32 Facts About The Middle Ages That Are 100% True Despite Being Quite Weird

Catherine and Elizabeth were not medieval. They were Renaissance. Medieval ended in 1450. Noble medieval women might receive education, but totally dependent on male whim. Aethelflaed is a better example.

There are lots of awesome examples! Hildegard von Bingen was an amazing and highly educated woman: also an abbess. Julian of Norwich, a visionary and author, was an anchoress (she lived inside small quarters inside the church).

There were women who would have themselves bricked up on the outside wall of a church; she only ate what was donated, I assume the output went into a container rather than just drop out

Books of the Hebrew Bible are still written that way today! I know. I was s scribe for many years.

That's why scribes and monks used penknives, both to sharpen the quill and to scrape off mistakes.

They were also all hand-written as this was pre_Gutenberg. My favorite manuscripts are the ones with the marginalia--and the one the cat walked all over..

And vellum was made from sheep skins, thus diplomas being referred to as sheepskins for quite some time

I thought Roman soldiers were paid in salt? They were worth their salt.

True-ish. It was extremely important - indispensable for food preservation - and thus the salt *trade* was valuable, but it was a commodity and not that expensive per se (there were exceptions- some crazy local salt taxes, high transport costs depending on location etc) but it wasn't like pepper, for example. Basically everyone depended on salt. One price I saw was for London in 1438, where 2 pints of salt cost between 1/8 and 1/4 of a day's pay for a craftsman, maybe a day's pay for a labourer, or about the price of maybe 4 pints of beer.

Up until 1974 the County of Cheshire in England had a long 'arm' that extended up the Longdendale Valley to the Pennines, many miles away from current boundaries. Apparently this was due to Salt trading routes and the lucrative taxes the county would collect. So salt has been very important for a very long time

There are many roads in Italy called Via Salaria, most notably the one that unites Rome with adriatic sea. They are called so because were primarily built for carrying the salt.

I don’t think it’s a great proof of love to prevent her daughters from getting married, unless none of them wanted to

My guess is that he wanted to protect them from the pain of court intrigues, marrying men who would only use them to gain access to power they might not have had otherwise, etc.

Amongsy many other innovations he standardised writing, magiform is the commonest script used in illumunated manuscripts,can't quite remember the lesser form but my brain is saying miniform and was used for general notation as it was quicker.

Probably he didn't let his daughters marry as their offspring had a claim to the throne. It's a nice thought that he "loved them so much", but more likely, it was a dynastic issue. (Several of his daughters did have illegitimate children.)

I think at the time he was called Karolus Magnus

Making pins using the tools available in medieval times required an immense about of skill, and the materials had to be very high quality. Only modern machinery allowed low cost mass production of metal sewing needles.

It is so very satisfying to read how lucky I am. Not only do I own a sewing machine but also needles and pins galore.

There is a wonderful case of a rat colony that was tried for destroying the grain reserves of a convent. The accusation was rolled up, smeared in lard and deposited in the nest as a notification. When the rats failed to show up at the trial (duh), the court's appointed defense lawyer successfully argued that, since the document was directed to "all and every single rat", the prosecution had failed to notify all rats, and asked for postponing the trial until evidence that "all and every single rat" had been notified. Later, he went on a diatribe about how the "industrious rats" were more hardworking than the friars of the convent. The judge declared a mistrial.

In the old Jewish system, any animal that killed a human was to be killed.

The church, as usual, showing off their logical thinking and their willingness to solve all those important problems in life.

I think many flies and mosquitos were found guilty but their death sentence was commuted to transportation to Australia

I never give mosquitoes a chance to plea. They are pressed to death with large fingers.

The plague, the black death, Yersinia pestis, is still around, and is killing people in Madagascar, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Arizona.

Crissy Newbury

Crissy Newbury

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