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Message: <blockquote data-quote="doctorbadwolf" data-source="post: 7979615" data-attributes="member: 6704184">Well, no. Plenty was good about Medieval Europe. The idea that it just sucked is an invention of people like Voltaire who were convinced of the superiority of the stuff they liked. The reality is that a lot of the stuff we attribute to the middle ages in order to say that they sucked either wasn't widespread, or wasn't really a thing until later periods like the early modern period. Bathing/being clean is my favorite example, because it doesn't require me to go hunt down medieval art to show that what we think of as Renaissance art started in the middle ages and wasn't centered in the places we think of as starting the Renaissance. Mideival Europeans bathed regularly. In the cold months they were more likely to clean themselves outside of a literal bath, but they still changed their underclothes daily, and cleaned their bodies with soap and water. But bathing was also somewhat social, and that didn't stop being so much a thing until after the Middle Ages. Likewise, the Church didn't discourage philosophy and alchemy (science), but were the primary patrons of it, and they didn't look down on or discourage pagan or muslim sources, but rather imported and preserved them quite eagerly. These fields advanced during the middle ages. The common concept that they didn't is historical bunk.At the same time, the Church did discourage beleif in witchcraft for most of the middle ages, as it was considered heretical to posit that anyone other than god could perform miracles. As for art, well, check out the blog posts from <a href="https://going-medieval.com/2017/07/25/on-the-concept-of-the-renaissance-and-outkasts-hey-ya/" target="_blank">Going Medieval </a>, which is a blog from a Medieval Historian about how most of what folks think about the middle ages is just flat out incorrect. The one I linked there is about the Renaissance, with analogues to Hey Ya by Outcast. It's a fun blog. There is swearing and fairly blunt discussions of sex, so, NSFW I guess.</blockquote>

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