Who was there in the Middle Ages? Who is a medieval man

Giotto. Fragment of the painting of the Scrovegni Chapel. 1303-1305 Wikimedia Commons

A medieval person is, first of all, a believing Christian. In a broad sense, it can be a resident Ancient Rus', and Byzantine, and Greek, and Copt, and Syrian. In a narrow sense, this is a resident Western Europe, for which faith speaks Latin.

When he lived

According to textbooks, the Middle Ages begin with the fall of the Roman Empire. But this does not mean that the first medieval man was born in 476. The process of restructuring the thinking and the imaginative world lasted for centuries - starting, I think, with Christ. To some extent, a medieval person is a convention: there are characters in whom, already within medieval civilization, a new European type of consciousness manifests itself. For example, Peter Abelard, who lived in the 12th century, is in some ways closer to us than to his contemporaries, and in Pico della Mirandola  Giovanni Pico della Mirandola(1463-1494) - Italian humanist philosopher, author of the “Speech on the Dignity of Man”, the treatise “On Being and the One”, “900 theses on dialectics, morality, physics, mathematics for public discussion” and so on., who is considered the ideal Renaissance philosopher, is very much medieval. Pictures of the world and the era, replacing each other, are simultaneously intertwined. In the same way, in the consciousness of a medieval person, ideas are intertwined that unite him with us and with his predecessors, and at the same time, these ideas are in many ways specific.

Finding God

First of all, in the consciousness of a medieval person, the most important place is occupied by the Holy Scriptures. For the entire Middle Ages, the Bible was a book in which one could find answers to all questions, but these answers were never final. We often hear that people of the Middle Ages lived according to predetermined truths. This is only partly true: the truth is indeed predetermined, but it is inaccessible and incomprehensible. Unlike the Old Testament, where there are legislative books, the New Testament does not give clear answers to any question, and the whole point of a person’s life is to seek these answers himself.

Of course, we are talking primarily about thinking man, about, for example, who writes poetry, treatises, frescoes. Because it is from these artifacts that we reconstruct their picture of the world. And we know that they are looking for the Kingdom, and the Kingdom is not of this world, it is there. But no one knows what it is. Christ does not say: do this and that. He tells a parable, and then think for yourself. This is the guarantee of a certain freedom of medieval consciousness, constant creative search.

Human life

The people of the Middle Ages hardly knew how to take care of themselves. Pregnant wife of Philip III  Philip III the Bold(1245-1285) - son of Louis IX Saint, was proclaimed king of Tunisia during the Eighth Crusade, after his father died of the plague., King of France, died after falling from her horse. Who thought of putting her pregnant on a horse?! And the son of King Henry I of England  Henry I(1068-1135) — younger son William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy and King of England William Etheling, the only heir, went out with a drunken crew on the night of November 25, 1120 best ship Royal Navy in the English Channel and drowned after crashing on the rocks. The country plunged into turmoil for thirty years, and my father received as consolation a beautiful letter from Childebert of Lavarden, written in stoic tones.  Childebert of Lavarden(1056-1133) - poet, theologian and preacher.: they say, don’t worry, owning the country, know how to cope with your grief. Dubious consolation for a politician.

Earthly life in those days was not valued, because other life was valued. The vast majority of medieval people had an unknown date of birth: why write it down if they die tomorrow?

In the Middle Ages there was only one ideal of a person - a saint, and only a person who has already passed away can become a saint. This is a very important concept that combines eternity and running time. Until recently, the saint was among us, we could see him, and now he is at the throne of the King. You, here and now, can venerate the relics, look at them, pray to them day and night. Eternity is literally at hand, visible and tangible. Therefore, the relics of saints were hunted, they were stolen and sawed - in literally words. One of Louis IX's close associates  Louis IX Saint(1214-1270) - king of France, leader of the Seventh and Eighth Crusades. Jean Joinville  Jean Joinville(1223-1317) - French historian, biographer of Saint Louis., when the king died and was canonized, he ensured that a finger was cut off for him personally from the royal remains.

Bishop Hugo of Lincoln  Hugo of Lincoln(c. 1135-1200) - French Carthusian monk, bishop of the diocese of Lincoln, the largest in England. traveled to different monasteries, and the monks showed him their main shrines. When in one monastery they brought him the hand of Mary Magdalene, the bishop took and bit off two pieces from the bone. The abbot and the monks were at first dumbfounded, then they screamed, but the holy man, apparently, was not embarrassed: he “expressed deep respect for the saint, because he also takes the Body of the Lord inside with his teeth and lips.” Then he made himself a bracelet in which he kept particles of the relics of twelve different saints. With this bracelet, his hand was no longer just a hand, but a powerful weapon. Later he himself was canonized.

