In the Middle Ages, people were weird. Don’t get us wrong — we’re not saying modern people are much better. Not at all. Still, sometimes we forget how incredibly bizarre the Old Continent was between the 5th and the 15th centuries. There were things about medieval times life that seem downright crazy when compared to our modern sensibilities — and that’s before you even start talking about the whole plague thing.
But why focus on the oddities of medieval life, you ask? Well, in the words of the great George R.R. Martin, “The things we do for love.” As lovers of all things strange, we find there’s something undeniably captivating about uncovering the unusual historical facts that lurk beneath the surface of remarkable time periods. After all, if we can’t laugh at (or be horrified by) the peculiar ways of some of our ancestors, then what’s the point of studying history?
Time to embark on an adventure through the tapestry of weird history, then! But instead of just visiting the grand courts and castles we often associate with this bygone era, we’re about to explore some of the lesser-known, quirky corners of medieval customs. And where did we unearth these medieval traditions and facts, you wonder? We chanced upon a treasure trove of weirdness in this Reddit thread — a gold mine of bizarre medieval tidbits, all shared by history enthusiasts. Trust us, you won’t believe some of the things people did back then!
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"CLOAKS! Cloaks are so freakin cool but they went out of style. I wish they weren’t weird today and so rare. Cloaks are so freakin amazing."
"Perpetual soup. Basically, a large pot would always be simmering and food would be tossed in before spoiling. So it was just a large vat of everything simmering non-stop."
user replied: "This is still a Welsh tradition, there are stories in my family of my grandmother running a cowl pot for months on end."
"Fight instead of divorce.
Why waste time on courts and child support? In medieval Germany, if a husband and wife reached a dead end on some important issue, they entered the ring.
The rules, of course, equalized the forces of men and women. In the ring, the man was in a hole, and one hand was tied behind his back so that he could strike with only one hand. And the wife was given a bag of coal, with which she struck.
Whoever wins the fight (inflicts serious injury or the defeated one asks for mercy) is, therefore, right in the dispute."
"Duels over a bride at a wedding."
IronBatNaz replied: "That leads to my favorite trivia of weddings, where the best man was not necessarily your best mate, but the best duellist you knew, in order to help fight over the bride at a wedding."
"This was a love potion recipe from the 10th century:
A woman will lay a cloth on the ground and cover it in grain. She will then strip her clothes off and cover her body in honey. After that, she will roll around on the cloth and try to get covered in grain.
Afterward, she will get up and take the grain stuck to her body over to the mill and ground that into flour. She will then use that flour to bake bread and give it to her husband to eat."
It doesn't say she gets dressed after she takes the grain off...could explain why there are so many people named Miller...
"The name Lance isn't popular in this day and age, but back in medieval times people were called Lancelot."
"Women plucking their hairline to make their forehead bigger. In the C13th, there was this whole European aesthetic about women's sexy, sexy foreheads. So women would pluck their hair to make the forehead bigger and sexier."
"Sleeping with your entire family in one bed.
Or if you are a king, sleeping in the same bed with a rival king to cement your friendship and respect for each other, as brothers.
Privacy was just not really a thing in the middle ages!"
"Having rules about what colors and what type of clothing and hats you could wear, based on your occupation or social level."
"Boiling fruit before you eat it.
People in medieval times thought raw fruit was bad for you - so they boiled their fruit before eating it. Boiling removes vitamin C from fruit. This habit is thought to be one of the reasons why there were high rates of scurvy in medieval times. One of the symptoms of scurvy is hallucinations. Scurvy-induced hallucinations are thought to be one of the reasons why so many people in medieval times were documented to have had religious visions. LPT - if you want to see Jesus, stop ingesting vitamin C. Possible side effects include loss of teeth, bleeding gums, aforementioned hallucinations, suppression of immune system, and death."
Not exactly, they thought raw of some types of fruits would create digestive issues. However pickeling was more common than boiling, which doesnt remove the vitamin C. Further they believed that cooking most vegetables were bad for the body, so veggies were eaten raw. There is ZERO historical evidence of high rates of scurvy outside of famine periods. Sailors had scurvy because of the lack of fruits and veggies on ships, which is why the Brits went with Lime Juice in the 17th Century, German and Dutch sailors went with Sourkraut, etc.
"A barber doing surgery."
showMeYourPitties10 replied: "It was more like a surgeon was also doing haircuts."
"A doctor taste-testing urine."
AngelFox1 replied: "This is how they determined if you were diabetic."
"Animal courts. By far the most serial offenders were pigs, accused and convicted of chewing off body parts and even eating children. Most were found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging or being burned at the stake. In 1386, a convicted pig was dressed in a waistcoat, gloves, drawers, and a human mask for its execution."
"Carrying a sword."
Farnsworthson replied: "More like not having enough money to be able to afford a sword. A decent sword cost several months' wages for the average man."
Which puts to bed that stupid trope about Baby Boomers were poor blacksmiths compared to 11the century Saxons. Blacksmithing was a very specialized trade requiring tools, setups, etc. It wasn't something that people did in their backyard in their spare time.
"From an American context (and possibly other places too), the amount of time off work in Medieval times would be utterly bizarre compared to now. The idea that the peasantry toiled dawn to dusk in the fields before dying of exhaustion and plague at age 45 is incorrect.
Farmers worked the land when it needed work, and the calendar dictates that schedule. Festivals, harvests, Religious holidays, and everyday life took up more time than work did. We've disillusioned ourselves into thinking that our ancestors lived to work so we should too."
