Professor of English and Medieval Literature Dr. Dorsey Armstrong answers your questions about the Middle Ages from Twitter. Why is it called the "Middle" Ages? What activities did people do for fun? How were animals tried in court for crimes? Answers to these questions and many more await—it's Medieval Support.Director: Lisandro Perez-ReyDirector of Photography: Constantine EconomidesEditor: Alex MechanikExpert: Dr. Dorsey ArmstrongLine Producer: Joseph BuscemiAssociate Producer: Paul Gulyas; Brandon WhiteProduction Manager: Peter BrunetteCasting Producer: Nicholas SawyerCamera Operator: Christopher EustacheSound Mixer: Sean PaulsenProduction Assistant: Kelsey BarnhartPost Production Supervisor: Christian OlguinPost Production Coordinator: Ian BryantSupervising Editor: Doug LarsenAssistant Editor: Andy Morell
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00:00I'm Medievalist Professor Dorsey Armstrong.
00:02Let's take some questions from the internet.
00:04This is Medieval Support.
00:11Atjohnnyv45385760 asks,
00:15What did Medieval English sound like?
00:17A good shorthand way to figure out what Medieval English sounds like
00:21is to take all vowels and pronounce them as you would in French
00:26and pronounce every letter.
00:28The word for wife would be pronounced weef.
00:32The word for house would be pronounced hoose.
00:35The word night, kinect.
00:38Here is what the Lord's Prayer would have sounded like
00:41in Middle English probably sometime in the 14th century.
00:43Our Father that art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
00:48Thy realm or kingdom come to be.
00:51And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
00:56Atcaffeinateddays asks,
00:58Why was it called the Middle Ages?
01:00How do they know when the end was?
01:02The name Middle Ages was given to that period by people who came much later.
01:08And the middle that they were thinking of
01:11was the period roughly from about 500 to 1500
01:15after the fall of the Roman Empire and before the Renaissance.
01:19Around 1000, there is an increase in population.
01:23And so we call this period in between, say about 1000 and 1300,
01:28the High Middle Ages.
01:30This is when the university system comes into existence.
01:33This is when those beautiful cathedrals are all being built.
01:36It really is a golden age in the medieval period.
01:40Beforewekiss asks,
01:44Wait, the Game of Thrones Red Wedding really happened?
01:48It's well known that George R.R. Martin borrowed liberally from medieval history.
01:52The Red Wedding itself is based on Scottish history.
01:56In 1440, the young king of Scotland invited
02:00the young leaders of the Douglas clan to dine with him.
02:02When you're invited into the feast hall, you dine with the king.
02:05The code of hospitality should maintain that no ill can come to you.
02:09And instead, they were betrayed and beheaded.
02:12Like in Game of Thrones, much of the contest over the throne
02:16has to do with rival factions that maybe to some degree or another
02:20are related to one another.
02:22George R.R. Martin took as his template for this
02:25the late medieval conflict known as the Wars of the Roses.
02:29You have the Lancaster cousins against the York cousins.
02:33And in the show, the Lannisters have a name that sounds very much like Lancaster.
02:38And the Starks, with their one-syllable name, that name chimes nicely with York.
02:42As far as characters go, the Mad Targaryen King would seem to be
02:47a pretty clear analog to King Henry VI, who suffered bouts of madness.
02:52Cersei Lannister very much resembles Margaret of Anjou, Henry VI's queen.
02:57Her son was probably not the son of Henry VI.
03:00Henry VI himself commented that he could not remember
03:03when the conception had happened and that it must have been a miracle.
03:06This, of course, seems to be very much like the situation with Cersei,
03:10whose children are not that of Robert Baratheon,
03:14but are indeed the children of herself and her twin brother, Jaime Lannister.
03:18At Solis Comrade asks,
03:20Do I have narcolepsy or do I just have the natural sleep cycle of a medieval peasant?
03:24Sleep in the Middle Ages was very different from sleep today.
03:27People in the Middle Ages generally slept biphasically, which means in two stages.
03:32So there was what was called the first sleep.
03:34If you're in a natural sleep rhythm that does not have any exposure to unnatural light,
03:40you will fall asleep when the sun goes down.
03:42You will sleep for a few hours and then you might get up maybe around 11 midnight,
03:46might do some chores, might have sex.
03:47You might visit your neighbors.
03:49In early castles, the lord and lady usually slept in the great hall
03:54behind where they would sit at table for great feasts.
03:57All of the king's retainers and loyal warriors would also sleep in that same room.
04:02There might be a screen separating their sleeping quarters from the rest of the hall,
04:05but there was not a ton of privacy.
04:07Then usually around 2 a.m. or so, you might enter what's called the second sleep.
04:12And this sleep would go until the sun came up
04:14and you would arise and get ready to do your chores or your work for the day.
