We may have touched upon this before, but the European Middle Ages is still to our day an incredibly slandered time period, pointed as the seat of the worst blames, such as oppression from nobility and royalty, tyranny of the Catholic Church, work slavery, nightmarish living conditions, bad nutrition and bad hygiene. See how it is portrayed every time in Hollywood films.
All of these points have been scrutinised by more honest historians in recent years and more or less all disproven. The portrayal that came to us of the Middle Ages is ironically a projection from later centuries, in which various issues, absent during the Medieval period or very limited, effectively contributed to a worsening of life conditions in Europe. Modern historians have taken it that, if things were so bad in the 19th century, Heaven knows how the could have been before then.
We might touch on other aspects in future posts, but one that is still particularly uncontested is hygienic conditions, so we would like to share an article taken from Quora by History PhD Helena Schrader, responding to the question How clean were medieval people?
All of these points have been scrutinised by more honest historians in recent years and more or less all disproven. The portrayal that came to us of the Middle Ages is ironically a projection from later centuries, in which various issues, absent during the Medieval period or very limited, effectively contributed to a worsening of life conditions in Europe. Modern historians have taken it that, if things were so bad in the 19th century, Heaven knows how the could have been before then.
We might touch on other aspects in future posts, but one that is still particularly uncontested is hygienic conditions, so we would like to share an article taken from Quora by History PhD Helena Schrader, responding to the question How clean were medieval people?