Medievalist Professor Answers Medieval Questions From Twitter | Tech Support | WIRED

I'm Medievalist Professor Dorsey Armstrong. Let's take some questions from the Internet. This is Medieval Support. Atjohnnyv45385760 asks, What did Medieval English sound like? A good shorthand way to figure out what Medieval English sounds like is to take all vowels and pronounce them as you would in French and pronounce every letter. The word for wife would be pronounced weef. The word for house would be pronounced hoose. The word night, kynicht. Here is what the Lord's Prayer would have sounded like in Middle English probably sometime in the 14th century. Atcaffeinateddays asks, Why was it called the Middle Ages? How do they know when the end was? The name Middle Ages was given to that period by people who came much later. And the middle that they were thinking of was the period roughly from about 500 to 1500 after the fall of the Roman Empire and before the Renaissance. Around 1000, there is an increase in population. And so we call this period in between say about 1000 and 1300 the High Middle Ages. This is when the university system comes into existence. This is when those beautiful cathedrals are all being built. It really is a golden age in the Medieval period. At beforewekiss asks, Wait, the Game of Thrones red wedding really happened? It's well known that George R.R. Martin borrowed liberally from Medieval history. The red wedding itself is based on Scottish history. In 1440, the young King of Scotland invited the young leaders of the Douglas clan to dine with him. When you're invited into the feast hall, you dine with the King. The code of hospitality should maintain that no ill can come to you. And instead they were betrayed and beheaded. Like in Game of Thrones, much of the contest over the throne has to do with rival factions that maybe to some degree or another are related to one another. George R.R. Martin took as his template for this the late Medieval conflict known as the Wars of the Roses. You have the Lancaster cousins against the York cousins. And in the show, the Lannisters have a name that sounds very much like Lancaster and the Starks with their one syllable name, that name chimes nicely with York. As far as characters go, the Mad Targaryen King would seem to be a pretty clear analog to King Henry VI who suffered bouts of madness. Cersei Lannister very much resembles Margaret of Anjou, Henry VI's queen. Her son was probably not the son of Henry VI. Henry VI himself commented that he could not remember when the conception had happened and that it must have been a miracle. This of course seems to be very much like the situation with Cersei whose children are not that of Robert Baratheon but are indeed the children of herself and her twin brother, Jaime Lannister. At Solis Comrade asks, Sleep in the Middle Ages was very different from sleep today. People in the Middle Ages generally slept biphasically, which means in two stages. So there was what was called the first sleep. If you're in a natural sleep rhythm that does not have any exposure to unnatural light, you will fall asleep when the sun goes down. You will sleep for a few hours and then you might get up maybe around 11, midnight. Might do some chores, might have sex. You might visit your neighbors. In early castles, the lord and lady usually slept in the great hall behind where they would sit at table for great feasts. All of the king's retainers and loyal warriors would also sleep in that same room. There might be a screen separating their sleeping quarters from the rest of the hall but there was not a ton of privacy. Then usually around 2 a.m. or so, you might enter what's called the second sleep. And this sleep would go until the sun came up and you would arise and get ready to do your chores or your work for the day. It's not until the advent of electricity and people are able to work longer hours and they need to compress their sleep into one single block that we see people sleeping, say, from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. And that is not a natural cycle. At Rasus asks, honestly, why do medieval people have so many torture devices? What the f*** was wrong with those people? First of all, they did not have all those torture devices. Yes, they had some but most torture devices you see came into use or were invented after the Middle Ages or they're completely fabricated, especially by people in the 19th century who for some reason wanted to imagine the Middle Ages as a time of savagery and barbarism. So by contrast, they seemed much more civilized. So for example, you might have the rack. That might be legit. There is no iron maiden. There is no Spanish tickler. There were no chastity belts. Any chastity belt you have seen in a museum is a fake. At Medieval Scholar asks, what is your favorite medieval castle? This is a tough question to answer because I have about 20. The top of my list is Windsor Castle. It is a great example of a Mott and Bailey castle. Basically, a Mott and Bailey castle has two parts. First, there would be an earthen mound. On top of that, you would build a keep. Below and in front of the keep would be the Bailey section. And this is where all the activity of the household would happen. A Mott and Bailey castle also have another layer outside that enclosure, which would be a moat. If you are a knight in armor, the last thing you probably want to do is swim across the moat. The moat also prevents the enemy from tunneling under the castle walls to get to the keep. If the enemy forces push through the Bailey, then everyone retreats into the keep. For the most part, a castle was defensive. It was not luxurious. There are, for example, no hallways in castles. Hallways come about with the advent of the palace, which is post-medieval. And because of this, there's really no privacy. Atshark3143 asks, did medieval kings ever just piss in the moat or what? Absolutely, and it's not just kings. Toilets tended to be a very, very small sort of closet that jutted out over the edge of the walls. Sometimes over the moat, sometimes just down into a courtyard and some poor guy had to clean it up. These were also called garderobes. Garderobes