History Facts You WILL NOT Believe Ep. 3

this video is brought to you by atlasvpn medieval Divorce by combat the Roman Emperor's taxing urine and the pope Banning crossbows we're gonna have a great time today hello Noble ones welcome back to my channel this is the Metatron speaking and welcome to another episode of fact check the series where we see what sort of historical facts the internet teaches us and we double check them to make sure they are correct let's go shoes where ridiculous tells us history hit.com as they are talking about the medieval period and they say from about the 1330s onward people began wearing shoes with ridiculously long toes the longer they could be the better they were called Krakow shoes named after where they originated from Krakow in Poland medieval shoes were ridiculous I think they look great Beyond about they look great honestly this idea of saying something looked ridiculous oh they looked great for the fashion of the time and to be honest I mean I'd take wearing medieval fashion over the majority of stuff that companies try to sell us these days now these don't have the long tips but they're still historically accurate reproduction of medieval shoes are you sure you want to say ridiculous again really with that being said it is true that long tips shoes became popular and fashionable in some areas in the medieval period but they were also expensive so there were a way to show off your wealth to the point they're actually nobles were the first ones who started wearing those kind of shoes actually made laws to prohibit for example Rich Merchant who could also afford the latest fashion to wear the long tip shoes imagine that from we are Mighty this common weapon was so pernicious that Catholicism banned it and of course they're talking about the ban towards crossbows now this one often gets quite a bit of misinterpretation and there are a few myths about this one so let's read what the article says and then I'll tell you the facts in 1096 Pope Urban II took a good hard look at this new crossbow thing and gave it all of the notes no Christians were to use it in any battle against a fellow Christian on the punishment of excommunication and eternal domination of the Soul suppose with already an old weapon when European Knights first ran into them in the 900s ancient Europeans had used similar weapons by crossbow-like Design had fallen out of favor in Europe yes they are correct crossbows were already used in the ancient period and in The Classical period but then they kind of went out of use and then came back again in the medieval period so if you talk about it as a returned weapon in its medieval iteration then I would imagine yes it is kind of a new weapon but not really by 1096 as they're mentioning here because we know that already in the Battle of Hastings in 1066 crossbows were used now given we don't have any representation of a crossbowman on the BYU tapestry which represents that battle but we do have written mentions and Western Knights did not like it their armor protected them from most weapons they would face with the exception of the Longbow a weapon that took years to learn in decades to master but crossbows could slice right through the armor at Great range than ever a longbow they wouldn't say that Longbow is a great range and a lot of power and Shooters could be training hours or days yeah maybe yeah this last one will probably take two or three weeks maybe four weeks to fully train across Bowman which of course compared to all the years that you needed to train along Bowman they do have a point there and it is true the crossbows were pretty good at penetrating male although it kind of depends on the distance but so were longbows but this is one of the main misconceptions when it comes to this crossbow ban from the Catholic Church particularly when talking about innocent of the second who is the one who in 1139 actually reinforces and pushes forward the ban again is that it's not that crossbows were banned crossbows and longbows meaning crossbowmen and archers were banned and also nobody cared man was basically ignored interestingly enough it's also abandoned monarchs tried to put in place not just a church so of course the church used the spiritual side of it saying God hates them let me read you how they ban it from the second later on Council in 1139 here is how the papal bull reads we prohibit under anathema that murderous art of crossbowmen and archers which is hateful to God to be employed against Christians and Catholics from now on I don't know why everyone forgets The Archers ban so like every time you read this you always think wow the crossbow oh the pope hated it first it's not just the pope there is at least one German King that I can think of who tried to ban it too that's mostly because you can easily have a common man killing a noble man so the upper echelon or Society didn't really like that but as they say archers were also banned and the bands didn't really work so it's possible that both the crossbow and the Longbow acted as a sort of catalyst through the development of late armor among other things in fact just a young later Pope Gregory iv used mounted crossbowmen against the Lombard league and Alliance of European Knights