Debunking 6 Lies You've Been Told About the Middle Ages 

Whenever people say “oh medieval people just forgot how to draw!” I imagine people in hundreds of years looking at anime figures going “wow, 21st century people COULD NOT draw lifelike people”

Medieval people probably smelt way better then Teenage boys who think axe bodyspray is a shower in a can.

Middle ages were so futuristic they made the best meme paintings

Worth adding that a lot of 'weird' Medieval art that modern people are familiar with came from bored monks doodling in the corners of manuscripts. Listen, I scribbled some fun stuff in the margins of my notebooks as a kid, but I don't think it'd be fair to judge the art style of an entire civilization from them.

Shitty food? Medieval food is *delicious.* I wish you'd covered the myth that "they used a lot of spices to cover up the taste of spoiled meat." My medievalist friend says "Do you have any idea how much that stuff COST?!" In some cases, it was quite literally worth its own weight in gold. No they didn't have freezers or refrigerators. But if you were well off enough to eat meat on a regular basis, you didn't keep it sitting around for days before you ate it. The duck that you ate for supper was quacking on the pond that morning. Meat that wasn't eaten immediately was preserved in a number of ways. Salting, drying, smoking, pickling, etc. Nobody kept it around until it was green and stinking -- that would be just as unappetizing for medieval people as it would be for 21st century people!

Another lie commonly told is "women did not know how to write and read". Reading and writting were considered a feminine trait, or something that non manly men did (as monks). Many women were the house/farm administrator, and they had to take care of the money, workers/servants, etc... most things they had to writte down. Also, mothers were on charge of their children education, and they were the ones teaching them to read and writte

I would just like to point out, that even though the middle ages were a time period, they only "took place" in europe. Asia and other continents had their own eras happening at the same time, but they were not called the middle ages.

"Did they only eat bad food?" If a medieval peasant saw a big mac he'd be calling our food garbage.

I laughed when you talked about Paris' "evil odor" that never really went away. I live in Paris and let's be real... The metro smells like piss, there is pollution everywhere and the rat population is about twice as big as the human population. So yeah.

“With such institutions such as the Flat Earth Society, we have come to the conclusion that most of the people during the Internet Age didn’t believe the world was actually round.” -a historian in the year 9001

My mom actually started brushing her teeth with olive oil and salt for god knows what reason AND THE DENTIST KEEPS COMPLIMENTING HER on the TREMENDOUS IMPROVEMENT of her dental health, so even when the brushing with salt method sounds primitive it apparently works quite well

another fun medieval (Christian) peasant fact: they weren't totally overworked and miserable. due to the church's calendar and the sheer number of feast days, they had a LOT of days off. yes, it has always been a part of the Catholic philosophy to fast and "deny the body" to gain more self-control and thus grow in virtue, but that fasting is also balanced out by feasting and resting when it came time to do so!

As an Art Historian in university, I can safely say that the reason why many people consider not only the middle ages, but any past era ever, as "inferior" to the current time is because a good 50% or more of important artifacts of those times were lost or destroyed. So many works of art and written information like books and manuscripts were lost in all kinds of events like wars, natural occurrences, or people dismantling them for other uses. People in the Renaissance, up to the 20th century, thought that greek and roman sculptures were all made without color because, when the ancient statues were found, their pigments were lost to time and natural causes. This made them believe that it was actually intentional from ancient artists, and started to worship the style of monochromatic sculptures as a "symbol of purity". Then it turns out that the ancient greeks DID paint their sculptures, just that the paint had worn out in all those centuries of being buried or hidden. Imagine this same thing with other works of medieval art and, most importantly, manuscripts that could've proven that they did hold more knowledge than we think. Historians and archeologists are searching for more artifacts precisely for that reason, to find what other forms of knowledge have been hidden due to the passage of time.

