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There are a lot of misguided beliefs about the Medieval period arising from a popular Gothic/Romantic revival in the 19th century. The period became known by an

• scythe 6y ago
  >there were exceptions to the rule like prosperous city-republics. This seemed to start because of the "compromise" status of Venice and Rome after Charlemagne's conquest of Italy; after that the floodgates opened and other cities tried to get away with it. A thousand years later, the kings have finally been kicked out (mostly).
• 29athrowaway 6y ago
  The #1 misguided belief among the general population is how the Reinassance came to be. And that misguided belief has been driven by revisionism. We are happy to talk about Ancient Greece, but when it comes to talking about the influence of the Umayyad Caliphate in Europe, then people quickly become aggressive and start saying "no, no, no, we don't talk about this here". Why? because the Islamic civilization were our rivals and acknowledging that we owe them our modern lifestyle is highly taboo, especially among people with Conservative views.
  • jlawson 6y ago
    You mean the influence where they sacked Constantinople in 1453 after centuries of attempts, destroying the Christian Byzantine empire and sending huge numbers of Byzantine writers and intellectuals fleeing to settle in Europe?
    • 29athrowaway 6y ago
      1453? Who is talking about 1453 here? I am talking about the 12th century. ♦♦♦ The bibliography used to kickstart the Reinassance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_translations_of_the_12th_century#List_of_translations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_translations_of_the_12th... ♦♦♦ Paper, and by extension, scalable libraries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_paper#Paper_in_Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_paper#Paper_in_Euro... > The oldest known paper document in Europe is the Mozarab Missal of Silos from the 11th century, probably using paper made in the Islamic part of the Iberian Peninsula. No paper = Books made out of parchements = Prohibitively expensive books = No libraries = No scholars ♦♦♦ "Our" modern higher education system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ijazah https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ijazah > George Makdisi, professor of oriental studies, theorized that the ijazah was the origin of the university academic degree as well as the doctorate. No universities = No doctorates = No advisors = No science ♦♦♦ "Our" modern astronomy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfonsine_tables https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfonsine_tables > The Alfonsine tables were the most popular astronomical tables in Europe and updated versions were regularly produced for three hundred years. Nicolaus Copernicus, known as the father of modern astronomy, bought a copy while at the University of Cracow. No astronomic data = No modern astronomy = No laws of gravity and motion = No physics ♦♦♦ "Our" philosophy that is tolerant to science: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholasticism#Early_Scholasticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholasticism#Early_Scholastic... > This period saw the beginning of the 'rediscovery' of many Greek works which had been lost to the Latin West. As early as the 10th century, scholars in Spain had begun to gather translated texts and, in the latter half of that century, began transmitting them to the rest of Europe. No tolerance to science = Scientists harassed by the church = Science becomes impossible to conduct. ♦♦♦ "Our" understanding of optics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snell%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snell%27s_law > The law eventually named after Snell was first accurately described by the Persian scientist Ibn Sahl at the Baghdad court in 984. In the manuscript On Burning Mirrors and Lenses, Sahl used the law to derive lens shapes that focus light with no geometric aberrations. The law was rediscovered by Thomas Harriot in 1602. No optics = No astronomy = No age of exploration No optics = No microscopes = No biology = No modern medicine ♦♦♦ ... And the list goes on, and on, and on. The Reinassance is the legacy of the Islamic civilization. It is overwhelmingly clear. Your school teachers lied to you, and their teachers lied to them. Don't believe me? Take a look here: https://genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/extrema.php https://genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/extrema.php The first doctoral advisors were Islamic. Every known scientist is somehow a student of them. Follow the chain of doctoral advisors and learn the unavoidable truth. Enjoy your new, more historically accurate perspective on the world. Downvote all you want, eventually your descendants will learn the truth in school one day anyways, when we are done undoing the revisionism.
• konjin 6y ago
  >That completely got wrong what the Medieval period really was - the transition from Roman imperial rule to early-modern European states, and a small industrial revolution in technology including agriculture and navigation. The Dark Ages are from ~500AD to ~900AD and as a term were first used in the 14th century. I don't know how else you would describe a period in which population was reduced to less than a quarter of what it had been at the peak of the Pax Romana.
