Why the Middle Ages weren't really so bad as we imagine

[abcdavid01]

History is written by the winners. In this case it's the Enlightenment and the Reformation. Are we being fed Enlightenment era propaganda? Here's why the Middle Ages might not have been so bad:

http://listverse.com/2008/06/09/top-10- ... -not-dark/

The creation of the university system. An offshoot of the (backwards, anti-intellectual, creationist) church. These universities were rigorous. Most modern colleges are a total piss stain by comparison. Science was slow to grow, but that's just because it was autocatalytic. Church monks with their vast libraries were actually the ones preserving Roman culture. The Middle Ages gave us trade, glasses, clocks, compass, the printing press...

A unified church meant relative peace. Trade with the Islamic world. The foundations of legal systems. Low unemployment.

If you were wanting to die a martyr by starvation, the Early Middle Ages were not the time to do it! As a consequence of the excellent weather and greater agricultural knowledge, the West did extremely well. Iron tools were in wide use in the Byzantine empire, feudalism in other parts of the world introduced efficient management of land, and massive surpluses were created so that animals were fed on grains and not grass. Public safety was also guaranteed under the feudal system and so peace and prosperity was the lot for most people.

http://listverse.com/2011/02/15/top-10- ... dark-ages/

Taxes averaging ten percent. A gold standard (real money). Lots of stability because you lived under one king. On work:

On the other hand, if you were a serf, you would work your fields during the summer months and laze about during the winter months enjoying your harvests (after the taxes you pay to your land owner). The only real requirement as a serf was that you pay your tithes (usually in wheat) and do a few other odd jobs, but, aside from that, you could do anything you wanted with your land, and the land owner had to guarantee you protection from criminals and provide for you in times of famine. Some serfs became incredibly wealthy through the wise use of their land.

http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/r ... kweek.html

Work hours were actually less than ours. People think of the labor movement and assume peasants had to work day and night in grueling work. Not true. It was only with industrialization that people began working obscene hours. In the Middle Ages peasants worked from dawn until dusk, but took numerous breaks (three meals, afternoon nap, ale drinking breaks, etc.). Plus they had a ton of church holidays. Some were spent in church, but others were week long festivals.

As a knight, one only had to work 40 days a year. The rest was spent jousting, which became gradually less dangerous as the Middle Ages went on.

One of the worst myths is that people died at 30 or 40. The numbers get skewed by the high infant mortality rate. If you could live past 21 you'd probably live to 70. Take the artist Titian for example. Lived from 1490-1576. Sure, he's rich, but that's almost 90 years.

On Crime:

The middle ages knew roughly 5 serial killers. Most of you will be able to name three of them: Elizabeth Bathory, Gilled de Rais and Sawney Bean (who may not have existed at all). Now try to name as many serial killers from the modern ages that you know. A lot more I bet. There were definitely a lot of murders in the Middle Ages, but the chances of the average person being a victim of murder were low. Murderers were tried and executed, and those who committed petty crimes were usually publicly shamed or fined. The stories we hear of people's hands being cut off for stealing were usually from Eastern countries, or were during the very early years of the Middle ages, when Europe was establishing itself into the formation we generally know it today.

But didn't people smell? Bathe once a year? Hogwash! They had communal bathing. Whenever a guest came over it was customary to invite them for a bath. They inherited that from the Romans. Bath houses were really popular.

What about violence?

http://listverse.com/2009/01/07/top-10- ... ddle-ages/

While there was violence in the Middle Ages (just as there had always been), there were no equals to our modern Stalin, Hitler, and Mao. Most people lived their lives without experiencing violence. The Inquisition was not the violent bloodlust that many movies and books have claimed it to be, and most modern historians now admit this readily. Modern times have seen genocide, mass murder, and serial killings, something virtually unheard of before the enlightenment. In fact, there are really only two serial killers of note from the Middle Ages: Elizabeth Bathory, and Gilles de Rais. For those who dispute the fact that the Inquisition resulted in very few deaths, Wikipedia has the statistics here showing that there were (at most) 826 recorded executions over a 160 year period from 45,000 trials!

