5 Clichés About The Middle Ages That We Should Get Out Of Our Heads
The Middle Ages is a time of contrasts. Anyone who enters it will come face to face with a real enigma. Were they really that religious? Did they spend their days praying, or did they enjoy the pleasures of life? Did they live in fear of sin? Did they consider women to be inferior beings? Why did the Church tolerate brothels (quite a bit) and at the same time proclaim a chaste life as the most direct path to God?
All of these are questions from which a series of topics about the Middle Ages usually arise ideas that have spread over the years and that offer us a distorted vision of that important period.
Topics about the Middle Ages: memory of a distortion
It is likely that there is no other historical period more mysterious than the Middle Ages, nor more full of questions and contradictions. In part, we owe this to the two great conspiracies in history that were responsible for designing our current vision of the era
One, the black legend, was the work of the Enlightenment, very interested in presenting the Middle Ages as a universe of darkness, cruelty and ignorance. Romanticism took charge of its antithesis, the golden legend, which offers us a Middle Ages full of brave knights and beautiful ladies.
Both are too Manichean, too simple and childish, to constitute medieval reality on their own. And the Middle Ages are probably somewhere in between.
Here you will find a brief list of clichés about the Middle Ages that still condition our way of conceiving that historical period, with explanations about why they do not fit reality.
1. They were always praying and not enjoying life
Who has not once believed that the faith of these men and women was so violent, so exaggerated, that they abandoned the pleasures of life to dedicate themselves to praying?
It is true that, at that time, existence without God made no sense. It was a theocentric world, in which human individuality did not exist and where the person only had importance in relation to the divine plan, that is, in relation to a universal collective. The Creator was everywhere and at all times: he could intercede in daily life, perform miracles, send signs to ensure success in a battle… Yes, indeed, medieval man was extremely religious.
But does this necessarily mean that he shunned the pleasures of life? Nothing is further from reality. In fact, the Middle Ages (especially its central centuries) It was one of the times where pleasure and love were cultivated with greater diligence and refinement
Paul Verlaine, the French symbolist poet, tells us about this time that it was sweet and delicate… He is right. It is the time of the troubadours who sing of the beauty of his lady; of the festivals, the banquets, the fairs and the Carnivals; of the knights who compose love poems and epics; It is the time of Chrétien de Troyes, one of the most prolific writers of those years, who has left us scenes as beautiful as the one he collects in his novel Perceval or the story of the Grail, where he compares the whiteness and the red cheeks of his lady with a field of snow stained by the blood of a little bird. Only the delicate lyricism of the Middle Ages can provide us with such extremely delightful passages.
And again, another topic born directly from the black legend promoted by the Enlightenment. No, medieval men and women were not prudes. They lived love with joy and hope and we would most likely be surprised to see that the Victorian era, much closer to ours in time, was much more self-conscious and moralistic about sex and love.
One example is enough: Régine Pernoud, in her wonderful book Heloise and Abelardtells us how William the Marshal, knight of the Plantagenet court, found, on a road, a monk who had escaped from the monastery with his beloved in his arms Far from reproaching him for such an attitude, she feels sorry for her unfortunate love and offers them money. But when the monk tells him that he has some coins that he plans to invest (that is, he is going to do usury), William flies into a rage, robs the lovers and abandons them to his fate.
In other words: what for the Victorian era (the gestation of capitalism) would have been a mere business, for William was a sin; and while what for the 19th century would have been amoral (the monk’s escape with his lover), for William it was nothing other than the triumph of Love.
If this eloquent example were not enough to illustrate what Love meant in medieval culture, we will also cite the story of the prudent Heloísa d’Argenteuil, who fell in love with her tutor, the philosopher Pedro Abelardo When he asks her to marry him because she is pregnant, Heloísa makes her opinion very clear when she tells him that she prefers to be his whore than his wife.
For the young woman, as for many medieval men and women, marriage is a mere contract, and therefore constitutes authentic prostitution. It is only in free love where the absolute purity of two hearts that give each other can be found; Perhaps, in this sense, the medievals are closer to us than we think.
3. They were brutal and ignorant
They only prayed and had blind faith, ergo they did not think. Here is one of the most widespread clichés about the Middle Ages, and yet it is one of the most absurd How can you think that human beings did not think for no less than a thousand years? The idea is absurd in that reasoning, curiosity, and the desire to know are inherent to the human condition. So yes, indeed, the medievals thought, a lot.
