What was good about the middle ages?

Answer 1

There were a lot of good things about the Middle Ages. And many of the things we think of as bad were not real.

People of the middle ages were rather clean, for the most part. The idea that they were dirty and smelly might have come from Hollywood, or it might have been a self congratulatory myth created in the Renaissance, but the medieval people believed that the attention a person put into keeping his body clean was an indication of how he attended to the needs of his soul; cleanliness is next to godliness. They also believed that bad air spread disease, so it was important not to let things get smelly. (please see link on bathing below)

Contrary to popular myth, medieval people were not particularly superstitious. Witch hunts, for example, did not really begin to happen a lot until the Renaissance and later times. The legal codes of Charlemagne and some of the Germanic tribes forbade even believing in witches, and made burning people for witchcraft a capital crime. (please see the link below on witch hunts)

There were great advances in science and mathematics during the Middle Ages, and some of these must have been quite exciting. Some of them were simple matters of inventive engineering, such as the 11th century invention of the chimney, which made it possible for the first time in history to have a real fireplace (believe it or not). Arabic numerals came into use, so, for example, you could divide 247 by 19 to get 13, instead of dividing CCXLVII by XIX to get XIII. Advances in agriculture improved efficiency on farms enormously, making cities larger and more numerous than they could be under the Roman Empire. (please see the link on medieval technology, below)

Some really great art and architecture was done in the Middle Ages. We have a myth that the Germanic tribes, for example, were made up of rude, destructive people, and seem to want to believe they had no culture of value. The artwork in the shoulder clasp found at Sutton Hoo is a magnificent example of jewelry that shows, by itself, how wrong this myth actually is. Gothic art and architecture is renowned. So is Byzantine art, and so is the Romanesque. (please see the link below on medieval art)

The Middle Ages saw the development of musical styles and genres that were very advanced and very important culturally. The development of written music, taking into account relative pitch and timing, meant that for the first time, music could be composed in notation that we can decipher today. Polyphony developed into the richest form it had ever seen with medieval counterpoint. And the minstrels, troubadours, jongleurs, gleemen, and other bards, spread both the music and the culture behind it throughout Europe. Both for the musician, and for the listener, these were exciting times. (please see the link below on medieval music)

The literature of the Middle Ages grew apace. There was always interest in theology, as people remain aware. But secular literature developed also. Taliesin, the Welsh poet, worked in the 6th century. Beowulf was an great Anglo-Saxon epic. Other literature developed, but in the High Middle Ages, there was a cultural blossoming that was quite remarkable. Fostered by such people as Duke William IX the Troubadour of Aquitaine, and his granddaughter, Duchess Eleanor of Aquitaine, who was also Queen of France and Queen of England, medieval literature took on new character. Stories that had already begun to be told were woven into cycles we still remember today, such as the stories of King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table. Thomas Malory wrote Le Morte d'Arthur, Geoffrey Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales, and Dante wrote The Divine Comedy, all in the Middle Ages. (please see the link below on medieval literature)

Now, if you are quite attentive and knowledgeable, and if you check the reference below on medieval literature, you will notice something very puzzling. The reference says, "Since Latin was the language of the Roman Catholic Church, which dominated Western and Central Europe, and since the Church was virtually the only source of education, Latin was a common language for Medieval writings, even in some parts of Europe that were never Romanized." Now this seems really strange in light of one thing; none of the works mentioned in the paragraph above was in Latin. And this points to a Great but Secret Truth about the Middle Ages: "Sometimes History is Wrong." The neat thing is that enough clues exist to tell us what the truth is, and why it is misunderstood. Education was not all from the Catholic Church. Secular education existed and was promoted by governments. Consider the following: First, in the year 700 AD, a school called the Beverley Grammar School was opened in Northumbria, supported by the state, not the church. The area it was in passed under control of Vikings for several decades, but the school remained open. When the Viking Danelaw was united with England, the school remained open, and it remains open to this day, as the sixth oldest school in England. (please see the link below to the list of the oldest schools in the world) Second, King Alfred the Great promoted education and started schools. His stated policy goal was to provide education to all who were free men (peasants not bound to the soil) or of higher rank in English. He subsidized the translation of great books into English, so ordinary people could read them. (please see the link below to an article on King Alfred the Great) The clear lesson is that there was a lot going on culturally that historians do not focus on much, and one such thing is that our ideas about medieval education are very much out of line with reality.

Even if we focus on the lives of the poor serfs, we can find some good to discuss. It is true that serfs were not rich (at least not usually), and it is true that they lacked a right to move off the manorial estate on which they lived without permission of their lord. But the idea that they were abused slaves is not true, the idea that they had no rights is not true, and the idea that their lives were uniformly miserable is, obviously, not true. Consider this: in many places, in many times, a serf who ran off the manor was considered free, if he could stay away for a year. We might wonder why a person would not prefer freedom. The penalty, if one was caught, was not severe, and yet most serfs did not run away. The answer to this puzzle lies in the fact that the serf was not without rights, he had a right to a place to live, he had a right to fields to work, and he had a right to protection. These rights could not be alienated by a lord arbitrarily. If the manor was sold, the serfs still had a right to live there, and the new lord had to respect that. The serfs who ran away gave up those rights, and had to fend for himself. I know a few people today who might want to give up the right to move away with out permission, if it meant that they had a permanent job, a permanent place to live, and protection. (please see the link below on serfdom)