Face and name

From the 4th to the 12th centuries, people seemed to have no face. Of course, people distinguished each other by their facial features, but everyone knew that God’s judgment is impartial; at the Last Judgment, it is not the appearance that is judged, but the actions, the soul of a person. Therefore, there was no individual portrait in the Middle Ages. Somewhere from the 12th century, eyes were opened: people became interested in every blade of grass, and after the blade of grass, the whole picture of the world changed. This revival, of course, was reflected in art: in the 12th-13th centuries, sculpture acquired three-dimensionality, and emotions began to appear on faces. In the middle of the 13th century, portrait likeness began to appear in sculptures made for the tombstones of high church hierarchs. Paintings and sculptures of former sovereigns, not to mention persons of less significance, are mainly a tribute to conventions and canons. Nevertheless, one of Giotto’s customers, the merchant Scrovegni  Enrico Scrovegni- a wealthy Paduan merchant, on whose order early XIV century, a house church was built, painted by Giotto, the Scrovegni Chapel., is already known to us from completely realistic, individualized images, both in his famous Padua chapel and in his tombstone: comparing the fresco and sculpture, we see how he has aged!

We know that Dante did not wear a beard, although in " Divine Comedy“his appearance is not described, we know about the heaviness and slowness of Thomas Aquinas, nicknamed by his classmates the Sicilian Bull. Behind this nickname there is already attention to the external appearance of a person. We also know that Barbarossa  Frederick I Barbarossa(1122-1190) - Holy Roman Emperor, one of the leaders of the Third Crusade. was not only Red beard, but also beautiful hands- someone mentioned this.

The individual voice of a person, sometimes considered to belong to the culture of modern times, is heard in the Middle Ages, but is heard for a long time no name. There is a voice, but no name. A work of medieval art - a fresco, a miniature, an icon, even a mosaic, the most expensive and prestigious art for many centuries - is almost always anonymous. It's strange for us that Great master doesn’t want to leave his name, but for them the work itself served as a signature. After all, even when all the subjects are given, the artist remains an artist: everyone knew how to depict the Annunciation, but a good master always brought his own feelings into the image. People knew the names good craftsmen, but no one thought to write them down. And suddenly, somewhere in the 13th-14th centuries, they acquired names.

Attitude towards sin

In the Middle Ages, of course, there were things that were prohibited and punished by law. But for the Church the main thing was not punishment, but repentance.
Medieval man, like us, sinned. Everyone sinned and everyone confessed. If you are a church person, you cannot be sinless. If you have nothing to say in confession, then there is something wrong with you. Saint Francis considered himself the last of sinners. This is the insoluble conflict of a Christian: on the one hand, you should not sin, but on the other, if you suddenly decide that you are sinless, then you have become proud. You must imitate the sinless Christ, but in this imitation you cannot cross a certain line. You cannot say: I am Christ. Or: I am an apostle. This is already heresy.

The system of sins (which are forgivable, which are unforgivable, which are mortal, which are not) was constantly changing because they did not stop thinking about it. TO XII century a science such as theology appeared, with its own tools and faculties; One of the tasks of this science was precisely the development of clear guidelines in ethics.

Wealth

For medieval man, wealth was a means, not an end, because wealth is not about money, but about having people around you - and in order to have them around you, you must give away and spend your wealth. Feudalism is primarily a system of human relationships. If you are higher in the hierarchy, you should be a “father” to your vassals. If you are a vassal, you must love your master in virtually the same way as you love your father or the King of Heaven.

Love

Paradoxically, much in the Middle Ages was done by calculation (not necessarily arithmetic), including marriages. Love marriages known to historians are very rare. Most likely, this was the case not only among the nobility, but also among the peasants, but we know much less about the lower classes: there it was not customary to record who married whom. But if the nobility calculated benefits when they gave away their children, then the poor, who counted every penny, even more so.

Peter of Lombardy, a 12th-century theologian, wrote that the husband, passionately loving wife, commits adultery. It’s not even about the physical component: it’s just that if you give too much to your feelings in marriage, you commit adultery, because the meaning of marriage is not to become attached to any earthly relationship. Of course, this view may be considered extreme, but it has proven influential. If you look at it from the inside, then it is the other side of courtly love: let me remind you that love in marriage is never courtly, moreover, it is always the subject of dreams of possession, but not possession itself.

Symbolism

In any book about the Middle Ages you will read that this culture is very symbolic. In my opinion, this can be said about any culture. But medieval symbolism was always unidirectional: it is somehow correlated with Christian dogma or Christian history, which formed this dogma. I mean Holy Scripture and Holy Tradition, that is, the history of the saints. And even if some medieval man wants to build his own world inside medieval world- like, for example, William of Aquitaine  William IX(1071-1126) - Count of Poitiers, Duke of Aquitaine, the first known troubadour., the creator of a new type of poetry, the world of courtly love and the cult of the Beautiful Lady - this world is still built, correlating with the value system of the Church, imitating it in some ways, rejecting it in some ways, or even parodying it.

Medieval people generally have a very unique way of looking at the world. His gaze is directed through things behind which he strives to see a certain world order. Therefore, sometimes it may seem that he did not see the world around him, and if he did, then sub specie aeternitatis - from the point of view of eternity, as a reflection of the divine plan, revealed both in the beauty of Beatrice passing by you, and in a frog falling from the sky (sometimes They were believed to be born from rain). A good example history serves this purpose, like Saint Bernard of Clairvaux  Bernard of Clairvaux(1091-1153) - French theologian, mystic, leader of the Cistercian order. I drove for a long time along the shore of Lake Geneva, but was so immersed in thought that I did not see it and then asked my companions in surprise what lake they were talking about.

