Education, study and knowledge

5 topics about the Middle Ages that we must get out of our heads

click fraud protection

The Middle Ages is a time of contrasts. Anyone who delves into it will find themselves 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 as an inferior being? Why did the Church tolerate (and quite a bit) brothels, and at the same time proclaim chaste life as the most direct way to reach God?

All these are questions from which a series of topics about the Middle Ages usually arise., ideas that have been propagated over the years and that offer us a distorted vision of that important period.

  • Related article: "What is social psychology?"

Topics on the Middle Ages: memory of a distortion

It is probable 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 two great conspiracies in history that were in charge of designing our current vision of the time.

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.

instagram story viewer

Both are too Manichean, too simple and childish, to constitute medieval reality by themselves. And it is that the Middle Ages is, probably, somewhere in between.

Here you will find a brief list of topics about the Middle Ages that still determine our way of conceiving that historical period, with explanations about why they do not conform to reality.

1. They were always praying and did not enjoy life

Who has not ever 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 pray?

It is true that, at that time, existence without God made no sense. He 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 everyday life, realize miracles, sending signals to ensure success in 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 when pleasure and love were cultivated with the most dedication and refinement..

Paul Verlaine, the French Symbolist poet, tells us of this time that it was sweet and delicate… He is right. It is the time of the troubadours who sing to the beauty of their lady; of the parties, of the banquets, of the jousts and of the Carnivals; of the gentlemen 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 his novel Perceval or the tale of the Grail, where he compares the whiteness and red cheeks of his lady to 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 delicious passages.

2. They were prudish and self-righteous

And again, another topic born directly from the black legend promoted by the Enlightenment. No, medieval men and women were not prudish. They lived love with joy and hope, and we would very likely be surprised to find that the Victorian era, much closer to ours in time, was much more self-conscious and moralistic about sex and love.

Suffice one example: Régine Pernoud, in her wonderful book Eloísa and Abelardo, tells 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, he sympathizes with his unfortunate love and offers them money. But when the monk tells him that he has some coins that he intends to invest (that is, he is going to make usury), Guillermo becomes enraged, 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 Guillermo it was a sin; and while what for the nineteenth century would have been amoral (the flight of the monk with his mistress), for Guillermo it was nothing other than the triumph of Love.

As if this eloquent example were not enough to illustrate what Love meant in medieval culture, we will also cite the history of the prudent Eloísa d ’Argenteuil, who fell in love with her tutor, the philosopher Pedro Abelardo. When he asks her to marry her because she is pregnant, Eloísa makes her opinion very clear, when she tells him that she prefers to be her whore to her wife.

For the young woman, as for many medieval men and women, marriage is a mere contract, and therefore constitutes true prostitution. It is only in free love that the absolute purity of two hearts that surrender can be found; maybe, in this sense, the medievals are closer to us than we think.

  • You may be interested: "The 5 ages of History (and their characteristics)"

3. They were gross and ignorant

They just prayed and had blind faith, ergo they didn't think. Here is one of the most widespread topics about the Middle Ages, and yet it is one of the most absurd. How can you think that man did not think for no less than a thousand years? The idea is absurd insofar as reason, curiosity, the desire to know are inherent in 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 was made to reconcile reason and faith.. Yes, God created humanity, they said to themselves; and he has created it with brain, he has created it with thought, with rational capacity. Therefore, trying to reach God through logic is not only feasible, but is perfectly consistent with what God expects of us.

Thus, the philosophers of the Middle Ages embarked, as early as the first Middle Ages, on a titanic undertaking: accessing the revealed word of the Bible through reason.

Many were the attempts and many were the fruits, but such an objective was condemned to constantly run up against a multitude of contradictions. For, can the existence of God be proved, as Thomas Aquinas tried to do in the thirteenth century? Can you give a logical explanation to the biblical facts? How to rationally unravel the mystery of the Divine Trinity??? The Middle Ages was the most vehement and moving experiment to attempt such harmony; From the fourteenth century, with William of Ockham at the head, the gulf that separated reason and faith became increasingly unfathomable.

Fruit of this craving 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, student and alumni corporations 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 boroughs, the gay goliards: obscene, quarrelsome, drunkards and regulars in brothels, which the Church certainly tolerated as a necessary evil.

These first university students were also the first to set up the typical youth riots and to raise their protest against what they did not consider fair; the same as today it is still done in universities.

4. They were misogynistic

This time there is quite a bit of truth to the topic. Yes, the Middle Ages is a misogynistic time, but let's point out: no more than classical or modern times. In fact, the freedom and power of women were much more curtailed in Ancient Greece (when women lived secluded in gyneceous houses) and in seventeenth-century Europe.

In fact, misogyny became more radical as the Middle Ages progressed. In recent centuries, especially from the thirteenth century, we already find very misogynistic positions among the thinkers of the time. Part of the fault was the recovery of Aristotle's work; From the Greek sage a theory was extracted that proclaimed that the birth of a woman was due to a corruption of the semen or to a poor diet of the mother.

Theology did nothing but ratify the supposed female inferiority, an idea against which they rose up some timid voices such as Christine de Pizán, considered one of the first feminists of the story.

However, there were very powerful women, like the influential abbesses who were in charge of monasteries (not just 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 woman who left her mark on the story.

In general, the feminine ideal was the Virgin Mary; that is, the woman who is completely asexual and who is also a mother. Female sexuality was a real taboo (at least, at the theological level, since, as we have seen, in everyday life people did his pluses and minuses), and he related to the woman who showed a certain sexual appetite with the figure of Eve, the sinful primal.

5. They did not wash

I would not like to end this brief review of some of the more hackneyed topics of the Middle Ages without mentioning the typical argument that they did not clean themselves. Obviously they didn't wash every day. The concept of regular hygiene is relatively modern, so cleaning it could be incredibly precarious today.

But yes, the fact is that they did wash. Wealthy people had their own bathroom 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 the Arab baths. In these places they washed, chatted and ate and, what may be the most surprising… 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 getting into the water of a basin with him

Conclution

Ignorant, gross, ordinary, self-righteous, cruel... even today the medieval term is still applied to refer to something rugged. Without wanting to idealize a time that of course had its shadows (and quite thick), I think that before getting carried away by the topics we have to contrast the information we have. And not only in regard to the Middle Ages, of course, but in all facets of our lives.

Bibliographic references:

  • Pernoud, R. (2011). Eloísa and Abelardo, ed. Cliff.
  • IDEM, (1986). What is the Middle Ages?, ed. Spanish Teaching.
  • Legoff, J. (2003). In search of the Middle Ages, ed. Paidos.
  • Troyes, C., (2018). Perceval or the tale of the Grail, Alianza Editorial.
  • ABELARDO, P. (1983). History of my misadventures, with a preliminary study by José María Cigüela. Ed. Centro Editor de América Latina.
Teachs.ru

The 10 best poems by Mario Benedetti

The name of Mario Benedetti is known as that of one of the best-known Uruguayan writers, playwrig...

Read more

Cryptozoology: what it is, what it investigates, examples and why it is not a science

Cryptozoology: what it is, what it investigates, examples and why it is not a science

Many people associate cryptozoology with an entertainment field that ranges from movies to fictio...

Read more

The 5 differences between advertising and propaganda

We live in a society in which we are constantly bombarded by advertising messages and propaganda,...

Read more

instagram viewer