  • deleted 6y ago
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  • infradig 6y ago
    I don't know why you are down voted, what you are saying is factually correct and the comment you responded to was wrong about the Dark Ages. The Dark Ages preceded the Medieval Period.
    • ljf 6y ago
      I always thought that the Dark Ages /was/ the middle ages and that dark referred (at least initially) to the lack of records. Wikipedia agrees but I am certainly no expert in this: The "Dark Ages" is a historical periodization traditionally referring to the Early Middle Ages or Middle Ages, that asserts that a demographic, cultural, and economic deterioration occurred in Western Europe following the decline of the Roman Empire.[1][2] Petrarch, who conceived the idea of a European "Dark Age". From Cycle of Famous Men and Women, Andrea di Bartolo di Bargilla, c. 1450 The term employs traditional light-versus-darkness imagery to contrast the era's "darkness" (lack of records) with earlier and later periods of "light" (abundance of records).
  • adamjb 6y ago
    >The Dark Ages are from ~500AD to ~900AD and as a term were first used in the 14th century. Petrarch, the 14th C dude you're referencing, believed in a two age history demarcated by the fall of Rome and that he was living in dark, post-Roman world. The three age history of light-dark-light that would give us the term middle ages/medieval wouldn't come til the 15th C with Bruni when he tacked a modern age onto Petrarch's scheme.
• jlawson 6y ago
  You seem a bit confused about the ages. The dark ages is not a synonym for the medieval era. It's a sub-division of the medieval era - one of three. The dark ages is a period after the fall of Rome. It's named for the fact that very little written output was produced during this time. It ran about 500-1000AD. The high middle ages came after, and there was a lot more writing going on during this period. This was about 1000-1250AD. When people think 'medieval', this is usually what they think, if not the late medieval period (the third sub-division). Then came the Renaissance, then the modern period. The dark ages actually were pretty dark, mysterious, and primitive, as evidenced by the very low intellectual and cultural output during these years, low populations, low levels of social organization, and so on. Generally, the good parts and achievements of the medieval period that you're gesturing at were during the high and late parts.
  • nexthash 6y ago
    None of this is true... politics mainly happened at the local level because the imperial Roman empire was destroyed, but that only changed development and innovation. Have you ever read Beowulf? It is one of the most highly developed pieces of Old English poetry, at 3000 lines, and was written in this time period. Silver mining increased, and many technological innovations like iron plows emerged. Beautiful cathedrals were constructed in the Romanesque style, and learning continued in monastical schools all over Europe. There was international trade and military activity ranging from Scandinavian societies raiding into Europe and the Mediterranean, as well as the Crusades starting up near the end of this period. The Christian church of the Roman empire, otherwise known as the Roman Catholic Church, was alive and well, becoming one of the most powerful institutions for the next several hundred centuries. "Dark Ages" is an antiquated term - think transition, not Camelot (although the legend did originate in this period). It is often called the "Early Middle Ages" these days.
    • landryraccoon 6y ago
      > the next several hundred centuries. No kidding! As documented in the Hyperion Series, by Dan Simmons, I suppose.
    • 6y ago
• Karrot_Kream 6y ago
  And to go along with that, the Renaissance was actually an incredibly violent and turbulent time. https://www.exurbe.com/black-death-covid-and-why-we-keep-telling-the-myth-of-a-renaissance-golden-age-and-bad-middle-ages/ https://www.exurbe.com/black-death-covid-and-why-we-keep-tel... is a good post about that, and the Dark Ages myth. There's a lot of propaganda from this time period that people still believe today because it was used to justify a lot of the European nationalism of the 19th and 20th centuries.
  • throwaway2048 6y ago
    Yep, the 30 years war was one of the bloodiest. most devastating conflicts in human history, and had more political twists and turns than a George RR Martin novel. It might have killed over 8 million people.
    • baybal2 6y ago
      Yet if it didn't you would've probably still lived under some Habsburg king.
      • anthk 6y ago
        As a Spaniard, it wouldn't do worse than the Borbon dinasty.