Antiquity and the Middle Ages

It is believed that the barbarian invasion swept away all the achievements of previous civilizations from the face of the earth, but this is not entirely true. Western European civilization inherited from Antiquity both the Christian faith and a whole range of values ​​and ideas about Antiquity, which was alien and hostile to Christianity, pagan. Moreover, the Middle Ages spoke the same language with Antiquity. Of course, much was destroyed and forgotten (schools, political institutions, artistic techniques in art and literature), but the figurative world of medieval Christianity is directly connected with the ancient heritage thanks to various kinds of encyclopedias (collections of ancient knowledge about the world - such as, for example, “Etymologies” St. Isidore of Seville  Isidore of Seville(560-636) - Archbishop of Seville. His Etymologies is an encyclopedia of knowledge from different areas, drawn including from ancient works. He is considered the founder of medieval encyclopedism and the patron of the Internet.) and allegorical treatises and poems like “The Marriage of Philology and Mercury” by Marcian Capella  Marcian Capella(1st half of the 5th century) - ancient writer, author of the encyclopedia “The Marriage of Philology and Mercury,” dedicated to an overview of the seven liberal arts and written on the basis of ancient writings.. Now few people read such texts, very few who love them, but then, for many centuries, they were read. The old gods were saved by precisely this kind of literature and the tastes of the reading public behind it. 

Setting a time frame

If we talk about the Middle Ages briefly, then this is one of the longest and most interesting eras after the ancient world. For a long time, among medieval scholars (medieval studies is one of the branches of history that studies the European Middle Ages) there was no agreement in defining the framework of this period in human history. The fact is that different countries developed completely differently. Someone left economically, politically and social development forward, some countries, on the contrary, lagged very far behind others. Therefore, now the Middle Ages, in short, are considered both as a general historical process and as a phenomenon that took place in any country. Here it could have its own specific characteristics and time frames.

History of the Middle Ages in brief

If we consider the Middle Ages, briefly outlined, the beginning of this era is considered to be the time of the collapse of the Great Roman Empire - the 5th century AD. However, in some European sources The beginning of the Middle Ages is considered to be the time of the emergence of Islam - the 7th century. But the first date is considered more common.
As for the end of the Middle Ages, here again the opinions of historians differ. Italian historians believe that this is the 15th century, Russian scientists accepted it as the final date end XVI- beginning of the 17th century. Again, for each country this date was set according to its development.

History of the term

This term, “Middle Ages,” was first used by Italian humanists. Before this, the name “dark ages” was used, which was coined by the great Italian Renaissance poet Petrarch.
In the 17th century, the name Middle Ages, in short, was finally consolidated in science by Professor Christopher Keller. He also proposed the following division world history on antiquity, the Middle Ages and modern times.
Why this particular name was taken is because the Middle Ages are located between antiquity and modern times.
For many years it was customary to consider the Middle Ages to be a time brutal wars and the dominance of the church. This era was referred to exclusively as the “dark ages,” where ignorance, inquisition, and barbarism reigned. Only in our time has the idea of ​​the Middle Ages begun to change radically. They started talking about it as a time full of romance, great discoveries, beautiful works art.

Periodization in the Middle Ages

It is generally accepted to divide the history of the Middle Ages into three large periods:

Early Middle Ages;
classic;
late Middle Ages.

Early Middle Ages

It begins with the fall of the Great Roman Empire and lasts about 500 centuries. This is the time of the so-called Great Migration of Peoples, which began in the 4th century and ended in the 7th. During this time, Germanic tribes captured and subjugated all the countries of Western Europe, thus defining the appearance of modern European world. The main reasons for mass migration during this period of the Middle Ages, in short, were the search for fertile lands and favorable conditions, as well as a sharp cooling in the climate. That's why northern tribes moved closer to the south. In addition to the Germanic tribes, Turks, Slavs and Finno-Ugric tribes took part in the resettlement. The Great Migration of Peoples was accompanied by the destruction of many tribes and nomadic peoples.
The existence of the Byzantine Empire and the formation of the Frankish Empire are associated with the era of the early Middle Ages.

High or classical Middle Ages

This is the period of the formation of the first cities, the emergence of the feudal system, the heyday of the power of the Catholic Church and the Crusades. Lasted from 1000 to 1300 centuries.
During times classical middle ages a hierarchical (feudal) ladder was formed - a special sequential arrangement of ranks. The institutions of vassals and seigneurs appeared. The owner of the land, a seigneur, could give a fief (land plot) for temporary use for special conditions. The vassal who received the fief became the military servant of his lord. For the right to use this land plot he had to serve in the army 40 days a year. He also took the obligation to protect his lord. However, in the Middle Ages, to put it briefly, these conditions were quite often violated by both sides.
The economy of the Middle Ages was based on Agriculture, in which most of the population was employed. The peasants cultivated both their land plots and the master's. More precisely, the peasants had nothing of their own; they were distinguished from slaves only by their personal freedom.
Catholic Church