04:18It's not until the advent of electricity and people are able to work longer hours
04:23and they need to compress their sleep into one single block
04:26that we see people sleeping, say, from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m.
04:32And that is not a natural cycle.
04:34At Rasus asks, honestly, why do medieval people have so many torture devices?
04:38What the f*** was wrong with those people?
04:40First of all, they did not have all those torture devices.
04:43Yes, they had some, but most torture devices you see
04:47came into use or were invented after the Middle Ages,
04:49or they're completely fabricated, especially by people in the 19th century,
04:53who for some reason wanted to imagine the Middle Ages as a time of savagery and barbarism.
05:00So by contrast, they seemed much more civilized.
05:02So for example, you might have the rack.
05:05That might be legit.
05:06There is no iron maiden.
05:08There is no Spanish tickler.
05:10There were no chastity belts.
05:11Any chastity belt you have seen in a museum is a fake.
05:15At MedievalScholar asks, what is your favorite medieval castle?
05:18This is a tough question to answer because I have about 20.
05:21The top of my list is Windsor Castle.
05:24It is a great example of a Mott and Bailey castle.
05:27Basically, a Mott and Bailey castle has two parts.
05:30First, there would be an earthen mound.
05:33On top of that, you would build a keep.
05:35Below and in front of the keep would be the Bailey section.
05:40And this is where all the activity of the household would happen.
05:43A Mott and Bailey castle also have another layer outside that enclosure, which would be a moat.
05:47If you are a knight in armor, the last thing you probably want to do is swim across the moat.
05:51The moat also prevents the enemy from tunneling under the castle walls to get to the keep.
05:58If the enemy forces push through the Bailey, then everyone retreats into the keep.
06:02For the most part, a castle was defensive.
06:05It was not luxurious.
06:06There are, for example, no hallways in castles.
06:10Hallways come about with the advent of the palace, which is post-medieval.
06:14And because of this, there's really no privacy.
06:17Atshark3143 asks, did medieval kings ever just piss in the moat or what?
06:22Absolutely, and it's not just kings.
06:24Toilets tended to be a very, very small sort of closet that jutted out over the edge of the walls.
06:31Sometimes over the moat.
06:33Sometimes just down into a courtyard and some poor guy had to clean it up.
06:36These were also called garderobes.
06:38Garderobes means in French, a place to keep your robe.
06:42And if you hung your clothes in the garderobe next to all the ammonia scent from the urine,
06:46you were less likely to get mites and other creepy crawlies in your clothes.
06:50Atweezy814 says, could y'all imagine the f*** swamp ass people had during the medieval times?
06:57Yes, in the Middle Ages, you absolutely were smelling your neighbors much more than you are today.
07:02But it is a myth that they were completely unsanitary.
07:05Plenty of medieval cities had bathhouses where a caller would go through the streets
07:09announcing when the water was hot.
07:11In certain medieval communities like Strasbourg, if you were a civil servant,
07:15part of your salary went towards being able to use the bathhouse once a week so you could get clean.
07:20It did smell bad.
07:21There were open sewers.
07:22But it was not as bad as some people might believe.
07:25Atcavemanpaints asks, how did humanity survive the Black Death without vaccines?
07:30They did not.
07:31Most of them died.
07:32If we look at the mortality rate for the Black Death, we see that it's something like 80%.
07:39And that means if you contracted plague,
07:41you had maybe an 18 to 20% chance of surviving.
07:45Otherwise, you were dead.
07:47The first big wave, which was about 1346 to 1353, wipes out half of the population we now estimate.
07:53The population didn't have any chance to rebound
07:56because plague kept coming back over and over again up until 1721.
08:01And by the way, if you have seen images that supposedly represent what plague doctors
08:06looked like in sort of a primitive hazmat suit, no one wore those plague masks in the Middle Ages.
08:12You should know that that is anachronistic.
08:14It is wrong.
08:15That probably came into being sometime around the 17th century.
08:18iloveyourmom3 says, Hansel and Gretel is brutal.
08:22Did parents even love their children?
08:24Infant mortality was so high in the Middle Ages that you might think there's no way
08:29medieval parents could attach any affection to children who were very likely to die.
08:34Evidence now shows that medieval people seemed to have loved their children
08:39just as much as modern people do.
08:41That they mourned when they died.
08:43That they worried over them when they were sick.
08:45Infant mortality rates before the first year of life are somewhere around 80%.
08:50But if you made it past age five, there's no reason why you couldn't live into your 60s,
08:57even 70s, and in some cases, 80s.
09:00The rate of infant mortality skews lifespan averages in the Middle Ages.
09:04So that it looks like totally healthy people are walking around at age 35, they keel over
09:08and die.
09:09That's not the case.