Honestly, as someone who lives in a non-English speaking Northern European country, a lot of these ideas feel really foreign? Like idk if it was just my school and city, but most of these ideas weren't really passed down to me. For example it's kond of hard to believe ppl didn't bathe when there is a Medieval bath house 4 streets from your school and about half the town squares have left overs from old clothes washing stations. And it's also hard to believe all science was bad when you can walk into a museum and see the math and science books of the time, though often geocentric, they were rarely about a flat earth model. Idk I feel like a lot of these ideas come from a lack of actually seeing the left overs of the time?

I thought the Dark Ages where a time within the Middle Ages that was barely documented. So they're "dark" because we can't "see" them.

Couldn't draw? How about all those beautifully manuscript illustrations, Mosaics, and stained glass? Art didn't vanish with the Roman empire. It was modified, changed, and became beautiful.

It's so funny how you said we should bring back apprentices when in Switzerland that is still a huge thing! Like after mandatory school, you can either continue school or do an apprenticeship and both are held to the same standard while in the U.S. that doesn't even exist. That truly is crazy to me!

Of course Baby Jesus had an adult's face. As the son of God, during his time on Earth he represented the "ideal human", and as such he could not have been a "normal" toddler that still needed to develop. Their logic was different to ours, but that doesn't mean there was no logic to it.

I remember during medieval literature classes at uni our professor talked about how a lot of ideas and attitudes medieval people had towards art and literature (esp the idea of authorship) was almost post-modern.

Castille soap is still made with lye. Soap by it's very definition is a chemical reaction between an alcoline (lye) and a fat (tallow in cheap bars, plant oils such as olive in high end bars). Castille soap is just made with olive oil any lye, and can be less drying than a tallow bar, which is why it seems milder. -Source: 11 years in the soapmaking industry

For what it's worth, this is gonna help me a lot in describing bathhouses in my d&d games. This is fantastic content, I feel like your channel's gonna blow up any day now.

I know you said don't talk about the black death, but it did create some interesting attributes to daily rituals. For example, people did stop bathing in water for a while for fear of breathing in the damp air infected with plague, miasma. So, instead, people used clean linen (they did continue to do laundry because one wouldn't be very close nor submerged in the water) to rub themselves down like a dry washcloth, and only wore natural and breathable fibers. Ruth Goodman tested this out a couple of times, and stated that as long as you only wore those aforementioned natural fibers and kept up with laundering garments, you would be essentially smell free. Water can breed the bacteria that causes odor (which we avoid by bathing frequently now), but the linen ritual could avoid that with similar success. Anyway, fantastic video! Funny it's getting recommended now.

This channel feels like ask a mortician and strange aeons had a baby. And I'm 1000% here for it. Please take this as a compliment!

As an art studant i would also like to add- like you said in the beggining, the middevil times spens through 1000 of years. Thats a very long time. Art changed throughout that times and there were times when art was lil bit more relistic. There were "little renaissances " all through out the middle ages.

A very interesting thing I learned a few years ago about "medieval literacy" is that a person (England/France) was only considered "legally literate" if they could read, write, and speak Latin. Local dialects didn't count. So a significant number of folks were perfectly literate by today's standards back then, and a whole lot of us now would be considered illiterate by their standards. That's not saying everyone knew how to read and write, but the percentages are off due to the definition of the terms at the different times. I learned this while reading about the legal codes and how there was a sort of "get out of jail free" card for people who were considered 'literate' so more well-to-do families sprung for Latin teachers for their kids.

I really love that one Tumblr post about how Medieval people almost definitely had their own inside jokes the way we do today, which was accompanied by an illustration of two figures exchanging words about a monk with a ladder and laughing about it.

In the book written by a former ortodox christian nun from Russia, she writes, that only one roll of toilet paper was provided for a whole of a month. This is 2010s not medieval ages!

In addition to turkeys being native to new world, turkeys big enough to create those gigantic turkey legs didn't exist yet as they're the relatively recent result of selective breeding. And are also all from dude turkeys, as they're larger than the lady turkeys.