During the era of the classical Middle Ages, the Catholic Church reached its power in Europe. She influenced all areas of human life. The rulers could not compare with its wealth - the church owned 1/3 of all lands in each country.
Medieval man was extremely religious. What is considered incredible and supernatural for us was ordinary for him. Belief in the dark and light kingdoms, demons, spirits and angels - this is what surrounded man, and what he believed unconditionally.
The Church strictly ensured that its prestige was not damaged. All free-thinking thoughts were nipped in the bud. Many scientists suffered from the actions of the church at one time: Giordano Bruno, Galileo Galilei, Nicolaus Copernicus and others. At the same time, in the Middle Ages, briefly speaking, it was the center of education and scientific thought. There were church schools at the monasteries, which taught literacy, prayers, Latin language and singing hymns. In the book copying workshops, also at the monasteries, the works of ancient authors were carefully copied, preserving them for posterity.

Knights
All the romance inherent in the Middle Ages is associated with knights. A knight is a feudal warrior on horseback. Knighthood, as a special class, arose from military warriors who became vassals and served their lords. Over time, only a warrior of noble birth could become a knight. They had their own code of conduct, in which the main place was occupied by honor, loyalty to the Lord and worship of their lady of the heart.

Crusades
A whole series of these campaigns took place over 400 years, from the 11th to the 15th centuries. They were organized by the Catholic Church against Muslim countries under the slogan of protecting the Holy Sepulcher. In fact, it was an attempt to seize new territories. Knights from all over Europe went on these campaigns. For young warriors, participation in such an adventure was prerequisite to prove his courage and confirm his knighthood.

Medieval cities
They arose primarily in places of busy trade. In Europe it was Italy and France. Cities appeared here already in the 9th century. The appearance of the remaining cities dates back to the 10th - 12th centuries.

Late Middle Ages
This is one of the most tragic periods of the Middle Ages. In the 14th century, almost the entire world experienced several plague epidemics, the Black Death. In Europe alone, it destroyed more than 60 million people, almost half the population. This is the time of the strongest peasant uprisings in England and France and the longest war in the history of mankind - the Hundred Years. But at the same time, this is the era of the Great Geographical Discoveries and the Renaissance.
The Middle Ages are an amazing time that determined the future path of humanity in the modern period.

Average reading time: 17 minutes, 4 seconds

Introduction: Myths of the Middle Ages

There are many things about the Middle Ages historical myths. The reason for this lies partly in the development of humanism at the very beginning of the modern era, as well as the emergence of the Renaissance in art and architecture. Interest in the world of classical antiquity developed, and the era that followed was considered barbaric and decadent. Therefore, medieval Gothic architecture, which today is recognized as extraordinarily beautiful and technically revolutionary, was undervalued and abandoned in favor of styles that copied Greek and Roman architecture. The term "Gothic" itself was originally applied to the Gothic in a pejorative light, serving as a reference to the Gothic tribes that sacked Rome; the meaning of the word is “barbaric, primitive.”

Another reason for many myths associated with the Middle Ages is its connection with Catholic Church(hereinafter referred to as the “Church” - note New than). In the English-speaking world, these myths originate in disputes between Catholics and Protestants. In others European cultures For example, in Germany and France, similar myths were formed within the framework of the anti-clerical position of influential thinkers of the Enlightenment. The following is presented summary some myths and false ideas about the Middle Ages that arose as a result of various prejudices.

1. People believed that the Earth was flat, and the Church presented this idea as doctrine

In fact, the Church never taught that the Earth was flat during any period of the Middle Ages. Scientists of the time had a good understanding of the scientific arguments of the Greeks, who proved that the Earth was round, and were able to use scientific instruments such as the astrolabe to determine the circumference quite accurately. The fact of the spherical shape of the Earth was so well known, generally accepted and unremarkable that when Thomas Aquinas began work on his treatise “Summa Theologica” and wanted to choose an objective undeniable truth, he cited this very fact as an example.

And not only literate people were aware of the shape of the Earth - most sources indicate that everyone understood this. The symbol of the earthly power of kings, which was used in coronation ceremonies, was the orb: a golden sphere in the king's left hand, which personified the Earth. This symbolism would not make sense if it were not clear that the Earth is spherical. A collection of sermons by 13th-century German parish priests also briefly mentions that the Earth is “round as an apple,” with the expectation that the peasants listening to the sermon would understand what it was about. And popular in the 14th century english book"The Adventures of Sir John Mandeville" tells the story of a man who traveled so far to the east that he returned to his homeland from its western side; and the book doesn't explain to the reader how it works.

A common misconception is that Christopher Columbus discovered the true shape of the Earth and that the Church opposed his voyage is nothing more than modern myth, created in 1828. Writer Washington Irving was commissioned to write a biography of Columbus with instructions to present the explorer as a radical thinker who rebelled against Old World prejudices. Unfortunately, Irving discovered that Columbus had in fact been deeply mistaken about the size of the Earth and had discovered America by pure chance. Heroic story didn’t work out, and so he came up with the idea that the Church in the Middle Ages thought the Earth was flat, and created this enduring myth, and his book became a bestseller.