In fact, It was at this time that the most sincere and passionate attempt to reconcile reason and faith was made Yes, God has created humanity, they said to themselves; and he has created it with a brain, he has created it with thought, with rational capacity. Therefore, trying to reach God through logic is not only viable, but it is perfectly consistent with what God expects of us.
Thus, the philosophers of the Middle Ages embarked, already in the early Middle Ages, on a titanic undertaking: accessing the revealed word of the Bible through reason.
There were many attempts and many fruits, but such an objective was doomed to constantly run up against a multitude of contradictions. Because, can we prove the existence of God, as Thomas Aquinas tried to do in the 13th century? Can a logical explanation be given to biblical events? How to rationally unravel the mystery of the Divine Trinity…? The Middle Ages were the most vehement and moving experiment to attempt such harmony; Starting in the 14th century, with William of Ockham at the helm, the abyss that separated reason and faith became increasingly unfathomable.
As a result of this desire for Truth, with capital letters (which historical clichés attribute only to the classical era or the Renaissance, when it is obvious that this is not the case), The Middle Ages gave birth to universities, corporations of students and pupils that were governed by their own rules and that they used dialectics (discussion) to unravel the truths of faith and life.
And hand in hand with the universities, student groups appear in the towns, the happy goliards: obscene, quarrelsome, drunks and brothel-goers, which by the way the Church tolerated because it considered a necessary evil.
These first university students were also the first to create the typical youth riots and to raise their protest against what they did not consider fair; just as it continues to be done today in universities.
4. They were misogynists
This time there is quite a bit of truth in the topic. Yes, the Middle Ages are a misogynistic time, but let’s point out: no more than the classical or modern era In fact, women’s freedom and power were much more limited in Ancient Greece (when women lived secluded in the gynoeciums of their homes) and in 17th century Europe.
To tell the truth, misogyny became radicalized as the Middle Ages progressed. In recent centuries, especially from the 13th century onwards, we already find very misogynistic positions among the thinkers of the time. Part of the blame was the recovery of Aristotle’s work; From the Greek wise man a theory was extracted that proclaimed that the birth of a woman was due to a corruption of the semen or poor nutrition of the mother.
Theology did nothing but ratify the supposed female inferiority, an idea against which some timid voices were raised, such as that of Christine de Pizán, considered one of the first feminists in history.
However, There were very powerful women such as the influential abbesses who were in charge of monasteries (not only of nuns, but also mixed, where men and women were separated only by the church!), or the great medieval queens, such as Eleanor of Aquitaine, a strong and independent that left its mark on history.
In general, the feminine ideal was the Virgin Mary; that is, the completely asexual woman who is also a mother. Female sexuality was a real taboo (at least, on a theological level, since, as we have seen, in everyday life people did their pluses and minuses), and it was related to women who showed a certain sexual appetite with the figure of Eve, the primal sinner.
5. They didn’t wash
I would not like to finish this brief review of some of the most hackneyed clichés of the Middle Ages without mentioning the typical argument that they did not clean themselves. Obviously, they weren’t washed every day The concept of assiduous hygiene is something relatively modern, so its cleanliness could seem incredibly precarious today.
But yes, the fact is that they did wash. Wealthy people had their own bathing systems in their homes, as well as cosmetics and cleaning utensils. Others They had to go to the famous Bath Houses, establishments that proliferated in the cities inspired by the Roman baths and Arab baths. In these places they washed, talked and ate and, what may be more surprising to us… Women and men entered the same basin naked!
Unsurprisingly, most of these bathhouses had to close, accused of promoting lust (many of them were in fact undercover brothels). But the truth is that the main cause of the closure was hygienic: After the Black Death, no one wanted to risk a plague-ridden person getting into the water of a basin with them …
Conclusion
Ignorant, brutal, ordinary, self-righteous, cruel… Even today the medieval term continues to be used to refer to something rugged Without wanting to idealize a time that of course had its shadows (and quite thick ones), I think that before getting carried away by clichés we have to contrast the information we have. And not only in regards to the Middle Ages, of course, but in all facets of our lives.