they were all Christians yet the Allure of crossbow power was so strong that a pope employed them against Christian forces absolutely not oh gosh what happened here I think they need to they need to edit this one it was not Gregory IV it was Gregory the ninth if it was Gregory IV it wouldn't have been in the 9th century but you're talking about 1238 this is definitely Pope Gregory IX you might want to change that but yeah it is true and funny if you think about it the first to Catholic Church is like you cannot use these crossbows God hates them and then a few years later they're like you know what never mind use the crossbow shoot all of those Muppets anyhow we've got many more mind-blowing facts to double check on this video including medieval Divorce by Jewel and we'll do it after a brief word from our sponsor now if you're like me and you like to serve the internet looking for interesting historical information it's a great idea to do it in safety which is why you should totally use today's sponsor Atlas VPN avpn is a virtual private Network that makes all of your internet traffic travel through an encrypted tunnel and this way it protects you from spying public Wi-Fi dangers it hides your IP address and online activities address VPN is a great choice because it was developed by cyber security Specialists and among other things it gives you access to the data breach monitor which is a security feature designed to track any data breaches related to your online account automatically scanning any leaked information but another add-on through Atlas vbn is the fact that you can use Netflix for many countries regardless of where you are so let's say that you wanted to watch a show that is only available 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public toilets was collected from the cloaca Maxima Rome's biggest sewage system the urine was sold as a chemical for tanning and laundry which Vespasian text a comical incident was the Vespasian Sun Titus complained about the disgusting nature of the tax for speigen responded by telling him to smell a gold coin and asking him if it stank titusan said no the spasen replied yet it comes from urine the conversation was a base for the saying pecunia no no lit money does not stink yeah that is that is actually all correct let me add a couple of things because they do mention that it was used for tanning and laundry but it was used for a lot more urine was a good commodity so what it really boils down to and saying boils down to while talking about urine is disgusting what it boils down to is the natural ammonia content of urine and it could be used for manufacturing cleaning and in the head of some Romans even for medicine I'd like to underline though that that doesn't make the Romans repulsive it makes them resourceful in fact this idea that we think oh that's disgusting they use the urine to do what well sure but then again on that same line of thought then why don't we complain about eating vegetables considering the fact that a lot of people still use animal manure to fertilize the land anyhow the Romans were famous for their high quality leather and one of the ways that they tanned said leather was to use urine that is because the ammonia in urine acted as a natural softener basically breaking down the proteins in the lever making it more Supple and the process was so effective that they actually kept doing it in the medieval period so it's not just a Roman thing urine was also used in the production of wool now wool was a highly priced commodity but before you could use it you had to spun it into a thread and before you could do that you had to clean it and skim it Udin was perfect for this purpose again because of the ammonia in it as it was effective in breaking down the natural oils in the wool after that they would wash it clean it and spin it so it's not like someone was wearing urine soaked wool they also used it as one of the constituents to create dyes for clothes so in other words in ancient Rome all you needed to do to become a productive and contributing member of society was to pee from livescience.com Divorce by combat couples in medieval Germany didn't waste time when it came to solving their dispute future rather than just arguing like any normal couple they took to the ring trial by single combat was a popular way to solve disagreements and when man and wife were fighting there were bizarre restrictions for example the husband must stand in a hole with a hand behind his back while his wife ran around with a sack filled with rocks is that all they say about that that you see that's the problem why these facts tend to misinform all right let me clear this one out first of all try it by combat or judicial battle was a bilateral form of the judicial ordeal called UD day in Latin and to simplify it the whole idea behind trial by combat was the fact that whenever a court of law couldn't decide who was right they didn't have enough evidence they would chalk it up to divine intervention put to people against each other in what they perceived the fairest way so and then they would fight each other and of course the one who survived the fight well that must have been God intervening and so being the Victor that already proves in the