Among the collection of catchphrases found on the Internet, one can often see the supposed statement of Ferdinand Magellan: “The Church says the Earth is flat, but I know that it is round. Because I saw the shadow of the Earth on the Moon, and I trust the Shadow more than the Church." So, Magellan never said this, in particular because the Church never claimed that the Earth was flat. The first use of this "quotation" occurs no earlier than 1873, when it was used in an essay by an American Volterian (a free-thinking philosopher - note New than) and the agnostic Robert Greene Ingersoll. He did not indicate any source and it is very likely that he simply made up this statement himself. Despite this, Magellan's "words" can still be found in various collections, on T-shirts and posters of atheist organizations.

2. The Church suppressed science and progressive thinking, burned scientists at the stake, and thus set us back hundreds of years

The myth that the Church suppressed science, burned or suppressed the activities of scientists, is a central part of what historians who write about science call the “clash of ways of thinking.” This persistent concept dates back to the Enlightenment, but became firmly established in the public consciousness with the help of two famous works 19th century. John William Draper's History of the Relations Between Catholicism and Science (1874) and Andrew Dickson White's The Controversy of Religion with Science (1896) were highly popular and influential books that spread the belief that the medieval Church actively suppressed science. In the 20th century, historiographers of science actively criticized the “White-Draper position” and noted that most of the evidence presented was extremely misinterpreted, and in some cases completely invented.

In late Antiquity, early Christianity did not really welcome what some clergy called “pagan knowledge,” that is, the scientific work of the Greeks and their Roman successors. Some have preached that a Christian should avoid such works because they contain unbiblical knowledge. In his famous phrase One of the Church Fathers, Tertullian, exclaims sarcastically: “What does Athens have to do with Jerusalem?” But such thoughts were rejected by other prominent theologians. For example, Clement of Alexandria argued that if God gave the Jews a special understanding of spirituality, he could give the Greeks a special understanding of scientific things. He suggested that if the Jews took and used the gold of the Egyptians for their own purposes, then Christians could and should use the wisdom of the pagan Greeks as a gift from God. Later, Clement's reasoning was supported by Aurelius Augustine, and later Christian thinkers adopted this ideology, noting that if the cosmos is the creation of a thinking God, then it can and should be comprehended in a rational way.

Thus natural philosophy, which was largely based on the work of Greek and Roman thinkers such as Aristotle, Galen, Ptolemy and Archimedes, became a major part of the curriculum of medieval universities. In the West, after the collapse of the Roman Empire, many ancient works were lost, but Arab scientists managed to preserve them. Subsequently, medieval thinkers not only studied the additions made by the Arabs, but also used them to make discoveries. Medieval scientists were fascinated by optical science, and the invention of glasses was only partly the result of their own research using lenses to determine the nature of light and the physiology of vision. In the 14th century, the philosopher Thomas Bradwardine and a group of thinkers who called themselves the “Oxford Calculators” not only formulated and proved the theorem about average speed, but were also the first to use quantitative concepts in physics, thus laying the foundation for everything that has been achieved by this science since then.

All the scientists of the Middle Ages were not only not persecuted by the Church, but also belonged to it themselves. Jean Buridan, Nicholas Oresme, Albrecht III (Albrecht the Bold), Albertus Magnus, Robert Grosseteste, Theodoric of Freiburg, Roger Bacon, Thierry of Chartres, Sylvester II (Herbert of Aurillac), Guillaume Conchesius, John Philoponus, John Packham, John Duns Scotus, Walter Burley, William Heytsberry, Richard Swineshead, John Dumbleton, Nicholas of Cusa - they were not persecuted, restrained or burned at the stake, but known and revered for their wisdom and learning.

Contrary to myths and popular prejudices, there is not a single example of anyone being burned for anything related to science in the Middle Ages, nor is there evidence of the persecution of any scientific movement by the medieval Church. The trial of Galileo happened much later (the scientist was a contemporary of Descartes) and had much more to do with the politics of the Counter-Reformation and the people involved in it than with the Church's attitude towards science.

3. In the Middle Ages, the Inquisition burned millions of women, considering them witches, and the burning of “witches” itself was commonplace in the Middle Ages

Strictly speaking, “witch hunts” were not a medieval phenomenon at all. Persecution reached its apogee in the 16th and 17th centuries and was almost entirely attributed to early period New time. As for most of the Middle Ages (i.e. 5th-15th centuries), the Church not only was not interested in hunting so-called “witches”, but it also taught that witches did not exist in principle.

In contact with

Spices as currency, books on chains, beauty standards a la naked rodent and getting rid of headaches through trepanation. How did they live in the Middle Ages, and most importantly, how did they survive?

You get up but don't brush your teeth because you've never seen a toothbrush. Towards noon, eat bean soup. If you are a woman, shave your forehead and completely pluck your eyebrows. If you get sick, go to the doctor, who will cover you with mercury or perform a craniotomy (he knows best). If you're lucky, you'll survive and even eat a second time (don't count on breakfast, only lunch and a light dinner).

We're exaggerating. Of course, a day in the Middle Ages could look completely different (again, depending on who). But the main points can still be traced.

