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20 Myths about the Middle Ages

People have some very wrong ideas about the Middle Ages. Here is a list
of twenty of the strangest misconceptions about the medieval period –
they often came about to portray the people as being ignorant, cruel and
unsophisticated.

1. 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.

However, in the 19th century it was widely reported that people in the
Middle Ages thought the Earth was flat because it made for a good
example of how backward the period was believed to be. A lot of the
blame should go to Washington Irving, an American writer. In 1828, he
wrote A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, which
reads like a biography of the explorer but was in part highly
fictionalized. One of the made-up sections has so-called experts
claiming the world is flat. Because Irving’s book was so popular, his
fictitious claim about this idea became widely accepted.

Click here to read more about the Myth of the Flat Earth

2. 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. There
are no recorded instances of this happening in the Middle Ages. When
people wrote about the Primae Noctis in later centuries, they would say
that it once happened in the Middle Ages, but that it vaguely took place
a long time ago and in places that were very remote.

3. That Vikings wore horned helmets

A drawing of the Norse god Odin by Carl Emil Doepler around 1880.
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. It was until the
19th century that some artists started to imagine that things like this
existed. One key person in this development was Carl Emil Doepler
(1824–1905), a costume designer who started including horned helmets in
famous operas. His headgear even had feathers! His depictions soon
became very popular, and others copied him.

4. That there were elaborate torture devices in the Middle Ages

An ‘Iron Maiden’ on display at the Medieval Crime Museum in Rothenburg.
Photo by Holger Uwe Schmitt / Wikimedia Commons
There are many different gruesome torture devices, including the Iron
Maiden, the Pear of Anguish, and the Breast Ripper. However, while many
are said to be ‘medieval torture devices’, they were actually invented
centuries later, sometimes as a kind of tourist attraction. Some objects
had much more mundane uses – the so-called Pear of Anguish may actually
have been a sock-stretcher.

Also, if you think medieval people got tortured in dungeons, then you
might want to read this.

5. That medieval thinkers argued over how many angels could dance on the
head of a pin
There is the claim that medieval thinkers argued over silly and useless
notions, such as “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?”
However, there is no example of a medieval scholar actually writing
about this subject. The question was actually invented in the 17th
century as a way to mock medieval theologians.

6. That chastity belts were used to prevent women from having sex

A drawing by Conrad Kyeser
The story goes that when medieval lords went on crusade, they would make
sure their wives would not have sex by enclosing their waists in a
locked belt. The truth is that chastity belts were never used in the
Middle Ages, but we do have a depiction of something that looks like a
chastity belt in the works of a military engineer named Conrad Kyeser.
He writes about it: “This is the girdle of Florentine ladies, iron and
hard, that is closed from the front.” Historians have judged this to be
a joke by Kyeser, directed at Florentine men. After the Middle Ages, we
do get stories and urban legends about chastity belts, and by the 19th
century people were making fake versions that they claimed were from the
medieval period.

7. That medieval people drank wine and beer because the water was so
polluted
While people avoided polluted water in the Middle Ages, there were many
sources of clean water which would be used for drinking. They also
understood that it was healthy to drink water, although it was not as
tasty as beer or wine.

Click here to read more about drinking water

8. That Neuschwanstein Castle is a medieval castle

Neuschwanstein Castle – photo courtesy Stokemont.com / Shutterstock
Neuschwanstein Castle has been described as one of the great medieval
castles of Europe. However, Ludwig II of Bavaria began building this
castle in 1869 – like many others in Europe, Neuschwanstein was based on
romantic ideas of what a castle would look like but actually has little
in common with a real medieval fortress.

9. That people did not live past 30 years old in the Middle Ages
It has long been stated the life expectancy for a medieval person was
about 30 years old. This does not mean that a person was considered old
or about to die when they turned 30. If a medieval person survived to
adulthood, he would likely live into his 60s or 70s, and they would not
be considered to be old until at least the age of 50. Life expectancy
rates were lower in the Middle Ages because there was a much greater
chance that an infant or child would die because of illness or disease
than in modern times.

10. That medieval people did not use cutlery
Medieval people did not have to eat everything with their hands. Knives
and spoons were common throughout the Middle Ages, while the fork goes
back to the 4th century in the Byzantine Empire. Its use spread to the
Middle East and Persia. By the 11th century, it was common in Italy, and
gradually other parts of Europe adopted it as part of their tableware too.

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11. That medieval people never travelled
The idea that medieval people would be born, grow up and die without
ever leaving their village is very unlikely. Many different records show
that people were travelling around and even moving to different parts of
a country. European peasants would go on pilgrimages and visit churches
and monasteries, in their country and overseas. Within the Islamic
world, the religious requirement of doing a pilgrimage to the city of
Mecca ensured that many medieval Muslims undertook long trips. We have
many accounts of their travels.

Beyond this, there were many other reasons for medieval people to
travel, including for business or as soldiers. It was not uncommon for
people to emigrate to different countries.

12. That medieval people were always dirty and had terrible personal hygiene

Calling someone dirty or unclean is a longstanding insult, and it is one
that has been used against many peoples in the past. So it is not
surprising that people in the 19th century, who saw themselves as
superior to their medieval ancestors, would make this claim too. As one
historian called it, the Middle Ages were “a thousand years without a bath.”

However, we have a lot of evidence that medieval people took baths and
tried to keep themselves clean. Taking baths was widely viewed as a way
to keep healthy, and one could find public bathhouses in practically
every town – 13th-century Paris, for instance, had 32 bathhouses, while
one 11th-century writer claimed that Baghdad had 60,000 (he was probably
exaggerating).

Medieval people also made use of many other grooming devices – combs
were particularly popular. While toothbrushes did exist in medieval
China, you could not find them in Europe a this time. Instead, people
cleaned their teeth with a cloth and sometimes used natural remedies to
make sure their teeth remained white and their breath fresh.

Click here to read more about bathing in the Middle Ages

13. That witch trials were common in the Middle Ages
There is a bit of truth to this one, but it is wildly exaggerated. Up to
the 14th century the idea of witches and witchcraft was pretty much
unknown in the medieval world. However, as the medieval period came to
an end, the idea began to emerge that people were using dark magic and
working with demons. We do have records of witch trials taking place and
even books like Malleus Maleficarum being written that spoke of the
dangers of witchcraft. However, it was between the 16th to 18th
centuries that European and North American societies became absorbed in
the witchcraft craze, and it was during this time that tens of thousands
of people were killed as suspected witches.

Fear of witches and witchcraft remains with us today. It is likely that
more people have been condemned and killed for witchcraft in the 21st
century than there were in the entire Middle Ages.