Mfs out here judging Medieval Art saying it looks dumb while we literally live in an era with this super ugly, overly simplistic art style every company uses

My great-grandparents "bathed" using a cloth and perfumed oil (no idea what type of oil), I never thought this practice was so old. Their reason for this is when they were my age and younger, there were no piped water where they lived, so bringing it home to warm it up was too much trouble, just like the middle ages ppl. weird how many simple things we taken for granted

I did a Middle Ages module at my university too and when discussing how children were thought of in Medieval English and Irish culture, they were perceived to be “tiny humans” so just smaller versions of adults. So many paintings portray them as tiny angry men to convey that.

this deserves so many more views omg

Honestly, I think my problem with a lot medievalism is that it strikes me as kind of dehumanizing towards the people of the Middle Ages

Those cloth baths really do get the job done :) Living without running water for a summer made me appreciate the old fashioned way of managing hygiene tbh.

Maybe the myth of anti-scientific beliefs in medieval ages also has to do with the Descartes' scientific method being created way later, which has become the basis of modern science. If the medieval science was different, many people could as well think it was invalid, therefore inexistent. And then it suddenly popped out of nowhere and was pushed by individual geniuses against all medieval darkness. Also... this may contribute to the idea that Europians evolved through the ages very fast after this age and immediatly solved all the problems by being inherently superior to people in other continents. That fueled a lot of apology for imperialism, cause they had the argument of having "the burden of the white men" (oops, I don't know how anglofonic people describe this, but traduced the term that we use in Brazilian Portuguese "fardo do homem branco") and therefore needed to share their amazing insights with other cultures and ultimadly dominate in a paternalistic way. And we know how that went and it's still going on. Even when people mock medieval ages just for the funsies, it reignites this idea and it's just so uncomfortable after you've seen the conexions it makes...

My dad would always remind me as a kid (usually referring to ancient people) that those humans had the exact same brains as we do and they were just as smart.

"Sit in their filth for days on end" I haven’t been able to take a shower or wash my hair since the beginning of December (it’s June now). I’m chronically ill and disabled and don’t have anyone who can really help me. The last time I tried I fell, got sick in the shower, had to stay in there all day because the shower literally took a full day and caused pain and a flare of my illnesses that lasted for about three weeks after. I haven’t been able to handle it since then. I use soapy cloths or hospital bath wipes when I feel able, but I can’t really do anything about my hair other than dry shampoo. Next time you come across someone who doesn’t smell entirely fresh, you all might want take a moment and think about why they may be in that situation. It’s very rarely by choice and it hurts knowing people already think we’re gross and lazy when we would love to change it if we could. I’m homebound anyway, but this is definitely a reason why the one time I’m able to get out of the house each month (for something that isn’t a doctor appointment) to pick up my prescriptions, I refuse to get out of the car and go in anywhere. It’s been several years since I’ve been able to go somewhere just for enjoyment or for something that wasn’t a doctor appointment, surgery, or pharmacy, or be around someone who isn’t my mother or a medical practitioner. I ended my 20’s last month having not seen many to any friends at all for the majority of my 20’s. And I’ll probably spend my 30’s even more isolated because I’m aware no one wants to be near me and my not very fresh disgusting cripple sick body.

One thing you need to mention about bathhouses is that the Christians were equally religious as the Jews and the Muslims. The Jews and the Muslims generally didn't want to bathe with the Christians in the first place for the same reasons the Christians didn't want to bathe with the Jews and Muslims. The Christians were not uniquely oppressive compared to the Muslims, Muslims existed in Christian lands such as the Byzantine Empire and in southern Italy where they were often treated well, participated in battles, and had their own cities. The Normans even extended their control into Africa for a short while and during that time they were tolerant of the local Muslims and essentially let them do their own thing unhindered (except they safeguarded the status of Christians who were previously persecuted). With the exception of isolated atrocities (such as the capture of Jerusalem in the First Crusade), the crusaders were remarkably tolerant of their Muslim population and generally treated well - this isn't out of some benevolence, the crusaders being oppressive tyrants on the huge Muslim majority would be unbelievably stupid and would destabilize the realm. (Keep in mind that the crusaders were generally fighting neighboring Islamic realms or themselves, I have not found any sources of them actually fighting a guerrilla war against their Islamic population, while their Islamic subjects would be more than capable of preforming if they were treated poorly enough). The Muslims were not uniquely benevolent and tolerant compared to the Christians based on religious principle. There were simply far more Christians living under Islamic rule than there were Muslims living under Christian role. There was also a wide degree of variation between them, from the very tolerant Abbasids to the almost ISIS-like Almohads who saw the "tolerance" of Christians as second-class citizens (as was the general trend for Muslim realms at the time) as being not Islamic enough. They forced Christians and Jews to convert or die on a large scale. Even those who converted were treated as second-class citizens and inferior to "true" Muslims. The Jews were, of course, in no position to be oppressive towards others and as such, they generally kept a very insular isolated culture, often living as perpetual foreigners in their lands. While the persecution of Jews obviously had a large impact on this, one should not discount the role of Jewish culture itself in isolating them from the rest of society.