Bob daily

Overall, most evidence suggests that medieval foods had a fairly high fat content

At the beginning of the 2nd millennium, there were no kitchens in castles, much less in ordinary houses, so they cooked directly under open air in clay pots on the hearth. A separate room - the kitchen itself - appeared only in late Middle Ages. Before this, where they slept, they also cooked and ate food.

The peasants' diet was based on cereals and legumes, so in the event of a crop failure, they were doomed to starvation (and crop failures were quite common in those days). Pieces of black bread were placed at the bottom of the bowl (white was intended for the nobility) to make the stew thicker and more satisfying. In general, stew is almost the only dish on the peasants' table. Only its color changed. At the end of autumn and winter it was dark brown (the color of peas and beans), with the onset of spring it became lighter (onions, first nettles and sometimes a little milk were added there), in summer it was green (cooked from vegetables).

The right side of the meat carcass was valued higher than the left, and the front was valued higher than the back. What portion was served to the guest at the table determined his social status

Fish is a rarity on the tables of peasants. It was very expensive because it was caught mainly from ponds and lakes owned by the rich. Ordinary people were not allowed to fish there. Meat was also almost a museum exhibit on the tables of the poor, although it was much cheaper than fish. Not to mention the fact that it was not always possible to eat it; the sacred post could last up to a third of the year. It was also not easy to stock it for future use - there were no refrigerators, and winters in Europe were warm. Simple salted meat lost its taste, and the spices with which it could be preserved cost incredible amounts of money and were a kind of currency (they were supplied from distant eastern and southern countries, and the journey to the consumer generally took about two years). In medieval France, for example, 454 g (1 lb) of nutmeg could be exchanged for one cow or four sheep. Spices could be used to pay a fine or pay for purchases.

The medieval library until the 18th century was simply a reading room filled with shelves. Numerous long chains descended from the shelves, to which each book was chained.

Interestingly, the right side of the meat carcass was valued higher than the left, and the front - higher than the back. What portion was served to the guest at the table determined his social status.

The peasants ate only twice a day - in the morning (women, old people, workers and the sick) or closer to noon (men) and in the evening. Such standards were set by the church, which for some unknown reason considered breakfast and snacks during the day to be something sinful or indecent. We had dinner early - around five in the evening, because we went to bed and got up early.

Books on chains

The invention of the printing press was an epochal event for the development of book printing. Before this, the volumes were handwritten, and their price was fantastic, because monks spent hours poring over each book and the copying process sometimes stretched for years

Peasants, the vast majority of the population medieval Europe, were uneducated, and they had no time to read: they worked hard to feed their family and pay tribute to the lord who allowed them to his lands, and also to pay taxes. They were required to work for the owner 50–60 days a year. Reading for a long time remained the lot of the clergy and perhaps only people from the educational system.

This did not abolish the existence of libraries. True, volumes were practically not issued at that time, so the medieval library until the 18th century was simply a reading room filled with shelves. Numerous long chains descended from the shelves, to which each book was chained. The goal is simple - not to be taken away.

The practice of “chaining” books lasted until the end of the 1880s, until books began to be published en masse and their cost decreased.

Books in those days were piecemeal and therefore very expensive. They were written by hand, and gold and silver were used in the design of capital letters. There is also evidence that they used earwax, from which pigment was extracted and used for illustrations.

Marilyn Monroe of the Middle Ages

This is, of course, the “Mona Lisa” - pale, with an S-shaped silhouette, thin and flexible, and most importantly, with completely plucked eyebrows and a shaved forehead (the higher the forehead, the more beautiful, by medieval standards). For this fashion gossips they even nicknamed the Middle Ages “the age of naked mole rats” (there is an African rodent that has no hair at all, you can even look at it and similar creatures in our wonderful selection of Anti-mi-mi-mi).

According to theories about fluids, women were classified as cold and wet, whose task was only one - to seduce an innocent and gullible man

Oddly enough, small breasts and narrow hips were a great honor in the Middle Ages. The words of a medieval song have survived to this day: “Girls swaddle their breasts tightly with a bandage, because for the eyes of men full breasts not nice." Considerable attention is also paid to the hair - it is desirable that it be blond and curly. The gait is in small steps, the eyes are modestly fixed on the floor.

Mercury and the dead

James Bertrand. Ambroise Pare. Patient examination. Second half of the 19th century

The theme of medicine in the Middle Ages, like the song of an akyn, has no end. Here you will find amulets, spells, and the doctrine of the four “juices” of the body: warm, dry, wet and cold (this was associated with the use not of medicines, but of the corresponding products; in case of fever, for example, lettuce leaves are “cold” foods) - and bloodletting, which was done not by doctors, but by bathhouse attendants and barbers.

But there were even more terrible “procedures”. Very often, real craniotomies were performed on living people who complained to the “doctor” of headaches or convulsions. History is silent about the painful shock that patients received during such “treatment”, because the “operations” were carried out using tools like a chisel and a hammer. The most dangerous thing was to damage the brain. But what is even more surprising is that quite a few patients survived after this procedure and even got rid of symptoms.