  • neuronic 6y ago
    The atrocities and genocides that Europeans brought to the world for centuries should be focused on deeply. Context: I am European and disgusted with the way we treat our impact on the world. I think among the most striking examples here aside from the obvious one (Holocaust), is Belgium, because it just seems to slip under a lot of people's radar. Belgium has an evil, brutal and vile history, especially in relation to its colonialism and the included human rights violations which in my opinion are massive compared to the country's size and geopolitical abilities. Belgian citizens are oblivious, but at least slowly "waking up" as the BBC calls it [1]. To be clear, it's the system and leadership that I struggle with. Not the citizens. To this day, Belgian schools do not in any way teach that Belgium is solely responsible for the Rwandan genocide in the early 90s. It was the sick Belgians who separated fake ethnic groups in Rwanda in the first place, depending on how ethnically white the shape of your skull appeared. And later they used these synthetic groups for political purposes and control. The Belgian government/leadership has a long history of inhuman behavior, violence and murder that goes nearly completely ignored within Europe and it sort of rubs me the wrong way. Guy Verhofstadt said 'I beg your pardon' once in Rwanda, and that was basically it. 800,000+ are dead and Belgium says 'sorry' once. What? Belgium isn't about chocolate, it's a country which is completely fine with not teaching its citizens about the common practice of chopping off children's arms for not meeting labor goals for the day. When Belgians travel to places like Rwanda they are dumbfounded by the realities of their own history. And those people want to tell China something about human rights, yelling from some tower in Brussels. It's breathtaking. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53017188 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53017188
• cletus 6y ago
  So I appreciate what you're saying but the "people are people" argument... has limits. One of the most interesting things I find about ancient history is just how _alien_ the culture must've been. The problem with a lot of historical texts is no one thinks to write down what to them is mundane or ordinary and it doesn't take long until the mundane becomes almost incomprehensible. Thing is, you don't need to go back thousands of years to see this. Even 100 years ago you find totally different attitudes (eg the willingness to be conscripted and to volunteer to go to war). Go back a little further and you find the culture shock to Victorian England with Pacific cultures. My point is it can be a bit of a trap to take too much for granted in terms of a human baseline.
  • nexthash 6y ago
    Willingness to be conscripted? Different styles of dress? Different approaches to life? Sure it would be a culture shock and strange, but the culture as a whole would not be alien. If we had a day just to shadow/hang around in the company of these people (you can still travel to areas where people practice indigenous lifestyles, for example) we would find them to be not much different than us. Despite their strange practices, this is what is normal to them, and they aren't any less human whether in the form of perfection or fallibility. They worry about the future, love their families, have wants and ambitions, get angry sometimes, and have their biases. We would find them to be comically relatable to your life, just in a different form.
    • andykx 6y ago
      Sure, but I think that’s the point being made here. They are humans, but they are different in very appreciable ways. Though we would ultimately share many similarities, as all of humanity has throughout history, there would undoubtedly be major cultural differences.
  • imbnwa 6y ago
    Ancient Sparta is exemplary on this point
• vondur 6y ago
  The later Medieval period was one of great economic and population expansion. However, the rise of famine due to too many people to feed without any increase in agricultural production was a big problem in Northern Europe (1315-1317. Of course the arrival of the bubonic plague would then push the population levels further down. Parts of Europe did indeed enter a "Dark Ages" after the fall of the Roman Empire. England was hit particularly hard after the Roman withdrawal , as was the Italian Peninsula after the Gothic Wars, the arrival of the first bubonic plague, and the worsening of the general climate during this time period (560s CE)
• suifbwish 6y ago
  A sobering thought: when you consider that this is true for people we have come to demonize as well. Hitler, Vlad the Impaler, Genghis Khan ect ect they were all human with emotions, worries, good days and struggles. The only thing that separates us from them is what we think about what they did. A lot of people can’t process the idea of the worst criminals being people just like them or consider that deep down they are not moral, good or anything special and they themselves are capable of the same evil if placed in the correct circumstances.
  • ip26 6y ago
    I think you are forgetting that sociopathy, in particular the inability to feel empathy, is a real thing.
  • loopz 6y ago
    They are without empathy, remorse and able to manipulate people duplicating their behaviours and choices. This is both normal and extremist. People are still vulnerable to it today.
