Why You Couldn’t Handle Medieval Women

Whether you're a lad or a lass, the unfortunate truth is that medieval women probably wouldn't like you. In fact, medieval people in general would be offended by your very presence, and if that makes you curious, then this is the video for you. But John, you might ask, why is this? Were the people of the past, specifically the women of the past, so different than us today? In some fundamental ways, no, but in cultural and social ways, you would almost think you were talking to an alien. In this video, we'll dive into the emotionally charged, deeply religious world of late medieval women, we'll learn all about what chivalry was actually like and whether or not women even cared about it, and we'll discuss the massive differences between our modern conceptions of morality and what a Western European woman 600 years ago would have to say about them. So strap in, and let's travel back through the centuries to find out what 14th and 15th century women thought of the world and why they'd probably look at you as The Dutch cultural historian Johan Huizinga argues in his book The Waning of the Middle Ages that late medieval society in Western Europe was defined by these extremely over-the-top displays of emotion. Huizinga wasn't right about everything, but there's still something to his argument if you know anything about medieval art or medieval religiosity. People back then were insanely intense in a way that you and I would have a difficult time wrapping our heads around. There are countless chronicles of medieval Catholic processions where all the townspeople in a French village or an English city would drape themselves in rags and walk barefoot for hours or even days, weeping and moaning as a local priest carried the Eucharist high over his head. You could find similar accounts of priests giving sermons about Christ's passion and being so moved that they can't finish the sermon because they're crying so hard, and also because the audience is crying uncontrollably and in some cases even rushing the pulpit to try and touch the priest. You might not think this to be true, but a number of studies have shown that generally women in a society tend to be more religious than men, and even in the male-dominated Middle Ages we see Catholic women rising to prominence on the strength of their character, but also the strength of their faith. Joan of Arc is the most obvious example with the vision she received as a simple peasant girl, and then the incredible military victories she achieved before being captured and burned to death, but the mystic Margery Kemp, who is a recurring character on this channel, is also part of this same class of medieval woman. She was known for her intense religiosity, how she would put herself through the most extreme deprivations in order to grow closer to Christ, how she would be physically attacked by Satan, and also hear the voice of Margery was very well known during her lifetime, and her story survived as one of the first autobiographies in English. Even though medieval society was patriarchal and generally viewed women as second-class citizens, Catholicism sort of acted as the great equalizer. So what does this mean for how medieval women would think of you? Well, for one, they'd probably think your comparatively chill and laid-back cool guy demeanor would be off-putting because it would If you were a potential suitor, a late medieval woman would expect you to display sincere, unrestrained passion, because love in this period wasn't a casual affair, and there weren't any situationships or any of the passive romance we've normalized today. It was totally accepted to write poetry about your willingness to die over an unrequited love, so a medieval woman, or at least a medieval noblewoman, would expect you to pine deeply for her, to declare your love publicly in poems, to cry over her beauty and chastity. This kind of over-the-top sentiment was seen as a sign of true devotion, and if you weren't showing that, then chances are nobody would waste their time with you. The obvious question here is, did women actually even want this, or was this just a figment of the male imagination that grew so strong it became sort of baked into social conventions? That's a tricky question to answer because most medieval writers were male, although we can look at one of the most famous and influential female writers of the period, Christine de Pizan. She was actually the first known woman in Europe to make a living solely off of her writing, and she publicly challenged the claims of a very popular romantic poem at the time called Roman de la Rose. The poem portrays women as crude, deceitful, sex-crazed wenches, and attempts to reverse the high view of love that had become the norm in the late middle ages, to instead view it from a more lustful, physical perspective. Christine basically stood on business and put her own reputation on the line to go against the ideas of the poem, and say that women deserve to be treated with the utmost respect, and that love should be a pure and selfless pursuit, which gives some credence to the idea that this was, at least in theory, what medieval women would have wanted or expected from a potential suitor. This brings us conveniently to the concept of chivalry, perhaps one of the most important components of the late medieval mindset, so let's dig in there to see what we can find. To all my fellas in the audience, you might be surprised to learn that chivalry wasn't really about you. It was actually about the fair lady you were pursuing, and let me explain what I mean by that. For the noble men and women of the late middle ages, chivalry had gone from this high-minded literary concept to something that was actually a big part of how they saw the world. The Burgundian Duke Philip the Bold would have his servants read aloud the deeds of heroic men of history while he got dressed in the morning so he could make sure to imitate their chivalrous attitudes as he went about his day. Chivalry turned into a kind of social performance with rules and expectations where the man's role was to prove his virtue and devotion in these increasingly elaborate ways. It got to the point where no act of obedience or humiliation was off-limits if a knight was doing it in honor of his lady. One of the most famous examples of this comes from the Arthurian Romance of Lancelot and Guinevere, and let's keep in mind that Arthurian legends were a cornerstone of the high and late medieval imagination. Sir Lancelot, who was this paragon of the chivalric lover, proves his loyalty to his beloved by riding in a criminal's cart, which was a pretty crazy public humiliation considering his noble status, because the queen's honor and rescue demanded it. So we might imagine from our medieval ideas of knights in glorious armor and their battlefield bravado that the middle ages were all about machismo, but by the 14th and 15th centuries, a man's worthiness in love was proven by self-sacrifice and ritual submission. Our modern approach to dating, which you probably know tends to revolve around casual, mutual interactions like, I don't know, a coffee date or meeting up for some activity, would seem shockingly selfish and disrespectful to a medieval noblewoman. Again, much of what we know about chivalry comes from male writers, which of course begs the question, what did women really think of it? Well, to answer that, we have to go back to Christine de Pizan. In her work God of Love's Letter, she has the figure of Cupid scold men who dishonor women under the guise of