When you mention the fall of the roman Empire, you should have mentioned that this is the fall of the western roman empire. The eastern roman empire, also called the Byzantine empire, didn't fall till 1453. It was also part of the Christian world, being Christian; the notion of the Catholic and Orthodox churches being separate wasn't a thing that was solidified till near the end of the the middle ages, this is especially true in the early middle ages.

Apprenticeships are still a thing in Europe - it's still a requirement for most craftspeople here in Germany, for instance. You do get paid, but much less than a regular employee, and you go to a specific school to learn the theory while the craftsperson you're the apprentice of teaches you the practical side. After three years, you take your exam and can then work in the field.

It pisses me off when people think that everyone in The Middle Ages was a dirty bastard. People think I'm Albert Einstein when I explain to them that people back then also had standards for cleanliness. It's as if people think that bathhouses dissappeared between the Holy Roman Empire and the Renaissence. Thanks for clearing the huge one up!

One of the first history videos I’ve sen that lists their sources. This means I can watch these relay the info to my PhD mom who specializes in the Middle Ages, and not have her go “What are the sources?”. You’ve earned a new sub

Someone: “they just weren’t good at art” Me: **gently raises The Book of Kells**

Suchhhhh an awesome video!! The Middles Ages are so totally misunderstood, and people seem to forget that humans in the past were the same as humans now. It’s amazing that a generation that could build massive cathedrals could be considered “less developed”, not to even mention the rest of the non-European world that was THRIVING during this era!

Hildegard von Bingen ❤️ also as a history major I appreciate what you are doing here. Everytime someone makes fun of the midieval times I used to lecture them, now I can refer the to your video

My own grandfather who was born in the 1930s only had a bath once a week when he was a boy. He was from a poor family so they couldn't afford the fuel to heat a bath sized amount of water more often. But he says he never smelt bad, pre global warming Europe was even colder than it is now so people just didn't sweat as much. And from the Tudor times to the Victorian Era there was what's called a "mini ice age", where even the River Thames froze over which would be impossible nowdays. Getting butt naked and having a bath when its so cold and people aren't sweating loads probably just didn't make much sense most of the time, whereas if you live in a hot country not washing all the time is extremely unpleasant

My high school history teacher once said something that is stuck in my head till this day, it really gave me a new perspective. She said that we often think about middle ages as "dark times". Even the name is nothing specific for that era, like it was just few centuries between ancient times and modern times when nothing important was happening (apart from wars, plagues and poverty). But what middle ages people did really well was preserving the knowledge. Can you imagine? All of the art, science, history from ancient times they preserved without computers, servers that can store huge amounts of information. It's a big accomplishment. If not the people who were rewriting the books and storing works of art it would all be gone and later the big expansion of science and civilization wouldn't be possibile. Plus educated people in middle ages were really good with the philosophy and debating. My teacher was laughting that if we were to have a discussion with someone who was educated in middle ages we would definitely lose lol Like yeah, sure we know how to use a smartphone or what wifi is, but can we really understand how they work or how to explain them?

as someone who spent way too much time on medieval studies in university: I approve this message

this was really cool and educational! taking a couple classes focused heavily on the middle ages (especially their art) this semester and it's always great to supplement that knowledge

The modern equivalent to the medieval style of art is basically just drawing in an anime style. Imagine a thousand years from now some future civilization discovers today's people's DeviantArt My Hero Academia shipping page going "wtf, this barely even looks human did they just forget how to draw???"