09:10Since you mentioned Hansel and Gretel, this story and other stories like Red Riding Hood
09:16have one purpose.
09:17To teach your children not to go into the woods.
09:21Dangers in the woods include, for example, wolves.
09:25That was a very large danger.
09:26On the continent and in England, you also have all kinds of outlaws living in the woods.
09:31They made their living by thievery, looting, and all kinds of other unsavory practices.
09:36At Strongbow Beleg asks, I must ask, did medieval artists actually know what animals look like?
09:42This image is from the Aberdeen Bestiary.
09:46These are cats.
09:47Yes, indeed, they did know what cats looked like.
09:49We know that they had cats and that cats were acting then like cats do now.
09:54Because we have evidence of paw prints walking across medieval manuscripts.
09:57We do have a medieval manuscript in which a cat apparently peed on the page and the
10:01monk circled it and noted which cat had done this to the manuscript.
10:05The way things were drawn or rendered was not meant to be a realistic representation.
10:10It was meant to be symbolic, flat, 2D, and often would have lots of signals or clues
10:17that had hidden meanings, especially in manuscript illuminations.
10:20And if you're going for a three-dimensional, realistic portrayal, that's not quite as easy
10:26to do.
10:26At Agnapunks asks, how f***ing boring would it have been to be born in medieval times?
10:32What the hell did they do for fun?
10:34They played all kinds of ball games that would involve kicking or hitting something like
10:38an inflated pig's bladder with a stick, lawn bowling, where they would roll smooth stones
10:43to knock someone else's ball out of the way.
10:46They also played board games.
10:47There's a game called Fox and Geese.
10:49That's sort of a strategy game.
10:51And they played chess.
10:52Here we have an example of a chess piece from the famous Isle of Lewis chess set, which
10:58was fashioned out of walrus ivory sometime in the 12th century.
11:03At Atothied asks, do medieval court jesters actually exist?
11:07Seems fake.
11:08Does seem fake, but it's not.
11:09Court jesters absolutely existed.
11:12They provided some much-needed entertainment, both for the king and for nobles assembled
11:16at court, especially on feast days.
11:19One famous court jester who was at the court of King Henry II was asked every year during
11:24the Christmas holidays to put on his signature performance, which was a leap, a whistle,
11:30and a fart.
11:30But jesters, or fools as they were sometimes called, might be there just for entertainment,
11:35juggling, antics.
11:37Others might be the individual who was the only individual who could speak truth to the
11:41king without fear of getting beheaded.
11:43Because this position of fool or jester was meant, on one level, not to be taken seriously,
11:49these individuals could get away with giving the king advice or information or saying things
11:54that other people at court just could not.
11:56At KenzieXLittle asks, how the f*** did jousting become a thing?
12:01Jousting started out as a very necessary, pragmatic activity that was to train young
12:08knights for warfare.
12:09Over time, however, jousting became something of a spectacle.
12:13And this eventually developed into the full-fledged tournament, one of which we see in the beginning
12:19of House of the Dragon.
12:20The basics are there, two knights riding at each other on horseback with a very small
12:24barrier in between to keep them to either side of what are known as the lists.
12:29House of the Dragon has some of the lower classes there.
12:31This wouldn't have been the case in the Middle Ages.
12:34This was really something that the upper classes attended, and the lower classes might
12:39be present as food vendors or sellers of other goods outside the tournament arena, but not
12:46inside.
12:46Boydell and Brewer asks, did you know that in medieval England, animals could be tried
12:51and convicted of crimes?
12:52There are records of animals being taken to court.
12:54And yes, indeed, there are.
12:56If an animal had caused damage to crops or to other livestock or had injured a person,
13:02very often the animal could be put on trial.
13:04And in this case, they were often thought to be possessed by Satan when they did these
13:09terrible things.
13:10Even more interesting than animals on trial, though, is the case of animals who became
13:14saints.
13:15In 13th century France, there is the story of the Sainted Greyhound.
13:19And this is a story in which the lord of a castle leaves his young son in a cradle while
13:23he goes out hunting.
13:24And when he comes back, he finds the son's room is a disaster.
13:28There's blood everywhere.
13:29The cradle's been overturned.
13:31The dog has blood on its muzzle.
13:34And so the lord thinks that the dog has killed his son.
13:37So he kills the greyhound.
13:39Flips over the cradle and finds that, in fact, what the dog had done was protect the child
13:44from a snake.
13:45And the lord feels so bad that he creates a shrine to this greyhound.
13:48And her name is Sainte-Geneviève.
13:50And pretty soon, she becomes a local patron saint to children.
13:55And a little bit later, the Catholic Church said, no, you are not allowed to have animal
14:00saints.
14:00What is wrong with you people?
14:01At Nephli's Stuff asks, was there a real King Arthur?
14:06Maybe?
