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Even as the Middle Ages is increasingly well documented and a number of historians have increasingly focused on writing literature addressing some of the primary misconceptions about medieval history, and as other historians take the alternative approach of highlighting many of the intellectual, scientific, and technological advances that took ...
- That medieval people thought the Earth was flat. Virtually every medieval scholar believed the world was round. In fact, they assumed that the Earth was perfectly round (in reality it is slightly elliptical), and one scholar named Abu Rayhan Biruni (973–1048) was able to figure out the radius of the Earth using mathematics – his estimate of it being 6,339 kilometres was only off by 31 kilometres.
- That Primae Noctis actually happened. In 19th century France, it became a popular belief that lords had several long-standing ‘rights’ over their peasants, including the right to have sex with any bride the ‘first night’ after her wedding.
- That Vikings wore horned helmets. Vikings and other medieval warriors never wore horned helmets. It would have been a very dumb idea for a Viking to use something like that in battle, as such a helmet could easily be knocked off.
- That there were elaborate torture devices in the Middle Ages. There are many different gruesome torture devices, including the Iron Maiden, the Pear of Anguish, and the Breast Ripper.
- Everyone Was Short and Died Young
- Peasants Were Revolting and Irrational
- Medieval Towns Were Unhygienic and Squalid
- Medieval People Were Brutally and Mindlessly Violent
- Medieval People Had No Sense of Humour
- Religious Dogma Meant That No One Thought For Themselves
- Torture Was Used Often, and Cruel Corporal Punishment Was Ubiquitous
- There Was Little Concept of Childhood in The Middle Ages
- There Was Little Trade Or Commerce, Partly Because Credit Was Underdeveloped
Evidence such as the small size of many medieval door-frames has led many to believe that people were significantly shorter in the Middle Ages. In fact, archaeological analysis shows that average heights have changed little over the past 1,000 years. From the 10th century through to the 19th-century, the average height did not shift more than a few...
It’s true that medieval peasants had little access to education or literacy, but they were by no means stupid. When they were involved in protests, they did so strategically, and knowingly evoked important documents about their ancient rights like the Domesday Bookof 1086. As for their more general acumen, many peasants were able to draw effectivel...
Whilst many medieval towns probably did stink, people were certainly bothered about this. More and more recent scholarly work has focused on the efforts to keep medieval towns clean and healthy, particularly in the late medieval period. 1. Read more | Beating the Black Death: did medieval medicine help people to survive? While we might often see or...
Although it’s very hard to assess this statistically, levels of interpersonal physical violencewere indeed probably very high. However, this was something which really bothered medieval people: across a range of contexts, they really agonised about levels of violence and the harm which it could cause, whilst also acknowledging that sometimes it was...
This is perhaps the most glaring misconception of all. Whilst it may not always be to our taste, medieval life was imbued with wit and humour. There was an appetite for jokes, ranging from the subtle and sophisticated to the obscene and bawdy. Sometimes the surviving evidence is material. For example, one jester called ‘Fromage’, from northern Fran...
The medieval Church did not value toleration, but nor did it try (or have the means) to impose absolute religious uniformity. Whilst the Middle Ages are punctuated by moments of censorship and persecution, religious thinking of a remarkably sophisticated kind was actively encouraged in many medieval universities. Paradigm-shifting advances in knowl...
In very many cases, corporal punishment was actually commuted to a monetary payment instead. Very often authorities were quite reluctant to punish people in a bodily manner. And when executions did happen, they often provoked pity and horror: in fact, that was precisely the point. Torture was used in some cases, but again, we know that medieval thi...
This myth originated with a famous book by historian Philippe Ariès, first published in 1960, which claimed that there was no distinctive notion of childhood in the Middle Ages. It is patently untrue – medieval children were certainly treated differently from modern children, but there was a real sense that children had different needs and differen...
The origins of modern commercial practiceslie precisely in this period. Extremely sophisticated commercial patterns emerged – both at a local level and internationally. These tended to be underpinned by complex systems of credit, and the 14th-century even saw the establishment of what are known today as ‘super companies’. And it is untrue that all ...
- Elinor Evans
- The Church 1. Was the Medieval Church Corrupt? (by Frans Van Liere) 2. Papal Infallibility (by Elaine M. Beretz) 3. “The Age of Faith”: Everyone in the Middle Ages Believed in God (by Peter Dendle)
- War and the State 9. The Crusades: Eschatological Lemmings, Younger Sons, Papal Hegemony and Colonialism (by Jessalynn Bird) 10. The Myth of the Mounted Knight (by James G. Patterson)
- Science. 12. The Myth Of The Flat Earth (by Louise M. Bishop) 13. The Medieval Sense of Self (by Ronald J. Ganze) 14. The Middle Ages Were a Superstitious Time (by Peter Dendle)
- The Arts. 18. Medieval Cuisine: Hog’s Swill or Culinary Art? (by Jean-François Kosta-Théfaine) 19. What Did Medieval People Eat? (by Christopher Roman)
- Misconception: People in the Middle Ages believed the Earth was flat. It turns out that plenty of people in the Middle Ages knew Earth was a sphere, thanks in large part to the Greek philosopher Pythagoras and the Roman astronomer Ptolemy.
- Misconception: It was called the Dark Ages because people were hopelessly mired in ignorance. Some people think of the Middle Ages as the “Dark Ages” because they seem less progressive than the Classical Era and Renaissance, two eras in which humanism and individualism were highly prized.
- Misconception: The Middle Ages was all feasting and jousting. Europeans might have jousted and feasted—some of them, at least—but those weren’t the only things going on in the world between the 5th and 15th centuries.
- Misconception: People never left their hometowns. So we’ve discovered that people in the Middle Ages understood geography and made some great art. The misconception that Europeans knew very little about the world beyond their own villages can be similarly refuted.
Medieval Europe. Where unbathed, sword-wielding knights ate rotten meat, thought the Earth was flat, defended chastity-belt wearing maidens, and tortured their foes with grisly gadgets. Except... this is more fiction than fact. So, where do all the myths about the Middle Ages come from? And what were they actually like? Stephanie Honchell Smith debunks common misconceptions about the time ...
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The Middle Ages is a traditional division of Western European history that roughly lasted from the 5th to 15th centuries. After the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, civilization in different parts of Western Europe receded at different rates and at different times. Eventually, the Carolingian Empire was established in the 9th century, reuniting much of Western Europe, but this entity ...