As someone who grew up orthodox, i can confirm that the man-baby Jesus thing appers in most orthodox iconography

Love the video and the fact that you put your sources on it! I'm a History teacher and I'll definaly will use some things that you said in my classes!

My nuanced yearning for our dapper host to cover indigenous native American history remains unconsolidated, yet I remain hopeful.

why did this video make me so emotional. like i'm legit about to cry. idk just thinking that these people lived and were alive and felt and loved and laughed and danced like us even though we're separated by centuries, by time and space, but we can still connect with them, even for a second, by learning about their lives and customs and stories. i think i need to take my meds.

I didn't know that there was a myth about bad cooking. Super weird: here in Italy we still cook and celebrate dishes that are known to be derived from the Middle Ages. Granted, they have changed and evolved in time, but everything does. Also, there are some schools that teach you medieval cooking. And the dishes are different but delicious.

Imagine what medieval people would think of this vid, like some future society would educate about the most basic things we do now, like how to buy groceries or what a school test is. Strange stuff

We always tend to forget that people in the past were, in fact, people too. Maybe it's our brains not fully comprehending the sheer scale of time, but every one of us had an ancestor 1000 years ago who lived, breathed, played and felt boredom just like us. The best way I like to do this is to remind myself of a young Russian boy who lived around the early 1200s named Onfim. His schoolwork was preserved and we can today see not just written work, but drawings of him and others engaging in battles, and a note to what might have been a classmate or friend. Onfim lived and died long before any of us, but he was a person too. Even earlier, we have evidence of people with disabilities showing signs of being cared for *from the neolithic era.* In a time when man was thought to be his most "savage", we see genuine compassion from them as well. They were people too. We have ancestors going back to the time of Roman, the time of Sumeria, the *time before history.* All composed of people, just like us.

When you started coughing I genuinely thought you were going to say the plague ahah

When it comes to drawings, I never considered middle ages artists bad at drawing because I grew up around churches with restored art from these times- wich all had different styles, yet looked absolutly awesome and made me wanting to visit as many churches as possible for sience purposes.

Two bros, chilling in a bath house, having homosexual interactions against the church's wishes!!!

As a person of Puerto Rican/Taino descent, I would love for you to do a video on Columbus. Sadly, most Americans have no idea that it was the Caribbean and the Arawak/Taino people whom Columbus was in contact with, not the indigenous North American people. So many misconceptions about who he was, what he did and who he impacted.

Kaz: " how are you supposed to woo Kathryn if ur stinky" Me: 👁️👄👁️ but I'm Kathryn....

The best thing I took from my favorite college professor, a medievalist, was that if priests were complaining about it enough for it to get written down multiple times - it didn't mean people were listening. It meant people were cheerfully ignoring them.