medieval mind that he was in the right and it is important to underline that this all fell within the judicial system of the medieval period in other words it's part of the legal system with that being said when it comes to marital disputes well first of all we have to understand one thing divorce in the modern sense basically did not exist in the medieval period divorce as a word was used but usually doesn't exactly overlap perfectly with a modern idea of what a divorce is one thing you could do is to get your marriage annulled but this was a multi-step process that involved courts the church the community and quite a bit of money in fact just for inflation a full-on divorce in the medieval period depending on the situation could cost you the equivalent of seven thousand pounds today which means that actual full-on divorces were not that common in the medieval period that doesn't of course mean that people just stayed married sometimes it would just you know separate him who cares but when it comes to the Nobles the situation was a bit more complicated because you know you're a noble man so everyone is looking at you and your private life as well including the church which is why the majority of documented cases that we do have come from the nobility and before I keep giving you a few more details about this the one thing I want you to remember is this do not imagine the medieval period having all of these people constantly getting divorces by combat fighting and that being a common practice because it wasn't in fact we have no idea how common it was maybe happen in a few other places but of course we shouldn't imagine oh if it happened in one place it means that it was the common law everywhere all over Europe regardless of all that I must admit that when it did happen that you had a trial by combat to resolve a divorce what I'm gonna say about that is goodness gracious they did take until death do us apart literally from Museum replicas.com we read something about armor no light could imagine entering the battlefield without his armor that's correct can you imagine that it would be like modern day armor units actually ditching the tank for a bicycle a suit to play still that was attached via leather buckles customizing when necessary in many suits and pieces that needed to be custom made to allow the wearer to move as freely as possible but I'd say when you talk about high-end and since it's mentioning Knights the entire suit Obama was casting not just the piece the pieces the whole suit of armor was custom made for high ranking nobility full play time of his complex and could weigh as much as 50 pounds justing armor could reach 100 pounds these are the maximum of the spectrum some sort of armor wear less heavy but he's not wrong it's correct and as a result it'll come myth that I fall into the night was like a turtle not very mobile and once down that was it over a decade of training being around and using these suits made them physically fit and very mobile absolutely yeah okay yeah that's that's good that's well written I'd like to underline one thing I noticed as I read a lot of these about medievalama uh people me included we tend to blame Hollywood for it we say yeah look at what Hollywood has done they pushed to this idea of our medieval Knight in full plate armor he can't move and if he falls on the ground he can't get up and he needs a freaking crane to mount his horse of course all of this is wrong but we shouldn't just blame Hollywood and what I mean by that is first we do have also to blame the victorians because that's what they it was just they didn't have video games they didn't have like a PlayStation so what they did was to just make up stuff about medieval people and laugh at them evil people are so stupid so yes they did push that but it actually goes deeper than that and there is something we can blame from the medieval period that sometimes has even persuaded some historians before the enactment proved them wrong that this idea of medieval people can't really move because of their armor was real let me show you in the 13th century the explanation by geralt of Wales said this with a complicated armor it was difficult to get around on foot when necessary in the mid-1400s Benedict cultio barrezzo wrote critically of Italian condotieri Cavalry as being so burdened with heavy armor that they could not fight for an hour without collapsing under the weight and if they dismounted they lost their mobility and were easily captured so as you can see this idea of our medieval armor is too heavy even in the medieval period the myth was there but how do I know it was a myth well first of all these need to be read in context in the sense that and one of the things that was an absolute given in the medieval period is that still you have to enter the battlefield wearing armor because if you don't wear the armor you're dead so of course wearing armor does come with some discomfort and that's probably what they were talking about with that being said still the pros outweigh the cons because if it wasn't the case no one would have worn armor also still from the medieval period with accounts on the other side of the Spectrum in the late 1300s the famous knight Jean lemayne described the