courtly love, and other women of the period complained that even noble men would deceive and slander them despite the lofty ideals of the chivalric code. So while chivalry was, on its surface, all about a man's servitude and virtue, that's, well, kinda what it was all about. The knight would go through all of these incredible tasks and acts of submission which in a lot of ways mirrored the late medieval obsession with religious asceticism. And his lady would be sort of a blank canvas onto whom were projected all of these high-minded ideals with seemingly little concern for her actual happiness. That being said, at least some degree of chivalrous approach would have been expected by medieval women of any male suitor, and that kind of passion and dedication is largely missing from modern conceptions of romance. When examining history like this, I always wonder what it was like for the common people. We mostly have the writings and literary stylings of the nobility as our evidence of this obsession with chivalry, but would a peasant woman or a merchant's wife in some city have cared about any of it? It's difficult to tell, although there's quite a bit of evidence to suggest that in the late middle ages, the lower classes sought to imitate the nobility in any way possible. Nowadays we tend to be rightfully and openly disgusted with billionaires and those who flaunt their wealth, but you don't see a lot of this in medieval social commentary. Instead, the common people have this weird mix of admiration for their lords, but then there's also this resentment that simmers under the surface until the common people are pushed too hard and erupt into horrific violence against the nobility, like we see in the 1358 Jacquerie Revolt in France. But this is pushing us into the territory of medieval morality, and what a medieval woman might actually be like if you were to engage her in casual conversation. I've already painted the picture for you of late medieval Christendom, which was totally saturated with the themes of medieval Catholicism in pretty much every aspect of everyday life. Interestingly, Johann Huizinga makes the claim that this was a two-way street. In some ways, it elevated the day-to-day grind of life to a holier status, but in other ways, it actually dragged the holy down to the level of the vulgar and mundane. But the general attitude of a late medieval woman would have been fixed on chastity, piety, and maintaining their reputation. This wasn't just an expectation that men put on women, it was an expectation that women very much had of men. A man who failed to live up to the religious standards of the day wouldn't have just been thought of as personally corrupt and not an ideal partner, he would have been seen as dishonorable and even a threat to the community. A lot of our modern habits, including many of which you've surely participated in today, would absolutely horrify a medieval woman. Use of profane language, indulgence in sexual imagery, a casual or non-existent approach to religious duties, these all would have been a death sentence to your reputation in the late middle ages. Medieval society was profoundly lacking in equality in many ways, but as I mentioned previously, Catholicism was the great equalizer. Everyone from kings to peasants was expected to go to confession and attend mass and live at least a somewhat pious life, and if you flouted these rules, it was nothing short of scandalous. But why did medieval women care so much about this? If you were otherwise a nice guy, why would it matter to them whether you took your salvation seriously or how much attention you paid at mass? Women had many responsibilities in their households, including the usual domestic duties of cooking and cleaning, but also home repairs, helping with agricultural duties if their husband was a farmer, and even engaging in trades of their own like the countless late medieval guilds that had women as active members. However, the patriarchal nature of medieval society meant that men were expected to be the moral guardians of their households, to lead prayers, to safeguard their wife and their souls, and to uphold some sense of propriety. Basically, if you were the man of the house, within those four walls, you were kind of like the priest. There are plenty of 15th century sermons that explicitly criticize men who visit brothels or engage in any kind of sexual debauchery, and preachers would directly say that this kind of behavior brought eternal consequences down on the whole household, not just the man himself. In medieval chronicles, we see prominent figures engaging in deep religious devotion, and we also see prominent figures acting in ways that seem to completely shirk any kind of Christian morality, and we assume these two things are at odds with each other. Some people were into the whole Christian thing, and some people weren't. The strange truth is that both these types of behavior were often exhibited by the same people, meaning even though the late middle ages were a time of intense religiosity, this wasn't always reflected in the actions of those who actually lived back then. In many cases, there was a little bit of both, like the example of Anne of Burgundy, wife of the Duke of Bedford, who scandalized the people of Paris by splashing a religious procession with mud when she carelessly rode past on her horse, but who would also leave court feasts early to attend matins, and who died caring for the sick in an impromptu hospital. So to answer our question of whether or not women really cared about religion and morality, we can say that they very likely did, although human beings are complicated and we should always refrain from making big sweeping statements about all of the people in a certain period. Once you build your time machine and head back to the middle ages, just like today, you'll find that some have different perspectives and values than others. But let's land the plane here. Would late medieval women really hate you? Maybe hate is a strong word, but I think you would have a tough time relating to medieval people in general. Their perspective on the world was much different than ours, especially in the late middle ages, when Catholicism and a fixation on honor had become so thoroughly infused in the general consciousness that it created this paradigm that would be completely foreign to our modern minds. Nowadays we tend to approach things cautiously, we don't really give ourselves over to extreme displays of emotion, and in fact we find those types of displays pretty off-putting. Most of what medieval men did in pursuit of their ladies would now probably be considered love-bombing. Perhaps there's something we can learn here about values though. While sometimes certain concepts were taken too far in the middle ages, like the obsession with chivalry turning into a sort of overwhelming personal pride that bled into international relations, there's something admirable about how seriously they took the world around them. Too often now we're concerned about trying too hard, about our behavior being cringeworthy or our interests being too earnest. I think we need to take a page from our medieval ancestors and fully engage with life on life's terms and hurl ourselves at it, instead of approaching it with this air of cynicism and sarcasm. But what do you think? Could we get along with medieval people at all, or would they instinctively hate us? Let me know in the comments. As always, I'm Jon, this has been Medieval Mindset, and remember, the past isn't gone, it's simply waiting to be rediscovered.