What is your view of the medieval world? A quaint world of tradition and custom? A low tech stable society where everyone knew their place? I don’t know about you but I for a long time wasn’t all that interested in the Middle Ages. It just seemed like a sort of hiatus between the civilisation of the Classical world and the exciting progress of the Renaissance. Indeed I think part of the reason for this was spin on the part of Renaissance scholars keen to show how much more brilliant they were than previous generations. Even the name, Middle Ages, suggests simply a filler between more interesting and significant periods. I don’t think that this view of the Middle Ages is particularly unusual. It is a period that tends to be ignored or romanticised. Continue reading →