Regiment of heavy exercise in armor including practice leaving on the back of the horse to accustom himself to become long-winded and enduring he would walk and run long distances on foot or he would practice striking numbers and forcible blows with a battle ax or Mallet in order to accustom himself to the weight of his armor he would turn some assaults whilst in a complete suit of mail with the exception of his helmet or would dance vigorously in a shed of Steel can you imagine that a medieval Knight in male doing a somersault or dancing in a skirt of Steel oh God now this is interesting also because this is in France but we have a similar mention uh in Portugal check this out in 1434 Don Duarte king of Portugal says that it is also advised that a wooden horse be kept for practicing jumping on and off the saddle in armor so we know medieval people use Dharma all the time we know they were extremely effective we also know that there is a massive variation from off-the-shelf low end armor all the way up to the best type of armor that is perfectly molded if you will and tailored for the person wearing it we also have many possible different configurations of armor lighter and more mobile one heavy Animal Protective ones so I think the one problem when it comes to early historians that use the aforementioned two passages to think oh armor you just you know horrible you can't move in it the one thing that they're not taking into consideration is it depends on every person how trained they are how good they are how physical they are how much armor they're choosing to wear there is so much variation that just us saying Amma equals this is as silly as saying all cars are fast because you just think of a Lamborghini or all cars are slow because you just think of a I don't know Fiat Panda from military.com six things you should know about medieval armor it's not called chainmail we don't care what your dungeon master calls it this is the verbal equivalent of calling the robot that dispenses money an ATM machine actually quite a few people do that chain and male are essentially the same thing a series of interwoven rings on a massive scale okay yeah oh I mean he's correct the right way to say it is just male but with that being said honestly the fact that the more popular chain male expression even though it is redundant it doesn't make me mad too much I don't use it I just call it male or a male shirt but even when playing Dungeons and Dragons or any role-playing game out there the one thing that really pisses me off a lot more than chain mail is plate nail literally scale mail chain mail plate mail what these games do is that they are coming up with their own nomenclature and they're basically changing the word mail into meaning armor that one together with the fact that DND calls a one-handed sword a long sword in with a real long swords were two-handed you know not a huge fan of that nomenclature but then again who cares is dandy armor didn't weigh that much there are movies that show Knights being lifted onto horses via cranes which is kind of ridiculous oh absolutely armor at the time was made of iron bronzo steel and an entire suit of armor dawned for using medieval combat didn't weigh hundreds of tons even when it was made of iron huh I'm actually interested so he's he's writing a good article but I'm saying I'm a little perplexed with the with the statement that armor in the medieval period was made of bronze and this one is kind of I kind of want to focus on this one very briefly because was medieval armor made of bronze when we talk about the medieval period we do have the tendency of imagining everything being made of either iron or steel and yes for the majority of stuff when it comes to weapons and armor that will be correct there are exceptions though for example sometimes mace heads both in the 12th century in the 13th century could be made of alternative Metals For example brass heads existed bronze heads existed that is because at the end of the day particularly when it comes to blunt weapons it doesn't really matter what lump of metal it is it will still crack a skull because of its condensed shape the same can't be said about for example a Long Blade then the type of metal you use will be significant when it comes to its durability but with a maze but what about a full sort of bronze maybe I'm reading too much into it but I think it's an interesting question so let's address it so bronze is a metal that will continue to be used all the way even beyond the medieval period I mean early canons were made of bronze and oftentimes bronze was used more than iron Whenever there was any sort of contact with gunpowder and that is because when you hit bronze it doesn't make sparks which makes it extremely safe to be used near gunpowder and because you're not going to make everything explode by mistake with that being said bronze and in general copper alloy Link in the description was definitely a component or a constituent when it comes to Medieval armor in the sense that yeah oftentimes you had rims made of brass or bronze or Latin for decorative purposes you also had male shirts that had some rings or sometimes signature of the maker that were made of brass or bronze sometimes rivets would be