Medievalists of Tumblr: what inaccuracies annoy you the most in movies set in the Middle Ages?
Mine is probably the ‘everyone was constantly caked in mud and only wore grey and brown’ aesthetic.
Same. Also the idea that “women were property so they did nothing but sew and have babies and the time was inherently backwards and violent”
the complete absence of christianity from pop culture perceptions of the medieval period really bugs me (or it being relegated to the fringes and a few monks somewhere)
like… this was a major part of most people’s daily lives even if it didn’t necessarily look like christianity as we know it. also medieval theology is fucking wild! where are all the debates about cannibal babies in pop culture medieval stuff? WHERE is the twelfth century werewolf renaissance? the fuckign infancy gospels?? give me weird medieval theology you cowards
A lot of them had already been mentioned, so may I add
“The dishes were only bland soups and maybe some moldy bread”
I’m studying English language and literature, not History, but like… Pork vs Pig… Deer vs Venison… Cow vs Beef… May give you the idea THEY FUCKING ATE MEAT AT LEAST GODDAMIT
And not even like we do
Where’s the feast with venison? The ridiculous amount of salmon and other fishes? The little gardens full of spices? Or the trade of exotic foods? Slaughtering season was celebrated in some places not that much ago (like… I saw one when little), why not portray one?
And more importantly
WHERE’S THE CHICKEN WITH HELMET???
GIVE ME CHICKEN WITH HELMET OR GIVE ME DEATH
Yeah, and for better or for worse they were much less picky about which animals they ate than we are. Porpoise, anyone?
Medieval people loved their spices; The Forme of Cury has a lot of flavours I’d associate more with Indian food than anything else. Even if you weren’t a wealthy seasoning-loving king like Richard II, you could still have garlic, onions, and herbs.
Also please link me a picture of the chicken with helmet if you can, I need to see this.
Here it is
Here’s a link with more info. Apparently the dish is called Singing Chicken… But that’s a chicken with a helmet
This is the best thing I’ve ever seen.
Hollywood has a tendency to portray the past as “just like today, minus whatever of today’s things we know they didn’t have.” There’s no concept that the past had things that today doesn’t.
Like bawdy medicinal tips.
The idea that people used spices to cover spoiled meat is similarly stupid and utterly infuriating.
And yes, the gaping absence of religion from depictions of the Middle Ages is jarring.
All of this, but mostly that they existed in a sepia toned world with no color, pattern, or texture.
Going off the colors of textiles, the assumption that their textiles were always crude and rough compared to today’s. Think of the twills and brocades! The cloth of gold! The silks, and the wool so gauzy you could see through it! The soft wool clothing! The quality and variety of fabric we have available has plummetted since the industrial revolution.
beyond conventional spices the medieval cook and especially the resourceful housewife would have been exploiting herbs by the fistfull on a level we today cannot comprehend, like we dont even know what some of the names of herbs they used even mean anymore and they grew them like suburban homeowners today grow ugly border hedges. whatever soups they had access to had a decent chance of being something that would be 100% locally grown and every bit as flavorful as any regonal dish today withiout having to resort to saying ‘well they could possibly have been eating curry’ instead of giving them a flavor identity of their own. just because ‘spice’ isnt readily available dont assume ‘flavor’ is out of reach, the aromatics they used would be on par with the modern french concept of mirepoix but, moving past the kitchen the two things that irk me are that everyone toiled miserably and everything was grey stone, rudely carved buildings, shoddy construction unadorned well yeah, if you went to a decrepit ruin thats been abandoned for centuries it would look like that, but not when people lived there! you see the shows and movies and sweet baby cheese the kings residence looks like a dank basement and sometimes he doesnt even have a change of clothes when castles were in use they were prominent displays of power and wealth, whitewashed so that even small amounts of light reflected well inside them so that they illuminated well, paintings and murals in a riot of colors and displaying personal tastes, tapestries that may be the local lords wife, aunt, or grandmothers gift to them as tappestry making was a popular hobby at court where women gathered to gossip and giggle while making vibrantly colored decorations that are usually dismissed because the only ones that survive had endured about 500 years of sun damage, smoke damage, and uncertain cleaning history
that clearly showed the people of the time valued color, had style, and only occasionally made horses look like a dog made out of play-doh. even people who didnt live in a castle still had access to paint to liven up the plaster walls of their homes, brightly dyed fabrics and flowers were as available to them as and they sang, constantly. what we assume was a life of toiling in the mud from dusk till dawn the whole year was typically a relaxed paced life of 10 hour a night sleep in a comfortable bed where work didnt start untill you had your flagon of ale and a song with your buddies as you walked to the field, you sang as you worked, took three ale breaks from work while singing, and then you sang as you walked to the tavern so you could sing while you played nine mens morris or cheated at mancala because you thought the miller was too soused to notice. we barely know any of the songs they sang and humanity is less for it, a scant handfull of them do remain and its just beautiful to hear what a table of tavern patrons would break into song about to prove they werent too drunk for another round song and story were all day every day, theres a reason the most well known middle english text was canterbury tales- whose narrative was that a selection of travelers on the way to the same location had an ongoing bar-bet about who could tell the better story, asking bartenders to judge the complexity of these stories, all of which were absolutely valid as just shit you would say to another drunk in a tavern, would give modern soap operas a swift kick in the pants and its sad that it takes a historian to tell you just how crass and lowbrow humor they were on a similar vein to how so many people somehow forgot that shakespear was lowbrow humor for the commoner and not somehow too sophisticated for rubes it wasnt just bards who would own an instrument, instruments are wood, leather, string, bone/horn, or even clay… those are all commonly available and affordable if not straight up FREE items to someone in the medieval world so a hefty chunk of the population would have an instrument and know how to use it, anything from a wood flute to a simple drum to an ocarina. many designs were even specifically for travel so you could always have it at the ready