means in French, a place to keep your robe. And if you hung your clothes in the garderobe next to all the ammonia scent from the urine, you were less likely to get mites and other creepy crawlies in your clothes. Atweezy814 says, could y'all imagine the swamp ass people had during the medieval times? Yes, in the Middle Ages, you absolutely were smelling your neighbors much more than you are today. But it is a myth that they were completely unsanitary. Plenty of medieval cities had bathhouses where a caller would go through the streets announcing when the water was hot. In certain medieval communities like Strasbourg, if you were a civil servant, part of your salary went towards being able to use the bathhouse once a week so you could get clean. It did smell bad. There were open sewers, but it was not as bad as some people might believe. Atcavemanpaints asks, how did humanity survive the Black Death without vaccines? They did not. Most of them died. If we look at the mortality rate for the Black Death, we see that it's something like 80%. And that means if you contracted plague, you had maybe an 18 to 20% chance of surviving. Otherwise, you were dead. The first big wave, which was about 1346 to 1353, wipes out half of the population we now estimate. The population didn't have any chance to rebound because plague kept coming back over and over again up until 1721. And by the way, if you have seen images that supposedly represent what plague doctors looked like in sort of a primitive hazmat suit, no one wore those plague masks in the Middle Ages. You should know that that is anachronistic. It is wrong. That probably came into being sometime around the 17th century. Iloveyourmom3 says, Hansel and Gretel is brutal. Did parents even love their children? Infant mortality was so high in the Middle Ages that you might think there's no way medieval parents could attach any affection to children who were very likely to die. Evidence now shows that medieval people seemed to have loved their children just as much as modern people do, that they mourned when they died, that they worried over them when they were sick. Infant mortality rates before the first year of life are somewhere around 80%. But if you made it past age five, there's no reason why you couldn't live into your 60s, even 70s, and in some cases, 80s. The rate of infant mortality skews lifespan averages in the Middle Ages so that it looks like totally healthy people are walking around at age 35, they keel over and die. That's not the case. Since you mentioned Hansel and Gretel, this story and other stories like Red Riding Hood have one purpose, to teach your children not to go into the woods. Dangers in the woods include, for example, wolves. That was a very large danger. On the continent and in England, you also have all kinds of outlaws living in the woods. They made their living by thievery, looting, and all kinds of other unsavory practices. At Strongbow Beleg asks, I must ask, did medieval artists actually know what animals looked like? This image is from the Aberdeen Bestiary. These are cats. Yes, indeed, they did know what cats looked like. We know that they had cats and that cats were acting then like cats do now because we have evidence of paw prints walking across medieval manuscripts. We do have a medieval manuscript in which a cat apparently peed on the page and the monk circled it and noted which cat had done this to the manuscript. The way things were drawn or rendered was not meant to be a realistic representation. It was meant to be symbolic, flat, 2D, and often would have lots of signals or clues that had hidden meanings, especially in manuscript illuminations. And if you're going for a three-dimensional, realistic portrayal, that's not quite as easy to do. At Agnapunks asks, how f***ing boring would it have been to be born in medieval times? What the hell did they do for fun? They played all kinds of ball games that would involve kicking or hitting something like an inflated pig's bladder with a stick, lawn bowling where they would roll smooth stones to knock someone else's ball out of the way. They also played board games. There's a game called Fox and Geese. That's sort of a strategy game. And they played chess. Here we have an example of a chess piece from the famous Isle of Lewis chess set, which was fashioned out of walrus ivory sometime in the 12th century. At Atothied asks, do medieval court jesters actually exist? Seems fake. Does seem fake, but it's not. Court jesters absolutely existed. They provided some much-needed entertainment, both for the king and for nobles assembled at court, especially on feast days. One famous court jester, who was at the court of King Henry II, was asked every year during the Christmas holidays to put on his signature performance, which was a leap, a whistle, and a fart. But jesters, or fools as they were sometimes called, might be there just for entertainment, juggling, antics. Others might be the individual who was the only individual who could speak truth to the king without fear of getting beheaded. Because this position of fool or jester was meant on one level not to be taken seriously, these individuals could get away with giving the king advice or information or saying things that other people at court just could not. At KenzieXLittle asks, how the f*** did jousting become a thing? Jousting started out as a very necessary, pragmatic activity that was to train young knights for warfare. Over time, however, jousting became something of a spectacle and this eventually developed into the full-fledged tournament, one of which we see in the beginning of House of the Dragon. The basics are there, two knights riding at each other on horseback with a very small barrier in between to keep them to either side of what are known as the lists. House of the Dragon has some of the lower classes there. This wouldn't have been the case in the Middle Ages. This was really something that the upper classes attended and the lower classes might be present as food vendors or sellers of other goods outside the tournament arena, but not inside. Boydell and Brewer asks, did you know that in medieval England, animals could be tried and