In the illuminating and entertaining weblog Going Medieval, Eleanor Janega, a medievalist on the London School of Economics, upends prevalent misconceptions about medieval Europe. These misunderstandings embody that individuals didn’t bathe (they did) and that these have been the Dark Ages*. Her new guide, The Once and Future Sex, is subtitled “Going Medieval on Women’s Roles in Society,” and that is precisely what she does—if by “going medieval” you plan the popular culture that means of “dismembering in a barbaric method” which, regardless of her protestations, you most likely do.
Her essential thrust, within the weblog and within the guide, is that it is easy and handy for us to examine medieval instances as being backward in each means as a result of that makes trendy instances appear all that rather more spectacular. But not solely is that this mistaken, it is harmful. Just as a result of life is unquestionably higher for ladies now than it was then, that doesn’t imply our present place in society is perfect or in some way destined. It’s not.
Progress didn’t proceed in a straight arrow from unhealthy instances then to good instances now. Maintaining that issues have been horrible then deludes us into pondering that they should be at their pinnacle now. Janega lays out this argument within the introduction after which spends the majority of the textual content citing proof to bolster it.
Blame the Greeks
The first chapter describes how medieval Europeans acquired their concepts about ladies, intercourse, magnificence, and… properly, typically every little thing from the Greeks. Greeks considered males because the default people; ladies have been considered spiritually as fallen males (Plato) and bodily as inside-out males (Galen). Then Christianity and its doctrine of Original Sin got here alongside, which didn’t precisely induce males to see ladies in a extra favorable gentle.
“Augustine’s message was that even when a man disobeyed God, it was probably because a woman had convinced him to do so,” she notes. Men wrote down these concepts about ladies after which spent centuries instructing them to different males in universities and monasteries, the place there have been definitively No Girls Allowed.
(Nuns have been permitted to learn, research, and assume, and the surviving data of ladies who did so, like Hildegard of Bingen [1098–1179] and Christine de Pizan [1364–c.1430], recommend that they didn’t view their very own natures fairly like males did. But educated ladies have been uncommon, and surviving writings by or about them are rarer nonetheless.)
Then there’s a chapter on magnificence requirements for ladies, which mandated golden tresses, milky-white pores and skin, and rosy cheeks. The adjectives have been lifted immediately from Dares Phrygius, a recent of Homer’s who purportedly witnessed the Trojan War, they usually’ve remained unchanged till… mainly now. Then, as now, ladies have been speculated to naturally have this look; God forbid they put any time, cash, or effort into it. (Quite actually—utilizing make-up was thought of among the many gravest of sins).
Medieval males did like a potbelly on their ladies, although. This is the alternative of at present’s choice for chiseled abs, however each options denote the identical trait: wealth. Medieval ladies sporting potbellies clearly had sufficient to eat, and at present’s flat-bellied ladies clearly have sufficient leisure time to work out.