A #thread about some dark facts about the middle ages.

1. Student Riots

Student riots didn't start in the 20th century. It is a violent tradition that has very old roots, even as far as the middle ages.

An example would be the riots in the University of Paris.

Students in those days were covered by something called "the benefit of clergy" which exempted them from secular law, opting instead for the more lenient Church laws, which meant they frequently got away with rowdy, drunken behaviour.

Anyway, the townsfolk of Paris were really mad after an incident where students fought over a bill at a tavern. The students got beaten up. The next day which was Ash Wednesday,

...the students returned to it in large numbers and with clubs and broke into the tavern, beat the taverner and tore down the tavern.

The city guardsmen, through a nobleman, demanded the university open the gates for retribution.

They came in, found a group of students who may not have even been involved and slaughtered them.

Sounds like getting a university education back in the day was an extreme sport.

The British were never ones to be left out of any fun though...

Here's a mural painting said to depict violence between students at Oxford University.

2. Papal Violence(Pope Leo III)

Violence wasn't restricted to the youth though. It seemed like back in the day, anyone could get it. As Pope Leo III was quick to learn.

On April 25, 799, Pope Leo III was leading a procession honoring St. Mark in Rome, chanting prayers and responses with the crowd, a practice called the Greater Litanies.

At the time, the politics and powerful families in Rome dictated who got to be Pope. So… anyway the Pope's predecessor's(Pope Adrian I) relatives were mad that they weren't controlling the Papacy anymore and sent thugs to gauge out Leo's eyes and cut his tongue out.

Leo managed to escape the mob and recover his eyesight and heal his tongue. He sought refuge with Emperor Charlemagne who marched south to Italy, to reinstate him as Pope.

3. The Demonization of Nudity

Nudity was a symbol of purity in the middle ages and everyone participated in it. Bathing, dancing, games, and feasts in the nude among mixed company were very common.

Public bathing was also a very popular past-time in the middle ages.

These are facts that most people do not know because the church after the Protestant Reformation made nudity a sin, and even started an Inquisition to torture those who participated in it.

Books that mentioned anything about sex,

...or nudity were destroyed, as well as statues, frescoes, friezes, etc.

So somehow between the 16th and the 17th century the world went from this

...to this.

4. The making of Knights

Knights began training as pages at 8 or 9 to inure them to violence and did so by being sent away from their parents to a relative or family ally because the process was brutal enough it was not reckoned a parent could do it.

The reason for their youth was to make sure all skills were bedrock-level secure but recent studies have also shown that your morality at 8 is still malleable enough to accept the violence without question.

Some pages were trained to slaughter pigs with swords that were hung from roof beams to desensitize them to the screams and blood and smell.

To be fair, the Spartans did it first.

5. The Synod of the Corpse(Pope Stephen VI)

Pope Stephen VI

In 897, Pope Stephen VI formally tried, dismembered, and drowned the corpse of his predecessor Formosus.

The reasons were political - Stephen relied on the support of the Holy Roman Emperor Lambert and his formidable mother Agiltrude.

Formosus, however, had supported one of Lambert’s rivals - and the emperor was determined to have his vengeance. The fact that Formosus had died in the meantime was inconvenient, but not insurmountable.

With Pope Stephen’s connivance, the remains of Formosus were exhumed, dressed in papal vestments, and propped up, in a courtroom.

A deacon was helpfully appointed to speak for Formosus, who was accused of dastardly ecclesiastical crimes. Unsurprisingly, Formosus was found guilty. The three fingers he used for blessings were torn off; the papal vestments were peeled away;

...and the corpse was heartily heaved into the River Tiber.

6. Pornocracy

Marozia

The period that indignant nineteenth-century historians dubbed the Pornocracy (roughly the first half of the tenth century 900-950 AD) was dominated by the Roman noblewoman Marozia, who managed to be the lover, mother, and grandmother of successive popes.

Around the age of 15 (or so a hostile source reports), Marozia became the mistress of Pope Sergius III, with whom she conceived the future John XI. A few years later, she married a prominent nobleman, and swiftly became the most powerful woman in Rome.

The only pope who dared to oppose her, John X, was imprisoned and smothered.

Marozia’s son was elected pope at age 20(Pope John XI). Shortly thereafter, at what must have been a memorable ceremony, he officiated at his mother’s third marriage.

In 932, however, he was imprisoned by his half-brother Alberic. Marozia was also thrown into prison, and seems to have died there.

7. Papal Orgies

Pope John XII

John XII, Marozia’s grandson, was a dissolute youth with no administrative ability, shred of dignity, or remotely redeeming quality. He was, however, Marozia’s grandson - and that was enough to get him elected pope.

Almost immediately upon being elected, if our sources can be believed, he invited his aristocratic buddies into the papal palace, and embarked on a more or less perpetual orgy.

When he emerged from the palace, it was apparently John’s custom to lurk in the darker corners of St. Peter’s Basilica and grope female worshipers.

A historical source quotes it this way

“we read….that [John’s] rapes of virgins and widows deterred female pilgrims from visiting the Shrine of St. Peter, lest, in the devout act, they should be violated by his successor”

In the end, after an eventful papacy, John XII died of sexual exhaustion at age 27.
Apparently, the good pontiff was stricken with paralysis while in bed with a friend’s wife (presumably by some sort of sex-induced stroke) and perished a few days later.

8. The Orgasm Debacle

In the Middle Ages people believed that women couldn’t become pregnant if they didn’t get satisfied sexually (have an orgasm).

The female body was considered a mirror image of the male body, with the sexual organs inside out. The vagina was though to be in inside out penis.

So, it just made sense to them that conception couldn’t occur unless both parties had an orgasm.

One big downside was that if a raped woman became pregnant, she must have experienced an orgasm, therefore she was not raped.

9. Hungry Royals.

The king’s castle usually didn’t have enough food-producing lands around it to feed the royal court year round, so the royal retinue would go couch surfing at various vassals’ keeps & manors. They’d arrive, eat up the larder for a few weeks, then move on to do it to someone else.

Even so, by late winter or early spring, there was often not enough food to go around, and everybody went hungry…even royalty.

10. Extremely Low Life Expetancy

Food storage was pretty terrible, so lots of what they ate was starting to turn bad. Molds often infested grains, introducing toxins. Water supplies were often tainted by human waste. Dysentery was common. Delirium from bad food and water...

...was common place.

While extremely lucky people could live into their 60’s, the average person was lucky to get into their 30’s. Infection, injury and illness took out many.

Makes one feel pretty lucky to live in the 21st century.