convicted of crimes? There are records of animals being taken to court. And yes, indeed there are. If an animal had caused damage to crops or to other livestock or had injured a person, very often the animal could be put on trial. And in this case, they were often thought to be possessed by Satan when they did these terrible things. Even more interesting than animals on trial though is the case of animals who became saints. In 13th century France, there is the story of the Sainted Greyhound. And this is a story in which the Lord of a castle leaves his young son in a cradle while he goes out hunting. And when he comes back, he finds the son's room is a disaster. There's blood everywhere. The cradle's been overturned. The dog has blood on its muzzle. And so the Lord thinks that the dog has killed his son. So he kills the Greyhound. Flips over the cradle and finds that in fact, what the dog had done was protect the child from a snake. And the Lord feels so bad that he creates a shrine to this Greyhound. And her name is Sainte-Geneviève. And pretty soon she becomes a local patron saint to children. And a little bit later, the Catholic church said, no, you are not allowed to have animal saints. What is wrong with you people? At Nephli's Stuff asks, was there a real King Arthur? Maybe? In about 1191, the monks at Glastonbury Abbey claim that they have found the grave of King Arthur. The monks report that in the coffin they discovered, there was a very large man who had died from an ax blow to the head. And they know it's Arthur's grave because on it is this leaden cross. And engraved on the cross in sort of very early script, here lies buried the renowned King Arthur in the Isle of Avalon. Now, in the 20th century, archaeologists excavated where the monks said they had dug. And they found out that indeed they had excavated someone. Whether or not it was actually King Arthur, we don't know. The cross itself has been lost. One clue that works in favor of this is the spelling of Arthur's name, Arturius, which is a really early spelling. If you were gonna dummy up a cross to say you found the grave of Arthur in the 12th century, you'd probably spell it Artus. Also the shape of the letters seemed to be earlier than 12th century. Although again, that could be part of the forgery. At Xavier Torch asks, did medieval knights name their swords? Because that's big in fiction. In the medieval tradition, the most famous sword is Excalibur, which belongs to King Arthur. Other medieval individuals who had actual named swords include Charlemagne, who had Joyeuse, his nephew Roland, Durandal. Some of these would be passed from generation to generation. And that's one reason why they would have names. Physical objects such as the sword would help to identify that person as the new head of the household. At Irene C. BGV says, why did the Vikings attack? Why these farmers and fishermen suddenly decided to go looting and pillaging has to do with the possibility that maybe the farmland they were working was no longer quite as fertile, and perhaps population had increased to the point that you had what's called this youth bulge, where there's too many young men and not enough for them to do. Whatever the reason, at the end of the eighth century, the Vikings start to move out from what we think of as their home territory here in Scandinavia. All of these blue pins on the map indicate places where they either set up settlements or they raided frequently. They made most of their money looting Christian churches and monasteries. The Vikings were not Christian, so they didn't know what these big structures were full of men who couldn't or wouldn't fight, except for they seem to be full of lots of nice, shiny things. They sailed up the Seine and attacked Paris, made it all the way to the Middle East, and if we go back to France, this area is Normandy. Why is it called Normandy? Because that is where the North men settled. There was almost nowhere that the Vikings did not go in the Middle Ages. Oh, here's a good one. Who is your favorite influential woman in history? I have several favorite medieval women. Right at the top, though, has got to be Eleanor of Aquitaine who famously was married to both the French king and the English king and was mother to two more kings. Eleanor was the heiress of the huge Duchy of Aquitaine, which is in what today is southern France. She was married off to the French king. Overnight, that almost doubled the size of France, but the French king wasn't a great king. He would have made a great priest. Eleanor, coming from the south, which was the land of troubadours and chivalry and courtly love and where women had much more power and influence, really was not having a great time up north in Paris where people were much more serious. She and the French king had two children, but after a certain point, it was clear that this was not working and they got the pope to annul their marriage. Once she was free, Eleanor wrote to the young prince Henry, letting him know that she was available should he be interested, and he was. She marries Henry and had an additional eight to 10 pregnancies. She is the mother of the famous Richard the Lionheart and the infamous King John. She was busy up until the very end of her life. She died when she was about 80 years old. At coveredinliz asks, what did the Holy Grail even do? Just a pretty cup? It is such an important religious object. Either the cup that Christ drank from at the Last Supper and or the cup that Joseph of Arimathea used to catch Christ's blood when he was on the cross. What's fascinating about the Grail legend in the Arthurian stories is that no one ever really succeeds. In fact, the only knight who really has a true measure of success is Sir Galahad. He gets to see the Grail, and when he does see it, we are told in Sir Thomas Malory's Mort d'Arthur that Galahad sees something and we don't get to know what it is. His flesh begins to tremble when he beholds the spiritual things, and then he dies and gets taken up to heaven. With the Grail, for everyone else, the quest is pretty much a dismal failure. So those are all the questions for today. Thanks very much for watching Medieval Support.