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Things That Were Totally Normal In Medieval Times, But Now Seem Completely Wild
While it’s easy enough to find a lot of relatability in the past, the truth is that humans have a very large capacity to be simply weird one way or another. So it stands to reason that a time traveler would probably encounter situations, norms and rules that would seem deeply bizarre.
Someone asked “What is something that was normal in medieval times, but would be weird today?” and internet historians shared their favorite examples. So get comfortable as you scroll through, upvote your favorites and be sure to add your own thoughts and examples in the comments below.
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#3
In the medieval period, it would be not at all unheard of for a people oppressed by economic means and force alike, to rise up and gut their leaders.
No person living is under an obligation to suffer torment without equal and opposite response, although the written law may say otherwise. Leaders and those with authority would do well to recall and respect the fact that their position is given them by consent, and should they misuse it, they have more to lose than those positions, and deserve to lose more than those positions.
#4
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.
#6
Inheriting clothes being a big deal.
Things weren't really disposable back then - people wore, turned, refreshed, re-sewed, cut down and re-sewed, stripped into trimming and then into rags every piece of clothing they owned. There was a thriving second hand market, and a lot of money in carefully re-using good bits of cloth, cutting off worn out buttonholes and re-sewing garments, re-using trim, etc. Even the upperclass did this to an extent, you had to get to ridiculously wealthy Royalty level for clothing to be abundant and completely new all the time. You rarely find whole garments in archeological digs, but you find all sorts of bits and pieces that were cut off an otherwise whole garment.
This was because making cloth was insanely time consuming, especially in the earlier periods when the primary looms were upright and sheep weren't yet fully modernized and produced smaller amounts of wool, of various qualities. Linen was even more time consuming, cotton wasn't a thing yet (and cotton is seriously annoying to process by hand), and silk was out of reach for most people.
So, people willed cloth to relatives when they died, as well as specific garments. These days you sell off all Grandma's old WalMart clothes, or sometimes get some cool vintage stuff you wear occasionally, but back then getting a few ells of worsted wool cloth was a huge score. There are garments that were passed down several times, because they were just that valuable - and clothes show up in the wills of people from many different classes. It was entirely normal for your daughter to be wearing a dress made from her great-grandmother's old overgown that had been willed down through the family and the good cloth re-purposed until it was only fit for rags. There were whole industries devoted to re-finishing cloth that had gotten a bit worn so new garments could be sewn from it.
Imagine today getting excited because your Aunt died and left you four pairs of jeans. But, in the Medieval period, that would have been a truly great score of an inheritence.
#7
The name Lance isn't popular in this day and age, but back in medieval times people were called Lancelot.
#8
Women plucking their hairline to make their forehead bigger. In the C13th, there was this whole European aesthetic about women's s**y, s**y foreheads. So women would pluck their hair to make the forehead bigger and sexier.
Whenever I tell my classes about this they go "ew" but they are all manscaping and waxing other body parts.
#9
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!
Edit: I came at this with a pretty western perspective obviously. Many families around the world still sleep together in the same bed/space. However in modern western culture, it isn't considered as normal as it would have been in previous centuries.
#10
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 passing).
#12
Having rules about what colors and what type of clothing and hats you could wear, based on your occupation or social level.
#14
Fight instead of divorce
Why waste time on courts and child support? In medieval Germany, if a husband and wife reached an 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, 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.
#15
Outlawry, which stripped a person of all legal rights and allowed anyone to k**l them with impunity.
#16
Assuming that most women you meet can't read.
Assuming that most men you meet either can't read or can also read Latin.
Not going more than 20 miles from where you were born.
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 buys 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.)
Barbers also being doctors and performing surgery.
Marrying second cousins. When nobody travels and villages are small... it's pretty much unavoidable.
Huge age disparities between husband and wife, both of whom are getting married for the first time.
Paying different taxes based on religion.
#17
I’ve taken medieval literaturein college. There’s a lot of strange things that was 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, et cetra et cetra.
#19
The hue and cry. Literally shouting that someone stole something and having the whole village chase after them.
#23
The whole family waking up at midnight to drink and b******t for an hour or two before going back to bed.
#25
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 n****y. 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).
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