Ancient History

We have a love hate relationship with the concept of what medieval torture was really like.  On one hand, modern culture is predominantly against torture as a means to gain information or as punishment for crimes.  Great pains are often taken to inflict punishment for even despicable and cruel crimes that does not impose undue suffering on the guilty. 

When we enjoy entertainment or festivals that celebrate medieval life and times, it is the life of royalty, traveling bards, monks of knights that are most often the focus of our attention.  Few of us would want to celebrate the lives of peasants and surfs during the middle ages.  There is good reason for that.  There was little to celebrate about the harsh life poor people endured during this time in history.

Many of the philosophies of how meals are taken and the types of foods that are suitable for a family meal that we hold today have their origins in medieval times.  The image of a slovenly king eating a turkey leg with his hands makes for fun at a medieval faire but that image is not a good representation of how food was prepared and what kinds of things the people of the middle ages age most often.

The narrow definition of what life was like during medieval times that comes from the entertainment industry is short sighted because it does not account for the fact that the middle ages was an extremely lengthy period in the history of civilization.  From the fall of Rome to the birth of the Renaissance period spans some 700-800 years and the changes in culture and what civilization looked like during those centuries was dramatic. 

It should come as no surprise that during medieval times, a big indicator of where you stood on the social hierarchy was your clothing.  Even today, clothes tell us much about where a person is in society.  A bricklayer dresses much differently from a policeman and both dress very differently from entertainers or the wealthy or people in politics.  The lines of distinction are not as strict now as they were in medieval times.  But using clothing as a measure of social rank is just as valid now as then.

Our fascination with all things medieval comes from two places.  There are the very popular medieval faires where hundreds of people dress up in what is perceived to be medieval garb and feel like they are transported back to the middle ages for a day.  Other than that, the movies and television give us much of our imagery from this time in human history.  From Robin Hood to King Arthur, our vision of what life was like in medieval times is highly romanticized and influenced by the fictional stories we enjoy.

Its good to be king

That is a famous quote that is associated with what the life of a medieval King must have been like.  It came from a comedy movie made by Mel Brookes called “The History of the World Part I”.  The context was a lighthearted spoof that focused on how Kings of medieval times lived like virtual gods enjoyed unimaginable wealth and power that was virtually limitless.

The stories and images that have come down to us from medieval times have become so morally simplistic as to make them more parables or fables than genuine history.   Of the many characters where that is true, the knights that represented the elite of the military of medieval castles are perhaps the most romanticized.  We have allowed the idea of good knights and bad knights to become quite entrenched in our culture.  Even in the ancient game of chess, we know right away that it is the white knight who is “good” and the black knight who is “bad.”

The middle ages was a time of serve punishment and harsh torture for crimes that today would seem trival.  People were beheaded limbs cut off, vagabonds were often whipped and chained in stocks. People lived in a state of fear think they would be the next victim. Even the catholic church used torture and imprisonment to obtain confession from people regardless of whether they were guilty.