Fun:Middle Ages


 * "Scratch a collectivist, and you will usually find a medievalist" - Nathaniel Branden

The Middle Ages was a delicious time in history. Before 1150, homosexuality was the norm though you did get at least some time off from uphill gardening to watch football and breed the next generation of Muscle Marys in shiny contoured breastplates and butch chainmail gloves. Still it's one of History's Mysteries how humans reproduced often enough to survive the Middle Ages, what with all that clanking mudwrestling and sweaty male bonding, interspersed with poverty, TB and Religious Wars. Thank goodness we have History to learn from.

But seriously, it was a time of chivalry, feudalism, dragons, castles, monarchy, elves, dwarfs, orcs, trolls , moats, magick , a de facto Catholic Church theocracy, knights, witch hunts, unicorns , either those funny conic hats or dresses with sleeves reaching the ground, King Arthur and the Knights of Camelot , watery tarts who gave swords , and a life expectancy of about 30.

(Nerdy spoilsport note: if you bother to try to understand stats, you'll realise that this low life expectancy is mainly due to deaths of young children. It *doesn't* mean that once you made it to adulthood you "expected" to die at 30.)

Dysentery was rampant, and sometimes fatal. The black plague. Dungeons. Rats. The Crusades. Not a particularly good time, nonetheless, some misguided though harmless fools get their kicks re-enacting the whole thing with a lot of pompous "yes m'lord" and "yes m'lady", or playing Dungeons and Dragons, or masturbating every night to The Lord of the Rings, or trying to revive dead (for good reason) religions. Of greater concern are those who think medieval "values" like chivalry, knighthood, dungeons, paranoia, monarchy, wizardly magick, The Crusades, and theocracy are appropriate models for today.

A few Christian apologetics writers like C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton treated the Middle Ages as some kind of golden age. Monty Python probably gave it the treatment it really deserves.

When you see a group of men in armour, run for your life. They're either a pack of marauders, or a bunch of "rennies" looking to rip you off. $3.00 for a bottle of water? That's robbery.