how about this- in all the versions of robin hood i have -EVER- seen the most historically accurate any of them got was the scene in kevin costner ‘king of theves’ where friar tuck was singing to himself while on the road ‘women wine and whoring’. not just because its one of the only times in any medieval period movie ive seen someone singing to pass the time in the mind-numbing hours of traveling before the invention of the car radio, but ALSO because they based the tune he sings off the classic ‘ Bache Benne Venies’, the oldest known drinking song we still know the words and tune of and let me tell you that song slaps talk to me about historical accuracy in movies and ill tell you that tolkein writing hobbit songs for walking, drinking, or describing what an elephant was was more historically accurate then all of GOT passed through a sieve to collect every grain of stray element of medievalness gaily dressed hobbits full of pie, sitting in a well decorated room full of beautiful hand carved furniture, on their fifth ale, and singing about the man in the moon getting shitfaced is about ten times historically accurate as most anything else i can think of if you ignored the historical accuracy of them being hobbits
To be clear, when I say ‘like Indian food’, I’m not generalising or trying to deny them their own flavour profile, I’m talking about how Forme of Cury uses things like cardamom, ginger, and pepper that I’ve also had in curry or kheer. I’m just comparing it to the closest thing I’ve eaten, not saying the two are the same. My voice teacher did once make me a medieval French bean dish with duck and smoked bacon, and it was excellent.
But yeah, I know that some people get exasperated by the number of songs that Tolkien has in his books, but I really think it completes the world. It makes it feel fleshed out and more enjoyable and individual in its own right but also ties it to history. Singing is such an accessible pastime and I really don’t think people in fantasy do enough of it. (And as a bonus, Tolkien also gives us some Middle-earth lore in his lyrics. Which is great for the reader and also reflects how important an oral information-sharing tradition is within the world itself.)
I will say that even though I’m not a fan of many of the creative choices made in GoT, I can understand GRRM making his world in ASoIaF a bleaker place than is realistic because part of the whole thing of low fantasy is The World Is Shitty. I’ve heard people say that Dunk and Egg is a less depressing story and it’s more of just a fun knight adventure. I’d like to read it. I definitely enjoyed ASoIaF, but it’s just so heavy sometimes. As for GoT, I never finished it.
Ok so I cannot speak to the accuracy of everything here, but let me tell you a little bit about textiles because (obviously this is news to everyone) I Love Them.
I studied late antique textiles in undergrad. Late antiquity is a weird period with multiple different scholarly definitions, but the gist is that it’s the transition period between the ancient and medieval worlds. Christianity was a thing, but people were also still heavily influenced by older stories/mythologies/religions (the vast majority of textiles that survive from this period come from Egypt because of the climate, so in this case it’s Greek and Roman traditions that still hold influence).
Anyway. The textiles from this weird nebulous period of history are straight-up gorgeous, and not just to a nerd of my particular type. Take a look at Dumbarton Oaks or the Met’s collections and come tell me that ancient/medieval hand-woven textiles were all rough and poorly made. And you know why people spent so many hours making these beautiful things painstakingly by hand? (Every single step of the process, by the way - shearing, carding, spinning, dying, all before you get to the actual weaving. This stuff was incredibly skilled, intensive labor.) They did it because textiles were incredibly important. We don’t think much of them now that they can be mass-produced, but there was a whole Thing with the Virgin Mary spinning and metaphors about her weaving Christ on a loom, and textiles were used for protective magic, and they were part of everything important in people’s lives.
There were dyes that were prohibitively expensive, yes - Tyrian purple is literally still so expensive that we couldn’t buy a big enough sample to test our actual antique textiles against effectively. In the Byzantine Empire, it was controlled exclusively by the imperial family - hence the whole royal purple thing. But guess what? There are so many purple textiles, because people used other things! Madder and indigo! Both affordable! Mix them together and you get a very pretty color. Change up the mordants you use to seal the dyes and you can get a whole range of different colors out of one plant!
And people took these things and they wove them into literal artwork and wore it around on their clothes. They had hangings on their walls for decoration, sure (and also insulation and noise control), but they also had curtains! Textiles separated rooms the way wooden doors do now! The reason I have a weird thing for liminal spaces is because textiles were associated with them, and they were given power. The hanging in your doorway could protect your home from misfortune. Protective symbols around the neck and sleeves of your tunic could keep you from getting ill. And all of these things were pretty and colorful and painstakingly crafted by laypeople and professionals alike, and they were everywhere.
Basically, the ancient and medieval worlds were alive and full of color and magic. Not gray stone and plain cloth and misery.
And also textiles are important and you should love them.
ALSO this is what Roman socks looked like, and aren’t they adorable!
(This particular one is a child’s sock and it’s from the Royal Ontario Museum. A lot of other examples are red, possibly because red was a protective color - it’s also more common in surviving children’s items, likely because of high infant mortality and a need for extra protection for kids. Red was also common as a border color around sleeves and necklines and such - this is the liminal spaces thing I was squealing about!)