14:08In about 1191, the monks at Glastonbury Abbey claim that they have found the grave of King
14:15Arthur.
14:15The monks report that in the coffin they discovered, there was a very large man who had died from
14:20an axe blow to the head.
14:22And they know it's Arthur's grave because on it is this leaden cross.
14:26And engraved on the cross in sort of very early script, here lies buried the renowned
14:33King Arthur in the Isle of Avalon.
14:36Now, in the 20th century, archaeologists excavated where the monks said they had dug.
14:40And they found out that, indeed, they had excavated someone.
14:43Whether or not it was actually King Arthur, we don't know.
14:46The cross itself has been lost.
14:49One clue that works in favor of this is the spelling of Arthur's name, Arturius, which
14:56is a really early spelling.
14:57If you were going to dummy up a cross to say you found the grave of Arthur in the 12th
15:01century, you'd probably spell it Artus.
15:04Also, the shape of the letters seem to be earlier than 12th century.
15:08Although, again, that could be part of the forgery.
15:10At Xavier Torch asks, did medieval knights name their swords?
15:14Because that's big in fiction.
15:15In the medieval tradition, the most famous sword is Excalibur, which belongs to King
15:20Arthur.
15:21Other medieval individuals who had actual named swords include Charlemagne, who had
15:26Joyeuse, his nephew Roland, Durandal.
15:29Some of these would be passed from generation to generation.
15:32And that's one reason why they would have names.
15:34Physical objects, such as the sword, would help to identify that person as the new head
15:39of the household.
15:40At Irene CBGV says, why did the Vikings attack?
15:46Why these farmers and fishermen suddenly decided to go looting and pillaging has to do with
15:52the possibility that maybe the farmland they were working was no longer quite as fertile,
15:56and perhaps population had increased to the point that you had what's called this youth
16:01bulge, where there's too many young men and not enough for them to do.
16:05Whatever the reason, at the end of the 8th century, the Vikings start to move out from
16:10what we think of as their home territory here in Scandinavia.
16:14All of these blue pins on the map indicate places where they either set up settlements
16:20or they raided frequently.
16:22They made most of their money looting Christian churches and monasteries.
16:26The Vikings were not Christian, so they didn't know what these big structures were full of
16:31men who couldn't or wouldn't fight, except for they seemed to be full of lots of nice,
16:35shiny things.
16:37They sailed up the Seine and attacked Paris, made it all the way to the Middle East.
16:43And if we go back to France, this area is Normandy.
16:47Why is it called Normandy?
16:48Because that is where the Northmen settled.
16:51There was almost nowhere that the Vikings did not go in the Middle Ages.
16:56Oh, here's a good one.
16:57Who is your favorite influential woman in history?
17:00I have several favorite medieval women.
17:03Right at the top, though, has got to be Eleanor of Aquitaine, who famously was married to
17:08both the French king and the English king and was mother to two more kings.
17:13Eleanor was the heiress of the huge Duchy of Aquitaine, which is in what today is southern
17:18France.
17:18She was married off to the French king.
17:20Overnight, that almost doubled the size of France.
17:23But the French king wasn't a great king.
17:25He would have made a great priest.
17:27Eleanor, coming from the south, which was the land of troubadours and chivalry and courtly
17:32love and where women had much more power and influence, really was not having a great
17:36time up north in Paris, where people were much more serious.
17:40She and the French king had two children.
17:43But after a certain point, it was clear that this was not working.
17:46And they got the pope to annul their marriage.
17:49Once she was free, Eleanor wrote to the young prince Henry, letting him know that she was
17:55available, should he be interested.
17:57And he was.
17:58She marries Henry and had an additional eight to ten pregnancies.
18:03She is the mother of the famous Richard the Lionheart and the infamous King John.
18:08She was busy up until the very end of her life.
18:11She died when she was about 80 years old.
18:13At Covered in Liz asks,
18:15What did the Holy Grail even do?
18:17Just a pretty cup?
18:18It is such an important religious object.
18:21Either the cup that Christ drank from at the Last Supper and or the cup that Joseph of
18:26Arimathea used to catch Christ's blood when he was on the cross.
18:30What's fascinating about the Grail legend in the Arthurian stories is that no one ever
18:36really succeeds.
18:38In fact, the only knight who really has a true measure of success is Sir Galahad.
18:42He gets to see the Grail.
18:44And when he does see it, we are told in Sir Thomas Mallory's Mort d'Arthur that Galahad
18:49sees something and we don't get to know what it is.
18:52His flesh begins to tremble when he beholds the spiritual things.
18:56And then he dies and gets taken up to heaven with the Grail.
18:59For everyone else, the quest is pretty much a dismal failure.
19:02So those are all the questions for today.
19:04Thanks very much for watching Medieval Support.