval legal proceedings were overall less gruesome than these gadgets suggest.
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They included fines, imprisonment, public humiliation,
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and certain forms of corporal punishment.
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Torture and executions did happen,
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but especially violent punishments, like drawing and quartering,
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were generally reserved for crimes like high treason.
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Surely chastity belts were real, though, right?
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Probably not.
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They were first mentioned by a 15th century German engineer, likely in jest,
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alongside fart jokes and a device for invisibility.
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From there, they became popular subjects of satire
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that were later mistaken for medieval reality.
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Ideas about the Middle Ages have varied
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depending on the interest of those in later times.
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The term— along with the pejorative “Dark Ages”—
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was popularized during the 15th and 16th centuries
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by scholars biased toward the Classical and Modern periods
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that came before and after.
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And, as Enlightenment thinkers celebrated their dedication to reason,
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they depicted medieval people as superstitious and irrational.
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In the 19th century, some Romantic European nationalist thinkers— well—
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romanticized the Middle Ages.
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They described isolated, white, Christian societies,
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emphasizing narratives of chivalry and wonder.
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But knights played minimal roles in medieval warfare.
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And the Middle Ages saw large-scale interactions.
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Ideas flowed into Europe along Byzantine, Muslim, and Mongol trade routes.
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And merchants, intellectuals, and diplomats of diverse origins
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visited medieval European cities.
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The biggest myth may be that the millennium of the Middle Ages
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amounts to one distinct, cohesive period of European history at all.
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Originally defined less by what they were than what they weren’t,
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the Middle Ages became a ground for dueling ideas—
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fueling more fantasy than fact.
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