Perhaps one of the oldest forms of medical intervention in the human body is trepanation. Essentially, it is drilling holes into the skull to treat problems such as seizures, migraines and mental disorders

True, if a person survived after trepanation, other trials could await him. For example, treatment with mercury, which was widespread in the Middle Ages (why, mercury ointments, as you know, were very popular even in the 20th century). Mercury was especially popular in the treatment of syphilis. The deterioration of the patient’s well-being only proved to the medieval doctors that mercury works.

Another popular drug was medicine made from ground mummies powder, which was openly traded. To acquire the strength and health of the deceased (say, on the gallows), people came up and, without a twinge of conscience, dismembered the corpse, drank its blood and made tinctures and medicines from all this. Read more about this in our material.

In the Middle Ages, dentists were ordinary hairdressers.

Despite all the tricks, they lived very briefly in those days (due to the lack of normal medicine). Average duration the lifespan of men is about 40–43 years, of women – 30–32 years (they, as a rule, died during childbirth).

I can't bear to get married

Wedding of young newlyweds in the Middle Ages

Girls were married off at the age of 12; several years before that they were already engaged. So there was probably no talk of special love there (although there were, of course, other examples). Thanks to church “morality,” the beautiful half of humanity was considered something sinful and unclean. According to theories about liquids, women were considered to be a cold and wet element, whose only purpose was to seduce an innocent and gullible man.

Early marriage of Mary Adelaide of Savoy (age 12) and Louis, Duke of Burgundy (age 15). The wedding took place in 1697 and created a political alliance

Violence against women was something commonplace. A woman, in principle, was perceived as a commodity. The description of the “inspection” has survived to this day. future wife: “The lady has attractive hair - a cross between blue-black and brown.<…>The eyes are dark brown and deep. The nose is quite even and even though the tip is wide and slightly flat, it is not upturned. The nostrils are wide, the mouth is moderately large. The neck, shoulders, her entire body and lower limbs are quite well formed. She is well built and has no injuries.<…>And on St. John’s Day this girl will be nine years old.”

From prayer to cocaine: How depression used to be treated

Laxatives, leeches, immersion in ice water, beating with nettles and “melodies” from a cat’s cry - over the centuries, humanity has invented the strangest ways to get rid of melancholy.

"An illness whose cause

It's time to find it long ago,

Similar to the English spleen,

In short: Russian blues

I mastered it little by little;

He will shoot himself, thank God,

I didn't want to try

But I completely lost interest in life.”

"Eugene Onegin", Chapter I, stanza XXXVIII

Laxative and philosophy

The word “melancholy” (the term “depression” came into use much later) came to us from Greek and literally means “black bile.” Both the term itself and its first definition belong to Hippocrates: “If the feeling of fear and cowardice continues for too long, then this indicates the onset of melancholy... Fear and sadness, if they last a long time and are not caused by everyday reasons, come from black bile.” He also formulated the accompanying symptoms: despondency, insomnia, irritability, anxiety, and sometimes aversion to food.

Hippocrates proposed treating the disease with a special diet and infusion of herbs, which give a laxative and emetic effect and thereby free the body from black bile. “Such a patient needs to be given hellebore, clear his head, and then give him a medicine that cleanses the bottom, then he should be prescribed to drink donkey milk. The patient should eat very little food unless he is weak; food should be cold, laxative: nothing caustic, salty, oily, sweet. The patient should not drink wine, but limit himself to water; if not, the wine should be diluted with water. There is no need for gymnastics or walking at all.”

“Such a patient should be given hellebore, cleanse his head, and then give him a medicine that cleanses the bottom, then he should be prescribed to drink donkey milk.”

Hippocrates' opponents on this issue were Socrates and, later, Plato. They considered his approach too mechanical and argued that melancholy should be treated by philosophers (Hippocrates, in turn, swore that “everything written by philosophers in the field natural sciences applies to medicine in the same way as to painting"). Today, apparently, Hippocrates would advocate antidepressants, and Plato and Socrates would advocate psychotherapy.

Work and Prayer

Medieval philosophers looked at melancholy much more harshly than the beautiful-minded Greeks: in those days, despondency was officially recorded as a mortal sin. The theologian Evagrius of Pontus writes about it this way: “The demon of despondency, which is also called “midday,” is the most severe of all demons. He approaches the monk around the fourth hour and besieges him until the eighth hour. First of all, this demon makes the monk notice that the sun moves very slowly or remains completely motionless and the day seems to be fifty hours long. This demon also instills in the monk hatred of the place, type of life and manual labor, as well as the thought that love has dried up and there is no one who could console him.”

“Despondency makes the monk notice that the sun moves very slowly or remains completely motionless and the day seems to be fifty hours long.”

Hildegard of Bingen - nun, abbess, author of mystical books and works on medicine - blames melancholy even for the fall of Adam: “When the fire in him went out, melancholy curled up in his blood, and from this sadness and despair arose in him; and when Adam fell, the devil breathed into him melancholy, which makes a person lukewarm and godless.”

It was believed that despondency arises from excessive idleness. This means that you just need to load the patient with physical labor and prayer, so that there is no time left for abstract reasoning.

