The Middle Ages and What We Can Do About Them

The Middle Ages is often referred to as “The Dark Ages” because the lack of documentation from the period makes what happened to them seem fuzzy and incomplete, much like middle ages for the rest of us…

Historians tend to set the beginning of the Dark Ages as coinciding with the fall of the Roman Empire. Well… not all of the Roman Empire, just the part that had Rome in it. We could have a Roman Empire without Rome for the same reason you can eat French fries outside of France.

Medieval barbers cut hair but also pulled teeth and bled customers. Today’s barbers might do the same thing from time to time but never on purpose…

In the Middle Ages, animals could be put on trial. Today, it is nearly impossible to get an indictment when your cat sets up an illegal offshore account to launder drug money.

Medieval rye bread was often infected with an hallucinogen called “ergot” that caused disturbing visions and painful cramps. We have a similar rye bread today but it isn’t bread and we call it a “rave”…

Surnames came about during the Middle Ages. Up until then, people tended to go by just one name; and, for half of the people, that name was “Resident”…

In Medieval Germany, husbands and wives could resolve conflict through combat where the man, standing in a hold and armed with a stick, fought his wive who was outside the hole holding a bag of rocks. This is very different from conflict resolution today in Germany in that there is no hole and the bag of rocks is a lawyer.

In France, during the Middle Ages, one pastime was to burn barrels of cats alive over a bonfire. As time went on, the practice was frowned upon and eventually was discontinued because who wants their barrel of cats frowned upon?

If you lived to twenty-one years old, in Medieval times, the average span of your life was sixty-four years… unless you were a cat in a barrel.

A lot of saints came from the Middle Ages and many of them were kings who tortured and murdered enemies. Maybe it was a bad idea to make them saints; but, would you want to piss off a mass murderer who could also perform miracles?