Ultimately, in the Middle Ages, one thing could be relied on, and that was the Church. The Church provided more than just salvation for the soul. It also provided the best health care people could get, and even when that meant nothing more than a bed, meals, a prayer, and a kind word, it was much better than the common alternative. The Church provided ecclesiastical courts that were more merciful than secular courts, were not permitted to torture anyone, and could be appealed to by anyone who could read the 51st Psalm, the standard test for literacy. The Church provided sanctuary for fugitives, whether it was a serf woman fleeing her husband, a Queen fleeing her husband, or an ordinary felon (who might only get sanctuary for a period of a few weeks, but it gave him time to repent, and possibly to learn to read the 51st Psalm). (please see the link below on the medieval right of asylum)

Answer 2

One point of viewI don't think there was much to like about the Middle Ages. It was stinky, dirty, full of superstition, run by the church, people didn't have any rights, most of the population was poor, there were wars or raids all the time, people didn't live much past the age of 40, and it was hard to stay warm or get cool. I wouldn't have wanted to live then. A good thing is the stain glass windows that still survive, some of the art, and the workman ship for the items they made. A different point of viewThe Middle Ages were a time when much of the world was full of exciting development in art, knowledge, and commerce.

I would invite anyone interested in what was good about the Middle Ages to review the Gothic architecture, the stories of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, Dante's Inferno, or Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Music developed as the rest of the art world did, and for the first time, in the Middle Ages, complex contrapuntal music was possible.

The Middle Ages were a time of development in mathematics that was quite remarkable. The Arabic numbering system, algebra, and a host of other things were introduced to Europe, and the Europeans responded with inventions of their own. Imagine this: in northern Europe, someone in invented the chimney. The invention of the chimney meant that the wealthier people of the Middle Ages could have fireplaces, something even the ancient Romans did not have. New looms, spinning wheels, paper, wine presses, printing presses, pumping windmills, grinding stones, methods of making steel, distilled spirits, and a host of other things were invented. Agricultural advances, many from Arab lands, and others developed in Europe, made it possible to support populations far in excess of what existed in Roman times, which meant that in time medieval cities were more numerous and more populated than those of Rome. (see link below on medieval technology)

The rise of the Middle Class meant that all free people could aspire to increase their status and wealth.

This is a very different picture than the one painted above. Let's look at the issues raised above one by one.

In the Middle Ages, the people were very clean. Most people were religious, and believed that cleanliness was next to godliness. They also believed that diseases were transmitted by tainted air, and so it was good to avoid things that smelled bad. The result was that most small towns had public baths, and people who did not have access to a bath bathed in brooks and rivers. (please see link below on bathing)

It is true that the Church influenced society profoundly during the Middle Ages, but it was not a time full of superstition. For example, there were provisions in medieval law condemning burning witches as a superstitious practice and prescribing a death penalty for it. Witch hunts came mostly after the middle ages were over. (please see the link below on witch hunts) Also, the Church was never unified. The Celtic Christian Church was separate until the eighth century, the Oriental Orthodox and Coptic Orthodox were always separate, and the Eastern Orthodox Church separated from the Roman Catholic Church in the eleventh century.

The Church also provided services for people that they would otherwise have needed badly. The monasteries provided medicines, hospital care, safe houses and protection for travelers, education, a separated and much more merciful set of ecclesiastical courts to which many people could appeal, and sanctuary for fugitives. Some of these require some explanation. Ecclesiastical courts could not allow prisoners to be tortured and provided for mercy to those who repented; in many places they could be appealed to by anyone who could read a prescribed passage from The Bible (Psalm 51). In many places, any fugitive, from a woman fleeing her husband to a felon, could get sanctuary in a church or monastery, and even agents of the kings could not remove them. The popes could excommunicate kings who went out of bounds, and excommunication threatened their very survival, since it excused everyone from oaths of support or treaties. (please see the link below on right of asylum)

The only people who did not have rights in the Middle Ages were slaves, there were not very many of them, and the practice of slavery passed out of existence in most places. Serfs, who were bound to the soil did not have a right to leave the manor on which they lived, were not slaves. They could not legally leave the manor without permission of the lord, but they had a right to live there and could not be evicted, even if the land was sold. If they wanted to leave but could not get permission, they could run away and were considered free if they could stay away for a year. The problem with this was not that they would be prosecuted, but that they would lose the security they had of having a right to farm their manor. Serfs also had reeves who represented them to their lords, and the reeves were not assigned by the lords, but elected by the serfs. (please see the section below on serfdom)

Poverty is a subjective thing, and what is poverty to one person is wealth to another. It is true that most people of the Middle Ages were serfs, but it is not necessarily true that they were all poor. There are references to rich peasants in medieval literature. There was also a middle class that started in the Early Middle Ages, and continued to rise in power through the entire period. By the end of the Middle Ages, there were a large number of cities with republican governments, called communes, powerful guilds, and leagues of guilds. The Hanseatic League, which was a group of cities and was controlled by merchants and tradesmen, rivaled nations with its power. (see links on the communes, guilds, and the Hanseatic League)

There have always been wars and raids. The Middle Ages, there were times when there were a lot, particularly in the Age of Migrations. Clearly there were not wars everywhere at all times.

I have seen data indicating that the life expectancy at birth was 37. Doing the math, and considering that the Infant Mortality Rate was about a third, what it comes to is that the life expectancy at two was about 55.

Answer 3

The Middle Ages are important because many important things were invented such as the printing press, quarantine, mechanical clocks, eyeglasses, and the plough. Go to the link below to see more of the inventions.

Answer 4

I'd say it's not too bad, it's just that it might have been a bit bloody and unfair.

Answer 5

The good features of the middle ages were that people could do things they wanted.

Answer 6

i can only think of one but thats enough. its polution, there is not big factories or transport, or people to drop rubbish and graffiti.

Answer 7

i think the middle ages were bad because