Moderation in food and sex

In 1621, English prelate Robert Burton published a 900-page work, The Anatomy of Melancholy. The author also explains the disease as “black bile” (which was still the leading cause of depression) and notes that “temperament does not affect the risk of the disease: only fools and stoics are not susceptible to melancholy.”

Burton classifies the causes of melancholy in detail, dividing them into supernatural (divine or diabolical intervention) and natural; congenital (temperament, hereditary diseases and “wrong” conception - for example, while intoxicated or on a full stomach) and acquired; inevitable and not inevitable.

“Only fools and stoics are not subject to melancholy.”

As a remedy, Burton advises limiting consumption of meat and dairy products, avoiding cabbage, root vegetables, legumes, fruits and spices, hot and sour foods, overly sweet and fatty foods, and generally all “complex, flavorful” foods. Burton also calls for balance in sexual life: after all, “with excessive sexual abstinence, the accumulated semen turns into black bile and hits the head,” but “sexual unbridledness cools and dries up the body. In this case, moisturizers can help: there is a known case when a newlywed who got married in the hot season and through a short time became melancholic and even insane.” What exactly the author means by “moisturizers” is anyone’s guess.

Theater and sunbathing

Over time, melancholy begins to be considered a “privileged” disease, characteristic of aristocrats and people of mental work. Thus, the Renaissance thinker Marsilio Ficino directly associates melancholy with excessive expenditure of the “subtle spirit” as a result of intense intellectual activity. It was proposed to replenish the “subtle spirit” aromatic wines, sunbathing, special music and theatrical performances. Subsequently, melancholy will completely become fashionable, which can easily be seen in world literature: both prose and poetry will be filled with languid heroes, tired of life.

Centrifuges, scabies and cat “music”

Meanwhile, in “serious” medicine, a new explanation for melancholy is emerging, according to which the blues are caused by dysfunction of the nerve fibers. This theory gave rise to a number of bizarre techniques designed to direct the “electricity” in the patient’s body in the right direction using external stimulation. The unfortunate patients were spun around in centrifuges, lashed with nettles, doused with dozens of buckets of ice water, or immersed in an ice bath with their heads “until the first signs of suffocation.” The most desperate doctors, in pursuit of external irritants, specifically inoculated patients with scabies or gave them lice.

The most desperate doctors, in pursuit of external irritants, specifically inoculated patients with scabies or gave them lice.

The champion in exoticism can be called the “cat org” A n” is a psychotherapeutic remedy of the Baroque era, which is described in his book “The Ink of Melancholy” by culturologist and psychiatrist Jean Starobinsky: “The cats were selected in accordance with the range and seated in a row, with their tails back. Hammers with sharpened nails struck the tails, and the cat that received the blow emitted its note. If a fugue was played on such an instrument, and especially if the patient was seated in such a way that he saw in all details the faces and grimaces of animals, then Lot’s wife herself would shake off her stupor and return to reason.”

Russian medicine did not lag behind in terms of radical methods, especially if depression took severe forms and the patient ended up in a mental hospital. According to the recollections of the chief physician of the Moscow psychiatric hospital, Zinovy ​​Kibaltitsa, in the first half of the 19th century, his institution was treated as follows: “As for brooding madmen, subject to mental despondency or tormented by fear, despair, etc., it seems that the cause of these diseases exists in the abdomen and affects mental abilities, then the following is used to use them: emetic tartar, potash sulfate, sweet mercury, laxative according to the Kempfick method, camphor solution in tartaric acid. Henbane, external rubbing of the head with cream of tartar emetic, application of leeches to the anus, blister plasters or other types of protracting medicines. Warm baths prescribed in winter, and cold in summer. We often apply moxas to the head and both shoulders and make burns on the arms.” If the patients were not cured of melancholy after this, then, according to at least, there were good reasons for this condition...

Cocaine and more cocaine

This method of “treatment” was especially advocated by Sigmund Freud, who in the mid-80s of the 19th century actively experimented with cocaine (primarily on himself). He published a number of articles on cocaine in medical journals and initially considered it a remedy for almost all diseases - from melancholy to alcoholism, eating disorders and sexual problems. “Taking it causes pleasant excitement and long-lasting euphoria, which is no different from normal euphoria healthy person, he writes enthusiastically in the article “About Coke.” - At the same time, the individual feels increased self-control, increased performance and a surge of energy. It seems that the mood produced by coca is due less to direct stimulation than to the disappearance of those physical factors that cause depression.” People will start talking about the dangers of cocaine only a few years later, but it will be used as a medicine for another couple of decades.

Interestingly, many of the recommendations of doctors from the past coincide with the advice of their modern colleagues. Hippocrates was especially close to the truth: today, those suffering from depression are also prescribed to limit alcohol, excessive exercise and heavy food. A grain of truth is also found in the treatise of Evagrius of Pontus: modern research shows that depression actually has pronounced daily fluctuations, and it is felt especially intensely in the morning. Marsilio Ficino’s recommendations regarding sunbathing have also been confirmed in modern psychology: it has been proven that even improving the lighting in a room can have a positive effect on the emotional state of residents, and light therapy has become a fairly popular method of treating depressive conditions. Overall, however, treating depression today has become much less traumatic.