some sort of copper alloy so yes it's but still the main component of medieval armor being bronze and not sure about that Shield bosses in the early medieval periods sometimes were made of bronze masks but a full suit of for example play Timer made of bronze I'm not aware of it when it comes to scale the situation can be maybe interesting and we could kind of Deep dive on this on a dedicated video if you're interested to scale armor but when we look at iconography we do have examples of scale skirts or scale a standards of protection for the throat and other sections or even an entire full sort of scale that are painted yellow now that could mean two things either it is some sort of copper alloy it could be bronze it could be brass or it was gilded and the only way to really know that would be to see who the person is because they would have to be quite Rich to have an entire thing gilded so I don't exclude it completely there may be some components of scale in some of the rims in male would be a brass or bronze possible absolutely but not a full sort of plate in bronze them they just wouldn't do that as well as I know let me know if you know of an example in the comments from Museum replicas.com the word night are we going into Linguistics here it translates to serve and how humble is that not what most people Envision when Lancelot comes striding in on his white stallion it's true their job was to serve Lords and Kings as soldiers landlords and Justice bearers and eventually take on the role of protecting pilgrims that could not protect themselves as we saw during the many crusades okay yeah this one does need absolutely some extra context while it is true that the original meaning of the word in Old English coming from the old Germanic root could be translated as servant that's not the only actual possible translation it could also be translated as just a Boy by the time this word is used in the medieval sense including the authorian legend and Sir Lancelot it had lost its original meaning and it just meant first a professional mounted Warrior and then a rank of nobility of course in connection with military training it is interesting however when it comes to comparative history that there is a similar route when it comes to the original meaning of the word Samurai in Japanese which does come from the old verb saburrau which means to serve but once again by the time the sun would have become the sort of elite fighting force they were used to it just doesn't mean servant anymore it's another way to say bushio warrior professional Warrior so you shouldn't imagine it as if medieval people were like hey there is a servant over there no that's a knight to add something interesting though medieval people didn't pronounce it night but first of all the K was absolutely fully pronounced all the way up to I want to say the 1800s at least so it would be Knight but not even because of a linguistic phenomenon called the Great Vowel Shift I'll make a dedicated video my second Channel Shameless plug metatron's Academy but to cut a long story short since yeah we don't do too much Linguistics the Great Vowel Shift was a linguistic evolutionary phenomenon that happened in England between the 1400s and the 17 1800s now many things changed but if we Focus mostly on vowels the vowel I for the majority of the medieval period was actually pronounced as a long e so connect would be how a medieval man would pronounce it but in the 1400s or 15th century as the Great Vowel Shift started to happen the vowel changed from e to a and only finally in the 18th century I in other words from connect to canate to ignite to night so a word like time would have been team team time and if the second iteration makes you think of some areas in Scotland you will be correct in fact the Scottish accent depending on where you're from when they say overate tame instead of time they're actually being very linguistically conservative in the sense that that's how everyone would have pronounced it in the 15th and 16th century the more you know alright but I think we reviewed quite a few facts if you like this series please share it comment below like and bring in some good engagement so I can continue this series and make even more episodes maybe next time even talking about gladiators well let me know what you think in the comments below and thank you very much for watching as always don't forget to click the link in the description below to make use of the great offer by atlasvpn thank you very much for watching and remember the Metatron spread his wings goodbye

Channel: Metatron

Views: 188,864

Keywords: middle ages, facts, incredible, amazing, wow, believe, spectacular, myth, myth busting, debunk, debunking, teacher, professor, university, fun, interesting, fun facts, ancient Rome, knight, prince, king, queen, duke, noble, soldier, armour, armor, sword, dagger, mace, lance, spear, documentary, support, metatron, discussion, reacts, how to, discuss, speech, talk, video, wrong, incorrect, check, facts that will blow your mind, really, force, history, historical, accurate, great, good, not good, real, reality, reality check, why, who

Id: 3T54DtfjOh8

Length: 24min 59sec (1499 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 15 2023