One thing I’d like to add in support is that there is strong continuity between late Roman Imperial and early Medieval art because it’s a shared symbolic language. When the Tetrachy was formed, the emperors commissioned a whole bunch of stylized art to be erected all over the Empire showing them with the same face or with one face for the emperors and one for the Caesars. Sometimes it would just be a stand alone with the same stylized face, rather than a portrait of any particular one of the four. There a big one with four identical faces on one head all looking out in different directions. Did artists all over the Empire suddenly forget how to sculpt realistic faces at once? No. This art was intended to symbolize that the four of them were basically one, that the empire was still whole even though administration had been divided into big regional districts. The four men making up the Tetrarchy were effectively one authority and one will. Call it symbolism or propaganda, but it was on purpose. So Christians looked at this Imperial art symbolizing that a bunch of different dudes are functionally the same dude and thought something like, “We are all one in Christ,” so they borrowed that symbolism. They’d do statues and reliefs with the same stylized face on all the figures, male or female. Eventually the Empire fell, but people kept liking the idea so those stylized identical faces turn up in a lot of Romanesque religious structures. People also got to liking the stylized look just generally as she points out above. Don’t get me wrong, late Romans did keep doing individualized statue portraiture and you can also find plenty of Romanesque early medieval art with multiple figures with different faces despite being heavily stylized and on the same relief carving and some more realistic figures, it’s just there was a powerful symbolic message in having, say a piece of art where the saints and the ordinary people have the same face, or Jesus and the people around him all have the same face. There are all sorts of theological messages you could send to people visually in contexts where hardly anyone in that church was literate , and it could be very moving for the people contemplating the art. Tastes change over time. The bit in the video about the shift from extremely realistic to abstract modern art is very apt. Art has a visual language that can be culturally determined. (Ex: the eyes in anime are different relative sizes and shapes to convey things about the character to viewers.) Romanesque art has a context. One thousand years of medieval art was made by a variety of cultures in a variety of contexts to do different things. Context very much matters.

So I live in eastern Europe and here we have still standing Ottoman bathhouses. Christians and Jews were forbidden from entering. Just to exist in the Empire Jews had to pay a "rabbi tax" and Christians payed the "blood tax" (sons to serve as Janissaries). It wasn't just Christians who were awful.

To add on the drawing part I just finished an assignment for an Art class where we read about all the different optic tools painters who did more realistic paintings used.. it was never about skill but mostly about the new technology available and whether you wanted to use it or were even able to get it. You can see paintings that were only a few years apart be drastically different because of this.

It is always nice to see videos correcting lies about the middle ages so thank you for doing so, unfortunately, you also reinforced some other myths about the middle ages. First is the Idea that the Church didn't want people of different faiths to mingle in bathhouses because they feared the mixing of Ideas, this is an oversimplification, as these same people would trade in the marketplace which was the most common way of sharing new ideas at the time, it is why the middle east was the hub of learning for a time because of the trade routes that came from Europe, Asia and Africa all passed through the area, this was later surpassed by universities started by the Catholic Church which is one of the reasons that led to the decline of the Middle East. Also, the Jews and the Muslims were just as opposed to bathing with Christians as Christians were. Second is the reason the church frowned on bathhouses, it wasn't just because they didn't approve of sex which in itself is another oversimplification, It wasn't the fact that people were having sex that worried the Church, it was the kind of sex that was being practiced, as a general rule you didn't go to the bathhouses to have sex with your wife or husband, almost all sex in the bathhouses was Fornication, which is sex before you are married, adultery, prostitution, and homosexuality, which are all outside of marriage and or considered sinful behavior, the idea that the church was anti-sex is an exaggeration, the idea you should only have sex to procreate was not a fixed doctrine of the church, some clergy may have believed and taught it but it was not universal and had its roots in Gnosticism which was condemned as a heresy, In Gnosticism, the physical body was considered evil and only the spirit was good and physical actions like sex were considered evil, which is why Gnostics did not believe Jesus was God because they believed God would never take on evil flesh. Also, one of the reasons the Catholic Church condemned the Cathar's was because they were teaching this belief that that flesh is evil. Just a few things to consider.🙂

"...Position of privilege..." Is a rare piece of honesty given the unbridled arrogance of a lot of modern academia talking about "people who don't know where the sun goes at night." That was refreshing. Thank you.

Love how you humanized these people- my history classes were always filled with jokes centered around disgust of the Middle Ages GAH IM OBSESSED W UR VIDEOS

Listening to the bathing part while in the shower was quite the immersive experience

Usually (in Britain at least) the term "the dark ages" refers to the early medieval period c 410 - 1066, its a bullshit term stemming from having so few surviving written sources, as well as all the saxon and viking incursions. P.s. loving the bede mention

Another thing that contributed to weird medieval art of animals specifically - most people only saw the animals that were around where they lived. Stuff like giraffes were probably based on descriptions of descriptions like a game of telephone!