I suspect the idea of constantly working came in with the Industrial Revolution.
"Public baths. Not on the same scale as they were in Rome, but it was still pretty common to have a bathhouse in medieval Germany and surrounding places to bathe in a group in a large tub of hot, fragrant water, called a "Zuberbad" in German. Now everyone's all hung up on nudity. Even among friends, so it's way less common (although you can still enjoy a public Zuber bath at medieval markets and renaissance fairs in Germanic countries)."
Go to a Sauna in Germany - if you wear clothes, you WILL be in the minority !!
"Sleeping twice.
In medieval times life effectively revolved around the sun. But particularly in the winter, there was far too much time in the night to fill with just sleeping. It was still common for people to go to sleep at dusk, after a hard day's work. But they would wake up in the middle of the night and do something (chat with the neighbors, have sex in front of the whole family, have a snack, etc. Then you'd go back to bed for your second sleep, waking up with the sun."
"The hue and cry. Literally shouting that someone stole something and having the whole village chase after them."
clarkjedi asked: "I mean... Have any better ideas for when you get robbed in a public place? Sounds like a sound idea to me."
theminef replied: "But imagine getting wrongly accused and getting lynched by a handful of peasants."
"Assuming that most women you meet can't read.
Assuming that most men you meet either can't read or can also read Latin."
Only boys of good families went to school in (late) medieval England, but they had "learned their letters" from their mothers before starting school. Most women in upper middle class and above could read and write. And most men of lower middle class or lower couldn't write. It was more a class thing than a gender thing.
"Gruesome executions that took a while to actually kill someone.
Seriously medieval people, what the hell is it with sentencing people to be burned at the stake or crucified or drawn-and-quartered?
A swift beheading was the most benevolent way to kill someone in the old days but not widely practiced as it turns out."
"Using stale bread as plates."
Malkariss888 replied:
"This was kinda debunked. It wasn't stale bread, it was the "normal" bread of the times: black, not much risen. So it was hard, and it was usually given to the poor after each meal.
Eating the "plate" was very impolite and shunned, as you would steal the meal of a person, and on the other hand, you would eat like a poor.
Also, bread was almost never eaten cold and without a soup."
They must have had yeast since it was healthier to drink beer than to drink from the local watering hole.
"In medieval times it was a common practice to display tapestries on walls instead of oil paintings and other works of art."
Tapestries can be confused with embroideries - the Bayeux one being the most famous example.
"I’ve taken medieval literature college. There are a lot of strange things that were normal for them but strange for us. Selling off your daughter so the rest of your family can eat, putting iron near your baby to protect them from changelings, etc."
"Salt being extremely expensive. Getting some comments here - expensive is a relative statement, and when you consider that less than three hours of minimum wage buy a 50 lb bag of salt today... it's safe to say that a modern person would be surprised at how expensive salt was. Additionally, salt in West Africa was expensive even in absolute terms."
I believe Roman soldiers got at least since of their wage in salt, the word for which was sal, origin of the word salary. Was necessary for the preservation of certain food.
"Marrying second cousins. When nobody travels and villages are small... it's pretty much unavoidable."
Makes doing genealogy research maddening since they all tended to name their kids after each other as well.
"You have insulted my honor, I challenge you to a duel!"
With most insults coming from anonymous trolls, no comeback likely for this one.
"Just tossing your feces out the window in the morning."
"More horrifying than weird, but burning cats alive was a popular form of entertainment in medieval and early modern France."
"Having multiple children, over many years, while living in a 1 room dwelling."
"At the table, in the Middle Ages, it was considered impolite to scratch your face unless you did it with a piece of bread and then ate it. This was a sanitary concern because people typically ate in what is now commonly called family style (everyone serving themselves at the table from communal dishes).
You wash your hands before dinner and if you have to scratch your face, to avoid soiling your hands again, you tear off a hunk of bread, scratch your face with that and eat it."
"Believing that that pleasant smelling oils can cure the plague."
"Brushing your teeth with a stick."
My late Great Auntie Mary still used Liquorice Root to clean her teeth right up to her death in 1998. Her teeth were'nt brilliant but she still had most of them when she died at the age of 92 !!
"Outlawry, which stripped a person of all legal rights and allowed anyone to kill them with impunity."
user replied: "I don't think it minds being an outlaw. Sure I could get killed, but doesn't that also means I could operate outside the laws with no consequences? Until I’m killed obviously."
"Going to sleep as soon as it gets dark, waking up and hanging out with your family for a few hours in the middle of the night, and going back to bed until sunrise."
RandomLuddite comments: "Before the industrial revolution, sleeping habits were different. It changed because of street lights, working hours, and such modern things, into a single 8-hour cycle.
"The concept of killing the wife by burning when the husband dies, called as Sati."
Only in India/Nepal, I doubt the rest of the world knew about this. And certainly would not have practised it.
"Leprosy."
Sung to the tune of "yesterday".... leprosy... I'm not half the man I used to be... all my parts are falling off of me... oh why do I have leprosy...
"Huge age disparities between husband and wife, both of whom are getting married for the first time."
"Let's sleep on some hay on the floor."
The poor in London in the nineteenth century paid for a place on a rope line to drape themselves to sleep.
"The concepts of paying a bride price or a dowry (they're the exact opposite).
Back then you had to pay to get married; now you just pay after you're married."