We didn't have bullshit art, degenerate habits, sluttish women...the food was healthier and the morals were higher. They tolerated prostitution as a means to prevent rape.

So the idea of a culture of ignorance with peasants working all hours for their super short lives...Enlightenment era propaganda? Revolutionaries trying to rewrite history to fit their dastardly goals?

Well I for one am a reactionary.

[abcdavid01]

[Cornfed]

Yes, the late Dark Ages and Middle Ages were probably the high water mark for Germanic people. It has been all downhill since then.

[Winston]

There's a similar article about this on Cracked.

6 Ridiculous Myths About the Middle Ages Everyone Believes

http://www.cracked.com/article_20186_6- ... ieves.html

[HenryGeorge]

Ellen Brown also destroys this myth in her book 'Web of Debt':

http://www.webofdebt.com/excerpts/chapter-5.php

A Revisionist View of the Middle Ages

Modern schoolbooks generally portray the Middle Ages as a time of poverty, backwardness, and economic slavery, from which the people were freed only by the Industrial Revolution; but reliable early historians painted a quite different picture. Thorold Rogers, a nineteenth century Oxford historian, wrote that in the Middle Ages, "a labourer could provide all the necessities for his family for a year by working 14 weeks." Fourteen weeks is only a quarter of a year! The rest of the time, some men worked for themselves; some studied; some fished. Some helped to build the cathedrals that appeared all over Germany, France and England during the period, massive works of art that were built mainly with volunteer labor. Some used their leisure to visit these shrines. One hundred thousand pilgrims had the wealth and leisure to visit Canterbury and other shrines yearly. William Cobbett, author of the definitive History of the Reformation, wrote that Winchester Cathedral "was made when there were no poor rates; when every labouring man in England was clothed in good woollen cloth; and when all had plenty of meat and bread . . . ." Money was available for inventions and art, supporting the Michelangelos, Rembrandts, Shakespeares, and Newtons of the period.

The Renaissance is usually thought of as the flowering of the age; but the university system, representative government in a Parliament, the English common law system, and the foundations of a great literary and spiritual movement were all in place by the thirteenth century, and education was advanced and widespread. As one scholar of the era observes:

"We are very prone to consider that it is only in our time that anything like popular education has come into existence. As a matter of fact, however, the education afforded to the people in the little towns of the Middle Ages, represents an ideal of educational uplift for the masses such as has never been even distantly approached in succeeding centuries. The Thirteenth Century developed the greatest set of technical schools that the world has ever known. . . . These medieval towns, . . . during the course of the building of their cathedrals, of their public buildings and various magnificent edifices of royalty and for the nobility, succeeded in accomplishing such artistic results that the world has ever since held them in admiration."

The common people had leisure, education, art, and economic security. According to The Catholic Encyclopedia:

"Economic historians like Rogers and Gibbins declare that during the best period of the Middle Ages say, from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century, inclusive, there was no such grinding and hopeless poverty, no such chronic semi-starvation in any class, as exists to-day among large classes in the great cities . . . . In the Middle Ages there was no class resembling our proletariat, which has no security, no definite place, no certain claim upon any organization or institution in the socio-economic organism."

Richard Hoskins attributes this long period of prosperity to the absence of usurious lending practices. Rather than having to borrow the moneylenders gold, the people relied largely on interest-free tallies. Unlike gold, wooden tallies could not become scarce; and unlike paper money, they could not be counterfeited or multiplied by sleight of hand. They were simply a unit of measure, a tally of goods and services exchanged. The tally system avoided both the depressions resulting from a scarcity of gold and the inflations resulting from printing paper money out of all proportion to the goods and services available for sale. Since the tallies came into existence along with goods and services, supply and demand increased together, and prices remained stable. The tally system provided an organic form of money that expanded naturally as trade expanded and contracted naturally as taxes were paid. Bankers did not have to meet behind closed doors to set interest rates and manipulate markets to keep the money supply in balance. It balanced the way a checkbook balances, as a matter of simple math. The system of government-issued tallies kept the British economy stable and thriving until the mid-seventeenth century, when Oliver Cromwell needed money to fund a revolt against the Tudor monarchy . . . .