"They didn't bathe as often in water" Oh I know this one, it's because they bathed in beer which killed germs and was more nutritious :) /jk

Brava! Very well done. Thank you. Apprenticeship - oh hell yes. My own grandson was saved from direction into the military by the US educational system by his other grandmother's family being iron workers. She got him an apprenticeship. Saved him from Afghanistan. I will be forever grateful. That said, when I was in high school, we had class direction toward trades, not just college. Why have we stopped this?

When you really think about, they were just like us. Under feudalism, class was seen as ordained to god, so not many questioned it. Race was seen like eye or hair color, so that didn’t matter. At the time, it was discriminatory against religion. Later it was race, with things like Jim Crow laws. We still have segregation. Now it’s by class. Medieval people where just as interesting as we are, and had vivid, emotional, albeit less incidental lives. I will admit that I will get emotional thinking about all those people that died in plagues. They were people, just like all of us. Also because we are currently in a certain _event_ that these people felt.

Another historian I watched showed a great video of the kind of haircare routine a medieval woman may follow and it was fascinating because it very much worked off this idea that you want your hair clean, but you may not have access to water to do this. Or you may not have regular access to water. It was essentially a method that involved regular brushing/combing with a fine tooth wooden comb and she was impressed by how little her head itched and how little hair came out in the daily brushing. She said that if she ever had no access to water/hot water then doing this would be a great alternative to keep her hair clean. They also had a version of dry shampoo that she made and they used various oils for conditioning. It was a really good deep dive into the hair care of a different time period

Paper wasn't readily available in most of Europe during the Medieval era. Most books were made from vellum (highly processed animal skins) which was very expensive, which would have made practicing drawing quite tricky for aspiring artists. This video is right to reject the term 'dark ages', but it was a little unusual to see 'renaissance' used in the same breath. Again, this isn't a very popular term with historians these days as a) it refers to the 'rebirth' of civilisation after the non-existent 'dark ages' and b) it's very difficult to define and supposedly happened in different places hundreds of years apart. Generally modern historians instead distinguish between the Medieval era and the Early Modern era, which began around 1500, with the expansion of global trade and European imperialism around that time. Good video, though.

Paris's evil odor never went away - yup 😂😂 they don't tell you about that in the travel ads. Loving your channel gonna go and binge 🥰🥰 thank you!

5:20 is basically "tell me you've never taken an art history class without *telling* me you've never taken an art history class."

i also think it's important to note that the medieval defenition of literacy was whether or not you could read/write latin, so a lot of people that would be considered literate today would be considered the oposite back then.

Its so weird/interesting how bath houses were a phenomenon across the world, even without communication. I mostly think of Japan where they didn't really have much outside contact til the 17th century, and they've had bath houses all over the place for forever! (And they also had a reason to explain the people who drowned during bathing- obviously they didn't drown, they were just kidnapped by frog-human hybrids with plates on their heads called Kappa!)

I love that this isnt like a watchmojo video, you literally debunk by educating us

Not just did Eratosthenes say that the planet was round, he calculated the circumference for the earth, which was amazingly accurate with what he was working with and this was widely known knowledge throughtout medieval times.

As a (new) history student i wanted to add something about the maps looking "weird" that i find really interesting: Maps today are accessible to everyone. They are a useful tool. In the middle ages and even later they were an expensive piece of art. They weren't used to help navigators most of the time but as a way to show off your wealth. That is why if you really analyze them they often have some message. For example there is this one map were Europe looks like a king with its head and crown located in Spain. Ok that is from th 16th century. But you can clearly understand this is basically a propaganda tool. Another element that shows they are artwork are the rich yet totally useless images. No they didn't litteraly think there were dragons, 4 legged humans or that the red sea was litteraly red. But that is what ancient legends told. It was like a cliché they wanted to put on the map to make it more interesting

If you want a really good documentary to watch about the Tudor period (right before the renaissance in Britain), I recommend Tudor Monastery Farm. It’s fascinating and eye opening.

Based on what I've seen on the docuseries, Terry Jones Medieval Lives. one of the reasons people have to know how to read was because they want to understand the law in case of land disputes and stuff.

