![]() ![]() Heironymus Bosch, a Dutch painter known for his outlandish religious paintings, and Giotto di Bondone, whose frescoes and architecture added artistic cachet to Italy’s Gothic cathedrals, are just a few of the medieval artists who became famous names in their day. Meanwhile, the formation of guilds allowed artists to rise from the peasantry into roles as coveted craftspeople, while everything from illuminated manuscripts to tapestry and sculpture thrived during the era. Gunpowder weapons revolutionized warfare forever, while mapmakers managed to create astonishingly accurate maps of the world. The age produced everything from the first eyeglasses to mechanical timekeeping, the heavy plow, and moveable type-three inventions that would enable the Industrial Revolution and the Age of Enlightenment. The myth seems to stem from some authors’ use of “dark” to refer to everything from a 14 th-century poet’s complaints about the quality of local literature to a 17th-century historian’s failed attempt to find historical sources from centuries earlier.ĭespite the era’s dark reputation, though, everything from scholarship to art and technology thrived during the Middle Ages. The so-called “Dark Ages” is a myth historians have spent years trying to disprove. Myth: the medieval period was a 'dark' time of irrationality In fact, some women became leaders in war, musicians, scientists, scribes, and political power players-though education was still off-limits to most women. Historians point to evidence of gender nonconformity and close same-sex relationships in medieval artwork and literature.Īnd not all medieval women were confined to domestic duties. Though the Catholic Church taught that homosexuality was sinful, attitudes toward same-sex desire varied. Nor were queer people absent from Middle Age societies. The analysis of 41 people revealed seven different places of origin, people of African ancestry, and people with dual white European and black African heritage. One 2019 study, for example, used DNA from bones in a Black Death cemetery in London to reveal a more diverse city than previously thought. Though travel was rudimentary compared to the modern age, racial, gender and even sexual diversity could be found throughout medieval society. Myth: Medieval Europe was homogenous and provincial So why does the myth persist to this day? Blame Washington Irving, a 19th-century American writer whose fantastical biography of Columbus was so well-loved that the myth of medieval flat-earthers stuck. That’s patently false: People knew the planet was a sphere as far back as ancient Greece (12th to 9th centuries B.C.), and had relatively complex astronomical and planetary knowledge by the time Christopher Columbus made his voyage to the Americas in 1492. Myth: Medieval people believed the world was flatĪ myth persists that during the Middle Ages, the unenlightened believed Earth was flat and worried that ships might even fall off the planet’s edge. Modern historians believe that handwashing only faded during the supposedly more enlightened 16th century, when the fork began replacing diners’ washed fingers at Renaissance tables. If dining with the king, they would wait for the monarch to publicly bathe his hands before sitting-proof of his powerful status. While peasants washed their hands, too, members of the aristocracy used lavish lavatories where they washed their hands as minstrels serenaded them. ![]() They even had elaborate rituals around handwashing before meals, especially in aristocratic circles. ![]()
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