[abcdavid01]

Great post as always HenryGeorge. I'll start looking for primary sources. It's important to undo all the brainwashing...

[momopi]

"On the other hand, if you were a serf, you would work your fields during the summer months and laze about during the winter months enjoying your harvests (after the taxes you pay to your land owner)."

Whoever wrote this has an overly romantic view of the farmer's lifestyle (or have no idea what work needs to be done on a farm).

[Tsar]

These are some of the many reasons why I am a monarchist. Life under a virtuous monarch who has most of the power would be capable of great change. Most contributions to science, medicine, art, culture, and inventions that improved humanity were created when monarchies were in power. People were meant to be agrarian. People were meant to pay taxes in what they produce like wheat or vegetables. Most trade could be conducted in barter or using the secondary medium of exchange which was coinage.

A Virtuous Absolute Monarch (or Authoritarian) would have the power to issue a proclamation and have things change. Most of the visionaries who changed their countries were monarchs or dictators, not figureheads like presidents or constitutional monarchs.

Monarchs and Religion supported one another throughout history. In a democracy or plutocracy they do not want religion because it doesn't support their actions. The immoral people do not want to hear how to live moral lives and the plutocrats want to be the new gods.

What we have now in slavery, indentured servitude to survive, and extortionate taxes. We have figureheads leading countries to represent an elite few. People are reliant on the fiat monetary system which is designed to oppress everyone except for a small group of people and many major corporations. This is a dystopian world and it will only become worse.

[Cornfed]

"On the other hand, if you were a serf, you would work your fields during the summer months and laze about during the winter months enjoying your harvests (after the taxes you pay to your land owner)."

Whoever wrote this has an overly romantic view of the farmer's lifestyle (or have no idea what work needs to be done on a farm).

Not necessarily. Farms now have to be far larger than they were even a few decades ago to be an "economic unit", so the work you need to do to keep a farm going has radically changed. It was actually the case that there was not a lot of work to do on farms during certain times of the year in the good old days.

[fschmidt]

Yes the Middle Ages really were so bad. Of course it was uneven. There were better times punctuated by plagues that wiped out a large percentage of the populations. It was these plagues more than anything that improved life at other times by reducing the population to a level that was easily supported by primitive farming of the land. Overall it was a Malthusian existence, meaning alternating between adequate food and plagues or starvation. And the Middle Ages were intellectually unproductive. Nothing of intellectual value came from these times. And to top it off, adultery was rampant with the aristocracy spending a lot of time chasing other men's wives.

I am a reactionary, but I want the 1600s-1800s, or early Athens or early Rome, not the decadent periods.

[Cornfed]

Yes the Middle Ages really were so bad. Of course it was uneven. There were better times punctuated by plagues that wiped out a large percentage of the populations. It was these plagues more than anything that improved life at other times by reducing the population to a level that was easily supported by primitive farming of the land. Overall it was a Malthusian existence, meaning alternating between adequate food and plagues or starvation. And the Middle Ages were intellectually unproductive. Nothing of intellectual value came from these times. And to top it off, adultery was rampant with the aristocracy spending a lot of time chasing other men's wives.

I am a reactionary, but I want the 1600s-1800s, or early Athens or early Rome, not the decadent periods.

That is not my understanding of history. The plagues started with the Black Death in 1348/49 when the Middle Ages were already over in an economic sense and continued sporadically for about 300 years. Prior to that, infectious diseases were no big deal. The periods you say were good corresponded with long work hours and a massive loss in nutritional status and height.

[fschmidt]

The periods you say were good corresponded with long work hours and a massive loss in nutritional status and height.

Do you have any references for this?

[Cornfed]

The periods you say were good corresponded with long work hours and a massive loss in nutritional status and height.

Do you have any references for this?

Here is a related article about the origins of corporations. I would have to hunt for other stuff.
http://www.realitysandwich.com/beyond_l ... s_rushkoff

[fschmidt]

Here is a related article about the origins of corporations. I would have to hunt for other stuff.
http://www.realitysandwich.com/beyond_l ... s_rushkoff

That looks interesting. I bookmarked it and will look into it more later.

[abcdavid01]

Work hours at bottom:

http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/r ... kweek.html