Practically all "realistic" perspectival paintings are only really so in the horizontal direction. In the vertical direction "accurate" perspective would look strange. Oh, and realism is only a style like any other. Mark Tansey made fun of it with his grisaille painting The Innocent Eye Test.

I experienced the point about art and drawing at my local museum last week. They have a huge exhibit on ancient Egypt and their collection spans several hundred years of Egyptian history. When you think of Egyptian art, you think of those highly stylized hyroglyphs and statues, but the exhibit also had animal figurines that were almost perfect stone reproductions of animals. Shows that the art we think of as Egyptian was very much a style choice, and not a matter of their artistic perception or ability.

It's actually quite interesting. There were "no bathing" rules for ascetics, but it was basically seen on the same level of not eating or not sleeping. And I think there was even an example of a medieval woman who wanted her marriage annulated or at least complained to some court because her husband didn't gave her enough money to at least bath once a week in a bathhouse.

I can’t believe my school taught me the complete opposite. School systems gotta up their game. They literally taught me Columbus discovered America and now that I look back at it it’s so dumb

Me, who already views the middle ages as a complex era that was not in fact dark or savage, still watching this cause i enjoy listening to Kaz: :)

It never made sense to me how people supposedly went from Romans loving their baths to medieval people going feral and bathing once a year.

I can’t believe I found such a gem so early in the game! I feel so honored rn ❤️

THAT COMMENTER HATED MEDIEVAL PPL SO MUCH LMAOOO WHYY AHAHA

Modern Ego: Medieval people were dumb Medieval Farmer: Why are you spending so much effort cultivating something you can’t eat? Yard? What’s a Homeowner’s Association? I think so many people of that day would be confused/horrified by the things we can’t do for ourselves. They had so many skills they developed over their lifetime.

“The term “Dark Ages” isn’t really used any more. It referred to a period of European history from about the mid-sixth century to the early ninth century. It was a term for the period coined by an earlier generation of historians because there was very little historical evidence from the period- that is, writing. Without a substantial written record for the era, the “Dark Ages” were seen as a period of economic and cultural stagnation. What little writing there is provides a clue for why the era was referred to as “dark”- apparently, according to the writings, the sky was dark for an extended period of time. Hence, given the combination of absence of a comprehensive historical record, and such record as there was indicating a physical phenomenon, “Dark Ages.” However, recent scholarship has uncovered more writing and records, and those have been used in conjunction with archaeology, particularly in England, to reconstruct a new view of the era. Apparently, although there was not a continuous written record, as exists in later eras, there was such writing as people of the times needed- especially relating to land. The archaeological evidence shows that the records were extremely accurate. Archaeology also shows that there was a fairly vibrant economy, with local trade, as well as trade across Europe. So the so-called “Dark Ages” were not the period of stagnation as was once believed. Without getting into details- or, indeed, event trying broad strokes- let it suffice to say that much happened during the Early Middle Ages, not only in the broad sweep of history, but in terms of everyday life- commerce, trade, ways of living. And contemporary means of research have provided much new information. Turns out, the “Dark Ages” weren’t so very dark. Except for the sky. Apparently, the sky was darkened by the eruption of a couple of supervolcanoes- including Krakatoa. Of course, writers in Europe would have had no way of knowing that- they just saw the darkened sky.”

Regarding odd Medieval art, could it not also be the case that many of the artists (or monks) who were given the task to draw didn't necessarily posess an innate talent? Kind of like how most middle school essays lowkey suck, while there are maybe one or two standouts? You know, like a law of averages sorta thing.

I mean, even the ancient Celts had soap, not modern soap but very similar.

Literacy rates were based off of whether or not someone could read and write in Latin. That limited being considered literate to mostly the clergy and a few nobles. The majority of people could read their own native languages and more than a fair number could write in the native language as well.

I really like how you talk about these topics with a lot of empathy. It’s easy for us to detach ourselves from eras that seem so different from our own, and forget about our shared humanity and experiences. Great vid!