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  • 7952 6y ago
    With BLM I found myself thinking a lot about this question. Should we be understanding of slave owners and put them into hisorical context? Is it fair to hold people in the past to the morals of today? Where should the balance be struck? I think the answer is that both things are true. Killing, abusing and enslaving people was always wrong. But the cognitive basis for those acts can be more mundane than pure evil. I think as a society we experience a larger version of the free will problem. Our future path is tightly bound to our history and culture. We do not have complete free will. Breaking away an asserting agency can be be both an opportunity and a risk. Nelson Mandela broke with history but so did Hitler and Stalin. We shouldn't assume that we are the former.
    • dragonwriter 6y ago
• TechnoTimeStop 6y ago
  Honestly the entire article is crap. And not even close to hacker news. Good write up btw on your part.
• ashtonkem 6y ago
  It’s important to emphasize that feudalism is fundamentally a transactional system. What the nobility had to offer peasants was safety. In the absence of the Roman imperial system, binding yourself to a local lord who could raise men at arms and a small castle to protect you and your family is a rational decision. I wouldn’t go so far as saying that feudalism is good, but it’s at least understandable when viewed that way. Of course late feudalism became extra intolerable once kings stopped protecting peasants and started pulling them into new wars instead.
  • remarkEon 6y ago
    I don’t see how democracy is much different, to be quite honest. The same structures get set up (the state, instead of a Lord, provides security ... over time the state drags the “citizens” into new wars all the same). I suppose the difference is that in a democracy you at least have an illusion of influence on the state, whereas in a Feudalistic society everyone was quite honest about how the peasants had no or only limited influence at best.
    • tsimionescu 6y ago
      This is ignoring all of the details. Feudal peasants were much closer to slaves than to citizens in a democracy. They had a duty to produce certain amounts of resources for the lord - often not a percentage like a tax, but a minimum amount due. In many places at many times, they were bound to the land - they were not allowed to move away from the village where they lived, definitely not to a different Lord's lands. As you also note, they had no power to influence decision making, and even if they did rise up, they were violently put down, by neighboring lords if they somehow were successful against their own. Not to mention, (modern) states offer much more than military security. They offer healthcare, food, care for the disabled, infrastructure, education, and many other services. And, especially in smaller nations or at local levels (think town, not US state), there is quite a lot of real democratic power, certainly incomparable to the realities of serfdom.
      • pietrovismara 6y ago
• zentropia 6y ago
  Transition? It was 1000 years. Roman Empire colapsed. 1000 years later powerful states with new political structures emerged.
• smogcutter 6y ago
  I broadly agree with you, but think there’s a danger there of going too far in reducing culture and belief systems to simple “customs”. Bret Devereaux, for one, constantly reiterates on his (awesome) blog you linked that people in the past really did often act, relate, and believe very differently than we do. Anachronism is a trap just as much as romanticism, only from the opposite extreme.
  • Balgair 6y ago
    The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there. -L.P. Hartley Try watching old movies, something from before WW2. The scripts and the acting aren't just different because of tech, but because the people are different. The similarities, usually in the vices and not the virtues, are eye opening too. Now that 'drift' from our reality continues all the way into the past, sometimes with violent changes, sometimes more slowly.
• slothtrop 6y ago
  I had the sense in my education that dubbing it the Dark Ages was a way of diverting attention away from it. This large block of time was the period of the Crusades, Reformation, antipopes, etc. No shortage of interesting happenings during this period, but the education system does not want to touch that with a 10-foot pole, nor the leadership. It's too close to the topic of religious strife and atrocities. This might become less true as Christianity gets less ubiquitous. Nationalism might be another reason that it's cast aside.
• yakubin 6y ago
  "The Dark Ages" is not a synonym for The Middle Ages. It refers to the period of 5th-10th century, when Europe experienced its biggest cultural stagnation. It's not to say that the rest of The Middle Ages was particularly innovative, but The Dark Ages were the The Middle Ages of The Middle Ages.
• coldtea 6y ago
  >That completely got wrong what the Medieval period really was - the transition from Roman imperial rule to early-modern European states, and a small industrial revolution in technology including agriculture and navigation. Well, not that wrong, as the "transition from Roman imperial rule" (in the Western part of the empire) was followed by huge decline in government, standards of living, safety, and so on, that lasted many centuries. (There's a recent trend to downplay this, as there was a trend to overplay how dark the dark ages where in the past. But if one can see through the temporal trends in the historical discipline, they can also see that those times were bad, and the numbers and facts support this).
  • deleted 6y ago
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