Medieval People Were Wacky

I’ve raised three children and with each I’ve leaned heavily into mainstream education. Having a year of doing some completely different was a gift, one that this post really sums up for me. As a writer, it’s been an amazing process to instill (inflict?) my pet peeves on my child (note the lack of passive voice in this essay, and I didn’t touch it at all!). As a parent, it’s been fabulous to have the time and space to follow my child’s curiosity, to trust him to learn what he wants to learn (notably biology, trigonometry, aerodynamics. and computer programming) and to answer his questions about life and the world around him with, “Well, let’s make that a unit!” Gabe finished this post the week before we left and I sent him back a message that said, “And now you are done.” If any piece sums up his year, it’s this. The topic shows his delight in learning, the voice is mature, the pacing is right, and I had nothing to do with any of it. He told me he wanted to write this for his last essay and I just had to let him roll. What a process it’s been. When I think of our year abroad, I know I’ll feel grateful for the travel, the clinking of wine glasses over tables up and down the boot, the sounds of Italian ringing around us in the year without tourism, but I will also remember fondly the walks with my son through the twinkling olive groves, wondering about Marco Polo and why olive trees live so long.

Medieval People Were Wacky

Medieval people were wacky.

Throughout this year abroad, I have studied various different ancient cultures, and while the intricacies of these cultures are interesting, no aspects of a culture are perhaps more interesting than the weird traditions. From what I have seen, the culture with the absolute zaniest of traditions is… (you already know because you read the title)… the various civilizations of the medieval era. Mostly I will be focusing on medieval Great Britain, as it may be the best documented of all the civilizations. 

First of all, let’s discuss why I chose the medieval era. It’s true, every culture has its fair share of weird traditions (even to this day, but I’ll get to that later), for example in the time of Ancient Rome, they constructed “bocche della verità” or “mouths of truth.” When one suspected that their friend lied, they made their friend put their arm into this mouth (usually a face carved into stone with a hole for a mouth). If the mouth closed around the arm, the suspect lied, if not, they told the truth. Another good example of ancient traditions took place in Italy during the Renaissance. Rome no longer ruled the towns of the Italian peninsula and thus Christianity ran rampant. This fueled many traditions, my favorite being this: oftentimes towns dug away large swaths of land around their town, in search of religious or historical objects. If they found an object with pagan roots, they considered it to bear an awful curse if they brought it back to town, as this exact scenario happened to the town of Siena. So it became common practice to, when digging teams unearthed these objects, bury them secretly under another rivaling town to bring them bad luck in the future.

 These are all marvelous traditions, but when it comes to sheer quantity of insanity, the medieval era takes the cake. Although I haven’t personally studied the medieval era in great depth, I’ve heard many odd traditions in my time. For this last “essay” I will be writing for this year, I’d like to talk about some of those zany traditions. 

The first tradition that comes to mind are animal trials. When I first heard of this subject, I assumed it to be a reference from a children’s story. I still picture cows in suits in a crowded courtroom, defending a nervous chicken. Turns out I’m not too far off. Courts often held animal trials over small disputes, such as a rat failing to leave a house by a certain date and time, or an insect that the people believed started a sickness in the town. However, a large percentage of trials had much more gravity to them. This image from the late 13th century pretty much sums it up, depicting a man accusing a sow in a courtroom (of course the sow is weeping, who wouldn’t).  Unfortunately the court found the sow guilty and put it to death on charges of murdering its owner, real mood dampener. From the 13th to the 15th century, these trials occurred often. 

Another notable trial occurred in 1379, when a town put on trial a herd of  three sows (technically a “drift of sows”) on charges of, you guessed it, killing and maiming their owner. Seems to me like sows really need some work on their public representation. In fact, farmers subjected their pigs and hogs more than any other animal to this trial. Usually for maiming. Sows often bit off extremities when mistaking them for an especially bony carrot, and sadly, trampled farmers or even children to death. But perhaps the greatest sin ever committed happened when a hog stole and ate a consecrated wafer. The court, of course, sentenced the pig to death. As you can see, in court, Medieval towns treated animals equally to humans.

A second bizarre tradition is divorce by combat, and it is pretty much what it sounds like. The Germans of the 15th century utilized this tactic to settle nonfunctional marriages, or even common disputes. However, no one wanted this to be an unstructured kerfuffle, no no, there had to be rules, and many of them. The whole ordeal feels almost like a big game. At the time, the Catholic Church outlawed divorce, which forced unhappily married people to find another strategy. The logical workaround to the phrase “to death do us part.” Even though the combat wouldn’t be lethal, the town hanged the loser.

There are so many other brilliant traditions and oddities from the medieval era, those two don’t even begin to scratch the surface. Every now and again I think about all the odd things that we do today that will be laughed at in future millennials. One that comes to mind is  Halloween. We carve out gourds, put a candle in them, and put them outside our doors. We then proceed to put on outfits to make us look like things that scare us, and walk around to other houses and ask for food. So who knows, maybe in a thousand years or so people will be writing about us, weirdness is relative.